If we start to get too far ahead of ourselves, we’ll soon be talking about children and the problems they bring. Today is a holiday, Manuel Espada is going to marry Gracinda Mau-Tempo, there hasn’t been a marriage like this in Monte Lavre for a long time, that is, with such an age difference between bride and groom, he’s twenty-seven and she’s twenty, but they make a handsome couple, he’s the taller of the two, which is as it should be, although she’s not short either, she doesn’t take after her father in that respect. I can see them now, she’s wearing a pink, calf-length dress with a high neck and long sleeves buttoned at the cuff, if it’s hot, she’s not aware of it, as far as she’s concerned it might as well be winter, and he’s wearing a dark jacket, more like a three-quarter-length coat than the jacket of a suit, a pair of rather tight trousers and shoes that no amount of polishing will bring a shine to, a white shirt and a tie bearing a pattern of branches as indecipherable as the tops of trees no one has bothered to prune, but let there be no misunderstanding, the trees are just a simile, nothing more, because the tie is new and will probably never be worn again, unless it’s at another wedding, should we be invited. It’s not a big wedding party, but there are plenty of friends and acquaintances, and children attracted by the prospect of sweets, and old ladies at the door talking about heaven knows what, one never knows what old ladies talk about, whether they are uttering blessings or reproaches, poor things, what is the point of their lives.
The ceremony takes place after the mass, as is the custom, and people look a bit cheerier than usual because, luckily, there’s plenty of work around at the moment, plus it’s a nice day. Doesn’t the bride look lovely, the boys don’t dare make many jokes about marriage, because, after all, Manuel Espada is older, nearly thirty, a different generation from us, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, of course, since he’s only twenty-seven, but it’s an interesting situation, even the married men refrain from teasing him, the bridegroom is hardly a boy, and he always looks so serious, he was the same when he was a child, you can never tell what he might be thinking, just like his mother, who died last year. They’re quite wrong, though, it’s true that Manuel Espada has a grave face or countenance, as people used to say, but even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to explain quite what he is feeling, it’s like water singing as it rushes over the rocks up there in Ponte Cava, which is a bleak place and a bit frightening at night, but then, come the dawn, you see there was no reason to be afraid, it was just the water singing among the rocks.
Great injustices are committed because of how people look, that was the case with Manuel Espada’s mother, a woman who seemed to be made of granite, but who melted sweetly at night in bed, which is perhaps why Manuel Espada’s father is slowly weeping, some say, It must be tears of joy, and only he knows that it isn’t. Let’s see, how many people are here, twenty, and each one of them would make a story, you can’t imagine, years and years of living is a lot of time, and a lot of things can happen in that time, if we were all to write our life story, think how big that library would be, we would have to store the books on the moon, and when we wanted to find out who So-and-so is or was, we would travel through space to discover not the moon, but life. It makes us feel, at the very least, like turning back and recounting in detail the life and love of Tomás Espada and Flor Martinha, if we weren’t driven on by events and by the new life and love of their son and Gracinda Mau-Tempo, who have now entered the church, surrounded by a throng of excited children, take no notice, boys will be boys, while the older people, who are familiar with rituals and sermons, enter, looking composed and slightly constrained, wearing old clothes from a time when they were slimmer. Just this coming into church and being here, these faces, feature by feature, each line and wrinkle, would merit chapters as vast as the latifundio that laps around Monte Lavre like a sea.
Father Agamedes is at the altar, and I don’t know what exactly has got into him today, what fair wind greeted him when he got up, perhaps it was the Holy Spirit, not that Father Agamedes is one to boast of his closeness to the third person of the Holy Trinity, he himself doubts the simplicity of these theological formulae, but for whatever reason, this old devil of a priest is in a good mood, he’s very composed, but his eyes are shining, and that can’t be because he’s looking forward to satisfying his greedy appetite, there will hardly be an abundance of food at the wedding feast. Perhaps it’s simply the pleasure of blessing this marriage, Father Agamedes is a very human priest, as we have seen throughout this story, and even if, for the moment, he chooses not to think about the latifundio’s variable need for workers, he must be pleased that this man should join flesh with this woman and make children who will then grow up and who are sure to
