The first to arrive were Sigismundo Canastro and João Mau-Tempo, who have made a special effort to be early because one of them is new. While they waited, sitting in the sun so as not to get too cold, Sigismundo Canastro said, If you take off your hat, always place it on the ground crown uppermost, Why, asked João Mau-Tempo, and Sigismundo Canastro replied, So as not to reveal your name, we shouldn’t know each other’s names, But I know yours, Yes, but don’t say it, the other comrades will do the same, it’s just in case anyone should be arrested, if we don’t know each other’s names, we’re safe. They talked of other things too, just for talking’s sake, but João Mau-Tempo was still thinking about how careful they had to be, and when the man with the bicycle arrived, he realized at once that here was someone whose real name he would never know, perhaps because of the great respect with which he was treated by Sigismundo Canastro, who nevertheless addressed him as tu, but then perhaps that was the most respectful thing he could do. This is our new comrade, said Sigismundo Canastro, and the man with the bicycle held out his hand, it wasn’t the large, coarse hand of an agricultural worker, but strong and with a firm grip, Comrade, the word is not a new one, that’s what one’s work colleagues are, but it’s like saying tu, it’s the same and, at the same time, so utterly different that João Mau-Tempo’s knees buckle and his throat tightens, which is odd in a man past forty who has seen a great deal of life. The three men chat together while they wait for the others to arrive, We’ll wait half an hour, and if they don’t come, we’ll start anyway, and at some point João Mau-Tempo takes off his hat and, before putting it down on the ground, crown uppermost as Sigismundo Canastro had recommended, he quickly looked inside it and saw his name written on the band, in the hatter’s fine lettering, as was the custom in the provinces at the time, whereas city folk were already favoring anonymity. The man with the bicycle, as we know him, although João Mau-Tempo assumes that he has come all the way on foot, the man with the bicycle is wearing a beret, which might or might not have his name in it, and if it did, what would it be, after all, you can buy berets at markets and from cheap tailors who don’t take such pride in their craft and have no tools for doing poker work or gilding, and who don’t care whether their client loses a beret or finds it.
The other two men arrived within a few minutes of each other. They had all met on other occasions, apart from João Mau-Tempo, who was there as the prime exhibit, if you like, and at whom the others stared long and hard in order to memorize his face, which was easy enough, you certainly wouldn’t forget those blue eyes. The man with the bicycle asked gravely and simply for better punctuality in future, although he recognized that it was hard to calculate precisely how long it would take to cover such long distances. I myself arrived after these two comrades, and I should have been here first. Then money was handed over, only a few coins, and each man received small bundles of pamphlets, and if names had been permitted, or if the red kite had overheard and repeated them, or if the hats had sneaked a furtive look at the names on each other’s respective hatbands, we would have heard, These are for you, Sigismundo Canastro, these are for you, Francisco Petinga, these are for you, João dos Santos, none for you this time, João Mau-Tempo, you just help Sigismundo Canastro, and now tell me what’s been happening. The person he addressed was Francisco Petinga, who said, The bosses have found a new way of paying us less, when they have to take us on by order of the workers’ association,* they dismiss us all on the Saturday, every single one of us, and say, On Monday, go to the workers’ association and tell them I said I want the same workers back, that’s the boss speaking, and the result is that we waste all of Monday going to the workers’ association, and the boss only has to start paying us on Tuesday, what are we supposed to do about that. Then João dos Santos said, Where I live, the workers’ associations are in cahoots with the bosses, if they weren’t, they wouldn’t act the way they do, they send us off to work, we go where we’re sent, but the bosses won’t accept us, and so back we go to the workers’ association, but they won’t accept us either and tell us to leave, and that’s the way things stand now, the bosses won’t accept our labor, and the workers’ association either has no power to force them to or is simply having fun at our expense, what are we supposed to do about that. Sigismundo Canastro said, The workers who do get jobs are earning sixteen escudos for working from dawn to dusk, while many can’t get any work at all, but we’re all of us starving, because sixteen escudos doesn’t buy you anything, the bosses are just playing with us, they have work for us to do, but they’re allowing the estates to go to rack and ruin and doing nothing about it, we should occupy the land, and if we die, we die, I know you say that would be suicide, but what’s happening now is suicide too, I bet there’s not a man here can boast of having eaten anything you might call supper, it’s not just a matter of feeling downhearted, we must do something. The other men nodded their agreement, they could feel their stomachs gnawing, it was past midday, and it occurred to them that perhaps they could eat the bit of bread and scrape they had brought with them, but at the same time they felt ashamed to have so little, though they were all equally familiar with such dearth. The man with the bicycle is wearing clothes so threadbare that it’s as plain as day he has no lunch concealed in his pockets, and what we know and the others don’t is that the ants could walk up and down his bicycle all they liked, but they wouldn’t find a single crumb, anyway, the man with the bicycle turned to João Mau-Tempo and asked, And what about you, do you have anything to add, this unexpected question startled the novice, I don’t know, I have nothing to say, and he said no more, but the other men sat silently looking at him, and he couldn’t let the situation continue like that, five grave-faced men sitting under an oak tree, and so, for lack of anything else to say, he added, When there is work, we wear ourselves out working day and night, and still we starve, I keep a few bits of land they give us to cultivate, and I work until late into the night, but now there’s no paid work to be had, and what I want to know is why are things like this and will it be like this until we die, there can be no justice as long as some have everything and others nothing, and all I want to say really is that you can count on me, comrades, that’s all.
Each man gave his arguments, they are sitting so still that from a distance they look like statues, and now they are waiting to hear what the man with the bicycle will say and what he’s already saying. As before, he speaks first to the men as a group, then to Francisco Petinga, then to João dos Santos, more briefly to Sigismundo Canastro and then at length to João Mau-Tempo, as if he were putting together stones to make a pavement or a bridge, a bridge more like, because over it will pass years, footsteps, heavy loads, and below it lies an abyss. From here, it’s like watching a dumb show, we see only gestures, and there are few enough of those, everything depends on the word and the stress laid upon it, and on the gaze too, but from here, we cannot even make out João Mau-Tempo’s intensely blue eyes. We don’t have the keen vision of the red kite, which is still circling around, hovering over the oak tree, sometimes dropping down whenever the air current slackens, and then with a slow, languid beat of its wings rising up again in order to take in the near and the far, this and that, the excesses of the latifundio and just the right measure of patience.
The meeting has ended. The first to leave is the man with the bicycle, and then, in a single expansive movement, like a sun exploding, the other men head off to their respective destinations, at first keeping within sight of each other, as they would know if they were to turn around and look, which they don’t, that’s another of the rules, and then they are hidden, they don’t hide, but are hidden by a dip or vanish into the distance behind a hill, or simply into the distance and the intense cold, which they are aware of now, and which makes them screw up their eyes, you have to look where you’re putting your feet too, you can’t just amble along willy-nilly. The red kite utters a loud cry, which echoes throughout the celestial vault, then it moves northward, while the startled angels rush to
the window, bumping into each other, only to find no one there.
MEN GROW, AND WOMEN grow, everything in them grows, both the body and the area occupied by their needs, the stomach grows commensurate to our hunger, the sex grows commensurate to our desire, and Gracinda Mau-Tempo’s breasts are two billowing waves, but that’s just the usual lyrical tosh, the stuff of love songs, because the strength of her arms and the strength of his arms, we are referring here, by the way, to Manuel Espada, for three years have passed and there has been no inconstancy of feelings, but, rather, great steadfastness, anyway, the strength of their arms, male and female, is, by turns, required and rejected by the latifundio, after all, there is not such a big difference between men and women, apart from the wages they are paid. Mother, I want to get married, said Gracinda Mau-Tempo, here’s my trousseau, it’s not much to look at, but it will have to do if Manuel Espada and I are ever to lie down together in a bed that is his and mine, and in which we can be husband and wife, and for him to enter me and for me to be in him, as if we had always been together, because I don’t know much about what happened before I was born, but my blood remembers a girl who, at the fountain in Amieiro, was violated by a man who had blue eyes like our father, and I know, although quite how I don’t know, that out of my womb will come a son or a daughter with the same eyes.
If Gracinda Mau-Tempo really had said these words, there would have been a revolution on the latifundio, but it is our duty to understand what her actual words meant, mean or will mean, because we know how hard it is to express the little we do say each day, sometimes because we don’t know which word best fits which meaning, or which of the two words we know is the more exact, often because no word seems right, and then we hope that a gesture will explain, a glance confirm and a mere sound confess. Mother, said Gracinda Mau-Tempo, the little I have is enough for us to make a home, or perhaps she said, Mother, Manuel Espada says that it’s time we married, or perhaps she said neither of those things, but gave the great cry of a solitary red kite, Mother, if I don’t marry now, I’m going to lie down in the bracken by the fountain and wait for Manuel Espada to come and enter my body, and then I will lift up my dress and wash myself in the stream, and my blood will flow off to some unknown place, but at least I will know who I am. And perhaps it wasn’t like that either, perhaps one night Faustina said to João Mau-Tempo, possibly interrupting his thoughts about leaving some pamphlets in the hollow of a particular tree, She should get married now, she has her little trousseau ready, and João Mau-Tempo would have replied, It’ll have to be a modest affair, I’d like it to be a really special occasion, but that’s not possible, and António won’t be able to help now that he’s doing his national service, tell Gracinda to sort out the paperwork and we’ll do what we can. As ever, it’s still the parents who have the last word.
They have a house, one that suits their pocket, and since their pocket is small, the house is small too, and rented of course, just in case you were thinking that Gracinda Mau-Tempo and Manuel Espada were about to announce proudly, This is our house, no, they would rather hide the fact and say, I live over there somewhere, as if they were playing hide-and-seek or hunt the thimble, except, of course, those are games played at school or in the city, simply so that no one will know exactly where they live, in this house which is just walls and a door, with one room up and one down, a rickety ladder that wobbles when you climb it and no fire in the grate when we’re out. We’re going to live on the side of this hill in Monte Lavre, in this little yard, there’s not enough space to swing a hoe if we wanted to grow some cabbage, after all it does get the sun all day, although I don’t know that it’s worth the trouble, we’re hardly going to get fat on cabbage. We’ll sleep downstairs, in the kitchen, except it won’t be a kitchen when we’re sleeping in it, just as it won’t be a bedroom when we’re up and about, what should we call it then, a kitchen when we’re cooking, a sewing room when Gracinda Mau-Tempo is doing the darning, and a waiting room when I’m sitting looking at the hills opposite, with my hands in my lap, this may seem as if they’re just playing with words, but it’s simply their mutual excitement, each tumbling over the other in their eagerness to speak.
If we start to get too far ahead of ourselves, we’ll soon be talking about children and the problems they bring. Today is a holiday, Manuel Espada is going to marry Gracinda Mau-Tempo, there hasn’t been a marriage like this in Monte Lavre for a long time, that is, with such an age difference between bride and groom, he’s twenty-seven and she’s twenty, but they make a handsome couple, he’s the taller of the two, which is as it should be, although she’s not short either, she doesn’t take after her father in that respect. I can see them now, she’s wearing a pink, calf-length dress with a high neck and long sleeves buttoned at the cuff, if it’s hot, she’s not aware of it, as far as she’s concerned it might as well be winter, and he’s wearing a dark jacket, more like a three-quarter-length coat than the jacket of a suit, a pair of rather tight trousers and shoes that no amount of polishing will bring a shine to, a white shirt and a tie bearing a pattern of branches as indecipherable as the tops of trees no one has bothered to prune, but let there be no misunderstanding, the trees are just a simile, nothing more, because the tie is new and will probably never be worn again, unless it’s at another wedding, should we be invited. It’s not a big wedding party, but there are plenty of friends and acquaintances, and children attracted by the prospect of sweets, and old ladies at the door talking about heaven knows what, one never knows what old ladies talk about, whether they are uttering blessings or reproaches, poor things, what is the point of their lives.
The ceremony takes place after the mass, as is the custom, and people look a bit cheerier than usual because, luckily, there’s plenty of work around at the moment, plus it’s a nice day. Doesn’t the bride look lovely, the boys don’t dare make many jokes about marriage, because, after all, Manuel Espada is older, nearly thirty, a different generation from us, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, of course, since he’s only twenty-seven, but it’s an interesting situation, even the married men refrain from teasing him, the bridegroom is hardly a boy, and he always looks so serious, he was the same when he was a child, you can never tell what he might be thinking, just like his mother, who died last year. They’re quite wrong, though, it’s true that Manuel Espada has a grave face or countenance, as people used to say, but even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to explain quite what he is feeling, it’s like water singing as it rushes over the rocks up there in Ponte Cava, which is a bleak place and a bit frightening at night, but then, come the dawn, you see there was no reason to be afraid, it was just the water singing among the rocks.
Great injustices are committed because of how people look, that was the case with Manuel Espada’s mother, a woman who seemed to be made of granite, but who melted sweetly at night in bed, which is perhaps why Manuel Espada’s father is slowly weeping, some say, It must be tears of joy, and only he knows that it isn’t. Let’s see, how many people are here, twenty, and each one of them would make a story, you can’t imagine, years and years of living is a lot of time, and a lot of things can happen in that time, if we were all to write our life story, think how big that library would be, we would have to store the books on the moon, and when we wanted to find out who So-and-so is or was, we would travel through space to discover not the moon, but life. It makes us feel, at the very least, like turning back and recounting in detail the life and love of Tomás Espada and Flor Martinha, if we weren’t driven on by events and by the new life and love of their son and Gracinda Mau-Tempo, who have now entered the church, surrounded by a throng of excited children, take no notice, boys will be boys, while the older people, who are familiar with rituals and sermons, enter, looking composed and slightly constrained, wearing old clothes from a time when they were slimmer. Just this coming into church and being here, these faces, feature by feature, each line and wrinkle, would merit chapters as vast as the latifundio that laps around Monte Lavre like a sea.
Father Agamedes is at the altar, and I don’t know what exactly has got into him today, what fair wind greeted him when he got up, perhaps it was the Holy Spirit, not that Father Agamedes is one to boast of his closeness to the third person of the Holy Trinity, he himself doubts the simplicity of these theological formulae, but for whatever reason, this old devil of a priest is in a good mood, he’s very composed, but his eyes are shining, and that can’t be because he’s looking forward to satisfying his greedy appetite, there will hardly be an abundance of food at the wedding feast. Perhaps it’s simply the pleasure of blessing this marriage, Father Agamedes is a very human priest, as we have seen throughout this story, and even if, for the moment, he chooses not to think about the latifundio’s variable need for workers, he must be pleased that this man should join flesh with this woman and make children who will then grow up and who are sure to bring some benefit to the church by being born, marrying and dying, as the other people here present have and will. This is a flock that brings him little wool, but it’s better than nothing, out of these crumbs comes a sponge cake, Have another slice, Father, and drink this glass of port, and then another slice, I couldn’t eat another thing, Senhora Dona Clemência, Go on, make a sacrifice, Father Agamedes, after all, that’s what he does every day, the sacrifice of the holy mass, come closer now and I will make you man and wife.
Raised from the Ground Page 21