Raised from the Ground

by José Saramago

  A scorching June morning. Twenty-two men left Monte Lavre, separately, so as not to attract the guards’ attention, and met up on the riverbank, just beyond Ponte Cava, among the reeds. They discussed whether they should set off together and decided that, since there were so few of them, it would be best not to break up the group. They would have to walk farther and more quickly, but if things went well, they would soon find others to join them. They drew up an itinerary, first Pedra Grande, then Pendão das Mulheres, followed by Casalinho, Carriça, Monte da Fogueira and Cabeço do Desgarro. They would see how they felt after that, assuming there was sufficient time and enough people to send to other places. They crossed at the ford, where the water formed a sort of natural harbor, and they were like a band of boys, wearing very serious smiles, or playful recruits with few weapons, taking off their shoes and putting them on again, with someone saying, as a joke of course, that he’d rather spend the day swimming. It’s three kilometers to Pedra Grande, along a bad road, then another four to Pendão das Mulheres, three to Casalinho, and beyond that, it’s best not to count, otherwise people might give up before they take the first step. Off they go then, the apostles, they could certainly do with a miracle of the fishes, preferably grilled over hot coals, with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt, right here underneath this holm oak, if duty were not calling to us so softly that it’s hard to know whether it’s coming from inside us or from outside, if it’s pushing us from behind or is there up ahead, opening its arms to us like Christ, how amazing, it’s the first comrade to leave the fields of his own free will, without waiting for someone to give him a reason, and now they are twenty-three, a veritable multitude. Pedra Grande comes into sight, and the fields lie before us, they’ve nearly cleared them already, as if they were working out their rage, who is this talking to them, it’s Sigismundo Canastro, who knows more than the others, Comrades, don’t be deceived, we workers must remain united, we don’t want to be exploited, what we are asking for wouldn’t even pay for a filling in one of the boss’s teeth. Manuel Espada steps forward, We cannot be shown to be weaker than our comrades in other towns, who are also demanding a fairer wage. Then a Carlos, a Manuel, an Afonso, a Damião, a Custódio, a Diogo and a Filipe speak, all saying the same thing, repeating the words they have just heard, repeating them because they have not yet had time to invent their own, and now it’s João Mau-Tempo’s turn, My only regret is that my son António isn’t here, but I hope that wherever he is, he will be saying the same things his father is saying, let us join together to demand a decent wage, because it’s high time we spoke out about the value of the work we do, it can’t always be the bosses who decide what they should pay us. Appetite comes with eating, and the ability to talk comes with talking. The foremen arrive, gesticulating, they look like scarecrows frightening off sparrows, Get out of here, if these people want to work, let them, you’re nothing but troublemakers, you lot, you deserve a good thrashing. But the workers have stopped, they have set down the sheaves, men and women are coming toward them, dark with dust, too baked dry with heat even to sweat. Work has stopped, the two groups join together, Tell the boss that if he wants us here tomorrow, all he has to do is pay us thirty-three escudos a day. Christ’s age when he died, says one joker who knows about religious matters. There may have been no multiplying of the fishes, but there was a multiplying of men. They split into two groups and divided up the itinerary, with some going to Pendão das Mulheres and others to Casalinho, and they will meet back here on this hill to divide up again.

  In heaven, the angels are leaning on the windowsills or over that long balcony with the silver balustrade that runs right around the horizon, you can see it perfectly on a clear day, and they are pointing and calling mischievously to each other, well, it’s their age, and one angel higher up the scale runs off to summon a few saints formerly linked with agriculture and livestock, so that they can see what’s going on in the latifundio, such upheavals, dark knots of people walking along the roads, where there are roads, or along the almost invisible tracks across the fields, taking shortcuts, in single file, around the edges of the wheatfields, like a string of black ants. The angels haven’t enjoyed themselves so much in ages, the saints are giving gentle lectures about plants and animals, although their memory isn’t what it used to be, but still they expound on how to grow wheat and bake bread, and how you can eat every bit of a pig, and how if you want to know about your own body, just cut open a pig, because they’re just the same as us. This statement is both daring and heretical, it brings into question the whole of the Creator’s thinking, had he run out of ideas when it came to creating man and so simply copied the pig, well, if enough people say so, it must be true.

  The saints live so high up and so far away, and have so completely forgotten the world in which they lived, that they can find no explanation for the trail of humans walking from Casalinho to Carriça, from Monte da Fogueira to Cabeço do Desgarro, and now, while some head off in that direction, others are going farther afield, to Herdade das Mantas, to Monte da Areia, all of which are places where the Lord never trod, and even if he had, what would he or we have gained. They’re heretics, Father Agamedes will bawl each day, and he’s bawling these words out now from the window of his house, because the pilgrims are beginning to arrive in Monte Lavre, can this be the new Jerusalem, it’s like the morning procession on Ascension Day, and the corporal has just run across the road, heading who knows where, someone must have summoned him, The boss wants to speak to you, and he pulls on his beret and tightens his belt, that’s military discipline for you, because the guards fall just short of being an army, and it is precisely that shortfall that makes them feel hard done by, he enters the perfumed cool of the cellar where Humberto is waiting, Right, you know what’s been happening, and Corporal Tacabo does know, it’s his duty to know, that’s what he’s paid for, Yes, sir, the strikers have been visiting the workers on the estates and now they’re back, So what are we going to do, I’ve asked for orders from Montemor, we’re going to find out who’s behind the mutiny, Don’t worry, I have a list of names here, twenty-two of them, they were seen at Ponte Cava before they set off, and while he’s saying this, Corporal Tacabo has poured himself a drink, Norberto paced back and forth, bringing his heels down hard on the flagstones, They’re troublemakers, idlers, that’s what they are, they don’t want to work, if the right side had won the war, they wouldn’t dare to so much as wag a finger, they’d be quiet as mice, happy to be working for whatever we were prepared to pay them, this is what Alberto says, and the confused corporal doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t like the Germans and wants nothing to do with the Russians but he has a soft spot for the English, and when he thinks about it, he’s not quite sure who it was who won the war, but he takes the list of names, it will look good on his service record, twenty-two proven strikers is no small thing, even though the angels find it all terribly amusing, they’re young, you can’t really blame them, one day they will learn the harsh realities of life, if they start having children, always supposing there are girl angels, as is only right and proper, and then they’ll have to feed them, and if heaven becomes a latifundio, then they’ll see.

  But the ants won. In the fading evening light, the men gathered in the square and the overseers came, grim-faced and silent, but defeated, Tomorrow you can work for thirty-three escudos, that was all they said and then they withdrew, humiliated, thinking vengeful thoughts. That night, joy was unconfined in the tabernas, João Mau-Tempo, most unusually, dared to drink a second glass of wine, the shopkeepers are hoping to get some of their debts repaid and are considering raising their prices, at the mention of money the children cannot even think of what they would want to buy, and since the body is sensitive to the contentments of the soul, the men moved closer to the women, and the women closer to the men, and they were all so happy that if heaven understood anything about human lives, you would have heard hosannas and the clamor of trumpets, and the moon was its usual bright, lovely June s
elf.

  And now it’s morning again. Each day’s work is worth an extra eight escudos, which is less than a ten-tostão increase per hour or almost nothing per minute, so little that there isn’t a coin small enough to represent it, and each time the sickle cuts into the wheat, each time a left hand grasps the stems and a right hand deals a final, decisive blow with the blade at ground level, only someone versed in higher mathematics could say how much that gesture is worth, how many zeros you would have to add to the right of the decimal point, in what thousandths we could measure out the sweat, the tendon in the wrist, the muscle in the arm, the strained back, the eyes fogged with fatigue, the broiling noonday heat. So much suffering for so little reward. And yet there are still some who sing, although not for long, because they soon hear the news that yesterday, in Montemor, the guards rounded up agricultural workers in the area and put them in a bullring, penned in like cattle. Those with long memories remembered what had happened in Badajoz,* the carnage that took place there, again in the bullring, it doesn’t seem possible, they machine-gunned the whole lot of them, but it won’t be like that here, we’re not that cruel. Dark presentiments fill the countryside, the line of reapers advances hesitantly, unrhythmically, and the furious foremen take out their anger on the workers, anyone would think it was their money, Now that you’re earning more, I’ve suddenly got a fieldful of malingerers. The line grows livelier, they don’t want to seem to be in the boss’s debt, they move more quickly, but then their imaginations turn back to the bullring in Montemor full of our people, from all over the latifundio, and fear so dries the mouth that some call to the water carrier to let them drink, Who knows what will happen to us. The guards know, as they walk over the clods of earth, a few at each end of the line, rifles at the ready and fingers on the trigger, If anyone makes a run for it, shoot in the air first, then aim at their legs, and if you have to fire a third time, make sure you don’t have to shoot again. The reapers straighten up when they hear the names, Custódio Calção, Sigismundo Canastro, Manuel Espada, Damião Canelas, João Mau-Tempo. These are the local mutineers, the others are being rounded up right now, or they already have been or soon will be, if they thought they wouldn’t have to pay the price for their insubordination, they were roundly deceived, they clearly didn’t know the latifundio. Those left behind lower head and arms, bow their whole trunk with heart and lungs, their back struggling to keep them upright, and the sickle again slices through the wheat, cutting what, why, the dry stalks of course, what else. And beside the workers, the foreman growled like a wolf, You’re lucky you weren’t all taken away, that’s what you deserve, if it was up to me, I’d teach you a lesson you wouldn’t forget.

  The five conspirators are flanked by the guards, who taunt them, So you thought you could lead a strike and get off scot-free, did you, well you’ve got another think coming. None of the five men replies, they hold their heads high, but have pangs in their stomachs that are not hunger pangs, and they’re strangely unsteady on their feet, that’s what fear does, it takes you over and it makes no difference if you speak or keep silent, but it will pass, a man is a man, whereas, even today, we can’t be quite sure whether a cat is an animal or a human. João Mau-Tempo makes as if to say something to Sigismundo Canastro, but we never find out what it is because, as one man, one commander, with one will, the guards say, If you open your gob, we’ll hit you so hard you’ll leave teeth marks in the road, and so no one else dares say a word, and they arrive in Monte Lavre in silence, go up the ramp to the guards’ post, because they had been arrested by then, all twenty-two of them, so someone had obviously betrayed us. They put them in an enclosure in the yard at the back, piled them in with nowhere to sit but the ground, although what does that matter, they’re used to it, weeds can survive the hardest of frosts, they have skin as thick as donkey hide, which is just as well, because that way they get fewer infections, if it were us, frail city dwellers, we wouldn’t stand a chance. The door is open, but in front of it, under a porch, stand three guards, rifles at the ready, one of them doesn’t seem too happy in his sentry box, he averts his gaze, the barrel of his rifle pointing at the ground, and he doesn’t have his finger on the trigger, He looks quite sad, who would have thought it. The prisoners only think this, they don’t speak, they’re under strict orders, but Sigismundo Canastro does manage to murmur, Courage, comrades, and Manuel Espada says, If we’re questioned, the answer is always the same, we simply want to earn a just wage, and João Mau-Tempo says, Don’t worry, they’re not going to execute us or send us to Africa.

  From the street comes a sound like that of waves breaking on a deserted beach. It’s their relatives and neighbors come to ask for news, to plead for the men’s impossible release, and then the voice of Corporal Tacabo is heard, a roar, Get back all of you or I’ll order my men to charge, but this is purely a tactical threat, how are they going to charge if they have no horses, and one can hardly imagine the guards advancing with fixed bayonets to pierce the bellies of children or women, some of whom aren’t bad-looking as it happens, and old ladies who can barely stand and who are about ready for the grave anyway. But the crowd draws back and waits, and all you can hear is the soft weeping of the women, who don’t want to cause a scandal for fear that it might redound on their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, but they are suffering too, what will become of us if he goes to prison.

  Then, as evening comes on, a truck arrives from Montemor with a large company of guards, they’re strangers here, we’re used to the local ones, but so what, it’s not as if we’re going to forgive them, how can they have sprung from the same suffering womb only to turn on ordinary people who have never done them any harm. The truck reaches the fork in the road, and one branch leads off to Montinho, where João Mau-Tempo once lived, as did his late mother Sara da Conceição and his brothers and sisters, some of whom live here and others over there, but none in Monte Lavre, but this is the story of those who stayed, not those who left, and before we forget, the other road is the one the owners of the latifundio usually drive along in their cars, now the truck turns and comes bumping down toward them, belching out smoke and kicking up dust from the parched road, and the women and children, the older people too, find themselves pushed out of the way by the truck’s swaying carcass, but when it stops, right by the wall that surrounds the guards’ barracks, they cling to the sides in desperation, a foolish move, because the guards inside use the butts of their rifles to strike the people’s dark, dirty fingers, they don’t wash, Father Agamedes, it’s true Dona Clemência, they’re impossible, worse than animals, and Sergeant Armamento from Montemor shouts, If anyone comes too near, we’ll shoot, so we can see at once who is in charge. The rabble falls silent, retreats to the middle of the road, between the barracks and the school, O schools, sow your seeds,* and it is then that the prisoners are called out, with the patrol forming up in two lines from the door of the barracks to the truck and inside it, too, like a hedge, or like a net into which the fish, or men, were drawn, for when men or fish are caught, there are few differences between them. All twenty-two came out, and each time one appeared on the threshold, there came from the crowd an irrepressible shout or cry, or, rather, shouts, because by the time the second or third man had appeared, there was an incessant clamor, Oh, my dear husband, Oh, my dear father, and the rifles were trained on the malefactors, while the local garrison kept their eyes fixed on the crowd, in case there should be a rebellion. It’s true that there are hundreds of people there and that they are desperate, but there are the barrels of the rifles saying, Come any closer and you’ll see what happens. The prisoners emerge from the barracks, look frantically around them, but there’s no time, they are forced onward and when they reach the edge of the wall, they have to jump into the truck, it seems like a spectacle put on to terrify the people, and meanwhile the light is fading, and in the gloom they can’t make out individual faces, barely has the first man emerged than they are all in the truck and the truck is setting off, it swerves wildly as if t
o scythe through the crowd, someone falls, but fortunately suffers only a few scratches, downhill it’s easy, the men sitting in the back of the truck are thrown around like sacks, and the guards hang on to the sides, forgetting all about keeping their rifles trained on the crowd, and only Sergeant Armamento, with his back to the cab, legs straddled, faces the crowd running after the truck, the poor things are getting left behind, they gain on it slightly at the bottom, when the truck has to slow down to turn left, but then they can do nothing more, for the truck accelerates in the direction of Montemor, and the poor, panting people wave and shout, but both cries and gestures are lost as the vehicle moves away, they can’t hear us now, the faster runners among them try to keep up, but what’s the point, the truck disappears around the first bend, we’ll see it later on going over the bridge, there it is, there it is, what kind of justice is this and what kind of country, why is our portion of suffering so much greater, they might as well kill the whole lot of us, thus sealing our fate once and for all.