Read Online Small Memories by José Saramago - Free Book Online

unpromising. When the sacristan rang the bell and the congregation obediently bowed their heads, I couldn't resist turning my head slightly to sneak a look at whatever it was we weren't supposed to see. Returning to the matter of my fall, though, if it happened before those church visits, this would mean that when they took me to Mass, I was already suspicious, disappointed with one saint and ready to believe that all the others were the same. If it happened afterward, then my tumble could be taken as a punishment for having abandoned the true path that would lead me to paradise, in which case God would have behaved disgracefully, like a bullying bigot doling out a brutal punishment for a very minor offense and taking no account of my condition as young pagan or of my very brief Christian apprenticeship. I will never know. I must not forget, however, that at least once, the celestial powers did watch over me and two of my friends who also lived in Rua Fernão Lopes. I had come across a cartridge at home, quite how I can't remember, and carried it off to show my pals, but I didn't stop at just showing it to them. Instead, trembling with excitement, like conspirators, we gathered on some nearby steps and opened it in order to extract its innards, the gunpowder and the lead pellets. Crouched on the stone steps in the hallway, we held a match to the little pile of gunpowder to see what would happen. The ensuing deflagration was a modest one, but enough to give us a real fright. The only reason we didn't get our hands and faces burned was doubtless because St. Anthony, or one of his many colleagues in the empyrean, interposed his providential, miracle-working hand between us and the explosion. A grazed knee was nothing in comparison.

    When it occurred to me to describe that fall in Avenida Casal Ribeiro, I had in mind a photograph of myself and Aunt Maria Natália, taken by a street photographer in Parque Eduardo VII, where, every Sunday without fail, the maids from all the rich houses and the soldiers from all of Lisbon's barracks would go for a stroll. In that photograph, which has been lost along with so many others, I was wearing a shirt, short trousers and black knee-high socks held up by white elastic garters. A basic rule in the art of being smartly dressed requires that you should fold over the top of your sock to hide the garter, but I had not yet, it seems, been instructed in the finer points. In the photo, you could clearly see a scab on my left knee. This, however, dated not from my fall in Avenida Casal Ribeiro, but from a few years later, when I fell over in the playground at the Liceu Gil Vicente, and the gash had to be treated at the doctor's. They applied what they used to call a
gato,
a small metal clamp used to hold the edges of the wound together and thus speed the healing process. The mark it left behind remained visible for years, and even now there's still a faint trace. Another scar I still have is the fine line of a razor cut, acquired one day in Mouchão do Baixo, when I was carving a boat out of a piece of cork. I was using the point of the blade to cut out lumps of cork so as to make what would be the inside of the boat, when, suddenly, due to a weak spring, the razor snapped shut and the blade cut through the first thing it found in its path, namely, the outer edge of my right index finger, by the side of my nail. It very nearly took with it a slice of my flesh. I was treated with one of the miraculous remedies of the day, alcohol and balsam. The wound didn't become infected and healed perfectly. Aunt Maria Elvira always said that I was made of good solid stuff.

    Aunt Maria NatÁlia worked as a maid in the Formigal household (the master and mistress were usually referred to in the plural as the Senhores Formigais), along with an outside maid, who was the one who did the shopping and ran other errands. I remember one morning (I'd perhaps gone there to collect my aunt for our fortnightly Sunday