The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  Raimundo Silva closed the window and went to his desk. Maria Sara could hear him muttering, It isn't here, where the devil have I put it, and then he went into the sitting-room, opened and closed the doors of the bookcase, finally announcing, Here it is. He reappeared with a quarto manuscript bound in leather, old in appearance, almost certainly the original text, and he came back with the satisfied expression of someone who has searched and found, but not just the book, You'll be more comfortable sitting down, he said, whereupon she sat on the chair by the table, her hand resting on the sheet of paper where the names of Ouroana and Mogueime were written, he remained standing, looked much younger, and happy, Now listen carefully, for this is interesting, I'll start with the title, here it goes, Sun Risen in the West and Set at Sunrise, St Antony, the Greatest Portuguese Luminary in the Firmament of the Church Between the Minor Constellations in the Sphere of Fransisco, A Historic and Panegyrical Précis of His Exemplary Life and Prodigious Deeds, Written and Offered to the Most Serene, August, Sublime, and Sovereign Family of the Royal House of Portugal, Whose Illustrious Names and Surnames are Complimented and Adorned with the Sacred Denominations of Fransiscos and Antonios, by the most Reverend Antonio Teixeira Alveres of His Majesty's Council, May God Protect him, Judge of the Royal Court of Appeals, Member of the General Council of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, Doctoral Canon in the Cathedral of Coimbra, and Distinguished Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Canon Law, etcetera, Brás Luís de Abreu, from the left bank of the Tagus, Member of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, whew. Maria, Sara laughed, If I've understood correctly, the author of this admirable work is this Brás Luís de Abreu, from the left bank of the Tagus, Yes, you've understood correctly, congratulations, now listen, page one hundred and twenty-three, pay attention, I'm about to start, On hearing the news that some Provinces of that Realm, the realm in question being France, had become infected by this disease, this heretical depravity, as explained several lines above, Antonio de Lemonges left for Toulouse, a city as rich in trade as in vices, and worst of all, a pestilent hotbed of the Sacramental Heretics who deny the real presence of Christ in the Consecrated Host. The Saint was no sooner placed in this den of apostasy than he began to descend into the area of conflicts, only so that he might ascend in the chariot of triumphs. Fired with the burning zeal of God's glory and the infallible truths of his faith, he hoisted the flags of doctrine on the banners of charity, on the shields of penance the arms of the Cross, and transformed into the Evangelical Trumpet of the Divine Word, he raised voices to eradicate vices. His implacable hatred for the Heretics was matched only by his untiring activity driven by zeal. Everything was sacrificed on the altars of Faith, victims of his cruelty, like someone who with so many truths had exposed life for death, his affections for martyrdom. Those Birds of ill omen who, living in the dark night of their errors, only surrender their obstinate pride to the weapons of light, took care to concoct secret poisons against his life, diabolical wiles against his honour, infernal machinations against his reputation, seeking, as far as the powers of their malice would permit, to discredit and obscure the lights of so much doctrine, the triumphs of so much Sanctity. St Antony began to preach to the applause and admiration of all Catholics, and all the more so because, recognising that he was a Foreigner, they heard him speak in their own language with such eloquence and ease that he appeared to have become naturalised in an idiom which, like him, had taken root in people's affections. The news soon spread of the wonderful effect his words were having on Souls, and the Preaching Heretics, once they saw the damage being done to their reputation by this new preacher who was attracting many converts, with that arrogance and presumption so characteristic of this rabble, decided to engage in a mercurial debate with Antony, relying on their specious fallacies to achieve a resounding victory.

  So far no signs of the donkey, said Maria Sara. At that time the paths of the world were awkward and those of writing even more so, observed Raimundo Silva, and he went on, To achieve their objective, they enlisted the services of a distinguished Dogmatist from Toulouse, the most capable and respected of scholars, named Guialdo, fearless, presumptuous and overbearing, deeply versed in Holy Scripture and with an excellent command of Hebrew, a sharp wit and fiery temperament, and well-prepared for the most testing debates. The Saint did not reject the letter of challenge in order to satisfy the duel of Faith, putting all his trust in God as the only Agent of his cause. He fixed the day and the place for the contest. A huge crowd gathered of both Catholics and Sectarians. The Heretic spoke before Antony, for Malice has always prevailed on the world stage, ranting on with vain ostentation about his ill-used learning, and introducing torrents of verbiage with all the loquaciousness of captious syllogisms. The Saint listened patiently to this flood of words, full of artifice, devoid of truth, and then proceeded to refute his depraved errors, with so many quotations from Holy Scripture, enhanced by such clear reasoning, by such convincing arguments and pertinent words that the Heretic's obstinacy was soon overcome, as much for the worn-out discourses of reason, if he had not held out firmly, as for the diabolical caprices of the will. I shall not go into detail about the subtle arguments with which Antony ennobled this battle of wits, because superior to the narrative, they succumb to the silence of history like the mysteries of fame, suffice it to say that he spoke so wisely that he surpassed himself, his success all the more glorious as it had appeared to be impossible. Now listen carefully, Maria Sara, you can already hear the sound of the donkey's hooves. The perverse Dogmatist found himself humiliated and confounded on seeing himself defeated in the presence of those very same followers who with so much pride had hoped to see his deceptions prevail. And on seeing the artificial mesh of his fraudulent sophistries undone, he began to test the Saint's modesty and humility with this malicious discourse, Now then, Father Antony, enough of speeches, conceits and disputes, time we turned to deeds, and since as a beloved son of the Roman Catholic Church you believe in miracles, which as confirmation of the Articles of Faith were in remote times the most powerful motives for cautious belief, I should acknowledge my acceptance of the article of faith proclaiming the Real Presence of Christ's body in the Sacrament if God were to work some miracle. Antony, who in order to emerge victorious from all conflicts, always had God by his side, confidently replied, I'm happy to oblige, and confide in the mercy of my Lord Jesus Christ, who, in order to win over your soul and that of so many others, with shameful blindness following the impious Dogmas of their errors, will manifest his divine power on behalf of-Catholic truth. Responding to this bold and holy resolution, the Heretic told him, It must be left to me to choose the miracle. I keep a donkey on my property. If the donkey after not having eaten or drunk for three days, will, in the sight of the Sacred Host, not so much as look at food however much it is coaxed, I shall firmly accept Christ's presence in the Holy Sacrament as an infallible truth. Moved by Divine inspiration, the Saint at once saw in the proposed event a cause for quiet confidence in victory, and the only disquiet to invade his heart was that of excitement. And confident that this was so much God's cause, he felt certain of victory, preparing for the contest both with the arms of Humility, and the escutcheon of Prayer.

  I feel quite nervous, said Maria Sara, with the solemnity of the moment, and with the vernacular, but this so-called escutcheon strikes me as being the most awful gallicism, Just so, and lest we forget that flaws are to be found everywhere, let us continue, The appointed day arrived, a vast crowd assembled on both sides, that of the Catholics, confident but humble, that of the Heretics, not simply incredulous but presumptuous. Antony celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the nearest Church, and taking the Consecrated Host into his hands with all due reverence, went out to where the starving Beast stood warily. They brought before its eyes and up close to its mouth a ration of ripe barley, as the Saint said aloud in a commanding voice, In the virtue and name of Jesus Christ, Whom I am holding in my unworthy hands, I order you, irrational creature, to reject th
is sustenance so that you may pay due homage to your Creator and mankind might be persuaded to abandon its wilful stubbornness and embrace the truths of the Roman Catholic Faith, convinced by the less stubborn instinct of Beasts. Antony had not quite finished uttering these words, when the foul beast, belying its true nature by rejecting the food it had started to devour, and overcoming its pressing hunger, came up to the Saint and kneeling before him, paid homage to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, to the astonishment and wonder of all those present. All gathered there, witnessed this wondrous spectacle with tears in their eyes, but with varying reactions, for what were tears of devotion and tenderness in the Catholics, were tears of compunction and remorse in the Heretics. The Catholics celebrated the triumphs of Faith while most of the Heretics deplored the errors of the Sect, only one or two rebels, in the face of the evidence, clung to their cherished absurdities and appeared to court disgrace. But they could not deny their amazement, so that those very men who before the contest were predicting triumphs, were so petrified by events that they became like the first statues erected to commemorate the victory.

  Raimundo Silva paused to observe, The following paragraph describes the conversion of Guialdo along with his relatives and friends, I'll spare you this passage, but what you must hear is the peroration, How admirable the enduring virtue of St Antony. A virtue capable of transforming Beasts into humans to confound Mankind. David complained that the irrational servants were only familiar with the stable where they found sustenance, while ignoring their Lord who provided for them, but on this occasion by order of St Antony, the ingratitude of its nature forgotten, this grateful living creature'sçorned sustenance and the stable in order to worship the true Lord who had given it both life and nourishment. Oh blessed Animal. You have now shown that judicious Beasts do exist, for you have given due warning to so many brutish Men. Once in Bethlehem, you refrained from munching the hay in order to protect the new-born Jesus, now in Toulouse you refrain from eating barley in order to worship God in the Holy Sacrament. You ignored the hay in the Manger in order to adore the Child Jesus made manifest in the house of bread, you ignored the barley during the contest in order to venerate Christ concealed in the substance of bread. You have thus shown yourself capable of reason and deserve our applause. Your instinct may be fantasy, but has all the appearance of discourse, your notions may not be reasoning, yet seems akin to understanding. Deprived of memory, you appear to know what you are venerating, deprived of willpower, you show affection for what you adore, without understanding, you appear to discover judgment in what you know. St Antony worked two miracles in you with a single prodigy that might be infinitely prodigious in this one portent. He made your brute instinct look like a rational idea because you adored, he made your bestial hunger look like penitential abstinence because you did not eat. There were not simply two surprises, because there were many more brutes present on this occasion. Guialdo was blind in his acceptance of that mystery, slow to show Faith in that presence, but Antony's faith opened his eyes before this singular miracle, Guialdo's faith stirred when confronted with this wonder never before witnessed. Behold how a single action by sovereign St Antony brought about three incredible miracles, because thrice refined in virtue whereby one became triple, because thrice miraculous in its works in that single miracle it became a wondrous superlative. Amen.

  Raimundo Silva closed the formidable book with a gesture of mock solemnity and repeated, Amen. Does this amen appear in the author's discourse, or was it introduced by you, asked Maria Sara, An oratorical bombast such as this demanded no less, What a strange world it must have been, that such things should have been believed and written, I'd prefer to say in which such things are not written, but believed even today, We're positively mad, Do you mean us, No, I was referring to people in general, I'm one of those people who thinks that human beings have always been mentally deranged, As platitudes go, that isn't bad, Perhaps it will sound less like a platitude if I tell you that in my opinion, madness is the result of the shock produced in man by his own intelligence and we still haven't recovered from the trauma three million years later, So, according to this hypothesis of yours, we're going from bad to worse, I'm no fortune-teller but I fear so. He went to put the book on the table just as Maria Sara was getting to her feet, they stood facing each other, neither can escape nor wants to. He took her by the shoulders, the first time he had touched her in this way, she raised her head, her eyes were shining brightly, caught by the dim light of the lamp, and whispered, Say nothing, not a word, don't tell me that you like me, that you love me, simply give me a kiss. He drew her gently towards him without their bodies touching, and slowly leaned forward until his lips touched hers, at first the merest touch, the most delicate contact, and then, after some hesitation, their mouths quickly opened, their sudden kiss total, intense, and eager. Maria Sara, Maria Sara, he murmured, not daring to use other words, but she made no reply, perhaps she still did not know how to say Raimundo, for anyone who thinks it is easy to pronounce a name for the first time when you're in love, is much mistaken. Maria Sara drew back, he tried to hold on to her, but she shook her head, moved away, slipped quietly from his arms, I must go, she said, give me my coat, it's in the study, and my bag, please. When Raimundo Silva returned, she was holding a sheet of paper in her hand and smiling, The world is full of such madmen, she said, and Raimundo Silva replied, Mogueime, I can see him below, in front of the Porta de Ferro, awaiting the order to attack, Ouroana, now that dusk has fallen, will be summoned to the knight Heinrich's tent so that he might take his pleasure, as for us, we're the Moors up here on a tower where we think we can watch destiny advance. Maria Sara took her coat, without putting it on, and her bag, and made for the bedroom door. He accompanied her, tried once more to detain her, No, she said, losing no time in opening the door on to the landing, from where she announced, I'll be back tomorrow, there's no need to bring me the photocopies at the office, and please, no telephone calls.

  Raimundo Silva scarcely ate any dinner and stayed up late writing, when the time came to go to bed he realised he would be incapable of turning down the covers, of lying on those laundered sheets, or so much as disturbing the pillow on top of the bolster. He took two extra covers from the wardrobe and carried them into the sitting-room, improvised a bed on the narrow divan and settled down to sleep.

  IT IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED a show of unsurpassable bravura when a man condemned to death himself gives the firing squad the order to shoot, and even the most peaceful or cowardly of us, attended by favourable circumstances, at some time must have dreamed of this glorious demise, especially if someone survived to tell the tale, for glories without anyone to narrate them are valued less. In fact, it is necessary to have come into the world with nerves of steel, or, if shaky and cracking, to be possessed of a patriotic or similar zeal beyond the ordinary, to cry out with a hoarse and then for ever afterwards silent voice, Fire, somehow alleviating the conscience of the assassins from any sense of guilt, while elevating our own conscience in one last glow to the sublime heights of sacrifice and total abnegation. It is possible that the common spectacle of such gestures, especially when transferred to the screen, contributes to an exaltation capable of turning the most mediocre person into a hero, only by chance absent from the scene of the drama, precisely because they decided to come to the cinema today, to see, one minute feigned, the next real, how the famous actor simulated death or how, with the realism of a documentary, an executed man without a name died for good. There is no hint of malice in this doubt, only what we assume to be true, that no one condemned to the electric chair, gallows, guillotine, garrote or stake will have given the order to switch on the current, open the trap-door, release the blade, turn the screw, or spark the match, perhaps because such deaths are so undignified, including those with the longest tradition in art, perhaps because they lack the military factor, the institution of arms, where heroism is more readily found, for even when the condemned man was no more than a common civilian, the
shots he received in the chest turned out to be a ransom for his mediocrity and were the viaticum, the safe-conduct, thanks to which he will be permitted, when the time comes, to enter the paradise of heroes, without any wrangling over meaning and cause, for there one loses any notion of these differences on earth.

  This lengthy circumlocution had no other justification than to show how, in all innocence, it can happen that a person gives voice to his own death, even if it should not be imminent, and how, in this case, words spoken in piety are transformed into enraged serpents that would not turn back for anything in this world. It was noon, and the muezzins had climbed up on to the balcony of the minarets to summon the faithful to prayer, because although the city is under siege and plunged into the turmoil of warfare, the rites of worship must not be neglected, and although the muezzin of the great mosque knew that he could be seen on all sides by the Christian soldiers, especially by those besieging the nearby Porta de Ferro, he remained unconcerned, firstly because he was not so close that he might be hit by a stray javelin, secondly because his own words would protect him from any danger, La ilaha ilia llah, he was about to cry out, Allah is the one and only God, and what good would it do him if he were not in the end. At this moment, positioned before the five gates, the Portuguese forces no sooner hear this cry than they launch a general and simultaneous attack, the first of the three strategic points, as we know, drawn up in the definitive plan of combat, as established by our good king after consulting his chief of staff. Out of habit, we might be tempted to describe this ironic touch of putting the order to attack into the mouths of the unsuspecting Moors as Machiavellian, but Machiavelli was not even born at this time nor did any of his ancestors, contemporary or preceding the conquest of Lisbon, distinguish themselves internationally in the art of deception. The utmost care has to be taken in the use of words, never using them before the epoch in which they came into the general circulation of ideas, otherwise we shall immediately be accused of an anachronism, which, amongst the reprehensible acts in the terrain of writing, is second only to plagiarism. In fact, if we had been as important a nation then as we are today, then it would not have been necessary to wait three centuries for Machiavelli to enrich the practice and vocabulary of political astuteness, and without further ado, we would describe this ingenious stroke as obsolete, Allah is the one and only God cries the muezzin, and, as one man, the Portuguese, shouting their heads off to summon their courage, advance steadily on the city gates, even though the most ordinary observer, so long as he is impartial, could not fail to notice a certain lack of conviction in the advancing armies, as if disbelieving that with so little they might get so far. It is true that the bows and the crossbows fired a veritable shower of arrows and other missiles over the battlements in order to drive back the guards and to give some respite to the assailants on the front line so that they might attempt to break down the gates with axes and hammers, while others, manning the heavy battering-rams, push them forward in a regular rhythm, but the Moors refused to give way, firstly because they were protected by the shelters they had built, and then, when these began to burn, set alight by flaming torches tied to the larger javelins, they came crashing down on to the heads of the Portuguese, who were forced to retreat, scorched like pigs after slaughter. Once they had put out some of the more dangerous fires, which meant that some of Mem Ramires's soldiers had to dive into the waters of the estuary, from where they emerged shivering and pleading for ointments, the artillery launched another barrage of missiles, this time more cautious, and preferring to use stones and missiles of hardened clay, for those fiendishly wicked Moors hit us back with our own munitions, causing at least one Portuguese soldier to die, showing that no man escapes his destiny, when a javelin was thrown back which he himself had been the first to aim.