Caminho de Luz e Sombra / Path of Light and Shadow Caminho de Luz e Sombra (Texto 6)

    Depois do batizado do menino, a situação começou a melhorar bastante; já havia quem tomasse conta da criança durante o dia, as amizades dos vizinhos começavam a dar frutos no auxílio da casa e os meios económicos tinham superado a pobreza extrema. ao que parece, tudo estava a encaminhar-se para um bem-estar e alguma felicidade e tudo poderia vir a tornar-se ainda melhor, se algo de inesperado, pelo menos naquela ocasião, não tivesse acontecido – a casa onde moravam, e que lhes tinha sido cedida para o seu lar, tinha de ser restituída para um dos familiares do proprietário. a partir daquela altura (por volta do ano de 1952) e em pouco tempo, a família Amaral tinha que arranjar uma nova casa, tinha de resolver um novo e difícil problema.

    Nesta situação, seria mais uma vez necessária a ajuda do primo Zé, pois conhecia bem a terra e outras terras vizinhas. O Amaral contara-lhe o sucedido, ficando com a esperança de que ele haveria de arranjar solução para o problema. E assim acontecera, pois ainda antes do prazo indicado para deixarem a casa, já uma outra, apesar de bem mais pequenina e modesta, o primo Zé tinha encontrado e apalavrado o aluguer, que seria económico, porém, não deixando de se tornar num encargo que antes não tinham e as condições não eram ainda desafogadas.

    Mesmo assim, logo que decidida a situação, por ambas as partes, senhorio e caseiro concordaram que a muda deveria ser imediata, pois era muito importante deixar vaga a casa onde viviam, para desta maneira poderem mostrar a sua compreensão pela necessidade da casa que lhes tinha sido cedida gratuitamente e, em simultâneo, poder ser uma forma de agradecimento reforçada na gratidão por esta espécie de retribuição moral.

    Com a mudança de residência também mudavam de freguesia, passavam de Avintes para Vilar de Andorinho, para o lugar das Menesas e para um local a montante do rio Febros. Era uma casa térrea, pequena e já bastante deteriorada. Mas como o Amaral era da arte, depressa a tornara mais asseada, pintou-a, substituiu as telhas partidas, organizou melhor os espaços da habitação e cortou o mato que fechava o carreiro de acesso à entrada principal. Quem olhava para a sua localização, do lugar do centro das Menesas tomando a sua linha horizontal ou tomando a linha vertical da marginal do rio Febros na direção da pequena colina, poderia ficar com a impressão de que seriam mais uns anexos de serventia aos animais do proprietário e lavrador, do que seria uma casa para servir de habitação. No entanto, quem se aproximava das suas redondezas, depois de passar o lugar onde lavavam roupa as lavadeiras das Menesas e de atravessar a ponte romana que ligava o rio Febros nas duas margens, constatava tratar-se de uma casa, porventura, muito modesta, mas com uma beleza natural que impressionava esteticamente quem lá passava. Era também aprazível, porque a corrente da água do rio era composta por pequenas cascatas, que se formavam pela força da água saída dos moinhos de pedra e que escondiam, na sua maior ondulação, uma diversidade muito rica de peixes: barbos, trutas, bogas, escalos, ribeirinhas, etc., facto que entusiasmava um grande número de pescadores que por lá passavam e faziam questão de experimentar os seus dias de sorte numa boa pescaria. Outra das riquezas naturais daquela casa era o campo que ficava no fundo da escarpa, que se descia e subia para cultivar e colher os produtos agrícolas que nasciam naquela pequena planície. Estava cheio de árvores que produziam bons frutos e de choupos e carvalhos, onde as videiras se enrolavam e se enchiam todos os anos de uvas para comer e produzir vinho americano, que, engarrafado com a mistura de outra qualidade de vinho, durante pelo menos um ano, tornava-se num vinho bastante agradável para poder ser bebido principalmente no verão. Nas traseiras desta casa modesta, encontravam-se mais alguns aspetos enriquecedores do ambiente do lar, nomeadamente um pátio solarengo onde podiam brincar as crianças.

    O senhorio era um agricultor médio e a casa onde vivia era paredes meias com a casa agora habitada pela família Amaral. Pode dizer-se que o todo do prédio habitado pelas duas famílias formava um retângulo, tendo no centro um pátio interior que dava acesso aos aidos dos bois, das vacas e dos porcos, mas também era um grande pátio comum que servia para as crianças brincarem e crescerem com harmonia. De vez em quando, lá se ouvia o guinchar de um porco e sentia-se algum tempo depois o cheiro a carne assada. Apesar da diferença entre as profissões, e por isso o horário das ocupações ser muito diferente entre ambos, eram bastantes as vezes que havia ocasião para falar sobre a vida, o crescimento dos filhos e os desejos para o futuro. Aliás, as crianças estabeleceram facilmente um contacto afetivo e partilhado. Quantas vezes, por seu intermédio, Maria podia permutar os bens alimentares que tinha comprado, como, por exemplo, bacalhau e outros peixes por aqueles que este lavrador produzia em abundância, como milho, feijão, castanhas e outros. Estes e outros acontecimentos fortaleceram a amizade e a estima recíproca, acabaram por tornar-se durante algum tempo nas forças que uniam estas famílias e que eram as únicas a viver nesta colina e nos campos que se estendiam para bem longe desta casa de lavoura.

Macedo Teixeira, Caminho de Luz e Sombra, Chiado Editora, Lisboa, 2013, pp. 24 a 27.

Path of Light and Shadow (Text 6)

For a long time, this had been the biggest problem of conscience of these parents about their children, by the feeling of pain created, when they knew that, to protect and raise one, they needed to sacrifice the other in the home tasks and to the school dropout. And, for this pain to not be even greater, it was worth that they could count with the sporadic helps from people who lived nearby their home, so that in the return to home, once the work was finished in the evening, Maria could arrange in everyone’s heart the happiness of each day.

After the boy’s christening, the situation began to better a lot; there was already someone who took care of the child during the day, the friendships of the neighbors were starting to give fruits in the aid to the house, and the economic means had surpassed the extreme poverty. Presumably, everything was going towards a well-being and some happiness, and everything could become even better, if something unexpected, at least on that occasion, would not have happened – the house where they lived, and which had been lent to be their home, had to be given back to one of the relatives of the owner, from that time on (about the year 1952), and in short time the family Amaral had to find a new house, they had to solve a new and difficult problem.

In this situation, it would be needed once more the help of Cousin Joe, since he knew well the land and other neighbor lands. Amaral had told him the happening, getting with the hope that he would find a solution to the problem. And so it happened, since even before the term for them to leave the house, already another one, although much smaller and modest, Cousin Joe had already found and bound by word the rent, which would be economic, however not ceasing to become a charge that they had not before, and the conditions were not yet well-off.

Even so, since the situation was settled, by both parts, landlord and tenant agreed that the removal had to be immediate, since it was very important to leave vacant the house where they lived, so that by this way they could show their understanding about the necessity of the house that had been lent to them freely and, at the same time, to be a reinforced way of thanking in the gratitude for this moral retribution.

With the removal of residence, they also changed parish: they passed from Avintes to Vilar de Andorinho, to the place of Menesas and to a place upstream the river Febros. It was a ground house, small and already very deteriorated. But since Amaral was from the craft, soon he had turned it tidier, he painted it, replaced the broken roof-tiles, he organized better the dwelling spaces and cut the brushwood that closed the access footpath to the main entrance. Those who looked to its location, from the place of the center of Menesas taking its horizontal line or taking the vertical line from the waterside of river Febros in the direction of the little hill, could get the impression that it would be some more annexes to serve as dwellings. However, to whom approached its surroundings, after passing the place where the washerwomen of Menesas washed the clothes and after crossing the Roman bridge that connected the river Febros on the two banks, it would be noticed that we were dealing with a house, perhaps very modest, but with a natural beauty that impressed aesthetically anyone who passed by. It was also pleasant, because the stream of the river water was composed by little cascades, which were formed by the strength of the water that left the stone mills and that hid, in its greatest undulation, a very rich diversity of fish: barbels, trouts, boces, chubs, etc., a fact that enthused a great number of fishermen who passed by there and insisted on trying their lucky days on a good catch. Another of the natural richnesses of that house was the field that was situated at the bottom of the scarp, through which one went down and up to cultivate and reap the products that sprang on that little plateau. It was full of trees that produced good fruits and of poplars and oak-trees, where the grape-vines wound themselves and got full of grapes every year to eat and to produce American wine, which, bottled with a mixture of another wine quality, for at least a year, became a very pleasurable wine to be able to be drunk especially in the summer. In the backyard of this modest house, there were some more enriching aspects of the home environment, namely a manorial yard where the children could play.

The landlord was an average farmer and the house where he lived was party-walled with the house now inhabited by the family Amaral. We may say that the whole of the building inhabited by the two families formed a rectangle, having at its center an inner yard that gave access to the courtyard for the oxen, the cows and the pigs, but also a large common patio that served for the children to play and grow up with harmony. Every now and then, there we heard the squeal of a pig, and after a while we felt the smell of roast meat. Despite the difference between professions, and therefore the schedule of the occupations being very different between both, there were many the times when they could talk about life, the growth of the sons and the wishes for the future. Besides, the children easily established an affective and shared contact. How many times, through her, Maria could exchange the food goods she had bought, like, for example, codfish and other fish by those that this peasant produced in abundance, like corn, beans, chestnuts and others. These and other happenings had strengthened the friendship and the reciprocal esteem, they ended up becoming for some time the forces that united these families and who were the only ones living on this hill and in the fields that extended far away from this farmhouse.

Macedo Teixeira, Path of Light and Shadow, Chiado Editora, Lisbon, 2013, pages 24 to 27.