Raised from the Ground (6 page)

N
ATURE DISPLAYS REMARKABLE
callousness when creating her various creatures. Apart from those who die or are born crippled, some do manage to escape and thus guarantee the results of nature’s engeneration, to coin an ambivalent and therefore equivocal noun that combines generation and engendering, with just the right cozy margin of imprecision that surrounds the many mutations of what one says, does and is. Nature does not itself parcel out the land, but uses the system to its advantage. And if after harvest time the granaries of the thousand anthills of the fields are not all equally full, the profits and losses feed into the great accounting department of the planet and no ant is left without its statistical quota of food. In the settling of accounts it matters little that millions of ants have died from being flooded out, dug up or urinated on: those who lived ate, and those who died left the others behind. Nature doesn’t count its dead, it counts the living, and when there are too many of those, it organizes a new slaughter. It’s all very easy, very clear and very fair, and as far as the memory of ants and elephants can recall, no one in the animal kingdom has as yet complained.

Fortunately, man is the king of the beasts. He can therefore do his accounts with pen and paper or by other, subtler means, murmured comments, hints, glances and nods. Such mimicry and onomatopoeia come together, in cruder form, in the songs and dances of struggle, seduction and enticement that certain animals use to obtain their goals. This may help in understanding Laureano Carranca, that rigid man of principle, think only of his inflexibility, his chill disapproval of his daughter’s marriage, and the game of emotional weights and measures that he practiced daily, now that he has his grandson João at home with him, an act of reluctant charity, and another, much more favored grandson called José Nabiça. Let us explain why, although it won’t really contribute much to our understanding of the story, only enough for us to know each other better, as the gospels urge us to do. José Nabiça was the child born to one of Sara da Conceição’s sisters and a man whose anonymity consisted in everyone pretending not to know who he was, when in fact his identity was public knowledge. In such cases, there is often a general complicity, based on everyone knowing the truth but feeling curious as to how the protagonists will behave, and what’s wrong with that, given how few distractions life provides. Such love children are often abandoned, sometimes by both mother and father, and consigned to the foundling hospital or left out on the road to be devoured either by the wolves or the Brothers of Mercy. Fortunately for José Nabiça, however, despite the taint of his birth, he was blessed with a father who had a little money and with grandparents who had an eye on a future inheritance, a remote possibility but of some substance nevertheless, enough to be a promise of wealth for the Carranca family. They treated João Mau-Tempo as if he wasn’t of the same blood at all, and so he, as the son of a cobbler-turned-vagrant, would inherit neither money nor land. The other grandson, though he was the son of a sin unpurged by marriage, was treated like a prince by his grandfather, who remained deaf to what people said and blind to the evidence of his daughter’s besmirched honor, and all because he had hopes of a legacy that never materialized. Proof perhaps that divine justice does exist.

João Mau-Tempo had more than a year of schooling, and that was the end of his education. His grandfather eyed that skinny little body, pondered for the nth time those blue eyes that were immediately lowered in fright, and decreed, You’re to help your uncle in the fields, so behave yourself, because if you don’t, you’ll feel the weight of my hand. By work in the fields he meant clearing land and digging, a kind of brute labor quite unsuitable for a child, but it was as well for him to find out now what his place in the world would be when he grew up. Joaquim Carranca was himself a brute, and would leave João out all night in the fields, on guard in the cabin or on the threshing floor, when such duties were completely beyond the strength of a child. Worse still, during the night, out of pure malice, he would go and see if the boy was sleeping and then throw a sack of wheat on top of him and make the boy cry, and as if that were not enough, or, indeed, too much, he would prod him with a metal-tipped stick, and the more his nephew screamed and wept, the more the heartless wretch would laugh. These things really happened, which is why they’re hard to believe when set down as fiction. In the meantime, Sara da Conceição gave birth to another daughter, who died eight days later.

There were rumors in Monte Lavre that a war was being waged in Europe, a place that few people in the village knew much about. They had their own wars to wage, and not small ones either, working all day, when there was work, and feeling sick with hunger all day, whether there was work or not. Not quite so many people died though, and generally speaking, any corpses entered the grave in one piece. However, as previously announced, the time had come for one of them to die.

When Sara da Conceição heard that her husband had been seen in Cortiçadas, she gathered together the children who lived with her and, putting little trust in her father’s ability to protect João, she picked him up en route and sought shelter in the house of some relatives, the Picanços, who were millers in a place called Ponte Cava, about half a league away, the place taking its name from the bridge that crossed the river there. The bridge in question, however, was now nothing but a crumbling arch and some large boulders on the riverbed, but João Mau-Tempo and the other children would bathe naked there, and when João lay on his back staring up at the sky, all he could see was sky and water. It was there in Ponte Cava that the family chose to hide, fearful of the threats emanating from Cortiçadas via the mouths of well-known tattletales. Domingos Mau-Tempo might never have come to Monte Lavre if the messenger, on his return journey, had not told him that his family had fled in terror. One day, he slung a saddlebag over his shoulder and, blinded by fate, set off along cart tracks and across plains, and when he reached the mill, he stood outside, demanding satisfaction and the return of his family. José Picanço came out to speak to him while, in the depths of the house, his wife kept guard over the refugees. Domingos Mau-Tempo says, Good morning, Picanço, And José Picanço says, Good morning, Mau-Tempo, what do you want. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, I’ve come for my family, who, it seems, have run away from me, and someone told me that they’re living in your house. And José Picanço says, Whoever told you that was quite right, they are living in my house. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, Then send them out to me, because my wandering days are done. And José Picanço says, Who are you trying to fool, Mau-Tempo, you certainly can’t fool me, I know you too well. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, They’re my family, not yours. And José Picanço says, Well, they’re certainly in far better hands here, anyway, no one is coming out, because no one wants to go with you. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, I’m the father and the husband. And José Picanço says, Get out of here, I saw how you treated your honest, hard-working wife when we were neighbors, and your poor children, and the misery you put them through, in fact, if it hadn’t been for me and a few others, they would have died of hunger, and there would be no need for you to be here now, because they would all be dead. And Domingos Mau-Tempo says, Yes, but I’m still the father and the husband. And José Picanço says, Like I said before, get out of here and go where no one can hear or see or speak to you, because you’re a hopeless case, a lost cause.

It’s a beautiful day. A sunny morning after rain, because we’re in autumn now, you see. Domingos Mau-Tempo draws a line on the ground with his stick, an apparent challenge, a sign that he is ready to fight, at least that is how Picanço interprets it, and so he, too, picks up a stick. These are not his problems, but often a man cannot choose, he simply happens to find himself in the right place at the right time. At his back, behind the door, are four frightened children and a woman who, if she could, would defend them with her own body, but the forces are so unequal, which is why Picanço draws his own line on the ground. He needn’t have bothered. Domingos Mau-Tempo says nothing, makes no other gesture, he is still absorbing what has been said to him, but if he is truly to absorb it, he cannot stay there. He turns and goes back the way he came, taking the path that follows the river past Monte Lavre. Someone sees him and stops, but he doesn’t respond. He might perhaps murmur, Wretched bloody place, but he says it with great sadness, with the grief of having been born, because he has no particular reason to hate this place, or perhaps all places are wretched and all are cursed, condemned and condemning. He goes down a grassy slope, crosses a fast-flowing stream via three steppingstones and climbs up the bank. There is a hill opposite Monte Lavre, each man has his mount of olives and his reason for going there. Domingos Mau-Tempo lies down in the sparse shade and looks up at the sky without knowing that he’s looking at it. His eyes are dark, as deep as mines. He isn’t thinking, unless thought is this slow parade of images, back and forth, and the occasional indecipherable word dropping like a stone that suddenly rolls for no reason down a hillside. He sits up and leans on his elbows, Monte Lavre is there before him like a nativity scene, at its highest point, above the tower, a very tall man is hammering at the sole of a shoe, raising his hammer and bringing it crashing down. Fancy seeing such things, and he’s not even drunk. He is merely sleeping and dreaming. Now it’s a cart passing by, piled with furniture and with Sara da Conceição perched precariously on top, and he is the one who’s going to have to be the mule, fancy hauling all that weight, Father Agamedes, and around his neck is a bell without a clapper, he shakes it hard to make it ring, it must ring, but it’s made of cork, oh, to hell with mass. And coming toward him is cousin Picanço, who removes the bell and replaces it with a millstone, you’re a hopeless case, a lost cause.

He felt as if he had spent the whole afternoon daydreaming like this and yet it took only a few minutes. The sun has barely moved, the shadows haven’t changed. Monte Lavre has neither grown nor shrunk. Domingos Mau-Tempo got up, ran his right hand over his beard and, when he did so, a piece of straw got caught in his fingers. He rubbed it between his fingertips, broke it in two and threw it away. Then he put his hand into his bag, produced a length of rope and walked in among the olive trees, out of sight now of Monte Lavre. He walked, looking about him as he went, like a landowner sizing up the harvest, he calculated heights and resistance, and finally decided where he would die. He slung the rope over a branch, secured it well, then climbed onto the branch, put the noose about his neck and jumped. No hanged man ever died so quickly.

J
OÃO MAU-TEMPO IS
now the man of the house, the oldest son. The firstborn with no firstborn’s legacy, the owner of nothing at all, he casts a very brief shadow. He clomps around in the clogs his mother bought for him, but they’re so heavy that they fall off his feet, and so he invents some rough-and-ready suspenders, which he loops under the soles of the clogs and through the holes he has made in his trouser bottoms. He cuts a grotesque figure, with his mattock, much larger than him, over his shoulder, as he rises from his thin mattress at dawn, in the cold, oily light of the lamp, so confused, so heavy with sleep, so clumsy in his gestures, that he probably leaves his bed with the mattock already on his shoulder and his clogs on his feet, a small, primitive machine capable of only one movement, raising the mattock and letting it fall, heaven knows where he gets the strength. Sara da Conceição said, Son, they’ve given me work for you so that you can earn a little money, because life is hard and we have no one to help us. And João Mau-Tempo, who already knows about life, asked, Shall I go and dig, Mama. If she could, Sara da Conceição would have said, No, my son, you’re only ten years old, digging is no work for a child, but what is she to do when there are so few ways of earning a living on the latifundio and when his dead father’s trade proved so ill fated. It is still pitch-black when João Mau-Tempo gets up, but luckily for him, his path to the farm of Pedra Grande passes through Ponte Cava, a fortunate place for him despite all, the place where they, poor things, were saved from the wrath of Domingos Mau-Tempo, indeed, a doubly fortunate place because, even though his father killed himself in that cruel fashion, and despite his many sins, if that shoemaker is not at God’s right hand, then there is no such thing as mercy. Domingos Mau-Tempo was a sad, unfortunate wretch, so let not good souls condemn him. His son, then, is setting off in the dim light of a still distant sun when Picanço’s wife comes out to meet him and says, So, João, where are you off to. The blue-eyed lad answers, I’m off to Pedra Grande to clear the fields. And Picanço’s wife says, You’re far too small to use a mattock and the weeds are far too tall. One can see at once that this is a conversation between poor people, between a grown woman and a man still growing, and they speak of these lowly and insubstantial matters because, as you have seen, they are rough-and-ready types, with no education to enlighten them, or if they have, any light once shed is rapidly burning out. João Mau-Tempo knows what answer he will give, no one taught it to him, but any other reply would be out of time and place, That may be so, but I have to help my poor mother, well, you know what our life is like, and my brother Anselmo is going out begging for alms so that he can bring me something to eat in the fields, because my mother hasn’t even enough money to buy food. Picanço’s wife says, You mean you’re going off to work without anything for your lunch, you poor lad. The poor lad answers, Yes, Senhora, I am.