Raised from the Ground

to their deaths and aware of why they were dying. The bodies are carried away or buried where they fell, the latifundio is swept clean, and the land is left ready for the next battle. That is why the relevant trades have to be learned thoroughly and practiced assiduously, without a thought for expense, as when the Conde de Vimioso wrote this detailed letter to his majesty, Sir, the men of the cavalry should be armed with a carbine and two pistols per soldier, the carbines will take musket bullets or smaller and the barrel will be no more than three spans in length, which will be quite sufficient, because if they had to be reinforced, as such bullets require, thus making the barrel longer, the carbines would no longer be manageable, they will also need a metal charger for their powder flask, the pistols, too, will be of good quality, with a two-span barrel, and come with saddle holsters and two chains to hang them from, it would be useful if I could have some spare pistols and carbines so that we can make more of them, and a good quantity of iron should be sent to Vila Viçosa to be distributed to the riflemen, some of the iron can stay in Montemor and in Évora, those are my requirements for the cavalry, however, I leave it up to your majesty to decide what is most convenient.

His majesty, because of financial difficulties, did not always prove to be a prompt and generous paymaster, In Montemor we have been working on the fortifications with the two thousand cruzados that your majesty was kind enough to send and with the further two thousand donated by the people, and since the agreement was that your majesty would give six and the people another six, the town council has written to say that your majesty needs to give a further two thousand which they will then match, I told them that they should try to come up with that amount, and I, meanwhile, would ask your majesty to send your two thousand so that the people can then make their contribution. These are bureaucratic negotiations with distrust on both sides and a lot of buck-passing, but there is no haggling over blood, no one says, Why doesn’t your majesty give a liter of your own blood, red or blue, it doesn’t matter, because within half an hour of being spilled on the ground, it will be the same color as the earth. People don’t dare go that far, because even if the blood of the whole royal household, including that of all the heirs to the throne and any bastard children the king or queen may have had, were poured into the same vat, it would still not be enough for the necessities of war. Let the people give their blood and their money, and his majesty will give the same amount of money that the people paid him earlier in taxes and tributes.

There are, of course, always calamities. All this talk of cavalry, crusades and fortifications, as well as the blood that binds them all together, belongs to the seventeenth century, a long, long time ago, but things have never improved, that’s how, during the war of the oranges, we lost Olivença and never got it back, and thus, embarrassingly, without a shot being fired, Manuel Godoy, meeting with no resistance, marched in, and to our shame and his gallantry, he sent a fruit-laden branch from an orange tree to his lover, Queen María Luisa,^* all that was lacking was for us to lie back and serve as their bed and mattress. Infinite misfortune, inconsolable grief, both of which lasted from the nineteenth century to the day before yesterday, there’s something about oranges, they have a bad effect on both personal and collective destinies, if not, why would Alberto order any windfall oranges to be buried and say to the overseer, Bury the oranges, and if anyone picks them up and eats them, they’ll be dismissed as of Saturday, and some men were dismissed because, in secret, they did eat the oranges, that forbidden fruit, while they were still good, rather than leaving them to rot beneath the earth, buried alive, poor things, what did we or the oranges do wrong. But there is a reason for everything, let us take a closer look at the situation, because, toward the end of the war that has just begun in Europe, a certain Hitler, Germany’s very own Horques Alemão, will send children of twelve or thirteen to form the last battalions of the defeat, wearing uniforms so big they fall from their shoulders and hang about their ankles, carrying recoil rifles that their shoulders are too frail to withstand, and that’s precisely what the owners of the large estates complain about, that there are no longer any children of six or seven who can tend the pigs or the turkeys, what will happen if they can’t earn their daily bread, they say to the brutalized parents who have already given their blood and their money and still haven’t caught on, or are just beginning to feel the stirrings of mistrust, as, in another century, they distrusted the king’s scornful rebuffs.

Wars are the least of it. A man can get used to anything, and between one war and another, he has time to make a few children and hand them over to the latifundio, without a spear thrust or a rifle shot cutting short the dream that the boy might be lucky enough to be made a foreman or an overseer or a trusted servant, or might choose to go and live in the city, which provides at least for a cleaner death. The worst of all things are the plagues and the famines that occur most years, and which are the ruin of the people, leaving the fields empty, whole villages closed down, you can travel for leagues without seeing a soul,