Alentejo Blue Read Free

José.
    ‘My son left London and went to Glasgow,’ said Rui.
    ‘My daughter,’ said Carlos, ‘says she will throw me out if I cough once more in the night. But she always says that.’
    When it was time to go to bed João walked with Nelson and Rui walked with Manuel. Sometimes João walked with Manuel. Sometimes he walked with José or Antonio or Mario. But in all those years he never walked alone with Rui.
    João thought he did not want to be the one to return Rui’s hat to his wife. He thought and thought about what to do. A bird flew down and landed on the hat’s ridge. It was gold with a black head and black feet. João had never seen a bird like that before and he knew it was a sign that he should keep the hat. Then he remembered about Rui’s wife. Dona Rosa Maria had died not last year but the year before that. The day they buried her was a scorcher. July the fourth: memorial day of Isabella of Portugal, patron saint of difficult marriages and the falsely accused.

    When they met for the second time they were men.
    João passed the greenshirt parade in the Praça Souza Prado and climbed the steps up to the Rua Fortunato Simões dos Santos, heading for his favourite bar. At the top of the steps he turned and watched as a boy marched out of the ranks and raised his right arm in the infamous salute. João went into the bar and saw Rui. His skin had darkened and his nose was no longer fine (it looked as though it had been broken) but João knew it was Rui because he brought back the pain in his stomach.
    He was talking, drawing people in from the corners of the room. ‘All I am saying is that a man who owns ten thousand hectares or more and dines on six courses twice a day is living a life of excess. Doesn’t the Public Man himself tell us we must restrain our desires?’ Rui wore a check shirt, a frayed jacket and his hair dangerously long: it came to within an inch of his collar. ‘Nobody can contradict Salazar.’
    ‘But you speak like a . . . a . . .’ the man sitting opposite Rui dropped his voice, ‘a communist.’
    ‘“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That’s what they say.’ Rui waved his hand. ‘Whoever heard such nonsense? Why should a man work according to his ability? Why should a man receive according to his needs? Imagine what would happen if people took this nonsense into their heads! Álvaro Cunhal –’ he let the name of the Communist Party leader hang for a while – ‘must rot in his cell for ever.’
    João knew what Rui was doing. He could see by the way the others shifted and glanced around that they knew too.
    ‘We are with the other side,’ said Rui. He looked up and saw João and something passed across his face. ‘Blackshirts and greenshirts stick together.’
    ‘Excuse me,’ said a little vole of a man sitting by the window, ‘but do you accuse Salazar of fascism?’
    ‘Accuse?’ said Rui. ‘I certainly accuse him of nothing. In 1945, when he decreed all flags to fly at half mast as a sign of respect for our dear departed Hitler I saluted him. We supported the Germans so of course it was a sad day for us all.’
    ‘But no,’ cried the little man with his lips aquiver, ‘we weren’t with anybody.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Rui stroking his nose, ‘I forget. But nevertheless I am sad when I am told to be sad.’
    It was 1951, the third year João passed in Lindoso with his sister, her husband, their four children and the husband’s brother, mother and aunt in a long, low house with three doors and one window. In the season he cut cork and when the season was over he did whatever he could. Over the years he had been a grape picker, an olive picker, a goatherd; a tanner of hides in Olhão, a labourer on the roads in Ourique, and a gutter of fish in Portimão.
    He tried to warn Rui. ‘There are spies,’ he said. ‘Informers. That little man with the shrunken head, how does he make his living? Nobody knows.’
    Rui shrugged. He