“Captain,” he asked, “what do these people we have just seen live on?”
“They work when they’re needed,” the Captain said. “We are poor.”
“Are they the poorest?”
“They are the poorest.”
The Judge, who arrived at that moment, slipping somewhat in his best shoes, said they already loved the noble engineer who was going to give them work.
“And, you know, they dance and sing every day.”
Then, without transition, he asked D’Arrast if he had thought of the punishment.
“What punishment?”
“Why, our Chief of Police.”
“Let him go.” The Judge said that this was not possible; there had to be a punishment. D’Arrast was already walking toward Iguape.
In the little Garden of the Fountain, mysterious and pleasant under the fine rain, clusters of exotic [179] flowers hung down along the lianas among the banana trees and pandanus. Piles of wet stones marked the intersection of paths on which a motley crowd was strolling. Half-breeds, mulattoes, a few gauchos were chatting in low voices or sauntering along the bamboo paths to the point where groves and bush became thicker and more impenetrable. There, the forest began abruptly.
D’Arrast was looking for Socrates in the crowd when Socrates suddenly bumped him from behind. “It’s holiday,” he said, laughing, and clung to D’Arrast’s tall shoulders to jump up and down.
“What holiday?”
“Why, you not know?” Socrates said in surprise as he faced D’Arrast. “The feast of good Jesus. Each year they all come to the grotto with a hammer.”
Socrates pointed out, not a grotto, but a group that seemed to be waiting in a corner of the garden.
“You see? One day the good statue of Jesus, it came upstream from the sea. Some fishermen found it. How beautiful! How beautiful! Then they washed it here in the grotto. And now a stone grew up in the grotto. Every year it’s the feast. With the hammer you break, you break off pieces [180] for blessed happiness. And then it keeps growing and you keep breaking. It’s the miracle!”
They had reached the grotto and could see its low entrance beyond the waiting men. Inside, in the darkness studded with the flickering flames of candles, a squatting figure was pounding with a hammer. The man, a thin gaucho with a long mustache, got up and came out holding in his open palm, so that all might see, a small piece of moist schist, over which he soon closed his hand carefully before going away. Another man then stooped down and entered the grotto.
D’Arrast turned around. On all sides pilgrims were waiting, without looking at him, impassive under the water dripping from the trees in thin sheets. He too was waiting in front of the grotto under the same film of water, and he didn’t know for what. He had been waiting constantly, to tell the truth, for a month since he had arrived in this country. He had been waiting—in the red heat of humid days, under the little stars of night, despite the tasks to be accomplished, the jetties to be built, the roads to be cut through—as if the work he had come to do here were merely a pretext for a surprise or for an encounter he did not even imagine but which had been waiting patiently for him at [181] the end of the world. He shook himself, walked away without anyone in the little group paying attention to him, and went toward the exit. He had to go back to the river and go to work.
But Socrates was waiting for him at the gate, lost in voluble conversation with a short, fat, strapping man whose skin was yellow rather than black. His head, completely shaved, gave even more sweep to a considerable forehead. On the other hand, his broad, smooth face was adorned with a very black beard, trimmed square.
“He’s champion!” Socrates said by way of introduction. “Tomorrow he’s in the procession.”
The man, wearing a sailor’s outfit of heavy serge, a blue-and-white jersey under the pea jacket, was examining D’Arrast attentively with his calm black eyes. At the same time he was smiling, showing all his very white teeth between his full, shiny lips.
“He speaks Spanish,” Socrates said and, turning toward the stranger, added: “Tell Mr. D’Arrast.” Then he danced off toward another group. The man ceased to smile and looked at D’Arrast with outright curiosity.
“You are interested, Captain?”
“I’m not a captain,” D’Arrast said.
[182] “That doesn’t matter. But you’re a noble. Socrates told me.”
“Not I. But my grandfather was. His father too and all those before his father. Now there is no more nobility in our country.”
“Ah!” the Negro said, laughing. “I understand; everybody is a noble.”
“No, that’s not it. There are neither noblemen nor common people.”
The fellow reflected; then he made up his mind. “No one works? No one suffers?”
“Yes, millions of men.”
“Then that’s the common people.”
“In that way, yes, there is a common people. But the masters are policemen or merchants.” The mulatto’s kindly face closed in a frown. Then he grumbled: “Humph! Buying and selling, eh! What filth! And with the police, dogs command.”
Suddenly, he burst out laughing.
“You, you don’t sell?”
“Hardly at all. I make bridges, roads.”
“That’s good. Me, I’m a ship’s cook. If you wish, I’ll make you our dish of black beans.”
“All right.”
[183] The cook came closer to D’Arrast and took his arm.
“Listen, I like what you tell. I’m going to tell you too. Maybe you will like.”
He drew him over near the gate to a damp wooden bench beneath a clump of bamboos.
“I was at sea, off Iguape, on a small coastwise tanker that supplies the harbors along here. It caught fire on board. Not by my fault! I know my job! No, just bad luck. We were able to launch the lifeboats. During the night, the sea got rough; it capsized the boat and I went down. When I came up, I hit the boat with my head. I drifted. The night was dark, the waters are vast, and, besides, I don’t swim well; I was afraid. Just then I saw a light in the distance and recognized the church of the good Jesus in Iguape. So I told the good Jesus that at his procession I would carry a hundred-pound stone on my head if he saved me. You don’t have to believe me, but the waters became calm and my heart too. I swam slowly, I was happy, and I reached the shore. Tomorrow I’ll keep my promise.”
He looked at D’Arrast in a suddenly suspicious manner.
[184] “You’re not laughing?”
“No, I’m not laughing. A man has to do what he has promised.”
The fellow clapped him on the back.
“Now, come to my brother’s, near the river. I’ll cook you some beans.”
“No,” D’Arrast said, “I have things to do. This evening, if you wish.”
“Good. But tonight there’s dancing and praying in the big hut. It’s the feast for Saint George.” D’Arrast asked him if he danced too. The cook’s face hardened suddenly; for the first time his eyes became shifty.
“No, no, I won’t dance. Tomorrow I must carry the stone. It is heavy. I’ll go this evening to celebrate the saint. And then I’ll leave early.”
“Does it last long?”
“All night and a little into the morning.”
He looked at D’Arrast with a vaguely shameful look.
“Come to the dance. You can take me home afterward. Otherwise, I’ll stay and dance. I probably won’t be able to keep from it.”
“You like to dance?”
“Oh, yes! I like. Besides, there are cigars, saints, [185] women. You forget everything and you don’t obey any more.”
“There are women too? All the women of the town?”
“Not of the town, but of the huts.”
The ship’s cook resumed his smile. “Come. The Captain I’ll obey. And you will help me keep my promise tomorrow.”
D’Arrast felt slightly annoyed. What did that absurd promise mean to him? But he looked at the handsome frank face smiling trustingly at him, its dark skin gleaming with health and vitality.
“I’ll come,” he said. “Now I’ll walk along with you a little.”
Without knowing why, he had a vision at the same time of the black girl offering him the drink of welcome.
They went out of the garden, walked along several muddy streets, and reached the bumpy square, which looked even larger because of the low structures surrounding it. The humidity was now dripping down the plastered walls, although the rain had not increased. Through the spongy expanse of the sky, the sound of the river and of the trees reached them somewhat muted. They were [186] walking in step, D’Arrast heavily and the cook with elastic tread. From time to time the latter would raise his head and smile at his companion. They went in the direction of the church, which could be seen above the houses, reached the end of the square, walked along other muddy streets now filled with aggressive smells of cooking. From time to time a woman, holding a plate or kitchen utensil, would peer out inquisitively from one of the doors and then disappear at once. They passed in front of the church, plunged into an old section of similar low houses, and suddenly came out on the sound of the invisible river behind the area of the huts that D’Arrast recognized.