Raised from the Ground

by José Saramago

  Then came the day when Sara da Conceição called her husband and he did not answer. That was the first time Domingos Mau-Tempo spurned his family and went wandering off. Then, Sara da Conceição, who had kept silent for so long about her life, asked a literate neighbor to write a letter for her, and it was as if she were pouring her whole soul into it, because such behavior certainly wasn’t what had made her fall in love with her husband. Dearest Father, for the love of God, please come and fetch me with your donkeys and your cart and take me back home with you where I belong and I beg you please to forgive me all the trouble and grief I’ve caused you as well as all you’ve had to put up with and believe me when I say how I regret not following the advice you gave me over and over not to make this unfortunate marriage to a man who has brought me only sorrow because I’ve suffered so much poverty disappointments beatings I was well advised but ill fated, this final phrase was drawn from her neighbor’s literary treasure trove, marrying the classical and the modern with admirable boldness.

  What would any father worthy of the name do, regardless of previous scandals? What did Laureano Carranca do? He sent his gloomy, ill-tempered son, Joaquim, to Canha to fetch his sister and however many grandchildren there might be. Not because he loved them dearly, they were, after all, the children of that drunkard cobbler, no, he didn’t love those chips off the old block, and besides, he had other grandchildren he preferred. And so, that poor woman and her children, abandoned by husband and father, arrived in Monte Lavre with the ruins of their furniture piled high on the cart, and some were given house-room by parents or grandparents, out of a somewhat tetchy sense of pity, while others were deposited in a hayloft until a home could be found for them. And when they had to find shelter, mats on the floor served them as beds, and for food the older children went begging, as Our Lord once did, for it is a sin to steal. Sara da Conceição worked hard, of course, because she wasn’t just there to bring children into the world, and her parents helped her out a little, her mother rather more generously, as is only natural, well, she was her mother. And thus they scraped along. A few weeks later, though, Domingos Mau-Tempo reappeared, prowling around Monte Lavre, trailing after his wife and children and finally ambushing them, contrite and repentant, to use his words, doubtless learned while he was sacristan. Laureano Carranca flew into a great rage, saying that he never wanted to see his daughter again if, heaven forbid, she went back to that useless, drunken scoundrel of a son-in-law. A much-chastened Domingos Mau-Tempo went to talk to him and assured him that he had changed his ways, and that this absence had shown him, blind as he was, how much he loved his wife and his dear children, I swear this to you, sir, on bended knee if necessary. Having somewhat assuaged their anger with all his tears, he and his family set off for a nearby hamlet, Cortiçadas de Monte Lavre, almost within sight of the paternal home. Having lost all the equipment that had allowed him, as he preferred, to work for himself, Domingos Mau-Tempo was forced to take employment with Master Gramicho, while Sara da Conceição labored away stitching uppers to soles, to help out her husband and keep her children fed and clothed. And the fates? Domingos Mau-Tempo once again began to slide into sadness, like a monster in exile, for that is the worst of all sadnesses, as you can see from the tale of Beauty and the Beast, and it wasn’t long before he said to his wife, It’s time to move on, I don’t feel comfortable here, wait for a few days with the children while I go and look for work elsewhere. Sara da Conceição, not believing that her husband would come back, waited for two months, what else could she do, and was once more the abandoned widow, then up he popped again, happy as a lark, full of sweet words, Sara, I’ve found work and a really nice house in Ciborro. And so they left for Ciborro, and things went quite well for them, because the people there were pleasant and paid their bills promptly. There was no shortage of work, and the shoemaker seemed to have lost his taste for the taberna, not entirely, that would be asking too much, but enough to make him seem a respectable man. And this happened at an opportune moment because, meanwhile, a primary school had been set up there, and João Mau-Tempo, who was the right age, went there to learn to read and write and count.

  And the fates? For some reason werewolves are drawn to crossroads, the poor wretches, not that I claim to understand such mysteries, dear reader, it’s as if they were under an evil spell, but on a particular day of the week, they leave their houses and at the first crossroads they come to, they take off their clothes, throw themselves on the ground, roll around in the dust, and are transformed into whatever animal has left its trail there, You mean any trail, or only the trail left by a mammal, Any trail, sir, once, a man was transformed into a cartwheel, and he went spinning and spinning along, it was terrible, but it’s more common for them to be changed into animals, as was the case with a man, whose name I can’t now recall, who lived with his wife in Monte do Curral da Légua, near Pedra Grande, and his fate was to go out every Tuesday night, but he knew what would happen, and so he warned his wife never to open the door when he was outside, no matter what noises she heard, because he uttered cries and howls that would freeze the blood of any Christian, no one could sleep a wink, but one night, his wife screwed up her courage, because women are very curious and always want to know everything, and resolved to open the door. And what did she see, oh dear God, she saw before her a huge pig, like a rampant boar, with a head this size, this big, and it hurled itself at her like a lion ready to devour her, but luckily she managed to slam the door shut, although not before the pig had bitten off a piece of her skirt, and imagine her horror when her husband returned home at dawn with that same piece of cloth still in his mouth, but at least it gave him an opportunity to explain that whenever he went out on Tuesday nights, he was changed into an animal, and that night he had been a pig, and he could have done her real harm, so next time she must on no account open the door, because he couldn’t answer for his actions, How dreadful, Anyway, his wife went to speak to her in-laws, who were most upset to learn that their son had become a werewolf, because there weren’t any others in the family, and so they went to a holy woman who recited the prayers of exorcism appropriate to such cases, and she told them that the next time he was changed into a werewolf, they must burn his hat, and then it would never happen again, and this proved to be a sovereign remedy, because they burned his hat and he was cured, Do you think burning his hat cured him because the sickness was in his head, I have no idea, the woman never said, but let me tell you of another, similar case, a man and his wife lived on a farm near Ciborro, why these things only happen between couples, I don’t know, where they raised chickens and other livestock, and every night, because it happened every night, her husband would get out of bed, go into the garden and start clucking, can you imagine, and when his wife peered around the door, she saw that he had been turned into a huge chicken, What, the same size as that pig, You may laugh, but just hear me out, this couple had a daughter, and when their daughter was about to get married, they killed a lot of chickens for the wedding feast, because that was what they had most of, but that night, the wife didn’t hear her husband get out of bed or hear him clucking, and you’ll never guess what happened, the man went to the place where the chickens had been killed, picked up a knife, knelt down by a bowl, and stuck the knife in his own throat, and there he stayed until his wife woke to find the bed empty, went in search of her husband and found him dead in a great pool of blood, you see, like I said, it’s the fates.

  Domingos Mau-Tempo went back to his old ways, wine, idleness, beatings, fights and insults. Mama, is Papa cursed, Don’t say such things about your father. These are words often spoken in such circumstances, and neither those intended as an accusation nor those intended to absolve should be taken seriously. Poverty was casting a dark shadow over the faces of these people, and the children who were old enough to do so went begging. However, there are still some kind, conscientious people, such as the owners of the house in which the Mau-Tempo family lived, who often gave them food, but children can b
e cruel, and although when bread was being baked in the owners’ house they always reserved a bread roll for João Mau-Tempo, the boys of the family, who went to the same school and were all friends, used to play a practical joke on João Mau-Tempo, tethering him with a rope to the trough with the bread roll before him and refusing to let him go until he had eaten it. And people say there’s a God.

  Then, what had to happen, happened. Domingos Mau-Tempo reached the last of his misfortunes. One afternoon, he was sitting on his bench polishing the heel of a shoe when he suddenly put everything down, untied his apron, went into the house, made up a bundle of clothes, took some bread out of the bread bin, put everything in a knapsack and left. His wife was working, along with her two youngest children, João was at school, and the other one was idling about somewhere. This was the last time Domingos Mau-Tempo left home. He will still appear to say a few words and to hear others, but his story is over. He will spend the next two years as a wanderer.

  NATURE DISPLAYS REMARKABLE callousness when creating her various creatures. Apart from those who die or are born crippled, some do manage to escape and thus guarantee the results of nature’s engeneration, to coin an ambivalent and therefore equivocal noun that combines generation and engendering, with just the right cozy margin of imprecision that surrounds the many mutations of what one says, does and is. Nature does not itself parcel out the land, but uses the system to its advantage. And if after harvest time the granaries of the thousand anthills of the fields are not all equally full, the profits and losses feed into the great accounting department of the planet and no ant is left without its statistical quota of food. In the settling of accounts it matters little that millions of ants have died from being flooded out, dug up or urinated on: those who lived ate, and those who died left the others behind. Nature doesn’t count its dead, it counts the living, and when there are too many of those, it organizes a new slaughter. It’s all very easy, very clear and very fair, and as far as the memory of ants and elephants can recall, no one in the animal kingdom has as yet complained.

  Fortunately, man is the king of the beasts. He can therefore do his accounts with pen and paper or by other, subtler means, murmured comments, hints, glances and nods. Such mimicry and onomatopoeia come together, in cruder form, in the songs and dances of struggle, seduction and enticement that certain animals use to obtain their goals. This may help in understanding Laureano Carranca, that rigid man of principle, think only of his inflexibility, his chill disapproval of his daughter’s marriage, and the game of emotional weights and measures that he practiced daily, now that he has his grandson João at home with him, an act of reluctant charity, and another, much more favored grandson called José Nabiça. Let us explain why, although it won’t really contribute much to our understanding of the story, only enough for us to know each other better, as the gospels urge us to do. José Nabiça was the child born to one of Sara da Conceição’s sisters and a man whose anonymity consisted in everyone pretending not to know who he was, when in fact his identity was public knowledge. In such cases, there is often a general complicity, based on everyone knowing the truth but feeling curious as to how the protagonists will behave, and what’s wrong with that, given how few distractions life provides. Such love children are often abandoned, sometimes by both mother and father, and consigned to the foundling hospital or left out on the road to be devoured either by the wolves or the Brothers of Mercy. Fortunately for José Nabiça, however, despite the taint of his birth, he was blessed with a father who had a little money and with grandparents who had an eye on a future inheritance, a remote possibility but of some substance nevertheless, enough to be a promise of wealth for the Carranca family. They treated João Mau-Tempo as if he wasn’t of the same blood at all, and so he, as the son of a cobbler-turned-vagrant, would inherit neither money nor land. The other grandson, though he was the son of a sin unpurged by marriage, was treated like a prince by his grandfather, who remained deaf to what people said and blind to the evidence of his daughter’s besmirched honor, and all because he had hopes of a legacy that never materialized. Proof perhaps that divine justice does exist.

  João Mau-Tempo had more than a year of schooling, and that was the end of his education. His grandfather eyed that skinny little body, pondered for the nth time those blue eyes that were immediately lowered in fright, and decreed, You’re to help your uncle in the fields, so behave yourself, because if you don’t, you’ll feel the weight of my hand. By work in the fields he meant clearing land and digging, a kind of brute labor quite unsuitable for a child, but it was as well for him to find out now what his place in the world would be when he grew up. Joaquim Carranca was himself a brute, and would leave João out all night in the fields, on guard in the cabin or on the threshing floor, when such duties were completely beyond the strength of a child. Worse still, during the night, out of pure malice, he would go and see if the boy was sleeping and then throw a sack of wheat on top of him and make the boy cry, and as if that were not enough, or, indeed, too much, he would prod him with a metal-tipped stick, and the more his nephew screamed and wept, the more the heartless wretch would laugh. These things really happened, which is why they’re hard to believe when set down as fiction. In the meantime, Sara da Conceição gave birth to another daughter, who died eight days later.

  There were rumors in Monte Lavre that a war was being waged in Europe, a place that few people in the village knew much about. They had their own wars to wage, and not small ones either, working all day, when there was work, and feeling sick with hunger all day, whether there was work or not. Not quite so many people died though, and generally speaking, any corpses entered the grave in one piece. However, as previously announced, the time had come for one of them to die.

  When Sara da Conceição heard that her husband had been seen in Cortiçadas, she gathered together the children who lived with her and, putting little trust in her father’s ability to protect João, she picked him up en route and sought shelter in the house of some relatives, the Picanços, who were millers in a place called Ponte Cava, about half a league away, the place taking its name from the bridge that crossed the river there. The bridge in question, however, was now nothing but a crumbling arch and some large boulders on the riverbed, but João Mau-Tempo and the other children would bathe naked there, and when João lay on his back staring up at the sky, all he could see was sky and water. It was there in Ponte Cava that the family chose to hide, fearful of the threats emanating from Cortiçadas via the mouths of well-known tattletales. Domingos Mau-Tempo might never have come to Monte Lavre if the messenger, on his return journey, had not told him that his family had fled in terror. One day, he slung a saddlebag over his shoulder and, blinded by fate, set off along cart tracks and across plains, and when he reached the mill, he stood outside, demanding satisfaction and the return of his family. José Picanço came out to speak to him while, in the depths of the house, his wife kept guard over the refugees. Domingos Mau-Tempo says, Good morning, Picanço, And José Picanço says, Good morning, Mau-Tempo, what do you want. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, I’ve come for my family, who, it seems, have run away from me, and someone told me that they’re living in your house. And José Picanço says, Whoever told you that was quite right, they are living in my house. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, Then send them out to me, because my wandering days are done. And José Picanço says, Who are you trying to fool, Mau-Tempo, you certainly can’t fool me, I know you too well. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, They’re my family, not yours. And José Picanço says, Well, they’re certainly in far better hands here, anyway, no one is coming out, because no one wants to go with you. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, I’m the father and the husband. And José Picanço says, Get out of here, I saw how you treated your honest, hard-working wife when we were neighbors, and your poor children, and the misery you put them through, in fact, if it hadn’t been for me and a few others, they would have died of hunger, and there would be no need for you to be here now, because they would all be d
ead. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, Yes, but I’m still the father and the husband. And José Picanço says, Like I said before, get out of here and go where no one can hear or see or speak to you, because you’re a hopeless case, a lost cause.

  It’s a beautiful day. A sunny morning after rain, because we’re in autumn now, you see. Domingos Mau-Tempo draws a line on the ground with his stick, an apparent challenge, a sign that he is ready to fight, at least that is how Picanço interprets it, and so he, too, picks up a stick. These are not his problems, but often a man cannot choose, he simply happens to find himself in the right place at the right time. At his back, behind the door, are four frightened children and a woman who, if she could, would defend them with her own body, but the forces are so unequal, which is why Picanço draws his own line on the ground. He needn’t have bothered. Domingos Mau-Tempo says nothing, makes no other gesture, he is still absorbing what has been said to him, but if he is truly to absorb it, he cannot stay there. He turns and goes back the way he came, taking the path that follows the river past Monte Lavre. Someone sees him and stops, but he doesn’t respond. He might perhaps murmur, Wretched bloody place, but he says it with great sadness, with the grief of having been born, because he has no particular reason to hate this place, or perhaps all places are wretched and all are cursed, condemned and condemning. He goes down a grassy slope, crosses a fast-flowing stream via three steppingstones and climbs up the bank. There is a hill opposite Monte Lavre, each man has his mount of olives and his reason for going there. Domingos Mau-Tempo lies down in the sparse shade and looks up at the sky without knowing that he’s looking at it. His eyes are dark, as deep as mines. He isn’t thinking, unless thought is this slow parade of images, back and forth, and the occasional indecipherable word dropping like a stone that suddenly rolls for no reason down a hillside. He sits up and leans on his elbows, Monte Lavre is there before him like a nativity scene, at its highest point, above the tower, a very tall man is hammering at the sole of a shoe, raising his hammer and bringing it crashing down. Fancy seeing such things, and he’s not even drunk. He is merely sleeping and dreaming. Now it’s a cart passing by, piled with furniture and with Sara da Conceição perched precariously on top, and he is the one who’s going to have to be the mule, fancy hauling all that weight, Father Agamedes, and around his neck is a bell without a clapper, he shakes it hard to make it ring, it must ring, but it’s made of cork, oh, to hell with mass. And coming toward him is cousin Picanço, who removes the bell and replaces it with a millstone, you’re a hopeless case, a lost cause.