The other two men arrived within a few minutes of each other. They had all met on other occasions, apart from João Mau-Tempo, who was there as the prime exhibit, if you like, and at whom the others stared long and hard in order to memorize his face, which was easy enough, you certainly wouldn’t forget those blue eyes. The man with the bicycle asked gravely and simply for better punctuality in future, although he recognized that it was hard to calculate precisely how long it would take to cover such long distances. I myself arrived after these two comrades, and I should have been here first. Then money was handed over, only a few coins, and each man received small bundles of pamphlets, and if names had been permitted, or if the red kite had overheard and repeated them, or if the hats had sneaked a furtive look at the names on each other’s respective hatbands, we would have heard, These are for you, Sigismundo Canastro, these are for you, Francisco Petinga, these are for you, João dos Santos, none for you this time, João Mau-Tempo, you just help Sigismundo Canastro, and now tell me what’s been happening. The person he addressed was Francisco Petinga, who said, The bosses have found a new way of paying us less, when they have to take us on by order of the workers’ association,* they dismiss us all on the Saturday, every single one of us, and say, On Monday, go to the workers’ association and tell them I said I want the same workers back, that’s the boss speaking, and the result is that we waste all of Monday going to the workers’ association, and the boss only has to start paying us on Tuesday, what are we supposed to do about that. Then João dos Santos said, Where I live, the workers’ associations are in cahoots with the bosses, if they weren’t, they wouldn’t act the way they do, they send us off to work, we go where we’re sent, but the bosses won’t accept us, and so back we go to the workers’ association, but they won’t accept us either and tell us to leave, and that’s the way things stand now, the bosses won’t accept our labor, and the workers’ association either has no power to force them to or is simply having fun at our expense, what are we supposed to do about that. Sigismundo Canastro said, The workers who do get jobs are earning sixteen escudos for working from dawn to dusk, while many can’t get any work at all, but we’re all of us starving, because sixteen escudos doesn’t buy you anything, the bosses are just playing with us, they have work for us to do, but they’re allowing the estates to go to rack and ruin and doing nothing about it, we should occupy the land, and if we die, we die, I know you say that would be suicide, but what’s happening now is suicide too, I bet there’s not a man here can boast of having eaten anything you might call supper, it’s not just a matter of feeling downhearted, we must do something. The other men nodded their agreement, they could feel their stomachs gnawing, it was past midday, and it occurred to them that perhaps they could eat the bit of bread and scrape they had brought with them, but at the same time they felt ashamed to have so little, though they were all equally familiar with such dearth. The man with the bicycle is wearing clothes so threadbare that it’s as plain as day he has no lunch concealed in his pockets, and what we know and the others don’t is that the ants could walk up and down his bicycle all they liked, but they wouldn’t find a single crumb, anyway, the man with the bicycle turned to João Mau-Tempo and asked, And what about you, do you have anything to add, this unexpected question startled the novice, I don’t know, I have nothing to say, and he said no more, but the other men sat silently looking at him, and he couldn’t let the situation continue like that, five grave-faced men sitting under an oak tree, and so, for lack of anything else to say, he added, When there is work, we wear ourselves out working day and night, and still we starve, I keep a few bits of land they give us to cultivate, and I work until late into the night, but now there’s no paid work to be had, and what I want to know is why are things like this and will it be like this until we die, there can be no justice as long as some have everything and others nothing, and all I want to say really is that you can count on me, comrades, that’s all.
Each man gave his arguments, they are sitting so still that from a distance they look like statues, and now they are waiting to hear what the man with the bicycle will say and what he’s already saying. As before, he speaks first to the men as a group, then to Francisco Petinga, then to João dos Santos, more briefly to Sigismundo Canastro and then at length to João Mau-Tempo, as if he were putting together stones to make a pavement or a bridge, a bridge more like, because over it will pass years, footsteps, heavy loads, and below it lies an abyss. From here, it’s like watching a dumb show, we see only gestures, and there are few enough of those, everything depends on the word and the stress laid upon it, and on the gaze too, but from here, we cannot even make out João Mau-Tempo’s intensely blue eyes. We don’t have the keen vision of the red kite, which is still circling around, hovering over the oak
