The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  The word she used was, Goodbye. Lying down in her bedroom, Maria Sara slowly replaces the receiver at the same time as Raimundo Silva, seated at his desk, does the same at his end. With a billowing movement, she indolently buries herself between the sheets, while he leans right back in his chair. The two of them are happy, so happy that it seems quite unfair to detach ourselves from the one in order to speak of the other, as we shall be more or less obliged to do, although, as we see in another more fanciful tale, it is physically and mentally impossible to describe the simultaneous actions of two characters, especially if they are far away from each other, to suit the whims and preference of an author who is always more preoccupied with what he believes to be the objective interests of his narrative than with the wholly legitimate aspirations of this or that character, however secondary, and with giving preference to his modest sayings and tiniest actions over the actions and words of his protagonists and heroes. And speaking of heroes, take for example those marvellous encounters between the knights of the Round Table or the Holy Grail with wise hermits or mysterious maidens who crossed their path, once having entertained us to yet another edifying episode, the knight would move on to fresh adventures and reunions, and of necessity, we the readers would move on with him, often abandoning for evermore the hermit on one page, the maiden on another, when we should have liked to know more about the fate awaiting them, whether some queen, out of love, would rescue the hermit from his hermitage, whether the maiden, instead of remaining in the forest to await the next knight errant, would go looking for a man somewhere in this wide world. When dealing with Maria Sara and Raimundo Silva, things get very complicated, since both of them are crucial characters, just as their gestures and thoughts will become crucial, from amongst which, given the insurmountable problem, we have no other solution than to choose something that the reader might consider to be essential, for example, in the case of Maria Sara, to observe that there was also a certain voluptuousness in her movement which we earlier described simply as being indolent, and that Raimundo Silva has parched lips as if a sudden fever, a raging fever, had taken possession of his body as he began trembling from head to foot, the outcome of all that nervous tension during their conversation, deceptively relaxed as they briefly made their farewells, and now humming like stretched wires, or, respecting the beauty and emotion of that moment, an Aeolian harp plucked by the wind, as ferocious as any cyclone. It is also worth mentioning that when Maria Sara went on smiling, her expression that of someone who was genuinely happy or looking the part, her sister-in-law asked her out of curiosity, Who is this Raimundo Silva who has got you into such a nervous state, and still smiling, Maria Sara replied, I still haven't discovered. Raimundo Silva has no one to talk to, he simply smiles, now little by little he regains his composure, he has finally got to his feet, a rejuvenated man emerges from the study and heads for the bedroom, and looking into the mirror he does not recognise himself, but so very conscious of being what he sees there that on observing the white line at the roots of his hair, he merely shrugs his shoulders with genuine indifference, at most a trifle impatient, perhaps because truth progresses so slowly. Maria Sara checks the time on her watch, it is too soon to expect him to ring back or for her to telephone him, the real test of wisdom is to bear in mind that even feelings must learn how to use time. Raimundo Silva checks the hour on his watch and goes out. He lost no time in heading for the nearest florist to buy four roses, in the most delicate shade of white he could find. This involved him in an animated dialogue with the assistant to ensure that they were just as he wanted them, and in the end, he had to give her a more generous tip than usual, especially for him, because the assistant was not easily persuaded by the various arguments he used, first trying to convince her that the difference between two and twelve roses is purely arithmetical and irrelevant, then making mysterious and veiled allusions to the fulfilment of a promise he swore never to reveal, much as he would like to confide in her, What else could he do to recompense so much patience and kindness. With that reassuring tip already in her apron pocket, the assistant allowed herself to be impressed, and, as the conversation continued, no one could be blamed for thinking that money had nothing to do with the enthusiasm with which she responded to the customer's unusual request, yes, unusual, for no matter how you look at them, two roses are not twelve, nor even an orchid, for the latter can stand on its own, and even prefers it so. Rather than miss her call which would be twice as frustrating, Raimundo Silva returned home by taxi, ran upstairs, a gymnastic feat which prevented him from breathing for several minutes, Such imprudence, he thought to himself, climbing the Calçada da Glória like this at my age, he said glória without thinking, then amused by his own excesses, physical as well as verbal, he went to remove the withered rose from the vase, change the water, and then began arranging the two roses with the painstaking artistry of a Japanese floriculturist.

  From the window, clouds could be seen slowly passing, dark and heavy, in the violet evening sky. Although advanced, spring had not yet decided to open its doors to the heat, to the warm southern wind, that encourages us to unfasten our collars and roll up our sleeves, to some extent, Raimundo Silva is going to live in two ages and in two seasons, blazing July that causes the weapons surrounding Lisbon to shine and glow, and this damp, grey April, sometimes with glinting sunshine that makes the light as hard as that of a bright, impenetrable diamond. He opened the window, rested his elbows on the parapet of the verandah, felt at peace with the world despite the inclement weather, fortunately his apartment was protected from the north wind blowing at this moment in sudden little gusts that come round the corner and brush against his face like a cool caress. He gradually begins to feel chilly and wonders if he should not go back inside, when he suddenly turns numb, literally numb, on remembering that from where he is standing he will not hear the telephone if Maria Sara should ring. He rushed back inside and dashed into the study as if trying to hear those final bleeps, the telephone was there, silent, as black as ever, but no longer a threatening animal, an insect armoured with prickly spines, more like a cat asleep, curled up in its own warmth, and once awake, no longer a danger with those claws of a tiny and often lethal wild beast, but waiting for an outstretched hand where it is all too ready to rub itself voluptuously. Raimundo Silva went back inside, sat at the small table near the window without putting on the light, and waited. He rested his forehead in his hands, a characteristic gesture of his, and with his fingertips distractedly scratching at the roots of his hair where another story might be written, because this one already started can only be read by those with perceptive and open eyes, not by a blind man, however keen his sense of touch, for his fingers cannot tell him about this latest colour appearing in certain hairs. Although evening is drawing in, the shadows in the room would not be so deep, were it not for the verandah, which even on clear days shuts out the light, and even now plunges the room into the darkness of night, while immediately outside, between the slow rents in the clouds, the nearby sky still allows itself to be pierced by the last rays which the sun, passing behind the sea, casts into the upper regions of space. Erect in the slender vase, the two roses seem even whiter in the purplish darkness of the room, Raimundo Silva's hands add several indecipherable black lines to the last written page, perhaps in Arabic, if only we had paid attention to the muezzin's cry, the sun lingered on for one long minute, settled on the bright horizon, waiting, then sank from view, too late now for any words. Raimundo Silva's indistinct form gradually merges with the denseness of the shadows while the roses still absorb from the window the almost imperceptible light preserved in the window-panes and bathe therein, at the same time releasing an unexpected scent from the intimate depths of their corollas. Raimundo Silva slowly raises his hands and reaches out to touch them, first the one, then the other, as if two cheeks were touching, a prelude to the gesture that follows, his lips slowly drawing close to the petals, the flower's multiple mouth. Now the telephone must not ring, let nothing in
terrupt this moment before it is ready to end, tomorrow the soldiers gathered on the Monte da Graça will advance like two pincers, to the east and west, as far as the margin of the river, they will pass under the gaze of Raimundo Silva who lives in the tower north of the Porta de Alfofa, and whenever he looks out on to the terrace, curious, holding a rose in his hand, or two, they will shout up to him from below that it is too late, that this is no longer a time for roses, but for final bloodshed and death. Along this side, in the direction of the Porta de Ferro, will descend the battalion of troops captained by Mem Ramires, amongst his men is Mogueime and when the leader sees and finally recognises him beneath the beard everyone wore at that time, he will call out to him amiably with a broad, medieval smile, Hey there, my friend, I'm afraid these walls are much too high for me to be able to climb back on to your shoulders and throw up a ladder as we did in Santarém to our own benefit and that of our king, and Mogueime, treated with familiarity, but with no intention of questioning his leader's version of the relative position of the constituent parts of that now famous human ladder, reacts as philosophically as that soldier on his way to war who calls out to the general passing in his jeep, If we ever see each other again, it will be a sign that we have both won the war, but if either of us should fail to turn up, then he has lost it, and now raise your shield, your Majesty, for there's a shower of arrows coming this way. Raimundo Silva switched on the table-lamp, the sudden light momentarily appeared to obliterate the roses, then they reappeared as if they had reconstituted themselves, but without any aura or mystery, contrary to what is commonly believed because of those famous words circulated by a botanist, A rose is a rose is a rose, whereas a poet would simply have said, A rose, before contemplating it in silence.

  The telephone rang at long last. Raimundo Silva jumped to his feet, pushing back his chair which swayed and fell as he reached the passageway, just ahead of someone who observed him with gentle irony, Whoever would have thought, my dear fellow, that anything like this could happen to us, no, say nothing, save your breath, it's •a waste of time trying to answer rhetorical questions, we've often discussed this, go, be off you, I'm right behind you, I'm never in a hurry, whatever might be yours one day, will also be mine, I'm the one who always arrives later, I live each moment lived by you, as if I were inhaling your scent of roses preserved only in memory, or, less poetically, your plate of greens and beans, wherein your infancy is constantly being reborn, yet you cannot see it, and would refuse to believe it were you to be told. Raimundo Silva pounced on the telephone, in a moment of doubt he thought, And suppose it isn't her, but it was her, the voice of Maria Sara telling him, You shouldn't have done it, Why not, he asked in dismay, Because from now on I shall be expecting roses every day, I'll see that you're not disappointed, I'm not talking about roses, roses, About what then, No one should be able to give less than they have given before, roses shouldn't appear today and a wilderness tomorrow, There won't be any wilderness, That's only a promise, how can we be sure, How true, we don't know, just as I didn't know that I would send you two roses, while you, Maria Sara, don't know that I have two roses exactly the same as yours here in a vase, on a table where there are written pages about the history of a siege that never happened, beside a window that looks on to a city that does not actually exist as I picture it, It would be nice to see where you live, You probably wouldn't approve, Why not, I can't say, it's a simple apartment, not even that, nothing fancy, me and a few items of furniture that don't match, lots of books, they're my whole life, yet I'm always the outsider, even when I correct a printing error or some mistake made by the author, rather like someone strolling in a park who feels obliged to keep the place tidy and lifts any Utter in sight, then not knowing where to put it, shoves it into his own pocket, that's all I carry with me, dry withered leaves, no fruit worth eating, May I come and visit you, There's nothing I'd like better, he paused for a second before adding, Right now, but, as if regretting what he had just said or feeling he had been tactless, he corrected himself, Forgive me, that was unintentional, and when she remained silent he came out with words he would never have imagined himself ever capable of saying, direct, frank, explicit in themselves, and not because of any game of cautious insinuation, Of course it was intentional, and I'm sorry. She laughed, cleared her throat, My problem in this situation is to know whether I should have blushed before or if I should be blushing now, I can recall having seen you blush once, When, When I touched the rose in your office, Women blush more easily than men, we're the weaker sex, Both sexes are weak, I was also blushing, How come you know so much about the weakness of the sexes, I know my own weakness, and something about the weakness of others, if books are to be trusted, Raimundo, Tell me, As soon as I'm on my feet again, I'll come and see you, but..., And I'll be waiting for you, Such fine words, What do you mean, Once I arrive there, you must go on waiting for me, just as I shall go on waiting for you, meanwhile we still don't know when we shall arrive there, I'll be waiting, Until soon, Raimundo, Don't be long, What will you be doing once we ring off, Camp in front of the Porta de Ferro and pray to the Most Holy Virgin that the Moors don't decide to attack at dead of night, Are you afraid, Trembling with fear, Is it that bad, Before engaging in this battle, I was a simple proof-reader whose only concern was to mark in a deleatur correctly in order to make it clear to the author, There seems to be some interference on the line, What you are hearing are the cries of the Moors shouting threats from up there on the battlements, Look after yourself, Don't worry, I haven't come all this way to die before the walls of Lisbon.

  IF WE ACCEPT and rely on the facts as written by the aforementioned Fray Rogeiro in his letter to Osbern, then Raimundo Silva will have to be told not to deceive himself about the presumed easiness of camping, without further ado, in front of the Porta de Ferro or any other gate, for this perverse race of Moors is not so timorous as to have locked themselves in with seven turns of the key without putting up a struggle, relying on a miracle from Allah who is capable of dissuading the Galicians from their evil intentions. Lisbon, as we said before, has houses outside its walls, many houses and villas and not simply for summer retreats, but more like one city surrounding another, and if it is known that, within days, when the encirclement finally becomes a geometrical reality, the military headquarters will be comfortably installed here and all the dignitaries, both military and religious, thus spared the relative discomfort of the tents, now they will have to fight hard in order to expel the Moorish hordes from these delightful suburbs, from street to street, from patio to patio, from terrace to terrace, a battle that will last at least a week, and which the Portuguese only managed to win because they were more numerous on that occasion and because the Moors had not sent out all their battalions and the troops inside could not intervene in the confrontations 'with catapults and beasts for fear of wounding their brothers who, willingly or otherwise, had sacrificed themselves by fighting on the front line. Therefore do not let us censure Raimundo Silva, who, as he himself has never tired of telling us, is merely a simple proof-reader exempt from military service and with no experience of warfare, notwithstanding that amongst his books there is an abridged edition of the works of Clausewitz, bought from an antiquarian bookseller years ago and never opened. Perhaps he wanted to abbreviate his own narrative, considering that, after so many centuries, what counts are the main episodes. Nowadays people have neither the time nor the patience to keep historical data and minutiae in their heads, that might have been all right for the contemporaries of our King Dom Afonso the First, for they clearly had less history to learn, a difference of eight centuries in their favour is no joke, the advantage we enjoy is having computers, we can feed any encyclopaedia or dictionary into them, and hey presto, we no longer need to rely on our memory, but this way of understanding things, let's say it before someone else says it for us, is totally reactionary and quite unacceptable, because the libraries of our parents and grandparents served this very purpose, so that the neopallium should not becom
e overloaded, it already does a great deal for its size, minuscule, buried deep down in the brain, surrounded by circuits on all sides, so when Mem Ramires said to Mogueime, Get ready, for I'm going to climb on to your shoulders, you might think this phrase was not the work of the neopallium, wherein there resides not only the memory of ladders and good soldiers, but also the intelligence, convergence or relationship between cause and effect, something no computer can boast of, because despite knowing everything, it understands nothing. Or so they say.

  Lisbon is surrounded at last, the dead have already been removed for burial, the wounded transported with them in the same ships to the other bank of the estuary and from there, carried uphill, some to the cemeteries, others to field hospitals, the latter indiscriminately, the former according to social rank and nationality. In the encampment, if we discount the sorrow and mourning for the losses suffered, and not all that demonstrative, because these people are stoical and not much given to tears, you can detect much confidence in the future and an exalted faith in the intercession of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who on this occasion need not take the trouble of appearing as He did in Ourique, He has already worked enough wonders by making sure that the Moors, in the haste of their retreat, should have left behind to satisfy the appetite of their enemy, that is to say, ours, generous stocks of wheat, barley, corn and vegetables to feed the entire city, and which for lack of space were stored in open caves halfway up the slope, between the Porta de Ferro and the Porta de Alfofa. And when this fortunate discovery was made, Dom Afonso with a wisdom rare in one so young, at the time he was only thirty-eight, a mere stripling, uttered those famous words which immediately entered the thesaurus of Portuguese sayings, He that saveth his dinner, will have the more for supper, before prudently giving orders that these supplies should be requisitioned before it became necessary to invent another maxim, Better belly burst than good food lost, the best time for rationing is when there is plenty, he concluded.