Look at these children, it doesn’t matter which one, the oldest boy, or the middle child, or the youngest, lying in a box in the shade of the holm oak while her mother, let’s say the child is a girl, works nearby, not so near that she can see her, and like all children, especially when they can’t yet talk, she gets a pain in her belly, or not even that, just the usual outpouring of poo, at least she hasn’t got dysentery this time, and by the time Faustina comes back, it’s lunchtime, and Gracinda is covered in excrement and flies like the dung heap she has, alas, become. By the time her mother has washed, and washed not just Gracinda’s little body, which is smeared all over, but also the rags covering her and which she hopes will dry draped over this pile of firewood, lunchtime has passed and so has her appetite. At this point, we don’t know who to take care of first, Gracinda, who, though clean and fresh, is all alone, or Faustina, who returns to work, gnawing on a bit of dry bread. Let’s stay here, beneath this holm oak, fanning the child’s face with this branch as she tries to sleep, because the flies are back again, but also to save the parents any grief, because you never know, a cortege of kings and knights might pass by, and the barren queen’s nursemaid might spot this little angel and carry her off to the palace, and how awful it would be if, later, she didn’t recognize her real parents, because in the palace she wears only velvets and brocades and plays the lute in her room in a tower, with its view of the latifundio. Later on, Sara da Conceição used to tell such stories to her grandchildren, and Gracinda wouldn’t believe us if we told her what danger she would have been in if we weren’t here, sitting on this stone, fanning her with this branch.
But children, if they get the chance, grow up. Until they are of an age to work, they are left in the care of their grandmother or their mother, if there’s no work for the mother, or with their mother and father, if there’s no work for the father either, and if, when they’re older, there are no children and all are workers, if there’s no work for fathers, mothers, children or grandmothers, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the ideal Portuguese family gathered around the same hunger, depending on the season. If it’s acorn time, then the father goes to gather them, as long as Norberto, Adalberto or Sigisberto doesn’t send the guards to patrol at night, which is why, as soon as it came into being, the dear republic set up the national republican guard. That’s all a very long story. But nature is prodigal, a generous teat that spills forth its milk in every ditch. Let’s go gathering thistles, dockweed, watercress, what better diet could there be. Dockweed is just the same as spinach, it looks the same, although it tastes quite different, but once cooked, fried with a little of the onions we have left, it’s enough to make your mouth water. And as for thistles. Strip those thistles, add a few grains of rice, and you have a banquet, please, Father Agamedes, help yourself, he who ate the meat can gnaw the bones. Every Christian, and even a non-Christian, needs his three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and supper, or whatever you choose to call them, what matters is having a full plate or bowl, or, if it’s only bread and scrape, then it should be rather more than just a nice smell. It’s a rule as golden as any other noble rule, a human right for both parents and children, which means that I don’t have to eat only once in order for them to eat three times, although those three meals serve more to keep hunger at bay than to fill the stomach. People talk and talk, but they don’t know what real need is, it means going to the bread bin knowing that the last crust of bread was eaten yesterday, and yet still opening the lid, just in case there’s been another miracle of the roses,* which would, in any case, be quite impossible, because neither you nor I can remember putting roses in the bread bin, to do that we would have had to pick them, and have you ever seen roses growing on a cork oak, if only they did, hunger, as you see, can bring on delirium. Today is Wednesday, Gracinda, take your sister Amélia and go up to the big house, hold her hand, Gracinda, António won’t go this time. Encouraging children to beg, that’s the kind of education the parents give their children, I don’t know why my tongue doesn’t form a knot in my mouth or fall to the floor and leap about like a lizard’s tail, that would teach me to be more careful what I say and not speak about hunger on a full stomach, because it’s not polite.
Wednesday and Saturday are the days when Our Lord God comes down to earth consubstantiated into bacon and beans. If Father Agamedes were here, he would cry heresy, call for the holy inquisition, and all because we said that the Lord was a bean and a slice of bacon, but the trouble with Father Agamedes is that he has little imagination, he has grown used to seeing God in a wafer and was never able to think of him in any other way, except, of course, as the Father with the
