The Violent Land by Jorge Amado

bushmaster was sleeping, too, curled up on José’s chest. After killing the snake, they found that José had seventeen bites in all, but he was none the worse for it on account of the rum. The alcohol had diluted the poison. The only thing was, he swelled up as big as a horse for a couple of weeks, but after that he was as right as ever.
    They also told stories of “snake-charmers,” those who were immune to the serpent’s bite, who would even pick them up along the highway and remain unharmed. There was Agostinho, on the next plantation; he was a “charmer”; a snake would never do him any harm. Why, merely for the fun of it, he would put out his arm for them to bite.
    Joanna, the pack-driver’s wife, who drank as much as any of the men, then began telling of something that had happened on the backlands ranch where she had lived before moving to these parts, here in the south. The family had come down to the Big House to spend their vacation; and one day a snake made its way into the house. They always came down at the end of the year; and this year they were very happy because a child had just been born to them, their first one, for they had been married only a little over a year and a half. But the snake came in and curled up in the baby’s cradle. The baby was crying for its mother’s breast, and so, in its innocence, it took the snake’s tail in its mouth. They found the infant the next day, the tail of the sleeping serpent still in its mouth; but it was no longer sucking on it, for the poison had taken effect. The lady of the house then ran out through the fields, her golden hair flying in the wind, her feet bare and white—Joanna had never seen any feet as white as they were—as she ran along over the thorns and briers. They said that she was never quite right in the head after that, but became an idiot and grew ugly, lost all her beauty of face and figure. Before that, she had been like one of those foreign dolls, but afterwards she was nothing but an old hag. The Big House was always closed after that; the family never came back. The ivy grew all over the verandas, and weeds crept into the kitchen; and those who go by there today can hear the hisses of the snakes that make their nests inside the house.
    Joanna ended her story, took another drink of rum, and spat, then turned around to look at Ester; but Ester was no longer there; she was running toward the house, to her own baby’s cradle, as if she, too, had gone mad.
    On the veranda now, with the bright sun playing about her, Ester remembered this and other nights of terror. From Paris Lucia had written her, letters that arrived three months later and brought news of another mode of life, other people, of civilization and festivities. Here was the forest night, the nights of storm and snakes. Nights for weeping over her own unfortunate lot. Twilights that clutched the heart, taking away all hope. Hope of what? Everything was so very, very definite in her life.
    There were other nights also when she wept. When she saw Horacio leave at the head of a group of men on some expedition or other. She knew that on that night, somewhere, shots would ring out, that men would die for a plot of earth in order that Horacio’s plantation, which was hers as well, might be augmented by another bit of forest. From Paris Lucia wrote, telling of balls at the Embassy, operas, concerts. And here in the plantation Big House the grand piano waited for a tuner who never came.
    Ah, those nights when Horacio left with his men on armed expeditions! Once, after he had gone, Ester tried to picture to herself what his death would mean. If he were to die—then the plantation would be hers alone, she would turn it over to her father to manage, and she would go away. She would go to join Lucia. . . . But it was a short-lived dream. For Ester, Horacio was immortal; he was the master, the boss, the “colonel.” She was