Raised from the Ground (17 page)

That’s just one story. Had it been João Brandão, I’m not sure how it would have turned out, but the man I dealt with was José Gato, with someone else it might have been different. Later, the gang moved to Vale de Reis, you city folk just can’t imagine how wild it is around there, grottoes and caves and evil-looking swamps, no one else would go anywhere near, not even the guards, they didn’t dare. The gang set up camp there, and they had a warning system in Monte da Revolta, whenever the guards appeared, Manuel da Revolta’s mother would stick a pole up the chimney with a rag tied on top, and that was the sign. One of the gang always kept an eye on that chimney, and as soon as he saw that old rag, he would warn the others and they would all vanish, disappear without trace. The guards never caught any of them. Those of us who knew the signal, when we were out in the fields working, we’d say, Something’s up.

Let me tell you now about Marcelino. He was the overseer in Vale de Reis and owned a famous rifle that the boss had bought him so that he could shoot any member of José Gato’s gang he caught stealing. But before I tell you about that, I want to tell you another story about a rifle. Once, when Marcelino was out riding, José Gato ambushed him and, with his gun pointing straight at him, said mockingly, which was very much his style, Just open your arms nice and wide and I’ll take the rifle, and Marcelino had no alternative but to do as asked, however much it galled him. José Gato was a small man, but he had a very big heart. Then it was the turn of the five-shot rifle, you know how it is, you start telling one story and other stories get in the way. Marcelino was riding along a path, no one bothered to clear the paths then, they were too busy cutting cork and slicing it up into small pieces, so the undergrowth was really thick. Marcelino was riding proudly along with his five-shot rifle loaded with five cartridges, thinking, If anyone tries to attack me now, that’ll be their goose well and truly cooked, but José Gato was hiding behind a slender holm oak, aiming straight at him, Give me that rifle, I need it, and off he went. Later, the boss said to Marcelino, I’ll buy you a carbine, I don’t want you being made to look a fool, and Marcelino replied tartly, I don’t want a carbine, from now on, it’ll be just me and my stick, that’s the best way to keep watch.

Marcelino had no luck at all with rifles. He even lost the one he owned himself and kept at home. The swineherd’s dogs started barking, they could smell that something was up, and the swineherd went to Marcelino and said, The dogs are barking, there’s someone trying to steal the pigs. Marcelino immediately picked up his rifle and his cartridge box and stood there guarding the pigs. Now and then he fired a shot, and José Gato’s men, hiding in the bushes, knew that these shots were intended for them and responded, although without wasting much ammunition. And where was José Gato all this time, why, up on the roof, onto which he had climbed unnoticed and where he remained all night, crouched like a lizard so that no one would spot him, he was nothing if not bold. Come the morning, at daybreak or shortly afterward, just as it was beginning to grow light, and when any shots from the other side had long since ceased, Marcelino said, They must have run away, I’ll just go home and have my breakfast, I’ll be back in a jiffy. And the swineherd, whose own appetite was stirred by those words, thought, Yes, I’ll go and have a bite to eat as well, why not. With his enemies gone, José Gato jumped down from the roof, ah, I forgot to mention that Marcelino had left his rifle inside the swineherd’s hut, anyway, José Gato jumped down from the roof, took the rifle and the swineherd’s new boots and a blanket, perhaps they were short of those as well, and meanwhile, his companions, there were five of them at the time, grabbed a pig each and carried them off into the undergrowth. Sows are like us, they have a joint just here, and if you cut it, they can’t move, and that’s what happened with these, only about a hundred and fifty yards from the pen, if that. And with someone keeping watch all the time. The boars noticed the sows were missing, but went looking for them far away, down the road, and none of them thought of looking closer to home. That night, José Gato went to fetch the sows, and so Marcelino’s third rifle was lost.

There’s another, more important story. Marcelino was standing guard, without his rifle this time, for they had all been stolen, and José Gato decided to set about stealing the broad beans, which had all been harvested and were lying on the threshing floor. It was close to the gang’s current hideout which we found out was there only when we were felling trees in the area, by which time they had moved on. They had dug a deep ditch and carved out caves along the walls. There were some high hills all overgrown with willows, and they had cut a path through them, rather the way mongoose do, and created alcoves furnished with comfortable beds made out of reeds and twigs. Anyway, José Gato went out nightly to steal some of the beans, and Marcelino realized that someone had been taking them because some had been crushed underfoot and you could see the empty shells underneath. Marcelino said to himself, The bastards, they’re after my beans, and so what did he decide to do, I’m going to confront them, he said, and so he tethered his horse out of sight, took a large sack with him, because in summer you don’t need a blanket, and a big stick. Shortly afterward, he heard rustling, it was José Gato tossing three or four bundles of beans in a cloth to shell them, but everything was so dry that the beans crunched underfoot, and then, at the agreed hour, a member of the gang came to help him carry away the beans, about a hundred liters of them. They were probably going to sell them to Manuel da Revolta in exchange for bread and other essentials, I’m not sure. José Gato was completely absorbed in his work, and Marcelino, barefoot, was drawing closer and closer, his own description of it was very funny, I was barefoot, you see, gradually edging nearer, and I got within about six or seven meters of the guy, another three or four meters and I could have hit him with my stick, but he was too sharp and he heard me, and just when I thought I’d deal him a blow with my stick, in two hops he was gone, now you see him, now you don’t, and I was pretty quick off the mark myself, but there he was pointing his rifle at me. José Gato said, or so Marcelino said, You’re lucky, you were kind to a friend of mine once, that was at a time when the guards were doing their worst and Marcelino had given shelter and food to one of the gang, You’re lucky, otherwise, I would have shot you dead. But Marcelino was a brave man too in his own way, Hang on, this calls for a smoke, and he pulled out his tobacco pouch, rolled himself a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, lit it, then said, Right, I’m off now.

Later, the gang were all arrested. It started in Piçarras, in an out-of-the-way place between Munhola and Landeira. There was a showdown with the guards, shots were fired, it was like a war. The guards caught them, but every one of them was given a job by local farmers, Venta Rachada became a watchman on a vineyard in Zambujal, and others the same. I would love to have heard one of those conversations between guards and farmers, We’ve arrested a man, Oh good, I’ll have him, I don’t know who was the more brazen of the two. José Gato was only arrested some time later, in Vendas Novas. He was living with a woman who sold vegetables there and he always went about in disguise, which is why the guards never caught him. Some say she gave him away, but I don’t know. He was taken prisoner at his lover’s house, in the cellar, when he was sleeping, in fact, he had said once, If they don’t catch me while I’m sleeping, they won’t catch me at all. Rumor had it that he was taken to Lisbon, and just as the others were given jobs by farmers, it was said that he had been sent to the colonies as a member of the PVDE. I don’t know if he would ever have agreed to that, I find it hard to believe, or perhaps they killed him and that was the story they made up, it wouldn’t be the first time.

José Gato had many good qualities. He never stole from the poor, his intention being to steal only from the rich, as people say José do Telhado used to. Once, Parrilhas came across a woman who had gone shopping for her family, and he robbed her, the wicked devil. Unfortunately for him, José Gato found the poor woman sobbing. He asked what was wrong and realized from what she said that Parrilhas had been her attacker. He gave the woman enough money for three loads of shopping and Parrilhas got the worst beating of his life. Quite right, too.

José Gato was a man with no illusions, small in stature but brave, as you’ll see from something that happened in Monte da Revolta. At the time, it was a very international place, you got people there from all over, suffice it to say that a man from the Algarve who was working on clearing the land managed to build a little cabin for himself, and there were others like him, with no house and no home, or if they had one, they kept quiet about it. A man there tried to provoke an argument between Manuel da Revolta and José Gato, telling Manuel da Revolta that José Gato had boasted about how he was going to sleep with Manuel’s wife. But Manuel da Revolta, who trusted José Gato, said to him straight out, So-and-so told me this. José Gato said, The bastard, let’s go and see him, and so they did, and when they got there, he said, This is what you told Manuel, and I’d like to hear you say the same to my face. The other man answered, Look, I was a bit drunk at the time, but you never said anything of the kind, and that’s the honest truth. José Gato said very calmly, Walk a hundred paces ahead of me, that way he knew he had no chance of killing the man, then he fired two or three shots at his back, so that a couple of pellets just stuck in his flesh while the others ricocheted off, then he gave him a couple of lashes with a whip as he lay on the ground, Behave like a man from now on, and don’t go playing any more childish pranks on people. It always seemed to me that José Gato got involved in a life of crime only because he couldn’t earn enough to eat.

He was in this area when I was a little boy. He was the foreman in charge of clearing the area between Monte Lavre and Coruche. The road was built entirely by itinerant laborers, lots of people worked like that, putting in three or four weeks until they had earned enough cash and then others came to take their place. José Gato arrived and clearly knew what he was doing, so he was made foreman, although he kept away from the low-lying valleys. I was herding pigs at the time, before I got to know Manuel Espada, so I saw it all. It came to be known that he’d had a few run-ins with the guards, and then the guards learned, or someone told them, that he was in the area, and they hunted him down and caught him. They didn’t quite have the measure of him though. He was at the head of the patrol, looking all meek and mild, and the guards were following behind him, looking smug, then suddenly he bent down, grabbed a handful of earth and threw it in the eyes of one of the guards, and was gone. Until his final arrest, they never saw him again. José Gato was a true wanderer. And I reckon he was always a very solitary man.

T
HE WORLD WITH ALL
its weight, this globe with no beginning and no end, made up of seas and lands, crisscrossed by rivers, streams and brooks carrying the clear water that comes and goes and is always the same, whether suspended in the clouds or hidden in the springs beneath the great subterranean plates, this world that looks like a great lump of rock rolling around the heavens or, as it will appear to astronauts one day and as we can already imagine, like a spinning top, this world, seen from Monte Lavre, is a very delicate thing, a small watch that can take only so much winding and not a turn more, that starts to tremble and twitch if a large finger approaches the balance wheel and seems about to touch, however lightly, the hairspring, as nervous as a heart. A watch is solid and rustproof inside its polished case, shockproof up to a point, even waterproof for those who have the exquisite taste to go swimming with it, it is guaranteed for a certain number of years, possibly many years if fashion does not laugh at what we bought only yesterday, for that is how the factory maintains its outflow of watches and its inflow of dividends. But if you remove its shell, if the wind, sun and rain begin to spin and beat inside it, among the jewels and the gears, you can safely bet that the happy days are over. Seen from Monte Lavre, the world is an open clock, with its innards exposed to the sun, waiting for its hour to come.

Having been sown at the right time, the wheat sprouted, grew and is now ripe. We pluck an ear from the edge of the field and rub it between the palms of our hands, an ancient gesture. The warm, dry husk crumbles and we hold cupped in our hand the eighteen or twenty grains from that ear and we say, It’s time to harvest. These are the magic words that will set in motion both machines and men, this is the moment when, to abandon the image of the watch, the snake of the earth sheds its skin and is left defenseless. If we want things to change, we must grab the snake before it disappears. From high up in Monte Lavre, the owners of the latifundio gaze out at the great yellow waves whispering beneath the gentle breeze, and say to their overseers, It’s time to harvest, or, if informed of this in their Lisbon homes, indolently say the same thing, or, more succinctly, So be it, but having said these words, they are trusting that the world will give another turn, that the latifundio will respect the regularity of its customs and its seasons, and they are relying, in a way, on the urgency with which the earth accomplishes these tasks. The war has just ended, a time of universal fraternal love is about to begin. They say that soon the ration books will be unnecessary, those little bits of colored paper that give you the right to eat, if, of course, you have the money to pay with and always assuming there is something for that money to buy. These people aren’t much bothered really. They have eaten little and badly all their lives, they have known only scarcity, and the hunger marches practiced here are as old as tales of the evil eye. However, everything has its moment. As anyone can see, this wheat is ripe and so are the men.