Small Memories Read Free Page B

wan seven-year-old daughter, who had come with her mother to enjoy the fresh air. Now, my uncle was a small, very upright man, a bit of a bully at home, but docility personified when it came to dealing with bosses, superiors or city-dwellers. It was no surprise, then, that he should bow and scrape to our visitor, behavior that might have been taken as evidence of the natural politeness of country folk if it hadn't smacked more of servility than simple respect. One day, my uncle, may he rest in peace, obviously wanted to show how fond he was of our two female visitors and so he picked up the little girl, placed her in the saddle and, playing groom to her little princess, paraded her up and down in front of my grandparents' house, while I watched in silent anger and humiliation. Some time after this, on an end-of-term trip with the technical school from which, a year later, I would emerge as a qualified general mechanic, I rode one of the sad old horses you can hire in Sameiro, hoping that by doing so I might perhaps make up in adolescence for the treasure denied me in childhood: the joy of an adventure that had come so close I could have touched it, but that had remained forever out of reach. Too late. The scrawny nag took me wherever it fancied, stopped whenever it cared to and didn't even turn its head to say goodbye when I slid down from the saddle, feeling just as sad as I had on that other occasion. The house where I live now is full of images of horses. Guests visiting for the first time almost always ask if I'm a keen rider, when the truth is that I'm still suffering from the effects of a fall from a horse I never rode. There are no outward signs, but my soul has been limping for the last seventy years.

    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