From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending

in the Era of Financial Inclusion:

Households, Debts and Masculinity
among Calon Gypsies of Northeast
Brazil Martin Fotta
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 FROM ITINERANT
TRADE TO
MONEYLENDING
IN THE ERA OF
FINANCIAL
INCLUSION
Households, Debts and Masculinity among
Calon Gypsies of Northeast Brazil

Martin Fotta
From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era
of Financial Inclusion
 Martin Fotta

From Itinerant Trade

to Moneylending in
the Era of Financial
Inclusion
Households, Debts and Masculinity
among Calon Gypsies of Northeast
Brazil
Martin Fotta
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Goethe University Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

ISBN 978-3-319-96408-9    ISBN 978-3-319-96409-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952363

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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To Adriana
 Acknowledgements

Over the years, the research for this book has been funded by a doctoral
fellowship from the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions programme,
Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, and a research
fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
My thanks go to the many people who have contributed to this project
and to those who have kept me inspired.
Thanks to my parents, Ján Fotta and Nataša Fottová, for their concerns
about me.
Thanks to Orlando, Viviane, Kiko, Romero, Rogério Maluco, Paula,
Sara, Nelson, Adair, Paulo, Rita, Tiago, and Wiliam for letting me ask so
much about their lives. Thanks to Luciano, Malu, Marly, Ronald,
Ronaldo, and Rogério for the parties.
Thanks to Roger Sansi for his guidance as my thesis supervisor, and to
Frances Pine for having read the final version of the thesis thoroughly.
Thanks to Michael Stewart and Keith Hart for being critical thesis exam-
iners. Thanks to my colleagues at Goldsmiths for listening to my raw
ideas and to our teachers for their encouragement. Thanks to João de
Pina Cabral, Hans Peter Hahn, Annabel Bokern, and Daniel Margócsy
for their support over the years. Thanks to Cecilia McCallum for think-
ing of me as a decent anthropologist, to Edilson Teixeira for making me
take up jogging, to Elena Calvo-González for the laughs, and to Clarice
Costa Teixeira for the delicious food. Thanks to Juliana Campos, Jucelho
vii
viii Acknowledgements

Dantas, Helena Dolabela, Aderino Dourado, Florencia Ferrari, Mirriam

Guerra, Edilma Monteiro, and Márcio Vilar for all the conversations.
Thanks to participants of seminars and conferences at which I pre-
sented various arguments of this book for their suggestions and ques-
tions. Thanks to Susanne Fehlings, Jan Grill, Andreas Streinzer, Mario
Schmidt, Cătălina Tesăr and Márcio Vilar for their invaluable comments
on parts of the manuscript. Thanks to Emma Welter for her assistance
with proofreading. Thanks to the editors from Palgrave Macmillan, Clara
Heathcock and Laura Pacey, for their patience.
Thanks to Adriana Lamačková for being my wife. Thanks to her and
Matilda Fottová for their love.
 Contents


Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending
Niche in the Early Twenty-First Century   1

Part I Settlements, Personhood, and the Centrality of

Households   33

Chapter 1 ‘There Are Ciganos in the Town’  35

Chapter 2 Household Fixity As a Process  65

Chapter 3 Makers of Their Futures  91

Part II Calon Assimilation of the Local Economic

Environment 121

Chapter 4 Deferred Payments and the Expanding Moment

of Caloninity 123

ix
x Contents

Chapter 5 Lending Money to Jurons 151

Chapter 6 Moneylending Niche As Householding 179

Epilogue: The Crisis, the Stranger, and the State 209

Bibliography 225

Index 237
 List of Figures

Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche in the

Early Twenty-First Century
Image 1 Old Paulo sitting in front of his poor tent. In 2017 it stood
at the end of a street in the neighbourhood in São Bento
where most of the Calon from this town lived 27
Chapter 1 ‘There Are Ciganos in the Town’
Map 1.1 Schematic map of the region described in this book. Most
of the Calon who I encountered in Santaluz have lived here
for several decades and many were born here. For house-
holds from Orlando’s family this region represents their
home range within which they move 39
Fig. 1.1 Kinship relations in the camp in Santaluz, October 2008.
Numbers correspond to those in the text and Map 1.2.
Black circles represent widow Fé (left) and Germana (right) 43
Map 1.2 Schematic plan of the camp in Santaluz in late October
2008. Although the core of the turma around Djalma’s
household (I) has remained in place for six years, this exact
composition of households lasted only for ten days. Smaller
black rectangles mark locations of tents of two widows
Germana (right) and Fé (left). They depended on others on
much subsistence and on decisions when and where to
move and settle 44

xi
xii List of Figures

Image 1.1 A Calon camp in a small town in a coastal region of Bahia;

like all settlements mentioned in this book it does not exist
anymore. The tarpaulin on the ground belongs to a family
that on the day when this picture was taken decided to
move elsewhere 51
Fig. 1.2 Orlando’s extended family, July 2009. Orlando is marked
black. Widow Germana is top right; widow Fé is top left 52
Image 1.2 After this turma left the town where they lived in a tent
encampment, one man decided to build a house on a new
location (in the foreground). He never finished it, because
the turma moved elsewhere. The man died a few years
later—in a tent 56
Chapter 3 Makers of Their Futures
Image 3.1 In card games among Calon men, which virtually never
involve non-­Gypsies, men see their futures unfolding before
their eyes with each draw of cards and each bet. Card games
are one mode through which they intervene in and reshape
their futures 98
Image 3.2 In 2010, an old Calon lived with his wife in a settlement of
his relative. He had singularised himself and his reputation
for valour and preparedness. Nevertheless, he was deemed
‘morto’ as he had very little money in circulation. There were
no beds in the tent: the man slept in a hammock and his
wife on a wooden palette on which a carpet and duvets were
stretched out at night 107
 Introduction: Consolidation
of the Cigano Moneylending Niche
in the Early Twenty-First Century

The Teacher and the Moneylender

Gilson is a 50-year-old high school teacher who lived in Santaluz, a small
town not far from the Atlantic coast of Bahia, northeast Brazil. In
November 2009, we were sitting in a bar, talking extensively about things
that interested me—the economic situation of his household, the ways in
which he managed money, and his plans for future investment. He then
told me how, in 2004, he urgently needed money for a small business
venture he had opened.
At the time, he could not borrow from any of his banks, since several
loan payments were due soon. Instead, he approached his friend, who he
knew was lending money on interest. But as the friend did not have the
sum needed, he suggested Gilson arrange a loan from Ciganos, or Gypsies,
on 40 per cent monthly interest. Gilson agreed, and the next day they
visited a Cigano tent settlement in Bomfim, a small village about 30 kilo-
metres from Santaluz. There they talked to a Cigano, who told Gilson to
return alone the following day. He told Gilson this in a way so that the
friend would not hear, as Gilson felt the man did not want to include the
friend in the deal and to offer a better interest rate.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. Fotta, From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era of Financial Inclusion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_1
2 M. Fotta

When Gilson returned the following morning, the two agreed on the
20 per cent monthly interest and the Cigano told him that the money
would be ready in five days. In the meantime, however, Gilson managed
to defer one bank payment and no longer needed to borrow money. He
nevertheless came back on the agreed date in order to ‘talk to’ the Cigano
and to ‘thank him’, as ‘I did not know if I would ever need him again’.
‘I think [the Cigano] might even have been Orlando’, Gilson noted,
but added that he could not remember anymore.
Until a few months before our conversation, Orlando had lived in a
big house in Santaluz, but had since left the town. Still, he remained the
most well-known Cigano in the town, and many non-Gypsies thought of
him as the chefe (chief ) of Ciganos in the region. I never discovered
whether the man Gilson met was indeed Orlando, since Orlando, too,
was vague about it—as he has always been regarding his deals and clients.
Be that as it may, throughout the years whenever I witnessed Orlando
meeting Gilson randomly, whether in Santaluz or elsewhere, the former
would greet Gilson amicably with a big smile: ‘Hello, professor! How are
you today?’

* * *

But why would Gilson, a public employee who worked for both munici-
pal and state high schools and had a stable income, think he would ever
‘need’ Orlando? And how does Gilson’s understanding of Orlando’s use-
fulness relate to his view of, and entanglement with, other sources of
credit? And how do loans from a bank, a friend (amigo), or a Cigano
compare? In turn, how does Orlando’s moneymaking depend on being
recognised as a Cigano by people like Gilson and his friend? And how
does his life, and that of the Cigano community to which he belongs,
connect with lives of their non-Gypsy clients? These are some of the ques-
tions that this book will try to answer.
Orlando belongs to a population of Brazilian Romanies who call
themselves Calon and are popularly known as Ciganos (Gypsies). Calon
Ciganos have lived in Bahia since at least the end of the sixteenth century;
another significant population of Romanies in Brazil is that of the Roma,
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 3

primarily from Eastern Europe, who started arriving around the end of
the nineteenth century. Calon Ciganos have thus co-constituted the
Bahian social world for centuries, not only as stock figures of folklore and
popular imagination, but also as people who occupy specific economic
niches and who relate to other Bahians in particular ways. Indeed, the
ethnogenesis of Calon as a distinct Romani population is intimately tied
to the South Atlantic colonial and postcolonial history and the formation
of Brazilian society and economy.
Gilson, like other Santaluzans, recalled that in the past, Ciganos would
pass through the town and sometimes erect their tents next to the river
for longer or shorter periods of time. He also remembered them as clients
of his father, a dental technician who used to make gold teeth for Ciganos.
At that time, Calon Gypsies specialised as itinerant traders of animals.
Today, however, most live in houses and are recognised as moneylenders.
In many towns in the Bahian interior, if one knows where to look (and
what to look for), one can identify groups of Calon men standing on
squares or in front of banks in the morning, waiting for clients. As the
vignette above suggests, Cigano moneylending relies on such ready avail-
ability. At the same time, however, it also depends on the management of
ethnic distance: a non-Gypsy client might even feign not to remember
the details of his deals, even though he had returned to talk to the mon-
eylender and they remain on friendly terms.
By looking at how people like Orlando, a Cigano moneylender, and
Gilson, a non-Gypsy school teacher, connect through relations of mon-
etary debt, and by discussing the role that the Brazilian state has played
in this regime, the book speaks to those recent works that focus on ways
that the state-sponsored project of expanding credit provision, or finan-
cialisation, has impacted intimate relations and future aspirations (e.g.
James 2015; Schuster 2015). It describes how the community life of the
Calon in Bahia is reproduced through debt relations, and how the forg-
ing of distinct relations of debt and credit becomes an aspect of the pro-
cess through which people fabricate and maintain their lifeworlds (e.g.
Chu 2010; Han 2012). Specifically, it argues that the loans extended to
non-Gypsies or the production of deferred payments among Calon, as
well as the technologies of monetary management that are used in both,
while continuous with non-Gypsy practices, serve as tools to recreate
4 M. Fotta

‘Caloninity’, so to speak. Here, specific dynamics of debt and repayment

confirm people’s convictions that an individual’s enmeshment in social
relations and participation in the lives of others are central for leading a
proper life—what Calon call vida do Cigano, ‘a Gypsy life’ (Vilar 2016).
Ultimately, the modernisation of the Bahian interior, the end of the
mass demand for work and transport animals, and the expansion of offi-
cial financial services to people and areas of life that until then had lain
outside of its orbit—the process of so-called financial inclusion—might
have been events ‘externally induced’, but the emergence of the Cigano
niche has been ‘orchestrated’ by Calon themselves (Sahlins 1985: viii).
True, this niche belongs to a particular milieu, with its ethnic stereotypes
and its productive structure, but it is not solely determined by it. The
lives of Calon Ciganos are fully embedded in the monetary economy and
depend on exchanges with non-Gypsies. But if recent socio-economic
changes have entailed the reorientation of subjectivities and reshaped
social life in Bahia, Calon have used these new alignments to recreate
themselves anew as Calon. Through attaining a certain stability over time
by means of the repetition and layering of diverse kinds of relationships
(including their juxtaposition), through conceptual and value calibra-
tion, and by drawing on established images about each other, a recogni-
sable social form—a Cigano moneylending niche—is created and
maintained.
A niche thus presupposes the fabrication of its own dimensions. As we
will see throughout this book, Calon differentiate between varied forms of
monetary exchange—various types of loans that come with different
names and standards, and which specify relationships between the parties
involved. This production of a distinction between what could be heuristi-
cally called the ‘inside’—one’s home range, settlement, or family—and
‘outside’—that is, the rest of the world—is characteristic to ethnic trader
communities who, by means of money and exchange, transgress physical
and local limitations and expand the reach of communities and individu-
als in time and space (Hart 2000). In discussing how opportunities emerge
through transgressing an ethnic niche threshold while simultaneously
recasting it, this book joins other works on middlemen minorities or trad-
ing diasporas, a topic still rarely explored in the Latin American context
(e.g. Bonacich 1973; Cohen 1971; Curtin 1984; Kagan and Morgan
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 5

2009; Tassi 2017). Its main contention is that the Calon niche represents
a specific form of integration into the market economy, what Chris
Gregory (2009) has termed a non-institutional householding. It is a kind
of householding that, unlike manorial or peasant householding, does not
gesture towards autarky, and because it is embedded in the dominant mar-
ket economy, it does not come with fixed and transcendent institutional
arrangements. Nevertheless, it comes with ethical principles, values, and
motives of its own as Martin Olivera (2016) has also shown for the Gabori
Romanies of Romania. Different kinds of exchanges constantly recreate
one’s social gendered position within one’s family and realise different
types of relatedness, producing distinctions between one’s family, enemies,
known Calon, other Ciganos, and Jurons, as Calon call non-Gypsies.

From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending

In a mid-twentieth-century description of the social composition of
Sergipe, a state that borders Bahia and that also belongs to the northeast
region of Brazil, Felte Bezera (1950: 118) observed that ‘among us, the
designation Cigano carries a cultural rather than ethnic meaning, signify-
ing a nomadic lifestyle sustained through exchanges and trade [trocas e
barganhas]’.1 It is still true today that Ciganos are not unambiguously
viewed by other Bahians as an ethnic group, and considered even less to
be an ethnic ‘minority’ in a European sense. At the same time, however,
nomadism and travelling as the mode of life is seen by both Calon and
non-Gypsies as a thing of the past, the memory of which marks Cigano
distinctiveness in the present (e.g. Fotta 2012; Goldfarb 2004). Moreover,
the term agiota (moneylender) has become a synonym for a Cigano, thus
replacing the terms mascate (an ambulant trader) or negociante (a trader)
used over the past two centuries, and the term gringo (a foreign ambulant
trader) from the seventeenth century. I suggest that the emergence of
moneylending as a recognised Calon specialisation—a niche—in recent
decades has to be understood as a transformation and intensification of
their previous activities, of ‘trocas e barganhas’.
In the Bahian interior of today, Ciganos represent one source of credit.
German anthropologist Elisabeth Thiele refers to them as an ‘informal
6 M. Fotta

bank’ (2008: 144), while an article from the 2005 financial section of
Folha de São Paulo dubbed them ‘the bankers’ of the Bahian sertão (the
semi-arid hinterland).2 The article describes how for the agave farmers in
Valente, a town about 300 kilometres from where I did my fieldwork,
Ciganos represented an important source of credit, second only to the
agave merchants who owned storage spaces and organised crop transport.
The merchants paid against the future crop, thus financing the planting.
Other sources of credit—banks and a co-operative—were not popular;
the cooperative did not even spend the money allocated to it by the fed-
eral government. Dealing with Ciganos did not require any bureaucracy
of the farmers, although their interest rates were considered ‘high’—‘10
on every 100’ per month. The farmers knew that Ciganos could be found
on the main street, although many preferred to deal with them in the
evening when nobody could see them. In Valente, stories circulated about
those who ‘lost everything’ to Ciganos. These are quite common views, in
my experience.
While in the past Ciganos were seen primarily as ambulant traders of
animals and other goods, there are indications that in other periods and
places, they were also known to lend money on interest. A 1957 diction-
ary of slang from Rio de Janeiro (Viotti 1957) provides under the entry
cigano, among other, two definitions that refer to a moneylender—agiota
and onzeneiro. Onzeneiro is derived from onze (eleven)—a percentage of
an interest rate—and dates back to at least sixteenth-century Portugal.
Other synonyms in the dictionary—sovina (miser) and espertalhão (‘con-
fidence man’)—also point to a perception of Ciganos as people involved
with money and money speculation in a way that violates norms of
appropriate sociability. In Rio de Janeiro, evidence of Cigano moneylend-
ing indeed goes back further. José Rabello, a Cigano, was one of the city’s
richest inhabitants at the beginning of the nineteenth century; among
other things, he organised ‘Gypsy festivities’ for the Royal Court. Vivaldo
Coaracy (1965: 74) writes that ‘Rabello, who received a position in the
military, dedicated himself to financial and bank operations. In other
words, he was a prestamista. On interest, naturally.’ A rumour circulated
in Rio de Janeiro that Rabello had so many golden bricks hidden in his
house that the ceiling collapsed under their weight—a legend that ‘was
probably invented by some of his clients’, Coaracy concludes (ibid.). In
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 7

Rio de Janeiro, such moneymaking activities were also connected with

the role of Ciganos as meirinhos, lower court officials, a profession that
was passed on hereditarily until the 1950s (Mello et al. 2004). Writing at
the end of the nineteenth century, Moraes Filho notes that ‘they were the
Ciganos of Cidade Nova [a Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood] who showed
off, the old justice officers, who set up home in the gallery underneath the
terrace, waiting for notifications of court orders and writs of garnishment’
(1904: 141).
For my purposes, however, it is important to note that the position of
Ciganos in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century was unique (Fotta
n.d.). Not only do Ciganos in Bahia of the period come across in histori-
cal sources as poorer and less influential, there is also no explicit mention
of moneylending activities. Rather, until very recently, they were consis-
tently seen throughout the Brazilian northeast as small-time ambulant
traders and resellers of animals, trinkets, and also slaves during the time
of slavery. This does not mean, however, that Ciganos did not lend money
on interest, especially when one takes into account that until very recently
most trade throughout Brazil was done on credit. In Os Ciganos No Brasil
Moraes Filho reproduces a journal article from 1885, which describes an
arrival to a town in the state of São Paulo of Ciganos who, ‘it seems, have
become rich through trading with animals [negócio de animais]’ (1886:
192). The article then goes on to explain that ‘it is certain that it was
usura that has brought about this ambulant wealth’ (ibid. 193). Usura
here is used not in its current restricted sense of monetary loans made
against excessive interests, but to interest rates involved in transactions
more generally. ‘To conclude’, the article sums up, ‘this entourage goes
from land to land trading [negociando] with animals, slaves and with “the
future” of those who are not Ciganos, but who are being ignorant [incau-
tos].’ The word prestamista, with which Coaracy describes Rabello’s occu-
pation, has been used in northeastern Brazil to denote an ambulant trader
who sells his goods on instalments, prestações.
Indeed, the project of the Portuguese maritime empire was based on a
dense net of debt relations into which Ciganos entered on various terms.
Just a paragraph above his description of Cigano slave merchants in the
Valongo wharf in Rio de Janeiro during the first half of the nineteenth
century, English chaplain Robert Walsh (1831: 322) notes that slaves
8 M. Fotta

were sold on credit for up to ten years. And in a commentary to his paint-
ing Boutique de la rue du Valongo (1839), which depicts a Cigano trader
with a buyer from the state of Minas Gerais, the French painter Jacques
Debret discusses the difference between buying on credit and with cash:
‘[D]ue to the depreciation of paper money [papel moeda] over time the
price of a negro [bought on credit] becomes doubled, but the inhabitants
of São Paulo or Minas with ready cash [com dinheiro na mão], buy him
for the exchange rate of the day’ (Debret 1975: 190). In the eighteenth
century, on the other side of the Atlantic, bush traders in Angola—many
of whom were exiled Ciganos and Jews persecuted in Portugal and shut
out from other opportunities—accepted goods on credit from Portuguese
merchants in ports before going into the interior (Miller 1993: 126,
141).
This suggests that the emergence of the present-day Cigano money-
lending specialisation has its origins in a general economy of credit. In
this respect, it could be seen as a continuation and intensification of an
aspect of their activities which had previously been grouped under the
label of negócio, which was itself understood as form of usura. Until a few
decades ago, owing to a general cash shortage and the character of the
agricultural cycle—in which cash from selling crops alternated with a
lack of cash—the majority of animals in Bahia were bought and sold on
credit (fiado). The debt relations went in both directions: When Manuel,
a Calon man, died in 1985, his older sons paid his debts to a farmer from
whom Manuel had bought animals through fiado because they wanted to
continue dealing with him. This is also how an owner of both a small bus
company and a small farm (fazenda) near Santaluz, himself a client of a
few Calon, saw it: his family used to buy animals, mostly on credit, from
Ciganos who frequently camped on the family’s property, and this is how
they became agiotas over time.
The shift towards the core economic activity of today’s Calon men—
lending money on interest without any mediation by objects—is accom-
panied by a shift in the content of the prevalent image of Ciganos from
nomadic traders to agiotas who inhabit houses. Both must be seen in the
context of socio-economic changes. Measures that stabilised the currency
in the mid-1990s under the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
followed by the policies under the Workers’ Party governments between
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 9

2003 and 2016—including an increased minimum wage, the expansion

of formal-sector employment, and the broadening of access to official
credit—led not only to a period of economic growth, but also trans-
formed production and consumption across Brazil. Although, since 2014
these developments have given way to both economic and political crises
and recession, the preceding decade—during which most of the ethno-
graphic research on which this book based occurred—had witnessed the
forging of the mass consumer society and the expansion of financial
services.
All of this has impacted the ways in which Calon position themselves
within the local economy and assimilate it into their sociality. As one
Calon man explained to me, after ‘Lula’ (a popular name for Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva) became president it became difficult for Ciganos to trade;
their only option was to lend money on interest. In other words, money-
lending as the Calon economic occupation or the way it is organised can-
not be appreciated without taking into account the culturally and
historically contingent context in which it belongs. I will try to character-
ise this milieu by returning to my discussion with Gilson.

‘Gypsies Are Not the Only Moneylenders’

‘But Ciganos are not the only agiotas’, Gilson remarked after he had fin-
ished telling me about his experience with Orlando. I had come to know
this by then. Ciganos were marginal to informal moneylending in
Santaluz—in fact, many could barely make a living in this way. In the
town, the biggest agiotas were non-Gypsies. A few were shopkeepers—to
a greater or lesser extent, all independent shopkeepers extended credit to
their customers and lent money on interest. Other agiotas combined
moneylending with other activities, such as running gambling parlours.
When Galeguinho, the richest non-Gypsy agiota in Santaluz, was impris-
oned for drug trafficking, rumour had it that the police found 3000 cards
in his house—both bank cards and those for Bolsa Família, a targeted
conditional family grant for the country’s poorest households.
Gilson, too, had experiences with non-Gypsy agiotas. In 2000, his
mother had borrowed R$100 from Seu Raimundo, probably the
10 M. Fotta

second-­biggest moneylender in Santaluz, using Gilson’s cheque as col-

lateral. For the next few months, she kept paying only the interest, and
after a year gave Seu Raimundo another cheque from Gilson. His
mother never managed to pay back the loan in full; in 2003 she had a
stroke. A few months later, Seu Raimundo asked Gilson for a new
cheque telling him that his mother’s debt had risen to R$1800. Gilson
managed to get away with paying only half of the sum by arguing,
according to him, that it was not his debt and that if Seu Raimundo
insisted that he pay, he would notify the police.
Besides these known agiotas, many people—like Gilson’s friend who
brought him to Orlando—lend money on interest. This happens usually
within networks of acquaintances and neighbours. ‘They tried to involve
me in agiotagem [moneylending] too’, Gilson told me. This was in 2007
or so, when another friend of his had asked him for a loan. Since Gilson
had just received a larger sum—an accumulation of several delayed sala-
ries from the municipal school—he agreed.
‘Ten percent, isn’t it, Gilson?’ confirmed the friend when she came to
pay back the loan.
‘I am not an agiota. You pay me only the rate of inflation’, he appar-
ently told her, appalled. The grateful friend then suggested that she could
arrange for him to lend money to people, but that the interest rate should
be ‘at least at 10 percent’. Gilson declined.
Gilson insisted that he did not know anything about his mother’s loan
from Seu Raimundo and believed that she would have been given a loan
from a bank: she was receiving a widow’s pension, had a bank account,
and the bank director was her friend. He thought that she must have
needed the money urgently and the bank required a lot of paperwork. At
that period in history, however, only a small minority of Brazilians were
applying for bank loans, and more than 60 per cent of those applications
were rejected (Lavinas 2017: 90). Things have changed radically since
then, as we will see presently.
Most people in small-town and rural Bahia talk of a credit from agiotas
as ‘fast money’ and ‘without any bureaucracy’ which does not require
proof of income. It should also be stressed that agiotas are not only a last-­
resort source of credit. Politicians, landowners, and members of the lower
middle classes approach them because they have their own projects and
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 11

visions of gains, often preferring the personalised nature of loans from

informal moneylenders. Although people like Gilson can—and do—
borrow from banks, Gilson doubted that banks were very much better.
While their monthly interest was lower, as the payment was extended for
longer periods, he thought that one ended up paying almost the same
amount. In 2015, average rates for consumer credit stood at 139.78 per
cent per annum, and the average length of a loan was 50 months (ibid.:
94). In the case of consigned, or payroll, credit (crédito consignado), the
interest rate was fixed to 2.14 per cent per month, with loans that
extended between 36 and 80 months. Moreover, for consigned credit,
one has no control over payments, since these are deducted directly from
one’s paycheques or pensions and the terms cannot be renegotiated. There
is also a limit to how much one can borrow; officially, only 35 per cent of
one’s salary can be tied up with such credit. This was the problem for
Gilson’s sister in 2009. According to Gilson, she had too many credit
cards; because too much of her salary was tied up in consigned credit, she
had no other option but to borrow from him.
Gilson was convinced that most teachers borrowed from agiotas at one
point or another. Generally speaking, he was probably correct. Between
2003 and 2013, many teachers, municipal employees, and those formally
employed came to form what was dubbed as the ‘new middle class’ (nova
classe média), composed of the ‘previously poor’ (Klein et al. 2018) who
moved up the income bracket (Neri 2008). However, even during the
period of economic growth between 2005 and 2010, whether because
they had exhausted their official credit possibilities or because they did
not want to subject themselves to a bank regime, they sometimes turned
to moneylenders. Yet today, as then, many find themselves in a
­predicament where they cannot pay. ‘I know one [teacher] from whose
house a Cigano took a kitchen blender’, Gilson said.
Ultimately, this occurs because, in Gilson’s theory, ‘many people have
problems with SPC and Serasa’ after they fail to pay their credit card
debts or debts in stores. SPC and Serasa are credit reference agencies that
register people with late credit payments; today, at the height of the eco-
nomic recession, 30 per cent of Brazilian adults are listed with them.3
Even back in 2009, if people’s names were ‘dirty on the square’ (nomes
sujos na praça)—that is, if they were on these agencies’ lists—stores or
12 M. Fotta

banks would not provide them with more credit. Gilson explained, ‘Only
financeiras [credit institutions and financial companies] lend to them.
And this is taken directly from their bank accounts. There is no way one
can avoid paying it. So it is much easier [to borrow from an agiota]’.
The point I want to make here is this: in order to understand the sta-
bilisation of the Cigano moneylending niche, we have to take into
account not only the history of Calon integration into the local Bahian
economy, but also the place of this ethnic credit institution within the
dense environment of monetary flows and credit modalities. This envi-
ronment has been radically reshaped in the last 15 years thanks to the
state-led expansion of financial services.

 xpansion of Credit Under Social

E
Developmentalism
The economic and financial policies of Workers’ Party governments
(2003–2016) under President Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff
combined extractivism with the promotion of consumption. The aim of
this ‘social developmentalism’, or ‘Lulism’ (Singer 2012), a form of
inward-looking developmentalist politics that relies on the central role of
the state, was to overcome Brazil’s underdevelopment through acting
upon a relationship between income distribution and economic growth:
expansion within the domestic market in combination with new finan-
cial infrastructure was expected to lead to new investment and innova-
tion (Lavinas 2017: 17–70). Key moves of social developmentalism of
the period included increases in the state-regulated minimum wage, to
which pensions, formally, and wages in the informal sector, customarily,
are pegged; the formalisation of employment and expansion of the for-
mal sector; tax breaks on certain durables; tax incentives and tax credits
which fostered transition to private and finance-based provision of social
services (especially in the areas of healthcare and higher education);
expansion of credit to a broad strata of society; and the creation of means-­
tested social assistance programmes.
In this way, the Brazilian state stimulated consumption through poli-
cies that broadened access to credit and altered the financial environ-
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 13

ment. One of the earliest and most influential of Lula’s financial

interventions, the development of consigned credit—which made low-­
interest credit available to state employees and pensioners—played an
important role in the expansion of consumer credit. The government also
supported targeted productive microcredit through secondary institu-
tions, such as fishermen’s and agricultural cooperatives and syndicates.
Last but not least, there was a project of ‘financial inclusion’ or ‘bankari-
sation’ of those who until that point had stood outside of formal financial
services. This was tied to the expansion of social assistance policies, such
as the creation of the Bolsa Família programme (see also Badue and
Ribeiro 2018). The banking system became a prime means for people to
access their salaries, pensions, and welfare and retirement benefits. New
simplified bank accounts were established for people with low income,
while new bank branches were opened across the country. Bank account
ownership, a benefit, a formal salary, or a university grant in turn allowed
people to open credit lines in chain stores.
The successes of these politics of growth are undeniable. With about
13.6 million families enrolled, Bolsa Família is currently the largest con-
ditional cash programme in the world.4 Between 2003 and 2014, levels
of inequality, as measured by the Gini index, lowered, although there has
been a resurgence of inequality during the current crisis (Lavinas 2017:
21–22). Officially, during the same period the proportion of those living
under the poverty line decreased from 23.4 per cent to 7 per cent.5
Moreover, 35.5 million people joined the middle-income sectors of the
population, especially its lowest rungs—the so-called class C. In the
northeast, which includes some of the poorest regions in Brazil, classes C
and D increased by 80 per cent between 2003 and 2009.6 Media and
analysts started speaking of the ‘new middle class’, thus announcing
Brazil’s coming of age and its entrance among middle-class nations (Neri
2008). In my discussions with people during these years, there was a pal-
pable sense of confidence and optimism which translated into their con-
sumption and their plans.
Social developmentalism led to the creation of the mass-consumption
society, while growing domestic demand helped the country to buffer
the global economic crisis of 2008. Between 2003 and 2014, household
14 M. Fotta

consumption was one of the main drivers of Brazilian economic growth,

representing, on average, 61 per cent of the GDP (Lavinas 2017: 48). A
central role in these developments was played by the increase and broad-
ening of the credit supply—while the wage bill grew 5 per cent annually,
individual credit expanded 13.8 per cent and consumer credit 11.5 per
cent. Total consumer loans rose sixfold, from 22 per cent of the GDP in
2003 to 60 per cent in 2015 (ibid.: 48–49). In a related move, between
2004 and 2011 ‘bank credit cards have tripled, to 159.5 million, and
retailer cards have nearly quadrupled, to 233.5 million. The average
interest rate on credit cards is 238 per cent annually, while loans from
retailers cost 85 per cent, and personal loans from banks 47 per cent.’7
This has resulted in a growing overindebtedness and a debt-to-income
ratio of 65 per cent in 2014 (ibid.: 49).
Despite all of these developments, the reindustrialisation of the coun-
try did not happen. As Lena Lavinas (2017) argues, a mass-consumption
society was forged without fundamentally altering the country’s produc-
tive and social structure. Quite on the contrary, it was built on, and
reproduced, internal heterogeneity and segmentation. Indeed, whether
the ‘emerging middle classes’ are middle classes at all is debatable (Klein
et al. 2018). Many, like Gilson’s sister, enter the labour market with earn-
ings slightly higher than the minimum wage, which, in combination
with their lack of savings, hinders their effort to keep up their newly
acquired lifestyle. The lower middle sectors are responsible for most
credit, as well as consumer debt defaults in the interior. A large portion of
their salaries is tied up with consigned credit—about a fifth of loans are
paid through direct deduction from paycheques.8

F inancialisation of Daily Life in Small-Town

Bahia
Today in towns like Santaluz various forms of credit exist (as well as of
savings and insurance): official loans from banks and financeiras; lines of
credit available at large stores; credit cards from retail chains and tele-
phone companies; fiado purchases in neighbourhood shops; advanced or
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 15

other credit from patrons, merchants, and agrarian syndicates; loans from
agiotas; cash and loans from communal institutions such as religious
cooperatives; money (cash or credit) from a variety of communal institu-
tions which go by the names of caixinhas, consórcios, bingos, balaidos, cam-
panhas, and so on. Within this universe, Ciganos are one source of credit
among many.
Although forms of credit differ—some involve two parties, others are
communitarian; some have existed for generations and some are new;
some are built on the ideology of personalised trust while others are
impersonal—most rely on, or take into account in one way or another,
the official financial infrastructure. Many credit modalities were created
by the state’s direct intervention in the financial market. Locally, these
stimulated new kinds of debts and specialisations. Official modalities of
credit and novel monetary flows also combined, influencing more cus-
tomary forms of credit and debt. Take, for instance, purchases that are
fiado (on trust), commonly practised with one’s local shop or merchant.
In the mid-twentieth century, American sociologist Donald Pierson
(1948: 98) noticed, in a town in the interior of the state of São Paulo, on
the wall of one bar ‘a piece of paper on which is printed, in pencil, in large
letters, the following verse’. In his translation:

O fiado me da penas Credit brings me worry

As penas me da cuidado My worries cause me pain
Para aliviar-me penas To relieve myself of worry
Não posso vender fiado I cannot sell on credit

Pierson observed that such posters against fiado were common and, as
a witness to the modernisation of the interior, he interpreted them as
‘[recent half-hearted] efforts to limit the amount of credit extended’
(ibid.). Sixty years later, however, shops in Santaluz still have posters
against fiado. Some are creative, while others, like the one in the bar São
Jorge where Gilson is a regular customer, are blunt: ‘Fiado suspended.’
And just like in Pierson’s era, shopkeepers invariably complain about it.
Indeed, these complaints strengthen the ideology of personalism. Similar
to the Haitian pratik (Mintz 1961), Bahian fiado, as an institution of
economic integration—through which, for instance, Ciganos bought
16 M. Fotta

and sold animals in the past—stabilises ties between parties involved,

bringing security to transactions and a certain order to the market (see
also Stecher 1998).
But things have also changed. Gilson, for instance, writes a cheque to
the São Jorge bar on exactly the date when he receives one of his salaries.
Others might set their payments for days when they receive their
­pensions or Bolsa Família money. In other words, while in ideology
personalised relations are still involved and some practise fiado in a
‘traditional way’, so to speak, most fiado purchases today are not based
on trust, at least not solely. Rather, confidence between parties is born
from the regularity of income flows or from transactions’ anchorage by
means of formal financial tools. The bulk of the confidence within a
personalised deal couched in the discourse of trust—between a local
shopkeeper and his neighbour, between a moneylender and his
friend—originates with the state and the flows of money formalised by
it. Undoubtedly, this has had positive consequences for increasing the
autonomy of poor people, as it transformed their access to small credit,
as well as the structure of their incomes and the flow of goods and ser-
vices within their communities (Morton 2019).
Both official sources of credit and unofficial moneylenders thus rely on
official infrastructure. Within the conditional cash transfer programme
Bolsa Família, for instance, money comes directly from the state and
requires registration, documents, and bank accounts. Over time, credit
card and other financial services have been added to the programme’s
infrastructure. The implementation of the programme resulted in poor
people’s inclusion in the official financial system and also required an
expansion of the network of state-run banks, ATMs, lottery houses, and
social services. Initiatives such as agricultural lending schemes that pro-
vide productive credit required the establishment of cooperatives and
expansion of bank services. The state registration of Bolsa Família benefi-
ciaries, retirees, or public employees, and the exchange of this informa-
tion with the private financial sector, eliminated costs for the latter
(Lavinas 2017: 93).
While creating opportunities for the formal sectors, the formalisation
and the creation of this financial infrastructure created new alignments
that have come with their own modalities of diversion. People can have
 Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche… 17

their money discounted from their bank accounts, but they can also leave
pre-dated cheques or bankcards with agiotas. They also collaterise their
regular cash from the government informally. A friend of mine living in
Santaluz, a single mother who normally earns money doing odd cleaning
jobs, pawned her Bolsa Família card to agiota Galeguinho for a lump sum
of cash. On the date when she received the money, Galeguinho’s right-­
hand man met her at a bank with her card, debited the whole grant,
discounted the instalment, and handed her the rest. The moneylender
kept the card until the principal was paid off—several months later than
she had originally planned. People who are better off are expected not
only to help their relatives and friends, but also to use their income as
capital in moneylending ventures. Still others can attempt to divert at
least some money from such arrangements, like Gilson’s amigos who were
hoping to get a commission or a cut on his deals: the first for arranging
the loan from a Cigano, the second for finding clients to whom Gilson
could lend money. Gilson had also served as a guarantor in a bank loan
to others. He only learnt that our common friend did not pay such a loan
when he found out that the daily limits on his credit card and cheque
especial9 were lowered. In all of this, his relatively high salary from the
state served as the ultimate collateral.
While navigating their ‘dense financial lives’ (Abramovay 2004),
whether they are searching for opportunities for gain or because they are
paying off non-negotiable debts, Bahians rely on various sources of credit.
Ciganos are an integral part of this distributional regime in which both
official and unofficial credit institutions increasingly tap into people’s
bank accounts or into at least partially formalised flows of money (James
2015). It is the changes of this regime that underpin the rise of a recogni-
sable Cigano niche. It is also here where the ambiguity of the current
popular view of Ciganos rests.

Cigano Moneylending Niche

Calon moneylending depends on common Bahian views about money and
intimacy, Ciganos and their moneymaking activities. Calon manipulate a
folk image of ‘Ciganos’ as standing outside of established social relations,
18 M. Fotta

especially those of social debt and reciprocities—defined by dynamics such

as patronage, amizade (friendship), favor (a kindness; service), and consid-
eração (consideration)—that lie at the heart of s­ mall-­town and rural social-
ity. Today, their position emerges from the system itself, in which, through
an ever-increasing field of state intervention and formalisation, wealth
flows and forms are being redefined and traditional regimes of value and
locally sanctioned debts and forms of distribution unsettled. People might
end up giving Ciganos their salaries or pre-dated cheques when faced with
non-negotiable and non-optative obligations backed up by the state or
when they need money to pay back a loan in a financeira. Conversely, they
might also take out a loan from a bank or sell some of their property in
order to pay their debts to Ciganos. Or they might not be combining credit
modalities at all, but only think that the interest rate is unjustified. Either
way, they end up seeing Ciganos as benefiting from their own liability and
as being somehow aligned with the formal financial sector against the inter-
ests of their households.
Generally speaking, interests on loans (empréstimos) that Calon make
to Jurons follow a temporal algorithm that is characteristic of the region.
Smaller loans carry higher monthly interests, while more spectacular
loans are usually calculated in years and for lower interest in relative
terms. Deals are often stabilised by promissory notes (notas promisórias),
a practice common in the region, especially with shopkeepers. And, more
or less explicitly, loans are backed up by a threat of physical violence and
the impossibility of borrowing later if the agreement is violated. All these
aspects—traditional views of Ciganos, customary modes of calculating
interest, social distance, and so on—give Ciganos-as-a-niche its temporary
stability, its ‘objectivity’ of a social form (Simmel 1972).
The term ‘niche’ as I use it here, however, does not primarily refer to
the specificity of a Romani mode of making a living through exploiting
temporary opportunities or those that others refuse or fail to cover (e.g.
Okely 1979; Gmelch and Gmelch 1987; Rao 1987). Rather, the niche
highlights a named specialist production, with specific standards, exper-
tise, and definitions, fully embedded in the commercial economy (Guyer
1997; 2004b). It belongs to an emergent-economy Brazil where life has
become increasingly financialised, but it is stabilised and made meaning-
ful by Calon practices. Calon value autonomous ways of making money,
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
de Cataluña. Conocedor de la patria en cuyo seno había tenido la
dicha de nacer, creyó que sus frailunas vestiduras eran el uniforme
más seductor para acaudillar aventureros, y al igual de las cortantes
armas puso la imagen del crucificado. En los campos de batalla, fuera
de alguna ocasión solemne, llevaba el látigo en la mano y la cruz en e
cinto; pero al entrar en las poblaciones colgaba el látigo y blandía la
cruz, incitando a todos a que la besaran. Esto hacía en aque
momento, avanzando por la plazuela. Su mulo no podía romper sino a
fuerza de cabezadas y tropezones la muralla de devotos patriotas, y él
afectando una seriedad más propia de mascarón que de fraile, echaba
bendiciones. El demonio metido a evangelista no hubiera hecho su
papel con más donaire. Viéndole, fluctuaba el ánimo entre la risa y un
horror más grande que todos los horrores. Los tiempos presentes no
pueden tener idea de ello, aunque hayan visto pasar fúnebre y
sanguinosa una sombra de aquellas espantables figuras. Sus
reproducciones posteriores han sido descoloridas, y ninguna ha tenido
popularidad, sino antes bien, el odio y las burlas del país.
Cuando el bestial fraile, retrato fiel de Satanás ecuestre, llegó junto
al grupo de que hemos hablado, recibió las felicitaciones de las tres
personas que lo formaban, y él les hizo saludo marcial alzando e
Crucifijo hasta tocar la sien.
—Bienvenido sea el padre Marañón —dijo el jefe de la Comisión
militar acariciando las crines del mulo, que aprovechó tal coyuntura
para detenerse—. ¿A dónde va tanto bueno?
—Hombre..., también uno ha de querer ver las cosas de gusto —
replicó el fraile—. ¿A qué hora será eso mañana?
—A las diez en punto —contestó Regato—. Es la hora mejor.
—¡Cuánta gente curiosa!... No me han dejado rezar, seño
Chaperón —añadió el fraile, inclinándose como para decir una cosa
que no debía oír el vulgo—. Usted, que lo sabe todo, dígame: ¿conque
es cierto que se nos marcha el príncipe?
—¿Angulema? Ya va muy lejos, camino de Francia. ¿Verdad, padre
Marañón, que no nos hace falta maldita?
—¿Pues no nos ha de hacer falta, hombre de Dios? —dijo el fraile
soltando una carcajada que asemejó su rostro al de una gárgola de
catedral despidiendo el agua por la boca—. ¿Qué va a ser de nosotros
sin figurines? Averigüe usted ahora cómo se han de hacer los
chalecos y cómo se han de poner las corbatas.
 Los tres y otros intrusos que oían rompieron a reír, celebrando e
donaire del Trapense.
—Queda de general en jefe el general Bourmont.
—Por falta de hombres buenos, a mi padre hicieron alcalde —dijo
Chaperón—. Si Bourmont se ocupara en otra cosa que en coge
moscas, y se metiera en lo que no le importa, ya sabríamos tenerle a
raya.
—Me parece que no nos mamamos el dedo —repuso el fraile—. Y
me consta que Su Majestad viene dispuesto a que las cosas se hagan
al derecho, arrancando de cuajo la raíz de las revoluciones. Dígame
usted, ¿es cierto que se ha retractado en la capilla?
—¿Quién, Su Majestad?
—No, hombre, Rieguillo.
—De eso se trata. El hombre está más maduro que una breva. ¿No
va usted por allá?
—¿Por la capilla?... No me quedaré sin meter mi cucharada... Ahora
no puedo detenerme: tengo que ver al obispo para un negocio de
bulas, y al ministro de la Guerra para hablarle del mal estado en que
están las armas de mi gente... Con Dios, señores... ¡arre!
Y echó a andar hacia la calle de Toledo, seguido del entusiasta
cortejo que le vitoreaba. Chaperón, después de dar las últimas
órdenes a los aparejadores y de volver a observar el efecto de la bella
obra que se estaba ejecutando, marchó con sus amigos hacia la calle
Imperial, por donde se dirigieron todos a la cárcel de Corte. En la
plazuela había también gente, de esa que la curiosidad, no la
compasión, reúne frente a un muro detrás del cual hay un reo en
capilla. No veían nada, y sin embargo, miraban la negra pared, como
si en ella pudiera descubrirse la sombra, o si no la sombra, misterioso
reflejo del espíritu del condenado a muerte.
Los tres amigos tropezaron con un individuo que apresuradamente
salía de la Sala de Alcaldes.
—¡Eh!, no corra usted tanto, señor Pipaón —gritole el de la
Comisión militar—. ¿A dónde tan a prisa?
—Hola, señores, salud y pesetas —dijo el digno varón
deteniéndose—. ¿Van ustedes a la capilla?...
—No hemos de ser los últimos. ¿Qué tal está mi hombre?...
—Van a darle de comer... Una mesa espléndida, como se
acostumbra en estos casos. Con que, señor Chaperón, seño
Regato...
—¡A dónde va usted que más valga! —dijo Chaperón deteniéndole
por un brazo—. ¿Hay trabajillo en la oficina?
—Yo no trabajo en la oficina, porque estoy encargado de los
festejos para recibir al rey —repuso Bragas con orgullo.
—¡Ah!, no hay que apurarse todavía.
—Pero no es cosa de dejarlo para el último día. No preparamos una
función chabacana como las del tiempo constitucional, sino una
verdadera solemnidad regia, como lo merecen el caso y la persona de
Fernando VII. El carro en que ha de verificar su entrada se está
construyendo. Es digno de un emperador romano. Aún no se sabe s
tirarán de él caballos o mancebos vistosamente engalanados. Es
indudable que llevarán las cintas los voluntarios realistas.
—Pues se ha dicho que nosotros tiraríamos del carro —dijo Romo
con énfasis, como si reclamara un derecho.
—Ahí tiene usted un asunto sobre el cual no disputaría yo —insinuó
Regato blandamente—. Yo dejaría que tiraran caballos o mulas.
—Ya se decidirá, señores, ya se decidirá a gusto de todos —dijo
Bragas con aires de transacción—. Lo que me trae muy preocupado
es que..., verán ustedes..., me he propuesto presentar ese día
doscientas o trescientas majas lujosamente vestidas. ¡Oh! ¡qué bonito
espectáculo! Costará mucho dinero ciertamente; pero ¡qué precioso
efecto! Ya estoy escogiendo mi cuadrilla. Doscientas muchachas
bonitas no son un grano de anís. Pero yo las tomo donde las
encuentro..., ¿eh? De los trajes se encarga el Ayuntamiento... Me han
dado fondos. ¡Caracoles!, es una cuestión peliaguda... Espero lucirme.
—Este Pipaón es de la piel de Satanás... ¿De dónde va a sacar ese
mujerío?
—Yo daría la preferencia a los arcos de triunfo —dijo Romo—. Es
mucho más serio.
—¿Arcos?... ¡Si ha de haber cuatro! Por cierto que el seño
Chaperón nos ha hecho un flaco servicio llevándose para la horca los
grandes mástiles que sirven para armar arcos de triunfo.
—Hombre, por vida del Santísimo Sacramento —dijo Chaperón
mostrando un sentimiento que en otro pudiera haber sido bondad—
ya servirán para todo. Pues qué, ¿vamos a ahorcar a media España?
—Entre paréntesis, no sería malo... Conque ahora sí que me voy de
veras.
 Estrechó Pipaón sucesivamente la mano de cada uno de sus tres
amigos.
—Ya nos veremos luego en las oficinas de la Comisión.
—Pues qué, ¿hay algo nuevo?
—Hombre, no se puede desamparar a los amigos.
—¡Recomendaciones! —vociferó el brigadier mostrando su fiereza
—. Por vida del Santísimo, que eso de las recomendaciones y las
amistades me incomoda más que la evasión de un prisionero. Así no
hay justicia posible, señor Pipaón; así la justicia, los castigos y las
purificaciones no son más que una farsa.
El terrible funcionario se cruzó de brazos, conservando fuertemente
empuñado el símbolo de su autoridad.
—Es claro —añadió Romo por espíritu de adulación—, así no hay
justicia posible.
—No hay justicia —repitió Regato como un eco del cadalso.
—Amigo Chaperón —dijo el astuto Bragas con afabilidad y
desviando un poco del grupo al comisario para hablarle en secreto—
cuando hablo de amigos me refiero a personas que no han hecho
nada contra el régimen absoluto.
—Si, buenos pillos son sus amigos de usted.
—No es más sino que al pobre don Benigno Cordero le está
molestando la policía de Zaragoza, y es posible que lo pase mal. Ya
recordará usted que don Benigno dio cien onzas bien contadas porque
se le comprendiera en el secreto del 2 de octubre fechado en Jerez
Acogiéndose a la proscripción, se libraba de la cárcel y quizás de la
horca... Pues en Zaragoza me le han puesto en un calabozo. Eso no
está bien...
—Bueno, bueno —dijo Chaperón disgustado de aquel asunto
También Romo me ha recomendado a ese Cordero.
Romo no dijo una palabra, ni abandonó aquella seriedad que era en
él como su mismo rostro.
—Por última vez, señores, adiós —chilló Bragas—, ahora sí que me
voy de veras.
—Abur.
Dirigiéronse a la puerta de la cárcel por la calle del Salvador; pero
les fue preciso detenerse, porque en aquel momento entraba una
cuerda de presos. Iban atados como criminales que recogiera en los
caminos la antigua Hermandad de Cuadrilleros, y por su traje
ademanes, y más aún por el modo de expresar su pena, debían de
pertenecer a distintas clases sociales. Los unos iban serenos y con la
frente erguida; los otros abatidos y llorosos. Eran veintidós entre
varones y hembras, a saber: tres patriotas de los antiguos clubs, dos
ancianos que habían desempeñado durante el régimen caído el cargo
de vocales del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia, un eclesiástico, dos
toreros, cuatro cómicos, un chico de siete años, descalzo y roto, tres
militares, un indefinido, como no se le clasificara entre los pordioseros
una señora anciana que apenas podía andar, dos de buena edad y
noble continente, que pertenecían a clase acomodada, y dos mujeres
públicas.
Chaperón echó sobre aquella infeliz gente una mirada que bien
podía llamarse amorosa, pues era semejante a las del artista
contemplando su obra, y cuando el último preso (que era una de las
damas de equívoca conducta) se perdió en el oscuro zaguán de la
prisión, rompió por entre la multitud curiosa y entró también con sus
amigos.
 V

Lo más cruel y repugnante que existe después de la pena de

muerte es el ceremonial que la precede, y la lúgubre antesala de
cadalso con sus cuarenta y ocho mortales horas de capilla. Casi más
horrenda que la horca misma es aquella larga espera y agonía entre la
vida y la muerte, durante la cual exponen la víctima a la compasión
pública, como a la pública curiosidad los animales raros. La ley, que
hasta entonces se ha mostrado severa, muéstrase ahora ferozmente
burlona, permitiendo al reo la compañía de parientes y amigos, y
dándole de comer a qué quieres, boca. Algún condenado de clase
humilde prueba en esos dos días platos y delicadas confituras, cuyo
sabor no conocía. Señores, sacerdotes y altos personajes le dan la
mano, le dirigen vulgares palabritas de consuelo, y todos se empeñan
en hacerle creer que es el hombre más feliz de la creación, que no
debe envidiar a los que incurren en la tontería de seguir viviendo, y
que estar en capilla con el implacable verdugo a la puerta es una
delicia. Sin embargo, a nadie se le ha ocurrido solicitar expresamente
tanta felicidad, ni contar a Nerón, Luis XI, don Pedro de Castilla, Felipe
II, Robespierre y Fernando VII entre los bienhechores de la
humanidad.
Desde el 5 de noviembre a las diez de la mañana gustaba don
Rafael del Riego las dulzuras de la capilla. Aquel hombre famoso, e
más pequeño de los que aparecen ingeridos sin saber cómo en las
filas de los grandes, mediano militar y pésimo político, prueba viva de
las locuras de la fama y usurpador de una celebridad que habría
cuadrado mejor a otros caracteres y nombres condenados hoy a
olvido, acabó su breve carrera sin decoro ni grandeza. Un noble mori
habría dado a su figura el realce heroico que no pudo alcanzar en tres
años de impaciente agitación y bullanga; pero tan desgraciada era la
libertad en nuestro país, que ni al morir bajo las soeces uñas de
absolutismo, pudo alcanzar aquel hombre la dignidad y el prestigio de
la idea que se avalora sucumbiendo. Pereció como la pobre alimaña
que expira chillando entre los dientes del gato.
La causa del revolucionario más célebre de su tiempo fue un tejido
de iniquidades y de absurdos jurídicos. Lo que importaba era
condenarle emborronando poco papel, y así fue. Desde que le leyeron
la sentencia el preso cayó en un abatimiento lúgubre, hijo, según
algunos, de sus dolencias físicas. Creeríase que confiaba hasta
entonces en la clemencia de los llamados jueces, o del rey, que es
todo el caudal de inocencia que puede caber en espíritu de hombre
nacido. A diferencia de otros que en horas tan tremendas se atracan
de los ricos manjares con que engorda el verdugo a sus víctimas, no
quiso comer, o comió muy poco. Ningún amigo pudo visitarle, porque
la visita hubiera sido quizás el primer paso para compañía perpetua
hasta la eternidad; pero le vieron muchos individuos particulares de
categoría, deseosos de hartar sus ojos con la vista de aquel hombre
que conmovió con su nombre a toda España; sacerdotes que
solícitamente se prestaban a encaminarle al cielo; hermanos de
diversas hermandades; personas varias, en fin, compungidas las unas
indiferentes otras, curiosas las más; pero en tal número que no
dejaban al preso un momento de descanso.
Estaba frío, caduco, los ojos fijos en el suelo, amarillo como las
velas que ardían junto al crucifijo del altar. A ratos suspiraba, parecía
vagar en sus labios la palabra perdón, acometíanle desmayos, y hacía
preguntas triviales. Ni mostró apego a las ideas políticas que le habían
dado tanto nombre, ni dio alas a su espíritu con la unción religiosa
sino que se abatía más y más a cada instante, apareciendo quieto sin
estoicismo, humilde sin resignación. Chaperón y otros de igual talla
gozaban viendo llorar, como un alumno castigado, al general de la
libertad, al pastor que con la magia de su nombre arrastraba tras s
rebaño de pueblos. En el delirio de su triunfo no habían ellos soñado
con una caída semejante que les desembarazara, no solo de su
enemigo mayor, sino del prestigio de todos los demás.
La retractación del héroe de las Cabezas fue una de las más
ruidosas victorias del bando absolutista. ¡Qué mayor triunfo que
mostrar a los pueblos un papel en que de su puño y letra había escrito
el hombre diminuto estas palabras: «Asimismo publico el sentimiento
que me asiste por la parte que he tenido en el sistema llamado
constitucional, en la revolución y en sus fatales consecuencias, po
todo lo cual pido perdón a Dios de mis crímenes...»! Han quedado en
el misterio las circunstancias que acompañaron a este arrepentimiento
escrito, y aunque el carácter de Riego y su pusilanimidad en las
tremendas horas justifican hasta cierto punto aquella genuflexión de su
espíritu, puede asegurarse que no hubo completa espontaneidad en
ella. El fraile que le asistía, Chaperón y el escribano Huerta sabrían
acerca de este suceso cosas dignas de pasar a la posteridad, porque
a ellos debieron los absolutistas el envilecimiento del personaje más
culminante, si no el más valioso de la segunda época constitucional
Ahora, cuando ha pasado tanto tiempo y la losa del sepulcro les cubre
a todos, ahorcadores y ahorcados, no podemos menos de deplora
que los que asistieron en la capilla a don Rafael del Riego en la noche
del 6 al 7 de noviembre, no hubieran hecho públicos después los
argumentos empleados para arrancar una abdicación tan humillante.
El 7, a las diez de la mañana, le condujeron al suplicio. De seguro
no ha brillado en toda nuestra historia un día más ignominioso. Es tal
que ni aun parece digno de ser conocido, y el narrador se siente
inclinado a volver, sin leerla, esa página sombría, y a correr tras de
una ficción verosímil que embellezca la descarnada verdad histórica
Una víctima sin nobleza, arrastrada al suplicio por verdugos feroces
es el espectáculo más triste que pueden ofrecer las miserias humanas
es el mal puro sin porción ninguna de bien, de ese bien moral que
aparece más o menos claro aun en los más horrendos excesos de
furor político y en los martirios a que es sometida la inocencia. Una
víctima cobarde parece que enaltece al verdugo, y al hablar de
cobardía no es que echemos de menos la arrogancia fanfarrona con
que algunos desgraciados han querido dar realce teatral a su postre
instante, sino la dignidad personal que, unida a la resignación
religiosa, rodean al mártir jurídico de una brillante aureola de simpatías
y compasión. Ninguna de aquellas especies de valor tuvo en su
desastroso fin el general Riego, y creeríase al verle que víctima y
jueces se habían confabulado para cubrir de vilipendio el último día de
la libertad y hacer más negro y triste su crepúsculo. La grosería
patibularia y el refinamiento en las fórmulas de degradación
empleadas por los unos, parece que guardaban repugnante armonía
con la abjuración del otro.
Sacáronle de la cárcel por el callejón del Verdugo, y condujéronle
por la calle de la Concepción Jerónima, que era la carrera oficial
Como si montarle en borrico hubiera sido signo de nobleza, llevábanle
en un serón que arrastraba el mismo animal. Los hermanos de la Paz
y Caridad le sostuvieron durante todo el tránsito para que con la
sacudida no padeciese; pero él, cubierta la cabeza con su gorrete
negro, lloraba como un niño, sin dejar de besar a cada instante la
estampa que sostenía entre sus atadas manos.
Un gentío alborotador cubría la carrera. La plaza era un amasijo de
carne humana. ¿Participaremos de esta vil curiosidad, atendiendo
prolijamente a los accidentes todos de tan repugnante cuadro? De
ninguna manera. Un hombre que sube a gatas la escalera del patíbulo
besando uno a uno todos los escalones; un verdugo que le suspende
y se arroja con él, dándole un bofetón después que ha expirado; una
ruin canalla que al verle en el aire grita; «¡Viva el rey absoluto!...»
¿Acaso esto merece ser mencionado? ¿Qué interés ni qué enseñanza
ni qué ejemplo ofrecen estas muestras de la perversidad humana? S
toda la historia fuese así, si no sirviera más que de afrenta, ¡cuán
horrible sería! Felizmente, aun en aquellos días tan desfavorecidos
contiene páginas honrosas aunque algo oscuras, y entre los miles de
víctimas del absolutismo húbolas nobilísimas y altamente merecedoras
de cordial compasión. Si el historiador acaso no las nombrase, peo
para él; el novelador las nombrará, y conceptuándose dichoso al llena
con ellas su lienzo, se atreve a asegurar que la ficción verosími
ajustada a la realidad documentada, puede ser en ciertos casos más
histórica, y seguramente es más patriótica, que la historia misma.
 VI

El triste día de la ejecución todo Madrid asistió a ella, lo mismo los

absolutistas rabiosos que los antiguos patriotas, a excepción de los
que no podían salir a la calle sin peligro de ser afeitados o arrojados
en los pilones de las fuentes, cuando no hechos trizas por el vulgo
Pero entre tanto gentío faltó un hombre que durante el verano había
vivido casi constantemente en la calle, entreteniendo a los
desocupados y dando que reír a los pícaros. Echábanle de menos en
las esquinas de la Puerta del Sol y en los diversos mentideros, por lo
cual le creían fallecido. No era cierto. Sarmiento vivía, gozando
además de una regular salud.
La primera noche que se quedó en casa de Solita durmió de un
tirón once horas, y habiendo despertado al medio día llamó con fuertes
voces para que le llevaran chocolate. Dióselo la misma dueña de la
casa con mucha amabilidad, y entre sorbo y sorbo el preceptor decía:
—Puedo aceptar estos obsequios porque hoy mismo entraré por la
senda a que me lleva mi destino... Si fuera por mucho tiempo de
ningún modo aceptaría... Mi carácter, mi dignidad, los recuerdos de
nuestro antagonismo no me lo permiten.
—¿Qué tal está el chocolate? —le preguntó Sola con malignidad.
—Así, así..., mejor dicho, no está mal..., quiero decir, muy bueno
excelente, o hablando con completa franqueza, riquísimo.
—¿Hoy se marcha usted?
—Ahora mismo... Me presentaré a las autoridades —repuso
Sarmiento dejando el cangilón y arropándose de nuevo entre las
sábanas— y les diré: «Aquí tenéis, infames sicarios, al que os ha
hecho tanto daño; quitadme esta miserable vida; bebed mi sangre
caníbales. Quiero compartir la inmortalidad del insigne Riego...».
 —¿Todo eso va a decir usted?... Pues un poco perezosillo está m
buen viejo para hacer y decir tantas cosas.
—¡Yo perezoso! —exclamó incorporando el anguloso busto y
extendiendo los brazos—. ¡Venga al punto mi ropa!
Soledad le mostró ropa blanca limpia y planchada.
—Estuve arriba —dijo.
—¿En mi casa?
—Sí: saqué la llave del bolsillo de usted, subí, revolví todo
buscando ropa mejor que la que usted tiene puesta..., pero no
encontré nada.
—¡Cómo había de encontrar, alma de Dios, lo que no tengo! No se
burle de mi miseria... Pero entendámonos, ¿qué ropa es esta que me
ofrece?
—Ya lo ve..., son piezas desechadas, pero en buen uso.
—¡Ah! ya... Ropa desechada del señor don Salvador Monsalud..
Pues mire usted, si fuera obsequio de otra persona lo rehusaría; pero
siendo de aquel noble patriota lo acepto. Conste que no he pedido
nada.
—De ropa exterior podríamos arreglarle algunas piezas decentes —
dijo Sola sonriendo—, siempre que usted tarde algunos días en
marchar a la inmortalidad.
—¡Tardar! Basta de bromas... ¿Para qué quiero yo ropas bonitas?
¿Voy acaso a entrar en algún salón de baile, o en los Elíseos Campos
donde los justos se pasean envueltos en mantos de nubes?... Figúrese
usted la falta que me hará a mí la buena ropa...
—Puede que tarden en matarle a usted un mes o dos. Y si siguen
estos fríos no le vendrá mal una buena capa.
—Tanto como venir mal precisamente, no... ¿La tiene usted?
—La buscaremos.
—No, no es preciso... Voy a levantarme.
Soledad se retiró, y al poco rato apareció en la sala don Patricio
completamente vestido. Sentose en el sofá, y contemplando a la joven
con bondadosa mirada, dijo así:
—Desde el tiempo de mi Refugio, no había dormido en una cama
tan buena... ¡Ay, ella era tan hacendosa, tan casera! Nuestro domicilio
estaba como un oro, y nuestro lecho nupcial podía haber servido para
que en él se revolcara un rey... ¡Pobre Refugio, si me vieras en m
actual miseria!... ¡Pobre Lucas, pobre hijo mío! Hoy tu muerte es digna
de envidia, porque estás en la morada de los héroes y de los elegidos
pero tu padre no tiene consuelo, ni puede vivir sin verte...
Derramó algunas lágrimas, y por largo rato estuvo silencioso y
cabizbajo, dando muestras de verdadero dolor. Soledad, ocupada en
sus quehaceres, no se presentó a él sino a la hora de la comida.
—Supongo que no saldrá usted hasta después de comer —le dijo
poniendo la mesa.
—Saldré antes, ahora mismo, señora —dijo Sarmiento irguiéndose
súbitamente como un asta de bandera—. El peso de la vida me es
insoportable. Una voz secreta me grita: «Anda, corre...». Todo mi se
avanza en pos de la gloria que me está destinada.
—¡Cuánto mejor irá usted después de comer!... ¿Es que desprecia
usted mi mesa?
—¡Oh!, no, señora, de ningún modo —replicó Sarmiento con
cortesía—; pero conste que solo por acompañar a usted...
Comieron tranquilamente, siendo de notar que el espiritual don
Patricio, creyendo sin duda inconveniente el aventurarse por los
ideales senderos con el estómago vacío, diose prisa a llenarlo de
cuanto la mesa sustentaba.
—¡Qué buena comida! —dijo permitiendo a su paladar aquel desliz
de sensualismo—. ¡Qué bien hecho todo, y con cuánto primo
presentado! Solita, si usted se casa, su marido de usted será el más
feliz de los hombres.
Al final de la comida, los ojos de don Patricio brillaron con
resplandores de gozo, viendo una taza llena de negro licor.
—¡También café!... ¡Oh, cuánto tiempo hace que no pruebo este
delicioso líquido!... El néctar de los dioses, el néctar de los héroes..
Gracias, mil gracias por tan delicada fineza.
—Yo sabía que a usted le gusta mucho este brebaje.
—¡Gracias!... ¡y qué bueno es!... ¡qué aroma!
—Será el último que beba usted, porque en la cárcel no dan estas
golosinas.
—¿Y qué importa? —repuso el anciano con solemne acento—
¿Acaso somos de alfeñique? Cuando un hombre se decide a escala
con gigantesco pie el último círculo del cielo, ¿de qué vale el liviano
placer de los sentidos?
Dijo, y poniéndose el farolillo de fieltro que desempeñaba en su
cabeza las funciones propias de un sombrero, se dispuso a salir.
 —Adiós, señora —murmuró—, gracias por sus atenciones, que no
esperaba en persona de quien soy encarnizado enemigo... político. Su
papá de usted y yo nos aborrecimos y nos aborreceremos en la otra
vida... Abur.
Salió precipitadamente hacia la puerta; mas no pudiendo abrirla
volvió diciendo:
—La llave, la llave...
Soledad rompió a reír.
—¡Y creía el muy tonto que iba a dejarle salir! No faltaba más. Eso
querrían los chicos para divertirse. ¿Quiere usted quitarse ese
sombrero, hombre de Dios, y sentarse ahí y estarse tranquilo?
—Señora, señora —dijo Sarmiento moviendo la cabeza y pateando
ligeramente en muestra de su decoroso enfado—, ábrame usted la
puerta, y déjeme en paz, que cada uno va a su destino, y el mío es..
el que yo me sé.
—No abro.
—Señora, señorita, que yo soy hombre de poca paciencia. Ábrame
la puerta, o reñimos de veras.
—Que no abro la puerta —replicó Sola, remedando el tonillo de
cantinela de su digno huésped.
—Basta de bromas, basta, repito —vociferó Sarmiento tomando e
aire y tono tragicómicos que empleaba al reprender a los alumnos—
Yo soy un hombre formal... De mí no se ríe nadie y menos una
chiquilla loca... Ea, niña sin juicio, abra usted si no quiere saber quién
es Patricio Sarmiento.
—Un loco, un majadero, un vagabundo, a quien es preciso recoge
por caridad y encerrar por fuerza, para que no se degrade en las calles
como un pordiosero, haciendo el saltimbanquis y muriéndose de
miseria, ya que por el estado de su cabeza no puede morirse de
vergüenza.
Esto lo dijo con tanta seriedad y entereza, que por breve rato estuvo
el patriota aturdido y confuso.
—Aquí hay algo, aquí hay algún designio oculto que no puedo
comprender —afirmó el anciano—, pero que tiene por objeto, sí, tiene
por objeto impedir una resolución demasiado ruidosa y que quizás
perjudicaría al absolutismo.
Otra vez se echó a reír Sola de tan buena gana, que Sarmiento se
enfureció más.
 —Por vida de la chilindraina —gritó agitando sus brazos—, que s
usted no me da la llave, la tomaré yo donde quiera que se encuentre.
—Atrévase —dijo Soledad con festiva afectación de valor
incorporándose en su asiento—. Mujer y de poca fuerza, no temo a un
fastasmón como usted... Quieto ahí, y cuidado con apurarme la
paciencia.
—Señora, no puedo creer sino que usted se ha vuelto loca —gruñó
Sarmiento con sarcasmo—. ¡Querer detener a un hombre como yo! No
sabe usted las bromas que gasto. Repito que aquí hay una conjuración
infame... ¡Oh, si es usted hija del conspirador más grande que han
abortado los despóticos infiernos!... ¡Ah, taimada muchachuela! Ahora
me explico a qué venían los chocolatitos, la ropita blanca, el buen
cocido y mejor sopa... ¡Quite usted allá! ¿Cree usted que con eso se
ablanda este bronce? ¿Cree usted que así se abate esta montaña?
¿Soy yo de mantequillas? Aunque fuera preciso derribar a puñetazos
estas paredes y arrancar con los dientes esos cerrojos del despotismo
yo lo haría, yo..., porque he de ir a donde me llama mi hado feliz, y m
hado, fatum que decían los antiguos, se ha de cumplir, y la víctima
preciosa inscrita en el eterno libro no puede faltar, ni la sangre
redentora puede dejar de derramarse, ni la libertad ha de quedarse sin
la víctima que necesita. De modo que saldré, pese a quien pese
aunque tenga que emplear la fuerza contra miserables mujeres, lo que
es impropio de la nobleza de mi carácter.
—¿Se atreverá usted?
—Sí; deme usted la llave de esa puerta nefanda —contestó
Sarmiento con énfasis petulante que no tenía nada de temible—, o se
arrepentirá de su crimen..., porque esto es un crimen... ¡La llave, la
llave!
—Ahora lo veremos.
Corriendo afuera, prontamente volvió Sola con un palo de escoba, y
enarbolándolo frente a don Patricio, le hizo retroceder algunos pasos.
—Aquí están mis llaves, pícaro, vagabundo. O renuncia usted a
salir, o le rompo la cabeza.
—Señora —exclamó don Patricio acorralado en un ángulo de la
sala—, no abuse usted de mi delicadeza..., de mi dignidad, que me
impide poner la férrea mano sobre una hembra... ¡Esto es un ardid
pero qué ardid!... Una trama verdaderamente absolutista.
 —Siéntese usted —gritó Soledad conteniendo la risa y sin dejar e
argumento de caña—. Fuera el sombrero.
—Vaya, me siento y me descubro —repuso Sarmiento con la
sumisión del esclavo—. ¿Qué más?
—¿Se compromete usted a no salir en quince días?
—Jamás, jamás, jamás. Antes la muerte —murmuró cerrando los
ojos—. Pegue usted.
—Esto es una broma —dijo Soledad arrojando el palo, sentándose
junto al anciano y poniéndole la mano amorosamente sobre el hombro
—. ¿Cómo había yo de castigar al pobre viejecito demente miserable
que se pasa la vida en las calles divirtiendo a los muchachos? Si no
hay en el mundo ser alguno más digno de lástima... ¡Pobre viejecillo
Me he propuesto hacer una buena obra de caridad y he de
conseguirlo. Yo he de traer a este infeliz a la razón. ¿Y cómo?
Asistiéndole, cuidándole, dándole de comer cositas buenas y
sabrosas, arreglándole su ropa para que esté decente y no tenga frío
proporcionándole todo lo necesario para que no carezca de nada y
tenga una vejez alegre y pacífica.
Estas palabras debieron hacer ligera impresión en el espíritu de
viejo, porque moviendo la cabeza, se dejó acariciar y no dijo nada.
—Jesucristo nos manda hacer bien a los pobres, cuidar a los
enfermos y aliviar a los menesterosos —añadió Sola acercando su
agraciado rostro a la rugosa efigie del vagabundo—. Y cuando esto se
hace con enemigos, el mérito es mayor, mucho mayor, y el placer de
hacerlo también aumenta. Recordando que este pobre iluso y fanático
negó a mi padre un vaso de agua en un trance terrible, más me alegro
de hacerle beneficios, sí, porque además yo sé que el desgraciado
vejete loco no es malo en realidad, ni carece de buen corazón, sino
que por causa del condenado fanatismo hizo aquella y otras
maldades... Por consiguiente, papá Sarmiento, aquí estarás
encerradito, comiendo bien y cenando mejor, libre de chicos, de
insultos, de atropellos, de hambre y desnudez; aquí vivirás tranquilo
haciéndome compañía, porque yo soy sola como mi nombre, y estaré
sola por mucho tiempo, quizás toda la vida... ¿Quedamos en eso? Ya
ves que te tuteo en señal de parentesco y familiaridad.
—¡Ah, mujer melosa y liviana! —dijo Sarmiento haciendo un
esfuerzo de energía, semejante al de los anacoretas cuando se veían
en grande y peligrosa tentación—. ¡Quita allá! Mi alma es demasiado
fuerte para sucumbir a tus pérfidos halagos.
—Esta noche cenaremos —dijo Soledad hablando como cuando se
les anuncia a los niños lo que han de comer—. Oye tú lo que
cenaremos; pollo, chuletas, uvas...
Iba contando por los dedos cada cosa, y haciendo gran pausa en
cada parada.
—Mañana —añadió— voy a ocupar a mi ancianito en cosas útiles
Me ha de trabajar para que yo pueda tratarle bien. Yo necesito
reformar mi letra, porque escribo patas de mosca y no tengo
ortografía. El viejecillo me dará lección todas las noches. Por el día le
emplearé en algo que le entretenga. Darele buenos libros..., nada de
política..., y cuando esté domesticado, le sacaré a paseo por las
tardes.
A don Patricio se le humedecieron los ojos. Difícil es saber lo que
pasaba en su alma.
—¿Y mi gloria, pero esa gloria que me está llamando? —dijo dando
fuerte porrazo en el brazo de la silla—. ¡Vaya un modo de hace
caridades, señora, quitándole a uno la inmortalidad, el lauro de oro que
se le tiene destinado!
Don Patricio dijo esto con una seriedad que hacía llorar y reír a
mismo tiempo.
—¿Qué gloria? —repuso Soledad—. No conozco sino la que Dios
da a los que se portan bien y cumplen sus mandamientos.
—¿Pero y esa víctima, esa víctima de quien necesita la libertad?
—La libertad no necesita víctimas, sino hombres que la sepan
entender... Conque Sarmientillo, seremos amigos. De aquí no se sale
mientras esa cabeza no esté buena.
Diole dos cariñosas palmadas en ella la encantadora joven
mientras el insigne patriota exhalaba de su noble pecho un suspiro de
a libra, permítase la frase. ¿Era que hacía el sacrificio de su idea
sublime? ¿Era que pedía a su espíritu fuerzas para sobreponerse a
seducción tan poderosa? No es fácil saberlo. Los próximos sucesos lo
dirán.
—¡Ah, señora —exclamó tomando la mano de Sola—, no sabe
usted bien lo que hace! La historia, quizás, pedirá a usted cuentas de
su acción abominable, aunque declaro que es inspirada por un noble
impulso de caridad... Engañosa Circe, no sabe usted bien qué clase de
ímpetus sojuzga y contiene al encerrarme; no sabe usted bien qué
especie de monstruo encarcela, ni qué heroicas acciones se pierden
con este hecho, ni qué días gloriosos serán borrados de la serie de
tiempo.
Dijo, y un rato después dormía la siesta.
 VII

En los días sucesivos tuvo don Patricio los mismos deseos de salir
si bien, a excepción de una vez, no fueron tan ardientes; pero hubo
gritos, amenazas, volvió a funcionar el inocente palo y la carcelera a
desplegar las armas de su convincente piedad, de la graciosa entereza
que tan buenos efectos produjera el primer día. Horas enteras pasaba
el vagabundo patriota, corriendo de un ángulo a otro de la sala, como
enjaulada bestia, deteniéndose a veces para oír los ruidos de la calle
que a él le sonaban siempre como discursos, proclamas o himnos, y
poniéndose a cada rato el sombrero como para salir. Este acto de
cubrirse primero y descubrirse después, al caer en la cuenta de su
encierro, era gracioso, y excitaba la risa de su amable guardiana. En la
comida y cena mostrábase más manso, y se ponía con cierto orgullo
las prendas de vestir que Sola le arreglara. Desde la cabeza a los pies
cubríase con lo perteneciente al antiguo dueño de la casa, de cuya
adaptación no resultaba gran elegancia, a causa de la diferencia de
talle y estatura.
Por las noches daba a Soledad lección de escritura, poniendo en
ella tanto cuidado la discípula como el maestro. Él, particularmente
mostraba una prolijidad desusada, esmerándose en transmitir a su
alumna sus altos principios caligráficos, la primorosa maestría de
ejecución que poseía y de que estaba tan orgulloso.
—Desde que el mundo es mundo —decía observando los trazos
hechos por Soledad sobre el papel pautado—, no se han dado
lecciones con tanto esmero. Hanse reunido, para producir colosales
efectos, la disposición innata de la discípula y la destreza del maestro
Ahora bien, señora y carcelera mía: la justicia y el agradecimiento
piden que en pago de este beneficio me conceda usted la libertad, que
es mi elemento, mi vida, mi atmósfera.
 —Bueno —respondió Sola—, cuando sepa escribir te abriré la
puerta, viejecillo bobo.
En los primeros días de noviembre estuvo muy tranquilo, apenas
dio señales de persistir en su diabólica manía, y se le vio reír y aun
modular entre dientes alegres cancioncillas; pero el 7 del mismo mes
llegaron a su encierro, no se sabe cómo (sin duda por el aguador o la
indiscreta criada), nuevas del suplicio de Riego, y entonces la
imaginación mal contenida de don Patricio perdió los estribos. Furioso
y desatinado, corría por toda la casa gritando:
—¡Esperad, verdugos, que allá voy yo también! No será él solo..
Esperad, hacedme un puesto en esa horca gloriosa... ¡Maldito sea e
que quiera arrancarme mis legítimos laureles!
Soledad tuvo miedo; mas sobreponiéndose a todo, logró contenerle
con no poco trabajo y riesgo, porque Sarmiento no cedía como antes a
la virtud del palo, ni oía razones, ni respetaba a la que había logrado
con su paciencia y dulzura tan gran dominio sobre él. Pero al fin
triunfaron las buenas artes de la celestial joven, y Sarmiento
acorralado en la sala, sin esperanzas de lograr su intento, hubo de
contentarse con desahogar su espíritu poniéndose de rodillas y
diciendo con voz sonora:
—¡Oh tú, el héroe más grande que han visto los siglos, patriarca de
la libertad, contempla desde el cielo donde moras esta alma atribulada
que no puede romper las ligaduras que le impiden seguirte! Preso
contra todo fuero y razón; víctima de una intriga, me veo imposibilitado
de compartir tu martirio, y con tu martirio tu galardón eterno. Y
vosotros, asesinos, venid aquí por mí si queréis. Gritaré hasta que mis
voces lleguen hasta vuestros perversos oídos. Soy Sarmiento, el digno
compañero de Riego, el único digno de morir con él; soy aque
Sarmiento cuya tonante elocuencia os ha confundido tantas veces; e
que no os ha ametrallado con balas, sino con razones; el que ha
destruido todos vuestros sofismas con la artillería resonante de su
palabra. Aquí estoy, matad la lengua de la libertad, así como habéis
matado el brazo. Vuestra obra no está completa mientras yo viva
porque mientras yo aliente se oirá mi voz por todas partes diciendo lo
que sois... Venid por mí. La horca está manca: falta en ella un cuerpo
No será efectivo el sacrificio sin mí. ¿No me conocéis, ciegos? Soy
Sarmiento, el famoso Sarmiento, el dueño de esa lengua de acero que
tanto os ha hecho rabiar... ¿No daríais algo por taparle la boca? Pues
aquí le tenéis... Venid pronto... El hombre terrible, la voz destructora de
tiranías, callará para siempre.
Todo aquel día estuvo insufrible en tal manera, que otra persona de
menos paciencia y sufrimiento que Solita le habría puesto en la calle
dejándole que siguiera su glorioso destino; pero se fue calmando, y un
sueño profundo durante la noche le puso en regular estado de
despejo. Habíale traído Soledad tabaco picado y librillos de papel para
que se entretuviese haciendo cigarrillos, y con esto y con limpiar la
jaula de un jilguero pasaba parte de la mañana. Sentándose después
junto a la huérfana mientras esta cosía, hablablan largo rato y
agradablemente de cosas diversas. Uno y otro contaban cosas
pasadas: Sarmiento sus bodas, la muerte de Refugio y la niñez de
Lucas; Sola su desgraciado viaje al reino de Valencia.
Continuaban las lecciones de escritura por las noches, y después
leía el anciano un libro de comedias antiguas que de la casa de
Cordero trajo Sola. Cuidaba esta de que en la vivienda no entrase
papel ninguno de política, y siempre que el anciano pedía noticias de
los sucesos públicos, se le contestaba con una amonestación
acompañada a veces de un ligero pellizco. Poco a poco iba
acomodándose el buen viejo a tal género de vida, y sus accesos de
tristeza o de rabia eran menos frecuentes cada día. Su carácter se
suavizaba por grados, desapareciendo de él lentamente las asperezas
ocasionadas por un fanatismo brutal, y la irritación y acritud que en é
produjera la gran enfermedad de la vida, que es la miseria. A las
ocupaciones no muy trabajosas de hacer cigarrillos y cuidar el pájaro
añadió Soledad otras que entretenían más a Sarmiento. Como no
carecía de habilidad de manos y había herramientas en la casa, todos
los muebles que tenían desperfectos y todas las sillas que claudicaban
recibieron compostura. En la cocina se pusieron vasares nuevos de
tablas; después nunca faltaba una percha que asegurar, una cortina
que suspender, lámpara que colgar, lámina que mudar de sitio o
madeja de algodón que devanar.
Llegó el invierno, y la sala se abrigaba todas las noches con
hermoso brasero de cisco bien pasado, en cuya tarima ponía los pies
el vagabundo, inclinándose sobre el rescoldo sin soltar de la mano la
badila. Era notable don Patricio en el arte de arreglar el brasero, y de
ello se preciaba. Su conocimiento de la temperatura teníale muy
orgulloso, y cuando el brasero empezaba a desempeñar sus