Baltasar and Blimunda

not all that far away, from time to time I stretch my legs on the road, the two legs that walk and the one in the middle that means my wife is pregnant once again, whatever money I save I leave there, but poor people like ourselves have to pay for everything we receive, there are no profits for us from trade with India or Brazil, nor do we enjoy appointments or benefices from the Palace, what can I do with a daily wage of two hundred reis when I have to pay for my ration of food and wine, the only people who make any money here are those who provide us with our daily needs, and if it is true that many of them were forced to come here from Lisbon, I live here out of need, and needy I remain, My name is Jose Pequeno, I have neither father nor mother, nor woman to call my own, I do not even know whether this is really my name or if I had some other name in the past, what is certain is that I was born in a village at the foot of Torres Vedras, and the parish priest baptized me, Jose is the name I was given at my christening, and Pequeno, which of course means small, was added later because I suddenly stopped growing, with this hump on my back, no woman was keen to marry me, but they all ask for more once I get the chance to mount them, that's my only consolation in life, Come over here, now off with you, and once I grow old, I won't even be fit for that, I came to Mafra because I like working with oxen, oxen are for hire in this world, just like me, My name is joaquim da Rocha, I was born in the region of Pombal, and there I've left a wife, I had four children, but all of them died before they were ten years old, two of the black plague, the others from malnutrition and anaemia, I rented a plot of land but it did not yield enough to provide us with food, so I told my wife, I'm off to Mafra, there work is guaranteed and for many years to come, and so far so good, six months have passed since I last went home and I shall probably never go back, there's no lack of women here, and anyhow mine must have been of dubious stock to have given birth to four children and allowed all of them to die, My name is Manuel Milho, I come from the countryside near Santarem, one day the magistrate's men arrived to announce that a good wage and good food could be earned on the building site at Mafra, I was hired with a few others, but the two men who came with me were killed in a landslide last year, I don't care for these parts, not because two of my countrymen perished here, after all, no one can decide where he will die unless he arranges his own death, but because I miss the river of my native land, I know there is plenty of water in the sea, as one can tell even from here, but what does a man want with all that water, with all those waves that beat incessantly against the rocks and sands, the river back home flows between two banks like a procession of penitents, it slowly wends its way as we stand there watching like the ash trees and poplars, and when a man wants to examine his face and to see how much he has aged, the water becomes his mirror, passing, yet at a standstill, and we who appear to be at a standstill are the ones who are really passing, what I cannot explain is why such things come into my head, My name is Joao Anes, I come from Oporto and I am a cooper, and coopers are also needed when a convent is being built, for who else could be relied upon to mend the vats, the pipes, and the buckets, if a bricklayer is on the scaffolding and they pass him a hod of mortar, he has to wet the stones with a brush so that they make firm contact as he lays one on top of another, that explains why he carries a bucket, and what do animals drink from, they drink from a trough, and who made the troughs, why, the cooper, of course, without wishing to brag, there's no better trade than mine, even God was a cooper, just look at that great vat known as the sea, if the work were not perfect and the staves not so well adjusted, its waters would cover the earth and there would be a second great flood, I have little to say about myself, I left my family behind in Oporto, they know how to look after themselves, I haven't seen my wife for two years, sometimes I dream that I'm lying by her side, but if it's me lying there, I don't see my face, next day my work always turns out badly, I would rather see all of myself in my dream, instead of that face without mouth, eyes or nose, I cannot imagine what face my wife sees there at such moments, but I hope it is mine, My name is Juliao Mau-Tempo, I'm a native of Alentejo, and I came to work here in Mafra because of the famine that scourges my province, I don't know how anyone has survived there, for if we hadn't grown accustomed to eating grass and acorns, I'll bet everyone would be dead by now, it's distressing to travel over that vast territory, as anyone will tell you who has been there, only to find that there is nothing but barren land, there are few signs of habitation or growth, and the rest is wilderness and solitude, it's a region blighted by warfare, with Spaniards invading and departing as if they were on their own soil, at the moment there is peace, but who knows for how long, when they're not making us run and exposing us to the risk of being killed, our monarchs and nobles themselves do the running and killing as they go hunting, yet God help the wretched fellow who's caught with a rabbit in his knapsack, even though he might have found it already dead from some disease or old age, the least he can expect is a dozen lashes on his back to teach him that when God made rabbits it was for the pleasure and stewpot of gentlemen, but those whippings would be worthwhile if we were allowed to keep the animals we poached, I came to Mafra because my parish priest assured us from the pulpit that anyone who came here would soon be a servant of the King, not exactly his servant, but something like that, he also assured us that no one in the King's service goes hungry, that they are given more meat than one sees in paradise and are well dressed, for if it is true that Adam, having no one to squabble with over food, ate to his heart's content, he did not have much in the way of clothing, well, I soon discovered that I had been misinformed, I can't vouch for paradise, because I wasn't around at the time of Adam, but I can speak for Mafra, and if I haven't died from hunger, it's because I spend everything I earn on food, I'm as shabbily dressed as I ever was, as for becoming one of the King's servants, I live in hope of seeing my sovereign's face before I finally pine away after all these years of separation from my family, when a man has children, he is often nourished just by looking at their faces, how reassuring it would be if our children could be nourished just by looking at our faces, we're fated to consume our lives looking at one another, Who are you, What are you doing here, Who I am and what I am doing here is a question I've often asked myself without receiving any answer, no, none of my children has blue eyes, yet I'm certain that they're all my children, this matter of blue eyes is something that appears from time to time in families, my mother's mother had eyes this colour, My name is Baltasar Mateus, but everyone calls me Sete-Sois, Jose Pequeno knows why he got his name, but I cannot say when and why they put seven suns in our house as if we were seven times more ancient than the only sun that shines on us, so we should be the kings of the world, this is the wild conversation of someone who has been too close to the sun and has had too much to drink, if you hear me talk nonsense, it's either because of the sun I caught or because of the wine that caught me, what is certain is that I was born here forty years ago, if I have added them up correctly, my mother, who is now dead and buried, was named Marta Maria, my old father can scarcely walk, I'm convinced that roots are growing from his feet, or that his heart is searching out the earth in order to rest, we once had a plot of ground like Joaquim da Rocha, but with all this disturbance of the soil we lost our land, I've even transported some of the soil from that plot in my handcart, who's going to tell my grandfather that a grandson of his has dumped earth that was once tilled and sown, now they're building a turret on top, These are the changes in life's fortunes, and my life has seen many changes, in my youth I dug the soil and sowed the fields for the farmers, our family plot was so small that my father worked it all the year round and still had time to cultivate other smallholdings here and there that he rented, real hunger we never experienced, but we were never well off and had barely enough to live on, then I joined the King's army and lost my left hand, it was only much later that I discovered that with one hand missing I had become God's equal, and since I could no longer fight in the war, I returned to Mafra, then I spent some years in Lisbon, and that's my life in a nutshell, What did you do in Lisbon, Joao Anes asked him as the only man in the group who could claim to be a skilled worker, I worked in the slaughterhouse in the Palace Square, but only as a porter, And when was it that you got close to the sun. Manuel Milho was anxious to know, since he was probably the only one there who was accustomed to watching the river flow past, That was when I once climbed a very high sierra, so high that by stretching out my hand I could touch the sun, What sierra could that be, for there are no sierras in Mafra high enough to reach the sun, just as there are no sierras in Alentejo, which is a region well known to me, Juliao Mau-Tempo asked him, Perhaps it was a sierra that was high on that particular day and is now low, If it takes so much gunpowder to blast a hill like this, surely it would take all the gunpowder in the world to raze a sierra, observed Francisco Marques, who had been the first to comment, but Manuel Milho insisted, You could only have got close to the sun by flying like the birds, there in the marshes you often see hawks soaring up and up in circles until they finally disappear and they become so tiny that they can no longer be seen as they head for the sun, but we humans don't know the path or doorway that leads there, and you are a man and have no wings, Unless you're a sorcerer, Jose Pequeno suggested, like a woman from the region where I was found, who rubbed herself with ointments, straddled a broom, and flew by night from one place to another, at least that's what people said although I never saw her with my own eyes, I'm not a sorcerer, and if you start to spread such rumours the Holy Office of the Inquisition will arrest me, nor did I say to anyone here that I have ever flown, But you did say that you had been close to the sun, and you also said that you had become God's equal when you lost your left hand, if such heresies reach the ears of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, nothing will save you, We should all be saved if we were to become God's equals, said Joao Anes, If we were to become God's equals, we should be able to rebuke Him for not having granted us equality from the outset, said