Doña Barbara
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Doña Barbara
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Overview
Following the epic struggle between two cousins for an estate in Venezuela, Doña Barbara is an examination of the conflict between town and country, violence and intellect, male and female. Doña Barbara is a beautiful and mysterious woman—rumored to be a witch—with a ferocious power over men. When her cousin Santos Luzardo returns to the plains in order to reclaim his land and cattle, he reluctantly faces off against Doña Barbara, and their battle becomes simultaneously one of violence and seduction. All of the action is set against the stunning backdrop of the Venezuelan prairie, described in loving detail. Gallegos’s plains are filled with dangerous ranchers, intrepid cowboys, and damsels in distress, all broadly and vividly drawn. A masterful novel with an important role in the inception of magical realism, Doña Barbara is a suspenseful tale that blends fantasy, adventure, and romance.
Hailed as “the Bovary of the llano” by Larry McMurtry in his new foreword to this book, Doña Barbarais a magnetic and memorable heroine, who has inspired numerous adaptations on the big and small screens, including a recent television show that aired on Telemundo.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226279206 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2012 |
| Pages: | 448 |
| Sales rank: | 451,280 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Doña Barbara
By Rómulo Gallegos, Robert Malloy
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 1929 Rómulo GallegosAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-27920-6
CHAPTER 1
WHO IS WITH US?
A large dugout was making its way up the Arauca, keeping close to the right side of the gorge.
Two boatmen propelled it by means of a slow, painful, and slavish manœuvre. Bronzed body bathed in sweat, apparently insensible to the torrid sun though but meagrely covered by dirty trousers tucked up above the knee, each in turn plunged a long pole into the muddy bed of the stream; then, with the upper end pressed against his powerful chest, set the craft in motion by tramping from bow to stern with heavy, measured stride and back bent from the strain. And while one struggled aft, panting, the other would return to the bow, renewing the desultory talk which lightened the bitter toil, or singing, between mighty in drawings of breath, some significant ballad of the boatman's life—the laborious poling of league upon league upstream, or the cautious gliding among overhanging boughs during the descent.
The patrón, a guide of long experience in the streams and channels of the plain of the Apure, sat in the stern, the bar of the tiller in his right hand, and kept a sharp watch for the currents which form among the tangles of waterlogged limbs and tree-trunks strewed on the river-bed, and for the eddies which would indicate the presence of an alligator lurking in ambush.
There were two passengers. Under the awning sat a young man whose strong, though not athletic, stature and decided expressive features gave him an air of almost aristocratic hauteur. His bearing and attire were those of the city dweller who is careful of his appearance. As though indicating a conflict of emotions concerning his affairs, the quiet pride of his expression would change for moments to a look of enthusiasm, and his eyes would light up joyously as he gazed at the surrounding country; but this would be followed by a frown and a dejected contraction of the corners of his mouth.
His fellow-passenger was one of those men of disturbing aspect and Asiatic cast of feature who make one think of the possibility of a strain of Tartar blood mysteriously introduced into South America at some unknown time. They belong to an inferior race, cruel, gloomy, and entirely unlike the inhabitants of the Plain. This man was stretched out beyond the awning, with his poncho beneath him, pretending to be asleep—a feint which did not influence either the patrón or the boatmen, who did not lose sight of him for an instant.
A blinding sun, the sun of the Plains at midday, flung its glare over the yellow waters of the Arauca and the trees along its banks. Through the open spaces occasionally breaking the almost continual density of the growths along the riverside could be seen, on the right, the basin of the Apure, a succession of small grassy plains enclosed by chaparral and palm trees, while on the left was the immense basin of the Arauca—its sides, vast green prairies stretching as far as the eye could reach, dotted at wide intervals by the blackness of wandering herds. In the deep silence the tread of the boatmen on the deck of the boat resounded monotonously, monotonously to the point of exasperation. Now and then the patrón would put a conch-horn to his lips, drawing from it a hoarse, groaning note which lost itself in the depths of the surrounding silence and was succeeded by the disagreeable chatter of the chenchena-fowls and the hurried plunges of the alligators dozing on the sunny deserted sand-banks—the fearful lords of the wide, silent, lonely stream.
The oppressive heat of midday increased in intensity. The sloughy smell of the tepid water broken by the boat became irritating. The boatmen had ceased to sing. The spirits of those on board were weighed down by the crushing atmosphere of the desert.
"We're coming to the Big Tree," remarked the patrón at last, turning to the passenger under the awning and pointing out a giant tree. "You can eat your lunch comfortably and have a good siesta there."
The disturbing passenger opened his slanting eyes a little and murmured:
"It's not far to the Bramador Pass, and there's a fine place there for a siesta."
"The señor gives orders here," the patrón said sharply, alluding to the passenger under the awning, "and he's not interested in the resting place at the Bramador Pass."
The man looked at him craftily and answered, in a voice as smooth and sticky as the quagmires of the Plain:
"All right, then, I didn't say anything, patrón."
Santos Luzardo turned his head suddenly. All at once, although hitherto oblivious of the man's presence, he had recognized that peculiar voice.
He had first heard it when crossing the gallery of an inn at San Fernando. Some cowboys had been talking about their work, and one of them broke off what he was saying and exclaimed,
"That's the man!"
The second time he had heard that voice was in a roadside lodging-house. The suffocating heat of the night had forced him to go out into the patio. In one of the galleries there were two men swinging in hammocks, and one of them had ended the story he was telling with these words:
"What I did was shove the dagger at him. He managed the rest himself. Went on pushing as if he liked the cool feeling of the steel."
Luzardo had heard the voice again, the night before. Just as he came to the inn at the place where he intended to cross the Arauca, his horse had a sunstroke, and he found that he would have to spend the night there and continue his trip on a river boat which at that season shipped hides for San Fernando. He had arranged for departure the following day. Just as he was falling asleep, he heard someone say:
"You go on ahead, partner. I'm going to see if there's room for me on the boat."
The three scenes flashed clearly and exactly across his memory, and Santos Luzardo drew this conclusion, which was to be responsible for a change in the purpose for which he had come to the country of the Arauca:
"This fellow has been following me all the way from San Fernando. That business of the fever was just a blind. I wonder why that didn't occur to me this morning?"
As it happened, the man had appeared that morning at dawn, just as the boat was about to leave. He was shivering, wrapped up in his poncho, and had asked the patrón:
"Will you take me along a little ways? I've got to get to the Bramador Pass and I can't sit on a horse with this fever. I'll pay well, you know."
"I'm sorry, my friend," answered the patrón, after a keen glance at the stranger. The patrón was, like all llanero, or Plainsmen, a bit suspicious. "I can't give you a lift, because the señor has hired the boat, and he wants to go alone."
But Luzardo, without any question, and without noticing the significant wink of the riverman, had allowed the man to come aboard.
Now he watched him out of the corner of his eye, and asked himself:
"I wonder what this fellow is about? He's already had plenty of chances to knife me, if that's what he was sent for. I'll bet he's one of the El Miedo outfit. I'll find out, pretty soon."
And putting his sudden thought into words, he asked the patrón, raising his voice:
"Tell me, patrón: Do you know this Doña Barbara of whom there are so many tales told in the Apure country?"
The boatmen glanced at each other, and the master, after a moment's pause, answered with the phrase used by the Plainsman confronted with an indiscreet question:
"I'll tell you, young man: I come from a place a long way from here."
Luzardo smiled knowingly; but he was determined to carry out his idea of sounding the disquieting stranger, and so added, without taking his eyes off the latter:
"They say she's a desperate woman, and leader of a troop of bandits she orders to assassinate anyone who shows any signs of opposing her."
A sudden movement of the patrón's steering hand made the boat swerve roughly, and one of the boatmen, pointing to what looked like a mass of tree trunks washed up on the right bank, exclaimed, turning to Luzardo:
"Look! You wanted to shoot alligators. See how they're piled up on the sand there!"
Luzardo smiled again, with the same knowing expression on his face; and standing up, brought the stock of his rifle to his shoulder. But the shot missed its mark, and the huge reptiles slid hurriedly into the water, churning it until it boiled.
When he saw the beasts plunge unharmed into the water, the stranger muttered, "Fine beasts, but they got away alive."
But only the patrón could hear him, and he looked the man over from head to foot as though he wanted to drag the dark meaning of his remark out of his body. The stranger pretended to be unaware of this attention, and when he had gotten to his feet and had stretched himself, slowly and freely, he said:
"Good. Here we are at the Big Tree, and my fever's all sweated out. Too bad it's gone."
Now Luzardo was the one who remained silent—a sombre silence—and in the meantime the boat had come to a stop at the place selected by the patrón for their midday rest. All got out. The boatmen drove a stake into the sand and moored the craft to it. The stranger went into the thicket, and Luzardo, seeing him go away, asked the patrón:
"Do you know that man?"
"Know him? Well, not exactly, because it's the first time I've come across him; but I think he's the one people around here call the Wizard."
One of the boatmen intervened:
"And you're not making a mistake, chief. That's the man."
"And this Wizard, what sort of person is he?" Luzardo asked.
"Think the worst things you can about a person, and put a little more with that, and don't be afraid that you're going too far," replied the riverman. "He's not from these parts. A guate, as we say here. A footpad from San Camilo, and he came down here some years ago, from ranch to ranch, all through the Arauca basin, until he got to Doña Barbara's place, where he works now. You know the saying: 'God makes them and the Devil brings them together.' They call him the Wizard because he is so good at catching wild horses. They say besides that he knows prayers that never fail to cure worms in horses and cattle. But if you ask me, his real business is something else. I mean what you spoke of before—Really, you nearly made me upset the boat!—That is, he's Doña Barbara's chief cut-throat."
"Then I wasn't mistaken."
"Where you were mistaken was in giving him a place on the boat. And let me give you a bit of advice, since you're a young man and a stranger here: Don't travel with anybody you don't know as well as the palm of your own hand. And since I've made free to give one bit of advice, I'm going to give you another, because I like you. Be very careful of Doña Barbara. You're going to Altamira, and that is, so to speak, her back gate. I can tell you now that I do know her. She's a woman who has pocketed heaps of men, and she never misses when she begins sweet-talking. She gives a man a love potion and ties him to her apron-strings, and then does what she likes with him, because she knows witchcraft. And if it's a case of an enemy, she don't shed tears at sending somebody who's daring enough to put him out of the way. And that's what she keeps the Wizard for. I don't know what you're looking for around here, but let me tell you again: Be careful. That woman's got a cemetery of her own."
Santos Luzardo remained wrapped in thought, and the patrón, fearing that he had said more than he had been asked to, added reassuringly:
"But I'll tell you the other side, too. All this is what people say, but you don't need to put much faith in it, because the Plainsmen are a born race of liars, I'm sorry to say, and even when they are telling the truth they exaggerate it so much that it might as well be a lie. Besides, there's nothing to worry about for the time being. We've four men and a rifle, and The Little Old Father is with us."
While they were talking on the beach, the Wizard, hidden behind a hummock, was listening to the conversation as he ate, with the slowness characteristic of his movements, the lunch he had in his knapsack. Meanwhile the boatmen had spread Luzardo's blanket under the tree, placing upon it the bag in which he carried his provisions. Then they fetched their own food from the boat, and the patrón joined them. During the time they spent eating their frugal lunch in the shade of a tree, the leader told Santos some of the incidents of his life on the streams and channels of the Plains. At last, wearied by the heat, he lapsed into silence, and all was still save for the gentle lapping of the waves against the sides of the boat.
Worn out with their toil, the boatmen flung themselves on their backs and soon began to snore. Luzardo leaned against the trunk of the tree and, crushed by the loneliness of the wild surroundings, he let sleep overcome him.
When he awoke, the watchful patrón said to him:
"You've had a good siesta."
And in truth, the afternoon was nearly at an end, and the breath of a fresh breeze was moving over the Arauca. Hundreds of black points bristled on the wide surface—the snouts of alligators breathing just flush with the level of the stream, motionless, lulled by the warm caress of the muddy waters. Then, in the middle of the river, slowly arose the head of an immense alligator. He came entirely to the surface, lazily blinking his scaly eyelids.
Santos Luzardo grabbed the rifle and stood up, eager to make up for his earlier failure. But the patrón intervened:
"Don't shoot him."
"Why, patrón?"
"Because—Because another of them might pay us off if you hit him, or even if you miss him. That's the One-Eyed Alligator of the Bramador Pass, and bullets don't go into him."
And as Santos seemed determined, he repeated:
"Don't shoot, my boy. Listen to me."
As he said this, his gaze turned, with a swift expression of warning, towards something which seemed to be on the other side of the tree. Santos turned and discovered the Wizard, leaning against the trunk and apparently asleep. He left the rifle where he had got it, went around the tree, and stopping short in front of the man, demanded, without paying any attention to the feigned slumber:
"So you like to hear what other people are saying, eh?"
The man opened his eyes, slowly, as the alligator had done, and replied with perfect calm:
"I like to be quiet when I'm thinking."
"What do you think about when you're pretending to be asleep?"
The man bore the gaze of his interlocutor without flinching, and said:
"The señor is right. The land is wide, and there's room for all of us without bothering each other. Excuse me for coming to rest against this tree. Sabe?"
And he went farther off to lie down, flat on his back with his hands under his neck.
The little scene had been watched expectantly by the patrón and the boatmen, who had, upon hearing voices, awakened with the rapidity characteristic of men whose lives are spent among dangers and who pass immediately from heavy sleep to watchfulness. The patrón murmured:
"Hoho! The tenderfoot isn't afraid of the Terror of the Savannah?"
Luzardo suggested at that moment:
"Whenever you're ready, patrón, we can go on. We've had our bit of rest."
"Right away, then," replied the patrón; and addressing the Wizard in a tone of authority:
"Get up, my friend! We're going."
"Thank you, señor," the man answered, without budging. "Very much obliged to you for wanting to take me all the way, but I can go on from here by shanks' mare. I'm not very far from home. I won't ask how much I owe you, because I know that people of your class aren't used to making dead beats pay you for favours. But, at your service! My name is Melquíades Gamarra, your servant, and I wish you a good voyage indeed, señor."
Santos was already going towards the boat, when the patrón, after exchanging a few words in a low voice with the boatmen, stopped him, determined to anticipate any emergency:
"Just a minute. I won't let this man travel behind us in this jungle. Either he goes ahead or we take him in the boat."
The Wizard, whose ears were of the keenest, heard what was said.
"Don't be afraid, patrón. I'm going ahead of you. And thank you for the good character you've given me."
And saying this, he stood up, gathered up his poncho, slung the knapsack over his shoulder, all with entire calm, and set off along the open plain which stretched out, a little way from the forest, along the bank.
The others got into the boat. The boatmen untied the rope, and after pushing the craft into deep water, leaped on board and seized their poles, while the patrón, already at the tiller, asked Luzardo out of a clear sky:
"Are you a good shot? Excuse my curiosity."
"It looks as though I'm a very poor one, patrón. So bad that you didn't want me to try again. No doubt, I've had better luck at other times."
"Evidently!" exclaimed the riverman. "You're not a bad shot. I knew that, from the way you took aim. And yet the bullet was about six yards away from the alligators."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Doña Barbara by Rómulo Gallegos, Robert Malloy. Copyright © 1929 Rómulo Gallegos. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
ForewordPart I
Who is with Us?
The Descendant of the Cunavichero
The Ogress
A Thousand Different Paths
The Lance-Head in the Wall
The Memory of Hasdrubal
The Tawny Bull
The Horse-Breaking
The Sphinx of the Savannah
The Spectre of La Barquerena
The Sleeping Beauty
The Day Will Come
Señor Danger
Part II
An Unusual Event
The Trainers
The Furies
The Rodeo
Mutations
The Terror of the Bramador
Wild Honey
The Phoenix
The Dance
A Passion without a Name
Imaginary Solutions
Song and Story
The Evil-Eye and Her Shadow
Part III
The Terror of the Savannahs
The Whirlwinds
Ño Pernalete
The Cross Roads
Man’s Hour
The Ineffable Discovery
Inscrutable Designs
Red Glory
Amusement for Señor Danger
Withdrawal
Light in the Cave
Dotting the E’s
Daughter of the Rivers
The Gleam of a Star
Many Horizons, Many Paths
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