Tortilla Flat

John Steinbeck

Tortilla Flat (1935)

Tortilla Flat é o nome de um morro nos arrabaldes pobres de Monterey, na costa californiana, habitado por hispânicos, italianos, índios e outros desfavorecidos da escala social. Aqui conhecemos Danny, vadio e alcoólico, a quem calha em herança um par de casas degradadas. Pilon, seu amigo de desventura, faz um trato de arrendamento da casa mais pequena, que ambos sabem não ser para cumprir, pois vivem na penúria e cada dólar que conseguem arranjar serve para comprar vinho. Sucessivamente vão sendo apresentados Pablo, Jesus Maria, o Pirata e os seus cinco cães, Big Joe Portagee, outros tantos vadios, ao longo de capítulos que descrevem situações diferentes mas conclusivas, numa estrutura semelhante aos episódios de uma série televisiva. Entretanto a segunda casa arde, e todos se mudam para a casa de Danny.

Tortilla Flat, que em português foi titulado como O Milagre de S. Francisco ou Boêmios Errantes, é uma novela escrita num registo leve, com descrições cheias de humor. As personagens, quase todas dependentes do vinho, arranjam as desculpas mas esfarrapadas para justificar perante si próprias a cedência ao seu vício, tentando convencer-se que, quando fazem algo em seu próprio benefício, o fim último dos seus actos é o altruísmo. Não se pense contudo que Steinbeck atribuiu as estas personagens um mau carácter, ou que quis gozar com a pobreza. Pelo contrário, estas almas simples não regateiam a amizade e também são capazes de se entreajudar com pouco que podem oferecer.

Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.

Danny began to feel the beating of time. He looked at his friends, and saw how with them every day was the same. When he got out of his bed in the night and stepped over the sleeping paisanos, he was angry with them for being there. Gradually, sitting on the front porch, in the sun, Danny began to dream of the days of his freedom. He had slept in the woods in summer, and in the warm hay of barns when the winter cold was in. The weight of property was not upon him. He remembered that the name of Danny was a name of storm. Oh, the fights! The flights through the woods with an outraged chicken under his arm! The hiding places in the gulch when an outraged husband proclaimed feud! Storm and violence, sweet violence! When Danny thought of the old lost time, he could taste again how good the stolen food was, and he longed for that old time again. Since his inheritance had lifted him, he had not fought often. He had been drunk, but not adventurously so. Always the weight of the house was upon him; always the responsibility to his friends.

“Tea made from yerba buena will be good,” Pilon suggested. “If you will go to bed, Danny, we will put hot rocks to your feet.”

It was not coddling Danny wanted, it was freedom. For a month he brooded, stared at the ground, looked with sullen eyes at his ubiquitous friends, kicked the friendly dogs out of his way.

In the end he gave up to his longing. One night he ran away. He went into the pine woods and disappeared.

Li anteriormente:

A um Deus Desconhecido (1933)

O Inverno do Nosso Descontentamento (1962)