Raised from the Ground

It’s also like bending down, placing one hand on the earth and saying, Stop turning, I want to see the sun for a while longer. While all this is going on, this heaping of words one upon another, just to see if they come out differently, no one has noticed that the constable has entered the ring in search of a man, just one, who is not even a lion with a sickle and who has not even come very far, and that man, if he were given an exercise book in which to write down all he knows, as the four from Monte Lavre, Escoural, Safira and Torre da Gadanha will do the following day, that man would write on the first line or on every line, so that there could be no doubt and so that there could be no change of heart from one page to the next, as I say, if he were to write his name, he would write Germano Santos Vidigal.

They have found him. Two guards lead him away, and whichever way we turn, that is all we see, they lead him out of the ring, to the exit door from sector six, where two more guards join them, and now it seems deliberate, it’s uphill all the way, as if we were watching a film about the life of Christ, up there is Calvary, and these are the centurions in their stiff boots and warriorlike sweat, their spears cocked, it’s suffocatingly hot. Halt. A few men are coming down the road, and Corporal Tacabo, fearing that they might be José Gato and his gang, says, Keep walking, this man is under arrest. The passersby stay as far away as they can, pressed against the wall, they’re in no danger, it’s almost as if they were grateful for that order and for the information, and the cortege has only a hundred meters or so to go now. Up above, we can see her over the wall, a woman is hanging a sheet out on the line, it would be funny if that woman was called Verónica, but she isn’t, her name is Cesaltina and she’s not much of a one for churches. She sees the man pass by under guard, follows him with her eyes, she doesn’t recognize him, but she has a presentiment and presses her face to the damp sheet as if it were a shroud, and says to her son, who insists on playing outside in the sun, Let’s go indoors.

The guards cross the road that leads up to the castle, where it widens out to form a square, only a few more steps to go and so little profit in them, but if you think that is what the prisoner is thinking, you’re quite wrong, we can’t know what his thoughts are or will be, but now it’s up to us to start thinking. If we were to stay outside, if we followed that woman, Cesaltina, and sat down, for example, to play with her son, well, who doesn’t like children, but then we wouldn’t find out what is about to happen, and we can’t have that. Two sentries are at the door, the guards are on a war footing, raise up once again the grandeur of Portugal,^* you get a good view of the countryside from here, the chapel of Our Lady of the Visitation, who is as miraculous as they come, but we don’t want any pilgrimages here, and a few gardens, but in this cramped space there’s no room to see more. Let’s go indoors, says Cesal­tina to her son, Let us go indoors too, through here, past the sentries, they can’t see us, that’s our privilege, let’s cross the courtyard, no, don’t go in there, that’s a kind of dungeon, a kind of wholesale warehouse for criminals, tomorrow the men from Monte Lavre and elsewhere will come here, minor cases, this is the way, but don’t take that corridor, it’s around this corner, another ten paces or so, mind you don’t trip over that bench, here it is, we need go no further, we’ve arrived, it’s just a matter of opening the door.

We have missed the preliminaries. We lingered to look at the landscape, to play with the little boy who so loves to play in the sun, however often his parents call him indoors, and to ask questions of Cesaltina, whose husband is not involved in these troubles, he works for the council and is called Ourique, but all these things were merely excuses, delaying tactics, ways of averting our eyes, but now, in between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, traveling along the grooves between tiles as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. The hearing apparatus and musical education of ants do not allow them to understand what men say or sing, so they cannot catch every detail of the interrogation. But that doesn’t matter, in the morning, in this same barracks, albeit in a less secret place, the men from Monte Lavre, Torre da Gadanha, Safira and Escoural will be questioned too, and then we’ll hear everything, along with the insults, son-of-a-bitch, bastard, son-of-a-bitch, piece of shit, son-of-a-bitch, faggot, all of which is very trivial, and we won’t be offended by such trifles, it’s like a scurrilous form of the tittle-tattle exchanged