Alentejo Blue Read Free Page B

Within a day or two it was known over the town that the address of the PIDE headquarters in Porto was 329 Rua de Heroismo. It was said that the back door connected with a cemetery.
    João’s nephew who was in the Portuguese Youth, drilling every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon with a wooden gun, said, ‘Will they nail his wee-wee to the wall?’
    ‘Get out,’ said João. ‘Is that what they teach you? Get out.’
    Everybody knew the stories. They beat a pregnant woman on the belly. They burned a man’s hands and threw him out of the top-floor window. They made prisoners do ‘the statue’, standing by a wall for ten days at a time with only their fingertips touching it. Everybody knew the stories. The children seemed to know them first.
    João was getting cramp. He needed to stand up. He pushed Rui’s hip gently to roll him off. The bone was sharp beneath his hand. He slid his palm up beneath the vest and felt the stomach, the ribs, the looseness of the skin like a newborn calf. The scent of eucalyptus anointed the day as the heat rose up from the ground. Somewhere a dog began to moan. The cork trees kept their counsel. It was two hundred years old, the tree that Rui had chosen. Eighty-four years was barely a beginning.
    João went over to the large stone and picked up the hat. The felt was warm between his fingers. He sat down on the stone and put the hat on his head. Where were the tears? Why didn’t they come?
    He looked down at some old goat droppings and thought about the posters all over the village. PCP they said in large red letters. A hammer and sickle sat proud in the top corner. Valeu a Pena Lutar!
    The struggle was worthwhile! Fifty years ago men died for the right to say so. Even those who remained alive died a little. What did the young ones think? What did they think when they looked at Rui, his squashed nose, his whiskery ears, the humble bend in his back? Of course they never looked; and the struggle belonged to them now and it was not of a kind that João could understand. João lifted his eyes. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Rui. ‘Shall we say this, as our last rites, that it was all worthwhile?’
    They had one night together, when Rui brought his broken nose and his bruised limbs and heart and his green eyes that had lost their eyelashes back from Porto and knocked at one of the three doors on the long, low house. The others moved out of their way and João held Rui afterwards, their feet pushed up against the rusting iron bedframe, knowing they could be heard, that his sister and brother-in-law would listen in the dark and hold their breath, and think that the weeping was for the torture that had been when it was only for the torture that was about to begin.
    Rui would not be alone with him after that. Within six months he had married. Dona Rosa Maria was the local mortician’s daughter. She had an overbite and a way of holding her hands behind her back that made it look as if she was hiding something, a pancreas perhaps, or a kidney. Two months later they moved away. That night a man followed João out of the bar and they went together into the woods.
    A cuckoo called out, fell silent and began again. A bird, thought João, never has to think about what to do next. This reflection struck him now with tremendous force, as if it had never before entered his head. A bird always knows how he feels. If he is hungry he will look for food. If he is frightened he will fly away. If he needs a mate he will find one. He is either hungry or not hungry. He is either frightened or not frightened. He knows when to be quiet, and he knows when to sing.
    João went to lie down with Rui. He closed his eyes and put his hand along Rui’s shoulder and stroked at his collar bone; he put his fingertips on the rope around his neck; he followed the bruise spreading like an ink stain up to his ear, which was cool and soft as a puffball; if he pressed down hard it would explode in a gentle cloud. Rui’s papery