the tops of the lemon trees and medlar trees or rising up with a simple flap of the arms and hovering above the rooftops. And I can't believe that St. Anthony experienced worse terrors than, for example, the recurring nightmare in which I found myself locked in a triangular room with no furniture, doors or windows, but where there was 'something' (I call it that because I never did find out what it was) gradually growing in size while a piece of music played, always the same music, and the thing grew and grew until I was trapped in one corner, at which point I would wake, terrified, in the grim silence of the night, struggling for breath and drenched in sweat. Nothing of great note, you might say. Maybe that's why this book changed its name and became
Let's move on. The Barata family entered my life when we moved from 57 Rua dos Cavaleiros to Rua Fernao Lopes. In February 1927, we were, I think, still living in the Mouraria district of Lisbon, because I have a vivid memory of hearing artillery fire whistling over the roof from the Castelo de S~ao Jorge and intended for the rebels encamped in Parque Eduardo VII. A straight line drawn from the castle esplanade, and taking as an intermediate point the building in which we were living, would bring you infallibly to the traditional command post of all Lisbon's military insurrections. Hitting your target or not would simply be a question of taking careful aim and adjusting your sight. Given that my first school was in Rua Martens Ferrao and primary education began at the age of seven, we must have left the house in Rua dos Cavaleiros shortly after I began my studies. (There is another and possibly more likely hypothesis to consider, one that I set down here before continuing: that those shots came not from the uprising of February 7, 1927, but from another, the following year. Indeed, although I may have started going to the cinema early on in my life-to the aforementioned Salao Lisboa, better known as the 'Fleapit' and located in the Mouraria, next to the Arco do Marques de Alegrete-I certainly wouldn't have done so at the tender age of barely five, my age in February 1927.) Of the people with whom we shared a house in Rua dos Cavaleiros my only clear memory is of the couple's son. His name was Felix and I experienced one of my worst nighttime horrors with him, doubtless brought on by the hair-raising films we used to watch then, and which would now seem laughable.
The Baratas were two brothers, one of whom was a policeman, like my father, although the former belonged to a different branch called Criminal Investigation. My father, who would reach the rank of sergeant a few years later, was, at the time, a simple constable in the PSP, the Public Security Police, working either on foot patrol or at the police station, depending on which shift he was on and, unlike the Barata brother, who was always in plain clothes, he bore his identification number on his collar, 567. I can remember that as clearly as if I were seeing it now, the brass numbers on the stiff collar of his dolman, as the jacket of his uniform was known, made of gray ticking in the summer and thick blue woolen cloth in the winter. The name of the Barata brother who was in the Criminal Investigation Department was Antonio, and he wore a moustache and was married to a woman called Conceicao, who, years later, brought him certain problems, for my mother suspected, or may even have had proof, that my father and Conceicao had enjoyed a degree of intimacy unacceptable even to the most tolerant of minds. I never discovered what really happened, I speak only of what I could deduce and imagine from the few hints dropped by my mother, when we were already living in the new house. Indeed, that might have been the real reason behind our move from Rua Padre Sena Freitas, where we were all living, to Rua Carlos Ribeiro, both of which were in the area being built on the hill that goes down from the Igreja da Penha de Franca to the beginning of Vale Escuro. And I only left Rua Carlos Ribeiro when I was twenty-two, to marry Ilda Reis.
I remember rather less about the other Barata brother, but I can still see him, small, round and rather plump. If I ever knew what he did for a living, I have long since forgotten. I think his wife's name was Emilia and his, I believe, was Jose: having been buried for years beneath many layers of forgetting, those names, like that of the supposedly flighty Conceicao, rose obediently from the depths of memory when summoned by necessity, like a cork float held fast on the riverbed, but which suddenly breaks free of the accumulated mud. They had two children, Domitilia and Leandro, both slightly older than me and both with stories to tell, and in the case of Domitilia, to my great good fortune, with some sweet memories to recall. Let's begin with Leandro. At the time, he didn't seem particularly intelligent, in fact, he didn't seem very intelligent at all or else made no effort to appear so. His Uncle Antonio Barata, who never wasted his breath on circumlocutions, metaphors or evasions, called him a fool straight out. In those days, we all had to learn from the
As for Domitilia, we were caught one day together in bed, playing at what brides and bridegrooms play at, active and curious about everything on the human body that exists in order to be touched, penetrated and fiddled with. When I try to pinpoint what age I was then, I think I must have been about eleven or perhaps slightly younger (I can't be certain because we lived twice in Rua Carrilho Videira, in the same house). We two bold creatures (who knows which of us had the idea, although it's likely that the initiative came from me) were spanked on the bottom, purely as a formality I think and not very hard. I'm sure the three women in the house, including my mother, would have laughed about it afterward, behind the backs of the precocious sinners who had been unable to wait until the proper time for such intimate discoveries. I remember crouching on the balcony at the back of the house (on a very high fifth story), crying, with my face pressed between the railings, while Domitilia, at the other end, accompanied me in my tears. But we didn't learn our lesson. A few years later, by which time I was living at 11 Rua Padre Sena Freitas, she went to visit Aunt Conceicao, and it happened that not only were my aunt and uncle not in, my parents were out as well, and so we had plenty of time for more detailed investigations, which, although they didn't go all the way, left us both with unforgettable memories, at least in my case, for even now I can see her, naked from the waist down. Later on, when the two Barata brothers were already living in Praca do Chile, I would go and visit them, my sights set on Domitilia, but since, by then, we were both grown up and fully equipped, we found it hard to find a moment alone. It was also in Rua Padre Sena Freitas that I slept (or didn't sleep) part of the night with a slightly older girl cousin (she had the same name, Maria da Piedade, as my mother, who as well as being her aunt was also her godmother) when we were put in the same bed, head to toe. A vain precaution on the part of our ingenuous mothers. While they returned to the kitchen and resumed the conversation we weren't supposed to hear and which they had interrupted in order to take us to bed, where they had covered us up and tucked us in with their own fond hands, we, after a few minutes of anxious waiting, hearts pounding, underneath the sheet and the blanket, in the dark, began a meticulous, mutual, tactile exploration of our bodies with more than justifiable urgency and eagerness, but in a way that was not just methodical, but also, in the circumstances, as instructive as we could make it from the anatomical point of view. I remember that the first move on my part, the first attack, so to speak, brought my right foot into contact with Piedade's already bushy pubis. We were pretending to sleep like angels when, later that night, Aunt Maria Mogas, who was married to a brother of my father's called Francisco, came to get her up and take her home. Ah, yes, those were innocent times.
We must have lived in Rua Padre Sena Freitas for two or three years. That was where we were living when the Spanish Civil War broke out. The move to Rua Carlos Ribeiro must have happened in 1938, or perhaps even 1937. And unless my still, for the moment, serviceable memory allows different dates and references to surface,
