I still remember the arduous hours I spent kneeling on the porous church floor when I was younger. Being in a family with very strong religious roots, I was only able to distance myself from all the mysticism around us after adolescence. While I didn’t mature, I had my mother praying by my side while my grandfather watched and waited, then blessed us with some prayer that I never heard very well and allowed us to do our things.
I never met my grandmother, but my father says that even my mother doesn’t look as much like her as I do. Big eyes, brown skin, dark hair, big teeth…I don’t know if he tell the truth and I never really cared about it, but when I was younger I liked listening to my grandfather telling Quaresma stories. In general, to be quite honest, I always really liked Quaresma and how it seemed cooler to play with scary stuff, summon spirits and run away when faced with any strange thing.
Quaresma is based on the forty days before Easter, and my grandfather always said to be even more careful during those days while I go outside. I never really understood what he meant because there was only one street that took us to the city and the closest city to us was two hours away, I would never be able to go very far alone and even as a young girl I knew that, not to mention my skepticism which later led to my current relationship with religion being agnostic.
My grandfather never wanted to explain himself much to me, but my mother once told me what, perhaps, messed with him so much.
I still remember the night she told me this story. I woke up very cold and thirsty, I got up wrapped in the blanket and ran down the hall to the kitchen, on the way I passed the living room and there was my mother, she sat in front of the window that led to the chicken coop outside, she looked tired but, thinking more about it today, I imagine it was an episode of insomnia. She saw me running, and when I came out of the kitchen, she called me and held me on her lap.
My mother talked to me, lit candles when the lamp outside the house began to switch off and told me, if I remember correctly, that we were in the middle of Quaresma, which, according to her, made the night “energy” more intense. I remember laughing about it and asking her to tell me stories. At first she didn’t agree, but I mentioned my grandfather and my mother looked thoughtful.
I mentioned the fact that my grandfather didn’t like to talk about this period, my mother looked at me with those narrow eyes and smiled at me, started rocking me on her lap and talked about when she herself was younger. To be more precise, when she was my age.
The city was even smaller in those years, just a cluster of businesses with few houses around it and farms, like ours, far away. When my grandfather was younger, he was a more active merchant, he took goods in his old cart in the morning and returned with it empty in the evening, leaving my grandmother alone with my mother and her brothers. My mother, being the only girl among all the boys, spent a lot of time with my grandmother and they both feared a lot for my grandfather, as the woods in the surrounding area were much denser than they are now.
My grandfather once came back with the cart full and very upset, shouting that everyone needed to get into the house and that they shouldn’t leave until Easter. He placed everyone under the cross that hung in the living room to this day and made them pray, everyone prayed for a forgiveness that no one there understood.
My mother accidentally overheard the conversation between her parents in the morning. My grandfather still seemed distraught and my grandmother seemed to be trying to comfort him, so much so that he decided to open up about what had happened.
He sold almost nothing on the day in question and was frustrated, the movement apparently had been low as most families were traveling. Frustrated, he took the products and began his journey back. As always, he was returning during sunset and remained calm, but the darker the way got, the more his horse seemed hesitant to move forward, galloping slower and constantly choking along the way as he stopped abruptly many times.
My grandfather, through all this movement of the horse, noticed that further along the road there was a person, someone who even from afar he could recognize some shapes like the short-brimmed hat and the pointed cane full of details. He moved the horse forward until he could see the person. A tall man, relatively pretty, but common, by city standards: tanned skin, trimmed hair and a prominent smile. My grandfather could only notice the stranger’s clothes, a white overcoat with social shoes matching the hat. Regardless of who it was, my grandfather probably acted cordial because he didn’t see a man there but rather a money sign.
The man introduced himself as “Cristóvão”, Christopher, and my grandfather offered to take him wherever he needed to go. The horse stamped its hooves, not wanting to continue, but my grandfather certainly paid no attention to that. Christopher was friendly, but he started asking strange questions about my grandfather’s life, especially about his family, his wife and his only daughter. My grandfather felt suspicious and wanted to leave him on the road again, but he got so distracted while they were talking that, when he looked at the road again, he noticed that they had been under the treetops of the same forest for a long time, and it seemed increasingly colder.
Christopher made a very nuanced proposal, it seems. He offered to buy everything in the cart as long as he could spend the night at my grandfather’s house. My grandfather was not happy to hear this and vehemently denied it, he says that Christopher did not like this but remained silent, which scared my grandfather and made him push Christopher onto the road. As soon as Christopher fell to the ground, my grandfather whipped the horse and got out of there in a hurry.
He says he only managed to leave the forest after putting the dagger he carried between his teeth and praying for protection. He asked so much that, when he walked back home, it didn’t take him more than a few minutes to leave the trees behind and see his chicken coop.
My grandmother was waiting for him outside while my mother was with her brothers inside the house. My grandmother was the only one who saw my grandfather and the cart, and she was the one who discarded the now rotten goods that were accumulating. My mother saw her check them one by one and throw them in a hole to bury. That night, my grandfather shouted at everyone as mentioned before. My mother obeyed him and remained at home all these long forty days. The problem, however, was that only she noticed that something about her father was different. He smelled like sulfur.
My mother said she tried many times to ask her father what was wrong, but he just yelled at her for being nosy and causing trouble. My grandfather became increasingly aggressive, wanting no one to go beyond the confines of the house, especially at night. Unfortunately, he was unable to stop my grandmother from going out on one occasion to fetch a basket she left behind at the back of the house.
My grandmother disappeared, and my mother says that my grandfather, despite not wanting to sell the house, took everyone to the city and it took years for everyone to decide to return, take care of the farm and continue the family business.
My mother said that she always felt that my grandfather didn’t tell my grandmother everything, that he left out something and that, until then, he never told anyone. She also said that she found my grandmother’s wedding ring along with a hat when the family decided to return home. She kept these things until she met my father who never knew this story, but because he was as religious as my grandfather, he never questioned his father-in-law behavior.
She said she doesn’t know where the ring is, and after I got older I forgot that little detail. Recently, however, I received a letter that I only found out about when I visited the post office and found out that this item was pending.
It’s not a letter, exactly, it’s just an envelope with a photo and a ring. The problem with all of this, besides the ring that reminded me of this story, is that the photo is of me as a child. I know I should ask my mom about it to confirm any suspicions, but to be honest, I’m a little scared of what kind of answer she can give to me.