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fourth, a boy named Domingos, like his father. May God give him better fortune, because there was nothing good to be said about his progenitor, who, caught between the wine and the cheap brandy, the mallet and the shoe stud, was going from bad to worse. And as for the furniture, the least said the better, for it continued to be bumped over hills and ditches as it was transported from house to cart and from cart to house and from village to village. A new shoemaker’s arrived, his name’s Mau-Tempo, let’s go and see what this master craftsman is like, mind you, he drinks wine all year round the way you drink water in August, he’s certainly a master at that. While living in Canha with her husband and children, Sara da Conceição suffered from tertian fever for two years, which, for those unfamiliar with the disease, is the sort of fever that comes and goes every four days. That is why, when his mother was ill in bed, João Mau-Tempo, he of the blue eyes, which were not repeated in his siblings, used to go to the well, and once, as he plunged the jug in, he lost his footing, proof that no one watches over the innocent, and fell into the water, which was very deep for a little seven-year-old. He was carried home by the woman who saved him, and his father beat him while his mother lay in bed trembling with fever, shaking so hard that even the brass balls on the bed shook, Don’t hit the boy, Domingos, but she might as well have been talking to a brick wall.
    Then came the day when Sara da Conceição called her husband and he did not answer. That was the first time Domingos Mau-Tempo spurned his family and went wandering off. Then, Sara da Conceição, who had kept silent for so long about her life, asked a literate neighbor to write a letter for her, and it was as if she were pouring her whole soul into it, because such behavior certainly wasn’t what had made her fall in love with her husband. Dearest Father, for the love of God, please come and fetch me with your donkeys and your cart and take me back home with you where I belong and I beg you please to forgive me all the trouble and grief I’ve caused you as well as all you’ve had to put up with and believe me when I say how I regret not following the advice you gave me over and over not to make this unfortunate marriage to a man who has brought me only sorrow because I’ve suffered so much poverty disappointments beatings I was well advised but ill fated, this final phrase was drawn from her neighbor’s literary treasure trove, marrying the classical and the modern with admirable boldness.
    What would any father worthy of the name do, regardless of previous scandals? What did Laureano Carranca do? He sent his gloomy, ill-tempered son, Joaquim, to Canha to fetch his sister and however many grandchildren there might be. Not because he loved them dearly, they were, after all, the children of that drunkard cobbler, no, he didn’t love those chips off the old block, and besides, he had other grandchildren he preferred. And so, that poor woman and her children, abandoned by husband and father, arrived in Monte Lavre with the ruins of their furniture piled high on the cart, and some were given house-room by parents or grandparents, out of a somewhat tetchy sense of pity, while others were deposited in a hayloft until a home could be found for them. And when they had to find shelter, mats on the floor served them as beds, and for food the older children went begging, as Our Lord once did, for it is a sin to steal. Sara da Conceição worked hard, of course, because she wasn’t just there to bring children into the world, and her parents helped her out a little, her mother rather more generously, as is only natural, well, she was her mother. And thus they scraped along. A few weeks later, though, Domingos Mau-Tempo reappeared, prowling around Monte Lavre, trailing after his wife and children and finally ambushing them, contrite and repentant, to use his words, doubtless