SALMON PÂTÉ
He arrived to the hamlet at dawn. A cold and wet dawn
with drizzling rain. Obvious evidence that it was already winter. It had been a laconic phone-call: “the
old bag kicked the bucket. Come ‘cos if you don’t, people will talk.” Actually,
leaving at night, having to listen to a taxi driver babbling about something on
his way to the train station, driving him up the wall on a slow train to
Castelo Branco and getting sick for more than thirty kilometres on his way to
Cebolais did not make his ideal weekend. At 5 a.m. he was snorting in his
sleeping bag in the living room of his cousin’s before getting ready to attend
the funeral. He had left working
projects, reading and trivial matters behind and his keys at his neighbour’s,
with instructions to feed his cat and his parakeets who collected complaints
from neighbours who could not endure Sunday morning noise, feathers, dust, with
parakeet seed on window sills, little poo stains, stronger than rust on drying
clothing. His favourite was his cat, rescued from street rubbish containers.
His behaviour was not too different from that of a dog. He had been named
Jardel, Pimpas, Michifu, Renault and Latex. In the end, he was named after the
funny name of Balthasar because he had devoured a whole bolo-rei.[1] He usually
laid on the entrance hall carpet when I went to work and there he stayed curled
during the day. As I returned, he would jump onto my lap, and purred as loudly
as the sound of a refrigerator motor.
It had started to rain, and he
buried his shoes in the mud as he remembered his grandfather in the priest's
words, protected by a reassuring umbrella held by the rough hands of Firmino
blacksmith, a bosom friend of his grandfather, who had always warned against
the possibility of being fooled by gypsies in the business involving apparently
bright flaxen chestnut horses which after being washed became gray, with rough
hair and bad teeth. This was the sort of thing that should not be mentioned at
a time as this. He should also accept his uncle’s ride; the daughter of the
policeman Zé should not also have fled with a man before getting married to him
first. He should also say goodbye and he should also accept kind offers, such
as cabbage, olive oil, rye bread, arbutus brandy and the genuine smile of those
who thought the future was at the end of the tarmac road to Lisbon. He accepted
the ride. The rain started to fall again silently and the treacherous fog was
strong enough to beat the laws of physics. A tight curve and the car slid on
the slope, falling apart-and broke into chains, tires and shrapnel.
The
parakeets... you have to be careful so that they won’t fly through the little
door; it’s not safe, you know, I had to use a paper clip to hold it to the
plastic bottom. And the cat... cat food... salmon! He likes salmon pâté, the
cheap one; that one in the round can sold at the local grocer’s...
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