suddenly, due to a weak spring, the razor snapped shut and the blade cut through the first thing it found in its path, namely, the outer edge of my right index finger, by the side of my nail. It very nearly took with it a slice of my flesh. I was treated with one of the miraculous remedies of the day, alcohol and balsam. The wound didn't become infected and healed perfectly. Aunt Maria Elvira always said that I was made of good solid stuff.
Aunt Maria NatAlia worked as a maid in the Formigal household (the master and mistress were usually referred to in the plural as the Senhores Formigais), along with an outside maid, who was the one who did the shopping and ran other errands. I remember one morning (I'd perhaps gone there to collect my aunt for our fortnightly Sunday walk) standing in the kitchen (I'd never seen anything like it and so was fascinated by the black oven, the little doors of varying sizes with their gleaming copper frames, and the boiler always full of hot water) when old Senhor Formigal came in, accompanied by his wife, Dona Albertina, who was equally advanced in years, but still a fine-looking woman. The cook and the two maids, inside and outside, curtsied and lined up, awaiting their orders, but Senhor Formigal, who wore a goatee and a moustache as white as the hair on his head, had come only to inspect (out of politeness, not because he was a doctor or a nurse) the knee I had split open in Avenida Casal Ribeiro. He regarded me with an understanding, protective air and asked: 'So you hurt your patella, did you?' I will never forget that word. I had hurt my knee, not my patella, but he must have felt that 'knee' was too vulgar a term, unworthy of his person. I looked down at my battered joint, and all I could say was: 'Yes, sir.' He patted my cheek and left, followed by Dona Albertina. Aunt Maria Nat?lia glowed with pride, while the cook and the outside maid looked at me as if a heavenly halo were encircling my head, as if hitherto unsuspected qualities had bloomed in the inside maid's otherwise insignificant nephew, qualities that the white, manicured hand of Senhor Formigal, when he lightly touched my cheek and my close-cropped hair, had finally caused to spring into life. The Senhores Formigais were about to go out, probably to Mass, but Dona Albertina returned to the kitchen in order to give me a little bag of chocolates: 'Here, these are for you, to help your knee get better faster,' she said and was gone, leaving behind her a whiff of face powder and having put that word 'patella' firmly in its place. I don't know if it was then that my aunt took me to see their bedroom-I think not-but it was a magnificent, solemn, almost ecclesiastical room, all adorned with scarlet draperies, the canopy, the coverlet, the plump pillows, the bed curtains, the upholstery on the chairs: 'It's all done in the very best, the very finest damask,' my aunt told me, and when I asked her why they had that S-shaped sofa at the end of the bed, she replied: 'That's a love seat, he sits on one side and she on the other, so that they can talk without having to turn their heads, it's very practical.' Since we were there, I would have liked to try it out, but my aunt wouldn't even let me across the threshold. The chocolates and I met with far worse luck later on. I ate a few before leaving the Formigais' house, and they left in my mouth a foretaste of paradise, but my aunt was categorical on the matter: 'Don't eat any more, they'll make you sick,' and I, being a good little boy, obeyed. Since I have no memory of strolling through Parque Eduardo VII with a bag of chocolates in my hand, especially since I was forbidden to eat them, we must have gone straight from there to Rua Fernao Lopes, where my aunt deposited me, having first described, in, I imagine, lavish detail, the episode in the kitchen, the kindness her employers had shown to me, Senhor Formigal patting my cheek and the chocolates given to me by the lady of the house, so very kind. Darkness fell, and, since at the time we had no radio on which we could listen to songs from the latest shows, we kept the same hours as the chickens, and so my mother soon packed me off to bed. My parents and I slept in the same room, they in the double bed and I on a small divan, almost a camp bed really, underneath the sloping roof. On the other side of the room, on a chair standing against the wall, stood the longed-for bag of chocolates. When my mother and father came to bed, first, my father, as usual, then my mother, because there were always dishes to wash or socks to darn, I had my eyes closed, pretending to sleep. They turned out the light and fell asleep, but I couldn't settle. Later, with the room in darkness, I slowly got up, tiptoed over to get the bag of chocolates and, in three furtive steps, crept back into bed where I snuggled happily down between the sheets to gorge myself until I slipped into unconsciousness. When I woke the next day, I found, squashed beneath me, what remained of my night feast, a sticky, soft, brown chocolate paste, the dirtiest, most repellent thing my eyes had ever seen. I wept bitter tears of vexation, and tears of embarrassment and frustration too, which was perhaps why my parents didn't punish or scold me. I was unhappy enough as it was. I had given in to the sin of greed, and greed was punishing me with no need for sticks or stones.
On the occasional Sunday afternoon, the women would go down to the Baixa to window-shop. They usually walked there, but sometimes took the tram, which was the worst thing that could happen to me at that age, because I soon grew queasy from the smell inside; the overheated, almost fetid atmosphere set my stomach churning and within minutes I would be throwing up. In that respect, I was a delicate child. With the passing of time that olfactory intolerance (I don't know what else to call it really) diminished, but for years afterward, I only had to board a tram for my head to start to swim. Anyway, on that particular Sunday, for whatever reason- whether because she felt sorry for me or simply wanted to stretch her legs-my mother, along with Conceicao, Emilia too, I think, and me, decided to walk there from Rua Fernao Lopes, along Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo, then down Avenida da Liberdade to the Chiado, which was where Ali Baba kept his most valued treasures. I don't remember the shop windows, and that isn't what I'm here to talk about. I'm concerned with more serious matters. Next to one of the doors to the department store, Armazens Grandella, a man was selling balloons, and whether it was because I asked (which I doubt very much because only someone who expects to be given something will run the risk of asking) or because my mother, unusually, wanted to make a public demonstration of her love for me, one of those balloons ended up in my hands. I can't remember if it was green or red, yellow or blue, or simply white. What happened afterward erased from my memory a color that should have stayed in my eyes forever, because that was neither more nor less than the first balloon I had been given in my six or seven years of life. We were walking across the Rossio, on our way home, and I was as proud as if I were dragging the whole world through the air tied to a piece of string, when, suddenly, I heard someone behind me snicker. I turned and I saw. The balloon had deflated and, without my realizing, I had been dragging it along the ground-a grubby, shriveled, shapeless thing-and two men were laughing and pointing at me. I felt, on that occasion, the most ridiculous of human beings. I didn't even cry. I simply dropped the string, grabbed my mother's arm like a drowning man a piece of wood and kept walking. That grubby, shriveled, shapeless thing
One day, at around this time, I went on a trip to Mafra. I had been born in Azinhaga and was living in Lisbon, and there I was, possibly in response to a knowing look or an indecipherable wink from the fates, being taken to the place where, more than fifty years later, my future as a writer would be decided once and for all. I don't remember now if the Baratas came with us or not. I have a vague idea that we were driven there in the car of some acquaintance of my father's, who, as far as I know, left no other trace of his passage through our lives. My most vivid memory of that brief visit (we didn't go into the monastery, only the basilica) is of a statue of St. Bartholomew which stood, as it still does, in the second chapel on the left as you go in, on the side which I believe is called, in liturgical language, the gospel side. A combination of extreme youth, a complete ignorance of the world of statues and the dim lighting in the chapel meant that I probably wouldn't even have noticed that poor St. Bartholomew had been flayed had it not been for the guide's practiced patter and his smugly eloquent gesture as he indicated the folds of flaccid skin (flaccid even though they were made of marble) that the poor martyr was holding in his hands. Dreadful. There is no mention of St. Bartholomew in
Between the ages of two and four or five, I must have made quite a few journeys to Azinhaga in my mother's arms. My father had gone from being a vulgar digger of fields to public servant, a policeman no less, with a basketful of news and novelties from the city to recount, and it was most unlikely that he would have remained in Lisbon during his annual leave, when he could enjoy showing off to his former work colleagues, talking fancy or at least trying hard not to sound too provincial and, in the intimacy of the tavern, after a couple of glasses of wine, regaling them with stories of women, a prostitute, say, who would pay with her body for a certain degree of police protection-not that he himself would admit to such things-or a market-trader of easy virtue in the Praca da
