Raised from the Ground (48 page)
Read Raised from the Ground Online
Authors: Jose Saramago
Overhead, the red kite is counting, one million, not to mention those we can’t see, for the blindness of the living always overlooks those who went before, one thousand living and one hundred thousand dead, or two million sighs rising up from the ground, pick any number and it will always be too small if we do the sums from too great a distance, the dead cling to the sides of the trailers, peering in to see if they recognize anyone, someone close to their body and heart, and if they fail to find the person they’re looking for, they join those traveling on foot, my brother, my mother, my wife and my husband, which is why we can see Sara da Conceição over there, carrying a bottle of wine and a rag, and Domingos Mau-Tempo with the noose still around his neck, and here’s Joaquim Carranca, who died sitting at the door of his house, and Tomás Espada, hand in hand with his wife Flor Martinha, what kept you so long, how is it that the living notice nothing, they think they’re alone, that they’re carrying on their task as living people, the dead are dead and buried, that’s what they think, but the dead often visit, usually in dribs and drabs, but there are days, rare, it’s true, when they all come out, and who could keep them in their graves on a day like this, when the tractors are thundering across the latifundio and there are no words that need go unspoken, Mantas and Pedra Grande, Vale da Canseira, Monte da Areia, Fonte Pouca, little water and much hunger, Serralha, home of the sow thistle, and so on over hill and vale, and here, at this turn in the road, stands João Mau-Tempo, smiling, he’s probably waiting for someone, or he can’t stir from the spot, perhaps because when he died he couldn’t move his legs, we take with us to our death all our ills, including the final ones, but no, we’re quite wrong, João Mau-Tempo has had his youthful legs restored to him, and he’s leaping about, he’s a dancer in full flight, and he’s going to sit down beside a very old deaf lady, Faustina, my wife, you and I ate bread and sausage one winter’s night and you got your skirt wet, ah, those were the days.
João Mau-Tempo puts his arm of invisible smoke about Faustina’s shoulders, and although she hears and feels nothing, she begins, hesitantly at first, to sing the chorus of an old song, she remembers the days when she used to dance with her husband João, who died three years ago, may he rest in peace, an unnecessary wish on Faustina’s part, but how is she to know. And when we look farther off, higher up, as high up as a red kite, we can see Augusto Pintéu, the one who died along with his mules on a stormy night, and behind him, almost hanging on to him, his wife Cipriana, and the guard José Calmedo, coming from other parts and dressed in civilian clothes, and others whose names we may not know, although we know about their lives. Here they all are, the living and the dead. And ahead of them, bounding along as a hunting dog should, goes Constante, how could he not be here, on this unique and new-risen day.
The translator would like to thank Tânia Ganho, João Magueijo, Rhian Atkin, David Frier, and Ben Sherriff for all their help and advice.
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J
OSÉ
S
ARAMAGO
(1922–2010) was the author of many novels, among them
Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda,
and
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis.
In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
* Mau-Tempo means bad weather.
***
* Blue and white were the colors of the old monarchical flag.
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* In French and Italian chivalric literature, Fierabras was a Saracen giant who sacked Rome and stole two containers of the fluid in which Christ was said to have been embalmed. This fluid was reputed to be able to heal any wound. Fierabras was, in turn, defeated by Oliveros, who gave the containers to Charlemagne so that he could return them to Rome. Roland became, in legend, Charlemagne’s chief paladin.
***
*
Ratinhos
in Portuguese; these were temporary workers from northern and central Portugal who went to seek work in the Alentejo.
***
* Afonso Anriques, or Henriques, was the first king of Portugal, nicknamed “the Conqueror.” Nuno Álvares Pereira (1360–1431) was a Portuguese military leader who played a crucial role in assuring Portugal’s independence from Castile.
***
* On May 28, 1926, General Gomes da Costa led an uprising in Braga, which was the prelude to the so-called National Dictatorship, which, in turn, paved the way for Salazar’s dictatorship.
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* Osberno was a crusader who took part in the siege of Lisbon in 1147, when the city was taken from the Moors by King Afonso I, and who received decisive help from crusaders from northern Europe. Osberno left a written record of the siege.
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* In 1800, Bonaparte and his ally, the Spanish prime minister Manuel de Godoy, issued an ultimatum to Portugal demanding that it enter into an alliance with France in the war against Britain and cede to France most of its national territory. Portugal refused, and in April 1801, French troops arrived in Portugal. On May 20, they were joined by Spanish troops under the command of Godoy. In a disastrous battle for Portugal, Godoy took the Portuguese town of Olivença and, following his victory, picked some oranges and sent them to his mistress, the queen of Spain. The conflict thus became known as the War of the Oranges.
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* The PVDE was created in 1933 by Salazar himself in order to prevent, repress and punish crimes of a social or political nature. In 1945, this body was dissolved and replaced by the PIDE (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado), whose task was to investigate, detain and arrest anyone suspected of plotting against the State.
***
* In August 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, between 1,300 and 4,000 Republicans —civilian and military—were rounded up and killed by Nationalist troops.
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* The opening lines of the Republican hymn to public education.
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* A reference to canto IX, verse 83, of
The Lusiads
by Luís Vaz de Camões.
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* A line from the Portuguese national anthem.
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* Literally, Big Spit and Little Spit.
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* Queen Isabel of Aragon, the wife of the Portuguese king Dom Dinis, was devoted to helping the poor. When her husband upbraided her for giving money to beggars, the queen drew back her cloak to reveal not money but a magnificent bunch of roses. The king, seeing this miracle, allowed her to continue her good works.
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* João de Deus (1830–1896) was the greatest poet of his generation, but he turned his attention to education. His
Cartilha maternal,
a reading primer published in 1876, was used in schools for more than fifty years.
***
† Chard.
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*
Casa do povo
in Portuguese. The organization was set up in 1933 to protect the rights and welfare of agricultural workers.
***
* Sousa was Saramago’s father’s name, Saramago being a family nickname, meaning wild radish, accidentally incorporated into Saramago’s name when his birth was recorded in the register of births.
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* In Portuguese, this is an untranslatable joke: “Qual é a pata direita do cavalo de Dom José?,” “Which is the right leg of Dom José’s horse?,” because the horse’s left leg is straight (
direita
) and the right leg (
direita
also means right) is bent.
***
* A prison camp in Cape Verde, known as the Camp of Slow Death, where Salazar sent opponents of his regime.
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* One of the heteronyms of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa and the main character in Saramago’s later novel
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis.
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* Filipa de Vilhena was a Portuguese noblewoman who became a symbol of patriotism in Portugal when, in 1640, she urged her sons to fight for the restoration of the country’s independence from Spain. Almeida Garrett wrote a play about her, which further contributed to her heroic image.
***
* Miguel Hernández, after whom this character is apparently named, was a self-taught Spanish poet who spent his childhood working as a farm laborer and goatherd. He published his first book of poetry at twenty-three and achieved considerable fame. He was active on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and after the Republicans were defeated, he was arrested several times and finally sent to prison, where he died of tuberculosis.
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* The Portuguese revolution in 1974 came to be known as the Carnation Revolution because, despite its being a military coup, no shots were fired and, in the streets, people handed the soldiers red carnations, which they pinned on their uniforms or placed in the barrels of their guns.
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* General Humberto da Silva Delgado was initially a staunch supporter of Salazar’s right-wing dictatorship and the youngest general in Portuguese history. However, he later became a defender of democratic ideals and decided to run for the Portuguese presidency in 1958. When asked what he would do about Salazar if he won the election, Delgado famously remarked, “Obviously, I’ll sack him.” As it happened, he won only twenty-six percent of the vote, losing to the government’s preferred candidate, Américo Tomás, amid widespread allegations of vote rigging. On February 13, 1965, Delgado and his secretary were murdered after being lured into an ambush by PIDE agents.
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* Américo de Deus Rodrigues Tomás became minister of the navy in 1944, was elected president of the Portuguese republic in 1958 and was reelected in 1965 and 1972. As president, he was a mere figurehead and widely lampooned. His one bold act was to dismiss Salazar after the latter suffered a crippling stroke in 1968.
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* A possible reference to Luís de Sttau Monteiro’s 1962 play
Felizmente há luar!
(
Fortunately There’s a Moon!
), which was banned because it was deemed to be critical of the Salazar regime and, in particular, of the Delgado-Tomás presidential campaign.
***
* A reference to the dramatic escape in January 1960 of ten leading members of the Portuguese Communist Party being held in the high-security prison in Peniche.
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* A reference to the hijacking of the Portuguese liner
Santa Maria
by the DRIL (Directorio Revolucionário Ibérico de Liberación) in 1961. The “pirates” sailed the ship out into the Atlantic and renamed it the
Santa Liberdade,
gaining the attention of the world’s press and hoping to undermine the Salazar and Franco dictatorships.
***
* Gugunhana, or Ngungunyane, was a tribal king of a territory in Mozambique. He rebelled against the Portuguese and was defeated by General Joaquim Mouzinho de Albuquerque in 1895. He lived the rest of his life in exile, first in Lisbon and then in the Azores, where he died in 1906.
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* All are names of Portuguese viceroys of India in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
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* Presumably a reference to Salazar’s entirely cynical view of rural life as some kind of idyll or paradise (for example, there were often competitions to find the most Portuguese village in Portugal). This paradise may not have a doctor, but there will always be a dragon or two in the form of a PIDE agent.