Morte na praça (Death on the Square)
- among the many collections of short stories written by contemporary
Brazilian author Dalton Trevisan (born 1925) who has dedicated his
seventy year (70!) literary career to writing short stories - no novels,
no essays, no poetry, just short stories.
To share my
enthusiasm for Dalton's storytelling, here's the beginning of two of the
tales from the collection along with my write-up of the title story, a
zinger I've read multiple times.
THE WAKE
Doralice lay in the
middle of four lighted candles. Lifting the thin cambric handkerchief
that hid the dead woman's face, Sinhô showed us the darkened nose and
the yellow teeth under the tightened lip:
"Her lamp went out..."
The
coffin had been set up in the middle of the parlor, surrounded by
chairs set against the walls. At the head, standing, an old woman in
black was weeping, the dead one's sister. And in the corner, her chin
nestled in her hands, Ivone.
THE WIDOW
The old Ford bounced
over the potholes in the street. I went through the town at dusk, past
the flickering doors of the cheap saloons with their drunks at the bar.
All by himself, an old man wearing a hat was smoking a long homemade
cigarette.
"Can you tell me where Dona Abigail's house is?"
"I don't know."
"She's a widow with two children."
"Ah, Dona Biga. You go straight ahead, then turn left. You'll come to a crossroads." The widow's house is there on the right."
On
the side of the road, pairs of glowing eyes lighted up. In the middle
of the open countryside I came across someone on a bicycle. He pointed
to the distance.
"You're a mile and a half from the crossroads."
That leprous hand in the headlight was a bad omen.
DEATH ON THE SQUARE
The
narrator of the tale, a town resident, speaks with a touch of pride
about their town square - a church, a hospital, a dry-goods store, a
photographer, taxis and a brass bust of the town hero surrounded by beds
of roses in the middle of the square.
Jonas, so the narrator
tells us, did it all - he prospected for diamonds, had been a
professional gambler and even stood trial for murder. But then Jonas
"finally returned to town with that woman."
Two words, "that
woman," says it all - we're being alerted by one of the town's staunch
residents that an out-of-towner, a woman, is about to upset the town's
peace and harmony.
The narrator goes on to relate the background:
The woman's gentleman friend mistreated her and finally abandoned her,
whereupon Jonas found her dancing in a cabaret. Jonas and the woman got
married and had three children. Jonas bought the pharmacy on the town
square when the old druggist died.
As readers we can imagine the
narrator and all the other townsfolk knowingly shaking their heads when,
a couple months later, Jonas caught her wife, Anita, in bed with clerk
Ernesto. "While his wife packed her bag, he (Jonas) went to the window
and fired two shots in the air. Anita left for the state capital on the
morning train."
Gossip circulated that Jonas planed to distribute
the children among his relatives, close down the pharmacy and
disappear. But then, three days later Anita arrived back in
town with one of Jonas's aunts who convinced Jonas to take her back.
Anita
walled herself up on the second floor of their apartment behind the
pharmacy and word flew around town that Jonas was slowly poisoning her .
Events
moved apace, including Jonas, murder in his eyes, paying a visit to the
office of Ernesto. But Ernesto didn't hang around to find out what
would happen next; nope, Ernesto fled town with his family, never to be
seen again.
Jonas's vengeance turned toward the town. One night
all the roses in the middle of the town square were cut down. Over the
next few days dogs were found dead, poisoned by bits of meat laced with
arsenic. Then, as a kind of grand finale, the townspeople woke up to
discover a bat with its wings nailed to the church door and a cigarette
in its mouth.
Everyone in town was aghast. If Jonas can inflict
his hatred and rage in these ways against innocent animals and the house
of God itself, what will he do to his wife?
But then the
surprise: Jonas showed his wife Anita off at the carnival dance. There
she was, a beauty in her black satin dress, lipstick on her mouth. The
couple danced and sat off by themselves and Anita drank raspberry soda
while she and Jonas talked in low voices.
The next morning: the shocker that changed everything. You'll have to read for yourself.
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For readers of English, these three Dalton Trevisan stories translated by Gregory Rabassa can be found in The Vampire of Curitiba published by Alfred Knopf.
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