Page 445 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Ah, yes, thought the Lusos. This is what we've heard about Speakers for the Dead. They have no respect for the dead, no sense of decorum.
"That was the name you used for him when you heard that his wife, Novinha, had another black eye, walked with a limp, had stitches in her lip. He was an animal to do that to her."
How dare he say that? The man's dead! But under their anger the Lusos were uncomfortable for an entirely different reason. Almost all of them remembered saying or hearing exactly those words. The Speaker's indiscretion was in repeating in public the words that they had used about Marc o when he was alive.
"Not that any of you liked Novinha. Not that cold woman who never gave any of you good morning. But she was smaller than he was, and she was the mother of his children, and when he beat her he deserved the name of C o."
They were embarrassed; they muttered to each other. Those sitting in the grass near Novinha glanced at her and glanced away, eager to see how she was reacting, painfully aware of the fact that the Speaker was right, that they didn't like her, that they at once feared and pitied her.
"Tell me, is this the man you knew? Spent more hours in the bars than anybody, and yet never made any friends there, never the camaraderie of alcohol for him. You couldn't even tell how much he had been drinking. He was surly and short-tempered before he had a drink, and surly and short- tempered just before he passed out-- nobody could tell the difference. You never heard of him having a friend, and none of you was ever glad to see him come into a room. That's the man you knew, most of you. C o. Hardly a man at all."
Yes, they thought. That was the man. Now the initial shock of his indecorum had faded. They were accustomed to the fact that the Speaker meant to soften nothing in his story. Yet they were still uncomfortable. For there was a note of irony, not in his voice, but inherent in his words. "Hardly a man at all, " he had said, but of course he was a man, and they were vaguely aware that while the Speaker understood what they thought of Marc o, he didn't necessarily agree.
"A few others, the men from the foundry in Bairro das Fabricadoras, knew him as a strong arm they could trust. They knew he never said he could do more than he could do, and always did what he said he would do. You could count on him. So within the walls of the foundry he had their respect. But when you walked out the door you treated him like everybody else-- ignored him, thought little of him."
The irony was pronounced now. Though the Speaker gave no hint in his voice-- still the simple, plain speech he began with-- the men who worked with him felt it wordlessly inside themselves: We should not have ignored him as we did. If he had worth inside the foundry, then perhaps we should have valued him outside, too.
"Some of you also know something else that you never talk about much. You know that you gave him the name C o long before he earned it. You were ten, eleven, twelve years old. Little boys. He grew so tall. It made you ashamed to be near him. And afraid, because he made you feel helpless."