It was back in the time of the king. In those days, one of the four corners at the intersection of Ouvidor and Quitanda streets was referred to as “Bailiffs’ Corner.” And an apt name it was, for that corner was the favorite meeting place of all the individuals exercising that office, which was then held in no inconsiderable esteem. The bailiffs of today are but meager shadows of bailiffs in the time of the king, which were figures fearsome and feared, respectable and respected. They represented one end of a formidable judicial chain that embraced all of Rio de Janeiro back when, amongst us, legal proceedings constituted one of the staples of life. At the other end were the appeals court judges. Now, ends can, after all, meet, and those ends, when they met, formed a circle inside of which there was fought out a terrible combat of summonses, bills of indictment, principal and final arguments, and all the judicial maneuverings that go into a court case. Hence the moral influence the bailiffs exercised.
But they had another influence as well, one that is precisely lacking in their modern-day counterparts. That was the influence deriving from their physical appearance. The bailiffs of today are men just like any others; there is nothing particularly imposing about them, either in countenance or in dress. They might be taken for a solicitor, a law clerk, or an office underling. The bailiffs of that fine time would never, ever be taken for anything other than what they were: originals, character types whose countenance reflected a certain air of forensic majesty, whose sharp, knowing look bespoke cunning. They dressed in sober black dress coats, breeches and stockings of that same color, and shoes with buckles; an aristocratic smallsword hung at their left side and at the right a white circle whose significance we no longer understand. They topped it all off with a severe cocked hat. Defined by the imposing presence of such features, the bailiff used and abused his position. It was a terrifying occurrence when, as a citizen turned a city corner or stepped out of his house in the morning, he came across one of those solemn figures who, unfolding a piece of paper in front of him, began reading it in a confidential tone of voice. No matter what he might think of doing, there was no alternative but to let escape from between his lips the doleful phrase: “I accept the summons.” No one now can understand the fateful and cruel significance that those few words contained! They constituted a sentence to eternal pilgrimage pronounced upon oneself; they meant that a long, wearying journey was being begun whose remote destination was the clerk of the appeals court. On that journey, toll had to be paid at an endless number of checkpoints: lawyer, solicitor, investigator, notary, judge, inexorable Charons all, standing in doorways with hands outstretched. And no one could pass through without depositing not an obol but the entire contents of his pockets and the last ounce of his patience.
But let us return to the corner. Whosoever passed by on a weekday in that blessed age would see seated there on low, worn leather seats, called “campaign chairs,” a more or less numerous group of those worthies peacefully conversing about anything and everything that was considered a legitimate topic of conversation: the lives of the nobles, the news of the kingdom, and the wily police exploits of Major Vidigal. Among the terms that made up the bailiff equation affixed to this corner was one constant quantity: Leonardo-Pataca. For such was the name commonly applied to a rotund and extremely fat personage with white hair and a florid complexion who was the dean of this corporation, the eldest of the bailiffs living at that time. Old age had made him soft and sluggish; his slowness delayed clients’ business, so he was little utilized and therefore never departed from the corner. He spent his days seated upon his chair with his legs stretched out before him and his chin propped on a thick cane that, after he turned fifty, had become his constant companion. From the habit that he had of incessantly complaining that his services brought but the meager sum of 320 réis, one pataca, came the tag that had been appended to his name.
Leonardo’s story has about it very little worthy of remark. He had been a used-clothes hawker in his native Lisbon, but he grew tired of that trade and moved to Brazil. When he got here, through whose intercession no one seems to know, he came into the position in which we now see him—in which, as we have said, he had been engaged for a great many years. Moreover, there came with him on the same ship, for what purpose it is hard to say, one Maria da Hortaliça, former produce vendor in the squares of Lisbon, a roundish, quite pretty native of the rural environs of the capital city. To do him justice, Leonardo was not all that unattractive in that time of his youth either; most of all, however, he was a rogue. Before they even got out of the Tagus, as Maria was leaning on the ship’s rail, Leonardo pretended to push innocently past her and trod heavily on her right foot with his iron-toed boot. As if she had been awaiting some such ruse, Maria smiled as though disconcerted and then, under the cover of that indirection, gave him a ferocious pinch on the back of his left hand. This, according to the customs of the land, constituted a formal declaration. They spent the rest of that day in the closest of courtship, and that night the scene of foot tromping and hand pinching was repeated, only this time more definitively. On the following day the two lovers had grown so ardent and so familiar that it seemed they had shared the relationship for years.
By the time they set foot back on land, Maria had begun feeling touches of nausea. They set up house together, and not more than a month later the effects of the tromping and the pinching became clearly evident. Seven months after that Maria gave birth to a son, a formidable youngster nearly three palms long, chubby and red, hairy, flailing his legs and yowling. Scarcely was he born when he nursed for two hours straight without relinquishing his mother’s breast. Of everything heretofore observed, this birth is what most interests us, for the child of whom we speak is the hero of this story.
There arrived the day on which the boy was to be baptized. The midwife was the godmother, but there was some debate about who should be the godfather. Leonardo wanted it to be the judge; ultimately, however, he had to give in to Maria’s insistence, and the midwife’s, that it be the barber from across the street. There was, needless to say, a party that day. The invitees of the master of the house, all of whom were likewise from the old country, sang ao desafio, as was their custom. The comadre’s guests, all of whom were native, danced the fado. The compadre* brought his fiddle with him, which, as everyone knows, is the preferred instrument of the people of his trade. At the outset Leonardo, wanting to impart an aristocratic air to the celebration, proposed they dance the courtly minuet. The idea won general acceptance, but they had some difficulty in creating partners. Finally, a short, heavy matron, wife of one of the invitees, got up, along with a woman friend of hers whose figure was her complete opposite; likewise, both a colleague of Leonardo’s, a tiny little man with a waggish air about him, and the sacristan of the Sé.** The godfather played the minuet on his fiddle, and the godson, lying in Maria’s lap, accompanied each and every pass of the bow with a squall and a kick. That caused the godfather to lose the beat over and over again and have to start in anew each time.
After they had finished the minuet, the formality gradually waned, and the party “came to a boil” as they used to say back then. Some young men arrived with guitars and machetes.*** Leonardo, urged on by the ladies, decided to launch into a lyric portion of the program. He seated himself on a stool in an empty part of the room and took up a guitar. It produced a wonderful comic effect to see him there, in his bailiff’s dress with the coat, breeches, and smallsword, accompanying his own toneless warbling of an old-world modinha with a monotonous strumming on the instrument’s strings. He found in the nostalgia for his native land the inspiration for his song, which was natural in a good Portuguese such as he was. The modinha went like this:
When I lived in my native land,
Whether in company or on my own,
A glass of wine in my hand,
I’d sing the night and daytime long!
The song was painstakingly executed and enthusiastically applauded; the only person who did not seem to accord it great appreciation was the boy, who rewarded his father as he had rewarded his godfather, keeping the beat with squalls and kicks. Maria’s eyes grew red and she sighed.
Leonardo’s song was the last call to arms needed for the party to take off—the farewell to formality. Thereafter, it turned into an uproar, which soon gave way to a din and then went on to become a riot, which progressed no further only because now and again there could be seen through the door and window shutters certain passing figures that suggested that Vidigal was somewhere in the vicinity.
The party did not end until late; the godmother was the last to leave, bestowing a blessing upon her godson and placing on his bellyband a sprig of rue.