The Patchwork Quilt
By MONTEIRO LOBATO
From the Portuguese (Brazil) by Isaac Goldberg
UPA! I swing into the saddle and I’m off.
Nature wakes late these March days. She spends the morning wrapped in a gown of mist, yawning and stretching like an indolent woman, removing then her veils of darkness for her sun bath. The fog blurs the outlines of the landscape, dimming its colors. The whole scene seems filtered through a clouded glass.
Along the hollows I can just see the
waving top of the thick grasses, like
a selvage edge; a few paces ahead the
road is lost, and nothing else is to be
seen beyond save, at intervals, the drip-
ping silhouette of some gum tree by the
roadside.
Here is a gate.
And now, the Labrego cross-roads.
I turn to the right, heading for José Alvorada’s homestead.
This fellow lives hard by the Peri-
quitos, and is admirably located to ex-
tend his property as far as their farm.
—a jewel of a place that clamors
through the mouth of its luxuriant
grasses for the fructifying seed and
the garnering scythe. Harvest here
shouldn’t be a difficult feat; with fifty
hands the product could be made
ready for market. Even discounting
the damage done by the hogs, and the
part eaten by pacas and rats. . . Can
that be Alvorada’s daughter?
“Good day, my girl. Is your father home?”
She is his only child. From all ap-
pearances she can’t be more than four-
teen. Such glowing health! She
makes me think of the maiden-hair
ferns of distant Norway. But she’s a
shy, taciturn sort. See how she’s
shrunk from me! She has lowered
her eyes and pretends to be busy
arranging her head cloth. She has
come to this streamlet to get some
water, and it’s really a wonder she
hadn’t dashed into hiding behind those
bushes at sight of me.
“Is your father home?”. I repeated.
She answered with a bashful “Yes,” but did not raise her eyes.
How wild this country life does
make these timid deer. Moreover, the
Alvoradas are not born country folk.
The old man, when he bought his pres-
ent place from the Periquitos, came
from the city. I even remember that
he used to receive a newspaper every
day.
But their life became a terrible
struggle against sterile soil and
droughts; they might redouble their
efforts, yet the harvest kept diminish-
ing from year to year. Visits to the
city grew less and less frequent and at
last were given up altogether. After
the little girl was born to them—an
autumnal blossom—and frost ruined
the new coffee crop, the man grew
surly and never set foot outside his
place.
The husband’s dejection assumed the form of misanthropy: the wife took root in the place for the rest of her days. She used to say that a countrywoman goes to the city three times: to be baptized, to be married, and to be buried.
With parents thus set in their ways,
poor Pingo d’Agua—such was the
nickname of Maria Dolores — nat-
urally grew so shy that she was afraid
of people. She had visited the city
once—when she was twenty days old—
to be baptized. And here she was, in
her fourteenth year, without ever a
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