Raised from the Ground (5 page)

Then the first man from the north walked over to the wheat with his sickle, and the first man from the south grabbed his arm, and they grappled clumsily, awkwardly, roughly, brutishly, hunger against hunger, poverty against poverty, how dearly we buy our daily bread. The guards arrived and broke up the fight, attacking one side only, driving back with their sabers those from the south and corralling them as if they were animals. The sergeant says, Shall I arrest the lot of them. The overseer says, It’s not worth it, leave the bastards there for a while to cool off. The sergeant says, But one of the other men has a wound to the head, he was attacked, and the law is the law. The overseer says, It’s not worth it, Sergeant, why worry over spilling a mere animal’s blood, it doesn’t matter whether they’re from the north or the south, they’re worth about as much as the boss’s piss. The sergeant says, Speaking of the boss, I need some firewood. The overseer says, We’ll send you a cartload. The sergeant says, And a few roof tiles too. The overseer says, Well, we can’t have you without a roof over your head. The sergeant says, Life is very expensive. The overseer says, I’ll send you some sausages.

The men from the north are in the field now. The blond ears of wheat fall onto the dark earth, how lovely, it smells like a long-unwashed body, then, in the distance, a passing tilbury stops. The overseer says, It’s the boss. The sergeant says, Give him my thanks, and let me know if you need any more help. The overseer says, Keep an eye on those rascals. The sergeant says, Don’t worry, I know how to handle them. Some of the men from the south say, Let’s set fire to the wheatfield. Others say, That would be a terrible shame. They all say, That lot don’t know what shame is.

T
HEY HAD BEEN
to Landeira, and to Santana do Mato, in and out of the parish, to Tarrafeiro and Afeiteira, and in the midst of all this traveling their third child was born, a daughter this time, Maria da Conceição, and a fourth, a boy named Domingos, like his father. May God give him better fortune, because there was nothing good to be said about his progenitor, who, caught between the wine and the cheap brandy, the mallet and the shoe stud, was going from bad to worse. And as for the furniture, the least said the better, for it continued to be bumped over hills and ditches as it was transported from house to cart and from cart to house and from village to village. A new shoemaker’s arrived, his name’s Mau-Tempo, let’s go and see what this master craftsman is like, mind you, he drinks wine all year round the way you drink water in August, he’s certainly a master at that. While living in Canha with her husband and children, Sara da Conceição suffered from tertian fever for two years, which, for those unfamiliar with the disease, is the sort of fever that comes and goes every four days. That is why, when his mother was ill in bed, João Mau-Tempo, he of the blue eyes, which were not repeated in his siblings, used to go to the well, and once, as he plunged the jug in, he lost his footing, proof that no one watches over the innocent, and fell into the water, which was very deep for a little seven-year-old. He was carried home by the woman who saved him, and his father beat him while his mother lay in bed trembling with fever, shaking so hard that even the brass balls on the bed shook, Don’t hit the boy, Domingos, but she might as well have been talking to a brick wall.

Then came the day when Sara da Conceição called her husband and he did not answer. That was the first time Domingos Mau-Tempo spurned his family and went wandering off. Then, Sara da Conceição, who had kept silent for so long about her life, asked a literate neighbor to write a letter for her, and it was as if she were pouring her whole soul into it, because such behavior certainly wasn’t what had made her fall in love with her husband. Dearest Father, for the love of God, please come and fetch me with your donkeys and your cart and take me back home with you where I belong and I beg you please to forgive me all the trouble and grief I’ve caused you as well as all you’ve had to put up with and believe me when I say how I regret not following the advice you gave me over and over not to make this unfortunate marriage to a man who has brought me only sorrow because I’ve suffered so much poverty disappointments beatings I was well advised but ill fated, this final phrase was drawn from her neighbor’s literary treasure trove, marrying the classical and the modern with admirable boldness.

What would any father worthy of the name do, regardless of previous scandals? What did Laureano Carranca do? He sent his gloomy, ill-tempered son, Joaquim, to Canha to fetch his sister and however many grandchildren there might be. Not because he loved them dearly, they were, after all, the children of that drunkard cobbler, no, he didn’t love those chips off the old block, and besides, he had other grandchildren he preferred. And so, that poor woman and her children, abandoned by husband and father, arrived in Monte Lavre with the ruins of their furniture piled high on the cart, and some were given house-room by parents or grandparents, out of a somewhat tetchy sense of pity, while others were deposited in a hayloft until a home could be found for them. And when they had to find shelter, mats on the floor served them as beds, and for food the older children went begging, as Our Lord once did, for it is a sin to steal. Sara da Conceição worked hard, of course, because she wasn’t just there to bring children into the world, and her parents helped her out a little, her mother rather more generously, as is only natural, well, she was her mother. And thus they scraped along. A few weeks later, though, Domingos Mau-Tempo reappeared, prowling around Monte Lavre, trailing after his wife and children and finally ambushing them, contrite and repentant, to use his words, doubtless learned while he was sacristan. Laureano Carranca flew into a great rage, saying that he never wanted to see his daughter again if, heaven forbid, she went back to that useless, drunken scoundrel of a son-in-law. A much-chastened Domingos Mau-Tempo went to talk to him and assured him that he had changed his ways, and that this absence had shown him, blind as he was, how much he loved his wife and his dear children, I swear this to you, sir, on bended knee if necessary. Having somewhat assuaged their anger with all his tears, he and his family set off for a nearby hamlet, Cortiçadas de Monte Lavre, almost within sight of the paternal home. Having lost all the equipment that had allowed him, as he preferred, to work for himself, Domingos Mau-Tempo was forced to take employment with Master Gramicho, while Sara da Conceição labored away stitching uppers to soles, to help out her husband and keep her children fed and clothed. And the fates? Domingos Mau-Tempo once again began to slide into sadness, like a monster in exile, for that is the worst of all sadnesses, as you can see from the tale of Beauty and the Beast, and it wasn’t long before he said to his wife, It’s time to move on, I don’t feel comfortable here, wait for a few days with the children while I go and look for work elsewhere. Sara da Conceição, not believing that her husband would come back, waited for two months, what else could she do, and was once more the abandoned widow, then up he popped again, happy as a lark, full of sweet words, Sara, I’ve found work and a really nice house in Ciborro. And so they left for Ciborro, and things went quite well for them, because the people there were pleasant and paid their bills promptly. There was no shortage of work, and the shoemaker seemed to have lost his taste for the taberna, not entirely, that would be asking too much, but enough to make him seem a respectable man. And this happened at an opportune moment because, meanwhile, a primary school had been set up there, and João Mau-Tempo, who was the right age, went there to learn to read and write and count.

And the fates? For some reason werewolves are drawn to crossroads, the poor wretches, not that I claim to understand such mysteries, dear reader, it’s as if they were under an evil spell, but on a particular day of the week, they leave their houses and at the first crossroads they come to, they take off their clothes, throw themselves on the ground, roll around in the dust, and are transformed into whatever animal has left its trail there, You mean any trail, or only the trail left by a mammal, Any trail, sir, once, a man was transformed into a cartwheel, and he went spinning and spinning along, it was terrible, but it’s more common for them to be changed into animals, as was the case with a man, whose name I can’t now recall, who lived with his wife in Monte do Curral da Légua, near Pedra Grande, and his fate was to go out every Tuesday night, but he knew what would happen, and so he warned his wife never to open the door when he was outside, no matter what noises she heard, because he uttered cries and howls that would freeze the blood of any Christian, no one could sleep a wink, but one night, his wife screwed up her courage, because women are very curious and always want to know everything, and resolved to open the door. And what did she see, oh dear God, she saw before her a huge pig, like a rampant boar, with a head this size, this big, and it hurled itself at her like a lion ready to devour her, but luckily she managed to slam the door shut, although not before the pig had bitten off a piece of her skirt, and imagine her horror when her husband returned home at dawn with that same piece of cloth still in his mouth, but at least it gave him an opportunity to explain that whenever he went out on Tuesday nights, he was changed into an animal, and that night he had been a pig, and he could have done her real harm, so next time she must on no account open the door, because he couldn’t answer for his actions, How dreadful, Anyway, his wife went to speak to her in-laws, who were most upset to learn that their son had become a werewolf, because there weren’t any others in the family, and so they went to a holy woman who recited the prayers of exorcism appropriate to such cases, and she told them that the next time he was changed into a werewolf, they must burn his hat, and then it would never happen again, and this proved to be a sovereign remedy, because they burned his hat and he was cured, Do you think burning his hat cured him because the sickness was in his head, I have no idea, the woman never said, but let me tell you of another, similar case, a man and his wife lived on a farm near Ciborro, why these things only happen between couples, I don’t know, where they raised chickens and other livestock, and every night, because it happened every night, her husband would get out of bed, go into the garden and start clucking, can you imagine, and when his wife peered around the door, she saw that he had been turned into a huge chicken, What, the same size as that pig, You may laugh, but just hear me out, this couple had a daughter, and when their daughter was about to get married, they killed a lot of chickens for the wedding feast, because that was what they had most of, but that night, the wife didn’t hear her husband get out of bed or hear him clucking, and you’ll never guess what happened, the man went to the place where the chickens had been killed, picked up a knife, knelt down by a bowl, and stuck the knife in his own throat, and there he stayed until his wife woke to find the bed empty, went in search of her husband and found him dead in a great pool of blood, you see, like I said, it’s the fates.

Domingos Mau-Tempo went back to his old ways, wine, idleness, beatings, fights and insults. Mama, is Papa cursed, Don’t say such things about your father. These are words often spoken in such circumstances, and neither those intended as an accusation nor those intended to absolve should be taken seriously. Poverty was casting a dark shadow over the faces of these people, and the children who were old enough to do so went begging. However, there are still some kind, conscientious people, such as the owners of the house in which the Mau-Tempo family lived, who often gave them food, but children can be cruel, and although when bread was being baked in the owners’ house they always reserved a bread roll for João Mau-Tempo, the boys of the family, who went to the same school and were all friends, used to play a practical joke on João Mau-Tempo, tethering him with a rope to the trough with the bread roll before him and refusing to let him go until he had eaten it. And people say there’s a God.

Then, what had to happen, happened. Domingos Mau-Tempo reached the last of his misfortunes. One afternoon, he was sitting on his bench polishing the heel of a shoe when he suddenly put everything down, untied his apron, went into the house, made up a bundle of clothes, took some bread out of the bread bin, put everything in a knapsack and left. His wife was working, along with her two youngest children, João was at school, and the other one was idling about somewhere. This was the last time Domingos Mau-Tempo left home. He will still appear to say a few words and to hear others, but his story is over. He will spend the next two years as a wanderer.