Chapter III: A Morning in the Tenement
Section summary
At five in the morning the tenement wakes, and the chapter shows it from the inside, from the water taps to breakfast, introducing the washerwomen tub by tub: Machona, Augusta Carne-Mole, wife of the police soldier Alexandre, whose daughter Juju lives with her godmother; the courtesan Léonie; the Witch; Marciana and her daughter Florinda, whom João Romão desires; and the washerman Albino. Among them is Dona Isabel, widow of the owner of a hat shop that went bankrupt, who will not marry her daughter Pombinha to her fiancé, the young clerk João da Costa, until the girl becomes a woman, even though the marriage could return the two of them to their former social circle. The washerwomen talk about Rita Baiana, missing for eight days on a spree with Firmo, and a young man comes looking for the laundry she took away.
The workers pass by, Miranda with Henrique on their way to the store and to classes, and at the townhouse window Dona Estela and Zulmira file their nails, oblivious to the noise. At nine the grocery and eating house of João Romão and Bertoleza fill with laborers, and a sturdy Portuguese man waits an hour for Romão to talk about a job: the boss is busy and will only see him when the rush is over.
Analysis
One could feel, in that sanguine fermentation, in that lush greed of creeping plants that plunge their vigorous feet into the black, nourishing mud of life, the animal pleasure of existing, the triumphant satisfaction of breathing upon the earth
The narrator describes the tenement, awake, as an organism that seethes, and what those who live there feel is hunger, health and the taste of existing, not only poverty. The image of the creeping plants can be read as a celebration of that vitality, or as the book's way of treating the residents as part of the environment, which grows wherever there is mud and water.
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Chapter IV: Seventy Milreis and the Quarry
Section summary
Half an hour later João Romão sees the quarryman, referred by Machucas, who asks for seventy milreis when he pays no more than fifty, and who argues from the disaster of the week before at the quarry: a good worker costs less than the accident. Romão takes him to see the quarry, and on the way, as he crosses the yard, he gives Florinda a slap on the backside, and she threatens him with a watering can; he says haughtily that the police have never set foot there. At the quarry the man points out the wrong way of attacking the rock, the chips and granite blocks it yields, the workers' sloppiness, and says the stone is good, but not in the hands it is in. Romão gives in because he sees in him the one who would correct the work, and, since the man will live in the tenement and his purchases will come from the grocery, he thinks the seventy milreis will return to his drawer; only at the end does he ask the name, Jerônimo, and give him room number 35.
Analysis
Chapter V: Jerônimo and Piedade Arrive at the Tenement
Section summary
The next day Jerônimo arrives with his wife, Piedade, to occupy number 35, and the washerwomen comment on the couple's furniture, wary of new tenants; Leocádia says the previous tenant, a cigar maker, ran off owing money, and that João Romão emptied the room and kept what was his. The chapter tells that Jerônimo came from Portugal with his wife and daughter as a colono (a contracted farm laborer), left the farm empty-handed, and went to the capital to break stone; he rose to foreman at seventy milreis, saved, sent his daughter, Marianita, to a school, and left the quarry when the employer's successors reorganized the work. At Romão's quarry he takes over the direction of the work and reorganizes the crew, and in two months the grocer, radiant with the profit, begins to respect him as he respects no one, while in the tenement Jerônimo gains the prestige he had in the previous tenement. At night, after a day with the pick, he plays fados on the guitar with his wife by the door.
Analysis
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Analysis