Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon

FIRST CHAPTER The Languor of OFENISIA (whose importance must not be judged by the brevity of her appearance) "In this year of headlong progress . . ." (FROM AN ILHEUS NEWSPAPER OF 1925) OF THE SUN AND THE RAIN AND A SMALL MIRACLE IN THAT YEAR of 1925, when the idyll of the mulatto girl Gabriela and Nacib the Arab began, the rains continued long beyond the proper and necessary season. Whenever two planters met in the street, they would ask each other, with fear in their eyes and voices: "How long can this keep up?" Never had they seen so much rain. It fell day and night, almost without pause. "One more week and we may lose everything." "The entire crop . . ." "God help us!" The crop gave promise of being the biggest in history. With cacao prices constantly rising, this would mean greater wealth, prosperity, abundance. It would mean the most expensive schools in the big cities for the colonels' sons, homes in the town's new residential sections, luxurious furniture from Rio, grand pianos for the parlors, more and better-stocked stores, a business boom, liquor flowing in the cabarets, more women arriving in the ships, lots of gambling in the bars and hotels--in short, progress, more of the civilization everyone was talking about. But this unending downpour might ruin everything. And to think that only a few months earlier the colonels were anxiously scanning the sky for clouds, hoping and praying for rain. All through southern Bahia the cacao trees had been shedding their flower, replacing it with the newly born fruit. Without rain this fruit would have soon perished. The procession on St. George's Day had taken on the aspect of a desperate mass appeal to the town's patron saint. The gold-embroidered litter bearing the image of the saint was carried on the shoulders of the town's most important citizens, the owners of the largest plantations, dressed in the red gowns of the lay brotherhood. This was significant, for the cacao colonels ordinarily avoided religious functions. Attendance at Mass or confession they considered a sign of moral weakness. Church-going, they maintained, was for women. Not that the colonels played no part in the religious life of the community. Their role, as they saw it, was to provide funds, upon request of the Bishop or the local priests, for church buildings and activities. They financed the parochial school for girls, the episcopal residence, catechism classes, novenas, the month of Mary, charity bazaars, and the feasts of St. Anthony and St. John. That year, instead of spending St. George's Day swilling in bars, there they all were, walking contritely in the procession, each with a candle in his hand, promising the saint everything in the world in exchange for the precious rains. The crowd followed the litters through the streets, praying along with the priests. Adorned in his vestments, hands joined, face touched with compunction, Father Easilio led the prayers in his sonorous voice. He had been chosen for this important function not only because of his professional capacity but also because he was himself a plantation owner and therefore had a special interest, not shared by his colleagues, in divine intervention. He could be relied upon to pray with all the strength at his command. Father Basilio's exaltation inspired transports of ecstasy in the old maids clustered around the image of Mary Magdalene. They could hardly recognize in him the indifferent priest whose Masses were breathtakingly short and who listened so inattentively to their long confessions--unlike Father Cecilio, for example. The priest's vigorous and self-interested voice rose high in ardent prayer. So did the nasal soprano of the old maids and the mixed chorus of colonels and their families, tradesmenAmado, Jorge is the author of 'Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon', published 2006 under ISBN 9780307276650 and ISBN 0307276651.