Raised from the Ground

him or my name’s not Escarrilho. He takes a long, long drink of water, he’s burning up with fever, then a kind of nervous fit comes upon him, and, energies replenished, he irrupts into the room again like a typhoon, and launches himself at Germano Santos Vidigal like a dog, he is a dog called Escarrilho, and it’s as if Escarro were urging him on, Go on, bite him, and perhaps he really does bite him, later on they’ll find teeth marks here and there, but whether they’re from a man or a dog is hard to tell, for sometimes, as everyone knows, men are born with dogs’ teeth. Poor dogs, trained to bite those they should respect and to bite parts of the body they should never bite, here, for example, the place that marks me out as a man, no more than they should bite a man’s arm or jaw, or this other place, the heart, our inner eye, or the head, where our real eyes are. But I was told as a child that this restless piece of machinery is what makes me a man, and although I didn’t really believe them, I’m fond of it, and it isn’t something that a dog should bite.

The large ant is on its fifth journey, and still the game continues. This time it was Escarro’s turn to go out for a rest, he went into the courtyard to smoke a restoring cigarette, then visited Lieutenant Contente in his office to ask about the progress of the field operations, the great maneuvers, and the lieutenant told him they were making a general sweep of strikers in the area, deploying all their manpower, it was good that they finally sent us reinforcements, he said, enough to arrest as many men again as we’ve got penned up in the bullring. And has that guy Germano Vidigal talked yet, asks Lieutenant Contente discreetly, because it really has nothing to do with him and Escarro is under no obligation to answer, but he does, Not yet, he’s a tough nut to crack, and the lieutenant, solicitously, helpfully, adds, You’ll have to tighten the screws still more. This mini-Torquemada of Montemor makes a good adjutant, offering them a roof over their heads and protection, and also throwing in a little free advice, but as he lights a cigarette, he hears Escarro’s ill-tempered response, We know what we’re doing, he snarls, then leaves, slamming the door and muttering, Imbecile, and, feeling perhaps put out by this exchange, he went into the room where the ants were and removed from the drawer a deadly weapon, a steel-tipped cat-o’-nine-tails, he looped the handle about his wrist to get a better grip, and as Germano, that foolish man of sorrows, tried to crawl away from his attacker, Escarro unleashed the whistling whip upon his shoulders, moving slowly down his back, centimeter by centimeter, as if he were threshing green rye, as far as the kidneys, where he lingered, blind even though his eyes were open, for there is no more dangerous form of blindness, rhythmically thrashing the man now lying on the floor, beating him methodically so as not to tire himself too much, because tiredness is the real killer, but gradually he began to lose all self-control and became a kind of manic whipping machine, a drunken automaton, until Escarrilho placed one hand on his arm, Don’t get carried away, man, you’ll kill the guy. Ants know about death, because they’re used to seeing their own dead and to making instant diagnoses, sometimes, on their travels, as they’re dragging along a grain of wheat, they stumble upon some small, shriveled, almost indecipherable thing, but they don’t hesitate, despite being encumbered by their load, they thoroughly investigate the object with their antennae, but their Morse code is quite explicit, This is a dead ant, and you only have to glance away for a moment, and when you look again, the corpse has gone, that’s what ants are like, they don’t leave behind those who fall in the line of duty, and for all these reasons, the large ant, which was on its seventh trip back and forth and happened to be passing, raises its head and studies the great cloud before its eyes, but then makes a special effort, adjusts its visual mechanism and thinks, How pale this man is, he doesn’t look the same at all, his face is all swollen, his lips are cut, and his eyes, poor eyes, you can’t see them for the bruises, he’s so different from when he first arrived, but I know him by his smell, because smell is the keenest of the ants’ senses. The ant is still thinking all this when the face is removed from view because the other two men turn the man over and lay him on his back, they throw water on his face, a whole jug of cool water, pumped up from the deep, dark well, little did that water suspect the fate awaiting it, coming as it did from the depths of the earth, after who knows how many years traveling underground, having known other places, the stony steps of a spring, the harsh brilliance of sand, the soft warmth of mud, the putrid stagnation of the swamp, and the fire of the sun that slowly erased it from the earth, vanished, gone, until it reappears in a passing cloud long, long afterward and suddenly falls to earth, falling helplessly from above, the earth seems beautiful to the water, and if the water could choose the places where it fell, if it could, there would be far less thirst or far less surfeit, yes, long, long afterward it fell to earth and went traveling, gradually evolving into pure, crystal-clear water, until it found a course to follow, a secret stream, this dark, echoing well, this surface perforated by a suction pump, and suddenly it’s trapped inside a transparent trap, a jug, is its fate perhaps