Arrepio  

Each time Little Manuel woke up he saw dark figures beside his bed.

In the small hours monks used to approach the bed number 38 at the Dona Estefânia Hospital in Lisbon. We are talking of the year nineteen forty.

When the baby opened his eyes, sinister and blurred habits surrounded him. How the hell do you would react to a circle of ghostly shapes whispering an unintelligible purr?

You, in your grey hair. Little Manuel in his four! Honest, do you believe a four years old child wouldn´t scare in front of those enormous hats and long beards? Damn it! A creature as him —as you, as me— would need a prolonged stay in a psychiatric clinic.

How come those monks kept coming visiting that bed? In the seventies grown Manuel knew what happened thirty years before. As he didn´t have family nobody explain him that he was sleeping on the same bed which Jacinta, a pastorinha de Fatima, died in. We could say the irons, the mattres, sheets and blankets even, all of them, were blessed.

One of the visitor didn´t speak. He said nothing. Some children, the bravest, dared to pull the cape however he didn´t answer with words but, with an energetic movement, the clothing returned to its normal course. This was father Cruz.

This father was a lifelong acquaintance: he had been several times, accompanied by the three pastorinhos, in the holy spot. He was who gave Lucia her First Communion as well.

The crybaby —they called him— was moved from the holy bed to other one, nevertheless he could still see them. Thus it is that little Manuel was transferred to another ward. Now I´m thinking how poverty there was in countries like Portugal, Spain, Ireland  at that time. We were a poor family, of course, although less so. Cannot they have an empty bed destined for whorship?

Monks praying

When adult Manuel visited a museum in Fatima he felt a variety of sensations which can be summed up in a very expressive Portuguese word: arrepio.

A shiver down his spine when he saw the room where Jacinta was lied down still her dead. It was the same one which appeared those shadows in. It was his bed.

From my Borstal.

LDR