Raised from the Ground

in charge of clearing the area between Monte Lavre and Coruche. The road was built entirely by itinerant laborers, lots of people worked like that, putting in three or four weeks until they had earned enough cash and then others came to take their place. José Gato arrived and clearly knew what he was doing, so he was made foreman, although he kept away from the low-lying valleys. I was herding pigs at the time, before I got to know Manuel Espada, so I saw it all. It came to be known that he’d had a few run-ins with the guards, and then the guards learned, or someone told them, that he was in the area, and they hunted him down and caught him. They didn’t quite have the measure of him though. He was at the head of the patrol, looking all meek and mild, and the guards were following behind him, looking smug, then suddenly he bent down, grabbed a handful of earth and threw it in the eyes of one of the guards, and was gone. Until his final arrest, they never saw him again. José Gato was a true wanderer. And I reckon he was always a very solitary man.

THE WORLD WITH ALL its weight, this globe with no beginning and no end, made up of seas and lands, crisscrossed by rivers, streams and brooks carrying the clear water that comes and goes and is always the same, whether suspended in the clouds or hidden in the springs beneath the great subterranean plates, this world that looks like a great lump of rock rolling around the heavens or, as it will appear to astronauts one day and as we can already imagine, like a spinning top, this world, seen from Monte Lavre, is a very delicate thing, a small watch that can take only so much winding and not a turn more, that starts to tremble and twitch if a large finger approaches the balance wheel and seems about to touch, however lightly, the hairspring, as nervous as a heart. A watch is solid and rustproof inside its polished case, shockproof up to a point, even waterproof for those who have the exquisite taste to go swimming with it, it is guaranteed for a certain number of years, possibly many years if fashion does not laugh at what we bought only yesterday, for that is how the factory maintains its outflow of watches and its inflow of dividends. But if you remove its shell, if the wind, sun and rain begin to spin and beat inside it, among the jewels and the gears, you can safely bet that the happy days are over. Seen from Monte Lavre, the world is an open clock, with its innards exposed to the sun, waiting for its hour to come.

Having been sown at the right time, the wheat sprouted, grew and is now ripe. We pluck an ear from the edge of the field and rub it between the palms of our hands, an ancient gesture. The warm, dry husk crumbles and we hold cupped in our hand the eighteen or twenty grains from that ear and we say, It’s time to harvest. These are the magic words that will set in motion both machines and men, this is the moment when, to abandon the image of the watch, the snake of the earth sheds its skin and is left defenseless. If we want things to change, we must grab the snake before it disappears. From high up in Monte Lavre, the owners of the latifundio gaze out at the great yellow waves whispering beneath the gentle breeze, and say to their overseers, It’s time to harvest, or, if informed of this in their Lisbon homes, indolently say the same thing, or, more succinctly, So be it, but having said these words, they are trusting that the world will give another turn, that the latifundio will respect the regularity of its customs and its seasons, and they are relying, in a way, on the urgency with which the earth accomplishes these tasks. The war has just ended, a time of universal fraternal love is about to begin. They say that soon the ration books will be unnecessary, those little bits of colored paper that give you the right to eat, if, of course, you have the money to pay with and always assuming there is something for that money to buy. These people aren’t much bothered really. They have eaten little and badly all their lives, they have known only scarcity, and the hunger marches practiced here are as old as tales of the evil eye. However, everything has its moment. As anyone can see, this wheat is ripe and so are the men.

There are two slogans, not to accept the daily rate of twenty-five escudos and not to work for less than thirty-three escudos a day, from morning to night, because that’s how it must be, fruits do not all ripen at the same time. If the wheatfields could speak, they would say in astonishment, What’s going on, aren’t they going to harvest us, someone isn’t doing his job. Pure imagination. The wheatfields are ripe and waiting, it’s getting late. Either the men come now or, when the season is over, the stems will break, the ears crumble, and all the grain will fall to the ground to feed the birds and a few insects, until, so that not everything is lost, they let the livestock into the fields, where they will live as if in the land of Cockaigne. That is pure imagination too. One side will have to give in, there is no record of the wheat ever being left to fall to the ground like that, or if it did, it was the exception that proved the rule. The latifundio orders foremen and overseers to stand firm, the language is warlike, No going back, the imperial guard will die rather than