Free Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali Page B

She could cut the head off a chicken and hold it down so she never lost a drop of the precious blood she used to cook it in. She could cure any woman (or goat or cow) of mastitis with her poultice and wouldn’t share the secret ingredients with anyone. Her achievements were not large but she was proud of them. She liked to pretend that whatever she knew, she knew with certainty.
    When Uncle Humberto packed his spare pair of trousers (with cuttings from his favourite vine wrapped inside) and set off for a new life in Mozambique, of metal mines and miscegenation, she said, ‘He has answered a call.’
    When her youngest son, Henrique, answered another call two years later, this time to fight the savages in Angola and save them from themselves and international communism, she said, ‘It is the Lord’s will.’
    When they learned he would not be coming home again, while Vasco’s mother sank to her knees and wept, his grandmother said, ‘What is meant to be, must be,’ and went out to feed the pig. But when Vasco broke her teapot she beat him with the big wooden spoon. Vasco sobbed. ‘I couldn’t help it. It slipped.’ She cracked the spoon down on his head. ‘Help it! Why was it in your hand in the first place? No, my boy, didn’t the Lord, through His Grace, give us free will? When Eve tasted the apple she did not say “But I could not help it.” Put your arms down. Do you think I would beat you on the face?’
    What a joke. Vasco digs his fingernail into the warm pool of wax gathering on the table. With teapots you are free to choose, in matters of life and death you are not.
    He holds his finger, with its cracked wax globe, up before his face. In the morning, when he wakes, his legs will feel like that: stiff, bloodless remains.
    He never was able to believe. All those mornings spent on his knees, smelling the polish and the dust, pushing his head against the pew in front as if he could force his way into the Light. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he prayed, ‘make me believe.’ Father Quintão’s eyes watered when the young girls took communion. Vasco saw him in the sacristy with Laura Meireles, her skirts up round her waist. He prayed again, ‘Oh, Lord, please try harder.’
    That Eduardo is like a bad case of the piles: the last thing you want to think about and the first thing on your mind. What did he mean, anyway? My own prize bull – what kind of insult is that? A prize bull is a fine animal and Eduardo has never come close to owning one. If you wish to insult a man, do it properly. That is Vasco’s opinion and he will not waste any more time on Eduardo.
    Only a couple of weeks ago he was in here snorting and mumbling when Vasco was discussing certain matters with Bruno.
    ‘The United States,’ Vasco was saying, ‘is the policeman of the world. Like it or not, it makes no difference.’
    ‘This a free lecture?’ said Eduardo, taking a stool at the counter.
    Vasco ignored him. ‘The United Nations cannot fart without permission from them.’
    ‘Emissions and permissions,’ said Eduardo. ‘Who has the licence here?’
    Vasco should have said something then and there.
    ‘A beer,’ said Eduardo. ‘When you have a moment.’
    The thing about Eduardo is that he eats his words. By the time you realize what he said, he is on to the next thing.
    But Vasco should have spoken up and then one thing would not have led to another like this.
    He breaks the wax off his finger. Some of it falls on the cake. It is not as though Eduardo is one for holding back on opinions. But it makes him uncomfortable when Vasco talks about certain matters of world affairs because Eduardo – and Vasco knows this for a fact – does not even possess a passport.
    Vasco rolls his shoulders. The bones click. How would it ever be possible, he thinks now, for me to decide to eat this cake or not to eat it? As if this is an isolated act, unconnected to all other acts that have gone before. As if history does not play its part. As if one thing