For this story it was suggested we take an opening sentence from a book and use it

as our starting line. I chose the beginning of the second chapter of Jos Saramago's
'The Gospel according to Jesus Christ'. He's one of Portugal's best known writers
and a Nobel prize winner, whose work was suppressed under Salazar's dictatorship.
Benfeita Then and Now - opening line from a book prompt
Night is far from over. Hanging from a nail near the door, the oil lamp is burning, but
the flickering flame, like a small, luminous almond, tremulous and unsteady, can
barely impinge on the encroaching darkness which fills the house from top to bottom
and penetrates the furthest corners where the shadows are so dense that they
appear to form one solid mass. Mari cannot sleep. It has been a hard day, much the
same as all the others in her life, though at least at this time of year the days are
mercifully shorter, the nights longer and sleep deeper, normally a blessed reprieve
from drudgery. Not this night though. What keeps her from sleep?
She can hear the restlessness of the hugely pregnant sow next door. The sound and
the smell always comfort her. Starvation can be kept at bay as long as they have
piglets to sell or slaughter later for ham, plus oil for the lamp, sinew for rope and
leather for winter shoes. Maybe it is the imminence of the old sow's birthing that
keeps her awake. It was a risk to let her run with the boar one last time, though it is
always good to keep the wild in the breeding, to keep the strain strong.
Mari lives in the small village of Benfeita, up in the mountains of Portugal, far from
civilisation - not that she really knows what that looks like, but she knows it's beyond
Coja, the furthest she has ever been. She goes there from time to time to sell off the
piglets - or trade them for fine cloth for a wedding or baptism. She has to leave at
dead of night, just like now, to get there in time for the big weekly market, for it is a
good 3 hour walk, sometimes a lot more if the piglets get spooked and run off into the
undergrowth. It's a hard track too, deeply pitted and rutted by the carriages that bring
the Senhor from the lowlands to inspect his domain and check on his tenants. She
sometimes takes short cuts on footpaths once first light glimmers and the birds start
to sing, but even then it can be dangerous because there are often brigands about
on market days and she cannot rely on the little mutt of a dog to drive them off, try as
he might in all his determined ferocity.
Times seem to be changing, even in this remote part of the country. In the last year, it
has been decreed by the new King Pedro that cemeteries must be built outside the
village. People have always been buried under the church floor, to rot away for a
year, to be reburied as clean bones, again under the church. So the church generally

stinks of rotting flesh that contaminates the water running nearby. It had seemed like
a good plan to her, but there had been an uproar in the village, where burying away
from holy ground promises purgatory. The priest, who spoke in favour of the new
cemetery, was hounded from the village and went into hiding in Sardal where he
perished in a fire a few weeks later. The fire was blamed on the Miguelites,
supporters of Pedro's tyrannical brother Miguel whom he had deposed that year, but
no one had ever been reprimanded for the arson. This is just how it is.
It was said that King Pedro had returned to Portugal from Brazil, inspired by the new
ideas coming from France - distant countries that she cannot imagine, but she's
heard whisperings of France's revolution, even in these mountains. There are
rumours that the new king is going to give some of the church lands to the people.
Such a king is surely to be welcomed and she cannot understand why the villagers
complain about the changes and remain faithful to Miguel. He has never done
anything for them, except take the cream of their young men for his wars, never to
return them unless made useless through wounding or old age.
But what does she truly know of all this? Things don't really change, always have
been the way they are, always will be. She is only a peasant, though she does dream
a lot and is maybe a little different from the others. She tries to keep herself informed
even though she cannot read or write, keeping her ears open when she goes to
market. She gathers wild herbs for curings, she helps mothers give birth and at times
she sees into the future - but always with discretion, for it is unsafe to let too much of
this be known. The witch-hunts live on in these remote hills and valleys, despite
Pedro's liberal views.
Her husband is basically a good man, a close relative, wounded out of war duty
when he was still very young. He can be heavy with his hand at times, both with her
and the children, but he is hard-working and does his best, working for the Senhor, to
bring home food as often as he can, even the odd tool or piece of clothing at times.
Today Mari went up the Valley of the Angels to gather wild food, for it is the middle of
winter and the tiny garden they call their own gives little at this time of year. She
found some good roots, wild parsnip they were, and put them in the thin broth she
prepared for Joo and the children. They didn't fancy the broth and made do with a
dry crust each, from the previous week's baking, and a thin slice of ham. But she,
hating waste when there is so little to eat anyway, finished off the broth and wiped
her olive-wood bowl clean with a crust of the rye bread. After saying their prayers to
the Holy Mother, she'd settled the children to sleep in the corner of the room. Joo
had fallen into a deep sleep on the rough earth floor in front of the fire smouldering

on the corner stone, with wisps of smoke finding their way out through the big slabs
of roof slates.
She lays down beside him to keep warm but does not drift into sleep as she normally
does. She starts to understand why, her stomach contracting, complaining about the
broth, she suspects. A fierce cramp grips her belly, she moans and thrashes about
on the floor with more, even stronger cramps, unable to move away from Joo, yet
concerned enough not to wake him, for fear of his hard hand.
Suddenly she is in a totally different reality.
It is still dark but she is outside, night air brushing her skin. She is walking along a
street that seems familiar but unnervingly different. Where she would normally walk
on rough ground, now she finds granite cobbles. The two Churches are the same
and she can see that the configuration of the houses is much as she knows it. But
they are mostly white, not the rough slate that she is used to. They are very bright. In
fact everything is very bright, despite the night. Now she sees that there are lights
everywhere, but they do not flicker, are not tremulous and unsteady, but firm, unmoving in their brightness, leaving no dark corners, no dead weight of shadows.
What shadows there are have a softness to them, they do not swallow up light
themselves but are teased out of the blackness by the superiority of these lamps.
The lamps are on tall poles that you cannot reach to snuff out, where they reach far
and wide, joining with each other to dispel deep darkness. She feels naked, stripped
clean and exposed in a way far more unsafe than the darkness with which she is
familiar, where she can hide. Here there is no hiding place even in the dead of night.
And it's warm. It feels like summer. How strange and disorienting it all is, the
familiarity coupled with the changes. A shiver of fear passes through her.
At least the river is the same, but in the square there are smart wood and canvas
chairs around wooden tables as if for the Senhor's annual feast for his tenant
workers. The ground is not dirt but finished off with big stone slabs. She sits on the
wall and waits, not knowing for what or why, but compelled. Soon the first bird sings
and slowly the natural light takes over from the strange lamps, which seem to fade
out automatically, without snuffing. People begin to appear, people who are familiar,
but the women are dressed oddly in short skirts, showing their legs. Some of them
carry baskets on their heads.
She is startled by a terrifying sound, getting louder by the second, and round the
corner comes a big shiny carriage, all boxed in and appearing to be made of metal,
without horses, yet moving much faster than ever a horse could. She shrinks back as

a man gets out, greeting her with a cheery 'bom dia'. She notices there are two other
strange carriages there that she hadn't noticed in the shadows, and before long quite
a few more appear in the square, each with a man inside, occasionally a woman too
and sometimes with another little cart attached behind. But never a horse, donkey, ox
or mule. They come in all shapes and sizes and different colours, each as noisy as
the next. She is finding it harder to breathe and realises that the whole air is different
to what she knows, unpleasantly odorous, not the natural smells of animals and
plants that she is used to, nor the musty, mossy dankness that rises from the river.
A woman approaches her and asks in a strange accent if she'd like a coffee. Mari
doesn't know what that is but out of politeness and shyness says yes please. The
woman brings it from a little hut - it's a drink, a sweet and tasty one, and it sets her
heart a-racing. The woman asks her where she comes from - what an odd question
when Mari's in her own village, yet not as she knows it - how can she answer this?
She just smiles.
After a short awkward chat, but sensing recognition, the woman invites Mari to her
home. Curiosity entices her. She follows, it's not far. Again the familiar streets are
different, as is her house when they enter. Like the outside it's all bright and white and full of furniture. She doesn't even know the purpose of some of it - there are
three big white metal boxes, one of them making an awful racket. It's shaking and
thundering and appears to have clothes whizzing around inside it, which she can see
through a little round window. Another one hums and when the woman opens the
door, a light magically shines inside it, bright like the night lights outside, also steady
and unwavering and not lit with a taper from the fire. There isn't a fire anyway. This
box has food in it and other strange and colourful packages. The third white box
makes it's own fire instantly with a little click when the woman touches it. Then she
picks up a tiny box, presses it and holding it to her ear starts to talk to it, as if to her
husband, telling him that she has a guest. Mari feels very uncomfortable with the
strangeness of it all and makes her excuses to leave.
- I have to get to market, she says - it's the only thing Mari can think of.
The woman looks at her sideways - there is no market - but Mari is half-way out the
door so the woman says good bye as Mari flees.
She goes back to the square. She sits on the wall again - it feels like the safest place
to be, even though the noisy metal carriages keep clattering past. Another woman
approaches her - she's wearing a long skirt like Mari but her hair is very blond and
her eyes are blue. She says 'bom dia' in an accent even stranger than the first

woman and as she continues to address her, Mari realises she can barely speak her
tongue at all. But she likes her - there's something warm and unthreatening about
her and her eyes crinkle into little smile lines as she talks.
Mari sees that she too is inviting her to follow her. She says something about the xist
path. Mari doesn't know what that is but the blond woman beckons her to the path up
to the Valley of the Angels that she walked yesterday. This too has changed but not
as much as the village. The terraces are the same and still grow vegetables and
corn, there are sheep and goats and she can even hear a pig in one of the houses
as they pass. But above, climbing in rows right to the top of the mountain, there are
tall straight trees, dark green, all identical, with long needles rather than leaves.
Some, even stranger, have leaves but they are crisp, long, grey-green ones and
there's bark straggling loosely all down their smooth silver trunks. The chestnuts,
oaks and cork oaks are few and far between, though there are still plenty of olive
trees. Mari wonders what food these new trees offer.
They wind along the valley trying to understand one another as they walk in single
file following the leat that runs back down to the Senhor's big house and mill in the
village. Out of the village now, Mari feels she can relax a little. The blond woman tells
her she comes from a place called England and has only lived here for a year. She
asks Mari how long she has lived here. She replies that she was born in Benfeita;
that at least is true. In time they come to the Senhor's lagar, the place where they
take his olives in late autumn to be pressed for oil. The lagar itself is all collapsed in
ruin and the water wheel gone, though it looks as though the houses have been
recently enlarged and renovated. Here they are not covered in white and the familiar
slate still shows.
- This is the valley where my husband was born, Mari ventures to tell the woman.
- Oh where? she asks.
- Just a little further up the valley, a little house on a rock.
- Really, I know the one, my friends live there. Shall we go?
- Do you mind? says Mari, I'd rather go alone.
- Of course, I understand, she says kindly.
Mari likes this woman, she feels safe with her, but she does think it wiser to carry on
alone. Who knows what she might find there with everything else so different?
There are new tracks to follow, tracks for the loud carriages perhaps, but she follows
the footpath, the one the blond woman calls the xist path to where her husband's
family house sits on top of a big rock at the confluence of two rivers, one from
Margarasa and one from Fraga da Pena. She's less surprised now to find his house

too has changed. It's much bigger than the one room house where Joo and his six
siblings were born. And it all looks new and well-built of slate. She loves the way it
has been sculpted with the rock, with little terraces, steps and ramps made of huge
slate slabs, spiralling round the rock to the river at the back, and the meadow below,
interspersed with lovely flowers. The house itself is under the spread of a chestnut
tree that isn't normally there, with a little round table beneath it and a curved stone
wall as seating, a beautiful spot to sit and dream. It smells good here - as it should of ferns, herbs and mosses - and the babble of the river below tells the stories of
always. It reminds her of the heart-shaped stone Joo took from this river bed years
ago to give her when they were betrothed - for he could not have afforded a ring,
then or now. She still treasures it and keeps it on her little altar behind the statue of
the Blessed Virgin, like angel's wings, to help her with her dreaming.
Below the rock, on the big flat meadow bounded by the river and a leat, is a large
circular garden that looks sumptuously full of all kinds of vegetables and fruit trees,
some that she does not recognise. She sees large purple tear drops hanging from
some plants, others, trailing along the ground, have huge orange, green or yellow
globes on them, still others have bright red baubles - and some of the trees with red
or green fruit that she has never seen before. There are tall beans with beautiful
orange flowers. In fact there are flowers dotted everywhere between the trees and
vegetables, again many unfamiliar ones. She wants to look closer, investigate these
plants, even though she notices another woman there, an older woman with white
hair, squatting over her garden. She looks up, sees Mari and beckons her over. Mari
feels drawn to her in spite of her wariness.
Mari looks into her eyes - they are grey, green and brown, deep and darkly
penetrating, even though she wears little circles of glass in front of them. She smiles
and takes Mari's hand in hers, not saying a word. Mari relaxes totally now, knowing
she is safe with this woman - she seems to know her, as she feels the woman knows
her, even though they have clearly never met. She takes Mari to a plant to ask her
about it. She knows instantly the speckled, spiky forbidding leaves of henbane and
tells her the name of this ugly and very poisonous plant. Again the woman's
language skills seem very limited but they manage to understand each other. It
seems the whole valley is occupied by these foreign people, unlike when her
husband lived here and strangers never ventured this far. Mari can hear children
playing nearby and their shouts are not in her tongue. Still she conveys to the woman
that this is a very dangerous plant and it's probably wise to dig it out and burn it, for it
can kill animals and humans alike. She tells her that in the winter time when the
leaves die back, it can be mistaken for wild parsnip and people have died of it in the
past, or time-travelled on magical journeys to other worlds.

She asks Mari about a few other wild plants and she's happy to fill her in, to share
her knowledge with this beautiful wise woman. Eventually she invites her into her
home and this time Mari feels happy to follow. Inside is a man, also with white hair
and a gentle shy smile. He greets her in his funny accent, then leaves them alone.
There is a fire and the woman moves a pot on to the glowing embers, blowing them a
little and adding a couple of sticks. The pot immediately begins to sing. She has
some wild mint and lemon balm for an infusion, not the coffee drink Mari had in the
village whose odd effect is only now beginning to wear off.
Mari is drawn to a picture on the wall, in black and white, very realistic, and she asks
if she can look at it.
- Of course, says the white haired woman - it's a photograph of people in Benfeita in
the olden days.
Mari doesn't ask what a photograph is, but takes the picture in her hands when the
woman removes it from the wall. It sends shivers down her spine, these people look
so real, so familiar. Then a little gasp escapes her lips.
- What is it, she asks?
She cannot say, though she's convinced the woman knows. Mari sees her daughter
there, as an older woman. She would know her anyway, but the two little moles
under her left eye are proof enough, if proof were needed. She sees that she wears
what looks like a large ring on her finger. She and the white haired lady are silent,
looking into each others' eyes - knowing. Then Mari sees that she too wears a large
ring, a lovely one in silver with a turquoise coloured stone. She admires it.
- Yes, she says, beautiful isn't it . I bought it recently in the market in Coja.
She takes it off, hands it to Mari.
- Take it, she says, it's for your daughter.
She hadn't even spoken of her children, but no matter, this woman knows, she
knows, and they each know the other knows. Mari thanks her and slips it on her
finger.
Instantly she returns to the earth floor of her own home. Joo is leaning over her,
with a sad concerned look on his face and her 13 year old daughter Conceco the
other side, grinning at her.
- Oh Mari, you're back, you're finally back, you've been gone a night and a day,
thrashing about, clutching your stomach and moaning in agony. We thought we
would lose you. It must have been the broth, thanks be to God the rest of us didn't
sup it. Whatever did you put in it? How are you my good wife? Where did you go?
- Mummy, Mummy where did you get that ring? It's beautiful, I've never seen a stone

like that.
- Oh Heavens, said Joo, how did you get that, have you stolen it? But no, you have
been here all the while, one of us was with you all the time. How strange, but you are
back, that's all that matters - we'll sort out the problem of the ring when you are
strong again.
Mari doesn't answer him, how can she? But turning to Conceco she whispers - it's
yours my love.
She is relieved to see that it is dark, dark to all the corners of the room, with just the
little flame of the oil lamp flickering quietly, illuminating the turquoise and silver ring
on her finger, Conceco's uncensored delight and Joo's sweet smile of relief.