For November’s first Translation Tuesday, we bring you a short story by Raul Germano Brandão, translated from the Portuguese by Jacqueline Frances Austin. In this haunting tale, Brandão recounts the woes of the destitute woman Candidinha. Like Voltaire’s Candide, her life is an unremitting stream of unearned misfortune, but unlike her optimistic counterpart, she maintains an iron grip on her fury and indignation. In order to survive, Candidinha transmutes her tragedy into entertainment, adopting an exaggeratedly ludicrous persona; her affluent neighbors reward her performance with leftovers. The narrative traces this disjunction between public and private, unfolding between the voices of the onlookers—who alternate between mocking gossip and scathing reprimands, feasting on her misery—and Candidinha’s own voice, bitter and cursing. Brandão unsparingly renders the acute discomfort provoked by direct confrontation with inequality, a grotesque reminder of the irrationality of fate.
That old woman who sometimes faces me on nights of supreme affliction, dressed all in black, ragged and stiff, is made of hatred and stone. I speak to her. She doesn’t respond. Her mouth held tight she keeps her silence, a ragged shawl pulled up around her chest. She is huge, like despair, dry as the stones. . . What is her story?
On ill-fated Tuesdays she always turned up in that big, lugubrious house, that witless, ridiculous old woman, holding her son, António, by the hand. Looking like a damp bird she would leap across the living room, her shawl aflutter, carrying her hat. Everybody found her comical and stupid, always dragging her boy, her look disorientated and her appearance somehow contemptible.
“Here’s Candidinha again. . .”
“Oh no.”
“Oh my dears. It could only happen to me, just imagine. . .”
On seeing her they would all start to laugh at that dry and stumbling figure, crushed by her disgrace, her hat missing feathers and her smile quite put on. She was like some kind of starving jester to whom, for their poverty, one tosses a crust, but mostly because they are inoffensive and ridiculous. You could tell that old woman anything: troubles, disasters, irritations. . . If you did, for a few minutes she’d exchange a few words, her smile forced and sinister. Trailing her ragged shawl, she’d go hopping around the house.
“How stupid she is!”
If we were fed up with our own contrary lives we would take to insulting Candidinha. We would unsettle and belittle her. Candidinha’s misery, Candidinha’s abjection, Candidinha’s hunger was consolation to us in our own troubles. Everything about her was grotesque, even the way she told her stories. With her hat on one side she would contort her face. She was accustomed to making her life something that others could laugh at.
“Come on and tell me a story. Give me a little laugh.”
“Oh my dears, yesterday I went to bed without eating. I had something here, in the mouth of my stomach… It felt like a wound. And there was me not knowing what it was. Hunger.”
And everyone would laugh at the old woman, as she went around all the houses telling her wretchedness. If they were in an ill humour, they received her like a plague, slamming doors in her face and sending her away. And then she would go off with her empty stomach and little Antoninho by the hand.
“That’s to teach you a lesson!”
“Oh poor thing. She really can be trusted.”
And Candidinha would go off and come back again, always with the same tragic figure, an abject smile on her lips. At the end of dinner, Antoninho would recite obscene verses for the relations so that they, with their satisfied bellies, might laugh at him and at the old woman.
“That Candidinha has always got something! Listening to her is better than going to the theatre.”
“Is she stupid?”
“It’s just how she manages life. That’s how she eats.”
“But that biting hunger, always!. . .”
And for years and years we all thought that woman—dry and gangling, her hat on one side, her torn green shawl—insignificant, ridiculous and most of all stupid.
She had set days when she appeared, and everyone, on Candidinha’s day, was out of sorts.
“She’s coming.”
“She never fails. That fiend is always hungry!”
“I’ve noticed”—said wealthy and aged Teodora—“that poor people never get ill. Nothing sticks to them, not even a stomach ache. Sickness doesn’t touch you if you’re already down. I’ve known Candidinha a long time, and never have I heard her complain of anything except hunger. . .”
Another boy one day hit Antoninho and Candidinha worked herself up,
“Hit him back! Are those tears? You hit him son!”
But the other boy’s father shouted at her with severity,
“What do you mean, hit! Who hits who? You keep it shut! Whyever do I bother with your hunger? Ungrateful. . . My dear you need to learn a lesson! And if this doesn’t teach you then out where the dogs live. You don’t make laws in my house. Oh, now her ladyship is proud, she who hasn’t a place to fall down dead in. You stay where you’ve been put. Her ladyship is poor isn’t she? So be humble then because humble fits those without a escudo to call their own. You look to your hunger. That’s fine. . . But be grateful, do you hear? Are you suffering? Well, you have to suffer because the Lord suffered for us. Why am I rich? Is it to put up with you? And get your son used to it, quietly. Bring him up to be what he must be. Or what is her ladyship thinking?”
And the old woman trembles, drawing her shawl up around her chest, her smile sinister, little António by the hand.
“Don’t cry boy. . . We are very grateful to our benefactors.”
“Don’t push it, you. . .”
That night Candidinha didn’t want to eat dinner. She left, trailing her son, her shawl aflutter.
“Don’t cry child. Here, take a crust. That’s what we’re having tonight.”
And the old women, muttering, sitting round the room,
“That Candidinha takes on airs. She is the proud poor. There’s nothing worse. She puts me off giving my bit to the needy.”
“Hunger makes people laugh. Disgrace makes people laugh. Such people put a mask on tragedy. They unhinge it and the crowd covers it in guffaws of laughter and in insults.”
“The old woman’s a rag, and her tears. . . Her catastrophe makes her all the more comical. She has no grandeur. Most of all she’s inoffensive and stupid. And yet she could do great harm. She knows all the secrets. No one holds back in front of her. She lays every wound bare. The old woman is witless and stupid. She goes hungry. We can kill her with hunger.”
“No one cares about Candidinha. . . Always disgraces, always misery. With her endless lamentations and the gnaw in her stomach, and the other rich, happy, well fed. . . Poor thing! Poor thing! She hardly knows how to string two words together.”
“And have you noticed that idiotic smile on her lips? Sometimes, I’m quite sure, her figure—I’m not sure quite why—makes me think straightaway about catastrophe. She’s horrifying. That black smear of a mouth troubles me when she chews. And on ill-fated Tuesdays, Lord knows, a great shudder comes in through the door with her. That’s for sure. The devil never falters! But people need to do some good in this world. That’s what they look for in the next. . .”
“She’s a relation. She’s old. She’s a bad habit.”
And they give her something to eat. Ever more humble she tells anecdotes. Sometimes she’s actually very useful. She listens to everything anyone wants to say to her, angry and desperate things. Even the servants treat her worse than poorly. They treat her like something left over, a remnant. She’s a simpleton. Poor thing!”
Oh yes I know that to a greater or lesser degree we’re all actors, comedians by necessity. If we want to live our lives out we have to be. Everything in nature fulfils its destiny with dignity. Only man wears a mask. I know only two ways of winning in life: either by force, or by flattering other people’s vices.
Her triumph was a crust, and to obtain it she had necessarily to exploit the vanity, the pride, the bad qualities of her rich relations. She unhinged herself to eat, made herself small to eat, appeared stupid and contemptible to eat.
Are people humiliated in life? They also like to crush, and there was Candidinha serving the purpose. With that comical and ruined old woman in front of your eyes, now and again you might feel pity, you might laugh at another person’s vices. It’s more than useful. It’s necessary. It brings comfort. The infamy of other people excuses our own. . .
“Here’s Candidinha!”
*
Candidinha was born to the winds of misfortune. Hatred had withered that enormous old woman wrapped in a faded shawl, sharp and dry hand poking through her rag.
“Your health! Your health!”
All her life she had lived with her barren disgrace. She looked as if made out of hatred and stone. After fifty years of hunger and disaster she had black hair and a heart forged from steel. Steel is plunged into water to harden it. Candidinha’s soul had grown hard with her tears. She had hatred for the world, hatred for her poverty, hatred for those smallest and most ordinary joys by which others are touched, for the crusts of bread on their tables, for their laughter, for everything! She stooped. She trailed herself around. She was evil like the serpents—so great was her hatred that her heart hurt.
“May everything in your body turn poison,” she said, in a small voice, as she looked at them. “Everything!”
And stooping again she went from house to house, her worn-out shawl, her torn skirt, her son by the hand. They would dismiss her and she, turning away, dreamt of catastrophes and infamies.
“Ah, if I don’t have it in my hand my Disgrace is no good to me at all!. . .”
Had she been alone, without her son, she would rather not have begged but died of hunger or been thrown into a corner—after roaring out her hatred.
“If I could! If I could!. . .”
But vulgarly and pitifully she wheedled and she whined. On certain days they would see her looming, bony and shrivelled, all in black. To everyone she wished to see brought down she said,
“Your health! Your health!”
Tell what? Tell this life ever harsher and all its disappointments, which slowly, slowly, like water on rocks, wears away? Her twisting useless rage when she had to wheedle and whine, despised and scorned!. . . Who can tell that drama between the mother and the son! She told him all her troubles, her hunger, the abuse, the comedy and the tragedy, the bitter hours seeking a crust, the humiliation, the mask of stupidity that she wore to cover her infamy. She withered him, raised him for Hatred. Inside this yellow and stiff little man, his ears sticking out from his skull, was already an old woman in a threadbare shawl calling down catastrophes, full of hypocrisy and a few begged coins.
When he lay down to sleep the old woman would sit by his side on the bed. Sometimes she’d given him the only piece of bread that there was in the house. Thin, dry and pitiless, she would take his hands to warm them and they would talk. The boy asked her questions. Candidinha answered in shrieks, her sharp hand tracing movements in the darkness. A bitter dialogue between the already grown-up son and the mother, worn out and despairing,
“Just look at the parson. He’s a villain. He killed his wife.”
“And he wasn’t arrested?”
“If you’re rich! The rich can do anything, son. Everything In this world is a lie. The only truth is money.”
“And we’re poor, aren’t we?”
“We are, son, we are. . . What I go through to keep you! I’ve had enough. The creeps! They give us what they don’t want, the leftovers. May God bring them down!”
“But mother, are they more than we are?”
“They’re rich.”
“But they’re our relations, aren’t they?”
“They are that.”
“And how did they earn it?”
“I have no idea. They stole it. And they treat us worse than dogs. How I would love, when they give me a crust, to see them brought down as we are!. . . If I could give to beggars, I wouldn’t give a single coin to anyone. I would have to laugh at their suffering.”
“The other rich boys in the school hit me too.”
“Bite them son!”
“And don’t the rich share?”
“The rich give charity to keep us down.”
“Are the rich evil?”
“As the stones. No-one in this world cares about other people’s troubles except to console themselves. Each for themselves. And whoever’s got money has got it all. This world belongs to those with the biggest grab, and the sky belongs to us all.”
Anguished and shrunken, then he would think. And for hours on end his mother by his side would cry curses out loud. The torrent of anger she’d held repressed all day would burst out. At night, alone with her son and finally tearing off the mask, she would tell him what she’d found in the house of her relatives. . . bitterness and tears.
“I’ve fed you on leftovers, brought you up with suffering and with begging. All your life remember that.”
“But mother, are they more than we are?”
“There you go again! You’re better than other people’s sons, but you’re poor—and the poor are cursed! Nights and nights on end I have cried for not being able to give you what the others have. . . Anacleto, you know?. . . He’s rich.”
“How did he earn it?”
“In the same way they all earn it—by taking it out of the mouths of the poor.”
“And Meireles?”
“He married a rich old woman and killed her with his dislike. It was well done. For her to learn, the fool! I never saw such an idiot! Don’t you ever marry poor, do you hear? That’s the worst thing of all. There’s no shortage of women. Get a very rich one.”
“And father wasn’t rich?”
“Your father died without recognising your existence, and the family grabbed hold of his money at once. They stole from us.”
“But is that how to steal?”
“If you’ve got money you can do anything. And then, to cap it all, they make a mockery of us and let us go begging. But they will be shamed. They will be more disgraced than we are! One son is stupid. One daughter ran away. Meireles has cried tears of blood. Pretend you’re their friend, but don’t forgive them. Do you hear? People who tell the truth are straight out on the street. Head down and walk on. If you don’t, you won’t get a thing. Make a big fuss of them but if one day you can do them harm, don’t you forgive them. . .”
“But they give us something to eat don’t they?”
“They do but those are crusts. They do it for vanity, for charity son. They kill us with hunger so that we can be grateful, for them to say what they like to us, to make us humble.”
“And we can’t do them evil?”
“Not for now. But who knows? The wheel of fortune sometimes turns and perhaps one day you’ll be able to dull their children’s hunger. Many things have been seen. You can get to be rich.”
“How mother?”
“By being big. Sleep. What matters in this world is money. If we’ve got money everything is a joke. We do what we like. . . Sleep.”
“We didn’t have dinner tonight.”
“We’ll have dinner tomorrow. Be quiet. It’s time you were asleep.”
“I can’t.”
“Are you hungry?”
“I am mother.”
“This hunger we go through, this cold that we catch, one day it will surely make you make others bitter, when you’re rich. At this hour the other children are in the warm with their stomachs full. And you my boy are hungry and cold!. . .”
And the old woman, to make him sleep, took the threadbare shawl from her shoulders and wrapped it round his feet. All night she stayed by his side, stiff with the cold and dreaming catastrophes. . .
*
The years passed and her hatred was useless. Her suffering deafened her. Other people kept on being happy, being satisfied and rich. She called upon her dream, drenched herself in dream. Oh those splendid nights of terror and of shrieking—who could watch them! The hours of hatred in the imagination into which we all plunge, feeling the groans of our enemies under our feet, and hearing them, finally, say the words,
“Forgive me!”
Candidinha had filled herself up with her shrieking! If you saw her pass by, dragging her shawl, her gaze lost, her eyes dry and huge, you might perhaps have thought,
“Poor old thing!. . .”
And yet with her went a vast vision of terror and a brazier of hate. Candidinha saw the ones who gave her charity dying in their infamy. They were her rags, her cries, her night-long monologues, life-long. . . The old woman laughed and the old woman dreamed the worst catastrophes. She sustained herself on wretchedness, fed herself on pain. It was her bitter bread of iron but with a strange taste. She is dry and hideous, her tremulous mouth, her sharp hands, shawl drawn up around her chest, full of misery and loathing they would watch her come in, saying in a hypocritical smile,
“Greetings dears! How lovely you look!. . .”
When, from the height of that dream of shrieks—the kingdom that nature, God or the Devil, shares between the unfortunate to sustain them in life—Candidinha suddenly faced reality and they saw the cold in her hands and the anger in her mouth; and when in spite of her hat without feathers and her torn dress someone read the tragedy in her crazed glance, the old woman would at once come to their aid with her laughter,
“Oh my dears! My dears!. . .”
And they all, between bursts of laughter, agreed that Candidinha truly was a fool. And off she went again to her dream, her son by the hand, revolving the same old wound. Old age had come. Death might come too, but she still had her son fed on hatred and not milk. She’d raised him—with more than love, with frenzy—for vengeance.
And with his years taller and harder, she called for Misfortune. . .
Until Misfortune heard her. . . Her son, despite her clamouring, in the space of a few days withered in her hands. He was more than her flesh. He was her dead hatred and every dream on the earth.
Her design had been in vain. Beyond the little white cadaver was a dusting from the formidable mountain, now crumbled. In a cacophony the laughter echoed in her ears. Yes, the old woman was a fool, and her entire tragedy was leaving. If she’d spoken she’d have told the others all her rancour, face to face. They’d have laughed, certainly, laughed at the worst that there is in this world—at the hatred in her dream.
“Son!. . .”
In vain the funereal evening comes down in layers of cloud upon layers of cloud and then night. Candidinha doesn’t hear. In vain they call out and speak to her. . . As it advances, the glacial darkness pierces her with cold. She bends over the cadaver, warming it.
“Son, can you hear me? Can you hear me boy?. . .”
Tearing off her mouldy and tragic rags to cover his feet, she watches him throughout the night; warms him with her breath for all of that infinite winter night.
“Son! But have I suffered so much and you die?. . . How cold your hands are!. . .”
In the morning when they take him, Candidinha walks alongside the coffin without even a tear; rigid and withered and wrapped in her shawl. She wanted to bury him with her own hands and he might still live. She never spoke again. Enormous in her rags she dived into a tragic absorption, one like the cobbles on the street. If they question her she neither answers nor turns her gaze away. With her sharp hand she draws the threadbare shawl up around her dry chest. She is stony, as if she were cut from that same block of granite on which I find her now sitting. Her hair is black. She doesn’t die but rather gazes on an abyss of useless hatred. The years pass and she keeps silent, looking Destiny full in the face.
Translated from the Portuguese by Jacqueline Frances Austin
Raul Germano Brandão (1867–1930) was born in Foz do Douro, Portugal. Descended from a family of fishermen, the sea is a recurring theme in his work. Soldier, journalist and writer, he is famous for the realism of his descriptions and for the lyricism of his language. He made extensive contributions both to journalism and to literature in Portuguese. In his literary compositions he is both innovative and original. It is sometimes said that his work prefigures 20th century Modernism. The most fertile period of his literary production begins after his retirement from the army in 1912. While the value of his literary opus is recognised within Portugal, the rest of the world is perhaps not yet sufficiently well-acquainted with it. Húmus (Humus) is said to be his major work. Brandão died of an aneurysm at the age of 63. He is buried in the town of Guimarães.
Jacqueline Frances Austin was born in Kent, England. She is an independent academic and researcher. A native speaker of English, she lives today in Portugal. Since arriving in Portugal (in 2012) she has taken constant pleasure in discovering Portuguese literature and culture in all its aspects. Nowadays her reading material is almost exclusively written in Portuguese.
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