Backlands (11 page)

These are not roots; they are branches. And the tiny bushes, sparse or sticking out in tufts that cover wide areas at times, are from a single enormous tree, entirely underground.

Beaten down by the dog days, lashed by the rays of the sun, gnawed by torrents of rain, tortured by winds, the plant seems to be bowing down before the attacks of these antagonistic elements and shielding itself in this way, invisible in the earth, over which only the tallest sprouts of this majestic frond emerge.

Others, lacking that conformation, make their adjustment in other ways.

The water that runs off in a savage torrential swirl or down into the sloping layers of schists is held for a long time in the husk of the bromeliads, giving them life. At the height of summer a
macambira
stalk means for the thirsty rustic a drink of crystal-clear pure water.
¹⁵
The greenish caroas,
¹⁶
with their tall triumphal flowers, the long moss, and the wild pineapples plaited in impenetrable shoots, do the same, purposely designed for those sterile climes. Their leaves, sword shaped, smooth, and shiny like those of most backland plants, help the condensation of the scant moisture carried by the winds. In this way they protect themselves from the greatest danger to vegetable life as the widespread condensation on their leaves drips down and is absorbed by their rootlets.

Others follow this pattern in diverse ways and with other means but in an equally resistant way.

The nopals and cacti, native everywhere, fall into the category of Saint-Hilaire’s vegetable fountains. They are classic types of desert flora, more resistant than the rest, and when trees all around fall down, struck by lightning they remain unchanged or perhaps even more alive. They were made for barbarous climes. They reject benign environments in which they blanch and waste away, while the fiery desert environment seems to stimulate the circulation of their sap through their swollen cladophylls in an even stronger way.

The
favelas
, still without a scientific name and unknown to scholars, but only too well known to greenhorns, are possibly members of a future genus
Cauterium
of leguminous plants. They possess in their leaves cells elongated into fuzz, which are a notable tool for condensation, absorption, and defense.
¹⁷
On the one hand, their skin, as it grows cold at night with a great drop in temperature, will in spite of the dryness of the air collect tiny drops of dew. And on the other hand, whoever touches it has touched a fiery sheet of constant flame.

When, unlike those just mentioned, some species do not appear to be as well fitted for a victorious outcome, what might be more interesting solutions are to be seen. These plants join in an intimate embrace and become social species. Unable to see things through in isolation, they discipline themselves and organize themselves jointly. In this group all the
Cesalpinia
and
caatinga
plants are to be found, making up, where they appear, 60 percent of the
caatinga
areas.
¹⁸
Flatland rosemary and tube reeds, bushlike heliotropes with hollow stalks and a speckling of white spiked flowers, which were destined to give their name,
canudos
, to the most legendary of towns . . .
¹⁹
They do not appear on Humboldt’s list of Brazilian social plants, and it is possible that they flourished in isolation in other areas.
²⁰
Here they associate, with roots firm and solid in the subsoil forming a tight netting to hold water and keep the earth from breaking up. In this way, and after a long effort, they end up creating the arable soil out of which they are born. They take it over with an inextricably woven net of capillaries made of tangled rootlets in an extensive web, dominating the insatiable suction of the layers of sand. So they live.
Live
is the right term because in this a high trace of passive vegetable evolution can be seen. . . .

The jujubes or
juazeiros
have like characteristics and they rarely lose their intensely green leaves, purposely designed for strong reactions to light.
²¹
Scorching months and years follow one upon the other. The extremely dry soil becomes completely impoverished, and yet during those cruel periods when the hot rays of the sun become more severe, as spontaneous fires lighted by the winds wear away the dry, peeled branches sometimes, the plants still wave their verdant branches, alien to the seasons, always in bloom, sprinkling the desert with their golden flowers merrily as the colors stand out against the brown, stubbled ground like green and festive oases.

The harshness of the elements increases during certain seasons, however, and it reaches the point of denuding them. The bottoms of waterholes have been buried for a long time and the hardened beds of puddles are revealed, becoming huge imprints, molds, along with the old tracks of cattle drives. The backlands have become completely unsuitable for life.

All that rises up then over the dead nature are the stands of cacti, slim and silent, proud, with their circular stalks arranged in polyhedral and uniform columns with the impeccable symmetry of enormous candelabra. Looming large at the end of the brief afternoons in those barren lands, with their red fruit standing out on them like neatly placed buttons in the half-light of dusk, they give the moving illusion of enormous candles stuck in the ground at random all across the plains and lighted. . . .

They characterize the capricious flora of summer’s bounty.

The
mandacarús
(
Cereus jamacaru
), attaining a notable height, are rarely seen in groups, appearing in isolation over the chaotic vegetation. They are an attractive novelty at first glance. They provide a contrast, standing up stiffly in triumph while the surrounding flora is pushed down. One has trouble adjusting his looks to a difficult contemplation of that mass of twisted boughs, but then his sight eases and straightens out as it runs over straight, firm stalks. After a time, however, it can become a distressing obsession. An intolerable monotony is stamped on everything as they come, one after the other, constant, uniform, all of them exactly alike, all with the same bearing, equidistant and distributed with singular order across the desert.

The
xique-xique
cacti (
Cereus peruvianus
) are a variant with smaller proportions, divided into close-knit and thorny stems, curved and creeping, which are embroidered with very white flowers.
²²
They seek out harsh, hot places. These are the classic vegetation of the burning sands, content on the scorching bed of granitic plates where the sun beats down.

As inseparable partners in this habitat, avoided even by orchids, they have the monk’s head, inelegant and monstrous
Melocacti
of elliptical shape, grooved and with thorny shoots that come together on their upper part, which is formed by a single immensely bloodred flower. These appear in some inexplicable way over the naked stone, giving the appearance, from their size, shape, and distribution, of decapitated and bleeding heads scattered about at random in tragic disorder. The fact is that very narrow fissures let their long capillary roots slip in through the hard stone mass to lower levels where some remnants of humidity might have been spared evaporation.

And this vast family, with all these aspects, gradually descends to the creeping
quipás
, spiny, humble, and curling across the ground like esparto grass, forming a lacerating mat, and the
Rhipsalides
, serpentine succulents, twisting their branches like green vipers as they tangle in partnership with the fragile epiphyte cacti, of a pale blue-green color, supported by appendages that hold on to the stalks of the
uricuri
palms as they flee the savage soil for peace at the top of the palm trees.
²³

Here and there we have other shapes: the “devil’s slaps,” prickly pear cacti with small growths and prickles scattered across their surface and the vivid scarlet of the cochineal bugs that feed upon them. They are garlanded with fiery flowers and gaily break the solemn sadness of the landscape.

A person crossing these barrens during a clear day, through leafless trees where there are no flowers, will notice little else. All plant life is entangled in an indescribable disorder, just as after land has been cleared. It is a
caatanduva
, a “sick forest” in the indigenous language, which has sadly collapsed over its terrible bed of thorns!
²⁴

Climbing to the top of any hill, as our eyes take in the sight around, we are upset by the same desolate scene: dying vegetation, sick, shapeless, and exhausted in a single painful spasm. . . .

It is the
silva aesta aphyla
, Martius’s
silva horrida
, opening up a desert vacuum in the bright bosom of tropical nature.

One can understand, then, Augustin de Saint-Hilaire’s paradoxical statement: “What exists there is the whole melancholy of winter along with a burning sun and the heat of summer!”
²⁵

The raw light of the long days burns down over the motionless land but does not stir it. Quartz outcroppings glimmer on the limestone hills that are scattered in disorder across the barrens with the whiteness of ice floes. And quivering from the tips of dry branches on the stiffened trees is Spanish moss, and its whitish gleam brings dripping snow to mind, giving the whole scene the look of a glacial landscape as vegetation hibernates in the frozen wastes. . . .

But in the darkening of any March afternoon, sunsets are quickly smothered by night and stars twinkle brightly at first.

Thick clouds then sweep across distant horizons and are cut up into the imposing outlines of dark mountains.

The clouds rise slowly, swelling and bubbling into slow, huge eddies as the winds blow in a tumult across the plains, shaking and twisting branches.

It grows darker by the minute. The sky is cut with sharp, successive flashes of lightning as they stitch across the bottom of the storm. Strong thunderclaps ring out and sudden cloudbursts fall, thick and sluggish, across the ground, then gathering together in a diluvian downpour. . . .

On the way back from his crossing, the traveler, to his amazement, no longer sees a desert.

Over the ground carpeted by amaryllis, the tropical flora has surged up again in triumph.

The change is like an apotheosis.

The round coral trees on the banks of the now full waterholes flaunt the royal robes of their broad red flowers, not waiting for their leaves to appear. The tall
caraíba
and hardwood
baraúna
trees come into leaf again along the banks of streams that are gurgling once again.
²⁶
The pruned
mariseiros
are branching out vigorously to the passage of soft breezes.
²⁷
Cloaking the mutilation of the slopes,
quixabeiras
appear with life and their tiny leaves and fruits, which remind one of onyx beads. Of more greenish hue are the caper plants as they grow thick across the floodplains under the festive waving of the crests of the annatto trees. There is a moving surge that has given life to the landscape, bedding down on the plains and rounding off the hillsides. It is the flowering thickets of hog myrtle with its thin and flexible stalks. The
umburana
trees perfume the air and filter it through their leafy fronds.
²⁸
Dominating the general revival, not yet by their height but by their graceful bearing, the umbra, or
umbú,
trees stand six feet above the ground, irradiating out in circles with their many branches.

This is the sacred tree of the backlands. This is the faithful partner to the cowmen’s fleeting happy hours and long bitter days. It represents a significant example of the adaptation of backland flora. It could be that it was of an even and more vigorous height but that it developed gradually during the interchange of fiery summers and torrential winters and modified itself to fit the makeup of its surroundings, growing smaller until it was prepared for resistance and reaction, finally challenging the long-lasting droughts and sustaining itself during the seasons of misery with the vital energy it had stored up during beneficent times by keeping large amounts of water in reserve in its roots. And it shares these with humans. If the umbra tree did not exist in that stretch of backland so sterile that the carnauba wax palm, so providently dispersed in neighboring tracts that extend up to Ceará, is scarce there, there would be no population. For the unfortunate rustic who lives there the umbra tree is what the
Mauritia
is for people living on the plains.

It feeds him and slakes his thirst. It opens up its soothing and friendly breast for him, where the curving and entwined branches seem to have been especially made for the frame of a swaying hammock. And with the arrival of the good season, it gives him its strange-tasting fruits so he can prepare his traditional
umbuzada
drink.

Even on days of plenty, cattle covet the acidy juice of its leaves. It stands out there with its upright bearing firmly outlined, its rounded crown on a perfect level plane over the ground at a height that can be reached by the tallest cattle, looking like ornamental plants under the care of professional gardeners. Trimmed in that way they resemble great spherical calottes. They dominate the flora of the backlands during good times the way the melancholy cacti do in the paroxysms of summer.

The
juremas
, favorites of half-breed Indians for the heady hashish they furnish in the form of a free, inestimable drink to reinvigorate them after long treks, dispelling their fatigue in a moment like a magic potion, are spread all about in hedges, impenetrable barriers disguised by their tiny leaves.
²⁹
The leaves of the rare
mariseiros
reappear. These are mysterious trees that presage the return of the rains and the annular periods of green and lean, when under the lash of the drought they provide a few drops of water in the dried bark of their trunks. The
juazeiro
trees are green again, the nightshades turn yellow in thickets, and the
baraúnas
have clusters of flowers. The
araticum
custard apples appear on the edge of bogs while standing out and scattered across the plains or on the rolling hillsides are the umbra trees, sparkling with bright white flowers, their leaves appearing as they go through fleeting changes from pale green to the gleaming pink of new shoots that better attract the eye. This is the happiest note in all the dazzling scene.