family architecture

i come from a family built on longing, on nostalgia for bygone days.

grandma glória was always talking about the times in the big house of portaris, about how she was happy before what happened happened. mom always talking about the family, about how important we were, about how in vigo we even had a coat of arms on a gothic-style stone house. aunt pilar always remembering her childhood in the house of one of her uncles, who was quite sophisticated and very rich.

i come from a family built on anger, because the ruin we suffered wasn’t fair. if it weren’t for uncle manuel, portaris would be ours, if it weren’t for that fight, we would still have sunday lunches with relatives, if it weren’t for the war, i would be living in redondela.

oh, if only it weren’t for…

the portrait

uncle manuel is in the only family photograph that my grandmother kept. uncle manuel was one of her older brothers, she was the youngest. there were thirteen of them, not counting the ones who had died. that’s why, in the photo, my grandmother is at my great-grandfather’s feet and is just two years old. uncle manuel looks straight-backed and stiff, in one of the outer corners of the photo. even though my great-grandparents are sitting in the center of the picture, as if they are on a royal throne, the one who is presiding over the scene is uncle manuel. because he has that air about him. and he plays up that majestic appearance with the white suit and white hat and white shoes. as if he were an indiano, the emigrant returned from the americas.

the rest of the brothers and sisters, thirteen in all, besides the ones who had died, and even my great-grandparents, sitting on their royal throne, look like uncle manuel’s poor servants, the tenant farmers who work his fields, the washerwomen who rinsed out his pristine laundry, the wet nurses who nursed my grandmother.

always serving the lord.

portaris

portaris was a place of immense wealth, with the meadows, swiddens, oak groves, community fields, wheat fields, and hills where cart after cart of manure was carried down. they said that portaris had five hundred square meters or so for every day of the year and had at least thirty tenant farmers. there wasn’t a lunchtime during the week when there weren’t at least two priests sitting at the table.

saying

where the priest says mass, he gets fed.

once this was all ours

one day my brother went with uncle josé to alter the course of the water. going up to the heights where the monastery was, where the well was and the irrigation streams started out, he looked where his uncle was pointing and listened to what he said:

—everything you see there on the horizon—and he pointed toward the north—were lands that belonged to portaris. when the words came to an end, he rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder, like they do in films with the cavalry set in the far west, and they watched the sun set.