The New California
Lima Barreto (Rio de Janeiro, 1881-05-13 -- Rio de Janeiro, 1922-11-01)
From: A Nova Califórnia
Translation by Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto
No one knew where that man had come from. The Mail agent could only inform that he answered to the name of Raimundo Flamel, because thus was subscribed the correspondence he received. And it was big. Almost daily, there went the mailman to one of the extremities of the town, where lived the unknown man, sustaining a robust pack of letters coming from the whole world, thick magazines in obscure[1] languages, books, packages...
When Fabrício, the mason, came back from a service at the house of the new inhabitant, all at the small store asked him what work had been determined to him.
-- I'll make an oven, said the black man, in the dining room.
Imagine the astonishment of the little town of Tubiacanga, in knowing of so extravagant a construction: an oven in the dining room! And, through the next days, Fabrício could tell that he had seen balloons of glasses, knives with no cut, cups as the ones of a pharmacy --- a roll of weird things showing themselves through the tables and shelves as utensils of a kitchen battery in which the devil himself cooked.
The alarm was made in the village. To some, the most advanced ones, it was a maker of fake currency; to others, the believers and simple ones, a type that had part with the Evil One[2].
Chico da Tirana, the carter, when he passed in front of the house of the mysterious man, next to the hissing car, and looked at the chimney of the dining room smoking, didn't refrain from crossing himself and praying a "credo" in low voice; and, were it not for the intervention of the pharmacist, the subdelegate would have gone give a siege to the house of that suspect individual, which uneased the imagination of a whole population.
Taking in consideration the information from Fabrício, the apothecary Bastos had concluded that the unknown man must be a wise man, a great chemist, in refuge there to more tranquilly take forward his scientific works.
Graduated man and respected in the city, councilman, doctor too, because doctor Jerônimo did not like to prescribe and had made himself an associate of the pharmacy to more in peace live, the opinion of Bastos took tranquillity to all the consciences and made the population surround with a silent admiration the person of the great chemist, which had come to inhabit the town.
By afternoon, if they saw him striding by the margin of the Tubiacanga, sitting here and there, looking lostly at the clear waters of the little river, preoccupied before the penetrating melancholy of the crepuscle, all uncovered themselves and it was not rare that to the "good evening" they added "doctor". And it touched the heart of that people very much the profound simpathy with which he treated the children, the way by which he contemplated them, seeming to take pity that they had been born to suffer and die.
In truth, it was to be seen, under the smooth sweetness of the afternoon, the goodness of Messiah with which he caressed those black children, so smooth of skin and so sad of ways, dived in their moral captivity, and also the white ones, of dark-complexioned, fissured and rough skin, living supported in the necessary cachexia of the tropics.
Sometimes, it came upon him the will to think what the reason was of having Bernardin de Saint-Pierre spent all his tenderness with Paul and Virginia and forgotten the slaves which surrounded them...
In few days the admiration for the wise man was almost general, and it wasn't so only because there was someone who didn't hold in great account the merits of the new inhabitant.
Captain Pelino, school-master and redactor of the ''Gazeta de Tubiacanga'', local organ and affiliated to the situationist party, showed aversion for the wise man. "You shall see, said he, who is this type... A bilk, and adventurer or maybe a thief runaway from Rio."
His opinion was based on nothing, or rather, was based on his occult spite seeing in the homeland a rival for the fame of wise man of which he enjoyed. Not that Pelino was a chemist, far from that; but he was wise, he was a grammarian. No one wrote in Tubiacanga which did not take strike of stick from Captain Pelino, and even when it was spoken of some notable man there in Rio, he did not refrain from saying: "There is no doubt! The man has talent, but writes: 'one other', 'of rest'..." And contracted the lips as if he had swallowed something bitter.
All the village of Tubiacanga accustomed itself to respecting the solemn Pelino, who corrected and amended the greatest national glories. A wise man...
By afternoon, after reading a little Sotero, Cândido de Figueiredo or Castro Lopes, and having once more dyed the hairs, the old school-master got slowly out of house, very buttoned in his mineiro[3] fine canvas jacket, and headed for the drugstore of Bastos to give two fingers of conversation. Conversing is a way of saying, because Pelino was avaricious of words, limiting himself so-only to hearing. When, however, from the lips of someone escaped the least incorrection of language, he intervened and amended. "I assure you, said the Mail agent, that..." By then, the school-master intervened with evangelical mansuetude: "Don't say 'assure' Mister Bernardes; in portuguese it's guarantee."
And the conversation continued after the amendment, to be again interrupted by another one. Because of these and other things, there were many talkers which moved away, but Pelino, indifferent, sure of his duties, continued his apostolate of vernaculism. The arrival of the wise man came to distract him a little from his mission. All his effort was now turned to combat that rival, which appeared so unexpectedly.
They were vain, his words and his eloquence: not only did Raimundo Flamel pay on time his bills, as he was generous --- father of the poverty --- and the pharmacist had seen in a magazine of specifics his name cited as chemist of value.
II
There were already years that the chemist lived in Tubiacanga, when, a beautiful morning, Bastos saw him enter through the drugstore in. The pleasure of the pharmacist was immense. The wise man had not dignated himself until then to visit whoever it was and, a certain day, when the sacristan Orestes dared penetrate in his house, asking him for an alms for the future party of Nossa Senhora da Conceição [Our Lady of Conception], it was with visible displeasure that he received and attended him.
Seeing him, Bastos got out from behind the counter, ran to receiving him with the most perfect demonstration of who knew with whom he was dealing and it was almost in an exclamation that he said:
-- Doctor, be welcome.
The wise man seemed not to surprise himself nor with the demonstration of respect of the pharmacist, nor with the universitary treatment. Sweetly, he looked an instant at the framework filled with medications and answered:
-- I wished to speak to you in private, Mister Bastos.
The pharmacist's astonishment was great. In what could he be useful to the man, whose name ran the world and of whom the newspapers talked with so scoured[4] respect? Would it be money? Maybe... A delay on the payment of the revenues, who knows? And he went conducting the chemist to the interior of the house, under the astonished look of the apprentice which, for a moment, let the "hand" rest on the grail, where he macerated some tisane.
At length, he found at the back, way at the back, the small room which served him for more time consuming medical exams or for the small operations, because Bastos also operated. They sat down and Flamel did not take long to expose:
-- As the mister must know, I dedicate myself to chemistry, and have even a respected name in the wise world...
-- I know it perfectly, doctor, I have even informed of this, here, my friends.
-- Thank you. Now well: I have made a great discovery, extraordinary...
Ashamed with his enthusiasm, the wise man made a pause and then continued:
-- A discovery... But it is not convenient for me, for now, to communicate to the wise world, do you comprehend?
-- Perfectly.
-- That's why I needed three conceptuated persons which would be witnesses of my experience of it and give me an attestation in form, to safeguard the priority of my invention... The mister knows: there are unforeseen happenings and...
-- Certainly! There is no doubt!
-- Imagine the mister that it is about making gold...
-- How? What? made Bastos, gazing with the eyes.
-- Yes! Gold! said, with firmity, Flamel.
-- How?
-- The mister will know, said the chemist drily. The question of the moment are the persons who shall attend to the experience, don't you think?
-- Surely, it is necessary that your rights stay safeguarded, because...
-- One of them, interrupted the wise man, is the mister; the other two, the Mister Bastos will do the favor of indicating to me.
The apothecary was an instant thinking, passing in review his knowledge and, at the end of some three minutes, asked:
-- Does the Colonel Bentes serve you? Do you know [him]?
-- No. The mister knows that I don't interact with no one here.
-- I can guarantee you that he is a serious man, rich and very discreet.
-- And religious? I ask you this question, added Flamel soon, because we have to deal with dead body bones and only these serve...
-- Which! He's almost an atheist.
-- Well! I accept. And the other one?
Bastos went back to thinking and this time took some more time consulting his memory... At length, he said:
-- It will be Lieutenant Carvalhais, the collector, do you know [him]?
-- As I've already told you...
-- It's true. He's a man of trust, serious, but...
-- What about him?
-- He's a freemason.
-- Better.
-- And when is it?
-- Sunday. Sunday, the three will go there at my house to attend to the experience and I hope that you won't refuse me your signatures for authenticating my discovery.
-- It is set.
Sunday, according to the promise, the three respected persons of Tubiacanga went to the house of Flamel, and, days later, misteriously, he disappeared without leaving vestiges or explanation for his disappearance.
III
Tubiacanga was a little town of three or four thousand inhabitants, very pacific, in whose station, from where to where, the expresses gave the honor of stopping. Since five years it was not registered in it a single theft or robbery. The doors and windows were only used... because Rio used them.
The only crime noted in its poor record had been a murder by occasion of the municipal elections; but, attending that the murderer was from the government party, and the victim from the opposition, the happening did not alter in nothing the habits of the town, continuing it to export its coffee and to stare at its low and bashful houses in the scarce waters of the little river which had baptized it.
But, what was not the surprise of its inhabitants when there came to be verified in it one of the most repugnant crimes of which there is memory! It was not about a quartering or parricide; it was not the murder of a whole family or an assault to the collecting house; it was something worse, sacrilegious to the eyes of all religions and consciences; the sepultures of "Sossego"[5] were being violated, its cemetery, its holy-field.
At the start, the gravedigger judged that it was dogs, but, searching well the wall, did not find but small holes. He closed them; it was useless. On the next day, a perpetual family vault[6] broken in and the bones sacked; on the other one, a charnel house and a shallow sepulture. It was people or demon. The gravedigger did not want anymore to continue the researches on his own, went to the subdelegate and the news spread through town.
The indignation in the town took all the countenances and all the wills. The religion of death precedes all the ones and will certainly be the last to die in the consciences. Against the profanation, claimed the six presbiterians of the place --- the bibles, as they're called by the people; claimed the Surveyor Nicolau, old cadet, and positivist from the rite Teixeira Mendes; claimed Major Camanho, president of the Lodge New Hope [Nova Esperança]; claimed the turk Miguel Abudala, dry goods trader, and the skeptic Belmiro, old student, who lived on the god-will-give, sipping parati[7] at the taverns. The daughter herself of the resident engineer of the railroad, who was always disdaining that little place, without even noticing the sighs of the local passionates, always waiting that the express would bring a prince to marry her ---, the beautiful and disdainful Cora could not refrain from sharing in the indignation and the horror which such an act had provoked in all of the little place. What did she have with the tumulus of ancient slaves and humble back country men[8]? In what could it interest her beautiful brown eyes the destiny of so humble bones? Would by chance their theft perturb her dream of making shine the beauty of her mouth, of her eyes and of her bust in the sidewalks of Rio?
Certainly, not; but it was Death, merciless and omnipotent Death, of which also she felt a slave, and that would not refrain one day from leading her beautiful little skull to the eternal peace of the cemetery. There Cora wanted her bones at rest, quiet and accommodatedly resting in a well-made coffin and in a safe tumulus, after having been her flesh an enchant and pleasure of the worms...
The most indignated one, however, was Pelino. The professor had laid article of back, imprecating, bellowing, shouting: "In the history of crime, said he, already rich enough of repugnant facts, as they be: the quartering of Maria de Macedo, the strangling of the brothers Fuoco, it is not registered one that is so as much as the sack to the sepultures of the 'Sossego'."
And the village lived in jumpiness. In the faces peace was no longer read; the businesses were paralized; the datings suspended. Days and days by above the houses stood dark clouds and, at night, all heard noises, moanings, supernatural sounds... It seemed that the dead were asking for revenge...
The sack, however, went on. Every night it was two, three sepultures opened and emptied of their funereal content. All the population resolved itself to go in mass to guard the bones of its majors. They went early, but, soon, giving up to fatigue and to the sleepiness, one left, then another and, by early morning[9], there was already not one vigilant. Still in this day the gravedigger verified that two sepultures had been opened and the bones taken to mysterious destiny.
They then organized a guard. Ten decided men swore before the subdelegate to watch during the night the mansion of the dead.
Nothing happened of abnormal on the first night, on the second and on the third; but, on the fourth one, when the watchers already disposed themselves to napping, one of them judged to glimpse a shadow cautiously directing itself by between the square of the charnel houses. They ran and managed to catch two of the vampires. The anger and the indignation, until then sopited in their spirit, were not contained anymore and they gave so many strikes at the macabre thieves, that they left them extended as dead.
The news soon ran from house to house and, when, by morning, it was treated of establishing the identity of the two malefactors, it was before the whole population that were recognized in them the Collector Carvalhais and the Colonel Bentes, rich farmer and president of the municipal council. This last one still lived and, to repeated questions they made him, could tell that he was gathering the bones to make gold and that the fellowman that had escaped was the pharmacist.
There was astonishment and there was hope. How to make gold with bones? Would it be possible? But that rich man, respected, how would he lower himself to the role of thief of dead ones if the thing were not true!
If it were possible to do, if from those miserable funereal spoils it could be made some contos de réis, how would it not be good for all of them!
The mailman, whose old dream was the graduation of the son, soon saw there means of getting it. Castrioto, the scribe of the judge of peace, which in the last year managed to buy a house, but still couldn't surround it, thought of the wall, which should protect his vegetable garden and the creation. By the eyes of the owner of a small farm Marques, which since years was confused to arrange a pasture, he thought soon of the green meadow of Costa, where his oxen would gain weight and strengths...
To the needs of each one, those bones which were gold would come to attend, satisfy and felicitate them; and those two or three thousand of people, men, children, women, young and old ones, as if they were a single person, ran to the house of the pharmacist.
Costly, the subdelegate could prevent them from ransacking the drugstore and he could manage that they stayed in the square, waiting for the man who had the secret of a whole Potosi. He did not take long to appear. Climbed to a chair, having in the hand a little bar of gold which shone to the strong sun of the morning, Bastos asked for grace, promising that he would teach the secret, if they spared his life. "We want to know it now," screamed they. He then explained that it was necessary to redact the recipe, indicate the march of the process, the reactives ---long work which could only be delivered on print on the next day. There was a murmur, some came to shouting, but the subdelegate spoke and responsibilized himself for the result.
Docilely, with that sweetness peculiar to the furious multitudes, each one headed home, having in mind a single thought: to arrange immediatly the larger portion of dead body bones they could.
The success reached the house of the resident engineer of the railroad. By dinner, nothing else was spoken of. The doctor concatenated what he still knew from his course, and declared that it was impossible. That was alchemy, a dead thing: gold is gold, simple body, and bone is bone, a compound, phosphate of lime. To think that it could be made from one thing the other was "folly". Cora took the opportunity of the case to laugh herself petropolily[10] of the cruelty of those botocudos[11]; but her mother, Mistress Emilia, had faith that the thing was possible.
At night, however, the doctor realizing that the wife slept, jumped the window and ran in the direction of the cemetery; Cora, with naked feet, with the house slippers in the hands, looked for the maid for them to go together to the gathering of bones. Didn't find her, went alone; and Mistress Emilia, seeing herself alone, guessed the walk and there she went too. And thus it happened all over the town. The father, without saying anything to the son, got out; the woman, judging to fool the husband, got out; the sons, the daughters, the domestics -- all the population, under the light of the astonished stars, ran to the satanic 'rendez-vous' in the "Sossego". And no one missed it. The richest one and the poorest one were there. It was the turk Miguel, it was professor Pelino, the doctor Jerônimo, the Major Camanho, Cora, the beautiful and mesmerizing Cora, with her beautiful alabaster fingers, revolved the sanies of the sepultures, tore off the meats, still rotten tenaciously held to the bones and with them filled her lap until then useless. It was the dote[12] that she gathered and her nostrils, which opened in rosy and nearly transparent wings, did not feel the fetid of the rotten tissues in stinking mud...
The disintelligence did not take long to appear; the dead were few and were not enough to satisfy the hunger of the living. There were knife-stabbings, shots, blows on the nape of the neck. Pelino knife-stabbed the turk because of a femur and even between the families questions arose. Uniquely, the mailman and his son did not fight. They walked together and in accordance and there was a time when the little one, a smart child of eleven years old, even counseled the father: "Daddy let's go where mommy is; she was so fat..."
By morning, the cemetery had more dead than those that it had received in thirty years of existence. A single person had not been there, had not killed nor profanated sepultures: it was the drunk Belmiro.
Entering in a small store, half opened, and in it not finding no one, he had filled a bottle of parati[7] and had let himself stay drinking sitting at the margin of the Tubiacanga, seeing its waters mildly flow over the rough bed of granite -- both of them, he and the river, indifferent to what they had already seen, even to the escape of the pharmacist, with his Potosi and his secret, under the eternal canopy of the stars.
1910-11-10
Notes:
[1] arrevesado, backwards, intricate.
[2] tinhoso, literally "sufferer from tinea"; evil natured; "Old Nick".
[3] mineiro, from Minas Gerais estate.
[4] acendrado, scoured with ashes.
[5] "Sossego", "Tranquillity".
[6] jazigo perpétuo.
[7] parati, cachaça.
[8] roceiros, men of the back country, frontiersmen, farmers.
[9] madrugada, dawn, early morning or wee hours.
[10] Petropolis, city in Rio de Janeiro estate.
[11] botocudos, a designation for some tribes of native americans.
[12] dote, dote, dowry.
