Free The Mystery of Rio by Alberto Mussa, Alex Ladd Page B

had lived nearby in a sumptuous manor house in the shadow of the forest.
    Conhé’s reaction was unexpected: he asked the slaves for help. Merã was rushed to the estate’s slave quarters, followed by an out-of-control Conhé. The midwife, an old slave woman, did not hold out much hope.
    â€œThe child is sitting up, half-strangled by the cord. I’ll do my best to save the mother.”
    That was when a bewildered Conhé pleaded:
    â€œPlease, the child first! Don’t let the child die!”
    Merã, though driven mad by the pain, could not help but listen. Life really is very funny: the old midwife managed to save both mother and daughter—for it was a girl, who would be given the name Vudja.
    When they returned to the village—with a heavy sack of coffee and dried meat donated by Madame de Montigny, who also pledged to be the girl’s godmother—the reception was not the best. That same night, Conhé’s brothers-in-law, the first wife’s brothers, paid him a visit to let him know they had taken her back, with the uncle’s consent.
    Conhé cursed them, but his attention was on Vudja. So much so, that he did not react when, the next day, some boys stole two of his harpoons, which were decorated with the teeth of the shark he had caught barehanded.
    When Merã finally recovered from her fever and puerperal inconveniences, Conhé—happy because Vudja had survived—once again sought his wife. Then came the surprise: Merã rejected him, forcefully. Repeatedly so, on the second, third, and fourth attempts. Conhé insisted almost every day, and he was always rebuffed.
    And that was not all: whenever he would show interest in any other woman, old or young, the other shark hunters would step in, alleging that the desired woman was unavailable and pointing to another hunter, who supposedly had chosen her before. It was an informal way, the only one they had, of banishing him from the caste. Conhé was the first among them to know this infamy.
    Merã, for her part, besides scorning Conhé and enjoying her shellfish, found secret pleasure in practicing small cruelties against Vudja, pretending that they were minor accidents. Several times she burned the girl or scratched her skin with fish bones. One time she went too far and broke her daughter’s leg, leaving her lame for the rest of her life.
    And Vudja grew up, and had her period. However, no shark hunter would consider her. The lame and crippled virgin was jealous of the girls who got married, all the while watching as Conhé’s overtures were consistently rejected by her mother, forcing Conhé to sulk alone in the opposite corner of the hut. Such was Vudja’s childhood.
    It is important to say that Madame de Montigny kept her promise. Once a year, Vudja would go to her godmother’s house, always returning with some trinket or other. When she was thirteen, still ignored by men, she was astonished to see, behind the barn, one of the coachmen mounting one of the cooks.
    She returned to the village very upset, mainly because the woman’s behavior had been very different from Merã’s. That same night she suddenly moved out of the hut, irritated by her parents’ ceaseless fighting.
    Vudja’s plan was simple: one afternoon, while Conhé slept in the hut and Merã collected shellfish in the Preto River, she went to a nearby swamp, where she captured an enormous
cururu
, also known as a cane toad, or
bufo marinus
.
    When Conhé felt that thump on his chest and on his mouth, his reaction was just what Vudja had imagined: startled out of his sleep, he pummeled the beast, and opened his eyes wide—which is precisely where the toad squirted his venom.
    Vudja knew that until the inflammation died down Conhé would be blind. What happened next is not hard to imagine. That night, his eyes covered with macerated rue leaves, Conhé was unable to pursue Merã. Thus, he