Small Memories (9 page)

It did not take me long to learn to read. Thanks to the training I had begun to receive in my first school, in Rua Martens Ferrão, of which I remember only the entrance and the dark stair, I moved on, almost seamlessly, to the regular study of advanced Portuguese in the form of a newspaper, the
Diário de Notícias,
which my father brought home with him every day and which I presume was given to him by a friend, a particularly thriving news-vendor perhaps or a tobacconist. I very much doubt that he would have bought it, for the very pertinent reason that we didn't have enough money to spend on such luxuries. To give you a clear idea of the situation, I need say only that for years, with absolute regularity, my mother used to pawn the blankets as soon as winter was over, only to retrieve them once the cold weather began to bite again and she had saved enough to pay back the monthly interest and the amount of the loan. Obviously I couldn't read that august daily newspaper fluently, but one thing was clear to me: the articles in the paper were written using the same characters (although we called them letters, not characters) whose names, functions and mutual relationships I was learning about in school. And so I was reading even before I could spell properly, even though I couldn't necessarily understand what I was reading. Being able to identify a word I knew was like finding a signpost on the road telling me I was on the right path, heading in the right direction. And so it was, in this rather unusual way,
Diário
by
Diário,
month by month, pretending not to hear the jokey comments made by the adults in the house, who were amused by the way I would stare at the newspaper as if at a wall, that my moment to astonish them finally came, when, one day, nervous but triumphant, I read out loud, in one go, without hesitation, several consecutive lines of print. I couldn't understand everything I was reading, but that didn't matter. Apart from my father and mother, the other adults present, once so skeptical and now so impressed, were the Baratas. In that house without books, it so happened that there was one fat book, bound, I believe, in sky blue, and which was entitled
The Warbler of the Windmill,
whose author, if my memory serves me right, was Émile de Richebourg a name that does not feature prominently in any histories of French literature, however detailed, if, indeed, it appears at all, and yet he was a master of the art of using the word to move sensitive souls and arouse the passions. The owner of this literary gem, which appeared to have been originally published in serial form, was Conceição Barata, who kept it like a treasure in a drawer in the dresser, wrapped in tissue paper and smelling of mothballs. This novel was to be my first great experience as a reader. I was still a long way from the municipal library in Palàcio das Galveias, but my first step in that direction had been taken. And thanks to the fact that we and the Barata family lived together for a good two years, I had more than enough time to read to the end and start again. However, try how I might, I cannot, as I can with
Maria, the Fairy of the Forest,
remember a single passage from the book. Émile de Richebourg would be most offended by such a lack of respect, he who thought he had written his
Warbler
in indelible ink, but things did not stop there. Years later, I would discover, to my great surprise, that I had also read Molière in that sixth-floor apartment in Rua Fernào Lopes. One day, my father came home with a book (I can't imagine where he got it from) which was neither more nor less than a Portuguese-French guide to conversation, with the pages divided into three columns, the first, on the left, in Portuguese, the second, in the middle, in French, and the third, alongside that, indicating how to pronounce the words in the second column. Among the various situations in which a Portuguese speaker might need the guide's help to communicate in French (a railway station, a hotel reception, an office hiring out carriages, a port, a tailor's shop, buying tickets for the theater, trying on a suit at the tailor's etc.) there suddenly appeared a dialogue between two men, one of whom seemed to be a teacher of sorts and the other some kind of pupil. I read it over and over because I so enjoyed the astonishment of the man who was unable to believe what the teacher was telling him, that he had been speaking prose since he was born. I knew nothing about Molière (how could I?), but I made a grand entrance into his world when I had barely got beyond knowing my vowels. No doubt about it, I was a lucky boy.

I cannot recall the first name of the headmaster at the school in Largo do Leão—to which I was transferred when I'd completed my first year in Rua Martens Ferrão—but I do remember that he had a strange surname, Vairinho (I can't find a single Vairinho in the current Lisbon telephone directory), and that he was a tall, thin man, with a severe face, who disguised his baldness by combing over the hair from one side of his head and gluing it down with brilliantine, just as my father used to do, although I must confess I found my teacher's hairstyle more presentable than my progenitor's. Even at such a tender age, I found my father's appearance slightly grotesque (if you'll forgive such disrespect), especially when I saw him get out of bed with those scant locks of hair hanging down on the side that was natural to them and revealing the bare, pale cranium, because as a policeman, of course, he usually wore a cap. When I moved to the school in Largo do Leão, the second-year teacher, who had no idea how much I'd learned during my first year and had no reason to expect from my person any notable degree of knowledge (after all, why would she think any differently?),sent me to sit with the more backward children, who, given the way the room was arranged, were consigned to a kind of limbo, to the right of the teacher and facing the more advanced children, who were intended to serve as an example. A few days after classes had begun, the teacher, with the aim of finding out how familiar we were with the orthographic sciences, gave us a dictation. I had careful, round, very upright handwriting in those days, very good for a boy my age. Now it happened that I, Zezito (I'm not to blame for the diminutive, that's what my family called me, it would have been much worse if my name had been Manuel, then they would have called me Nelinho...), made just one mistake in the dictation, and even then it wasn't really a mistake, bearing in mind that all the letters of the word were there, but two had been transposed: instead of "class" I had written "calss." Perhaps I was concentrating too hard. Anyway, now I come to think of it, that was where the story of my life began. (In our classroom, and probably in every classroom in the country, the double desks at which we sat were exactly the same as those which, fifty years later, in 1980, I found in the village school of Cidadelhe, in the region of Pinhel, when I was traveling around meeting people and places for my book
Journey to Portugal.
I confess that I couldn't conceal my emotion when I thought that, in times gone by, I might have sat at one of those desks. They were more decrepit and stained and scratched by use and lack of care, but it was as if they had been transported direct from Largo do Leão and 1929 to that village classroom.) But let's get back to the point of the story. The best student in the class occupied a desk right by the door and performed that most honorable of duties, class doorkeeper, for he was the one responsible for opening the door if anyone knocked. The teacher, surprised by the orthographic talent displayed by a boy who had just arrived from another school—and who was therefore assumed, by definition, to be a slacker—ordered me to go to the top of the class, where, of course, the dethroned monarch who had been sitting there until then had no alternative but to move. I can see the scene as if it were happening now, with me hastily gathering up my things, walking the length of the room before the perplexed (admiring? envious?) gaze of my classmates and, heart beating wildly, sitting down in my new place. When I won the PEN prize for my novel
Levantado dochão (Raised from the Ground),
I told this story to assure the audience that no moment of glory, present or future, could ever compare with that. Now, though, I can't help thinking about that other poor boy, coldly cast out by a teacher who must have known as much about teaching children as I did about subatomic particles, if such things were spoken of then. How would he explain to his parents—justifiably proud of their young son—that he had been knocked off his pedestal by a stranger who had just appeared over the horizon, like Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse? I can't remember whether I went on to become friends with my unfortunate classmate, although he probably wanted nothing to do with me. Besides, if I remember rightly, shortly after that, I was transferred to another class, perhaps, who knows, to resolve the problem created by the teacher's lack of sensitivity. It isn't hard to imagine a furious father storming into the headmaster's office and protesting vehemently at the discrimination (did people use that word then?) of which his son had been the victim. Although, if truth be told, I have the impression that parents, in those primitive times, didn't worry overmuch about such details. It all came down to whether you got through the year or not, whether you passed or failed. Nothing else mattered.

When I moved from second year to third, Senhor Vairinho, the headmaster, summoned my father. He told him that I was a good, hard-working student and capable, therefore, of completing the third and fourth years in one year only. I would attend the normal third-year classes, while the more complex fourth-year subjects would be taught in private lessons given by Senhor Vairinho himself, who lived above the school. Given that this arrangement would cost him nothing, my father agreed, for Senhor Vairinho was doing it out of the goodness of his heart. I wasn't the sole beneficiary of this special treatment, three more of my classmates were in the same situation, two of whom came from quite well-off families. The only thing I remember about the third was that his mother was a widow. Of the other two, I recall that one was called Jorge and the other Mauricio, but I can't even remember the name of the orphan, although I can still see his thin, rather bent figure. Jorge, I recollect, was already getting a beard. As for Mauricio, he was a real devil in short trousers, quarrelsome, impetuous, always itching for a fight: once, in a fit of rage, he hurled himself on a classmate and stuck a pen in his chest. With a temperament like that, so quick to anger, what would have become of that boy in later life? We were friends, but not close. They never came to my house (well, living as we did, in rented rooms, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to invite them) and I was never invited to theirs. Any shared experiences, friendships and games were confined to the playground. By the way (was this perhaps another example of my presumed dyslexia?), I remember that, around this time, I confused the word
retardador
—"delaying"—with
redentor
—"redeeming"—and in the most bizarre manner imaginable. The slow-motion effect, which, in Portuguese, is
o efeito de retardador,
had just begun to be used in films by then, or perhaps I'd only just noticed it. And during a game we were playing one day, I had to fall to the ground, but I decided to do it very slowly, saying: "
É o efeito redentor.
" The others took no notice, perhaps because that expression, which I had only just learned, wasn't familiar to them at all.

Out of school, I remember engaging in some terrific battles with children from the neighboring houses, battles that involved much hurling of stones, but which, fortunately, never ended in blood and tears, although there was no shortage of sweat. As shields we had saucepan lids that we found among the rubbish. Now, I've never been particularly brave, but I remember once going on the attack beneath a hail of stones and how that one heroic gesture routed the two or three enemies opposing us. Even now, I have the sense that in advancing like that, barefaced, I was disobeying one of the unspoken rules of engagement, that each army should stay where it was and take aim at the other side from that position, with no charges or countercharges. More than seventy years later, in an image shrouded in the mists of memory, I can see myself with a saucepan lid in my left hand and a stone in my right (plus two more in my pockets), while missiles from both sides flew over my head.

What I remember most vividly about Senhor Vairinho's classes is the moment when, at the end of the lesson, with his four students lined up in front of his desk on the stage, he would write that day's marks in his beautiful hand in our black-bound exercise books, abbreviating the marks to B, A, G, E: bad, average, good, excellent. I still have that exercise book
and it shows what a good student I was: there were very few "bads," not many "averages," lots of "goods" and a fair number of "excellents." My father would sign at the bottom of the page each day, signing himself Sousa, because he never liked the Saramago he had been obliged to adopt by his son. It was a source of great pride to my family, both in the city and the village, that I passed the fourth-year exam with distinction. The oral exam took place in a ground-floor room (well, it was ground-floor in relation to the back of the building, which gave onto the playground, but first-floor in relation to the street) on a morning of brilliant sunshine, with a breeze wafting in through the windows open on either side, the trees in the playground looking green and leafy (I would never play in their shade again), and with my new suit, if my memory can be trusted, pinching me under the arms. I remember hesitating over one question from the jury (perhaps I didn't know the answer, perhaps my stutter had tied my tongue, as sometimes happened), and someone, a fairly young man whom I had never before seen in the school and who was standing just three steps from me, leaning against the frame of the nearest door—one of the doors that opened out onto the playground—whispered the response to me. Why was he there and not inside the room with everyone else? A mystery. That was in June of 1933, and in October, I would go to Liceu Gil Vicente, which was based then in the former monastery of São Vicente de Fora. For some time, I thought that the two went together, the name of the school and the name of the saint. I could hardly have been expected to know who Gil Vicente was.