Raised from the Ground Read Free Page A

that’s to be expected. Then the old man opened a drawer and produced a large key, Here’s the key, I was beginning to think you weren’t coming, and everyone stares at Domingos Mau-Tempo, taking the measure of this new neighbor, every village needs a shoemaker and São Cristóvão is no exception. Domingos Mau-Tempo offered an explanation, It’s a long way from Monte Lavre, and it rained while we were on the road, not that there’s any need for him to account for himself, but he wants to be friendly, and then he says, Let me buy you all a drink, which is an excellent way of touching the pockets of men’s hearts. The men who were seated stand up and watch the ceremony of their glasses being refilled, and then, unhurriedly, each man again picks up his glass with a slow, careful gesture, this is wine, after all, not cheap brandy to be drunk down in one gulp. Won’t you have a drink yourself, sir, says Domingos Mau-Tempo, and the old man, who knows the ways of the big city, answers, Here’s wishing good health to my new tenant. And while the men are engaged in these niceties, the woman comes to the door, although she doesn’t actually come in, the taberna is reserved for men only, and she says quietly, as is her wont, Domingos, the child is restless, and what with the furniture and everything being so wet, we need to get unloaded.
    She is quite right, but Domingos Mau-Tempo disliked being summoned by his wife like that, what will the other men think, and as they cross the square, he scolds her, If you do that again, I’ll be very angry. The woman did not respond, too busy trying to quiet the baby. The cart went slowly on, jolting over the bumps. The donkey had stiffened up with the cold. They went down a side street where the houses alternated with vegetable gardens, and they stopped outside a low hovel. Is this it, asked the woman, and her husband replied, Yes.
    Domingos Mau-Tempo opened the door with the large key. In order to enter, he had to lower his head, for this is no palace with high doors. There were no windows. To the left was the fireplace, with the hearth at floor level. Domingos Mau-Tempo made a small, flickering torch from a sheaf of straw and held it up so that his wife could see their new home. There was a bundle of firewood by the chimney breast. Enough for their immediate needs. In a matter of minutes, the woman had laid the child down in one corner to sleep, gathered together some logs and some kindling, and the fire had sprung into life, like a flower on the whitewashed wall. The house was once again inhabited.
    Domingos Mau-Tempo led the donkey and the cart in through the gate to the yard, and started unloading the furniture and carrying it into the house, where he set it down willy-nilly, until his wife could come and help him. The mattress was wet on one side. The water had got into the clothes chest, and one leg of the kitchen table was broken. But on the fire was a saucepan of cabbage leaves and rice, and the baby had suckled again and fallen asleep on the dry side of the mattress. Domingos Mau-Tempo went out into the yard to do his business. And standing in the middle of the room, Sara da Conceição, Domingos’s wife and João’s mother, stood quite still, staring into the flames like someone waiting for a garbled message to be repeated. She felt a slight movement in her belly. And another. But when her husband came back in, she said nothing. They had other things to think about.

 
     
     
     
     
    D OMINGOS MAU-TEMPO will not make old bones. One day, when he has given his wife five children, although not for that most mundane of reasons, he will put a rope around the branch of a tree, in a desolate place almost within sight of Monte Lavre, and hang himself. Before he does this, however, he will carry his house on his back to other places, run away from his family three times, but fail to make his peace with them on that third occasion because his hour will have come. His father-in-law