The door opened again, João Mau-Tempo went up the steps, followed by the hound, and entered the room, and look who’s here, it’s the man from Vendas Novas who traveled with João Mau-Tempo as far as Terreiro do Paço, his name is Leandro Leandres, and now he says in a scornful voice, Do you know why you’ve been brought here, and João Mau-Tempo, always polite and respectful, says, No, sir, I don’t, and Leandro Leandres says, You’ve come to tell the rest of your story, but there’s no point now describing what happens next, it’s the same old thing, the same conversation, how many newspapers were distributed, and how local committees were formed and why did they stop meeting, and how many members were there, and who, look, someone here gave us your name, so it must be true, and if you don’t confess, you won’t get out of here alive, it would be best for you if you talked, you know, but João Mau-Tempo isn’t at all sure about that, and even if he was, It’s been four years since I so much as touched any political papers, and they were only ones I picked up in the streets or along the way, apart from that I can’t remember anyone actually giving them to me, that was years ago, all I think about is my work, I swear. The conversation was always the same, the same questions and answers, the same grilling and the same lying, but this time there were no beatings and the statue that is João Mau-Tempo remained in his natural position, sitting on a chair, he looked as if he were posing for a portrait, except that his soul was jumping about inside his heart like a poor, frightened lunatic, and his pale but constant will kept saying, You mustn’t talk, lie all you want but don’t talk. There was another difference too, the fact that a hound of a lower category was typing out all the questions and answers, but after a few pages there was nothing more to write, because the conversation was like dredging up water with a wheel equipped with bottomless buckets, going round and round, the mule was treading in its own dung now and the sun sinking, and that was where the statements ended, and the man at the typewriter asked, Where’s this guy’s original statement, and Leandro Leandres, not realizing what he was saying, answered, It’s over there, along with Albuquerque’s statement, João Mau-Tempo had tormented himself over and over as to who had given them his name, and now he knew, it was Albuquerque, and knowing this was so painful and so sad, what must they have done to him to make him talk, or did he do so willingly, what could he have been thinking, well, it happens, and João Mau-Tempo cannot know that some years later, he will see Albuquerque, the squealer, in Monte Lavre, and remember that he was the one who once said, If they turn up here, I’ll shoot them, I mean it, and yet in the end he had squealed on him, and when Albuquerque got out of prison, he became a Protestant priest, not that we have anything against religion, but why go around proclaiming the salvation of all men when he couldn’t even save his few comrades, what will he have to say for himself at the hour of his death, but now all that João Mau-Tempo feels is a great sorrow and a great sense of relief that at least he has not talked, perhaps they won’t beat me again or make me play the statue, I’m not sure I could take it.
João Mau-Tempo returned to Aljube, then, after a few days, he was taken from there to Caxias, and news of this finally reached Monte Lavre. Letters will come and go, everything has to be meticulously arranged between Faustina and João Mau-Tempo, because these things are no joke, everything has to be worked out to the last detail if a person is traveling a long way to be at a certain place at a certain time, even when the meeting is not a clandestine one, even when it’s the police themselves who open the door and say, Come in. No, you have to take account of every eventuality, from Monte Lavre to Vendas Novas by cart, then from Vendas Novas to Barreiro by train, possibly in the same carriage that brought João Mau-Tempo and Leandro Leandres,
