Miguel Torga

For a few years I was able devotedly to take health and hope to many homes. At the same time I relished the peace of village life. Often I had dinner at Augusto's, played cards at Raimundo's shop and went hunting with them and Dionisio, a consummate master in this art. We went to fetch him at dawn when he would stick his nose outside the window 'checking out the stars' as he'd say and if they were favourable, he would dress and come down to meet us. He was a very superstitious man, spoke in aphorisms and through metaphors, preferred others to beat the partridges for him, but filled the hours with wit and picturesque sayings. He invariably brought the same lunch: bread and raw sausage which he would roast out in the countryside. He would light a fire, wrap the delicacy in a cabbage leaf, brown it in the heat and chew it at his leisure, telling his amusing tales all the while. One day at Monte de Vez when he started the ritual, the bitch he kept on a near starvation diet, in a surprise leap gobbled down his sausage in one bite. Reacting instantly, Dionisio had the animal by its hind legs, stood up and started using her as a flail against the ground. He flailed so hard that the poor animal was forced to vomit up the mouthful she had swallowed whole. Dionisio picked up the sausage, washed it, rinsed it, put in back on the fire and ate it with relish while we wept with laughter.

With their high, wide glass panes, the windows in my new office were like two wide open eyes overlooking the small garden square to which the bronze statue lent a kind of metallic stillness. On the right stood the pale facade of the Bank of Portugal, the clock on top striking the sleepy hours; on the left, the old iron bridge crossing the white ribbon of the sandbar where the Mondego river wound thin and indolent; and directly in front, the green view of the rural horizon was a bucolic pasture feeding my imagination. Idle pigeons swayed voluptuously on the electricity cables or perched grooming themselves on the street lamps. Traffic sounds ebbed and flowed in alternate waves. The city's emblem, drawn with polychromatic dwarf plants in a grassy flower bed, welcomed strangers.

I was back in Coimbra once again, with its esoteric light, its lyrical grace and its provincial academic pretentiousness symbolised by the University's campanile proudly lifted against the pale blue sky.

My first attempts were a resounding failure. Accustomed to human insincerity, my mind stumbled on the sincerity of animals. Once at liberty, and with much persistence, in two or three cases I thought I had managed to make a purely instinctual existence seem plausible. A frog attuned to the germinal silence of sap, a cicada singing madly in her final metamorphosis, the cackle of a blackbird filling a restless feminine heart with hope. With growing confidence I went on. I had always been sensitive to the infinite variations of form of which protoplasm is capable. I had also been aware of the irreducible individuality in the appearance and, above all, in the behaviour of each and every one of these variations. An ill-fated crow cawing ominously in a deserted place, a sensual rooster ruling the roost or a glassy-eyed cat disdainfully considering the rest of the world, were not in any way inferior in character to the human animal. With the additional merit of remaining entirely themselves, without the misfortune of committing the crime of deviating from their nature. True, they did not act through conscious deliberation. Independent of any ethical principles, the truth is, although obeying an inner drive, they never intentionally betrayed themselves. Behind their attacks no one could find any motives other than hunger or the defence of their lairs. Even when domesticated and driven, however, the corrupting impulse could not entirely erase their innate purity ready to show itself from the first. I tried to make this incorruptible essence as obvious and convincing as possible in the portrayals I made of it.