It isn’t all roses for one side or the other, although, as we have explained before, the distribution of thorns is made according to the old familiar rules of disproportion and gives the lie to the dictum, which may be true in the world of navigation, The larger the ship, the bigger the storm. On land, it’s different. The Mau-Tempo family have only a tiny, flat-bottomed boat, and it’s only by chance and because of the demands of the story that they haven’t all drowned. However, their small craft was giving every sign of breaking up on the next reef or the next time the store cupboard was empty, when, unexpectedly, Sara’s brother, Joaquim Carranca, lost his wife. He wasn’t of a mind to remarry, nor did he have a list of potential brides, plus he had three children to bring up and a very bad temper, but hunger joined forces with a desire to eat, and this prompted brother and sister to unite lives and children. It balanced out nicely, the brother provided a new father, the sister a new mother, but it was all kept in the family, so let’s see how things turned out. It wasn’t any worse than what could have happened, and possibly better. The Mau-Tempo children stopped begging from door to door, and Joaquim Carranca had someone to wash his clothes, which is something every man needs, and, in addition, someone to look after his children. And since it is not the custom for brothers to beat their sisters, or at least not as often as it is for husbands to beat their wives, this was the beginning of better days for Sara da Conceição. Some may consider this to be very little. They, we would say, clearly don’t know much about life.
EVERY DAY HAS ITS story, a single minute would take years to describe, as would the smallest gesture, the careful peeling away of each word, each syllable, each sound, not to mention thoughts, which are things of great substance, thinking about what you think or thought or are thinking, and about what kind of thought it is exactly that thinks about another thought, it’s never-ending. It would be best to say that for João Mau-Tempo, these years will provide his professional education, in the traditional country sense that a workingman has to know how to do everything, from scything to harvesting cork, from clearing ditches to sowing seeds, and he needs a good strong back for carrying loads and for digging. This knowledge is transmitted across the generations with no examinations and no discussions, and it has always been the same, this is a hoe, this is a scythe, and this is a drop of sweat. It is also the thick white saliva you get in your mouth on furnace-hot days, it’s the sun beating down on your head, and your knees going weak with hunger. Between the ages of ten and twenty you have to learn all this very fast, or no one will employ you.
Joaquim Carranca remarked one day to his sister how good it would be to find a boss who would take them all on, and she agreed, a habit born of years as a submissive married woman, but in this case what flickered before her was the hope of spending a whole year safe from unemployment, that would be her one modest but sure ambition, for they could hardly aspire to anything more. At this time, three brothers inherited Monte de Berra Portas following the death of the old owner, their father, who had sowed his seed in the womb of a very canny mistress, who, while appearing to submit to the patriarch’s terrible whims and to his thunderous rants and rages, had gradually tamed him, like a lamb, so much so that he agreed, at the last, to disinherit his closest relatives in favor of his three natural sons. Pedro, Paulo and Saul took turns presiding over the estate, each taking a different season, and when Pedro was giving the orders, the other two obeyed, a system that could have worked well if each brother hadn’t chosen to spy on his other siblings, with Saul declaring that when he wasn’t in charge, the household went to rack and ruin, with Paulo stating that he was the only really capable administrator, and with all three becoming embroiled in domestic alliances and plots, as often happens in families. The story of this triumvirate would, alone, be enough to make an opera. And then there was the mother, who screamed that she had been plundered by her own sons, or to speak more plainly, robbed, after all she had done for them, putting up with being the servant of that old pig and now finding herself the slave of her own children, who kept her short of money and a virtual prisoner in the house. At night, when the countryside drew the silence up about it like a blanket, the better to hide itself away in the great secrets of the dark, you would hear what sounded like a sow having its throat slit and the loud stamping of feet, it was the war between mother and sons.
Joaquim Carranca found employment with these bosses, and João Mau-Tempo worked as a day laborer. All in all, they earned a pittance, enough, just about, for them not to be constantly hungry, but there
