Raised from the Ground (38 page)

Then one year, António Mau-Tempo decided not to return to France, partly because his health was suffering. After that, he went back to being nothing but a latifundio rabbit, caught on a twig, scratching away with his claws, the ox returns to the furrow, the stream to its familiar course, alongside Manuel Espada and the others, cutting cork, scything, pruning, hoeing, weeding, why do they not weary of such monotony, every day the same as the last, at least as regards the scant food and the desire to earn a little money for tomorrow, which hangs over these places like a threat, tomorrow, tomorrow is just another day, like yesterday, rather than being the hope of something new, if that’s what life is.

France is everywhere. The Carriça estate is in France, that’s not what it says on the map, but it’s true, if not in Normandy, then in Provence, it really doesn’t matter, António Mau-Tempo no longer has Miguel Hernández by his side, but Manuel Espada, his brother-in-law and his friend, though they are very different in character, they are scything, doing piecework, as we shall see. Gracinda Mau-Tempo is here too, pregnant at last, when it seemed that she would never have children, and the three of them are living, for as long as the harvest lasts, in an abandoned laborer’s hut, which Manuel Espada has cleaned up to make comfortable for his wife. No one had lived there for five or six years, and it was a real ruin, full of snakes and lizards and all kinds of creepy-crawlies, and when it was ready, Manuel Espada, having first sprinkled the floor with water, went to fetch a bundle of rushes to lie down on, and it was so cool inside that he almost fell asleep, it was just an adobe wall with a covering of gorse and straw to serve as a roof, then suddenly a snake slithered over him, as thick as my wrist, which is not of the slenderest. He never told Gracinda Mau-Tempo, and who can say what she would have done had she known, perhaps it wouldn’t have bothered her, the women in these parts are made of stern stuff, and when she arrived at the hut, she found it all neat and ready, with a truckle bed for the couple, another for António Mau-Tempo and a large sack to share as a blanket, that is how intimately people live on the latifundio. Oh, don’t get all hot under the collar, Father Agamedes, where have you been, by the way, these men are not really going to sleep here, if they do lie down on the bed, they will do so simply in order not to die, and now is perhaps the moment to speak about pay and conditions, they’re paid so much a day for a week, plus five hundred escudos for the rest of the field, which must all be harvested by Saturday. This may seem complicated, but it couldn’t be simpler. For a whole week, Manuel Espada and António Mau-Tempo will scythe all day and all night, and you need to understand exactly what this means, when they are utterly exhausted after a whole day of work, they will go back to the hut for something to eat and then return to the field and spend all night scything, not picking poppies, and when the sun rises, they will again go back to the hut to eat something, lie down for perhaps ten minutes, snoring like bellows, then get up, work all day, eat whatever there is to eat and again work all night, we know no one is going to believe us, these can’t be men, but they are, if they were animals they would have dropped down dead, only three days have passed, and the two men are like two ghosts standing alone in the moonlight in the half-harvested field, Do you think we’ll make it, We have to, and meanwhile Gracinda Mau-Tempo, heavily pregnant, is weeding in the ricefield, and when she can’t weed, she goes to fetch water, and when she can’t fetch water, she cooks food for the men, and when she can’t cook, she goes back to the weeding, her belly on a level with the water, her son will be born a frog.

The harvest is done, and in the agreed time too, Gilberto came to pay these two ghosts, but he’s seen plenty of ghosts in his time, and António Mau-Tempo has now gone to work on the other side of this France, this killing field. Manuel Espada and his wife Gracinda Mau-Tempo stayed on in the hut until it was time for her to give birth. Manuel Espada took his wife home and then went back to the Carriça estate, where, fortunately, there was work. Anyone who remains unsurprised by all this needs to have the scales removed from his eyes or a hole bored in his ear, if he hasn’t got one already and sees them only in the ears of others.

G
RACINDA MAU-TEMPO
gave birth in pain. Her mother Faustina came to help her during labor, along with old Belisária, who had long practiced as a midwife and been responsible for a fair few deaths in childbirth, of both mothers and babies, but to make up for this, she did create the finest navels in Monte Lavre, and while this may sound like a joke, it isn’t, rather, it deserves to be the subject of obstetric research into just how Belisária managed to cut and suture umbilical cords in such a way that they resembled goblets straight out of the thousand and one nights, which, opportunity and audacity allowing, one could verify by comparing them with the bare bellybuttons of the Moorish dancers who, on certain mysterious nights, cast off their veils at the fountain in Amieiro. As for the pain suffered by Gracinda Mau-Tempo, it was neither more nor less than that suffered by all women since Eve’s fortunate sin, fortunate, we say, because of the earlier pleasure enjoyed, a view that does not sit well with Father Agamedes, who disagrees out of duty and possibly conviction, as the upholder of the most ancient punishment in human history, meted out by Jehovah himself, You will give birth in pain, and so it has been all the days of all women, even those who didn’t know Jehovah’s name. The rancor of the gods lasts much longer than that of men. Men are poor wretches, capable of terrible vengeance, but capable, too, of being moved to tears by the slightest thing, and if the time is right and the light propitious, they will fall into their enemy’s arms and weep over how strange it is to be a man, a woman, a person. God, Jehovah or whoever, never forgets anything, the sinner must be punished, which is why there is this endless line of gaping vulvas, dilated, volcanic, out of which burst new men and new women, all covered in blood and mucus, all equal in their misery, but so instantly different, depending on the arms that receive them, the breath that warms them, the clothes that cover them, while the mother draws back into her body that tide of suffering, even while the last flower of blood drips from her torn flesh, and while the flabby skin on her now empty belly slowly stirs and hangs in folds, that is when youth begins to die.

Meanwhile, up above, the balconies of heaven are deserted, the angels are taking a nap, of Jehovah and what remains of his wrath there is no news that makes any human sense, and there is no record that the celestial fireworks were summoned to conceive, create and launch some new star to shine for three days and three nights above the ramshackle hut that is home to Gracinda Mau-Tempo, Manuel Espada and their first child, Maria Adelaide, for that is the name she will bear. And we are in a land that does not lack for shepherds, some who were shepherds as children and others who continued to be and will be until the day they die. The flocks are large too, we saw one of six hundred sheep, and there’s no shortage of pigs either, although the pig is not really a suitable animal for nativity scenes, it lacks a sheep’s elegance, thick coat, soft woolly caress, pass me my ball of yarn, will you, darling, such creatures are made to bend the knee, whereas the pig rapidly loses its sweet look of a pink, newborn bonbon and becomes instead a bulbous-nosed, malodorous lover of mud, sublime only in the meat that it gives us. As for the oxen, they are busy working, nor are there so many of them on the latifundio that they can afford to attend belated scenes of adoration, and as for the donkeys, beneath their saddle cloths there are only sores, around which buzz bluebottles excited by the smell of blood, while in Manuel Espada’s house the flies swarm feverishly above Gracinda Mau-Tempo, who smells like a woman who has just given birth, Keep those flies off, will you, says old Belisária, or perhaps she doesn’t, so used is she to this accompanying halo of winged, buzzing angels, who appear as soon as summer arrives and she has to go off to help some woman in labor.

Miracles do happen, though. The child is lying on the sheet, they smacked her as soon as she came into the world, not that this was necessary, because her first cry was already forming in her throat, and one day she will shout other things that now seem quite impossible, she cries, although she sheds no tears, merely screws up her eyes, making a face that would frighten any visiting Martian, but which, nonetheless, makes us sob our hearts out, and since it is a bright, warm day and the door is open, there falls onto this side of the sheet a kind of reflected light, where it comes from doesn’t really matter, and Faustina Mau-Tempo, so deaf that she cannot even hear her granddaughter crying, is the first to see her eyes, which are blue, as blue as João Mau-Tempo’s eyes, two drops of sky-bathed water, two round hydrangea petals, but neither of these vulgar comparisons serves, they merely reveal a lack of imagination, no comparison will serve, however hard future suitors may struggle to come up with one that does justice to these eyes, which are blue, not aquamarine or azure, not some botanical caprice or the product of some subterranean forge, but bright, intense blue, like João Mau-Tempo’s eyes, we can compare them when he arrives, and then we will know what kind of blue it is. For now, though, only Faustina Mau-Tempo knows, which is why she can proclaim, She has her grandfather’s eyes, and then the other two women want to see as well, Belisária, much put out at being deprived of her midwife’s privileges, and Gracinda Mau-Tempo, a jealous she-wolf to her cub, but Belisária takes her time, which is why Gracinda Mau-Tempo is last, not that it matters, she will have time enough to be attached by her nipples to that sucking mouth, she will have time to lose herself in contemplating those blue, blue eyes while the milk flows from her breast, whether here beneath these badly laid roof tiles, or beneath a holm oak in the middle of the countryside, or standing up when there’s nowhere to sit, or hurriedly when she can’t dawdle, milk that flows, in small and large quantities, from that breast, that life, like white blood made out of the other, red variety.

Then the three kings arrived. The first was João Mau-Tempo, who came on foot when it was still light, so he needed no star to guide him, and the only reason he didn’t arrive earlier was male modesty, because, were such things the norm in that time and place, he could easily have been there at the birth, after all, what’s wrong with seeing your own daughter give birth, but it’s simply not done, people would talk, such ideas belong in the future. He arrived early because he’s currently out of work, and has been clearing a piece of land he’s been given to cultivate, and when he went into the house, his wife wasn’t there, but his neighbor informed him that he was the grandfather of a little girl, and he was pleased, but not as pleased as you might expect, because he would have preferred a boy, men do, in general, prefer boys, and then he left the house, walked at his usual slow, swaying pace, caught between two different pains, one here, the other there, the old pain acquired carrying logs to the charcoal pit, and the other, a dull ache, was the result of being forced to stand for hours like a statue, he looks like a sailor fresh off the boat after a long voyage, disconcerted to find that the ground he walks on doesn’t move, or as if he were riding on the back of a camel, the ship of the desert, a comparison that paints exactly the right picture, for, given that João Mau-Tempo is the first of the magi to arrive, it is only proper that he should travel according to his condition and tradition, the others can choose their own mode of transport, and he brings no gifts to speak of, unless the ark of suffering that João Mau-Tempo carries in his heart could be considered a gift, fifty years of suffering, but no gold, and incense, Father Agamedes, is for the church, and as for myrrh, that’s been used up on those who died along the way. It seems rather mean and in somewhat bad taste to give such a gift to a newborn, but these men from the latifundio can only choose from what they, in turn, were given, as much sweat as one could want, enough joy to fill a toothless smile and a plot of land large enough to devour their bones, because the rest of the land is needed for other crops.

João Mau-Tempo, then, arrives empty-handed, but on the way, he remembers that his first grandchild has just been born, and from a garden he plucks a single geranium flower on its knotty stem, with its acrid smell of poor households, but what a pretty sight it is to see one of the magi mounted on his camel with its gold and crimson saddle cloth, humbly bending down to pick a pelargonium, he didn’t order a slave to do this, of the many who accompany and serve him, what a fine example he sets. And when João Mau-Tempo reaches the door of his daughter’s house, it seems that the camel knows its duty, for it kneels down to let this lord of the latifundios dismount, while the republican guards from the local barracks present arms, although Corporal Tacabo has his doubts about whether a large, exotic beast like a camel should be allowed to travel the public highway. These are fantasies born of the harsh sun, now sinking in the sky but still beating down on the stones along the road, which are as hot as if the earth had just given birth to them. My dear daughter, and it is then that João Mau-Tempo sees that his eyes are immortal, for there they are again after a long peregrination, even he doesn’t know where they started out, where they came from and how, he knows only that there are no other such eyes in Monte Lavre, in his own family or elsewhere, my daughter’s children are definitely my grandchildren, while those of my son might and might not be, none of us is free of such popular malice, but who can doubt those eyes, look at me, look into my blue eyes, and now look at those of my granddaughter, who is to be called Maria Adelaide and is the image of her ancestor more than five hundred years ago, for those eyes come from that foreigner, that deflowerer of virgins. All families have their myths, some of which they do not know, as is the case with this Mau-Tempo family, who should, therefore, be very grateful to the narrator.