THE PIGS
Julia Lopes de Almeida
To Artur Azevedo
When the cabocla
Umbelina turned up pregnant, her father beat her, claiming that he would give
his grandson to the pigs to eat.
The case was not new,
nor did it surprise her, and that he would keep his promise, she knew very
well. She had once found a child's arm among the golden flowers of the pumpkin
patch. That, surely, had been her father's doing.
The whole time of her
pregnancy she thought, in a most cruel, torturous obsession, of that naked,
loose, cold arm, the remains of a delicate feast, which the vile voracity of
the animals had forgotten due to weariness and fullness.
Umbelina would sit for
hours on the doorstep, smoothing her flowing black hair with a red celluloid
comb. Thus, lazily, with a sharp, lingering gaze, she followed the lines of the
horizon, staring at the pigs, those damned pigs, who surrounded her house from
morning till night.
She always saw them
there dragging their filthy bodies, with thin hair and drooping fat, through
the mud with their greedy eyes, shining under their slack eyelids and their
ears covered by flat skin, in the brutal selfishness of finding all their
attention in themselves. The piglets would sometimes come, jumping noisily, to
wrap themselves in her skirt and she would shake them in disgust, hitting them
with her feet, knocking them.
The pigs didn’t fear
her, they walked close by, making everything disappear before the eagerness of
their blunt and twitching snouts, which came and went grunting, drooling,
hideous, dirty with the mud in which they basked themselves, or painted by the
corn dust that was there, in heaps, tanning in the sun.
Oh! Pigs were a good
solution for the caboclo's vices! Umbelina cursed them and thought of a way to dispose
of her son in a less degrading and cruel way.
Keep the child... but
how? Her eyes questioned the cloudless horizon in vain.
Her lover, the boss's
son, had put her aside... it was even rumored he was going to marry someone
else! However, everyone thought she was beautiful, in her Indian way,
especially on Sundays, when she adorned herself with red marvels, which gave
color to her tanned skin and dressed her all over with a sweet and modest
smell.
It was two in the
morning when Umbelina opened the door of her father's house and slipped into
the yard.
The moon was shining;
everything had a soft glow. The water from the watermill fell in sobbing
gurgles, surrounding the grass thatched hut, and then running in a luminous and
tremulous manner across the flat land. Flowers of gabiroba and wild esponjeira
laid sheets of snow on the extensive stream bank; all the growing herbs smelled
good. A rooster crowed close by, another crowed far away, and then another, and
another, until their voices were muddled in the distance with the faintest
noises of night.
With a feverish hand,
Umbelina drew back the shawl that was wrapped around her, and, uncovering her
head, she observed the deep sky with a sinister gaze.
Where would be hiding
the great, divinely merciful God, of whom the priest spoke at the mass in terms
that she did not comprehend, but that made her tremble?
No one can escape their
destiny, they all said; would it then be written that her fate was the one her
father promised her − to kill the pig's hunger with the flesh of her flesh, the
blood of her blood?!
These questions rolled
through her mind, indeterminate and confusing. The rage and dread of childbirth
strangled her. She didn't love her son; she hated the deceitful love of the man
who had seduced her and its fruit. She could kill him, crush him even, but
throw him to the pigs... never! And, with a shudder, that loose little arm came
back to her mind, which she had held between her indifferent fingers, in her
bestiality as a rural cabocla.
The January sky was
clean, blue, warm, clothed in light, with its huge, diamond star Vesper, and
the moon very large, very strong, splendorous!
The cabocla peered with
a keen eye the side of the cornfield, where to her acute ear she seemed to hear
the cautious sound of human feet: but no one came, and she, burning, tore her
shawl from her shoulders and let it drag on the ground, holding it with her
hand. The childbirth pains crept convulsively. Her body was distorted, barely
covered by a cotton shirt and calico skirt. The ends of her glossy black hair
ruffled around her narrow shoulders; her heavy belly slowed her walk, which she
often interrupted to take a deep breath, or to crouch down, writhing all over.
Her plan was to have
her son at the lover's door, kill him right there, on the stone steps, which
the father would tread in the morning, when he went down for the usual walk.
A crazy and cruel
revenge, that had long been fixed in her savage heart.
The child trembled in
her womb, as if sensing that it was about to enter life just to get in the
tomb, and she hurried nervously over the leaves of ragweed.
There! Now they were
going to see who the cabocla was! Didn't they despise her? Didn't they laugh at
her? Didn't they leave her hanging around like a stray dog? Well, just wait!
And she mulled over her plot, afraid to forget some minutiae...
She would let the child
live for a few minutes, would even make it cry, so that the father inside, in
the comfort of his cotton mattress, which she had carefully torn apart, would
hear its weak cries and keep them always in his memory, like a remorse.
She was lost. They
didn't want her at home; her mother disowned her, her father beat her, her
lover closed the doors on her... and Umbelina cursed aloud, threatening to
bring down divine wrath on everyone!
The moonlight, with its
white and cold light, illuminated the sad walk of that almost naked and
extremely heavy woman, who was stricken with pain and fear through the fields.
Umbelina skirted the corn field, already dry, very yellow, and which crackled
at the contact of her barely steady body: then she passed the large cane field,
a watery green, that the moonlight filled with sweetness and which spread down
the hill. Snakes slithered among the canes, and on the other side, in the darkness
of the cassava plantation, a frightened bird rose with a fluffy flight.
The cabocla made the
sign of the cross and cut straight through the soft soil of the recent bean
grove, crushing the tender leaves of the still flowerless plant under the soles
of her small, brown feet. Then she opened the gate upstairs, which groaned for
a long time with its back-and-forth movements, and entered the farm's pasture.
A great nudity all over the immense lawn. The land sloped down in a smooth line
to main house's yard, which appeared in the distance as a white dot. The
cabocla crouched down, holding her belly with her hands.
All her energy was
fading, worn out by the physical pain, which came on in violent contractions.
Little by little, her nerves relaxed and the almost relief of exhaustion made
her remain there, motionless, with her body on the ground and her head raised
to the peaceful sky. A wave of poetry invaded her: it was the first
entanglements of motherhood, the unforgettable purity of the night, the lucid
transparency of the stars, the almost imperceptible and mysterious sounds,
which seemed to come from far away, like a fugitive echo of the angels, who
were said to exist in heaven under the blue and floating mantle of the Virgin
Mother of God...
Umbelina felt a great
tenderness rise in her heart. She didn't know how to understand it and let
herself go in that sublimely merciful and sad wave...
Suddenly, a violent
pain shook her and took her by storm, forcing her to dig her nails into the
earth. That brutality made her curse and then she got up, angry and decided.
She had to cross all the long pasture, the bank of the lake and the edge of the
orchard before she fell on her lover's doorstep.
She went; but her
strength diminished and the pains resumed closer and closer.
Down below, the white
sheet of the walls of the house, beaten by the moonlight, could already be
seen.
The girl walked with
her eyes fixed on that light, quickening her weary steps. Sweat fell in thick
beads all over her body as her legs buckled under the child's weight.
In the middle of the
meadow, a huge fig tree stretched out its shadowy arms, casting a black stain
across that expanse of light. The cabocla wanted to hide there, tired of the
light, afraid of herself, of the sinful thoughts that turmoiled in her spirit
and that the holy, white moon seemed to penetrate and clarify. She reached the
shadow with faltering steps; but her swollen and numb feet no longer felt the
ground and stumbled over the roots of the trees, very extended and protruding
from the ground.
The cabocla fell to her
knees, supporting herself forward with her outstretched hands. The shock was
fast and the last pangs of childbirth came to grip her. She wanted to react and
even get up, but she couldn't anymore, and furiously clenched her teeth,
letting out the last, piercing screams of expulsion.
A minute later the
child was crying suffocatingly. The cabocla then tore off the skirt's cord with
her teeth and, raising his body, firmly tied her son's navel-string, and
wrapped him in the shawl, hardly looking at him, afraid of loving him...
Afraid to love him!...
In her wild heart the flower of motherhood timidly blossomed. Umbelina
struggled to her feet with her son in her arms. Her body crushed by pain, which
seemed to tear her flesh, did not obey her will. Down below, the same sheet of
white light beckoned to her, calling her to revenge or to love. She thought now
that if she knocked on those windows and called her lover, he would come, moved
and shaking, to kiss her first child.
She ventured with
laborious steps to follow her path, but the pain soon returned and, feeling
faint, she sat down on the grass to rest. She then uncovered her son's body;
she thought he was white, she thought he was beautiful, and in an impulse of
love she kissed him on the mouth. The child moved his lips in the manner of the
newborns and she gave him her breast. The little boy was pulling uselessly, the
cabocla was breathless, her head was drooping in a mild vertigo, then another
pain came, her arms opened and she fell backwards.
The moon was disappearing,
and the first beams of dawn tinged the whole horizon with a rosy golden hue.
Overhead, the deep blue of the night changed to a transparent, whitish,
diaphanous violet.
It was in the midst of
that sweet transformation of light that Umbelina barely made out a black
figure, which was approaching slowly, dragging its sagging breasts on the
ground, with its thin tail, arched over its enormous hips, the stiff hair,
erupting thinly from the dark and wrinkled skin, and the gluttonous gaze,
stupidly fixed: it was a pig.
Umbelina felt it grunt.
Stunned, she saw the repeated movements of its bumpy, gelatinous snout, which
was pulled back, showing its yellowish, strong teeth. A cold breath ran through
the girl's body, and she shuddered hearing a painful, very painful moan, which
sank into her afflicted heart.
It was the son! She
wanted to get up, take him in her arms, defend him, save him... but she
continued to fade away, her eyes barely opened, her limp limbs had no vigor,
and her spirit itself lost track of consciousness.
However, before dying,
she still saw, vaguely, indistinctly, the black and plump figure of the pig,
walking away with a heap of meat hanging from its teeth, standing out isolated
and frightening in that immense pink wilderness.
