Raised from the Ground (28 page)

M
EN GROW, AND WOMEN
grow, everything in them grows, both the body and the area occupied by their needs, the stomach grows commensurate to our hunger, the sex grows commensurate to our desire, and Gracinda Mau-Tempo’s breasts are two billowing waves, but that’s just the usual lyrical tosh, the stuff of love songs, because the strength of her arms and the strength of his arms, we are referring here, by the way, to Manuel Espada, for three years have passed and there has been no inconstancy of feelings, but, rather, great steadfastness, anyway, the strength of their arms, male and female, is, by turns, required and rejected by the latifundio, after all, there is not such a big difference between men and women, apart from the wages they are paid. Mother, I want to get married, said Gracinda Mau-Tempo, here’s my trousseau, it’s not much to look at, but it will have to do if Manuel Espada and I are ever to lie down together in a bed that is his and mine, and in which we can be husband and wife, and for him to enter me and for me to be in him, as if we had always been together, because I don’t know much about what happened before I was born, but my blood remembers a girl who, at the fountain in Amieiro, was violated by a man who had blue eyes like our father, and I know, although quite how I don’t know, that out of my womb will come a son or a daughter with the same eyes.

If Gracinda Mau-Tempo really had said these words, there would have been a revolution on the latifundio, but it is our duty to understand what her actual words meant, mean or will mean, because we know how hard it is to express the little we do say each day, sometimes because we don’t know which word best fits which meaning, or which of the two words we know is the more exact, often because no word seems right, and then we hope that a gesture will explain, a glance confirm and a mere sound confess. Mother, said Gracinda Mau-Tempo, the little I have is enough for us to make a home, or perhaps she said, Mother, Manuel Espada says that it’s time we married, or perhaps she said neither of those things, but gave the great cry of a solitary red kite, Mother, if I don’t marry now, I’m going to lie down in the bracken by the fountain and wait for Manuel Espada to come and enter my body, and then I will lift up my dress and wash myself in the stream, and my blood will flow off to some unknown place, but at least I will know who I am. And perhaps it wasn’t like that either, perhaps one night Faustina said to João Mau-Tempo, possibly interrupting his thoughts about leaving some pamphlets in the hollow of a particular tree, She should get married now, she has her little trousseau ready, and João Mau-Tempo would have replied, It’ll have to be a modest affair, I’d like it to be a really special occasion, but that’s not possible, and António won’t be able to help now that he’s doing his national service, tell Gracinda to sort out the paperwork and we’ll do what we can. As ever, it’s still the parents who have the last word.

They have a house, one that suits their pocket, and since their pocket is small, the house is small too, and rented of course, just in case you were thinking that Gracinda Mau-Tempo and Manuel Espada were about to announce proudly, This is our house, no, they would rather hide the fact and say, I live over there somewhere, as if they were playing hide-and-seek or hunt the thimble, except, of course, those are games played at school or in the city, simply so that no one will know exactly where they live, in this house which is just walls and a door, with one room up and one down, a rickety ladder that wobbles when you climb it and no fire in the grate when we’re out. We’re going to live on the side of this hill in Monte Lavre, in this little yard, there’s not enough space to swing a hoe if we wanted to grow some cabbage, after all it does get the sun all day, although I don’t know that it’s worth the trouble, we’re hardly going to get fat on cabbage. We’ll sleep downstairs, in the kitchen, except it won’t be a kitchen when we’re sleeping in it, just as it won’t be a bedroom when we’re up and about, what should we call it then, a kitchen when we’re cooking, a sewing room when Gracinda Mau-Tempo is doing the darning, and a waiting room when I’m sitting looking at the hills opposite, with my hands in my lap, this may seem as if they’re just playing with words, but it’s simply their mutual excitement, each tumbling over the other in their eagerness to speak.

If we start to get too far ahead of ourselves, we’ll soon be talking about children and the problems they bring. Today is a holiday, Manuel Espada is going to marry Gracinda Mau-Tempo, there hasn’t been a marriage like this in Monte Lavre for a long time, that is, with such an age difference between bride and groom, he’s twenty-seven and she’s twenty, but they make a handsome couple, he’s the taller of the two, which is as it should be, although she’s not short either, she doesn’t take after her father in that respect. I can see them now, she’s wearing a pink, calf-length dress with a high neck and long sleeves buttoned at the cuff, if it’s hot, she’s not aware of it, as far as she’s concerned it might as well be winter, and he’s wearing a dark jacket, more like a three-quarter-length coat than the jacket of a suit, a pair of rather tight trousers and shoes that no amount of polishing will bring a shine to, a white shirt and a tie bearing a pattern of branches as indecipherable as the tops of trees no one has bothered to prune, but let there be no misunderstanding, the trees are just a simile, nothing more, because the tie is new and will probably never be worn again, unless it’s at another wedding, should we be invited. It’s not a big wedding party, but there are plenty of friends and acquaintances, and children attracted by the prospect of sweets, and old ladies at the door talking about heaven knows what, one never knows what old ladies talk about, whether they are uttering blessings or reproaches, poor things, what is the point of their lives.

The ceremony takes place after the mass, as is the custom, and people look a bit cheerier than usual because, luckily, there’s plenty of work around at the moment, plus it’s a nice day. Doesn’t the bride look lovely, the boys don’t dare make many jokes about marriage, because, after all, Manuel Espada is older, nearly thirty, a different generation from us, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, of course, since he’s only twenty-seven, but it’s an interesting situation, even the married men refrain from teasing him, the bridegroom is hardly a boy, and he always looks so serious, he was the same when he was a child, you can never tell what he might be thinking, just like his mother, who died last year. They’re quite wrong, though, it’s true that Manuel Espada has a grave face or countenance, as people used to say, but even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to explain quite what he is feeling, it’s like water singing as it rushes over the rocks up there in Ponte Cava, which is a bleak place and a bit frightening at night, but then, come the dawn, you see there was no reason to be afraid, it was just the water singing among the rocks.

Great injustices are committed because of how people look, that was the case with Manuel Espada’s mother, a woman who seemed to be made of granite, but who melted sweetly at night in bed, which is perhaps why Manuel Espada’s father is slowly weeping, some say, It must be tears of joy, and only he knows that it isn’t. Let’s see, how many people are here, twenty, and each one of them would make a story, you can’t imagine, years and years of living is a lot of time, and a lot of things can happen in that time, if we were all to write our life story, think how big that library would be, we would have to store the books on the moon, and when we wanted to find out who So-and-so is or was, we would travel through space to discover not the moon, but life. It makes us feel, at the very least, like turning back and recounting in detail the life and love of Tomás Espada and Flor Martinha, if we weren’t driven on by events and by the new life and love of their son and Gracinda Mau-Tempo, who have now entered the church, surrounded by a throng of excited children, take no notice, boys will be boys, while the older people, who are familiar with rituals and sermons, enter, looking composed and slightly constrained, wearing old clothes from a time when they were slimmer. Just this coming into church and being here, these faces, feature by feature, each line and wrinkle, would merit chapters as vast as the latifundio that laps around Monte Lavre like a sea.

Father Agamedes is at the altar, and I don’t know what exactly has got into him today, what fair wind greeted him when he got up, perhaps it was the Holy Spirit, not that Father Agamedes is one to boast of his closeness to the third person of the Holy Trinity, he himself doubts the simplicity of these theological formulae, but for whatever reason, this old devil of a priest is in a good mood, he’s very composed, but his eyes are shining, and that can’t be because he’s looking forward to satisfying his greedy appetite, there will hardly be an abundance of food at the wedding feast. Perhaps it’s simply the pleasure of blessing this marriage, Father Agamedes is a very human priest, as we have seen throughout this story, and even if, for the moment, he chooses not to think about the latifundio’s variable need for workers, he must be pleased that this man should join flesh with this woman and make children who will then grow up and who are sure to bring some benefit to the church by being born, marrying and dying, as the other people here present have and will. This is a flock that brings him little wool, but it’s better than nothing, out of these crumbs comes a sponge cake, Have another slice, Father, and drink this glass of port, and then another slice, I couldn’t eat another thing, Senhora Dona Clemência, Go on, make a sacrifice, Father Agamedes, after all, that’s what he does every day, the sacrifice of the holy mass, come closer now and I will make you man and wife.

There is some confusion among the witnesses, none of whom can remember which side they should be standing on, and Father Agamedes says the necessary words, folds and unfolds his stole, steals a suspicious glance at the sacristan, who arrives late, but what are you thinking, he’s not Domingos Mau-Tempo, that was years ago, and this isn’t the same priest, people don’t live forever. Nothing happened, the light didn’t change, the church didn’t fill up with thrones and seraphim, and a turtledove cooing in the garden continues to coo, preoccupied perhaps with other weddings, and Gracinda Mau-Tempo can now look at Manuel Espada and say, This is my husband, and Manuel Espada can look at Gracinda Mau-Tempo and say, This is my wife, which, as it happens, will only be true from this moment on, because the bracken at the fountain has never received these two bodies, though that once seemed a distinct possibility.

The bride and bridegroom are just crossing the tiny nave when the door of the church opens and in comes António Mau-Tempo in his army uniform, he’s late for his own sister’s wedding, a matter of delayed trains, missed connections, which left him furiously counting the kilometers between him and home, but finally, after António Mau-Tempo had uttered oaths capable of melting the bronze bearings on a train and alternately run and strode along the verge of the road, the driver of a passing fish truck succumbed to the magic spell of his uniform and asked, Where are you going, To Monte Lavre for my sister’s wedding, and dropped him off at the bottom of the hill, saying, Congratulate the happy couple for me, and António Mau-Tempo bounded up that hill like a mountain goat, walked straight past the big house and the guards’ barracks without so much as a glance, bastards, and then it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the wedding was over, but no, there are still people outside, only a few more meters, up the steps in two strides, and there’s my sister and there’s my brother-in-law, I’m glad you could make it, brother, Oh, I’d have made it if I had to set fire to the whole regiment. Out in the street now, the main topic of conversation isn’t the wedding but António Mau-Tempo, who was given leave to come to his sister’s wedding, and since he then has to embrace everyone, father and mother, relatives and friends, the wedding cortege is slightly disrupted, patience, not that Gracinda Mau-Tempo is jealous, she has her magnificent husband, Manuel Espada, by her side, she stands arm in arm with him the way couples at the very smartest weddings stand, and she’s blushing furiously, Lord in heaven, why can you not see these things, these men and women who, having invented a god, forgot to give him eyes, or perhaps did so on purpose, because no god is worthy of his creator, and should not, therefore, see him.

The disruption was short-lived. Manuel Espada and Gracinda Mau-Tempo are once more the king and queen of the party, António Mau-Tempo having now joined his childhood friends, with whom he always needs to reinforce and refresh the bonds of friendship after his long absences in such places as Salvaterra, Sado and Lezírias, farther north toward Leiria, and now, during his national service. The wedding feast is being held in someone else’s house, lent for the day. There is wine, lamb and bread stew, with more bread than lamb, bride cakes, two bottles of fortified wine and a few tasty pigs’ ears, this is no banquet but the wedding of poor people, so poor that João Mau-Tempo would clutch his head if we were cruel enough to mention the expense and the quadrupled debt at the grocer’s and the haberdasher’s, the all too familiar dogs that will soon be snapping at the debtor’s heels, but which for the time being remain treacherously silent, Is there anything else you need, after all, it’s not every day your daughter gets married.

Until Father Agamedes joins them, no one can eat, wretched priest, he’s obviously not as hungry as I am, the smell of that stew is making my stomach rumble, I don’t know how I’ve lasted this long really, I deliberately didn’t eat supper last night so that I’d have more appetite today. One doesn’t own up to such feelings, of course, admitting that one didn’t have supper so as to be able to eat more at other people’s expense, but we’re all familiar enough with such human frailties, and therefore with our own, to be able to forgive them in others. Especially now that Father Agamedes has finally arrived and goes over to say a few words to Tomás Espada and the Mau-Tempos, words that Faustina doesn’t quite understand, although she nods vigorously and adopts an expression of filial unction, not that she’s a hypocrite, poor woman, it’s just that the timbre of Father Agamedes’s voice makes her ears buzz, otherwise she would be able to understand him perfectly. Father Agamedes is very fatherly with the bride and groom, he gestures with his right hand, blessing people on either side, and they forget about their hunger for a moment, but now it comes roaring back, at last we’re going to start. In came the platters and tureens, all borrowed, well, two of them weren’t, and as for Gracinda Mau-Tempo’s own meager collection of crockery, her mother was very firm, You’re not taking that to the wedding, we’ll sort something out, don’t you worry, you can’t start married life with a load of broken crockery, it might bring bad luck. Finally they ate, at first greedily, then more slowly, because everyone knew that there wouldn’t be much more to eat, and common sense dictated, therefore, that they make the stew and the pigs’ ears last, at least there was plenty of wine, which was something.