Read Online Raised from the Ground by José Saramago - Free Book Online Page B

workingman has to know how to do everything, from scything to harvesting cork, from clearing ditches to sowing seeds, and he needs a good strong back for carrying loads and for digging. This knowledge is transmitted across the generations with no examinations and no discussions, and it has always been the same, this is a hoe, this is a scythe, and this is a drop of sweat. It is also the thick white saliva you get in your mouth on furnace-hot days, it’s the sun beating down on your head, and your knees going weak with hunger. Between the ages of ten and twenty you have to learn all this very fast, or no one will employ you.
    Joaquim Carranca remarked one day to his sister how good it would be to find a boss who would take them all on, and she agreed, a habit born of years as a submissive married woman, but in this case what flickered before her was the hope of spending a whole year safe from unemployment, that would be her one modest but sure ambition, for they could hardly aspire to anything more. At this time, three brothers inherited Monte de Berra Portas following the death of the old owner, their father, who had sowed his seed in the womb of a very canny mistress, who, while appearing to submit to the patriarch’s terrible whims and to his thunderous rants and rages, had gradually tamed him, like a lamb, so much so that he agreed, at the last, to disinherit his closest relatives in favor of his three natural sons. Pedro, Paulo and Saul took turns presiding over the estate, each taking a different season, and when Pedro was giving the orders, the other two obeyed, a system that could have worked well if each brother hadn’t chosen to spy on his other siblings, with Saul declaring that when he wasn’t in charge, the household went to rack and ruin, with Paulo stating that he was the only really capable administrator, and with all three becoming embroiled in domestic alliances and plots, as often happens in families. The story of this triumvirate would, alone, be enough to make an opera. And then there was the mother, who screamed that she had been plundered by her own sons, or to speak more plainly, robbed, after all she had done for them, putting up with being the servant of that old pig and now finding herself the slave of her own children, who kept her short of money and a virtual prisoner in the house. At night, when the countryside drew the silence up about it like a blanket, the better to hide itself away in the great secrets of the dark, you would hear what sounded like a sow having its throat slit and the loud stamping of feet, it was the war between mother and sons.
    Joaquim Carranca found employment with these bosses, and João Mau-Tempo worked as a day laborer. All in all, they earned a pittance, enough, just about, for them not to be constantly hungry, but there was at least the advantage that they could all be together and have access to a vegetable patch where they could break their backs toiling away on high days and holidays. Joaquim Carranca’s wage at this time consisted of lodging, firewood, sixty kilos of maize flour, three liters of olive oil, five liters of cowpeas, one hundred escudos and, at the end of the year, a modest handout. As for the younger members of the family, they earned forty kilos of maize flour, a liter and a half of olive oil, three liters of cowpeas and fifty escudos. And so it went on, month after month. They would take their sacks and bags to the granary, their jug to the cellar, where the foreman would measure out their rations of food and oil, and the administrator would pay their wages, and that was all they had to keep body and soul together and to recoup the energy expended every day. Of course, not all of them did recover, and they accepted this, time would inevitably take its toll, the skull beneath the skin becoming ever more evident, but then we are all born in order to die. Joaquim Carranca died, without having had a single day’s illness, after coming back from