Portrait of a marriage - or a 60 years war

My grandparents were married on the January 30th 1930. He was 26, she was 16. They had met just a few months earlier, my grandfather had arrived in the village from Lisbon, after an ad of a pharmacy for sale, which he was short of money to buy. Then he met this ageing alcoholic barber surgeon, who was worried about his only daughter’s future in case he died. Somehow, the old man liked and trusted the young pharmaceutic, so he lent him the money to buy the pharmacy and gave him his daughter in marriage. Nobody asked her opinion, women in Portugal at the time didn’t have any right to decide about their lives.

It was a disastrous marriage ever since the beginning. My grandmother always said: “I didn’t marry, I was married off!”. And my grandfather said he knew his wife was bad-tempered (torta, was the term he used) just 3 days after the wedding – they were supposed to go to their farming plot and it was raining and cold, so he and his father-in-law thought they’d better stay at home, but she said “Since you made me wake up so early, now we’re going!”.

I can’t imagine how traumatic it must have been to this girl, used to run her father’s household since childhood (her mother had died when she was just 5 years old), to suddenly being subjected to a husband’s authority, having to ask him for money to attend to everyday’s needs, and watching him dilapidate the family goods in foolish agricultural works, becoming indebted and selling her mother’s gold jewels and disregarding her elderly father, who she worshipped, as a worthless drunkard.

I also cannot imagine how their intimate life would be. I remember how my grandmother, even if she loved romantic novels, used to say, watching kisses on television: “How disgusting!”. And I also remember my grandfather telling me – “Now you’re old enough to know it” – how he stopped having intercourse with his wife after their fourth child’s birth, because the doctor said it would be dangerous for her.
He wished his children to marry local farmers, she was the one who supported them to go to college and get degrees so they could have a better life. She would steal small amounts from the household accounts so she could help her children at university. And she succeeded - their children got a college education and became quite successful in their professions.

At some time, her children tried to convince her to leave her husband and live on her own, but she never wanted to even consider that, she felt bound to her duties as a wife, however disagreeable they might be.

I remember the constant arguments between my grandparents; at the time I thought them funny, but then I understood how unhappy they were together, and felt sad about it. How sad is a decades old unhappy marriage? There were so many petty things, like the way my grandfather kept the household accounts in sheets of paper, so he could control his wife's spending. We as children didn't understand how much suffering this must have caused her, and joked behinnd their backs about their constant bickering. We actually enjoyed how he made her mad at lunch telling jokes that she would find disrespectful, after all he was funnier than she was. Later, I understood, and felt bad about it.
She would knit quilts and table cloths to make some money on the side, money she used to help their children through college and later to have some financial independence. She was only financially secure when he sold the pharmacy - he gave the money to their children, who immediately gave it back to her, without him knowing.

They lived in a big house, with an outdoors kitchen in the garden. So in their late years, they lived totally separate lives - he would cook his meals in the outdoors kitchen and they spent several days without even seeing each other. Once, my grandmother went away to visit her son for a few days. My grandfather, after not seeing her for a few days, asked their neighbours about her; when they said they didn't know where she was, he became extremely upset, saying "OMG, what shall I tell my children? How will I justify their mother's disappearance?" Of course, my grandmother was delighted when she knew about this.

Later, when heart failure kept my grandfather bedridden, he still tried to be independent from her, and asked a friend to bring him his meals to his room, but she didn't even open the door, saying that she was perfectbly able to take care of her husband. And she did take care of him, probably delighted to finally have him at her mercy.

How sad is that? There was a kind of justice there, but still it seems to me so... cruel. I guess that was the way it went with marriages before divorce became available and acceptable. Having watched this wreck of a marriage, I cannot but approve of divorce, thinking how much better their lives could have been.