From those dirt trails constantly rose the red dust which they could still taste, and on both sides, as far as the eye could see, it covered the sparse vegetation of the plains.
The harsh sun, the pale mountains full of ravines, the starved zebus encountered along the roads, with a tired flight of ragged urubus as their only escort, the long, endless crossing of an endless desert . . . He gave a start. The car had stopped. Now they were in Japan: fragile houses on both sides of the road and, in the houses, furtive kimonos.
The chauffeur was talking to a Japanese wearing soiled dungarees and a Brazilian straw hat. Then the car started up again.
“He said only forty kilometers.”
“Where were we? In Tokyo?”
“No. Registro. In Brazil all the Japanese come here.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. They’re yellow, you know, Mr. D’Arrast.”
But the forest was gradually thinning out, and the road was becoming easier, though slippery. The car was skidding on sand. The window let in a warm, damp breeze that was rather sour.
“You smell it?” the chauffeur asked, smacking his lips. “That’s the good old sea. Soon, Iguape.”
“If we have enough gas,” D’Arrast said. And he went back to sleep peacefully.
Sitting up in bed early in the morning, D’Arrast looked in amazement at the huge room in which he had just awakened. The lower half of the big walls was newly painted brown. Higher up, they had once been painted white, and patches of yellowish paint covered them up to the ceiling. Two rows of beds faced each other. D’Arrast saw only one bed unmade at the end of his row and that bed was empty.
But he heard a noise on his left and turned toward the door, where Socrates, a bottle of mineral water in each hand, stood laughing, “Happy memory!” he said. D’Arrast shook himself. Yes, the hospital in which the Mayor had lodged them the night before was named “Happy Memory.” “Sure memory,” Socrates continued. “They told me first build hospital, later build water.
Meanwhile, happy memory, take fizz water to wash.” He disappeared, laughing and singing, not at all exhausted apparently by the cataclysmic sneezes that had shaken him all night long and kept D’Arrast from closing an eye.
Now D’Arrast was completely awake. Through the iron-latticed window he could see a little red-earth courtyard soaked by the rain that was noiselessly pouring down on a clump of tall aloes. A woman passed holding a yellow scarf over her head. D’Arrast lay back in bed, then sat up at once and got out of the bed, which creaked under his weight.
Socrates came in at that moment: “For you, Mr. D’Arrast. The Mayor is waiting outside.” But, seeing the look on D’Arrast’s face, he added: “Don’t worry; he never in a hurry.”
After shaving with the mineral water, D’Arrast went out under the portico of the building. The Mayor—who had the proportions and, under his gold-rimmed glasses, the look of a nice little weasel—seemed lost in dull contemplation of the rain. But a charming smile transfigured him as soon as he saw D’Arrast.
Holding his little body erect, he rushed up and tried to stretch his arms around the engineer. At that moment an automobile drove up in front of them on the other side of the low wall, skidded in the wet clay, and came to a stop on an angle. “The Judge!” said the Mayor. Like the Mayor, the Judge was dressed in navy blue. But he was much younger, or at least seemed so because of his elegant figure and his look of a startled adolescent.
Now he was crossing the courtyard in their direction, gracefully avoiding the puddles. A few steps from D’Arrast, he was already holding out his arms and welcoming him. He was proud to greet the noble engineer who was honoring their poor village; he was delighted by the priceless service the noble engineer was going to do Iguape by building that little jetty to prevent the periodic flooding of the lower quarters of town. What a noble profession, to command the waters and dominate rivers!
Ah, surely the poor people of Iguape would long remember the noble engineer’s name and many years from now would still mention it in their prayers. D’Arrast, captivated by such charm and eloquence, thanked him and didn’t dare wonder what possible connection a judge could have with a jetty. Besides, according to the Mayor, it was time to go to the club, where the leading citizens wanted to receive the noble engineer appropriately before going to inspect the poorer quarters. Who were the leading citizens?
“Well,” the Mayor said, “myself as Mayor, Mr. Carvalho here, the Harbor Captain, and a few others less important. Besides, you won’t have to pay much attention to them, for they don’t speak French.”
D’Arrast called Socrates and told him he would meet him when the morning was over.
“All right,” Socrates said, “I’ll go to the Garden of the Fountain.”
“The Garden?”
“Yes, everybody knows. Have no fear, Mr. D’Arrast.”
The hospital, D’Arrast noticed as he left it, was built on the edge of the forest, and the heavy foliage almost hung over the roofs. Over the whole surface of the trees was falling a sheet of fine rain which the dense forest was noiselessly absorbing like a huge sponge. The town, some hundred houses roofed with faded tiles, extended between the forest and the river, and the water’s distant murmur reached the hospital.
The car entered drenched streets and almost at once came out on a rather large rectangular square which showed, among numerous puddles in its red clay, the marks of tires, iron wheels, and horseshoes.
All around, brightly plastered low houses closed off the square, behind which could be seen the two round towers of a blue-and-white church of colonial style. A smell of salt water coming from the estuary dominated this bare setting. In the center of the square a few wet silhouettes were wandering.
Along the houses a motley crowd of gauchos, Japanese, half-breed Indians, and elegant leading citizens, whose dark suits looked exotic here, were sauntering with slow gestures.
They stepped aside with dignity to make way for the car, then stopped and watched it. When the car stopped in front of one of the houses on the square, a circle of wet gauchos silently formed around it.
At the club—a sort of small bar on the second floor furnished with a bamboo counter and iron café tables—the leading citizens were numerous. Sugar-cane alcohol was drunk in honor of D’Arrast after the Mayor, glass in hand, had wished him welcome and all the happiness in the world.
But while D’Arrast was drinking near the window, a huge lout of a fellow in riding-breeches and leggings came over and, staggering somewhat, delivered himself of a rapid and obscure speech in which the engineer recognized solely the word “passport.” He hesitated and then took out the document, which the fellow seized greedily.
After having thumbed through the passport, he manifested obvious displeasure. He resumed his speech, shaking the document under the nose of the engineer, who, without getting excited, merely looked at the angry man. Whereupon the Judge, with a smile, came over and asked what was the matter. For a moment the drunk scrutinized the frail creature who dared to interrupt him and then, staggering even more dangerously, shook the passport in the face of his new interlocutor.
D’Arrast sat peacefully beside a café table and waited. The dialogue became very lively, and suddenly the Judge broke out in a deafening voice that one would never have suspected in him. Without any forewarning, the lout suddenly backed down like a child caught in the act. At a final order from the Judge, he sidled toward the door like a punished schoolboy and disappeared.
The Judge immediately came over to explain to D’Arrast, in a voice that had become harmonious again, that the uncouth individual who had just left was the Chief of Police, that he had dared to claim the passport was not in order, and that he would be punished for his outburst.
Judge Carvalho then addressed himself to the leading citizens, who stood in a circle around him, and seemed to be questioning them. After a brief discussion, the Judge expressed solemn excuses to D’Arrast, asked him to agree that nothing but drunkenness could explain such forgetfulness of the sentiments of respect and gratitude that the whole town of Iguape owed him, and, finally, asked him to decide himself on the punishment to be inflicted on the wretched individual.
D’Arrast said that he didn’t want any punishment, that it was a trivial incident, and that he was particularly eager to go to the river. Then the Mayor spoke up to assert with much simple good-humor that a punishment was really mandatory, that the guilty man would remain incarcerated, and that they would all wait until their distinguished visitor decided on his fate. No protest could soften that smiling severity, and D’Arrast had to promise that he would think the matter over. Then they agreed to visit the poorer quarters of the town.
The river was already spreading its yellowish waters over the low, slippery banks. They had left behind them the last houses of Iguape and stood between the river and a high, steep embankment to which clung huts made of clay and branches. In front of them, at the
