Raised from the Ground (26 page)

If the nations were telling the truth, this is the speech we would hear, give or take a comma or two, but then we would have to suffer the disappointment of ceasing to believe in the sweet fairy tales of yesterday and today, which are sometimes clothed in armor and gauntlets, sometimes in epaulettes and jambeaux, for example, the story about the little soldier in the trenches who missed his real mother, the heavenly one having already died, and who would gaze for hours at the portrait of she who brought him into the world, until a stray bullet, or an extremely well-aimed one from a skilled marksman on the other side, shattered the portrait, and the young soldier, mad with grief, clambered over the parapet and ran toward the enemy trenches, brandishing his rifle, he didn’t get very far, though, he was mown down in a hail of bullets, that’s what they say in war stories, said hail of bullets coming from a German soldier, who also had a portrait of his dear old mother in his pocket, we add this information so as to round out these stories about mothers and nations and about who dies or kills for such stories.

António Mau-Tempo left his work unfinished and headed for Monte Lavre, getting off the train in Vendas Novas, where he viewed from outside the barracks he would have to enter in three days’ time, before setting off to walk the three leagues home, and since it was fine weather, he walked at a steady but relaxed pace, leaving behind him on his left the firing range, an ill-fated place, and, like certain men, punished with sterile upheavals, he finally loses sight of it, or, to be more exact, when he can no longer see it, he puts it out of his mind, and feels upset just to think that he is about to lose his freedom for a year and a half. He thinks of José Gato, and wonders if he ever did his military service, and feels a great weight lifting off his heart, as if destiny were opening a door to the empty road before him and saying, Leave it all behind, why be stuck in a barracks, trapped between four walls, only to go back afterward to cutting cork, digging, scything, don’t be a fool, look at José Gato, now that’s what I call living, no one dares lay a finger on him, and besides, he has his gang, he’s the boss, what he says goes, and though you’re not the boss now, you could learn, you’re young, it wouldn’t be a bad beginning. Temptations, we all have the temptations available to us according to our class and background, as well as those we have learned. His plan may seem rash in a lad who comes from an honest family, apart from the stain left by the life and death of his grandfather Domingos Mau-Tempo, but you can’t spend your whole existence thinking about that, let he who has never dreamed of these and worse things throw the first stone, especially since, at this point, António Mau-Tempo doesn’t yet know the whole of José Gato’s story, which is still to come, and all he can think of is the delicious smell of pork bought clandestinely with his honestly earned money.

With fifteen kilometers to walk, a man has plenty of time to think, to weigh up his life, yesterday he was just a kid and soon he’ll be a recruit, but the young man walking determinedly along the road is the best cutter of cork of his nine fellow trainees, perhaps he’ll meet one of them in the army. The weather has warmed up, his bag doesn’t weigh that much, but it jogs against him and keeps sliding from his shoulder, I’ll stop here for a rest, a few meters off the road, not too far, but out of sight, on the grass because the earth is damp, I’ll lay my head on my bag and sleep, I’ve plenty of time to get to Monte Lavre. An old lady sits down next to me, bad luck for me and good luck for her, I don’t know what she wants from me, what power she has, perhaps she’s a witch, she takes my hand, opens my closed fingers, and says, According to your hand, António Mau-Tempo, you will never marry or have children, you will make five long journeys to distant countries and will ruin your health, you will never own any land of your own apart from the plot that will be your grave, you’re no different from other men, and that plot will be yours only until you’re nothing but dust and a few bones the same as everyone else’s, which will end up somewhere or other, my predictions don’t go that far, but as long as you’re alive, you will do no wrong, even if others tell you otherwise, but you must get up now, it’s time. But António Mau-Tempo, who knew he was dreaming, pretended he hadn’t heard this order and continued sleeping, a bad move because he never knew that a weeping princess had been sitting beside him, and that she had held his hand, so hard and calloused though he was still young, so young, and then, having waited a long time, the princess left, trailing the satin of her gown over the gorse and the rockroses, which is why, when António Mau-Tempo finally woke up, the shrubs and bushes were covered in white flowers such as he had never seen before.

These apparently impossible but entirely true incidents often occur on the latifundio. However, the reason António Mau-Tempo was deep in thought from there to Monte Lavre was that he had found two drops of water in the palm of his hand and couldn’t work out where they had come from, especially since they refused to mingle into one, but rolled around like pearls, such prodigies are also common in the latifundio, and only the presumptuous would doubt them. António Mau-Tempo would, we believe, still have those drops of water if, when he arrived home and embraced his mother, they had not slipped from his hand and flown out of the door, fluttering white wings, What birds were those, António, I don’t know, Ma.

S
OME PEOPLE SLEEP
very heavily, some lightly, some, when they fall asleep, detach themselves from the world, some have to sleep in a particular position in order to dream. We would say that Joana Canastra belongs to the latter category. If she’s left to sleep peacefully, which is the case when she’s ill, and if she’s not in too much pain, she lies there just as she did in the cradle, or so someone who knew her then would say, resting her dark, weary cheek on her open palm and immersed in a long, deep sleep. But if she has things to do, things that have to be done at a particular time, then fifteen minutes before the designated hour, she abruptly opens her eyes, as if in obedience to an internal clock, and says, Get up, Sigismundo. Now, if this story were being told by the person who lived it, you would see that already dastardly changes have been made, some involuntary, some premeditated and in accordance with certain rules, because what Joana Canastra really said was, Get up, Sismundo, and one can see how little such minor errors matter when both parties know what they’re talking about, the proof being that Sigismundo Canastro, who has his own doubts about how his name should be spoken or spelled, throws off the blanket, jumps out of bed in his long johns, walks over to open the shutters and peers out. It’s still black night, and only a very sharp eye, which Sigismundo no longer has, or millennia of experience, which he has in abundance, could distinguish the imponderable change taking place in the east, perhaps it is the fact, and who can comprehend such natural mysteries, that the stars are shining more brightly, when you would expect quite the opposite to be the case. It’s a cold night, which is hardly surprising, November is a good month for cold, but the sky is clear and will remain so, for November is also a good month for clear skies. Joana Canastra gets up, lights the fire, puts the blackened coffeepot on to heat up the coffee, the name that continues to be given to this blend of barley and chicory or ground toasted lupine seeds, for even they are not always sure what they are drinking, then goes over to the bread bin to fetch half a loaf and three fried sardines, leaving little if anything behind, and places them on the table, saying, Coffee’s ready, come and eat. These may seem trivial words, the poor talk of people with little imagination, who have never learned to enlarge life’s small actions with superlatives, compare, for example, the words of farewell spoken by Romeo and Juliet on the balcony of the room in which she has just become a woman, and the words spoken by the blue-eyed German to the no less maidenly, albeit plebeian girl who became a woman against her will after being raped amid the bracken, and, of course, the words she said to him. If these dialogues were being held on the elevated level demanded by the circumstances, we would know that, although this is hardly the first time Sigismundo Canastro has left the house, there’s more to this departure than meets the eye, which is why we’re telling you about it. Sigismundo ate half a sardine and a crust of bread, with no plate and no fork, slicing into the sardine and cutting chunks off the loaf with the keen blade of his penknife, and once this pap was safely in his stomach, he topped it off with the comforting warmth of that ersatz coffee, there are those who swear blind that the existence and harmonious coexistence of coffee and fried sardines is sufficient proof that God exists, but these are theological matters that have nothing to do with early-morning journeys. Sigismundo then put his hat on his head, laced up his boots, pulled on a worn sheepskin coat and said, See you later, and if anyone asks for me, you don’t know where I’ve gone. There was no need for him to give this advice, it’s always the same, besides, Joana Canastra would have little to say, because, although she knows what her husband is going to do, and she wouldn’t tell anyone that, even if they killed her, but since she doesn’t know where he’s going, she couldn’t tell them even if they did kill her. Sigismundo will be out all day and won’t return until after dark, more because of the path taken and the distance covered than because of the actual time it takes, although one never knows. The woman says, Goodbye, Sismundo, she insists on calling him this, and we shouldn’t laugh or even smile, after all, what’s in a name, and once he’d gone out through the gate, she went and sat down on a cork stool by the fire and stayed there until the sun came up, her hands clasped, but there’s no evidence that she was praying.

Faustina Mau-Tempo, at the other end of Monte Lavre, is not used to this, it’s the first time, which is why, although she knew her husband wouldn’t have to leave the house until sunrise, she couldn’t sleep all night, alarmed that the usually restless João Mau-Tempo should be sleeping so peacefully, like a man afraid of nothing, though he should be afraid. This is the body’s way of soothing the troubled soul. It’s daybreak, not daylight, when João Mau-Tempo wakes up, and the memory of what he is about to do suddenly enters his eyes, so much so that he immediately closes them and feels a pang in his stomach, not of fear but of quiet respect, the kind one feels in a church or a cemetery or when a child is born. He’s alone in the room, he can hear the sounds of the house and those outside, the cold trilling of a lone bird, the voices of his daughters and the crackle of burning wood. He gets up, he is, as we have said before, a small, wiry man with ancient, luminous blue eyes, and at forty-two his hair is thinning and what hair he has is turning white, but before standing up, he pauses to accommodate his body to the sharp pain in his side that always resuscitates after he’s been lying down all night, when it should be quite the opposite if his body has rested properly. He dresses and goes over to the fire in the kitchen, as if still wanting to savor the warmth of bed, you would never think he was a man accustomed to bitter weather. He says, Good morning, and his daughters come and kiss his hand, it’s good to see the family all together, all are currently unemployed, although they have plenty of things to do to fill the day, be it darning clothes or, in Gracinda’s case, working on her trousseau as best she can, though the marriage won’t be until next year, and that afternoon, she’ll go with her sister to wash clothes in the stream, a whole load of laundry from the big house, well, twenty escudos is better than nothing. Faustina, who is going deaf, didn’t hear her husband, but she felt him, perhaps the seismic tremor of the earth as he approached or the movement through the air that only his body makes, each body is different, but these two have been together for twenty years, probably only a blind man would make a mistake, and she has no problems with her eyesight, it’s her hearing that’s going, although it seems to her, and this is her usual excuse, that people nowadays gabble when they speak, as if they were doing so on purpose. This may sound like the sort of thing only the very old complain about, but these are simply people tired before their time. João Mau-Tempo is stoking up for the day, he drinks his coffee, which is as disgusting as Sigismundo Canastro’s coffee, eats some bread made from various flours, just which part of the wheat do they use in the flour, he wonders, and devours a raw egg, making a hole in each end, one of life’s great pleasures, when he can get it. The tightness in his stomach has gone, and now that the sun has risen, he’s suddenly in a great hurry, See you later, he says, and if anyone asks for me, you don’t know where I’ve gone, this is no pre-planned formula, they are merely the words that come naturally, and there’s no need to search for other reasons. Neither Gracinda nor Amélia know where their father is going, they ask their mother when he’s left, but she makes the most of her deafness and pretends not to hear. We shouldn’t blame the girls, they’re young and curious, certainly not irresponsible, an imputation that would doubtless offend Gracinda, who knows all about the exploits of Manuel Espada and his friends when they were only lads, and he was Monte Lavre’s first known striker.