Small Memories

by José Saramago

  A third and no less edifying affair was the skill with which people at home deceived the Water Company. They would make a tiny hole in an exposed part of the lead pipe then tie a rag around it, leaving one end hanging down into a pot. The pot would slowly fill up, drop by drop, and because that water didn't pass through the meter, it didn't appear on the bill. When the decanting process was over, that is, when the pot was full, they would run the blade of a knife over the tiny hole, and under this slight pressure, the lead itself would conceal the crime. I don't know how long this went on for, but eventually, the pipe, after multiple piercings, would refuse to remain an accomplice to the fraud and begin spurting water from every orifice, old and new. Then the "man from the Water Company" had to be summoned urgently. He came, looked, cut into the damaged section of pipe and, not wishing to reveal that he knew all about a trick that could hardly have been new to him, peered inside the pipe and said: "Yep, it's rotten, all right." He would solder on a new piece of pipe and leave. He must have been a kind man because he clearly didn't want to get us into trouble by reporting us to the Water Company. As far as I recall, none of the three heads of household was ever present on those occasions, which was just as well, because it wouldn't have been easy to explain how we dared commit such illegal acts with two policemen on the premises, one of whom, moreover, worked in the Criminal Investigation Department. Another hypothesis that might merit serious consideration is that the Water Company employee had already had a word with my father or with one of the other two men and was in on the plot. It could be.

  I have little else to say about our time in Rua Heróis de Quionga, just a few random memories of little importance: the cockroaches that scampered over me when I was sleeping on the floor; the way we used to eat soup, my mother and I, from the same plate, one on either side, taking turns to dip in our spoons; the morning it rained heavily and I refused to go to school, to my mother's fury and to my own even greater surprise that I would dare to miss classes when I wasn't ill and had no real reason for doing so; sitting at the windows that gave onto the long balcony at the back of the house, watching the raindrops trickling down the panes; looking through the imperfections in the glass at the distorted images these produced; the bread rolls bought from the bakery, still hot and delicious-smelling, and which we called ""sete e meios""—"seven-and-a-halfs," and the more expensive vianinhas made from finer flour and that I only rarely had the sweet satisfaction of eating.... I've always loved bread.

  Contrary to what I said earlier, the Barata family did not first enter my life when we moved from Rua dos Cavaleiros to Rua Fernão Lopes. Thanks to some documents I had assumed lost, but which providentially turned up when I was searching for something else entirely, my disoriented memory has finally been able to fit together various disparate pieces of the puzzle and replace what was uncertain and doubtful with what was right and true. Here then, for the record, is the exact and definitive list of our frequent changes of residence: we started out in a place known as Quinta do Perna-de-Pau, in the Picheleira district of Lisbon, then moved to Rua E (which later became Rua Luis Monteiro) in Alto do Pina, and from there to Rua Sabino de Sousa, followed by Rua Carrilho Videira (that's where the Baratas appear for the first time), Rua dos Cavaleiros (without the Baratas), Rua Fernão Lopes (with the Baratas again), Rua Heróis de Quionga (still with them), back to the same house in Rua Carrilho Videira (again with the Baratas), then to Rua Padre Sena Freitas (with only Antonio Barata and Conceição), and finally to Rua Carlos Ribeiro (independent at last). Ten homes in just under ten years, and I don't think it was because we couldn't pay the rent. As you see, I was quite right when I said that we had lived in Rua Carrilho Videira twice, but I made a serious miscalculation when, forgetting a few basic matters of sexual physiology and hormonal development, I added that I was eleven at the time of that encounter with Domitília. I got that completely wrong. In fact, I could only have been six at the time and she would have been about eight. If I had been eleven, and tall for my age too, she would have been thirteen, and in that case the whole affair would have been much more serious and the punishment for the crime rather more than a couple of slaps on the bottom. Anyway, now that I've sorted that out and the weight of error has been lifted from my conscience, I can continue.

  In those days, when people couldn't afford to pay for a moving van, they would employ moços-de-fretes —"porters"—whose only equipment was a couple of poles, some rope and a shoulder pad apiece to bear the weight. And, of course, a great deal of stamina. But they didn't transport the smaller things, which is why my mother, over the years (I'm not imagining this, I saw it with my own eyes), had to trudge miles back and forth between the different houses, carrying baskets and bundles on her head, or balanced on her hip if that was easier. Perhaps on one such occasion she would have recalled the day when, returning from the village fountain all confused and excited because my father had just asked her if they could be sweethearts, she forgot that she was carrying a water jug on her head and neglected to stoop down when going into the house. The jug struck the lintel and fell to the floor. Shards and water everywhere, my grandmother telling her off, then perhaps laughing when she found out the cause of the accident. You might say that my life started there too, with a broken water jug.

  My mother arrived in Lisbon with us children in the spring of 1924. In December of that same year, Francisco died. He was four years old when bronchial pneumonia carried him off. He was buried on Christmas Eve. I don't really believe in so-called false memories, I think the difference between those and the memories we consider certain and solid is merely a question of confidence, the confidence that we place in the incorrigible vagueness we call certainty. Is the one memory I have of Francisco false? Perhaps, but I have spent the last eighty-three years believing it to be true. We are in a cellar in Rua E, in Alto do Pina, there is a chest of drawers underneath a horizontal opening in the wall, long and narrow, more of a slit than a window, level with the pavement outside (I can see people's legs through what must be a curtain), and the bottom two drawers are open, with the lower one pulled furthest out to form a step with the one above. It's the summer or perhaps the autumn of the year in which Francisco is going to die. At that moment (the photo is there for all to see), he is a happy, sturdy, perfect little boy, who, it would seem, cannot wait for his body to grow and for his arms to be long enough to reach something on top of the chest of drawers. That's all I can remember. Maybe my mother arrived to put a stop to Francisco's mountaineering ambitions, I don't know. I don't even know if she was at home, or if she had gone to scrub the steps of some neighboring building. If she had to do that kind of work later on, out of necessity, when I was already grown up enough to understand what was happening, it's more than likely that she was doing it then, when the need was even greater. As Francisco's brother, I would have been unable to help the daring mountaineer had he fallen. I must have been sitting on the floor, pacifier in my mouth, little more than eighteen months old, concerned, without even realizing that I was, with recording what I was seeing in some part of my small brain so that, a whole lifetime later, I could describe it to you, dear reader. That, then, is my earliest memory. And it may well be false.

  There is nothing false about what comes next however. The grief and the tears, could they be summoned up again, would bear testament to the fierce and violent truth. Francisco had already died and I must have been two or three years old. A short distance from the house (we were still living in Rua E at the time) there was a heap of rubble left over from some building work. Three or four older boys took me there by force (my small powers of resistance proved useless). They pushed me and threw me to the ground, removed my short trousers and my underpants, and, while the others held my arms and legs, one of them began to insert a piece of wire into my urethra. I screamed and struggled desperately, I kicked as hard as I could, but the cruel process continued, and the wire penetrated ever deeper. Perhaps the blood that started gushing from my small, suffering penis saved me from
worse harm. The boys may have grown frightened or simply decided that they'd had their fun and fled. There was no one there to help me. Crying and with blood pouring down my legs, I left my clothes where they were on the rubble and staggered homeward. My mother had already come out to look for me (I can't remember what I was doing alone in the street), and when she saw me in that wretched state, she cried: "Oh, my poor little boy! Who did this to you?" But all our tears and shouts were in vain, the guilty parties were far away by then, indeed, they may not even have lived in the area. Fortunately, the internal wounds healed up, because a piece of wire picked up from the ground seemed, in principle, a sure-fire recipe for tetanus. After Francisco's death, it appeared that bad luck did not want to leave our door. I can imagine my parents' anxiety when, at the age of five, I developed a bad sore throat and they had to take me to the same hospital where Francisco had died. In the end, it turned out to be only an inflammation of the throat and sinusitis, nothing that couldn't be cured in a fortnight, which is precisely what happened. You may ask how it is that I know all these details when so much time has passed. It's a long story, but it can be summed up in a few words. When, many years ago now, I first had the idea of writing down my memories and experiences of the time when I was small, I thought immediately that I should speak of my brother Francisco's death (his life being so brief). Members of the family had always said that he died of what they called angina diftérica, or "croup" to use my mother's word, in the Instituto Bacteriológico Cámara Pestana. And yet, I cannot remember anyone mentioning the date of his death. I decided to investigate and wrote to the Instituto Cámara Pestana, and they very kindly responded, saying that they had no record of a child of four called Francisco de Sousa. They sent me—I presume so as to make up for the disappointment—a copy of the record of my own admission on April 4,1928 (I was discharged on the 11th of the same month), under the name of José Sousa, just like that, abbreviated twice. There's no trace of Saramago, and, as if that weren't enough, the preposition "de" that should come between "José" and "Sousa" has also disappeared. Thanks to that piece of paper, though, I found out what my temperature was during those days of inflammation and sinusitis. I can clearly remember one visit from my parents. I had been placed in what was called the isolation ward, and we could only see each other through a glass window. I also remember sitting in bed and playing with a little clay burner and fanning the nonexistent flame with a banana skin. I'd seen my mother doing much the same at home, and the truth is, that was about all I knew of life.

  To return to my brother. As was only natural, the first thing I did, the very first, was to ask the registry office in Golegã, which dealt with our municipality, to send me the birth certificate of Francisco de Sousa, son of José de Sousa and Maria da Piedade from Azinhaga, because the date of his death should have appeared there. But it didn't. To judge from that official document, Francisco hadn't died. It was surprising enough to have the Instituto Bacteriólogico Câmara Pestana tell me, with due administrative seriousness, that he had never been admitted there, when I knew for certain that he had, but now it was the registry office in Golegã telling me, implicitly, that he was still alive. There was only one solution, to investigate the vast archives of the Lisbon cemeteries. Certain individuals offered to do this for me and for that I will be eternally grateful. Francisco died on December 22nd at four in the afternoon and was buried in the Benfica cemetery on the 24th, at more or less the same time (what a sad Christmas that must have been for my parents). Francisco's story, however, does not end here. I doubt very much if my novel All the Names would be as it is if, in 1996, I hadn't become so well versed in the workings of registry offices...

  His name was Francisco Carreira and he was a shoemaker. His shop was a small, dark, windowless room, with a low door through which only children could enter without bending down, because it must have been, at most, about three or four feet high. He was always there, sitting on a stool behind a bench on which were laid out all the tools of his trade and which was covered with an ancient layer of dust and detritus: bent nails, shavings from soles, a blunt needle, a pair of broken pliers. He was a sick man, old before his time, with a deformed spine. All his strength was concentrated in his arms and shoulders, as strong as levers, and with them he could hammer on the sole of a shoe, wax the thread, pull the stitches tight and drive the tacks home with two short unerring blows. While I amused myself making holes in a piece of shoe leather with a punch or played with the water to which the soles of shoes, left to soak, lent an astringent touch of tannin, he would tell me tales of his youth: vague political plots, a pistol that had been shown to him as a somber warning of what, word of honor, would happen to any traitor of the cause. Then he would ask me how school was going, what news I had of events in Lisbon, and I would waffle on as best I could to satisfy his curiosity. One day, he seemed preoccupied. He smoothed his thin hair with his bradawl and paused in his sewing, both of which were familiar signs, heralding a particularly important question. Shortly afterward, Francisco Carreira leaned back his twisted body, pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and fired at point-blank range: "Do you believe in the plurality of worlds?" He had read Fontenelle, and I had not, anything I did know having been gleaned from overhearing someone else discussing his work. I muttered something about the movement of the stars, mentioned Copernicus just in case, and that was that. But basically, yes, I did believe in the plurality of worlds, the main question being: was there anyone out there? He seemed pleased, or so it seemed to me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Many years later, I wrote an article about him to which I gave the Lorca-inspired title, "The Prodigious Shoemaker." What other adjective could I have used? A shoemaker in my village, in the 1930s, talking about Fontenelle...

  There was something I meant to say when, on an earlier page, I spoke about going to market with the pigs. My grandfather hadn't managed to sell many suckling pigs to his neighbors in Azinhaga that year, which is why he thought it best to take what remained of the litters to the market in Santarém. He asked if I would like to go along as my Uncle Manuel's assistant, and I didn't need to think twice, I said yes, I would. I greased my boots in preparation for the walk (this was not a journey to be undertaken barefoot) and went over to the porch to select a stick that best suited my height. We set off in midafternoon, my uncle at the rear, making sure none of the piglets went astray, and me at the front, with, at my heels, the sow who would keep them all together, the real mother of some of them and on maternal loan to the others for the occasion. Now and then my uncle would swap places with me, and then, like him, I had no alternative but to eat the dust kicked up by the livelier animals. It was almost dark by the time we reached Quinta da Cruz da Légua, where we had arranged to sleep. We put the pigs in a large shed and ate our food standing up in the light from a window, either because we preferred not to go into the house or, more likely, because the farm manager didn't invite us in. While we were eating, the servant came to say that we could sleep with the horses. He gave us two thick striped blankets and left. The stable door remained open, and that suited us well because we had to leave at dawn, before first light, in order to reach Santarém in time for the opening of the market. Our bed would be the two ends of the feeding trough that ran the length of the back wall. The horses snorted and stamped on the paved floor. I hoisted myself into the trough and lay down on the cool straw, as if in a cradle, wrapped in the blanket, breathing in the strong smell of the animals, who were restless all night or so it seemed to me in my fitful sleep. I felt tired, especially my legs and feet. The darkness was warm and thick, the horses shook their manes fiercely, and my uncle, his head almost touching my feet, was sleeping like a log. It was still dark when I awoke from the deep sleep to which I finally succumbed, and my uncle was calling to me: "Come on, Zé, we've got to go." I sat up in the trough, blinking and still sleepy, dazzled by an unexpected light. I jumped down and went out into the yard: before me, pouring a milky light over the night and the surrounding landscape, was a va
st, round moon, making the white seem still whiter where the light struck it full on and the black shadows still deeper. I would never see a moon like that again. We fetched the pigs and set off very cautiously down into the valley, where the grass was very tall and there were thick shrubs and rocks, and the piglets, not used to being out so early, could easily stray and get lost. Once in the valley, it was much easier. We walked along a dusty path, the dust slaked by the cool of night, past vineyards in which the grapes were already ripe, and I leapt in among the vines and cut two large bunches that I slipped inside my shirt, looking around all the while in case a keeper should appear. I returned to the path and handed one of the bunches to my uncle. We walked on, eating the cold, sweet grapes, so hard they seemed almost crystallized. We started the climb up to Santarém when the sun was just coming up and spent all morning and part of the afternoon at the market. We did quite well, but still didn't manage to sell all the piglets. My uncle decided that we should return home via the low hills that rise up along that part of the Tejo, I can't remember why now, if, as seems unlikely, my uncle bothered to give me a reason. But it was thanks to that whim of his, that I encountered my first Roman road.