José Saramago: Small Memories

One cherry brings another cherry, and just as a horse brought an uncle, an uncle will bring with him a rural version of the final scene of Verdi's Otello. As was the case with most of the older houses in Azinhaga (and I am, of course, speaking of those inhabited by the lesser folk), my aunt and uncle's house in Mouchào dos Coelhos-built, it should be said, on a stone base at least six feet high, with an external staircase, to keep the house safe from the winter floods-consisted of two rooms, one usually facing onto the road (or in this case onto fields), which we called the casa-de-fora, or "outside room," the other being the kitchen, with a door leading out into the yard at the back, again via a staircase, made of wood this time and plainer than the front stairs. My cousin José Dinis and I used to sleep in the kitchen, in the same bed. He was three or four years younger than me, but even though the difference in age and strength was entirely in my favor, this didn't stop him getting into fights with me whenever it seemed to him that I, his older cousin, was trying to outdo him in gaining the favor, whether explicit or implicit, of the local girls. I will never forget the torment of jealousy the poor boy went through over a girl from Alpiarça called Alice, a pretty, delicate creature who went on to marry a young tailor and, many years later, came to live in Azinhaga with her husband, who continued to work in the trade. When I was in the village on holiday once and learned that she was living there, I passed by her door unseen and, for the briefest of moments, barely long enough to glance in, all those past years rose up before me. She was sitting with her head bent over her sewing and didn't see me, and so I never found out whether or not she would have recognized me. I should also say that even though José Dinis and I fought like cat and dog, I had often known him to hurl himself to the floor and weep desperate tears when the holidays were over and I was saying goodbye to the family in order to return to Lisbon. He wouldn't even look at me, and if I tried to approach, he would repel me with kicks and punches. My Aunt Maria Elvira was quite right when she said of her son: "He's a bad boy, but he has a good heart."

José Dinis had solved the problem of squaring the circle without once seeking advice on tackling that most difficult of operations. He was a bad boy, but he had a good heart.

Jealousy was evidently a disease that ran in the Dinis family. During harvest time, but also when the melons were beginning to ripen and the kernels of corn were hardening on the cobs, Uncle Francisco rarely spent a whole night at home. On horseback, his shotgun across his saddle, he would patrol the vast estate, on the lookout for felons, major or minor. I imagine that if he did feel the need for a woman, whether under the lyrical influence of the moon or due to the friction of saddle on crotch, he would trot home, quickly relieve that particular itch, rest a little from the effort, then return to his night patrol. One unforgettable day, in the early hours, my cousin and I were fast asleep, exhausted from the day's various fights and forays, when Uncle Francisco erupted like a fury into the kitchen, brandishing his shotgun and yelling: "Who's been in here?" At first, barely conscious after being so violently wrenched from sleep, I could just make out through the open door the double bed and my aunt sitting up in her white nightdress, clutching her head and moaning: "The man's mad! The man's mad!" He was not perhaps mad, but he was certainly in the grip of jealousy, which comes pretty much to the same thing. He was saying that he would kill us all if we didn't tell him the truth about what had happened, and he kept urging his son to answer, come on, come on, but José Dinis' courage, amply proven in everyday life, failed him completely when confronted by his father armed with a shotgun and almost foaming at the mouth. I told my uncle that no one had come into the house, that we had, as usual, gone to bed immediately after supper. "But what about later, can you swear to me that no one else was here?" bawled the Othello of Mouchão de Baixo. I began to grasp what was going on, my poor Aunt Maria Elvira was begging me: "Tell him, Zezito, tell him, because he won't believe me." I think that was the first time in my life that I gave my word of honor. It was comical really, a boy of fourteen giving his word that his aunt had not taken another man into her bed, as if I, who slept like a log, would have noticed (no, I mustn't be so cynical, Aunt Maria Elvira was a thoroughly decent woman), but the fact is that the very solemnity of that word of honor had the desired effect, I suppose because it was so novel, and also because when country people spoke, oaths and curses apart, they meant what they said and didn't waste their breath on flowery rhetoric. My uncle finally calmed down, leaned his shotgun against the wall, and it became clear what had happened. They slept in one of those brass bedsteads with brass rails at the head and the foot, the ends of which were held in place by spherical brass knobs that screwed into the side bars. Clearly, those internal screws had become worn with use and lost their grip. When my uncle came in and turned up the wick on the oil lamp, he had seen what he thought was proof of his dishonor: the rail at the head of the bed had worked loose and hung like an accusing finger over the sleeping woman's head. Aunt Maria Elvira must have raised her arm as she turned over in bed and dislodged the brass rail. I could not at the time imagine what shameful, shocking orgies Francisco Dinis must have imagined, what writhing bodies convulsed by every conceivable erotic extravagance, but the fact that the poor man lacked the intelligence to know which way the wind was blowing, or if indeed there was any wind, shows to what extent jealousy can blind someone to the obvious. Had I been of the cowardly race of Iagos (I know nothing, I saw nothing, I was asleep), then perhaps the night silence in Mouchão de Baixo would have been shattered by two gunshots, and an innocent woman would have lain dead between sheets that had never known any other masculine smells or fluids than those of the wife-murderer himself.

I remember that this same uncle would turn up now and then carrying a rabbit or a hare, shot during his patrols of the estate. As a keeper, there was no closed season as far as he was concerned. One day, he returned home as triumphant as a crusader who has just vanquished an army of infidels. He had a large bird slung over the saddletree, a gray heron, a creature new to me and which I believe was a protected species. Its meat was rather dark and tasted faintly of fish, unless, after all these years, I am imagining tastes that never tickled my palate or passed my gullet.

Another edifying story from Mouchão de Baixo involved Pezuda, a woman whose real name I've long forgotten, if, indeed, I ever knew it, and who was called Pezuda-Big Foot-because she had truly enormous feet, a misfortune she could not conceal because, like all of us (young children and women, that is), she went everywhere barefoot. Pezuda lived right next door to my uncle and aunt, and she and her husband had a house exactly like theirs (I can't remember now if they had any children), and as so often happened in that place-where for good or ill, I was, in the most exact sense of the expression, brought up body and soul-the two families were at daggers drawn, they didn't get on, they didn't speak, not even to say good morning. (My grandmother Josefa's neighbor, in theDivisões, or "Divisions," district of the village-so-called because the olive trees that grew there were owned by someone else-was one of my grandfather Jerónimo's sisters, Beatriz by name, and yet, even though they were of the same blood, they had entirely broken off relations and had hated each other for more years than my childhood memory could comprehend. I never found out the reason for the quarrel that had separated them.) Pezuda's real name, of course, appeared in the baptismal records in the church and in the register of births, marriages and deaths, but to us she was simply Pezuda, and that ugly nickname said it all. So much so that on one famous occasion (when I was about twelve), I was sitting at the door of the house, at the top of the steps, when she, the hated neighbor, passed by (I hated her only out of a mistaken sense of familial solidarity, because the woman had never done me any wrong), and I commented to my aunt, who was inside sewing: "There's old Pezuda going by." I said this more loudly than I'd intended, and Pezuda heard me. From down below, full of righteous indignation, she proceeded to give me a piece of her mind, saying I was a badly brought-up Lisbon brat (and I was anything but a Lisbon brat), who, it would seem, had not been taught to respect his elders, a moral quality essential to the smooth functioning of society. She rounded off her rebuke by saying that she would tell her husband about me when he returned from work at sunset. And I must confess that I spent the rest of the day with heart pounding and stomach churning, fearing the worst, because her husband had a reputation as a real bruiser. I decided privately that I would make myself scarce until after dark, but Aunt Maria Elvira was on to me at once, and just as I was about to disappear, she said very calmly: "When it's time for him to come home from work, you sit at the door and you wait. If he tries to beat you up, I'll be here, but don't move from that spot." That is the nature of all really useful lessons, the sort that last a lifetime, that place a hand on your shoulder just when you're about to give in. I remember that it was a gorgeous sunset (and it really was, this isn't a mere literary afterthought), and I sat there at the door, watching the red clouds and the violet sky, with no idea what might happen, but convinced that the day would end badly for me. Eventually, when the sun had set, Pezuda's husband arrived home, went up the stairs to his house, and I thought: "This is it." But he didn't come out again. I still don't know what went on inside. Was it that when his wife told him what had happened, he decided that it wasn't worth taking seriously anything a mere lad had said? Had she been generous enough not to say a word to her husband about the unfortunate episode and decided to swallow the insult hurled at a pair of feet that were hardly her fault anyway? Had she thought of all the scornful names she could call me, "stammerer," for example, but had chosen instead, out of charity, to keep silent? The truth is that when my aunt summoned me to supper, I wasn't filled only with a sense of satisfaction. Oh, I was glad that I'd managed to pretend a courage that was, in fact, merely borrowed, but I also had the uncomfortable feeling that I'd missed out on something. Would I really have preferred to have had my ears boxed or been given a good spanking, which I was still of an age to receive? Well, no, my thirst for martyrdom didn't go that far. I'm sure, though, that something that night was left hanging in the air. Or, rather, as I write about it now, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the attitude of those hated neighbors in Mouchão dos Coelhos was simply the second lesson I needed to learn.