From the street comes a sound like that of waves breaking on a deserted beach. It’s their relatives and neighbors come to ask for news, to plead for the men’s impossible release, and then the voice of Corporal Tacabo is heard, a roar, Get back all of you or I’ll order my men to charge, but this is purely a tactical threat, how are they going to charge if they have no horses, and one can hardly imagine the guards advancing with fixed bayonets to pierce the bellies of children or women, some of whom aren’t bad-looking as it happens, and old ladies who can barely stand and who are about ready for the grave anyway. But the crowd draws back and waits, and all you can hear is the soft weeping of the women, who don’t want to cause a scandal for fear that it might redound on their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, but they are suffering too, what will become of us if he goes to prison.
Then, as evening comes on, a truck arrives from Montemor with a large company of guards, they’re strangers here, we’re used to the local ones, but so what, it’s not as if we’re going to forgive them, how can they have sprung from the same suffering womb only to turn on ordinary people who have never done them any harm. The truck reaches the fork in the road, and one branch leads off to Montinho, where João Mau-Tempo once lived, as did his late mother Sara da Conceição and his brothers and sisters, some of whom live here and others over there, but none in Monte Lavre, but this is the story of those who stayed, not those who left, and before we forget, the other road is the one the owners of the latifundio usually drive along in their cars, now the truck turns and comes bumping down toward them, belching out smoke and kicking up dust from the parched road, and the women and children, the older people too, find themselves pushed out of the way by the truck’s swaying carcass, but when it stops, right by the wall that surrounds the guards’ barracks, they cling to the sides in desperation, a foolish move, because the guards inside use the butts of their rifles to strike the people’s dark, dirty fingers, they don’t wash, Father Agamedes, it’s true Dona Clemência, they’re impossible, worse than animals, and Sergeant Armamento from Montemor shouts, If anyone comes too near, we’ll shoot, so we can see at once who is in charge. The rabble falls silent, retreats to the middle of the road, between the barracks and the school, O schools, sow your seeds,* and it is then that the prisoners are called out, with the patrol forming up in two lines from the door of the barracks to the truck and inside it, too, like a hedge, or like a net into which the fish, or men, were drawn, for when men or fish are caught, there are few differences between them. All twenty-two came out, and each time one appeared on the threshold, there came from the crowd an irrepressible shout or cry, or, rather, shouts, because by the time the second or third man had appeared, there was an incessant clamor, Oh, my dear husband, Oh, my dear father, and the rifles were trained on the malefactors, while the local garrison kept their eyes fixed on the crowd, in case there should be a rebellion. It’s true that there are hundreds of people there and that they are desperate, but there are the barrels of the rifles saying, Come any closer and you’ll see what happens. The prisoners emerge from the barracks, look frantically around them, but there’s no time, they are forced onward and when they reach the edge of the wall, they have to jump into the truck, it seems like a spectacle put on to terrify the people, and meanwhile the light is fading, and in the gloom they can’t make out individual faces, barely has the first man emerged than they are all in the truck and the truck is setting off, it swerves wildly as if to scythe through the crowd, someone falls, but fortunately suffers only a few scratches, downhill it’s easy, the men sitting in the back of the truck are thrown around like sacks, and the guards hang on to the sides, forgetting all about keeping their rifles trained on the crowd, and only Sergeant Armamento, with his back to the cab, legs straddled, faces the crowd running after the truck, the poor things are getting left behind, they gain on it slightly at the bottom, when the truck has to slow down to turn left, but then they can do nothing more, for the truck accelerates in the direction of Montemor, and the poor, panting people wave and shout, but both cries and gestures are lost as the vehicle moves away, they can’t hear us now, the faster runners among them try to keep up, but what’s the point, the truck disappears around the first bend, we’ll see it later on going over the bridge, there it is, there it is, what kind of justice is this and what kind of country,
