I began by expressing our thanks for the use of the motor, to which he instantly replied, “Ah, to be sure, I was so delighted to be able to serve you, and—and——”
He was plainly waiting for me to encourage him with, “Yes, that was so kind of you” and a gentle pat on the shoulder, instead of the swift kick farther down which he so richly deserved. I bowed, and took to expressing in the most polished Portuguese I could summon my admiration for a man who had the nerve to demand several times the price of a machine for such a brief use of it. I had intended to work him up slowly to the point where my remarks would feel like the threshing of nettles on a bare skin, but the men of northern Brazil are dynamic with pride and quick to flare up at any suggested slight, so that I had barely reached the word roubar (rob), first of a long and culminative list with a sting, when he bounded into the air and asked if I really knew the meaning of that word in Portuguese. I assured him that I did, and the action, too, in any land or clime, whereupon he demanded in a neighbor-waking voice whether I had come to call him a thief in his own house. When I informed him that I had come for that express purpose, he bellowed, “Rua! Off with you! Out of my sight,” at the same time hastening to pick my hat off the rack and hand it to me. I was going anyway, now that he had caught my hint, but I did not propose to let his wrath hasten matters. As I stepped leisurely out upon the veranda he slammed the door and informed me in the bellow of a mad bull that he would “pay me back”—not the 100$ unfortunately—“the first time he met me on the street—to-morrow!”
“Why not to-day?” I queried, for it was barely dusk and there were street-cars, if it was beneath his dignity to walk.
This redoubled his fury. “Era uma fita”—it was a regular movie, as the Brazilians say, to see him giving an impersonation of a fire-eater for the benefit of his wife and children, and shouting. “Let me at him! Let me eat him!” while his wife and three small sons clung to his arms, legs, and other appendages, screaming the Brazilian form of, “Don’t kill him, Pa! Oh, don’t shoot him, for my sake!” He allowed the pistol he had caught up to be wrested from his hand, but the howls and screams of the whole family could still be heard when I turned the next corner—and I was not running at that.
Ladies of Pernambuco
A minstrel of Pernambuco—and a Portuguese shopkeeper
Advertising the Kinetophone in Pernambuco, with a monk and a dancing-girl. “Tut” on the extreme left, Carlos behind the drummer