The birds of dawn wake up and see no one working. The lark says, How the world has changed. But the red kite, soaring high above, cries out that the world has changed far more than the lark suspects, and not just because the men are working only eight hours now, as the ants know, for they have seen many things and have good memories, which is hardly surprising, since they’re always together. What do you say to this, Father Agamedes, I really don’t know what to say, Senhora Dona Clemência, apart from farewell to a world that’s going from bad to worse.
JOÃO MAU-TEMPO IS in bed. Today will be the day of his death. The illnesses that poor people die from are almost always indefinable, so much so that doctors find it extremely hard to fill in the death certificate unless they drastically simplify things, generally people die of some obscure pain or in childbirth, but how to translate this into clear nosological terms, all those years of studying count for nothing. João Mau-Tempo was in the Montemor hospital for two months, although this did him little good, not that this was the fault of the care he received, some cases are beyond salvation, and in the end, he was brought back home to die, and while his death here will be much the same, it will, at least, be quieter, there’ll be the smell of his own bed, the voices of people passing by in the street, the sounds made by the poultry at dusk, when the chickens go to their roosting places and the cockerel vigorously shakes its wings, who knows, he might miss these things in the next world. During the time that João Mau-Tempo languished in the hospital, he lay awake all night listening to the sighs and moans and sufferings of the ward, and fell asleep only toward dawn. He doesn’t sleep much better at home, but at least he has just his own pain to worry about now, and that is something to be resolved as a matter of confidence between his body and the spirit that still sustains it, with only his family as witness, and although one day their time will come, for they will not be left unharvested, even they will not be able to understand what it means to be a man alone with his own death, knowing, without anyone having to tell him, that today is the day. These are certainties that come into the mind when one wakes very early in the morning to hear the rain falling and dripping from the eaves like the threads of water from a spring, as children we used to perch on the lintel and, leaning against the door frame, hold out our hand to catch the drips, that’s what João used to do and others who are not João. Faustina sleeps on top of the chest, at her insistence, so that her husband can have the double bed to himself, and there is no danger that she will forget her duties, you can see her eyes shining in the night, catching either the gleam of the dying fire or the glow from the oil lamp, perhaps her eyes shine so brightly as a compensation for being deaf. But if she falls asleep and João Mau-Tempo’s pain becomes such that he cannot bear it alone, there is a piece of string linking his right wrist to his wife’s left wrist, having reached a certain age, they are not going to be separated now, he only has to give the string a tug and Faustina will wake from her lightest of sleeps, get up fully dressed, go over to the bed and in the great silence of her deafness take her husband’s hand in hers and, unable to do anything more, say a few comforting words to him, not everyone can boast of being able to do so much.
It isn’t Sunday today, but in this rain, with the fields waterlogged, no one can go to work. João Mau-Tempo will have all of his small family around him, apart from those who live far away and cannot come, his sister Maria da Conceição, who still works as a maid in Lisbon, still with the same employers, for such examples of loyalty do exist, give them some gold dust and, when you come back, you’ll find it all still there and possibly more besides, and his brother Anselmo, who went to live up north and was never heard of again, perhaps he’s dead, perhaps he’s gone on ahead,
