The Old Woman and the Boat

(A Velha E O BARCO)

By Ernesto Leal

Translated from the Portuguese by Harry E. Berndt

 

    The tancar is a type of boat which is larger than a sampan and smaller than a river junk. It is a shapely boat which, floating, has the form of a sea-gull with its neck cut up short in the water. It is five yards long by five feet wide and in the middle, a little to the stern, there s a small, round awning that covers about a third of the boat. Inside, everything seems to be build to scale; steps, stools, stowage holes, trap-doors, utensils, everything, even the straw mats rolled up for the day.

    The Chinese rivers and ports are filled with tancars around which life revolves. For on board the tancar the female population is born, lives and dies. The men---the men go ashore, for the "house" is not roomy: and they work somewhere; or they do not work. The young women also go out; they go to the market, or they run errands, or, if they are comely, they simply go out. It is the old woman and the babe who are left behind. The babe with a string passed under his arm-pits and around his chest and a bottle gourd secured by the string on his back so that, if he falls, the gourd and he will float until the old woman, his or some other old woman, hears and runs to pull him out. Boards are laid between the boats for dogs and pedestrians to pass back and forth and these boards act also as the yard for the babe and his playmates. Like all kids, they play in the yard all day.

    So the old woman is left alone. She is always left alone. She cooks, she sews, she washes and tidies up. She walks swiftly in the boat, but she is squatting while she walks. She squats when she cooks; she washes squatting – she squatting lives.

    The old woman knows all the rules by heart and, since she follows all the rules, she is virtuous. The rules tell her how to live every day – all her life. On New Year's Day she places strips of red paper here and there around the boat. When there is mourning, strips of white are hung, and the appropriate lantern is put up for the moon festivities. Everything is done according to rule – the old woman sees to it. The old woman's virtue is extended to the boat and, therefore, the boat too is virtuous.

    The old woman rubs and scrubs and polishes the boat, and because of all the rubbing, the wooden inside the tancar looks polished as if waxed and every edge has gone blunt the same as the stairway of an old convent. In the convent it's the feet passing and passing that has made the steps worn and polished. In the boat it's the old woman's arms, hands, legs, and back that have worn and rounded all the corners and edges of the boat. The wood has become lighter; it resembles the old woman's skin. The old woman's skin has gone darker; it looks like the wood, and it looks waxed too. The Brownish old woman's skin shows veins like the wood; the wood shows veins like the old woman's, and the old woman's body has bent to the boat. Her fingers and toes, even her hands and feet can go into every hole in the boat.

    The river or sea water pats the hull of the boat: tchap--- tchap--- tchap--- like the gentle stroking of her lover. When the old woman prepares the meals, the smoke comes out of the make-shift flu and the water makes tchaaap --- tchaap, and the boat roles gaily. If the old woman sews the water makes tchap, tchap, and the boat dances lazily like lovers do making plans – contented. If the old woman sits and thinks and looks on, looks at nobody knows what, the water laps the boat so gently, so very gently that the boat is motionless. The old woman pisses into the water; she throws her dirty wash water back into the sea water – the same water she uses to wash her teeth and to do the endless cleaning that the old woman has to do. The water is the color of clay. It is brown. The water is everywhere; it is the environment.

    The boat breathes through the old woman's lungs, grunts through the old woman's throat, works with the old woman's hands. The old woman's roots in the world are the boat. When the old woman leaves the boat, which is almost never, she moves like a crab with one shoulder high and forward and one shoulder low and seemingly pulled back. Her legs are bent and her knees protrude outwards, and she is as tall as a child. The boat hull and keel are being cleaned and it too looks somewhat pulled and twisted. The boat and the old woman, one without the other, look deformed.

    So the old woman and the boat go through life. They know it all from the shrill cry of birth, to the gentle singing of the bride, to the sad moan of death. Then, finally, the typhoon named t'ai-fong or great wind comes; the boat disappears into the bosom of the water --- the old woman disappears.

 

NOTE: This story was part of a book of short stories by Ernesto Leal, published in 1959 --- PREMIO – ATICA. Ernesto and were friends when I worked and lived in Lisbon in 1959 – 1960. His stories are about his experiences while an officer in the Portuguese Army stationed in Macau. He left the army and worked for a time at the United States Embassy in Lisbon and later for Firestone Portuguesa. The translation is the best that I could do with a less than proficient grasp of Portuguese.

                                    Harry E. Berndt