Iraçéma: the Honey-lips, a Legend of Brazil/Chapter 31
CHAPTER XXXI.
Softly sang Iraçéma, rocking the hammock to soothe her son.
The beach sands cracked beneath the strong firm foot of the Tabajára brave, who came from the sea-border with an abundance of fish.
The young mother crossed the fringes of the hammock that the flies might not tease her sleeping babe, and went forth to meet her brother.
"Cauby will return to the mountains of the Tabajáras!" she said gently.
The warrior՚s brow clouded over.
"Iraçéma sends away her brother from her Wigwam that he may not see the sorrow which fills it."
"Araken had many sons in his youth. Some were carried off by war, and they died like braves; others chose wives, and begot in their turn numerous off-spring. Araken had but two children of his old age. Iraçéma is for him like the dove which the hunter has stolen from its nest. Alone remains with the old Pagé the warrior Cauby, to sustain his bent frame and to guide his tremulous steps."
"Cauby will depart when the shade shall leave the face of Iraçéma. As lives the night-star, so lives Iraçéma in her sorrow. Only the eyes of her husband can banish the darkness from her brow. Go, in order that his sight may not wax dim at the sight of Cauby!"
"Iraçéma՚s brother will depart to please her, but he will return every time the Cajueiro flowers to feel in his heart the child of her bosom."
He entered the cabin. Iraçéma took the child from the hammock, and both mother and son remained pressed to the heart of Cauby. He then passed through the door, and soon disappeared amid the trees.
Iraçéma, dragging along her trembling steps, accompanied him for some distance, till he was lost to sight on the skirts of the forest. Then she stopped; when the cry of the Jandáia, accompanied by the infant՚s wail, recalled her to the cabin; only the cold sand upon which she had sat, kept the secret of the tears which it had drank.
The young mother gave her child the breast, but the babe՚s moan was not hushed. The scanty milk refused to flow.
The blood of the unhappy girl had been thinned by the ever-flowing tears of which her eyes had not wearied, and none came to her bosom, where the first nourishment of life is formed.
She dissolved the white Cariman[1] and prepared over the fire the Mingáo[2] to nourish her son. When the sun gilded the mountain-crests she set out towards the forest, carrying on her bosom the sleeping child.
In the thickness of the wood was found the lair of the absent Irára; the pups, still small, were whining and rolling over one another. The beautiful Tabajára crept softly up to it. She made for her child a cradle of a soft bough of the Maracujá, and sat down near it.
She took one by one into her lap all the pups of the Irára, and abandoned to their famished mouths her bosom, beautiful as the red Pitanga, which she had anointed with the honey of the bee. The hungry young ones fastened upon it, and greedily drained her breasts.
Iraçéma felt pain hitherto unknown to her; they seemed to exhaust her life. At last, however, her bosom began to swell, and the milk, still tinged with the life-fluid of which it is formed, gushed forth.
The happy mother cast away the little Iráras, and, full of joy, appeased the hunger of the babe. He is now doubly Moacyr, the son of pain, once born of Iracema, and secondly nourished by her.
The daughter of Araken at last began to feel that her veins were drying up, and withal her life, embittered by sorrow, rejected the nourishment which might have restored her strength. Tears and sighs had alike banished the smile and the appetite from her beautiful mouth.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work was published before January 1, 1931, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
|---|---|
| Translation: |
This work was published before January 1, 1931, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
