Raised from the Ground

good example. He has spent his whole life simply earning his daily bread, and some days he doesn’t even manage that, and this thought immediately forms a kind of knot inside his head, that a man should come into a world he never asked to be born into, only to experience a greater than normal degree of cold and hunger as a child, if there is such a thing as normal, and grow up to find that same hunger redoubled as a punishment for having a body capable of withstanding such hardship, to be mistreated by bosses and overseers, by guards both local and national, to reach the age of forty and finally speak your mind, only to be herded like cattle to the market or the slaughterhouse, to be further humiliated in prison, and to find that even freedom is a slap in the face, a crust of bread flung to the ground to see if you’ll pick it up. That’s what we do when a piece of bread falls to the ground, we pick it up, blow on it as if to restore its spirit, then kiss it, but we won’t eat it there and then, no, I’ll divide it into four, two large pieces and two small, here you are Amélia, here you are Gracinda, this is for you and this is for me, and if anyone asks who the two larger pieces are for, he is lower than the animals, because I’m sure even an animal would know.

The parents cannot do everything. They bring their children into the world, do for them the little they know how to do and hope for the best, believing that if they’re very careful, or even when they’re not, for fathers often deceive themselves and think they have been attentive when they haven’t, no son of theirs will become a vagabond, no daughter of theirs will be dishonored, no drop of their blood poisoned. When António Mau-Tempo spends time in Monte Lavre, João Mau-Tempo forgets that he is his father and older than him and starts dogging his footsteps, as if he wanted to find out the truth behind those absences, as far away as Coruche, Sado, Samora Correia, Infantado and even the far side of the Tejo river, and the true stories he hears from his son’s mouth both confirm and confuse the legend of José Gato, well, legend is perhaps an exaggeration, because José Gato is nothing but an inglorious braggart, he allowed us to be driven from Monte Lavre to prison, the stories are important more because they involve António Mau-Tempo, who either was there himself or heard about it later, than because they are picturesque facts that contribute to the history of minor rural crimes. And João Mau-Tempo sometimes has a thought that he cannot really put into words, but which, from the glimpse we’ve had of it, seems to say that if we’re talking about good examples, perhaps that of José Gato is not so very bad, even if he is a thief and doesn’t turn up when he’s needed. One day, António Mau-Tempo will say, In my life I’ve had a teacher and an explainer, but now I’ve gone back to the beginning to learn everything over again. If you need an explanation, let’s say that his father was the teacher, José Gato the explainer and that what António Mau-Tempo is learning now he will not be learning alone.

This Mau-Tempo family learn their lessons well. By the time Gracinda Mau-Tempo marries, she will know how to read. This formed part of her engagement, a reading primer by João de Deus,^* with the words in black and gray so that you could distinguish the syllables, but it’s not natural that such refinements should take root in memories born to remember other things, she just has to continue hesitantly reading and pausing between the words, waiting for her brain to light up her understanding, It’s not acega, Gracinda, it’s acelga.^† Manuel Espada is now allowed into the house, if it wasn’t for the primer he would still be lingering on the threshold, but it seemed wrong that they should sit outside learning to read where other people could see them, and besides, their relationship is clearly a serious one, Manuel Espada’s a good lad, Faustina would say, and João Mau-Tempo watched his future son-in-law and saw him walking from Montemor to Monte Lavre, scorning cars and carts so as to stay true to his beliefs and not be in debt to the very people who had refused him his daily bread. That, too, was a lesson, and João Mau-Tempo took it as such, although Sigismundo Canastro had said, What Manuel Espada did was good, but that doesn’t mean we acted wrongly either, he gained nothing by walking, and we lost nothing by traveling back in the cart, one has to act according to one’s conscience. And Sigismundo Canastro, who had a mischievous, albeit rather toothless smile, added, And of course he’s still a young man, whereas our legs are getting old and heavy. That may well be, but even if there were thirty-three other reasons why Gracinda’s parents should welcome Manuel Espada’s courtship of their daughter, the very first, if João Mau-Tempo were ever to confess as much to himself, would be those twenty kilometers, Manuel Espada’s out-and-out rejection of help, his affirmation of himself as a man during the almost four hours it took him to walk, with the sun beating down and his boots pounding the tarmacadam road, it was as if he were carrying a large flag that would not submit to being carried in the cars and carts owned by the latifundio. In this way, and as has always happened since the world began, the old learn from the young.

MAY IS THE MONTH of flowers. Let the poet go on his way in search of the daisies he has heard of, and if he doesn’t come