Small Memories Read online

  Where does my fear of dogs come from? And my fascination with horses?

  The fear—which even today, and despite recent happy experiences, I can barely control when face to face with an unfamiliar representative of the canine species—comes, I am sure, from the utter panic I felt as a seven-year-old, when, one night as darkness was falling and the streetlamps were already lit and just as I was about to go into the house on Rua Fernão Lopes, in the Saldanha district of Lisbon, where we lived along with two other families, the street door burst open and through it, like the very fiercest of Malayan or African beasts, came the neighbors' Alsatian dog, which immediately began to pursue me, filling the air with its furious, thunderous barking, while I, poor thing, desperately dodged behind trees to avoid him as best I could, meanwhile calling for help. The aforementioned neighbors—and I use the word only because they lived in the same building as us, not because they were the equals of nobodies like us who lived in the attic room on the sixth floor—took longer to restrain their dog than even the most elementary charity demanded. Meanwhile—if my memory is not deceiving me, and I'm not being misled by my humiliation and my fear—the owners of the dog, young, refined, elegant (they must have been the teenage children of the family, a boy and a girl) were, as people used to say then, laughing fit to burst. Fortunately, I was quick on my feet, and the animal never caught me, still less bit me, or perhaps that wasn't its intention; it had probably been startled to find me standing outside the door. We were both afraid of each other, that's what it was. The intriguing thing about this otherwise banal episode is that I knew, when I was standing outside the front door, that the dog, that particular dog, was waiting there to go for my throat. Don't ask me how, but I knew.

  And the horses? My problem with horses is a more painful one, of the kind that leaves a permanent wound in a person's soul. One of my mother's sisters, Maria Elvira by name, was married to a certain Francisco Dinis, who worked as a keeper on the Mouchão de Baixo estate, part of Mouchão dos Coelhos, the name given to the whole of a particularly large estate on the left bank of the Tejo, more or less in a direct line with a village called Vale de Cavalos, or "Valley of Horses." Anyway, to return to myUncle Francisco. Working as a keeper on such a large and powerful estate meant that he belonged to the aristocracy of the countryside: double-barreled shotgun, green beret, white shirt buttoned up to the neck regardless of whether it was blazing hot or freezing cold, red belt, knee-high leather boots, short jacket and, naturally, a horse. Now, in all those years—and from eight until fifteen is a lot of years—it never once occurred to my uncle to lift me up into that saddle and I, presumably out of a kind of childish pride of which I couldn't even have been aware, never asked him to do so, however much I wanted him to. I can't remember by what circuitous route (possibly because she knew another of my mother's sisters, Maria da Luz, or one of my father's sisters, Natália, who had worked as a maid for the Formigal family in Lisbon's Estrela district, in Rua dos Ferreiros, a street in which, an eternity later, I, too, would live), but one day, a lady, still fairly young, moved into Casalinho, as my maternal grandparents' house had always been known; she was, as people used to say then, the "lady friend" of a gentleman who owned a shop in Lisbon. She was unwell and in need of rest, which is why she had come to spend a little time in Azinhaga, to breathe in the good country air and, in so doing, improve by her presence and her money the food that we ate. With this same woman, whose name I can't quite remember (perhaps it was Isaura, or perhaps Irene, no, it was Isaura), I enjoyed several enjoyable bouts of hand-to-hand combat and a few arm-wrestling matches, which always ended with me (I must have been about fourteen at the time) throwing her down onto one of the beds in the house, chest to chest, pubis to pubis, while my grandmother Josefa, whether knowingly or innocently I'm not sure, would laugh out loud and say how strong I was. The woman would sit up, excited and flushed, smoothing her disheveled hair and swearing that if we had been fighting for real, she wouldn't have allowed herself to be beaten. Fool or utter innocent that I was, I could have taken her at her word, but never dared. Her relationship with the shopkeeper was a well-established one, proof of which was their pale, 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 has a good heart."

  José Dinis had solved the problem of squaring the circle without once seeking advice on tackling that most difficult of operations. He was a bad boy, but he had a good heart.

  ***

  Jealousy was evidently a disease that ran in the Dinis fami
ly. During harvest time, but also when the melons were beginning to ripen and the kernels of corn were hardening on the cobs, Uncle Francisco rarely spent a whole night at home. On horseback, his shotgun across his saddle, he would patrol the vast estate, on the lookout for felons, major or minor. I imagine that if he did feel the need for a woman, whether under the lyrical influence of the moon or due to the friction of saddle on crotch, he would trot home, quickly relieve that particular itch, rest a little from the effort, then return to his night patrol. One unforgettable day, in the early hours, my cousin and I were fast asleep, exhausted from the day's various fights and forays, when Uncle Francisco erupted like a fury into the kitchen, brandishing his shotgun and yelling: "Who's been in here?" At first, barely conscious after being so violently wrenched from sleep, I could just make out through the open door the double bed and my aunt sitting up in her white nightdress, clutching her head and moaning: "The man's mad! The man's mad!" He was not perhaps mad, but he was certainly in the grip of jealousy, which comes pretty much to the same thing. He was saying that he would kill us all if we didn't tell him the truth about what had happened, and he kept urging his son to answer, come on, come on, but José Dinis' courage, amply proven in everyday life, failed him completely when confronted by his father armed with a shotgun and almost foaming at the mouth. I told my uncle that no one had come into the house, that we had, as usual, gone to bed immediately after supper. "But what about later, can you swear to me that no one else was here?" bawled the Othello of Mouchão de Baixo. I began to grasp what was going on, my poor Aunt Maria Elvira was begging me: "Tell him, Zezito, tell him, because he won't believe me." I think that was the first time in my life that I gave my word of honor. It was comical really, a boy of fourteen giving his word that his aunt had not taken another man into her bed, as if I, who slept like a log, would have noticed (no, I mustn't be so cynical, Aunt Maria Elvira was a thoroughly decent woman), but the fact is that the very solemnity of that word of honor had the desired effect, I suppose because it was so novel, and also because when country people spoke, oaths and curses apart, they meant what they said and didn't waste their breath on flowery rhetoric. My uncle finally calmed down, leaned his shotgun against the wall, and it became clear what had happened. They slept in one of those brass bedsteads with brass rails at the head and the foot, the ends of which were held in place by spherical brass knobs that screwed into the side bars. Clearly, those internal screws had become worn with use and lost their grip. When my uncle came in and turned up the wick on the oil lamp, he had seen what he thought was proof of his dishonor: the rail at the head of the bed had worked loose and hung like an accusing finger over the sleeping woman's head. Aunt Maria Elvira must have raised her arm as she turned over in bed and dislodged the brass rail. I could not at the time imagine what shameful, shocking orgies Francisco Dinis must have imagined, what writhing bodies convulsed by every conceivable erotic extravagance, but the fact that the poor man lacked the intelligence to know which way the wind was blowing, or if indeed there was any wind, shows to what extent jealousy can blind someone to the obvious. Had I been of the cowardly race of Iagos (I know nothing, I saw nothing, I was asleep), then perhaps the night silence in Mouchão de Baixo would have been shattered by two gunshots, and an innocent woman would have lain dead between sheets that had never known any other masculine smells or fluids than those of the wife-murderer himself.

  I remember that this same uncle would turn up now and then carrying a rabbit or a hare, shot during his patrols of the estate. As a keeper, there was no closed season as far as he was concerned. One day, he returned home as triumphant as a crusader who has just vanquished an army of infidels. He had a large bird slung over the saddletree, a gray heron, a creature new to me and which I believe was a protected species. Its meat was rather dark and tasted faintly of fish, unless, after all these years, I am imagining tastes that never tickled my palate or passed my gullet.

  ***

  Another edifying story from Mouchão de Baixo involved Pezuda, a woman whose real name I've long forgotten, if, indeed, I ever knew it, and who was called Pezuda—Big Foot—because she had truly enormous feet, a misfortune she could not conceal because, like all of us (young children and women, that is), she went everywhere barefoot. Pezuda lived right next door to my uncle and aunt, and she and her husband had a house exactly like theirs (I can't remember now if they had any children), and as so often happened in that place—where for good or ill, I was, in the most exact sense of the expression, brought up body and soul—the two families were at daggers drawn, they didn't get on, they didn't speak, not even to say good morning. (My grandmother Josefa's neighbor, in theDivisões, or "Divisions," district of the village—so-called because the olive trees that grew there were owned by someone else—was one of my grandfather Jerónimo's sisters, Beatriz by name, and yet, even though they were of the same blood, they had entirely broken off relations and had hated each other for more years than my childhood memory could comprehend. I never found out the reason for the quarrel that had separated them.) Pezuda's real name, of course, appeared in the baptismal records in the church and in the register of births, marriages and deaths, but to us she was simply Pezuda, and that ugly nickname said it all. So much so that on one famous occasion (when I was about twelve), I was sitting at the door of the house, at the top of the steps, when she, the hated neighbor, passed by (I hated her only out of a mistaken sense of familial solidarity, because the woman had never done me any wrong), and I commented to my aunt, who was inside sewing: "There's old Pezuda going by." I said this more loudly than I'd intended, and Pezuda heard me. From down below, full of righteous indignation, she proceeded to give me a piece of her mind, saying I was a badly brought-up Lisbon brat (and I was anything but a Lisbon brat), who, it would seem, had not been taught to respect his elders, a moral quality essential to the smooth functioning of society. She rounded off her rebuke by saying that she would tell her husband about me when he returned from work at sunset. And I must confess that I spent the rest of the day with heart pounding and stomach churning, fearing the worst, because her husband had a reputation as a real bruiser. I decided privately that I would make myself scarce until after dark, but Aunt Maria Elvira was on to me at once, and just as I was about to disappear, she said very calmly: "When it's time for him to come home from work, you sit at the door and you wait. If he tries to beat you up, I'll be here, but don't move from that spot." That is the nature of all really useful lessons, the sort that last a lifetime, that place a hand on your shoulder just when you're about to give in. I remember that it was a gorgeous sunset (and it really was, this isn't a mere literary afterthought), and I sat there at the door, watching the red clouds and the violet sky, with no idea what might happen, but convinced that the day would end badly for me. Eventually, when the sun had set, Pezuda's husband arrived home, went up the stairs to his house, and I thought: "This is it." But he didn't come out again. I still don't know what went on inside. Was it that when his wife told him what had happened, he decided that it wasn't worth taking seriously anything a mere lad had said? Had she been generous enough not to say a word to her husband about the unfortunate episode and decided to swallow the insult hurled at a pair of feet that were hardly her fault anyway? Had she thought of all the scornful names she could call me, "stammerer," for example, but had chosen instead, out of charity, to keep silent? The truth is that when my aunt summoned me to supper, I wasn't filled only with a sense of satisfaction. Oh, I was glad that I'd managed to pretend a courage that was, in fact, merely borrowed, but I also had the uncomfortable feeling that I'd missed out on something. Would I really have preferred to have had my ears boxed or been given a good spanking, which I was still of an age to receive? Well, no, my thirst for martyrdom didn't go that far. I'm sure, though, that something that night was left hanging in the air. Or, rather, as I write about it now, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the attitude of those hated neighbors in Mouchão dos Coelhos was simply the second lesson I needed to le
arn.