Raised from the Ground
Page 37
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.
Translator’s Acknowledgments
The translator would like to thank Tânia Ganho, João Magueijo, Rhian Atkin, David Frier, and Ben Sherriff for all their help and advice.
Visit www.hmhbooks.com or your favorite retailer to purchase the books.
About the Author
JOSÉ SARAMAGO (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.
Footnotes
* Mau-Tempo means bad weather.
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* 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.
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* Ratinhos in Portuguese; these were temporary workers from northern and central Portugal who went to seek work in the Alentejo.
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* 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.
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* 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.
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* 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.
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† 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.
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* 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.
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* 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.
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* 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 b
y 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.
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* 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.
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* 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.
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* An ironic reference to the first line of Luís Vaz de Camões’s poem The Lusiads, Portugal’s great epic, published in 1572. It glorifies the great Portuguese navigators, who set sail to discover new worlds. It is, of course, also an echo of the opening line of The Aeneid.
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* The expression in Portuguese is “em Abril aguas mil”—literally, “in April a thousand waters”—because April is traditionally a rainy month. This is Saramago’s version of that familiar expression.
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* The Largo do Carmo barracks was where Marcelo Caetano (appointed prime minister after Salazar suffered a stroke) took refuge, only to find himself surrounded by revolutionary troops.
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* Presumably a reference to an incident that took place during the Carnation Revolution in 1974 near the PIDE headquarters in Rua António Maria Cardoso, where a few desperate PIDE agents opened fire on the troops and the crowds surrounding the building. Four people in the crowd were killed. These were the only casualties in an otherwise bloodless coup.
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* These figures appeared on the bank notes of the time.
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