full beard and dark eyes and the Son with the short beard and pale eyes, was there perhaps some incident involving a fountain and bracken at some point in the sacred story, do you think. Dona Clemência knows more about such transfigurations, having been the wife and fount of virtue from Lamberto down to the last Berto, because on Wednesdays and Saturdays she presides over how much food should be given to whom, advising on and checking the thickness of the slice of bacon, the piece with the least meat, of course, because if it’s pure fat, all the better, so much more nourishing, she also levels off the measure of beans with the strickle, purely in the interests of fairness and charity, you understand, we don’t want the children to quarrel, You’ve got more than me, I’ve got less than you. It’s a lovely ceremony, it quite makes one’s heart melt with saintly compassion, not a dry eye in the house, or a dry nose, well, it’s winter now, especially outside, where the children of Monte Lavre are leaning against the wall, waiting to receive alms, how they suffer, barefoot, in pain, see how the girls lift first one foot and then the other to escape the icy ground, they would lift both at once if they ever grew the wings it’s said they will have once they’re dead, if they have the sense to die early, and see how they keep tugging at their dresses, not out of injured modesty, because the boys are too young to notice such things, but because they’re terribly cold. They form a queue, each holding a small tin, all of them snotty and snuffling, waiting for the window above finally to open and for the basket to descend on a rope from the skies, very slowly, magnanimity is never in a hurry, oh no, haste is plebeian and greedy, just don’t eat the beans as they are, because they’re raw. The first child in the queue places his tin in the basket, and then the basket ascends, off you go and don’t be long, the wind cuts along the wall like a barbed razor, who can possibly bear it, well, they all do in the name of what is to come, and then the maid sticks her head out of the window, and down comes the basket with the can full or half full, just to show any smarty-pants or novices that the size of the tin has no influence over the donor of this cathedral of beneficence. Anyone seeing this would think he had seen just about everything. But that’s not true. No one leaves until the last one has received his ration and the basket has been taken in until Saturday. They have to wait until Dona Clemência comes to the window, warmly wrapped up, to make her gesture of farewell and blessing, while the dear little children chorus their thanks in various ways, apart from those who merely move their lips, Oh, Father Agamedes, it does my soul so much good, and if someone were to assert that Dona Clemência was nothing but a hypocrite, they would be much mistaken, because only she can know how different her soul feels on Wednesdays and Saturdays, in comparison with other days. And now let us recognize and praise Dona Clemência’s Christian act of mortification, for although she has both the time and the money to hand out bacon and beans every day of the week, as well as the permanent, assured comfort of her immortal soul, she doesn’t do it, and that, dear readers, is her personal penance. Besides, Dona Clemência, these children mustn’t be allowed to acquire bad habits, imagine what demanding creatures they would grow into.
When Gracinda Mau-Tempo grew up, she did not go to school. Nor did Amélia. Nor had António. A long time before, when their father was a child, the propagandists for the republic urged the people, Send your children to school, they were like apostles sporting goatees, mustaches and trilby hats and proclaiming the good news, the light of education, a crusade they called it, with the signal difference that it wasn’t a matter of driving the Turk out of Jerusalem and from the tomb of our Lord, it wasn’t a question of absent bones, but of present lives, the children who would later set off with their bag of books slung over one shoulder with a piece of twine, and inside it, the primer issued to them by the same republic that ordered the national guard to charge if these same children’s progenitors demanded higher wages. That is how João Mau-Tempo learned to read and write, enough to have misspelled his name in that exercise book in Montemor as João Mau-Tenpo, although, unsure which was the correct version, he sometimes wrote João Mautempo, which is better but still not quite right, Mau-Tempo, of course, being clear evidence of grammatical presumption. The world progresses, but within certain limits. In Monte Lavre it didn’t advance enough for him to be able to send his own three children to school, and now how will Gracinda Mau-Tempo write to her fiancé when he’s far away, a good question, and how will António Mau-Tempo send news if the poor thing never learned how to write and has apparently joined forces with a gang of ne’er-do-wells, I just hope he’s leading a respectable life, says Faustina to her husband, You always set such a good example.
João Mau-Tempo nods, but in his heart of hearts he’s not sure. It wounds him not to have his son by his side, and to see only women around him. Faustina is so different from what she was as a young woman, and she was never pretty, and his daughters, whose freshness and youth still survive despite a life of hard labor in the fields, it’s just a shame that Amélia has such dreadful teeth. But João Mau-Tempo isn’t so sure about having set a
