again, would bear testament to the fierce and violent truth. Francisco had already died and I must have been two or three years old. A short distance from the house (we were still living in Rua E at the time) there was a heap of rubble left over from some building work. Three or four older boys took me there by force (my small powers of resistance proved useless). They pushed me and threw me to the ground, removed my short trousers and my underpants, and, while the others held my arms and legs, one of them began to insert a piece of wire into my urethra. I screamed and struggled desperately, I kicked as hard as I could, but the cruel process continued, and the wire penetrated ever deeper. Perhaps the blood that started gushing from my small, suffering penis saved me from worse harm. The boys may have grown frightened or simply decided that they'd had their fun and fled. There was no one there to help me. Crying and with blood pouring down my legs, I left my clothes where they were on the rubble and staggered homeward. My mother had already come out to look for me (I can't remember what I was doing alone in the street), and when she saw me in that wretched state, she cried: 'Oh, my poor little boy! Who did this to you?' But all our tears and shouts were in vain, the guilty parties were far away by then, indeed, they may not even have lived in the area. Fortunately, the internal wounds healed up, because a piece of wire picked up from the ground seemed, in principle, a sure-fire recipe for tetanus. After Francisco's death, it appeared that bad luck did not want to leave our door. I can imagine my parents' anxiety when, at the age of five, I developed a bad sore throat and they had to take me to the same hospital where Francisco had died. In the end, it turned out to be only an inflammation of the throat and sinusitis, nothing that couldn't be cured in a fortnight, which is precisely what happened. You may ask how it is that I know all these details when so much time has passed. It's a long story, but it can be summed up in a few words. When, many years ago now, I first had the idea of writing down my memories and experiences of the time when I was small, I thought immediately that I should speak of my brother Francisco's death (his life being so brief). Members of the family had always said that he died of what they called
To return to my brother. As was only natural, the first thing I did, the very first, was to ask the registry office in Golega, which dealt with our municipality, to send me the birth certificate of Francisco de Sousa, son of Jose de Sousa and Maria da Piedade from Azinhaga, because the date of his death should have appeared there. But it didn't. To judge from that official document, Francisco hadn't died. It was surprising enough to have the Instituto Bacteriologico Camara Pestana tell me, with due administrative seriousness, that he had never been admitted there, when I knew for certain that he had, but now it was the registry office in Golega telling me, implicitly, that he was still alive. There was only one solution, to investigate the vast archives of the Lisbon cemeteries. Certain individuals offered to do this for me and for that I will be eternally grateful. Francisco died on December 22nd at four in the afternoon and was buried in the Benfica cemetery on the 24th, at more or less the same time (what a sad Christmas that must have been for my parents). Francisco's story, however, does not end here. I doubt very much if my novel
His name was Francisco Carreira and he was a shoemaker. His shop was a small, dark, windowless room, with a low door through which only children could enter without bending down, because it must have been, at most, about three or four feet high. He was always there, sitting on a stool behind a bench on which were laid out all the tools of his trade and which was covered with an ancient layer of dust and detritus: bent nails, shavings from soles, a blunt needle, a pair of broken pliers. He was a sick man, old before his time, with a deformed spine. All his strength was concentrated in his arms and shoulders, as strong as levers, and with them he could hammer on the sole of a shoe, wax the thread, pull the stitches tight and drive the tacks home with two short unerring blows. While I amused myself making holes in a piece of shoe leather with a punch or played with the water to which the soles of shoes, left to soak, lent an astringent touch of tannin, he would tell me tales of his youth: vague political plots, a pistol that had been shown to him as a somber warning of what, word of honor, would happen to any traitor of the cause. Then he would ask me how school was going, what news I had of events in Lisbon, and I would waffle on as best I could to satisfy his curiosity. One day, he seemed preoccupied. He smoothed his thin hair with his bradawl and paused in his sewing, both of which were familiar signs, heralding a particularly important question. Shortly afterward, Francisco Carreira leaned back his twisted body, pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and fired at point-blank range: 'Do you believe in the plurality of worlds?' He had read Fontenelle, and I had not, anything I did know having been gleaned from overhearing someone else discussing his work. I muttered something about the movement of the stars, mentioned Copernicus just in case, and that was that. But basically, yes, I did believe in the plurality of worlds, the main question being: was there anyone out there? He seemed pleased, or so it seemed to me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Many years later, I wrote an article about him to which I gave the Lorca-inspired title, 'The Prodigious Shoemaker.' What other adjective could I have used? A shoemaker in my village, in the 1930s, talking about Fontenelle…
There was something I meant to say when, on an earlier page, I spoke about going to market with the pigs. My grandfather hadn't managed to sell many suckling pigs to his neighbors in Azinhaga that year, which is why he thought it best to take what remained of the litters to the market in Santarem. He asked if I would like to go along as my Uncle Manuel's assistant, and I didn't need to think twice, I said yes, I would. I greased my boots in preparation for the walk (this was not a journey to be undertaken barefoot) and went over to the porch to select a stick that best suited my height. We set off in midafternoon, my uncle at the rear, making sure none of the piglets went astray, and me at the front, with, at my heels, the sow who would keep them all together, the real mother of some of them and on maternal loan to the others for the occasion. Now and then my uncle would swap places with me, and then, like him, I had no alternative but to eat the dust kicked up by the livelier animals. It was almost dark by the time we reached Quinta da Cruz da Legua, where we had arranged to sleep. We put the pigs in a large shed and ate our food standing up in the light from a window, either because we preferred not to go into the house or, more likely, because the farm manager didn't invite us in. While we were eating, the servant came to say that we could sleep with the horses. He gave us two thick striped blankets and left. The stable door remained open, and that suited us well because we had to leave at dawn, before first light, in order to reach Santarem in time for the opening of the market. Our bed would be the two ends of the feeding trough that ran the length of the back wall. The horses snorted and stamped on the paved floor. I hoisted myself into the trough and lay down on the cool straw, as if in a cradle, wrapped in the blanket, breathing in the strong smell of the animals, who were restless all night or so it seemed to me in my fitful sleep. I felt tired, especially my legs and feet. The darkness was warm and thick, the horses shook their manes fiercely, and my uncle, his head almost touching my feet, was sleeping like a log. It was still dark when I awoke from the deep sleep to which I finally succumbed, and my uncle was calling to me: 'Come on, Ze, we've got to go.' I sat up in the trough, blinking and still sleepy, dazzled by an unexpected light. I jumped down and went out into the yard: before me, pouring a milky light over the night and the surrounding landscape, was a vast, round moon, making the white seem still whiter where the light struck it full on and the black shadows still deeper. I would never see a moon like that again. We fetched the pigs and set off very cautiously down into the valley, where the grass was very tall and there were thick shrubs and rocks, and the piglets, not used to being out so early, could easily stray and get lost. Once in the valley, it was much easier. We walked along a dusty path, the dust slaked by the cool of night, past vineyards in which the grapes were already ripe, and I leapt in among the vines and cut two large bunches that I slipped inside my shirt, looking around all the while in case a keeper should appear. I returned to the path and handed one of the bunches to my uncle. We walked on, eating the cold, sweet grapes, so hard they seemed almost crystallized. We started the
