Any conversations going on around him stopped, Gracinda Mau-Tempo and Manuel Espada ceased gazing at each other, although they continued to hold hands, Flor Martinha said her farewells, Goodbye, Tomás, the guests put their elbows on the table, they have no manners these people, and if someone sticks a finger in his mouth to extract from some cavity in his teeth a bit of gristle from the lamb, don’t be angry, we live in a land where food cannot be wasted, and António Mau-Tempo, in his cotton uniform, is talking about just that, about food. It’s true that there’s a lot of hunger hereabouts, sometimes we’re obliged to eat weeds, and our stomachs are as swollen and tight as drums, and perhaps that’s why the commander of the regiment believes that if a donkey is hungry enough it will eat thistles, and since we are donkeys, because we hear nothing else on the parade ground, well, actually we hear far worse than that, we do eat thistles, but I can tell you that I would rather eat thistles than the food they serve at the barracks, which is fit only for pigs, although even they might turn up their snouts at it.
António Mau-Tempo paused, took a sip of wine to clear his throat, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, after all, what more natural napkin is there, and resumed his speech, They believe that because we are starving at home, we should accept anything, but that’s where they’re wrong, because our hunger is a clean hunger, and the thistles we have to strip, we strip with our own hands, which even when they’re dirty are still clean, no one has cleaner hands than us, that’s the first thing we learn when we enter the barracks, it’s not part of the weapons drill, but you sense it, and a man can choose between outright hunger and the shame of eating what they give us, they came to Monte Lavre to summon me to serve the nation, or so they said, but I don’t know what that means, the nation is my mother and my father, they said, well, I, like everyone else, know my real mother and father, who took the food from their own mouths so that we could eat, in that case, the nation should also take the food from its own mouth so that I can eat, and if I have to eat thistles, then the nation should eat them too, if not, that means that some are the sons of the nation and others are the sons of whores.
Some of the women were shocked, some of the men frowned, but António Mau-Tempo, who has something of the vagabond about him despite his uniform, will be forgiven anything for having put Father Agamedes firmly in his place, and besides, he says these other words that taste to his listeners like the excellent wine from Senhor Lamberto’s cellar, although that’s purely a hypothesis, because our lips have never actually touched the stuff, Anyway, in the barracks we decided to hold a hunger strike, we wouldn’t eat a single crumb of what they put before us, just like pigs who refuse to eat from the trough in which there’s more rubbish in the swill than even a pig will eat, we don’t mind eating two quarts of earth a year, the earth is as clean as us, but not that food, and I, António Mau-Tempo, speaking to you now, was the one who had the idea, and I’m proud of that, you don’t know how different you feel until you’ve done these things, I talked to my comrades and they agreed that the situation could only be worse if they were actually spitting on us, and when the day came, the cookhouse bell rang and we went and sat down as if we were going to eat, but the food arrived and it stayed there on the plates uneaten, the sergeants bawled and yelled, but no one picked up his spoon, it was the revolution of the pigs, and then the officer on duty turned up, made a speech like the one Father Agamedes made, but we pretended we didn’t understand a word of it, as if he were talking Latin, first he tried to win us over with sweet words, but then he lost his rag and started screaming at us, ordering us to form up on the parade ground, an order we did understand, because what we wanted more than anything was to get out of that cookhouse, so out we went, whispering words of encouragement to each other, Don’t give up, courage, my friend, stick to your guns, we’re all in this together, and there we stood for half an hour, and that, we assumed, was the punishment until we saw them setting up three machine guns trained on us, all in accordance with the regulations, with gunners and their assistants, and boxes of ammunition, and then the officer said that if we didn’t go and eat, he would give the order to fire, that was the voice of the nation speaking, it was as if my mother had said to me, either eat your food or I’ll slit your throat, none of us believed he would do it, but then
