They sent me to learn my lessons at the house of one Dr. Figueiredo, who
had come from the capital to spend some time in the town of Pilar. For the
first time in my life I spent a whole day with strangers.
I was treated with the courtesy and condescension due to the grandson of
the local Prefect. My teacher had a wife who was dark and pretty, and who kissed
me every day when I arrived, and who did her best to please me. Her name was
Judite. I liked her in a different way to how I liked Aunt Maria. When she
explained things she always leant over me. Her kisses were warmer than I had
ever received before.
Dr. Figueiredo did not hang around in the class room, just long enough
to read the newspapers he kept on his table. It was his wife who taught me, who
took care of me. Once I saw her crying, her eyes red, and Dr. Figueiredo
leaving the house, banging the door behind him.
On another occasion I was left alone in the classroom with my exercise
book and I heard from the interior of the house the sound of beatings and
yelling. It was then that I understood that my lovely Judite was catching it
from her husband.
I felt like running into the street and calling for help, but instead I
stayed put and sat quietly on my chair, listening to her stifled sobs. When she
came in later on to teach me she hugged me and kissed me like never before. All
I could think about was how much my friend had suffered at the hands of that
tall thin man. And my heart felt a strange affection for this woman. She was so
tender with me, holding me to her breast to caress me, telling me that she
loved me like a mother. I felt her suffering as if it were my own.
It was there with her, with the scent of her black hair in my nostrils,
and the gentle touch of her dark hands, that I learnt the letters of the
alphabet. I dreamt about her at night, and I didn't like Sundays because I was
far away from her hugs and kisses.
But then I was taken away from her and sent to a class with other boys,
all poor people. They treated me differently and deferentially. They didn't
shout at me. I had my own separate cup for drinking water and I had a straw
stool 'for Colonel Zé Paulino’s
grandson.' The other boys sat on old gas canisters.
The lessons were read out loud. the times tables we chanted in chorus,
our feet tapping out the time in a rhythm that even today I still recall.
I didn't get slippered if I got the answers wrong. Indeed, if I got it
right I was asked to slipper my classmates who got it wrong. I was quite at ease
with this miserable regime. The other boys felt no anger towards me. Many of
them lived on the plantation. I can still see them in my mind's eye, carrying
their little straw baskets, walking back home, looking at me, leather bag slung
over my shoulder, in the saddle of the grey horse that took me to school and
back.
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