THESE MEN ESCAPED from among the dead and the wounded. We will not name them one by one, it’s enough to know that some went to Lisbon to languish in prisons and dungeons, and others returned to the threshing machine, being paid the new wage for as long as the harvest lasted. Father Agamedes issues a paternal admonishment to these madmen, reminds them directly or indirectly how much they owe him and how they, therefore, have still more of an obligation to fulfill their Christian duties, for did not the Holy Mother clearly demonstrate her power and influence by touching the bolts on the prison doors and making them fall away and by prying open the bars on the windows, hallelujah. He makes these grand statements to a church almost empty apart from old ladies, because the other parishioners are still brooding over how much that gratitude has cost them and are not consoled. In Monte Lavre, they know little of the arrests, it’s all very vague, however often Sigismundo Canastro tells them how many there were, and only tomorrow will it become known how many deaths there were, as worker talks to worker, but the weariness of the living seems to hang heavier than a death about which they can do nothing, My father is ill and I don’t know what to do with him, these are private concerns particular to each household, not to mention that the harvest is coming to an end, and then what will happen. It will be no different from other years, but now Norberto, Alberto and Dagoberto are saying, through the mouths of the overseers, that this rabble will regret ever going on strike, and the extra money they earned will cost them dearly. Adalberto has already sent written instructions from Lisbon to the effect that, once the harvest and the threshing are over, he will keep on only the swineherds and shepherds and the watchman, because he doesn’t want his land trampled by strikers and idlers, later we’ll see, it depends on the olives, how are the olives doing, by the way. The overseer will reply, but this is the kind of correspondence no one bothers to keep, you receive the letter, do what it tells you to do or send an answer to the question asked, and then it’s, Now where did I put that letter, it would be amusing to base a whole history on such letters, it would be another way of doing it, our problem is that we think only the big things are important, and so we talk about them, but then when we want to know how things really were, who was there and what they said, we’re in trouble.
Her name is Gracinda Mau-Tempo and she is seventeen. She will marry Manuel Espada, but not just yet. She’s young, she can’t simply get married from one day to the next, with no trousseau, they will have to be patient. Quite apart from these obvious social obligations, they have nowhere to live, It would mean having to move somewhere else, You don’t want to be like your brother, always having to live so far away, I know it’s not the same thing, because you’re a girl, but it’s bad enough never seeing one child, ah me, that boy of mine. These are Faustina’s words, and João Mau-Tempo nods, he always feels a pang in his heart whenever they talk about his son, the little devil, who was only eighteen when it became clear that he had inherited his late grandfather’s wanderlust. Gracinda Mau-Tempo will tell Manuel Espada the substance of these conversations later, and he will say, I want to marry you and I don’t mind
