from the inn, get into bed, their blood inflamed by the smell of their wife or by the wine they’ve drunk or by the sexual appetite that comes with tiredness, and they get on top of her, they don’t know any other way, they huff and puff, they’re not exactly subtle, and leave their sap to soak in the mucous membrane inside the woman’s incomprehensibly intricate innards. This is a good thing, better than going with other women, but the family is growing, more and more children are born, because they don’t take precautions, Mama, I’m hungry, the proof that God does not exist lies in the fact that he did not make men sheep so that they could eat the grass in the fields, or pigs so that they could eat acorns. But even if they did eat acorns and grass, they couldn’t do so in peace, because there’s always a warden or the guards around, with eye and rifle cocked, and if the warden, in the name of Norberto’s lands, doesn’t shoot you in the leg or kill you right off, the guards, who will do the same if they’re ordered to, or even if they’re not, can choose the more benign options of prison, a fine and a beating. But this, ladies and gentlemen, is a bowl of cherries, you pull out one and three or four come out together, there are even estates that have their own private prison and their own penal code. Justice is done every day on the latifundio, what would become of us if the authorities weren’t here.
The family grows, though many children die of diarrhea, dissolving in their own shit, poor little angels, snuffed out like candles, with arms and legs more like twigs than anything else, their bellies distended, until the moment comes and they open their eyes for the last time to see the light of day, unless they die in the dark, in the silence of the hovel, and when the mother wakes and finds her child dead, she starts to scream, always the same scream, these women whose children have died aren’t capable of inventing anything, they’re speechless. As for the fathers, they say nothing and, the following night, go to the taberna looking as if they’re ready to kill someone or something. They come back drunk, having killed nothing and no one.
The men go far away to work, wherever they can earn some money. At bottom they’re all itinerants, they go here and there, and come home weeks or months later to make another child. Meanwhile, as they labor on the cork plantations, watched by the overseers, each drop of sweat is a drop of spilled blood, and the wretches suffer all day and sometimes all night as well, counting the number of hours worked on the fingers of three hands, except when they have to resort to a fourth hand, like the four-legged beasts they are, to count the rest, their clothes don’t dry on their backs for a whole two weeks. To rest, if such a word can be used in the circumstances, they lie down on beds of heather with some straw on top of them, and, dirty and bruised, they moan all night, it’s quite wrong, how can they believe in Father Agamedes when they see him coming back from his Sunday lunch at Floriberto’s house. Judging from the loud belch that echoes around the estate, it was a very good lunch indeed.
This is the power of the heavens. It is, besides, an oft-repeated story. The men are in the hut, exhausted, still clothed, some are sleeping, others can’t sleep at all, and through the gaps in the cane walls there enters a never-before-seen light, the morning is still far off, so it’s not the morning light, one of the men goes outside and stands frozen with fear, because the whole sky is a shower of stars, falling like lanterns, and the earth is lit more brightly than by any moonlight. Everyone comes out to look, some are really terrified, and the stars fall silently, the world is going to end, or perhaps begin at last. One man, with a reputation as a sage, says, When the stars are restless, so is the earth. They are standing close together, looking up, their heads right back, and
The family grows, though many children die of diarrhea, dissolving in their own shit, poor little angels, snuffed out like candles, with arms and legs more like twigs than anything else, their bellies distended, until the moment comes and they open their eyes for the last time to see the light of day, unless they die in the dark, in the silence of the hovel, and when the mother wakes and finds her child dead, she starts to scream, always the same scream, these women whose children have died aren’t capable of inventing anything, they’re speechless. As for the fathers, they say nothing and, the following night, go to the taberna looking as if they’re ready to kill someone or something. They come back drunk, having killed nothing and no one.
The men go far away to work, wherever they can earn some money. At bottom they’re all itinerants, they go here and there, and come home weeks or months later to make another child. Meanwhile, as they labor on the cork plantations, watched by the overseers, each drop of sweat is a drop of spilled blood, and the wretches suffer all day and sometimes all night as well, counting the number of hours worked on the fingers of three hands, except when they have to resort to a fourth hand, like the four-legged beasts they are, to count the rest, their clothes don’t dry on their backs for a whole two weeks. To rest, if such a word can be used in the circumstances, they lie down on beds of heather with some straw on top of them, and, dirty and bruised, they moan all night, it’s quite wrong, how can they believe in Father Agamedes when they see him coming back from his Sunday lunch at Floriberto’s house. Judging from the loud belch that echoes around the estate, it was a very good lunch indeed.
This is the power of the heavens. It is, besides, an oft-repeated story. The men are in the hut, exhausted, still clothed, some are sleeping, others can’t sleep at all, and through the gaps in the cane walls there enters a never-before-seen light, the morning is still far off, so it’s not the morning light, one of the men goes outside and stands frozen with fear, because the whole sky is a shower of stars, falling like lanterns, and the earth is lit more brightly than by any moonlight. Everyone comes out to look, some are really terrified, and the stars fall silently, the world is going to end, or perhaps begin at last. One man, with a reputation as a sage, says, When the stars are restless, so is the earth. They are standing close together, looking up, their heads right back, and
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