Read Online Small Memories by José Saramago - Free Book Online Page A

walk) standing in the kitchen (I'd never seen anything like it and so was fascinated by the black oven, the little doors of varying sizes with their gleaming copper frames, and the boiler always full of hot water) when old Senhor Formigal came in, accompanied by his wife, Dona Albertina, who was equally advanced in years, but still a fine-looking woman. The cook and the two maids, inside and outside, curtsied and lined up,awaiting their orders, but Senhor Formigal, who wore a goatee and a moustache as white as the hair on his head, had come only to inspect (out of politeness, not because he was a doctor or a nurse) the knee I had split open in Avenida Casal Ribeiro. He regarded me with an understanding, protective air and asked: "So you hurt your patella, did you?" I will never forget that word. I had hurt my knee, not my patella, but he must have felt that "knee" was too vulgar a term, unworthy of his person. I looked down at my battered joint, and all I could say was: "Yes, sir." He patted my cheek and left, followed by Dona Albertina. Aunt Maria Nat´lia glowed with pride, while the cook and the outside maid looked at me as if a heavenly halo were encircling my head, as if hitherto unsuspected qualities had bloomed in the inside maid's otherwise insignificant nephew, qualities that the white, manicured hand of Senhor Formigal, when he lightly touched my cheek and my close-cropped hair, had finally caused to spring into life. The Senhores Formigais were about to go out, probably to Mass, but Dona Albertina returned to the kitchen in order to give me a little bag of chocolates: "Here, these are for you, to help your knee get better faster," she said and was gone, leaving behind her a whiff of face powder and having put that word "patella" firmly in its place. I don't know if it was then that my aunt took me to see their bedroom—I think not—but it was a magnificent, solemn, almost ecclesiastical room, all adorned withscarlet draperies, the canopy, the coverlet, the plump pillows, the bed curtains, the upholstery on the chairs: "It's all done in the very best, the very finest damask," my aunt told me, and when I asked her why they had that S-shaped sofa at the end of the bed, she replied: "That's a love seat, he sits on one side and she on the other, so that they can talk without having to turn their heads, it's very practical." Since we were there, I would have liked to try it out, but my aunt wouldn't even let me across the threshold. The chocolates and I met with far worse luck later on. I ate a few before leaving the Formigais' house, and they left in my mouth a foretaste of paradise, but my aunt was categorical on the matter: "Don't eat any more, they'll make you sick," and I, being a good little boy, obeyed. Since I have no memory of strolling through Parque Eduardo VII with a bag of chocolates in my hand, especially since I was forbidden to eat them, we must have gone straight from there to Rua Fernão Lopes, where my aunt deposited me, having first described, in, I imagine, lavish detail, the episode in the kitchen, the kindness her employers had shown to me, Senhor Formigal patting my cheek and the chocolates given to me by the lady of the house, so very kind. Darkness fell, and, since at the time we had no radio on which we could listen to songs from the latest shows, we kept the same hours as the chickens, and so my mother soon packed me off to bed. My parents and I slept in the same room, they in the double bed and I on a small divan, almost a camp bed really, underneath the sloping roof. On the other side of the room, on a chair standing against the wall, stood the longed-for bag of chocolates. When my mother and father came to bed, first, my father, as usual, then my mother, because there were always dishes to wash or socks to darn, I had my eyes closed, pretending to sleep. They turned out the light and fell asleep, but I couldn't settle. Later, with the room in darkness, I slowly got up, tiptoed