Free Small Memories by José Saramago

the dim lighting in the chapel meant that I probably wouldn't even have noticed that poor St. Bartholomew had been flayed had it not been for the guide's practiced patter and his smugly eloquent gesture as he indicated the folds of flaccid skin (flaccid even though they were made of marble) that the poor martyr was holding in his hands. Dreadful. There is no mention of St. Bartholomew in
Baltasar and Blimunda,
but it is quite possible that the memory of that awful moment was still lurking somewhere in my mind when, in 1980 or 1981, I once again gazed upon the vast bulk of the palace and the towers of the basilica and said to the people with me: "One day, I'd like to put all this in a novel." I can't swear to it, I'm just saying that it's possible.

    Between the ages of two and four or five, I must have made quite a few journeys to Azinhaga in my mother's arms. My father had gone from being a vulgar digger of fields to public servant, a policeman no less, with a basketful of news and novelties from the city to recount, and it was most unlikely that he would have remained in Lisbon during his annual leave, when he could enjoy showing off to his former work colleagues, talking fancy or at least trying hard not to sound too provincial and, in the intimacy of the tavern, after a coupleof glasses of wine, regaling them with stories of women, a prostitute, say, who would pay with her body for a certain degree of police protection—not that he himself would admit to such things—or a market-trader of easy virtue in the Praça da Figueira. Many years later, my grandmother would tell me that, whenever I was left in her care, she would sit me in the next room, on a blanket spread on the floor, from where, after a while, she would hear me say: "Gramma, gramma." "What's wrong, sweetheart?" she would ask. And I would reply tearfully, sucking my right thumb (was it my right thumb?): "Want to poo." By the time she had rushed to my aid, it was always too late. "You were already all dirty," she would say, laughing. My mother, Francisco and I had left for Lisbon in the spring of 1924, when I was, at most, eighteen months old, so my communicative skills weren't really up to much. Presumably, though, such scatological episodes must have taken place later, on those holiday visits to Azinhaga, when my mother, leaving me in the hands of Grandmother Josefa, would go off to catch up on the latest gossip with her childhood friends, to whom she would report on her own experiences of civilization, including, if pride or shame did not tie her tongue, the frequent beatings she received from a husband disoriented by the erotic delights of the Lisbon metropolis. And perhaps it's because I was an astonished and frightened witness to some of those deplorable domestic scenes that I've never raised my hand to a woman. It served me as a vaccine.

    This was a time when women would consult the local witch when things were going wrong at home. Even during the time we were living in Rua Fernào Lopes, I remember the prayers and smoke with which my mother would fill the room as she tossed some small, dark, round seeds onto the embers in the stove, all the while intoning a spell that began thus: "
Cocas, minhas cocas
" I can't remember how the rest of it went, but I can recall the smell of the seeds, so intense that even now I can feel it in my nose. They gave off a sickly smoke, simultaneously sweet and nauseating, that made you dizzy. I never found out what
cocas
were, but they must have been something oriental. Maybe that's why I still can't stand the stench from the joss sticks with which people often contaminate their apartments in the belief that it makes them more spiritual.

    One day, on a melon patch near Mouchão de Baixo, Aunt Maria Elvira, José Dinis and I—why I can't remember, although I'm sure it can't have been mere chance—met up with Alice and her parents, and my angry cousin, seeing that the girl was paying more attention to