Wandering Lives E-Book

Simone Malacrida

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"Wandering Lives" is the exciting tale of seven women who intersect their existences with History and the events characterizing their endless wandering. Maria, Jana and Agnes, by a strange will of chance, brush past each other's experiences without noticing each other. Brought together by the tragic course of the 20th Century, they have not lost hope in the future. Evelyn, Dafina, and Serena find themselves overwhelmed by contemporary society that forces them not to anchor themselves in the past. Alone in the impetuosity of the present, they will manage to work out personal responses. All the women will find their own dimension only after going through a series of trials and after finishing a journey that will lead them to the discovery of the self and the other. Alongside them, there will be a common witness that the reader will discover page after page. Closing the writing, a timeless figure, a mysterious female entity, will bring each tale and each thought back to a longed-for eternity.

Leseprobe

Simone Malacrida

Wandering Lives

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

SIMONE MALACRIDA | “ Wandering Lives”

ANALYTICAL INDEX

RED

I | STORIES

II | THOUGHTS

III | DREAMS

WHITE

IV | STORIES

V | THOUGHTS

VI | DREAMS

BLUE

VII | STORIES

VIII | THOUGHTS

IX | DREAMS

SKY

X | STORIES

XI | THOUGHTS

XII | DREAMS

DESERT

XIII | STORIES

XIV | THOUGHTS

XV | DREAMS

OCEAN

XVI | STORIES

XVII | THOUGHTS

XVIII | DREAMS

LIFE

XIX | STORIES

XX | THOUGHTS

XXI | DREAMS

Sign up for Simone Malacrida's Mailing List

SIMONE MALACRIDA | “ Wandering Lives”

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ Wandering Lives”

"Wandering Lives" is the exciting tale of seven women who intersect their existences with History and the events characterizing their endless wandering.

Maria, Jana and Agnes, by a strange will of chance, brush past each other's experiences without noticing each other.

Brought together by the tragic course of the 20th Century, they have not lost hope in the future.

Evelyn, Dafina, and Serena find themselves overwhelmed by contemporary society that forces them not to anchor themselves in the past.

Alone in the impetuosity of the present, they will manage to work out personal responses.

All the women will find their own dimension only after going through a series of trials and after finishing a journey that will lead them to the discovery of the self and the other.

Alongside them, there will be a common witness that the reader will discover page after page.

Closing the writing, a timeless figure, a mysterious female entity, will bring each tale and each thought back to a longed-for eternity.

––––––––

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

––––––––

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. These events and characters really happened and existed.

On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

ANALYTICAL INDEX

RED

I – STORIES

II – THOUGHTS

III – DREAMS

––––––––

WHITE

IV – STORIES

V – THOUGHTS

VI – DREAMS

––––––––

BLU

VII – STORIES

VIII – THOUGHTS

IX – DREAMS

––––––––

SKY

X – STORIES

XI – THOUGHTS

XII – DREAMS

––––––––

DESERT

XIII – STORIES

XIV – THOUGHTS

XV – DREAMS

––––––––

OCEAN

XVI – STORIES

XVII – THOUGHTS

XVIII – DREAMS

––––––––

LIFE

XIX – STORIES

XX – THOUGHTS

XXI – DREAMS

RED

RED

––––––––

“Happiness does not lie in being loved,

this is but a satisfaction of vanity mixed with disgust.

Happiness lies in loving and stealing at most

some illusory instant of closeness to the loved object.

Thomas Mann “Tonio Kroger”

I | STORIES

I

STORIES

“ Dilma , what do you want to drink? Do you want some water?”

My daughter begins to express herself with increasing clarity. At two and a half years, she already knows a complete vocabulary of many words.

She likes to hear me talk and tell my stories. She must have got it from my grandmother.

There are few people in this bar. A single woman, I'd say in her early thirties, is writing a letter and staring at the sea that can be seen from the tables immediately outside the club. A couple of men, presumably French, are talking to each other over wine, while two other women are sitting in a corner. They look like mother and daughter, they look a lot alike. The daughter will be twenty years old, a few younger than me and she is quite annoyed by what her mother is saying.

It's nice here outdoors, there's an almost summery climate even though it's only the end of May.

On a clear Saturday morning, I can enjoy this small town where I have lived for almost three years. I could not have done otherwise on the previous weekend.

It was all a din of engines and important personalities. The 1977 Formula 1 Grand Prix was held and Jody Scheckter triumphed .

Here in Montecarlo, everything stops for those four days.

Dilma points to the sea.

How I miss the ocean, very different from the quiet cove now known to my eyes.

How I miss the powerful wind, very different from this Mediterranean breeze.

“You are like your father, my daughter.”

Her father, my only love, was Fabiano Caetano, a lieutenant in the Portuguese Armed Forces.

I met him by chance in the Alfama district in Lisbon.

The panorama was not that of the bay of Montecarlo seen from the Rocca, but the immensity of the city of Lisbon, with the Bairro Alto, the Baixa at our feet and the ocean in the distance.

It was 1972, exactly five years ago and I was twenty years old.

I was wandering through the narrow streets of the Alfama, full of steep ramps and abrupt descents. Hidden by small ravines, the alleys all appeared the same in the eyes of a foreigner, or simply of a person who was not born there, but not for an inhabitant of that neighborhood. Every single stone, every single meter of those streets, carried within it a particular story, known only to a select few.

The threshold of my grandmother, Adelaide Gomes Pinto's house, had been obtained by reducing the entrance to an old shop that traded spices from the eastern colonies.

In that magical world, Fabiano Caetano moved like a stranger, dressed in a white linen suit with shiny black moccasins.

He was evidently lost, but his questioning expression could not erase the natural radiance of his face, which emanated from his delicate features as if they had been painted with a light impressionist touch.

"I have to repay, don't you want something to drink?"

It was his sentence at the end of the journey, as if I had been his Ariadne and that the labyrinth of the palace of Knossos.

He didn't even know my name, nor did I know his. Perhaps for that reason we used a formal and detached language even though the attitudes were of a completely different nature.

We knew nothing about our lives, but there had been something in those twenty minutes.

A spark and an alchemy.

I didn't have to wait long to see him again. The next day it was still there, in the same place.

I had never trusted anyone so quickly and following only my instinct, but I did it immediately with him.

"Come with me to the Guincho ", was his first request and our first outing out of town.

Carried on the wings of our understanding, we remained there until after dark. Our first kiss.

“My daughter, your father and I loved each other intensely even if briefly. Two years have been worth a lifetime and you are the tangible concreteness of what, otherwise, would have been just a memory."

The lightheartedness of our youth was typical of that period and, perhaps, unrepeatable. Someone will also be able to narrate the life of us twenty-somethings in the early seventies in all the details, but no one will ever be able to grasp those sensations and thoughts if they have not experienced them firsthand.

It was true that Portugal hadn't fully experienced that wave of 1968 that swept across Europe and that there was still a semi-dictatorial authoritarian regime, but controlling the dreams and thoughts of young people was almost impossible.

There was no barrier between me and Fabiano, even though my family was made up of fairly well-to-do traders and my father didn't look kindly on a young man who, in order to emancipate himself from the humble condition of his lineage, had enlisted in the Army becoming in a short time an officer with a rosy future.

“Maria, the uniform suits you more than it does me” he used to tell me when, as a joke, getting out of bed half naked, I partially put on his uniform and his hat.

Summer and autumn passed quickly and the months chased each other as young and fleeting as adolescent races on the beach.

“In my time, such a thing would not have been tolerated and know that your mother and I disapprove of your behavior”, my father used to scold me about, in his opinion, the licentiousness of our relationship.

I knew well that it was a way to play a part and that my mother didn't share her ideas, but it was enough for me only to be able to see my love every day.

The only limitation to our idyll was what we could hardly trespass on. The governments friends and supportive of Caetano's – Dilma , you don't know how many times that same name with the Prime Minister in office had been a source of misunderstandings for your father – they were very few and the continuing economic crisis did not allow for accumulating savings to think of live like the wealthy.

Even my family came to tighten their belts during those years.

“There is more and more discontent. I mean, not only among the people, the workers, workers and traders, but also within the Army, I don't know how it's going to end."

For the first time I glimpsed an expression of doubt about the future on Fabiano's face.

“Promise me you won't get into trouble. Swear it.”

I was sure that the strength of our bond could have defeated any negative event, simply by not making it happen and by removing it from our destinies.

But there are circumstances that do not ask permission to enter the lives of each of us. There are moments when we feel carried away by a current that is above us and that we cannot resist.

At that time, I could not know these things. I have learned them with time and experience and now I am telling you, my daughter, even if you are only a child. Who knows, listening to them from an early age, you'll be able to understand the unraveling of events better than me.

I knew that the supreme head of Fabiano's unit was General Kaulza de Arriaga and that the latter did not look favorably on President Caetano and his line, defined as soft against socialists and troublemakers.

“Something will happen before Christmas”, so Fabiano had told me, but I wasn't thinking of an attempted coup d'état within the Armed Forces.

One evening Fabiano didn't show up at home, a modest apartment we had rented in Bairro Alto to enjoy every moment of our love.

I had an uncontrolled tremor. I thought the worst. How would I have done without him?

I didn't sleep and stayed up all night. At dawn he showed up.

I greeted him on the doorstep, weeping bitterly and embracing him:

"Luckily you've arrived. And you're safe."

Fabiano didn't seem impressed by that scene.

He let me vent, then he said:

“Safe, at least for now. It's all failed. General de Arriaga did not succeed in his attempt. Now we are all in danger, at least as long as Caetano remains in his post."

How was it possible that there was a settlement of accounts within the same Army? How many were negotiating under the table to save their position?

Fabiano understood that he had entered into a very dangerous game and that we could not control.

Besides, there was no choice. Somewhere it was also necessary to take sides: either with President Caetano or with General de Arriaga or with the rioters.

Only one side would have triumphed and the others would have been shipwrecked, perhaps in bloodshed, perhaps in exile, perhaps amnestied but in any case out of contention for the future of Portugal.

“We have to be quiet for a while and disappear from sight here in Lisbon. We take advantage of the Christmas break to go to Madeira. When we get back we will tell your family that we are engaged and I will ask your father if I can marry you.”

Fabiano immediately knew how to lift the mood and how to give people perspectives. He would make a fine officer who would instill great confidence and a patriotic spirit in his soldiers.

I didn't believe my ears. Was I really about to get engaged to that young man I had noticed a year and a half before?

Suddenly, my life seemed to pale in the face of that occurrence. What had I done for twenty-one years but wait for that moment? How empty and vacuous the moments prior to our meeting seemed to me and everything accomplished without Fabiano's presence.

As expected, my father objected to that holiday, saving up appearances in the family with the classic Christmas Eve dinner.

I tried to talk to my mother, to tell her about our engagement decision. I knew that a clear opposition from my father could also destroy all our plans and I had to somehow soften that position by relying on the most powerful of social institutions: that of marriage.

“I don't ask dad to agree with me, it's enough for me that he doesn't oppose it and that he lets me live my life, perhaps even making a mistake. I know how to take responsibility for a choice.”

Mum was certainly surprised by my words and, perhaps, she only realized at that moment how much knowing Fabiano had changed me into a woman sure of her own ideas.

Madeira Island is truly that paradise that everyone describes.

A small rock compared to the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean, the same one that divided two worlds for millennia.

Because of that sense of isolation, it quickly became a magical and enchanted place for us.

“Let's stay here forever and forget everything: the past, the future, the Army, President Caetano and your general.”

It was a plea as moving as it was impracticable. I knew it myself, but I had to say those words. It was what I felt deep in my heart.

“I would like it as much as you do, but you know we can't. I have duties, we have duties.

Listen Maria...I have a friend from the days of the Military Academy, now he's stationed in the Navy on the frigate Gago Coutinho .

He's always been informed before the others of what was about to happen, maybe I'll try to ask him something."

It seemed like a good idea.

"But be careful my love."

Year 1974: what would it have reserved for us? The marriage? Happiness?

They weren't questions we asked ourselves often, caught up in living the present and devouring all the moments. I certainly wasn't thinking of you, Dilma . And I didn't think about the Revolution.

They were two completely unforeseen events that I hadn't taken into account.

In mid-January, everything seemed to turn around for the better.

Fabiano officially went to my family to announce the engagement and to ask permission to marry me.

My mother had worked in the shadows, blunting a lot of my father's natural criticisms. His only request was to wait until the situation had settled down.

"The situation?" Fabiano asked uncertainly.

“Yes, the situation of this blessed country. There are too many contradictions and too many movements right now. Something big is about to happen and before making decisions for life, you need to know in which company you will start a family."

It seemed like an excellent compromise. Waiting a few months, maybe a year, was nothing for us; on the other hand, we had had certainties from my father. There would have been no obstacles to our love.

“Maria, there is excellent news. You know that friend of mine who was in the Navy? It always has first hand updates. They were mobilized for joint NATO exercises and he learned that General de Arriaga allied himself with the President of the Republic, Admiral Tomas, effectively isolating President Caetano.

It means that there will be no summary trials and no one will come looking for us. If anything, it is Caetano and his followers who should be afraid of us."

Fabiano's euphoria was not shared by my family. Probably, being in contact with people for the wholesale and retail trade, they had a better pulse on the social and economic situation.

“People have lost much of their savings and the purchasing power of wages. There is little work and the ongoing crisis has ignited the hotbeds of revolt.

The military junta will hardly be able to hold power, so the question is: what will the Army do? Will he shoot into the crowd while defending Caetano? Will he overthrow it by installing an even harsher regime with more repression? Or will there be a civil war? Nothing good on the horizon.”

My father was drastic, as usual, but he wasn't entirely wrong.

Fabiano dreamed of palace alliances, but what would the soldier base do?

Spring would have warmed souls, not just hearts.

Alongside the blossoming of Nature and love, there would have been a shock, but no one knew in which direction.

So everyone waited. And there is nothing more exhausting than waiting.

“Let's leave Lisbon for a few days. Let's go south, in search of the first heat."

Thus it was that, listening to my requests, we became estranged in the interior of the Alentejo.

A region left over from the pre-industrial agricultural society. Olive trees and vines, oil and wine.

Expanses of land as far as the eye can see between Sierra towards Spain and the ocean.

“It was in that environment that you were conceived, Dilma ”.

Now my daughter smiles. She has always had a calm character, she almost never cried or got nervous.

She took a lot from Fabiano and from the country life of that unforgettable week.

In mid-March we were back in Lisbon.

“The Ides of March, it was at this time that Caesar was betrayed.”

That sentence, said halfway between funny and notional, unfortunately turned out to be spot on.

On the morning of March 16, 1974, Fabiano was called in a fury from his headquarters.

“Someone is marching on Lisbon, we have to stop them.”

I thought it was all over.

“Oh my God, the revolutionaries will take over!”

“But no Maria, what revolutionaries. It is the Army that is marching!”

I was dumbfounded.

So part of the Army was with the revolutionaries? Or were they the troops loyal to Caetano who were trying to counterattack de Arriaga's moves?

“I have no idea what's going on. Maria, now I have to go to command. Do you understand how important it is? You stay in the house, I'll call you as soon as I know something for sure."

So I did and waited for that phone call that never seemed to arrive.

“I didn't know about you then, Dilma. Otherwise I might have acted differently."

Finally the phone rang:

"Everything is under control, don't worry", Fabiano's voice on the other end of the phone had a reassuring tone, but deep down I understood how something was bothering him.

The fact that an Infantry Regiment had marched on Lisbon was significant even though the action had gone awry and over two hundred soldiers had been arrested before evening.

I rushed out of the house to go and tell my parents. Almost running, I got off the Bairro Alto, crossed the few streets of the Baixa and then immediately slipped onto the steep ascent that passes next to the Cathedral.

In a short time, I found myself in my familiar alleys of Alfama. There, not even a surveillance patrol could have followed me.

I could have entered any door and disappeared from the view of passers-by for tens of minutes.

When I communicated what happened to my family, there was no big surprise.

"It was to be expected," said my father who then went on to ask me pressing questions:

“Do you know who they were? Did Fabiano tell you? The movement of captains or that of the Armed Forces?”

Besides not knowing any of this through my fiancé, I was unaware of it myself.

In the last two years I had lived only on love, estranging myself from political and social reality.

My father, on the other hand, seemed very knowledgeable.

I let him speak and understood that there were three main issues on the table of these revolutionaries: the end of the colonial war in Africa which had now lasted for over twenty years and which no one had yet resolved in an acceptable way, greater democracy through free elections and the loss of political power by the military.

All of this was seen as a necessary step to implement those reforms that would revive the economy and work.

And these revolutionaries, to my surprise, were largely backed by branches within the military.

It seemed strange to me that Fabiano knew nothing about it.

As soon as I learned that information, I tried to reach the headquarters where he served.

There were numerous checkpoints and as I got closer to it, I had to explain why I wanted to enter that place.

At first, a simple:

"I am the girlfriend of Lieutenant Fabiano Caetano", then I increased the dose by replacing the word girlfriend with that of wife.

I entered the command and they made me settle in a waiting room not far from one of the side entrances, guarded by at least a dozen soldiers.

Ten minutes later Fabiano arrived.

"What are you doing here?"

“I wanted to see you with my own eyes and make sure everything was okay.”

We embraced and kissed.

“Just think that a fellow soldier announced you as my wife...”

“That's what I said. To make sure I see you and then...", you hesitated for a moment but then blurted out, "...and then that's what I want."

We sat down and I explained to him everything I had learned from my father.

“I only found out about it today. Until now I hadn't paid attention to what was happening because I was totally immersed in our relationship. It is all so absurd... General de Arriaga will have to move in advance if he is to implement his plan.”

It was now clear that President Caetano no longer counted for anything and that, in a short time, he would be deposed by an action similar to a coup d'état perpetrated by the Armed Forces themselves.

But who would assume power?

The troops loyal to General de Arriaga and the President of the Republic Tomas or the revolutionary movements?

And then what would happen?

In the first case, the military would have strengthened controls and political repression, concentrating even more power in their hands. Perhaps Fabiano would have become a big shot, perhaps in some ministry.

But I could not understand if instead the revolutionaries had won. I knew so little about them that I could not make any predictions.

I didn't even know if the coup would lead to clashes with thousands of dead.

“Dilma , I did not have a clear view of events then. A few years later, it was so clear that the attempts supported by me and Fabiano were unrealistic and wrong. Paradoxically, we are paying for the mistakes we have made due to a manifest lack of knowledge of the facts."

For a week, Fabiano went back and forth between headquarters day and night.

“I can't trust anyone except those who report directly to General de Arriaga. We know that there are two high-ranking soldiers at the head of the revolutionary movements, General Spinola and General Costa Gomez, supported by operational elements such as Otelo de Carvalho and Antonio Ramalho Eanes . They probably hope to get something out of it in terms of political office, but we have to get ahead of them.”

We ran into the unknown without being aware of the consequences.

We had the typical certainty of young people: that of never making mistakes.

In early April, it became clear that this would be the decisive month.

“We have information that everything will happen in the second half of this month, but our plan will anticipate every move. We are in much smaller forces, but timing will be on our side.”

Fabiano's safety clashed with what my family reported.

“De Arriaga's attempt will not change the course of events.

The only real obstacle to the Revolution taking power is how loyalist troops are really loyal to the government and to Caetano. Finally, there is the police. You would do well to talk to your boyfriend and make him give up this absurd attempt.

As long as you are in time, avoid harmful consequences for your future.”

I didn't listen to my father's advice, thinking it was dictated by hatred towards Fabiano.

Maybe if I had said those words, we wouldn't have exposed ourselves so much and now everything would have been different.

“I received an important task directly from General de Arriaga. I must take note of the military rioters. When we implement the plan, they will have to be incarcerated.”

With those dry words, Fabiano communicated to me the decision that would change our lives forever.

Only now do I understand that, somehow, he betrayed the trust of his department, his superiors and his subordinates and betrayal is certainly not something easily bearable for the military hierarchy.

“They will attack on April 25 or 26, we have the counter-moves ready. We know that their general command will be in Pontinha, at the barracks of the 1st Engineer Regiment.”

But, despite all the efforts, neither Fabiano nor others had managed to grasp what would have been the decisive signal.

“ Dilma , you and your generation must always have your ears pricked to hear. The noises, the people and the songs.”

Yes...just a song, popular and working-class, was the signal.

While we slept embraced, Radio Renascença , just after midnight, kicked off the longest day of my life.

At two in the morning the phone rang.

"It happened, we have to move."

It was those few words from an orderly of General de Arriaga that pierced the veil on reality.

Only later did we know that there was no longer any hope for that attempt. The Armed Forces Movement had already arrested officers loyal to Caetano and occupied the Lisbon airport.

Shortly thereafter, television and radio fell into their hands.

Fabiano was called back to the Terreiro do Paco headquarters, where the government institutions were located.

The moment indicated by de Arriaga had arrived.

To his surprise, only a small number of officers followed that choice. Many had disappeared, probably the same ones who supported the revolutionary movement. Few remained at Caetano's side and very few with de Arriaga.

I stayed at home, immediately after notifying my family.

Dad was over the moon, not understanding the consequences this coup d'état would have on my future with Fabiano.

At four in the morning, it all became official. A communiqué announcing the coup d'état was broadcast over the radio. The population was invited to stay at home, in order to avoid street clashes.

That message would be broadcast countless times during that day.

The events of April 25 were obscure to me, only with the time I've had in these three years have I managed to reconstruct them.

Fabiano left the general command as soon as he had the feeling that this was going to become a trap. Indeed, both loyalist troops sent to break the siege, and the frigate Gago Coutinho who had been ordered to open fire on the rebels , refused to carry out what the commanders decided and joined the Revolution.

During that day, the majority of officers and soldiers disobeyed the military hierarchy.

It was a great civil disobedience movement carried out by the military. Incredible to think of it up until a few years earlier.

At noon, the Armed Forces Movement announced that it had taken control of Portugal.

At that point, what would the few loyalist forces do?

Would there have been a settlement of accounts?

But the pressing question for me was only one: where was Fabiano and how was he?

I hadn't known anything about him for about ten hours which, on a day like that, was really a lot.

I couldn't stay at home, I ran out in a hurry without having a precise idea of where to go.

I soon realized that the thought had spread rapidly; a huge crowd stood in the streets and one could do nothing but go with the flow.

In that whirlwind of people I felt safe.

“No one will ever hurt us,” I thought.

At the same time, however, I was confused. The confusion had gone to my head.

At one point I felt pulled.

They were my parents, evidently exalted:

“We've been waiting for this day for forty years,” my father began.

Then he pointed out to me a curious scene.

A flower girl was distributing carnations to the soldiers who had joined the population and invited them to place those colorful spring flowers in the barrels of their rifles, so as to simulate a joyful demonstration and not an armed revolution.

“Put flowers in your guns” hadn't happened in the United States, although the slogans had been coined there a few years earlier, but here in Lisbon.

In the afternoon there were clashes with Police, the last institutional body that remained loyal to Caetano.

Everything was resolved in a short time and the dead were less than ten.

A Revolution had been made in one day with little bloodshed. It was all over before sunset, only a few hotbeds of loyalist troops remained.

Everyone was waiting for an announcement from the Armed Forces Movement.

I went home, waiting to see Fabiano arrive.

Twenty hours after leaving that apartment, he reappeared looking disconsolate.

“It's all done. Caetano surrendered and the military junta fell. Our attempt at counter-revolution has been a failure. They will come looking for us in the next few days, I don't know how it will end."

I had passed in a short time from a timid hope to an immediate terror.

I imagined revolutionary troops climbing the stairs, breaking down our door and forcibly taking Fabiano amidst my desperate cries.

Before midnight, General Spinola approved law number 1, the one that dismissed all "fascist" leaders such as the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the National Assembly, the Council of State, the Single Party, the Civil Governors, Police and Portuguese Legion.

Portugal was founded again and the transition phase would be managed by the National Salvation Junta.

In the following days, the situation seemed more and more evident.

Political prisoners were freed, other charismatic leaders returned from exile while Caetano and his faithful were forced to leave.

On May Day there was a big demonstration in Lisbon for 1st May. Someone said there were more than a million.

There was my family, but not me and Fabiano.

We were too afraid of what might happen.

Some questions remained open in the background: what would happen to the colonial war? Most likely the new rulers would have dealt with the colonies quickly and guaranteed immediate autonomy.

"So they will bring dishonor on our country," commented Fabiano.

The guild system was abolished and a new economic and working model was established.

“We will become a capitalist state with socialist orientations,” I thought.

“Exactly, everything against which we have fought for forty years.”

Fabiano did not accept the new state of things. In his eyes, it was as if the entire Portuguese people had betrayed their history.

Perhaps that was why that charge hurt him so much.

By mid-May the first trials began against those who had obstructed Revolution, in particular against those who had obtained information on the rebels and had them imprisoned.

“They will not defame me with treason charges. I have always done my duty”, so Fabiano refused the lawyer's advice to plead guilty and to negotiate a small sentence, perhaps exile for a few years.

"But don't you think about us and our future?" I asked him directly.

At the time, I was still not sure if I was pregnant. A ten day delay didn't seem like a clear signal to me. Perhaps, if I had spoken to my mother earlier and if I had told Fabiano the truth, we would not have reached that point.

"What intentions do you have?"

I made myself more accommodating to get him to open up to me.

“These trials don't last long, they have other things to do. There are urgencies on all fronts. I will prepare a memorial which will highlight my exemplary conduct towards Portugal and my absolute fidelity towards the homeland. Then they won't be able to convict me."

It didn't seem like a great idea to me. What one could be proud of up to a month ago, had now become something to hide while those who were considered a danger by society now managed positions of power.

Revolutions are like this: they suddenly change the social and political state and they do it irreversibly.

After two days, the defense brief was drawn up. In it, Fabiano proudly claimed his work, always based on the utmost loyalty to the institutions.

The Military Tribunal did not like this attitude at all.

The normalization process of Portugal was still in its infancy and they knew very well that there could be counter-revolutionary resurgences, especially since the Armed Forces Movement was by no means a compact coalition.

The military was divided into three different branches, while in the political parties there was strong uncertainty on the left, especially between socialists and communists.

Those written memoirs were used against Fabiano as if he himself had signed his own sentence.

The Military Tribunal imposed a very harsh sentence on him: life imprisonment for high treason which could be converted into exile for life only if he gave the names of all the conspirators, as General de Arriaga's loyalists were called at that time.

“I will never betray my fellow soldiers”, were his only words towards me.

It had been a month since the Revolution and now I knew I was pregnant.

I could have told him, but I didn't.

“ Dilma , one day I'll have to explain to you why I kept silent.”

I didn't want to inflict such great pain on Fabiano. I knew his stubbornness and I knew he would never speak and that he would remain in prison, perhaps forever.

How to give him the best news there could be, that of becoming a parent, at a time when he saw his freedom deprived?

How would he have lived knowing that out there, in a society free to see the sky and the ocean, a child wholly alien to him would be born? She wouldn't have seen him grow up, start walking and talking. Fabiano would have remained imprisoned in a cell without witnessing anything.

I asked my family for help.

Psychological and economic support in view of your birth, Dilma .

Mom didn't ask any questions and gave me unconditional support while dad, always very thoughtful and with a far-sighted gaze, told me right away:

“It won't be easy for you in this country if we don't manage to rehabilitate Fabiano. A wife of a traitorous military man sentenced to life imprisonment will not get very far and I dare not imagine her son or daughter. We have to find a mediation using some channels known to me.”

Only in that instant did I realize that my father was offering immense help and that his resistance to Fabiano had been motivated more by political reasons than by personal grudges.

He had probably understood as early as 1972 what was going to happen in terms of the general situation in Portugal and, probing Fabiano's ideas, he had drawn the conclusion that that young lieutenant would have sided with the wrong side.

So why didn't he warn me openly years ago?

Why were events allowed to unfold in that way?

A few days later I was informed of an attempt to convert the sentence into life exile.

"You and Fabiano will have to leave, but at least you will be alive and you will be together."

I never asked how my father got those concessions. Probably, unbeknownst to me, he had taken an active part in the revolutionary movement.

On the other hand, how could he always be so well informed about political developments?

I started thinking about where we could go.

I had never gone abroad as I knew my parents had wandered around a lot in their youth right after World War II.

My thoughts weren't concrete at all and it all felt far-fetched.

Spaint certainly could not accommodate us, it was experiencing a travail similar to ours with equally dangerous revolutionary prospects and, moreover, the Basque situation was ready to explode.

Maybe Italy. I would have liked to live in Rome, see the wonders of antiquity.

But then I was immediately discouraged. How would we live? Where would we find the sustenance to live on?

And finally, the final blow was always given by the knowledge that I could never see Portugal and Lisbon again.

“You will go to Monte Carlo,” my father stated peremptorily.

“Your mother and I have business connections there. You know...before this colonial war that bled our country's coffers dry, we ran a thriving trade in luxury food products from our colonies such as fine cocoas and spices or port. And Montecarlo was an excellent market not only because a large number of wealthy people live there but because there are the headquarters of important import companies for those goods.”

My father had studied everything in detail. He had already got in touch with a businessman, a certain Olivier Desmoulins, who would take care of our initial accommodation, waiting for us to find work, probably in the import-export sector.

As soon as the Tribunal had agreed to change the sentence imposed on Fabiano, we would have left.

“I just need a day's notice and I can organize everything.”

We were in mid-June. I got to see Fabiano who was locked up in the Peniche prison.

Our meeting would have taken place in the presence of armed guards so I could not have spoken clearly about escape or anything else.

I found him serene and not at all disturbed by events. It was my last chance to tell him about you Dilma , but I didn't.

We parted with a kiss. By now the worst seemed to be over.

Returning to Lisbon, I felt relieved. We would live together in Monte Carlo until things settled down. Dad had confirmed to me that, generally, after a few years there is always an amnesty for crimes considered political.

Now all that remained was to wait for the communication from the Court.

A phone call came, but it wasn't as expected.

Officially, the Government of Portugal informed me that, in an attempt to escape, Fabiano Caetano had been killed by two rifle shots.

Darkness descended on me.

My father shook me:

“You must leave immediately. You're leaving tomorrow."

“I have to stay to attend his funeral,” I replied.

“There will be no funeral. But don't you understand that it wasn't an escape attempt, but some kind of execution? They had to put a stone on the past. You have duties to the creature about to be born.”

On 2 July 1974 I left Lisbon with the Principality of Monaco as my destination.

The carnations in the guns had saved the lives of many Portuguese, but they had already withered when it came to the most important person to me: Fabiano Caetano, my daughter's father.

II | THOUGHTS

II

THOUGHTS

This is my favorite bar in Montecarlo: before setting foot on the French Riviera, I had never eaten such crumbly sweets that here they call croissants .

You can see the Condamine bay, the service is quick and impeccable and I've learned to recognize the waiters. During the week there is always Maurice, a young French-Algerian who has in mind to open a restaurant of his own, while on Saturdays and Sundays there is Valentine, a student from Nice.

I have become a habitué , as they say in these parts, that is, an assiduous visitor to the place. Everyone knows Dilma , they stop to say hello and play with her.

The lonely woman who has been writing continuously for twenty minutes now looks up. It can be seen that she is excited.

The two French guys have just paid the bill and are about to leave, while the other woman continues to argue animatedly with her daughter. They speak in English, but the features are typical of people from Eastern Europe.

Dilma was born here in Montecarlo, in mid-December 1974.

My parents only saw her in photographs.

In order not to arouse suspicion, correspondence to and from my family always takes place through Olivier Desmoulins, the real jack of all trades in many companies.

I owe him a lot. In the name of the friendship that binds him to my father, he found me a home in an isolated area of the Principality, a small apartment whose rent is really modest when compared to local standards, and a job in a logistics company that exploits nearby ports of Nice, Genoa and Marseilles for its traffic.

“It's hard to tell you about your father without crying, but I know he wouldn't have agreed. He was always so sunny and smiling and he didn't like to see people get sad."

Before May 1972, my life had been quite linear.

I didn't have great economic ambitions or glory. Truth be told, growing up in 1960s Portugal would have clipped the wings of even the most ambitious of people, especially if they were a woman.

The main idea of the Estado Novo was linked to pre-world social models of World War II: exploitation of the colonies, military regime, no democracy and the role of women wholly marginal except for family matters.

Not that I minded, but I understood how my parents disagreed. They wanted to educate me in an “emancipated” way as a free thinker, but that was not possible under that regime.

Strange to say, my generation's only empowerment, the one on sexual mores, was not well received even by progressive parents like my own.

What was going through the mind of a Portuguese middle-class teenager?

Not being able to apply in the social, political and economic spheres, there were not many choices.

Almost all of my friends focused their thoughts on a possible romance and I did the same.

Only a very few women, and almost all of them of intellectual or working class extraction, had dedicated themselves to opposing the authoritarian regime.

They were the first forerunners of the Revolution, but at the time they lived totally in the shadows and therefore we paid no attention to that completely marginal movement for us.

Education and school were seen as a compendium of a woman's preparation and, in some way, I was involved.

The only concession, with respect to the normal course of study dedicated to a girl, had been strongly desired by my parents and concerned the teaching of foreign languages. According to them, French and English should be known in today's world by all people and, for this, they paid for years of private lessons for me to practice.

I can never thank enough for that decision. In my time of need, when I left Lisbon, being able to utter sensible phrases in French became crucial to my survival.

In this, I made it easier for Desmoulins to find me a job.

Conversely, I have never discussed political and social issues with my family. It was an unforgivable mistake.

Over time I have gained the certainty that my father was one of those who fought in Lisbon to spread revolutionary ideas among clandestine circles.

For that reason, he didn't openly discuss politics with me. Not to get involved and not to put myself in danger.

Things changed after I started dating Fabiano.

On the one hand, a daughter who had a relationship with an Army lieutenant could avert suspicions about her person, while on the other, the kind of protection that had always surrounded my existence ended.

From the moment Fabiano entered my life, I found myself catapulted into the Portuguese political situation, not knowing in the least either the actors involved or the dangers I was facing.

My unconsciousness was total above all because, for over a year and a half, I lived only on Fabiano and our love.

“When you grow up you will ask me how your father was. What struck me about him. What we talked about and what it was like to be with him. These are all legitimate questions Dilma , but if I don't talk about them every day, they will end up just memories, like old yellowing photos.

For this, I tell you everything right now, even if you don't understand. To keep moments and thoughts from dying.”

Dilma opens her eyes to look at me as only children can. His attention wanders among the particulars present in the vicinity, but then he always ends up staring at me.

His father did the same.

Fabiano had a slender build, as if he was rising from the earth to want to touch the sky.

He moved with a delicate step, despite his strict military training.

He liked to listen. The people, the words, the music and the sounds of nature.

Once we were in Sintra, right on top of the Castle of the Moors. From up there you can feel the wind blowing imperiously from the ocean and directed towards the northern districts of Lisbon.

Fabiano said nothing for over an hour immersed as he was in listening to that so familiar sound.

Next to him, distances disappeared and time was not defined.

I once read that modern physics theories question the very concept of time. In different spheres, I can say that when the heart and mind sing in unison it doesn't matter whether it's seconds, days or years.

Thanks to Fabiano, I managed for the first time to impose my will and to discover something about myself.

I realized that I was a fiercely combative woman in pursuing what was close to my heart.

I understood how I could turn against my family simply to defend my feelings towards him.

Previously, I would never have said I was able to dare so much.

I had been used to respecting roles and being content with my part.

“It's different with you. For the first time it's me, you know what I mean?”

Of course he understood. Fabiano read inside me.

That was the real spring from our first meeting.

He was looking for a way to orient himself and I was there right then.

I was waiting for a light to illuminate my path and Fabiano was right in front of me, under a small balcony of one of the oldest houses in Alfama.

“What should we do with your family?”

“Don't worry, my love, I need to talk to my mother to sort things out. You will see that my family will accept our relationship. I am their only child and they have never been grumpy towards me.

Rather, when will you introduce me to your few relatives?”

I knew it was a painful subject for Fabiano. The father had died in an accident at work on a construction site. An incorrectly hoisted load had landed on three people leaving no hope for any of them.

These episodes happened often, but nobody talked about them. It was forbidden to cast a bad light on the regime or to spread news considered defeatist.

When the accident happened, Fabiano was twelve years old. The mother, already exhausted by country life, could not bear that blow and died two years later.

So Fabiano went to live with cousins across the Tagus River.

He stayed there for only a year and then moved to the Military College in Lisbon. Since then he didn't have much contact with what was left of his family.

“You know how I think and how I lived.”

He was right, but I was interested in seeing the places where he grew up and trained. I would have also liked to visit the Military College, but it was certainly not allowed.

I was always amazed when I stopped to reflect on the randomness of life.

For years, Fabiano and I, like millions of other people, had grown up as perfect strangers, leading parallel lives in completely different places.

Perhaps, we even met on the streets of Lisbon while we were students.

Maybe while I was sitting on a bench with my friends watching the Portuguese autumn turn the Boavista neighborhood yellow, Fabiano was walking right below us.

Or from the windows of the Military Academy he had glimpsed me walking quickly.

Then, suddenly, it all happened as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

As if everything had already been written.

“It is right that you think of yourself, but you must keep your eyes open to the world”, was my mother's advice.

We didn't get it and maybe it was our undoing.

Our eyes were turned inward. We saw nothing but our relationship, fatally ignoring all signals from others.

There was no disagreement between us, we lived in a fairy world.

Only later did I discover that everything around us was changing and that we should have talked about those things. Discuss democracy, colonial wars, the economic crisis, how one could have lived in another state.

Instead we talked about ourselves.

Of the house we would build together. We both wanted to take a piece of land and build upon it, brick by brick, our home where we would grow old together and where our children would grow up.

“It will be over a hill and we will always have to see the sea.”

The situation suddenly changed in December 1973.

Suddenly we understood that Portugal and the Armed Forces were at the center of an epochal change.

We thought we had all the time available to make up for lost time, but events accelerated more and more.

All our efforts to catch up were in vain.

Madeira was an opportunity for us.

It represented our fairy world turned into reality.

On that island, for ten days, thoughts vanished. Forgetting doesn't have to be that bad. You forget everything and live only for yourself and your loved one.

“But after a while we get tired and we'll end up hating each other”, Fabiano pointed out, thus emphasizing his typical military concreteness.

My twenty-one years, on the other hand, suggested the opposite.

In the life of each of us there must be a time for impossible thoughts, for those visions that arise only by abandoning logic and following the heart.

If there aren't those moments, it's totally useless to live spending time just to say you existed.

“When we are old, will we be able to tell our grandchildren how we felt in our youth?”

The doubt of experiencing something unique and unrepeatable touched us several times.

Does every person on this planet really experience a similar feeling at least once in their life?

If so, we truly are privileged creatures.

Soon, events engulfed us.

La Storia, the one with la Sa capital letter, does not wait. It is a tram that must be seized on the fly, as is customary in the Alfama.

We put the we aside, trying desperately to save ourselves.

Sadly, we didn't realize we were on the wrong side.

I don't mean by that the side that didn't win. It would have been too easy, as many did, to get on the winner's chariot at the last minute to secure one's existence.

The wrong side is not always the one that succumbs just as the right one is not always the one that prevails.

This transformist attitude is not to be commended and did not belong to us.

Dad would be proud of this freethinking reasoning. The three years spent here in Montecarlo between work and my daughter's growth have allowed me to distance myself from the Portuguese situation and analyze certain social, ethical and political attitudes in detail.

If until the age of twenty-two I was unaware of almost nothing and I was certainly behind in thinking compared to my peers, now I know that I possess a critical maturity well beyond my chronological age.

I had to grow up quickly, facing challenges as an adult in almost complete solitude.

“Dilma , you will have to figure out for yourself when one cause is right and when one is wrong.”

We had been born under Salazar and with that regime, but that was no excuse.

The generation of our parents and all our peers had grown up like this, but a good portion of the population was able to oppose the abuses of the dictatorship.

He knew how to shout loudly that he demanded pluralism, elections, a free press.

We, supporting de Arriaga's attempt, wanted to maintain the status quo, that of a society founded on injustices.

This means being on the wrong side.

The surprising fact is that it doesn't take complex reasoning to understand this banality. Nonetheless, we didn't do it simply because it wasn't natural to do so.

Will our children ever be able to understand the reason for those actions and those choices?

I doubt it, it will be natural for them to grow by freely expressing their ideas, without any authority intervening from the outside to impose their own vision.

And, perhaps, twenty years from now, they will judge us as a spineless generation, who acted too late in overthrowing a regime.

The French and the Italians resisted Nazi-fascism thirty years before us and resisted with all their might, while we and the Spaniards suffered for another three decades.

But Revolution in the end there was. It lasted only one day, but it changed Portugal forever.

Fabiano and I didn't even understand in that instant what had to be done for our own good and that of future generations.

Not even when Caetano was deposed and the Armed Forces Movement took power did we adapt to the new situation.

It seemed completely unnatural to think with one's own head and so we went ahead for pre-established schemes and concepts pre -set by others in our minds.

Only in this way can I understand Fabiano's will to write that memorial, a true act of self-condemnation.

How did I not stop him?

Why didn't I consult with my father?

He would certainly have convinced me not to allow nonsense of that magnitude.

We were unaware of the dangers and our thoughts still wandered among the unfounded visions of our fairy world.

The awakening was abrupt. Reality does not reveal itself gradually.

Fabiano perhaps did not even notice the end of that world.

The time between his incarceration and the fake escape attempt that ended in his death was too short. Will he have understood, in a month of prison, what has tormented me for these years?

The real question will be asked: why? And if so, what answer was given?

I'll never know and that's my biggest gripe.

Instead I had time, far too much.

Without you, Dilma , I don't know what I would have done. When I jolted awake in the night with those questions, there was always something for you to do.

You claimed my care, food, diapers, teeth.

This prevented me from hurting myself with the past. I was too absorbed in your present.

This is why I have cried very little in these three years. I didn't have time to do it.

Do not regret this my daughter, you have been my lifeline.

Now I can face the years ahead more serenely, even though I am practically a widow at the age of twenty-five.

I understand the mistakes of the past and I know how to move for the future.

From here I followed, albeit with a certain distance, the evolution of the Portuguese situation after my departure.

Spinola's ascent to President was as unexpected as it was ephemeral. Everyone knew that the real leader of the Revolution was Costa Gomez, but Spinola had the great merit of making Caetano surrender.

However, Spinola's positions were too conservative for Revolution.

The mechanism that was set in motion was such that the majority of people called for radical solutions.

Not a federalist vision of the colonial problem, but a transfer tout court with the end of all hostilities.

The call to the square failed and Spinola had to leave Portugal.

At that point Costa Gomez became President and even appointed a colonel who winked at communism as Prime Minister.

In just three months after my departure, Portugal had gone from a fascist regime to a socialist and communist government.

As Dad predicted, the colonies were declared independent.

So, suddenly, we lost what all of us had been brought up to call "Empire". New states such as Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde were born.

Perhaps a time of adjustment had come in the troubled year of 1974.

I distinctly remember my father's words:

“Sooner or later you will be able to return here to Portugal. Everything that man builds has an end. It is necessary for the situation to calm down and be well defined.

Only in this way will there be a generalized amnesty and the past will be erased."

Not that I needed an amnesty, as I had never been charged with anything. The problem was how to live in a state where you are considered a threat to national security.

While waiting for favorable events, I had other things to think about.

I soon found a job, but after a few months I had to abandon it due to maternity leave.

My son and Fabiano Caetano's was about to come into the world and I realized that I had never thought about the name of this child.

If it had been a boy, I had decided that it would have been called Aurelio. I had always liked that name.

Conversely I had no idea if it was a girl. To tell the truth, I had never considered that hypothesis.

It was so natural to think that the only clear trace of Fabiano's life would have been his male heir.

A month before giving birth, the doctor confronted me with the possibility that this was not the case:

“One out of two,” he told me as if to indicate a fifty percent chance.

Waking up a few days later, I remembered running as a child on the beach in Estoril.

They were my first moments of freedom, without any thought for Portugal and the future.

At the time, like all little girls, I had a favorite playmate. When I was a teenager we lost touch and now I don't know what happened to it.

name was Dilma .

“That's how I chose your name.”

A month after your birth, I felt alone for the first time.

I was living in a foreign country, with no friend near me.

I began to imagine going back to Portugal and tried to find out about the political situation.

As soon as the horizon seemed to clear up, something happened that kept me from returning.

In the spring of 1975, all hope seemed to vanish into thin air.

At the beginning of March there was an attempted coup by soldiers loyal to Spinola, but the revolutionary forces managed to block that reactionary move.

This gave further development towards socialism.

Within days, all banks, insurance companies and most industries were nationalized.

At that point, it became clear that my return anytime soon was not going to happen easily.

The affirmation of the most intransigent wing of the Armed Forces did not go hand in hand with a generalized amnesty.

Furthermore, I was certain that a well-to-do merchant would not have been frowned upon in a socialist, if not even Soviet-style, management of power.