HOME-MADE BREAD

6.48 AM. Breakfast bathed by the raising sun.

Life in the country is undoubtedly less stressing than life in the big city. There are lots of birds. And also lots of lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, cement mixers, drills, and church bells to pridefully hammer our ears at dawn.

DE MÁLAGA, COM ARDOR

Encontrei estes desenhos num velho CD muito bem guardado (mas não tão bem preservado, só passando as imagens pelo Flash consegui que elas saissem aqui com a cor original), ainda do tempo em que estávamos em Málaga. O blog que eu escrevia na altura não tinha imagens.

HAIL AND THUNDER

Wind NNE 11 kph
Humidity 68%
Barometer 982 mb

At 4.30 PM

I slept with the window open (it has been very hot). Big thunderstorm, at dawn. Strong winds. Hail and thunder. When I took my feet out of bed there were ice pellets all over the floor.

THE GREEN FISH, chapter 2

FUEL

THE LAST OF THE FERAL

The Croatian satirical newspaper Feral Tribune closed its doors.

Although I don’t know Croatian enough to read it, I had the opportunity to read some of its articles translated in Courrier International, during the 90s, when it was considered by many the only serious newspaper around here.

I hope they can find a way out of the troubles they attracted for being the only really critical newspaper in Croatia and come back again.

THE GREEN FISH, chapter 1

CRUELTY TO SNAILS

Photographs J.G.

“Look how he cries for help.”

“The little mouth still open in desperate need for fresh air.”

“I tell you, death is cruel to the animals we eat. Death is even crueler to snails. We have to cook them slowly, so they get out of the shells while the water warms up and we have no trouble in picking them with a toothpick when they are ready.”

“The same with the big ones?”

“Caracoletas, you mean? Those ones have a trick. You grill them in a metal sheet and see them suffer in direct. Spread salt over the sheet, so they avoid turning themselves on it, and they cook inside their own shell. They contort desperately and while doing so they get out. You just have to make sure they don’t turn over. Then prepare the sauce, usually very fat and spicy. Are you still interested?”

“I’m afraid of nothing!”

“Since you’re a brave sailor I tell you another way of grilling caracoletas somebody told me once. I don’t know if it works, but since you’re afraid of nothing maybe one day you’ll find out. Prepare a coal fire and when it’s ready, put the caracoletas gently over the coals, shell down. Then put a cold metal sheet over them. The artist that told me this said it was the best way, because then they stick to the sheet trying to escape and they cook evenly on both sides. What? Are you loosing your appetite?”

“I may give up the snails, after all.”

“What? Do you think lobsters and shrimp feel better, when they are being cooked alive? Are you ready to give them up too? I tell you what is, for me, the best way of doing the little snails we find in the south of Portugal. Cook them in water with salt slowly, as I told you, for around half an hour or a little more. Some time before they are ready join sticks of oregano. Not the leaves, they give a sour taste to the snails, just the sticks. Some people also use piri-piri, other ones prefer pepper. Other way of doing them is with olive oil, garlic, onion, laurel, oregano, pepper and/or piri-piri. Some people even use bacon! Barbarians!”

C

AS CHAMINÉS DE MELVILLE

Ilustração Nina Govedarica

“... for it is resolved, between me and my chimney, that I and my chimney will never surrender”.
Herman Melville, I and my Chimney (Setembro 1855).

Os pequenos demónios têm o hábito de se introduzir no ouvido quando estou mesmo a deixar cair as pálpebras de cansaço. Não que tenha ilusões de que vá conseguir dormir. Não quero gritar, por isso cerro os maxilares, mas cerro-os com tanta força que se deve ouvir nas outras camas, apesar do barulho da lona a bater furiosamente contra os varais.
A luz é amarelada e a lona que em tempos foi branca está salpicada de manchas de ferrugem onde as ilhoses lhe tocaram, ao ficarem guardadas no porão, e de sangue que parece ferrugem, onde lhe roçaram mãos e ligaduras.

De vez em quando sai-me um som do fundo da garganta, não há nada a fazer para o impedir, quando as pequenas lâminas afiadas rebentam de súbito e cortam o osso em todas as direcções. Ou o corpo encolhe-se. Ou a cabeça abana como a cabeça dum cão picado. Como, por exemplo, quando o maldito bicho entra a matar pelo ouvido adentro.
Na cama ao lado, o Fataça percebe qual é o meu problema e olha-me com tristeza. O Fataça tem uma teoria e custa-lhe que não a leve a sério e seja tão estúpido que prefira sofrer ainda mais do que aquilo que o meu corpo me obriga a sofrer.
“Contou-me um marinheiro russo, um tipo com cara de bolo-rei e olhos em bico. Lá na terra dele, dizia-me, têm mosquitos grandes como salmões. Sim, como salmões. Era o que ele dizia, e também me ensinou como ficar em paz com os mosquitos. Uma pessoa tem que manter a calma, deita-se e faz de conta que o mosquito é como um cão ou um gato, ou outro animal doméstico que está ali ao lado de vigília. Sossegado.”
A teoria dele irritava-me mais do que me entretinha e não me contive que não o interrompesse.
“Ó Fataça! Parado estou eu aqui, sem me conseguir sequer levantar para ir mijar que não me caiam todos os talhantes do inferno em cima dos ossos, e eles não me largam o pavilhão!”
Ele não percebeu esta do pavilhão, e eu que queria ser mesmo mau não lha expliquei.
“Vá por mim”, continuava ele pacientemente, alheio à minha vingativa injustiça, “por certo o meu tenente não quer ficar como aquele ali.” E apontou para um tipo que passava noite e dia sentado, balançando-se e gemendo baixinho, com um cobertor cobrindo a cabeça. Nunca tinha pensado que o drama dele fossem mosquitos e calculei que o Fataça estivesse a inventar aquela para me impressionar. “Cada vez que aquele se vira aos mosquitos, eles não o largam. Até grita com eles! Uma desgraça.”
“Pensava que gritasse de pânico. A desgraça dele foi um estouro que lhe rebentou os ouvidos, e não os mosquitos. Fataça, por amor de Deus! Como quer que acredite nessa?”

Passa um sargento devagar, frente à abertura da tenda, mãos atrás das costas e ombros atirados para trás, a pala sobre os olhos e o francalete pelas beiças, a imitar um oficial inglês de jornal ilustrado. Vê-se o vento a bater-lhe nas calças brancas de pano farto e as folhas das árvores a marcar-lhe o ritmo.
Lá ao fundo, ou bombarda ou trovoada, já nem sei qual é qual, a envolver-nos. Aqui, o vento. As árvores abanam com raiva, as lonas batem tímbales com fúria, e não dão mostras de sossegar. Já vai assim, sem chover, no terceiro dia de ameaça de temporal.
Está calor e cada vez há mais mosquitos. Porque é que o vento não os leva para longe? Ocorre-me que o vento os tenha trazido de longe. Para este sítio de refúgio, onde a Natureza rufa mais do que a guerra. Estamos cercados de chuva e trovoada por muitos quilómetros em redor, um inimigo medonho, cinzento escuro e pesado, que nos aperta. Só aqui o céu está azul. É a ilha dos mosquitos.

Lá em baixo, junto à água, deve estar mais abrigado, mas não quero que me mandem para lá. Voltar para trás nunca me pareceu boa coisa e eu já estou bastante atrás. O médico disse-me que assim que chover me ponho a andar. “Na sua idade não é muito normal”, como é que ele pode achar que tal coisa pode ser normal seja em que idade fôr, “isso vai, se não for a bem, vai a mal.” E deu-me um minúsculo frasco castanho com láudano, que me ajuda tanto como o vento ou os mosquitos de cada vez que as navalhas muito afiadas se decidem a cortar-me os ossos dos pés em lascas muito finas, que se separam numa multidão de pedaços de vidro. Daqui para a frente já não há justiça nem injustiça, não há vento nem mosquitos.
Por falar nisso, um deles passa devagar mesmo à frente dos meus olhos. Já não lhes ligo. Eles também não. Disfarço, para que o Fataça não perceba que estou a dar razão à sua teoria. Mosquitos grandes como salmões! Russos com cara de bolo-rei! Como dar-lhe razão em tamanhos disparates, não me dizem? Mas um problema já está resolvido. Agora só falta andar.
As lonas revoltam-se com renovada força e a da minha frente solta-se num canto, que bate como metralha. Encolho-me todo. Os pedaços de vidro moído explodem em outras tantas ampolas de ácido. Tento não pôr os pés em cima de nada. O sargento passa por detrás das tendas, soltando berros que o vento se encarrega de apagar. Ponho os pés no chão.

Lá ao fundo, para lá da lona que se levanta e bate furiosa, por detrás das copas das árvores baixas que se espalham monotonamente pelos trezentos graus de terra firme que nos rodeiam, recortam-se contra o horizonte escuro as silhuetas solenes e divertidas das chaminés de Melville.

O PASTEL

Pastéis e fotografia, J.G.

Lisboa.

“Sabe o que é um pastel de bacalhau? Um pastel de bacalhau é um frito, com a forma duma ameixa, de cor ocre com manchas escuras e superfície irregular como as costas dum animal abespinhado. O interior amarelo com pintinhas verdes tanto pode ser uma massa seca, com uma ocasional espinha de grandes dimensões, como pode ser macia e ter mesmo sabor a bacalhau. Por isso é melhor conhecer o sítio onde se vai comer o pastel. Os portugueses não vendem os pastéis de bacalhau nas padarias, como na sua terra se faz com o burek, vendem-nos nos sítios em que também se bebe. Por isso é que você não vê pessoas a andarem na rua comendo pastéis de bacalhau, nem a entrarem num café com um saco de papel com pastéis de bacalhau e pedirem uma taça de vinho branco.”

O meu amigo olha-me com a atenção dividida entre as minhas palavras e os pastéis que vêm a caminho.
Perfilado em frente a um mar encapelado de azulejos azuis e amarelos, o empregado que trouxera os pastéis, mexendo-se devagar mas com eficácia, olha para além de nós com uma atenção silenciosa.
O meu amigo repara com estranheza nos bancos. São assentos de madeira altos de tampo quadrado e estão montados em volta da barra para pôr os pés, não podendo assim mexer-se senão de lado e apenas um pouco para trás e para diante.

“Nunca vi uns bancos assim”, diz-me ele, “nem penso que alguém queira agarrar num banco tão pesado e fugir com ele pela porta fora.”
Explico-lhe que antigamente, por estes lados, tinham o curioso hábito, quando bebiam um copo a mais, de mandar com os bancos à cabeça uns dos outros.
Olha-me com incredulidade. “Em tempos”, digo-lhe eu para arrumar de vez as suas dúvidas, “sobretudo junto ao rio e nos bairros que sobem até ao Castelo, era hábito baptizarem os estrangeiros desse modo”.
Ele entrega-se ao pastel, para amenizar o horror.

Estamos nisto, quando estala uma gritaria lá fora. Ao fundo, a rua está cheia de gente. Os gritos são de socorro. Com tanta gente na rua, porque não socorrem o desgraçado?
Pedimos vinho tinto e ele mira já, guloso, o último pastel que está na montra.

Os gritos aproximam-se, e imagino que tenham palavras escondidas, mas não se consegue perceber quais. Vamos até à porta. Um homem grande com uma grande cabeleira amarrada em tufo na nuca como um polvo, pega pela manga de outro homem, que se agarra ao chão e se faz de peso-morto, enquanto grita e esperneia como uma criança.
O polvo está a gritar para um telemóvel, com uma voz gemida “onde é que vocês estão? Agarrei o Moçambique! Onde é que vocês estão?”
Mentira, não agarrou nada, o Moçambique, que se vê logo ser malandro como um alho, escapa-se e agarra num grande cubo de basalto. Mas a ameaça que leva na mão tarda em atingir uma altura digna.
O outro continua a ser o único dos dois a manter o estado de histeria, “Onde é que vocês estão?”

Um carro da polícia vem da rua de cima e tapa a saída ao Moçambique, que abre os braços como que para receber um amigo ausente há muito, fazendo ao mesmo tempo desaparecer a pedra que se diria nunca ter estado nas suas mãos, sequer arrumada estrategicamente a um canto do passeio, tal como outros cubos de basalto espalhados pelo centro da cidade. O Moçambique aproxima-se assim para o emocionante encontro, tira o blusão, finge despir a camisa em gestos trapalhões e entrega-se de braços e pernas abertas contra o carro, como num filme americano.
Viro-me para o sítio onde deveria estar o homem com a cabeça de polvo, mas este entretanto desapareceu como uma brisa.

Voltamos para dentro. Já não há pastel de bacalhau na montra. Um tipo de boné, ao fundo do balcão, está a comê-lo. Então, o meu companheiro agarra no assento do banco e sacode-o. Este abana um pouco para um lado, um pouco para outro, pouco firme.

C

WAX

Another old story from Carmen’s café, this time during the Holy Week in Andalucia, when penitents in hooded suits fill the streets, carrying images of saints, incense burners and tapers.

As every year, during the processions, Little Tartesus seemed to lose control of his nerves. His fellow penitents in the cofradia, or brotherhood, used to think he had too many glasses of cheap wine over only a meager ration of conchas finas. But that year things were not so easy.

Big Balboa made up that Tartesus was high on something more sinful than just bad wine. Of course nobody believed him, and also everybody knew that Big Balboa had a particular hatred for Little Tartesus since his sister Esmeraldita, also known as La Torre, humiliated Balboa in public one Friday night in Plaza de la Merced, which thing in itself is not astonishing, due to the terrible reputation of La Torre, but that left Big Balboa prisoner of a long-living rage. This year Big Balboa took the trouble of whispering to Little Tartesus that he knew his secret, in the beginning of the procession, thus increasing the nervousness of the man, already afflicted by the fear of losing control as usual.

What Little Tartesus would confess to nobody, not even to the priest, was that he actually hallucinated in such occasions.
Images of the procession would melt inside his hood with sounds and scents from another place and time, and Tartesus would feel he was digging for silver. He dug, and dug, and dug, his hands and feet filled with earth under his broken nails. He would also be very conscious of the smell of the wax. He could not afford wax for himself, even if he dug his entire life. He would get dizzy from the effort and the heat.
The strangest thing would be that Balboa, or someone looking very much like him, was also there, not whispering into his ear unpleasant threats, but watching from a distance, his hands on his hips, the arms full of silver. A mixture of the smell of the dried sweat and the earth of the digging days, and the wax of the burning tapers, would impregnate the cloth over his head and make him feel tired but strong, made him move both with and without his body, both on and above the ground.

When Carmen told me that Big Balboa was found away from the procession in Arco de la Cabeza, seated on the floor, yellow as wax and shrunk inside his gown, the look fixed in a place only him could see, I thought immediately of Little Tartesus, his fear of Balboa and his hallucinated walk.

But people kept all the time an eye on Tartesus, and it was impossible not to notice him walking as if he was floating inside his robes. Only Balboa disappeared from the procession, nobody knows when.
“It was as if he was dropped there by a demon or an angel,” Carmen told me, “or a helicopter.”
I told Carmen the story I was imagining about Little Tartesus. I was curious how my theory would fit in the rumors about a terrible sin, a malediction, and things of the sort, where the name of La Torre was whispered frequently. She shook her head slowly.
“There’s nothing wrong with Tartesus, I’ve been telling it to everybody. He’s just allergic to wax.”

C

THE CHINESE MASTER SPY, CHAPTER 1 - RAKIA FOR THE GHOST

The Chinese Master Spy was published as a weekly webcomic on his own blog between February 7 2008 and August 28 2008. Here are some pages.

MEDITERRANEAN HEAT

Last year Carmen showed me the place where Paco was stabbed in the back in a deadly embrace with his wife Remedios, shortly after my last visit, some years before. The place is a strange and isolated one, a large mole away from the beach and the restaurants, although in plain view of them.
That day, long ago, there were only a few fishermen, Paco included, on the side of the mole facing the thin strand lined with tall buildings and palm trees, and a lonely passerby dwarfed by the huge platform moored at the other end.

“She had more than she could bear,” said Carmen, cleaning the counter with slow movements, a little here, a little there. I wondered if she ever had the intention of cleaning anything at all. Finally she leaned with her arms and her large breasts dressed in red against the counter and moved her lips almost imperceptibly. “There is so much violence,” she said. She went back to the cleaning, this time caressing the coffee machine. For a moment I was left alone with my glass of wine. I looked at the large room of the café, empty of costumers at that hour. Big tables for six or seven people each, with the corresponding chairs in wood and laminated plastic, stood close to the big windows. All those things where there even before Carmen was born.

On the other side of the street was the port and, behind its buildings, the mole. The light outside, usually very bright, was covered with a thin layer of yellow dust blown by a strong and warm wind. The mountains on the background enclosed the place against the sea. The sea was calm. Compared with the usual aspect of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean looked like a big, unnatural swimming pool. There was something in the air that tickled my nerves. I knew the feeling. Even when being careful enough to avoid the omnipresent houses of wine, tapas and seafood, it was difficult to feel sober.

“Do you remember,” said Carmen softly, “last time you were here, you used to make,” she breathed, “you know,” she breathed again, “that bad taste joke, saying a woman smashed in the ground when you were passing by?”
Yes, I could remember that, in the months before Remedios and Paco danced their relationship away, several tragic incidents took place, always involving domestic violence or divorced couples.
“I remember that a man tried to put fire to the apartment of his mother-in-law,” I said, “thinking that with a bit of luck he could burn both her and his wife, but he was so clumsy that the flames spread instead by the stairs.” I sort of laughed trying to spice the bad taste in the joke, “and there was another one,” I started counting by the fingers, “that was more practical and ran over his ex-wife with his car several times.”

I held up my counting and looked sideways to Carmen. She still did not appreciate the joke.
“But the preferred tactic of most of them was just to throw the wife by the window.”
She stood there, leaning with her arms and breasts against the counter.
“Paco was one of those?” I asked carefully, losing any hope of redemption.
“He used to beat her,” Carmen said, looking at me as if she was reading something in the buttons of my shirt, “but I don’t know what she was doing there, in the mole. She used his fishing knife, an old kitchen knife, but very sharp…”
She left the rest of the story that was building up on her head suspended, and went back to the coffee machine.

I looked through the window and imagined that, in the bottom of those waters divided in two shades of blue crossed by the silver band of the sun, there must lie the remains not only of innumerable ships sunken in fights between Christians, between Muslims, between Muslims and Christians, between Muslims and Normans, between Turks and Spanish, between Spanish and Algerians, pirates and Venetians, Turks and Venetians, Venetians and Genoese, among pirates, against pirates, between English, Spanish, French, Italians and Turks, but also all the ones lost in battles against the sea itself and the more recent but outdated sunken ordnance, and the remains of the tones of cocaine consumed in the south of Europe, mixed with a growing quantity of industrial waste. So many things! And still has fish.

C

THE DEATH OF A SLUG

Coming home one day, I found that a slug had managed to slip inside a sloppily installed wall socket and had the only quick thrill of its life when head and tail connected both poles.

I could only identify the animal by a tiny piece of skin lodged in a corner, all the rest being a sort of yellow foam spread all over. I imagine most of their body is water.

The same must happen with snails. If you want to eat snails, you have a problem in killing them. The animal is all foot, and you can’t kill an animal by just twisting its foot. You can’t electrocute them, I saw the result and it didn’t look edible. Freezing seems the only practical solution to kill a snail without damaging the meal. But there was a time when, for doing that, you had to take the animals to the next glacier and back, in time for lunch. Besides, the animal must be out of the shell when ready for eating and I suspect the cold will send him inside forever.

So, usually people just cook them alive, after a complicate ritual that involves, among other things, cleaning it from the mucus. Stories and tricks abound on how to do this. I don’t advise you to wash them the day they were caught, I saw once a friend of my mine doing it and it was not nice to look at his face when the job was done. Usually they are hanged in nets for several days and especially nights, until they rubbed themselves against each other enough to loose the major part of the mucus.

They can be kept for a while in recipients covered with nets or surrounded with salt. Snails avoid the salt but some are courageous enough to brave it.

There is a tradition that snails are good for lung diseases, but for that you have to eat the animal alive.

C