Raised from the Ground

traveled from Lisbon, they look like rooks perched on top of a holm oak, but that’s where you’re wrong, we are all rooks, lined up on the benches, flapping our wings, cawing away, and now it’s time for the music, it’s the national anthem, everyone stands up, some because they know it’s the thing to do, others out of pure imitation, Requinta reviews his men, Come on, sing, I wish I could, who knows the national anthem, if it was some popular song we all knew, that would be another matter, oh, are we leaving, no, it’s not time to leave yet, if only we could fly, spread our wings and fly far from here, over the fields, watching from on high the trucks driving back, how sad, it was all so sad, and we shouted as if we had been paid to do it, I don’t know what’s worse, it’s not right, it was like a carnival farce. So you didn’t enjoy yourself, João, Not a bit, Faustina, we went like sheep and we came back like sheep. By the time they’re in the truck again, evening is falling, an aid to melancholy, someone tries singing and two men join in, but when sadness weighs heavy, even that sad voice falls silent, and then they hear only the sound of the engine, and they sit in silence, being thrown about, a badly tied load, a loose load, this was no work for men, João Mau-Tempo. The truck drops the men off outside Monte Lavre, like a flock of dark birds who scatter, not knowing quite where to go, some go to the taberna to slake their thirst and their bitterness, others mumble to themselves, the saddest go back to their houses, We’re just like dolls to be traipsed back and forth, who’s going to pay us for today, I had work to do in the vegetable garden, it’s that wretch Requinta’s fault, I’ll find some way to get my own back, words and promises born only of the pain underneath, but they can give full expression to little of that pain, it’s too vague, it may not hurt but it cripples. That’s why Faustina asks, Are you ill. João Mau-Tempo says no, he isn’t, and if he says nothing more, it’s because he doesn’t know how to explain how he feels. Lying in bed, they talk a little more, So you didn’t enjoy yourself, Not a bit, and by way of pouring out his heart and confessing his feelings, João Mau-Tempo rests his head on Faustina’s shoulder and falls asleep.

The gentlemen of the estate go up the hill so that the sun will warm them alone, at least they do in João Mau-Tempo’s rough-and-ready dream, because the gentlemen have no faces and the hill has no name, but that’s how it is when João Mau-Tempo wakes up, and when he falls asleep again, a procession of gentlefolk are walking along and he goes ahead of them, digging up weeds with his mattock, clearing the way for that gay company of men, he pulls up the gorse with his bare hands, his hands are bleeding, and the gentlemen of the estate are laughing and talking, they are generous and patient when he falls behind in his weeding, they wait, they don’t mistreat him or summon the guards, they simply wait, and while they wait, they picnic, and João Mau-Tempo dredges up the strength from somewhere and lays in with his mattock, breaking the earth and slicing through the roots, he’s a man now, and above him, on the side of the hill, he sees trucks passing, bearing a sign that says Surplus Goods from Portugal, they’re heading for Spain, don’t give the reds an inch, as for those others, the saints, the pure ones, those who save me, João Mau-Tempo by name, from falling into hell, down with them, death to them, and now a man on horseback is coming after me, and the horse is the only thing in the dream to have a name, it’s called Bom-Tempo, well, horses have a long life, Wake up, João, it’s time to go to work, says his wife, and yet it’s still pitch-black outside.

OTHERS, THOUGH, HAD already got up, not in the sense of someone who, sighing, drags himself from the dubious comfort of a mattress, if he has one, but in that other, peculiar sense of waking in the middle of the day to discover that, only a minute before, it was still black night, for man’s true time and the changes to which he is subject are not ruled by the rising of the sun or the setting of the moon, objects that are merely part of the celestial and terrestrial landscape. It is true that there is a time for everything, and this particular event was fated to happen during harvest time. Sometimes, a physical impatience, not to say exasperation, is required for souls finally to move, and when we say soul, we mean that thing with no real name, which is perhaps merely the body, the whole body. One day, if we don’t give up, we will all know what these things are and how far they are from the words that attempt to explain them, and how far those words are from the things themselves. But this looks far more complicated when you try to write it down.

This machine looks complicated too, and yet it is so simple. It’s a thresher, never better named because that is precisely what it does, it removes the grain from the ear of wheat, separating stalks and husks from grain. From the outside, it looks like a large wooden box on metal wheels, connected by a chain to an engine that trembles, roars, rumbles and, if you’ll forgive the word, pongs. It was originally painted egg yolk yellow, but the color has faded beneath the dust and the harsh sun, and now it looks more