Raised from the Ground Read Online Free PDF Page B

blades of the soldiers’ swords, until Fierabras, frisky as an ox stung by a gadfly, grips his saber in his hand and cuts, scythes, slices, pierces, blind with rage, although quite why he doesn’t know. The peasants lay moaning on the ground, and when finally carried back into their huts, they did not rest but tended their wounds as best they could, with lavish use of water, salt and cobwebs. We’d be better off dead, said one. Our time has not yet come, said another.
    The national guard, belovèd child of the republic, is leaving, the horses are still trembling, and flecks of foam still fill the air, and now they move on to the second phase of the battle plan, which is to ride into the hills and gullies and hunt down the workers who are inciting the others to rebellion and strikes, leaving the work in the fields undone and the animals untended, and thus thirty-three of them were taken captive, along with the main instigators, who ended up in military prisons. The guards led them off like a train of mules, their backs clothed in lashes, blows and mocking remarks, you bastards, mind you don’t trip over your cuckold’s horns, long live the republican guard, long live the republic. The farm workers were all individually bound and then tied as well to a single rope, like galley slaves, can you believe it, as if these were tales from barbarous times, from the days of Lamberto Horques Alemão, from the fifteenth century, at most.
    And who is going to take the leaders of the mutiny to Lisbon? Eighteen soldiers from the seventeenth infantry, led by their lieutenant, also called Contente, set off secretly on the night train, thirty-eight eyes keeping watch over five farm laborers accused of sedition and incitement to strike. They will be handed over to the government, our solicitous correspondent informs us, this government is a regular almshouse, always eager to receive such deliveries. And it’s May again, gentlemen, the month of Mary. There goes the train, there it goes, whistling away, there go the five farm laborers, to rot in Limoeiro prison. In these barbarous times the trains travel slowly, they stop for no apparent reason in the middle of nowhere, perhaps at some halt perfect for an ambush and sudden death, and the locked carriage in which the malefactors are traveling has its curtains closed, if there are curtains in the days of Lamberto Horques, if such extravagances are commonplace in third-class carriages, and the seventeenth infantry have their rifles cocked, perhaps even their bayonets fixed, who goes there, getting off the train ten at a time whenever it stops, to prevent any attacks or attempts to free the prisoners. The poor soldiers are under orders not to sleep, and they stare nervously at the hard, grimy faces of those five criminals, so like you. And when I get out of the army, my friend, who knows, perhaps another soldier will arrest me and carry me off to Lisbon on the night train, in the dark, We know our place now, but tomorrow, who can say, They lend you a rifle, but they never say anything about turning it on the estate workers, All that training, all that take aim and fire, is actually turned against yourself, the barrel of your weapon is staring at your own deceived heart, you have no idea what you’re doing, and one day they’ll give the order to fire, and you’ll shoot yourself, Shut your mouth, you seditious bastards, you’ll learn your lesson, who knows how many years you’ll spend inside, Yes, Lisbon is a big city, the biggest in the world they say, as well as home to the republic, which should, by rights, set us free, We’re perfectly within the law.
    There are now two groups of workers face to face, a mere ten paces apart. Those from the north are saying, We’re perfectly within the law, we were hired and we want to work. Those from the south say, You’ve agreed to work for less money, you come here to do us harm, go back where you came from, you rats, * you blacklegs. Those from the