The Pataca hit the girl on the shoulder.

 Garnizé had a lot of people that night. Around a dozen crude bread tables, with a tinplate covering painted white, pretending to be marble, were groups of three and four men, almost all in shirtsleeves, smoking and drinking in the midst of a great racket. There was wide consumption of national beer, virgin wine, paraty and laranginha. On the sand-covered floor there were rinds of Minas cheese, remains of liver bait, fish bones, giving the idea that not only was there drying, but also eating. Indeed, further inside, in a greasy buffet, next to the counter and between the shelves of full and corked bottles, there was a plate of roast with potatoes, a ham bone and several plates of fried sardines. Two kerozene lamps were smoking, smearing the ceiling. And from a back door,

The Pataca stopped at the entrance, causing a great drunkenness and trying, in disguise, in all the groups, to see if he could discover Firmo. I couldn't; but someone, at a certain table, had called his attention, because he was heading there. She was a thin, poorly dressed little mulatto, accompanied by an old woman who was almost blind and another man, completely bald, who suffered from asthma and, from time to time, shook the table with a loose cough, making the glasses dance.

The Pataca hit the girl on the shoulder.

—How are you, Florinda?

Ella looked at him, laughing; she said she was doing fine, and asked how she was doing.

“Roll over, daughter. What end did you take? I haven't seen you for a couple of days!

-And even. Since I've been with Seu Bento I haven't gone out almost.

—Oh! said the Pataca, are you friends? Good!...

-I have always been!

And she then, very expansive with her day off that Sunday and with her mouthful of beer, said that the day she was running away from the inn, she stayed on the street and slept in some work on a house under construction on the lane of That passage, and that in the next, offering from door to door, to hire herself as a maid or dry nurse, she found an old bachelor and well-to-do who took her into his service and got involved with her.

-Good! very good! Annuio Pataca.

But the old devil was a bastard; he gave her a lot, even money, he always brought her clean and with a full belly; yes sir! but he wanted her to lend herself to everything! They fought. And as the salesman on the corner was always calling her home, one fine day she arrived, taking what she had taken from the old man.

"So you have the one from the sale now?"

No! The rogue, on the pretext that he mistrusted her with Bento the carpenter, threw her out on the street, calling to himself what poor Christo had brought from the other's house and leaving her alone with the clothes on her back and on top of that. sick from a miscarriage he had had just after he had come across such a plague. Bento had taken care of her then, and she, thank God, for as long as she had no reason to complain.

The Pataca looked around with the air of someone looking for someone, and Florinda, assuming it was her man, added:

“It's not here, it's in there. Elle, when she plays, doesn't like me being around; she says she embarrasses.

-It's your mother?

-Poor thing! went to the asylum...

And then he began to talk about old Marcianna; the Pataca, however, was no longer paying attention to him, because at that moment the red curtain had just opened, and Firmo appeared very drunk, bouncing around, counting, without succeeding, a mass of money, in small notes, which he finally got into a cake and put it in his pants pocket.

—O Porphyr! do not come? she yelled inside, slurring her voice.

And, after waiting uselessly for an answer, he took a few steps into the room.

The Pataca gave Florinda a quick "see you later" and, pretending to be very drunk again, headed in the direction the mulatto was coming from.

They bumped into each other.

—Oh! Oh! exclaimed the Pataca. Sorry!

Firmo raised his head and looked at him arrogantly; but I unfurrowed my face as soon as he recognized it.

—Oh! is it you, you gallego? How's it going? Does the thief run?

—Ladroeira had her grandmother in her gourd! Go take something. Do you want?

—What must it be?

-Beer. Go?

“Go there.

They arrived at the counter.

—An Old Guard, O little one! shouted the Pataca.

Firmo immediately pulled out money to pay.

-He leaves! said the other. The memory was mine!

But, as Firmo insisted, I allowed him to do the desperation.

And the change nikei rolled on the floor, escaping through the mulatto's fingers, who had them stiff in the muscular tension of his intoxication.

-What time is it? Pataca asked, looking almost with his eyes closed at the clock on the wall. Half past eight. Let's go for another bottle, but now I pay!

They drank again, and Jeronymo's coadjutor later remarked: You really screwed her over today! You're that you can't lick yourself!

"Disgusts..." muttered the capoeira, unable to get the saliva clinging to his tongue out of his mouth.

—Wipe the chin you're spitting out. Dislikes of what? Women's business, I bet!

“Rita didn't show up for me today, you know? It wasn't, and I can guess why!

-Why?

—Because Jeronymo's plague has returned to the inn today!

—Oh! I didn't know!... Is Rita with him then?...

—It's not, and it never will be, because I'm going to look for that ordinary gallego from here and put the sardine in the pandulho!

—Did you come armed?

Firmo pulled a razor out of his shirt.

-Hides! you must not show it here! Those people over there at the other table can't take their eyes off us!

—I'm rocking myself to them! And don't look too much, I'll give you a sample!

"An urban man came in!" Hand me the razor!

The Cappadocian looked at his companion, finding the request strange.

—And that, explained that one, if they arrest you, they won't find you iron...

– Arrest whom? to me? Now, shut up!

"And is she good?" Let me see!

"This is not something to be seen!"

"You know very well that I don't get along with barber's weapons!"

-I don't know! This one doesn't come off my fingernails, not even for my father to ask for it!

"It's because you don't trust me!"

—I trust my teeth, and they bite my tongue!

"Do you know who I saw just now?" You can't guess!...

-Who?

—Rita.

-Where?

—Over there on Saudade beach.

-With whom?

—With a typo I don't know...

Firmo got up suddenly and staggered to the side of the exit.

-Wait! growled the other, stopping him. If you want, I'll go with you; but it is necessary to go carefully, because if she is a bishop, she runs away!

The mulatto ignored this observation and knew how to bump into every table. Pataca caught up with him on the street and put his arm around his waist, amicably.

—Let's take it easy… he said; otherwise the bird takes a risk!

The beach was deserted. There was a drizzle. Cold winds blew in from the sea. The sky was a black background, with a single ink; on the opposite side of the bay the lanterns seemed to emerge from the water, like seaweeds of fire, plunging their trembling luminous roots deep.

—Where is she? asked Firmo, not holding up on his legs.

“Over there, near the quarry. Walk, what you have to see!

And they continued to walk towards the hospice. But two figures emerged from the darkness; the Pataca recognized them and suddenly hugged the mulatto.

"Hold his legs!" she shouted to the others.

The two figures, putting the club between their teeth, took hold of Firmo, who was holding his arms securely by the trunk.

He had let himself be grabbed—he was lost.

When Pataca saw him seized by the armpits and the crook of his knees, he took out his razor.

— Prompt! It's unarmed!

And he also took his bread.

Then they released him. The capoeira, as soon as his feet touched the ground, I landed a blow with his head, at the same time that the first club blow opened the back of his head. He gave a cry and staggered around. A new stab slammed into his shoulders, then another into his kidneys, and another into his thighs, another, more violently, broke his collarbone, while another soon cracked his forehead and another caught his spine, and others, more and more quickly, they hit the points that had already been beaten again, until they became a continuous load of clubs, which the unfortunate man couldn't resist, rolling on the floor, dripping blood from all over his body.

The rain thickened. Elle now, like this, under that relentless chatter, seemed much smaller, dwindled as if she were on fire. She resembled a mouse dying with a shovel. A slight convulsive tremor was all that still betrayed a remnant of life. The other three didn't say a word, they gasped, beating constantly, seized by an irresistible vertigo as they smacked that bundle of soft, bloody flesh, grunting softly at their feet. Finally, when they didn't have the strength to knock yet, they dragged the bundle to the shoreline and threw it into the sea. Then, panting, they lay down and fled, aimlessly, to the sides of the city.

It was raining very heavily now. They only stopped at Cattete, next to a kiosk; they were soaked; they asked for paraty and drank like a drink now. It was already eleven o'clock. They went down the beach at Lapa; when they arrived under a lamp, Jeronymo stopped, sweating despite the downpour that fell.

"Here you are," he said, taking the four twenty-thousand-reis bills from his pocket. Two for each! And now let's have something hot in logar secco.

"There's a tavern there," the Pataca indicated, pointing to Rua da Gloria.

They climbed one of the stairs that connect this street to the beach, and shortly afterward they settled around an iron table. They asked for food and drink and began to talk in a gloomy voice, very tired.

At one o'clock in the morning the owner of the cafe threw them out. Fortunately it rained less. The three took the direction of Botafogo again; On the way, Jeronymo asked Pataca if he still had Firmo's razor with him and asked for it, to which his companion gave in without objection.

"It's to keep a memory of that slobbery!" explained the digger, putting away his weapon.

They parted in front of the inn. Jeronymo entered without a sound; he went to the house, peeked through the keyhole; there was light in the bedroom; he understood that the woman was waiting for him, maybe awake; he thought he could feel the sour bodum coming from inside, he grimaced in disgust and headed resolutely towards the mulatta's house, on whose door he knocked slowly.

Rita, that night, had withdrawn, distressed and frightened. She had stopped going to see her lover and later wondered how she had done such imprudence; how she had the courage to put into practice, precisely at the most dangerous moment, something that she had not felt up to doing. In her heart she respected capoeira; she was afraid of him. She had loved him at first because of an affinity of temperament, because of the irresistible connection of the lustful and scoundrel instinct that predominated in both of them, then she continued to be with him out of habit, out of a kind of vice that we cursed without being able to let go of it; but ever since Jeronymo had taken a liking to her, fascinated her with his calm seriousness as a good and strong animal, the mestizo's blood had claimed the right to investigate her, and Rita preferred the male of superior race over the European. The horseman, by her side,

They loved each other brutally, and they both knew it. This irrational and empirical love had been much more charged, on both sides, with the tragic incident of the struggle, in which the Portuguese had been a victim. Jeronymo glowed in her eyes with the sympathy of a martyr sacrificed to the woman he loves; she grew up with that slash; she lit up with her own spilled blood; and then his absence from the hospital completed the crystallization of his prestige, as if the caveman had lowered himself to a grave, dragging behind him the longing of those who mourned him.

However, the same phenomenon was at work in Jeronymo's spirit with regard to Rita: spontaneously risking one's life for someone is to accept a commitment of tenderness, in which we commit soul and heart; the woman for whom we make such a sacrifice, whoever she may be, assumes in a single flight in our phantasy the proportions of an ideal. The exile, at the first exchange of glances with the Bahian woman, immediately loved her, because he felt in her the summary of all the hot mysteries that voluptuously entwined him in these lands of luxury; he loved her much more when he had the chance to throw his existence away for that love, and he loved her madly during the sad and painful solitude of the infirmary, when her moans and sighs were all for her.

The mulatto woman understood him well, but she didn't have the courage to confess to him that she too was in love with him; she was afraid of harming him. Now, with that madness of missing the interview precisely on the day that Jeronymo returned to the inn, the situation seemed very touchy to him. Firmo, desperate at her absence, naturally got drunk and came to the tenement to provoke the farmer; the fight would break out again, fatal for one of them, if not both. Of what she had felt for the naval artist, now only fear persisted, not as he had been before, indeterminate and limp, but on the contrary, startled, nervous, full of apprehensions that made her distressed. Firmo no longer appeared in his mind as a jealous and dangerous lover, but as a simple criminal, armed with an old, disloyal and murderous razor. His fear turned into a mixture of disgust and terror. And, without finding only a blind man in bed, he let himself be stunned by his presentiments, when he heard a knock on the door.

—It's her! she said, her heart pounding.

And he could already see Firmo in front of him, drunk, screaming for Jeronymo, to stab him right there. He didn't answer the first call; he was listening.

After a pause they knocked again.

Ella found it strange the way they beat. It was not natural for the thief to proceed with such prudence. She got up, went to the window, opened one of the sheets and peered through the labels.

—Who's there?... he asked in a low voice.

"It's me..." said Jeronymo, reaching out.

He recognized it right away and ran to open it.

-As?! Is that you, Jeromo?

—Schit! she did, putting her finger in her mouth. Fall low. Rita began to tremble: in the Portuguese man's eyes, in his blood-soaked hands, in his drunken, soaked, and dirty whole, there was a terrible expression of crime.

—Where do you come from?... she whispered.

—To mind our own business... There you have the razor with which I was wounded!

And he threw Firmo's razor on the table, which the mulatto woman knew like the back of her hand.

—And she?

-Is dead.

“Who killed him?

-I.

Both fell silent.

"Now..." added the digger, at the end of a silence they both gasped for; I'm willing to do anything to be with you. We'll both leave here to wherever it is best... What do you say?

"And your wife?"

“I'll leave you my savings for a long time and I'll continue to pay the little one for school. I know I shouldn't leave her, but you can be sure that even if you don't want to come with me, I won't keep her! I don't know! I can no longer bear it! A man is infuriated! Luckily my box of clothes is still at the Order and I can pick it up in the morning.

"And where are we going?"

—What's not missing is where to go! Anywhere we will be fine. I have about five hundred thousand réis on me here, for the first expenses. I can stay here until five o'clock; It's half past two; I leave without being seen by Pity; I'll send you later to tell you what I've arranged, and you will come to me... Is that said? Do you want?

Rita, in response, threw herself on his neck and clung to his lips, devouring him with kisses.

That new sacrifice of the Portuguese; that extreme dedication that led him to throw himself on the family, dignity, future, everything, everything for her, excited her madly. After the upheavals of that day and that night, her nerves were sharp and she was all electric.

Oh! had not been mistaken! that big man Herculeo, with the muscles of a bull, was capable of all the sweetness of affection.

-Then? I insist.

“Yes, yes, my captivity! replied the bahiana, speaking into her mouth; I want to go with you; I want to be your mulatto, the good of your heart! You are my spells!

And feeling his body: —But how soaked you are! Wait! wait! what's not lacking here is men's clothes to change!... You could have a relapse, crosses! Remove all that is flooded! I'll light the stove and spread the cashmere over it so you can get dressed at five o'clock. Take off your boots! Look at the hat as it is! All this dries up! All this dries up! Mira, take a sip of paraty to cut through the friage! Then it goes all over the body. I'll make coffee!

Jeronymo drank a good drink of paraty, changed his clothes and lay down on Rita's bed.

—Come here… he said, a little hoarsely.

-Wait! wait! Coffee is almost ready!

And she only went to him, taking him the key in the steaming perfumed drink that had been the messenger of her loves; She sat down on the edge of the bed and, holding the saucer with one hand and the cup with the other, helped him to drink, gulp by gulp, while her eyes caressed him, glistening with impatience in the foreboding of that first bond. .

Then she threw off her skirt and, wearing only her shirt, threw herself at her lover, in a frenzy of mad desire.

Jeronymo, as he felt her whole in his arms; when you feel the hot meat of that Brazilian woman on your skin; when she felt the black and cold wave of the mulatto's hair flood her face and shoulders, in an effluvium of vanilla and cumarú: when she felt the two swollen and soft globes crush in her wide and furry collar, and on his thighs her thighs; his soul melted, boiling and bubbling like metal on fire, and I came out of his mouth, out of his eyes, out of every pore of his body, scorching, on fire, burning his very flesh and drawing muffled groans from him, irrepressible sobs, which shook his limbs, fiber by fiber, in an extreme, supernatural agony, an agony of angels violated by devils, amid the bloody redness of the flames of hell.

And with a jerk of a wild beast they both fell prostrate, gasping. Ella's mouth was open, her lingo was out, her arms were stiff, her fingers stiff, and her whole body was shaking from head to toe, continually, as if she were dying; while he, suddenly flung away from life by that unexpected explosion of her senses, allowed himself to be plunged into a delicious intoxication, through which the whole world and all her past fled like fatuous shadows. And, with no awareness of anything around him, no memory of himself, no eyes, no sense, no ears, he only preserved in his whole being a very clear, vivid, inextinguishable impression: the friction of that hot and throbbing flesh. , which he in delirium pressed against his body, and which he still felt throbbing under his hands,