Alentejo Blue - Softcover

Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and grew up in England. She was named one of the twenty best young British novelists by Granta and is the author of the novel Brick Lane, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is now a major motion picture, and Alentejo Blue, a story collection. She lives in London with her husband and two young children.

One

At first he thought it was a scarecrow. Coming outside in the tired morning light to relieve his bladder, blessing as always the old Judas tree, Joćo turned his head and saw the dark shape in the woods. It took some time to zip his trousers. His fingers were like enemy agents. They pretended to be his instruments but secretly worked against him.

Joćo walked out beneath the moss-skinned branches thinking only this: Eighty-four years upon the earth is an eternity.

He touched Rui's boots. They almost reached the ground. "My friend," he said, "let me help you." He waited for the courage to look up and see his face. When it came, he whispered in his lacerated old man's voice. "Querido," he said. "Ruizinho."

Standing on the log that Rui had kicked away, Joćo took his penknife and began to cut the rope. He put his free arm across Rui's chest and up beneath his armpit, felt the weight begin to shift as the fibers sprang apart beneath the blade.

The almond blossom was early this year. The tomatoes too would come early and turn a quick, deceiving red. They would not taste of anything. Joćo took Rui's crooked hand in his own and thought: These are the things that I know. It was time to put the broad beans in. The soil that had grown the corn needed to rest. The olives this year would be hard and small.

He sat in the long grass with his back against the log and Rui resting against him. He moved Rui's head so it lay more comfortably on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around Rui's body. For the second time he held him.

They were seventeen and hungry when they first met, in the back of a cattle wagon heading east to the wheat fields. Rui pulled him up without a word, but later he said, "There's work enough for all. That's what I hear." Joćo nodded, and when the hills had subsided and the great plains stretched out like a golden promise, he leaned across and said, "Anyone who wants work can find it." They moved their arses on the wooden slats and pretended they weren't sore and looked out farther than they had ever seen before, white villages stamped like foam on the blue, the land breaking against the sky.

On the third day they put down at the edge of a small town and the children who ran up to meet the wagon were bitten hard, no different from Joćo's brothers and sisters. Joćo looked at Rui but Rui set his mouth and swung his legs over the side the same as the other men. The older ones got called and went to cut cork or plow the fields while Joćo and Rui stood up tall with their hands in their pockets. Joćo was so hungry he felt it in his legs and his hands and his scalp. They walked through the hovels, the women lining the doorways, the dogs nosing the gutters, and came to the center. "We'll stick together," said Rui. He had green eyes and a fine nose and white skin, as though he had never been out in the sun.

"If someone wants us, he'll have to take us both," said Joćo, as if he were master of his destiny.

They scrounged half a loaf at the café by scrubbing the floor and humping the rubbish to the tip, and slept on the cobbled street with their mouths open. When he woke, the first thing Joćo saw was Rui's face. He thought the pain in his stomach was pure hunger.

Side by side they scavenged and slept. They milled about with the other men waiting for work and learned a lot: how to eke out a few words to last a conversation, how to lean against a wall, how to spit, and how to fill up on indifference.

At the top of the square was a two-story building with bars on the bottom window. Joćo had never seen a prison before. The prisoners sat in the window and talked to friends or received food from relatives. One day a dozen or more people had gathered. Joćo and Rui had nothing else to do.

"He talks about sacrifice. Who is making these sacrifices, my friends? Ask yourselves."

No one looked at the prisoner. They were just hanging around waiting, though there was nothing to wait for.

The prisoner clutched the bars and pressed his face to them. His nose escaped. "Salazar," he said, "is not making sacrifices."

There was a general stirring, as if fear had blown in on the dry wind.

"Listen to me," said the prisoner. His face was thin and pinched, as though he had spent too long trying to squeeze it out of the narrow opening. "In the whole of the Alentejo, four families own three quarters of the land. It was like this too in other countries, like Russia. But now the Russian land belongs to the Russian people."

Each man averted his face from every other. It was not safe to read another's thoughts.

Joćo glanced at Rui. Rui did not know what the others knew, or was too reckless to care. He looked directly at the prisoner.

"The people make the wealth, but the wealth does not belong to the people."

Men withdrew their hands from their pockets as if emptying their savings before leaving town. The prisoner slid his fingers between the bars. "It is forbidden for us to go barefoot. Salazar forbids it." The man laughed, and the laugh was as free as the body was caged. "Look, this is how we must bind our feet. As long as our feet are in slippers and rags, our bellies must be full."

An old man with a bent back, obliged to gaze at feet the long day through, grunted a loud assent. A younger man, blinking back tears of fury, said, "It is true."

The prisoner tipped back into the dark cell as though wrenched by some unknown force, perhaps by the darkness itself. Each free man discovered he had something to do elsewhere.

"Rui," said Joćo, "we better go."

Rui stood with his hands on his hips and tossed his head like a bullfighter. "It's finished," said Joćo. He grabbed Rui's elbow and dragged him away.

Later a man came to the square and beckoned Joćo. "You want to work?"

"Anything," said Joćo. "Please."

"Come," said the man and turned around.

"My friend," said Joćo, looking over at Rui, who whistled and kicked his heels against the wall.

The man kept walking.

"Wait," called Joćo. "I'm coming."

He looked up and saw Rui's hat on a large stone, bathed in a circle of milky light. He imagined Rui sitting there, taking off his hat for the last time.

Joćo's spine was stiff and there was an ache in his chest. He shifted in the damp grass and looked across and saw how oddly Rui's legs were lying. His trousers were hemmed with mud. One boot faced down and the other faced up. For us, thought Joćo, there can be no ease.

He had been there as usual on Thursday, outside the Junta de Freguesia for the game. Everyone was there: José, Manuel, Nelson, Carlos, Abel, and the rest. Only Mario did not come, because Mario had broken his hip. "That Manuel," said Rui, "is a cheating bastard." "That Rui," said Manuel, "is a stupid donkey." Everything went on the way it had for the past eighteen years, since Rui turned up in Mamarrosa, though Rui and Joćo had been the young ones then. "Carlos," said Abel, "you bowl like a woman." "Shut up," said Carlos. "What do you know about women?"

Malhadinha was the best way for men to talk. You rolled the balls out onto the green and rolled the words out after them. You didn't have to face each other.

Afterward they locked the balls in the Junta and went to the café to drink.

"My granddaughter wants to go to Lisbon," said José.

"My son left London and went to Glasgow," said Rui.

"My daughter," said Carlos, "says she will throw me out if I cough once more in the night. But she always says that."

When it was time to go to bed, Joćo walked with Nelson, and Rui walked with Manuel. Sometimes Joćo walked with Manuel. Sometimes he walked with José or Antonio or Mario. But in all those years he had never walked alone with Rui.

Joćo thought he did not want to be the one to return Rui's hat to his wife. He thought and thought about what to do. A bird flew down and landed on the hat's ridge. It was gold with a black head and black feet. Joćo had never seen a bird like that before, and he knew it was a sign that he should keep the hat. Then he remembered about Rui's wife. Dona Rosa Maria had died not last year but the year before that. The day they buried her was a scorcher. July the fourth: memorial day of Isabella of Portugal, patron saint of difficult marriages and the falsely accused.

* * *

When they met for the second time, they were men.

Joćo passed the greenshirt parade in the Praēa Souza Prado and climbed the steps up to the Rua Fortunato Simões Dos Santos, heading for his favorite bar. At the top of the steps, he turned and watched as a boy marched out of the ranks and raised his right arm in the infamous salute. Joćo went into the bar and saw Rui. His skin had darkened and his nose was no longer fine (it looked as though it had been broken), but Joćo knew it was Rui because he brought back the pain in Joćo's stomach.

He was talking, drawing people in from the corners of the room. "All I am saying is that a man who owns ten thousand hectares or more and dines on six courses twice a day is living a life of excess. Doesn't the Public Man himself tell us we must restrain our desires?" Rui wore a checked shirt, a frayed jacket, and his hair dangerously long: It came to within an inch of his collar. "Nobody can contradict Salazar."

"But you speak like a . . . a . . ." The man sitting opposite Rui dropped his voice. "A Communist."

"'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' That's what they say." Rui waved his hand. "Whoever heard such nonsense? Why should a man work according to his ability? Why should a man receive according to his needs? Imagine what would happen if people took this nonsense into their heads! Įlvaro Cunhal" -- he let the name of the Communist Party leader hang for a while -- ...