When slavery ended, it took with it certain trades and tools; the same must have happened with other social institutions. I’ll only mention some of the tools because of their link with certain trades. One of them was the neck iron, another was leg irons; there was also the tin-plate mask. The mask cured the slaves of the vice of drunkenness by shutting their mouths. It had only three holes in it, two to see, one to breathe, and it was fastened behind the head with a padlock. Not only did this curb the vice of drinking: the slaves also lost the temptation to steal because they generally used their master’s small change to slake their thirst, and so two sins were eliminated, and honesty and sobriety were assured. The mask was grotesque, but order in the human and social realm is not always achieved without grotesquery – cruelty, even, sometimes. Tinsmiths used to hang them up, for sale, in the doorways of their shops. But let’s not think about masks.
The neck iron was applied to slaves with the habit of running away. Imagine a thick collar, with an equally thick shaft on one side, left or right, which went up to the top of the head, and which was locked behind with a key. It weighed a lot, naturally, but it was less a punishment than a sign. A slave who fled with one of these showed that he was a repeated offender, and wherever he went was easily caught.
Half a century ago, slaves frequently ran away. There were lots of them, and not all of them liked being slaves. From time to time they would be beaten, and not all of them liked being beaten. Many were simply reprimanded; there was someone in the household who acted as their godfather, and the owner himself wasn’t a bad man; besides, the sensation of ownership acted as a softener, for money hurts, too. Escapes happened repeatedly, however. There were even cases, exceptional though they were, when a contraband slave, no sooner had he been bought in the Valongo, took to his heels, even though he was unfamiliar with the city streets.1 Some of those who went into private houses, as soon as they were used to their surroundings, asked their masters to fix a rent, and went to earn it outside, selling items in the street.
When someone’s slave escaped, they offered a sum of money to whoever returned them. They put advertisements in the newspapers, with the distinguishing marks of the escapee, his name, clothes, physical defects if he had any, the neighbourhood where he might be and the amount of the reward. When the amount wasn’t mentioned, there was a promise: ‘There will be a generous reward’, or: ‘You will be well rewarded’. Often the advertisement carried above it, or at the side, a little vignette of a black man, barefoot, with a stick over his shoulder and a bundle on the end. Anyone who gave the slave shelter was threatened with the full rigour of the law.
Well then, catching runaway slaves was one of the trades of the time. Maybe it wasn’t a noble one, but since it was the forcible instrument whereby law and property were safeguarded, it had that other implicit kind of nobility we owe to the law and its demands. No one entered the trade out of a desire for entertainment, nor did it require much study; poverty, a sudden need for money, unsuitability for other jobs, chance, and sometimes a pleasure in serving too, though in another walk of life, provided the incentive to anyone who felt strong enough to impose order on disorder.
Candido Neves – Candinho to his family – is the person linked to the story of an escape; he gave in to poverty when he took up the trade of catching runaways. This man had a grave defect – he never lasted in any job or trade, and lacked the necessary stability; that’s what he called a run of bad luck. He began by wanting to learn typesetting, but soon saw it would take some time to learn the job well, and even then perhaps he might not earn enough; that was what he said to himself. The retail trade attracted him – a fine career was to be had there. However, the obligation of attending to everyone and serving them touched a raw nerve of pride in him, and after five or six weeks he was back in the street of his own free will. An assistant in a notary’s office, office boy in a government department attached to the ministry of the interior, postman and other jobs were abandoned soon after they were obtained.
When he fell for young Clara, all he owned was debts, though not that many since he lived with a cousin, a wood carver by trade. After several attempts to get a job, he decided to opt for his cousin’s profession, and in fact had already taken some lessons. It was no bother to take some more, but since he tried to learn in a hurry, he learned badly. He couldn’t do delicate or complicated work, only claw-feet for sofas and common decoration for chair backs. He wanted to have something to work at when he married, and marriage wasn’t long in coming.
He was thirty years of age, and Clara twenty-two. She was an orphan who lived with an aunt, Monica, and did sewing jobs with her. Her sewing didn’t stop her flirting a bit, but her suitors only wanted to pass the time of day; that was as far as it went. They came by of an afternoon, looked her up and down, and she them, until night fell and she went back to her sewing. What she noticed is that she regretted none of them, nor did she feel any desire for them. In many cases, she may not even have known their names. She wanted to get married, of course. As her aunt said to her, it was like fishing with a rod to see if the fish would bite – but they kept their distance; all they did was swim round the bait, looking at it, sniffing it, then leaving it for others.
Love has ways of making itself known. When the girl saw Candido Neves, she felt that he was the husband-to-be, the real, the only one. They met at a dance; such was – in keeping with her suitor’s first trade – the first page of this book, which would be published badly typeset and with its stitching in a worse state. The marriage happened eleven months later, and it was the biggest party they’d had all the time they’d known one another. Some of Clara’s friends, less out of friendship than envy, tried to prevent her taking this step. They didn’t deny he was a nice lad, nor that he loved her – some virtues couldn’t be denied; what they said was that he was too fond of a good time.
‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ replied the bride, ‘at least I’m not marrying a corpse.’
‘No, not a corpse; it’s just that …’
But they didn’t finish the sentence. Aunt Monica, after the marriage, in the impoverished house where they lodged, spoke to them about possible children. They wanted one, just one, even if it made their poverty worse.
‘If you have a child, you’ll die of hunger,’ said the aunt to her niece.
‘Our Lady will feed us,’ replied Clara.
Aunt Monica should have warned or threatened them this way when Candido came to ask for the girl’s hand; but she liked a good time as well, and there’d be a great party at the wedding, as in fact there was.
All three of them were happy. The happy couple laughed at everything. Even their names, Clara, Neves, Candido, were the subject of jokes;2 they didn’t provide food, but they made you laugh, and the laughter was easily digested. She did more sewing now, and he went out on odd jobs; he had no fixed employment.
But none of this made them give up on the child. This creature, however, ignorant as it was of this procreative urge, lay waiting in the eternal realms. One day, however, it announced its presence; male or female, it was the blessed fruit that would bring them the happiness they longed for. Aunt Monica was dismayed, but Candido and Clara made fun of her fears.
‘God will come to our aid, Auntie,’ insisted the mother-to-be.
The news went round the neighbourhood. All they had to do was wait for the great day. The wife was working with a greater will, which was the way it had to be, since, as well as the sewing she was paid for, she had to make the baby’s clothes with offcuts. She was looking forward to it so much, measuring nappies, sewing shirts. There wasn’t much material, and she could only do it from time to time. Aunt Monica helped, it’s true, though she complained.
‘Yours is a sad lot,’ she sighed.
‘Other children come into the world, don’t they?’ asked Clara.
‘Yes, and they always find something certain to eat, even if it’s not much …’
‘What d’you mean, certain?’
‘Certain – a job, a profession, something to do, but how does the father of this unfortunate creature spend his time?’
As soon as he heard about this warning, Candido Neves went to talk to the aunt, not harshly, but much less mildly than usual, and asked if she’d ever gone without food.
‘You’ve only ever fasted in Holy Week, and that’s when you don’t want to eat your supper with us. We’ve always had our salt cod on Good Friday …’
‘I know that, but there are three of us.’
‘So now there’ll be four.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘What do you want me to do, more than I do already?’
‘Something more fixed. Look at the joiner on the corner, the man who keeps the store, that typesetter who married last Saturday, all of them have got a fixed job … Don’t get angry; I’m not saying you’re a layabout, but your job’s too uncertain. You go for weeks without a penny to your name.’
‘Yes, but then one night I’ll make up for it all, and more. God doesn’t abandon me, and runaway slaves know I’m not to be trifled with; hardly any of them put up any fight, many give themselves up on the spot.’
He was proud of this, and talked of this hope as if it was secure capital. Soon he was laughing and making the aunt laugh; she was naturally jolly, and looked forward to a great party at the christening.
Candido Neves had lost his job as a wood carver, just as he’d given up on many others better or worse than that one. Catching slaves had novel charms for him. He didn’t have to sit down for hours at a stretch. All it needed was strength, a sharp eye, patience, courage and a bit of rope. Candido Neves read the advertisements, copied them out, put them in his pocket and went out to do his research. He had a good memory. When he’d memorised the distinguishing marks and the habits of a runaway, in no time he found him, caught, bound and returned him. A lot of strength was needed, and agility. More than once, on the street corner, talking of something else altogether, he saw a slave pass by like any other, realised he’d escaped, who he was, his name, who his owner was, where he lived and what the reward was; he interrupted the conversation and went after the criminal. He didn’t catch him straight away, but waited to find a suitable spot, then one leap, and the reward was his. He didn’t always get away without losing some blood, as the victim’s nails and teeth did their work, but usually he subdued them without the least scratch.
One day these profits began to dwindle. Runaway slaves no longer gave themselves up to Candido Neves as they had been doing. There were other, skilled hands at work. As the business was growing, more than one unemployed man got his act together, grabbed a rope, looked at the papers, copied advertisements and set out on the hunt. Even in the neighbourhood there was more than one rival. This meant that Candido Neves’s debts started to mount, with less of those timely or near-timely payments than in the early days. Life became a hard grind. They ate badly, and on borrowed money; they ate late. The landlord insisted on the rent.
Clara didn’t even have time to mend her husband’s clothes, so great was the necessity to sew for money. Aunt Monica helped her niece, of course. When he came in every evening, you could see on his face that there was nothing in his pocket. He had his supper and went out again, looking for some runaway or other. Sometimes, though not often, he even got the wrong person, and grabbed a faithful slave going about his master’s business. Once, he caught a freedman; he was full of apologies, but he got a healthy drubbing from the man’s family.
‘That’s all we needed!’ Aunt Monica exclaimed when he’d come in and told the story of the mistake and its consequences. ‘Give it up, Candinho; look for another way of earning your living.’
Candido truly did want to do something else, not because of this advice, but because he felt like a change of job; it would be a way of changing skin or identity. The trouble is that he couldn’t find any job to hand that he could learn in a hurry.
Nature did its work; the foetus was growing, until it was heavy in the mother, and the birth was not far off. The eighth month came, a month of worries and necessities, though still less so than the ninth, which I’ll skip too. It’s best to come to the effects of all this. They couldn’t have been much nastier.
‘No, Aunt Monica!’ shouted Candinho, rejecting some advice which I find difficult to write down, though less difficult than it was for the father to hear it. He’d never do that!
It was in the last week of the final month that Aunt Monica advised the couple to take the child when it was born to the Orphans’ Wheel for abandoned babies, set in the wall of a convent.3 Nothing could be harder to bear for two young parents awaiting their child, to kiss it, care for it, watch it laugh, grow, fatten, jump up and down … Put it where? What did she mean? Candinho stared wide-eyed at the aunt, and ended up thumping the dining table. The table, which was old and falling to pieces, nearly collapsed completely. Clara intervened:
‘Auntie doesn’t mean any harm, Candinho.’
‘Harm?’ Aunt Monica answered. ‘Harm or no harm, whatever, I’m telling you that’s the best thing you can do. You’re up to your eyes in debt; there’s hardly any meat or beans in the house. If some money doesn’t turn up, how can your family grow? There’ll be time later; later, when you’ve got a surer way of earning your living, the children that come will be received with the same affection as this one, or more. This one will be well brought up; it’ll lack for nothing. Is the Wheel some beach, or a rubbish dump? They don’t kill people there, no one dies unnecessarily; here, it’s certain to die if it doesn’t get fed enough. Oh well …’
Aunt Monica ended the sentence with a shrug of her shoulders, turned her back and went to her bedroom. She had already hinted at this solution, but it was the first time she’d done it so openly and passionately – cruelly, if you prefer. Clara held her hand out to her husband, as if looking to him to buck her up; Candido Neves grimaced, and, under his breath, said the aunt was crazy. The couple’s show of affection was interrupted by someone knocking at the door.
‘Who is it?’ asked the husband.
‘It’s me.’
It was the landlord, who was owed three months’ rent, and was coming in person to threaten his tenant with eviction. Candido begged him to come in.
‘There’s no need …’
‘Please do.’
Their creditor came in and refused to sit down; he glanced at the furniture to see if any could be pawned; not much, he thought. He’d come to get the rent they owed, and could wait no longer; if he wasn’t paid in five days, he’d put them in the street. He’d not worked for the benefit of others. When you saw him you wouldn’t think he was a proprietor; but words made up for appearances, and poor Candinho shut up rather than answering back. Instead he gave a bow, promising and begging at the same time. The owner gave no ground.
‘Five days or out you go!’ he repeated as he went out, his hand on the latch.
Candinho went off in another direction. When he was in a fix like this he never despaired; he always counted on some loan or other, how or where from he had no idea, but from somewhere. Then he cast his eye over the advertisements. He found several, some already old, but he’d been looking in vain for a long time. He spent some hours to no effect, and went back home. Four days later, he’d still found no way out; he tried to find backing, and went to see people friendly with the owner, but was only told to pack his bags.
It was a tight situation. They couldn’t find a house, or anyone to give them temporary lodging; it was the street or nothing. They couldn’t count on the aunt. Aunt Monica managed to find a room for the three of them in the house of an old rich woman, who promised to lend her basement at the back of the stables, on one side of the courtyard. Moreover, she deliberately said nothing to the two of them, so that Candido Neves, in despair at this state of affairs, would start by putting the child on the Wheel and finding some secure and regular way of getting money; putting his life in order, in short. She listened to Clara’s complaints, without echoing them, it’s true – but she brought no comfort. The day they were forced to leave the house, she’d surprise them with news of the favour and they’d go and sleep better than they’d expected.
That was what happened. Thrown out of the house, they went to the rooms they had been lent, and two days later the child was born. The father was very happy, and unhappy at the same time. Aunt Monica insisted on giving the child to the Wheel. ‘If you don’t want to take it, leave it to me; I’ll go to the Rua dos Barbonos.’ Candido Neves asked her not to, wait, and he’d take it himself. We might note that it was a boy, and that this was the sex both parents had wanted. They’d only given him a bit of milk; but, as it was raining that evening, the father agreed to take him to the Wheel the next night.
That evening, he went through all his notes of runaway slaves. The rewards for the most part were just promises; some mentioned a sum, though nothing much. One, however, was for a hundred mil-reis. It was for a mulatta; there was information about her looks and her clothes. Candido Neves had searched for her without success, and had given up on it; he imagined some lover had taken her in. Now, however, looking again at the amount and the need he had for it gave Candido Neves the energy to make one last big effort. He went out in the morning to look for signs and ask questions round the Rua da Carioca and the nearby square, the Rua do Parto and the Rua da Ajuda, which was where she might be, according to the advertisement. He didn’t find her; only a chemist in the Rua da Ajuda remembered selling an ounce of some drug, three days before, to someone with those marks. Candido Neves talked as if he were the slave’s owner, and politely thanked him for the information. He had no better luck with other runaways whose reward was meagre, or less certain.
He went back to the miserable lodgings they’d been lent. Aunt Monica had put some food together for the young mother, and had the child ready to be taken to the Wheel. The father, in spite of the agreement they’d reached, could hardly hide his pain at what he saw. He refused to eat what Aunt Monica had kept for him; he wasn’t hungry, he said, and it was true. He thought of a thousand ways whereby he could keep his son; but none was any good. He couldn’t even forget the shelter where he was living. He consulted his wife, who seemed resigned. Aunt Monica had described the child’s future upbringing: more and greater poverty – perhaps he would die in utter destitution. Candido Neves was forced to fulfil his promise; he asked his wife to give their son the last milk he would drink from his mother. This done, the child went to sleep; his father picked him up, and went off in the direction of the Rua dos Barbonos.
We can be sure he thought more than once of going back home with him; and that he wrapped him up warm, kissed him, and covered his face to keep the damp night air off. When he entered the Rua da Guarda Velha, Candido Neves began to slacken his pace.
‘I’ll give him up as late as I can,’ he murmured.
But since the street was not infinite, or even long, eventually he’d come to its end; it was then that it occurred to him to go into one of the alleyways that linked it to the Rua da Ajuda, and he saw the figure of a woman on the other side of the street: it was the mulatta who had escaped. I won’t depict Candido Neves’s commotion here, because I can’t convey it with enough intensity. One adjective is enough; let’s say it was enormous. As the woman went down the street, he went too; a few steps away was the pharmacy where he’d got the information, as I’ve already recounted. He went in, found the pharmacist, asked him if he’d be so kind as to look after the child for a moment; he’d be back to get it, without fail.
‘But …’
Candido Neves gave him no time to say anything; he hurried out, crossed the street, up to the point where he could catch the woman without creating a disturbance. At the end of the street, when she was turning to go down the Rua de São José, Candido Neves came close to her. It was her, it was the runaway mulatta.
‘Arminda!’ he shouted, using the name in the advertisement.
Arminda turned round without suspecting ill intent. It was only when he’d pulled the piece of rope from his pocket and grabbed her arms that she realised and tried to flee. It was too late. Candido Neves, with his strong hands, tied her wrists and told her to get moving. The slave made as if to shout; it seems she even let out a louder cry than usual, but she soon realised that no one would come to free her – quite the contrary. She then asked him to free her, for the love of God.
‘I’m pregnant, master!’ she exclaimed. ‘If your worship has a child, I beg you for the love of him to let me go; I’ll be your slave, I’ll serve you for as long as you want. Please, please let me go, young master!’
‘Get moving!’ Candido Neves repeated.
‘Let me go!’
‘Don’t keep me waiting; get moving!’
There was a struggle at this point, for the slave, groaning, was dragging herself and her unborn child along. Passers-by, or people in shop doorways understood what was going on, and naturally didn’t get involved. Arminda alleged that her master was a very bad man, and would probably punish her with a whipping – which, in the state she was in, would hurt much more. No doubt of it, he’d have her whipped.
‘It’s your own fault. Who asked you to have a child and then flee?’ asked Candido Neves.
He wasn’t in the best frame of mind, because of the child he’d left behind in the pharmacy, waiting for him. It’s also true that he wasn’t one for saying anything very profound. He dragged the slave along the Rua dos Ourives, towards the Rua da Alfândega, where her master lived. On the corner of this last street, the struggle got worse; the slave planted her feet against the wall, and pulled back with great effort, to no avail. All she did was make it take more time to get to the house than it would have done, and it was nearby. Finally, she arrived, dragged along, desperate, gasping for breath. She even got down on her knees, but in vain. The master was at home, and responded to the call and the commotion.
‘Here’s the runaway,’ said Candido Neves.
‘That’s her all right.’
‘Master!’
‘Come on, get in …’
Arminda fell in the corridor. Then and there the master opened his wallet and took out the hundred mil-reis of the reward. Candido Neves put the two fifty mil-reis notes away, while the master was still telling the slave to get inside. On the floor, where she was lying, carried away by fear and pain, and after a short struggle, the slave had a miscarriage.
The product of a few months’ growth came lifeless into the world, amid the groans of the mother, and the owner’s gestures of despair. Candido Neves saw the whole spectacle. He didn’t know what time it was. In any case, he had to run quickly to the Rua da Ajuda, and that was what he did, with no wish to know what the consequences of the disaster were.
When he got there, he saw that the chemist was alone, without the child he’d handed over. He felt like strangling him. Fortunately, the chemist explained everything in time; the child was inside with his family, and both went inside. The father grabbed his son with the same degree of ferocity he’d used to grab the slave-woman a short while back, a different ferocity, of course – the ferocity of love. He thanked them hurriedly and awkwardly, and left in a tearing hurry, not to the Orphans’ Wheel, but to the borrowed room, with his son and the hundred mil-reis of the reward. Aunt Monica, when she heard the explanation, forgave the return of the child, since he brought the mil-reis with it. She did, it’s true, say some harsh things about the slave, because of the miscarriage, as well as the escape. Candido Neves, kissing his son amid genuine tears, blessed the escape and was unconcerned about the miscarriage.
‘Not all children make it,’ said his beating heart.