Alentejo Blue Read Free Page A

felt his nose, pinching down from the bridge to the tip. He could never get used to his nose. ‘The PIDE pays him, I am sure. These secret police are not so secret.’
    ‘Please,’ said João. ‘Be careful.’
    Rui cast his line again into the dark waters of the Mira. ‘Nobody speaks more highly of Salazar than me.’
    He had been in France after the war, with all the other illegals, working the construction sites. He learned to read and write. ‘ Liberté, égalité, fraternité ,’ he said. ‘In France,’ he said, ‘a man has rights. He has dignity. He has respect.’
    ‘He has freedom,’ said João. He sat down on the riverbank.
    Rui sat next to him. In the cafés and bars you could not talk freely. Out here there was privacy.
    João could hear Rui breathing. He could hear his heart beating, or perhaps that was his own heart, banging in its cage. He looked in Rui’s face and for a long moment they held each other’s gaze. Rui looked away, as he always did.
    ‘For the love of God,’ said João.
    ‘Tell me about Portimão,’ said Rui.
    In the months since they found each other in the Rua Fortunato Simôes dos Santos, João had told it many times. Rui wanted to know everything about the sardine-processing factory. The worker who read out articles from Avante! – who had grassed on him? What, exactly, did he look like? Was João sure he did not come from Aljustrel, because he sounded like a Comrade Rui had met there. He wanted to know as well: did the men respond? Were they interested in joining the Party? Did they see that the means of production should be owned by the people? Did they understand about surplus value?
    João did not like to think about the factory. Rui kept making him describe the workers’ barracks. There the smell was, if anything, worse than the main building. The floor was a permanent slime: the result of loose tiles, faulty drains, blocked souls.
    ‘There’s nothing more to tell,’ said João. What would happen if he put his hand on Rui’s cheek? Just to think about it made him tremble.
    ‘The barracks,’ said Rui, ‘did it bring men closer, living together like that?’
    ‘No,’ said João harshly. He thought about the men he had known there, who came to his bunk at night, who had wives waiting at home, children to be fed.
    ‘All right,’ said Rui. ‘Let’s be quiet then. We are not afraid of silence.’
    They looked down at the Mira, the never-ending pilgrimage of water, moving blindly, relentlessly on. A rowboat went by. Rui touched his hat.
    João turned his head to Rui. Rui would not look at him. João kept waiting, out of spite. If he put his hand between Rui’s legs, if he led him up a dark alley and turned round, if he took him into the woods and dropped to his knees and kept his eyes down – these things Rui would accept. João wasn’t having it. His desire was so strong it felt like hate.
    ‘Salazar,’ said Rui, who was, after all, afraid of silence, ‘has not told a single truth from the day he was born. If he tells you that the sun will rise in the east, you know it will rise in the west. But we keep pretending to believe his lies. That’s the problem with our people. If you pretend for long enough, you forget you were only pretending in the first place. The illusion becomes a kind of reality.’ He looked underneath his jacket where he had thrown it down and found the tin of bait and then began to wind in his line. ‘It’s like me. I didn’t start coming to the river to fish, but now I think I’m a fisherman.’
    ‘Why did you come then?’ said João, wanting to hear it.
    ‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Rui, finally letting his eyes meet João’s. It was safe now that he was standing. ‘Salazar has told so many lies that his tongue has begun to rot. Really, it is what I heard. That’s why he likes to hide away. Yes, my friend, it is true. This is true: Salazar’s tongue is black.’
    Not long after, they took him far away, to Porto.