Manual of Painting and Calligraphy

by José Saramago

  I would probably exchange all my talent as a painter (which does not amount to much but is all I have) in order to discover the deeper motivations which lead people to write. The same could be said of painting, but I repeat, writing strikes me as being the more subtle art and probably reveals more about the writer. I can swear that in Venice (let anyone who doubts me check the catalogues) those birds I mentioned were really there, those birds by Trubbiani made of zinc, aluminum and copper, held down by their half-severed wings on a torturing rack, the mechanical device which aims and releases the blade of the guillotine, fires a revolver or simply prolongs a painful death. But why should this have made such a deep impression, why should this have so caught my imagination that it was the first thing I mentioned, thus betraying myself? I was not conscious of this when I wrote it, but I am aware of it now as I write it again (an important lesson: nothing should be written only once). Frankly, I betrayed myself, but who was to know, because the first time one always uses the secret language which divulges everything yet allows no understanding whatsoever. Only the second language explains, yet everything would go back to being obscure if the code of the first language were to be forgotten or lost at this precise moment. The second language, without the first, is useful for telling stories and together the two of them constitute the truth. So what did I betray? I betrayed a torture practiced for many years, long before the episode with the police and the leaflets of the Portuguese Popular Front. How time passes. There are those who say there is a cruelty one can associate specifically with childhood and there are those who deny it. But if pressed, I should say that this cruelty certainly exists, when the person concerned can testify to this experience at a later date and in different circumstances. At a later date and in different circumstances, but in the right place in my judgment.

  High up on a tree (an olive tree, to be exact) sits a bird. A sparrow. Creeping about below is a young lad with a catapult in his hands. The picture is familiar, the objective simple. Nothing cruel about it: sparrows were born to be stoned, boys to stone sparrows. This has been so since the world began, and just as sparrows refused to emigrate to Mars, boys have not taken refuge in monasteries overcome with remorse. (Although that is what the pilot did who dropped the atom bomb over Hiroshima [or was it Nagasaki?], but this time the exception does not prove the rule.) So once the elastic has been stretched and aim taken, there goes the stone. However, the sparrow did not come down. It neither came down nor flew away. It remained in the same spot on the same branch, chirping in a manner difficult to define but which, as later became apparent, was one of resignation. The stone had missed its aim, breaking off several leaves from the olive tree, which came floating down, swaying like the pendulums from a wire extending all the way down to the ground. The boy felt successively annoyed, bewildered and pleased. Annoyed because he had missed, bewildered because the sparrow had not flown away and pleased for the same reason. Another stone in the sling (also known as a catapult), another and more cautious aim and the sudden noise of friction in the air, the sound of humming. Discharged upward, the stone soared above the tree, a black dot getting smaller against the blue background of the sky, almost touching the white border of a tiny round cloud, and once on high, it paused for a second as if taking the opportunity to examine the landscape. Then, as if going into a swoon, it dropped, having already chosen the spot where it would settle on the ground once more. The sparrow remained on the branch. It had neither stirred nor noticed anything, the poor bird did nothing except chirp and shake its feathers. From being annoyed-bewildered-pleased, I began to feel simply ashamed. Two stones, one bird quiescent and alive. I looked around me, hoping to find someone to help me improve my wretched aim. The olive grove was deserted. There was nothing to be heard other than snatches of song from the other birds, and perhaps a few meters away a green lizard at the entrance to its lair in the hole of a tree might be looking at me with fixed, stony eyes, trying to grasp what it was seeing. A third stone whizzed through the air, and then another, and another. Seven or eight stones were fired, increasingly less steady, my hand becoming more and more shaky, until the sparrow, without so much as moving or interrupting its chirping, was accidentally and almost without force struck on the breast by one of them. The bird flitted from branch to branch, beating its wings with that restless flutter of something taking its leave of the atmosphere’s elastic stability before dropping at my feet, its claws quivering spasmodically and opening its malformed remiges like fingers (remiges, artemages, both words clearly Gallicisms). It was a young sparrow, which must have left its nest for the first time that day, so young that its beak still had yellow corners. It had managed to fly onto that branch and there it perched until it could regain some strength in its wings and tiny soul. How beautiful the crested peaks of the olive trees look when seen from the air, and there in the distance, if the sparrow’s vision does not deceive it, those other trees, ash trees and poplars planted in rows and covered with leaves resembling tiny waving hands or fans stirring up a breeze. I lifted the sparrow from the ground. I watched it die in my cupped hands; first the black pupils dimmed, the eyelids, almost translucent, went up and stayed there, leaving the tiniest of gaps for sight to pass through during those last few moments. It died in my hand. Alive to begin with, then it died. It died for a second time in Venice, tied down onto a torture rack. Twisted slightly to one side, the head turned an eye swollen with horror in my direction. Which death is the real one? Traveling backward in time and therefore displacing itself in space over Italy, France and Spain, or hovering dead over the rejuvenated waters of the Mediterranean, Trubbiani’s bird in copper and aluminum came to rest in the palm of my hand to take the place of the bird I had killed, its corpse still lukewarm but beginning to turn cold. In the hot and silent olive grove, the boy begins to perceive that crimes have their own dimensions. He takes the dead sparrow home and buries it in the yard, right up against the fence where the hoe cannot reach: a tomb for eternity.

  What has yet to be, what has come and gone, what no longer is. The place nothing but space, and not a place, the place occupied and therefore designated, the place once more space and the sediment of what remains. This is the most straightforward biography of a man, of a world, and perhaps even of a picture. Or of a book. I insist that everything is biography. Everything is life, lived, painted and written: to be living, to be painting, to be writing: to have lived, to have written, to have painted. And the prelude to all this, the world still uninhabited, waiting or preparing for the arrival of man and the other animals, all the animals, the birds of tender flesh, of feathers and songs. A great silence over the mountains and plains. And then, very much later, the same silence over different mountains and plains and over deserted cities, loose sheets of paper still being blown through the streets by a questioning wind which moves off into the countryside without any response. Between the two imaginings, the one the before demands and the other which the afterward threatens, there is biography, man, the book, the picture.

  The water drained from the Mediterranean, Venice balanced on tall stakes as if they were her bones, so tall that only the birds visit the city. Broniatowski’s figures of men and women might be strolling the streets and squares, naked figures covered or dressed in newspaper, headlines covering their skin, mouth, limbs, sex and eyes. This is a possible afterward. I inhabit my obsession with these images but wish that it were otherwise. One has to imagine the desert, contemplate the desert like Lawrence of Arabia in the film, to strip away everything, to create perfect silence, that which only the sounds of our body inhabit, to listen to blood coursing through the undulating softness of our veins, the throbbing of blood, the artery of our throat pounding, our heart beating, ribs vibrating, intestines gurgling, air whistling between the hairs of our nostrils. And now is the moment. Now day may dawn, slowly, slower still, without haste. Lying on the ground, on one’s back, looking up where the sky will start to clear, then turning one’s head from side to side, because there is no certainty
in this world that the sun will rise in the east, one has to catch the first glimmer of light, the first fringe, perhaps another bird, that spot on the mountain where the sky settles, a glance, a smile, two hands ready to build. In the end, it might just as well be the Scrovegni Chapel as the brotherhood of Tetrarchs, shoulder to shoulder, the common gesture of laying their hand on their sword hilts as they pursue a common goal. Daylight at last. Seated on the scaffold, Giotto paints Lazarus restored to life. And far, far away, in Egypt (or perhaps in Syria) one can still see today the enormous slab of porphyry showing the scar left by the block from which the Tetrarchs were carved.

  Between life and death, between the spelling of death and the spelling of life, I go on writing these things, balanced on the narrowest of bridges, my open arms clutching the air, wishing it were more dense so that the fall might or may not be so hasty. Might not, may not. In a painting these would be two very similar shades of the same color, the color “to be,” to be precise. A verb is a color, a noun a symbol. In the desert, only nothingness is everything. Here we separate, distinguish, arrange things in drawers, storerooms and warehouses. We commit everything to biography. Sometimes we give an accurate account, but our judgment is much more reliable when we invent. Invention cannot be compared with reality, therefore it is more likely to be faithful. Reality is untranslatable because it is plastic and dynamic. It is also dialectic. I know something about this because I studied it at one time, because I have painted, because I am writing. Even as I write, the world outside is changing. No image can capture it, the instant does not exist. The wave that came rolling has already broken, the leaf has ceased to be a wing and will soon snap, withered under our feet. And there is the swollen belly which rapidly goes down, the stretched skin which contracts again, while a child struggles for breath and calls out. This is not the time for the desert. It is no longer time. It is not yet time.

  I HAVE BEEN OFFERED another commission, but I have no intention of starting to paint just yet. In this profession of mine it is sometimes useful, without overdoing it, to show that one is not readily available. If someone expects to have his portrait painted and the painter says without a moment’s hesitation “At your service,” the client is almost certain to feel disappointed. We portrait painters must try to be more astute. The basic rule is to treat the person who wants his portrait painted like a patient. What does the patient do? The patient rings the doctor’s office, speaks to his receptionist, and makes an appointment three weeks in advance. Could anyone wish for better attention? During the weeks of waiting, the patient considers himself as important as the doctor who keeps him waiting. He takes pride in having a doctor who is in such great demand, preoccupies himself with the affairs of a man who will be unavailable for three weeks before finally being able to see him, listen to him, examine him and then arrange for tests and further analyses. And, if possible, cure him. But the waiting in such cases is almost as good as the remedy. As everyone knows, only the poor die from a lack of medical attention.

  The same is true of portrait painting, although here there is the additional advantage that the person about to be portrayed still has a few more days to prepare himself. He will take care over his appearance, make every effort not to give the impression of being diminished psychologically, because this portrait is going to be an examination when the time for examinations has already passed. And when the time comes for the first sitting, the person about to be painted will look at the painter as I imagine the penitent must feel tempted to look at his confessor or the patient at his doctor: What secrets or mysteries are his secrets and mysteries about to encounter? What words will attach themselves to mine? What face existed before mine? Who inhabited this place before me? All of them good reasons for keeping the client waiting. And meanwhile, I need the money. Even this quiet life I lead, the rare outings, my painting (writing in recent months), simply breathing, eating, the clothes I wear, painting and writing materials, the car I hardly ever use, all of these things constantly require money. They are not luxuries, but the cost of living is steadily rising. Everyone complains. It is true that my needs are few. If necessary, I would be quite happy to settle for some writing paper, a bed, a table and a chair. Or perhaps two chairs rather than keep a visitor standing. And my easel, because I need it. Let me say here and now that my childhood and adolescence were not easy. I know something about privations. In my parents’ house (both of them are dead) there was little money and barely enough food to go around. And for some years (far too many in a child’s eyes) home consisted of a single rented room, in addition to what one referred to in those days as “use of the kitchen at mealtimes,” and that was precisely what it meant. It was only later that bathrooms were to become a common feature in the construction of houses. Here in Lisbon, at a time when there were few slums of any size and poor living conditions were confined to dilapidated tenement buildings and old farmhouses in the suburbs, there were many homes where the kitchen sink was used for disposing of all garbage and excrement. Each room had its own chamber pot, and the servant who cleaned out the rooms would empty the chamber pot in the kitchen after giving fair warning so that the other women and children had time to get out of the way. The chamber pot was covered with a cloth as it was carried to the kitchen, not because of the stench, which no cloth could ever suppress (everyone knew everyone else by their smell), but simply out of modesty and discretion, and even after all these years, just to think of it makes me shake my head and quietly smile.

  I must be getting old. Because life is becoming costly I find myself remembering things from a difficult past. Perhaps I am giving the impression of being the sort of man who thinks the world owes him a living, but I do not believe this is helpful for one’s psychological stability. No one should feel sorry for himself. This is the first commandment of human respect (contradiction: no man can take pity on others unless he has taken pity on himself). But this facility for recalling episodes of no significance and long since forgotten is clearly a sign of old age (if what we read in books is true). I can still see, even after all these years, that drunk old woman who lived in the tenement, sprawled out amid the skirts of the other women, who were both scandalized and amused as they watched her lying there, plastered, singing to herself and masturbating on the highly polished floor (such incongruity: plastered, polished). At that age I only knew about singing. And I only caught the briefest glimpse. The women closed ranks and screened the entrance to her room and one of them (not my mother) led me out onto the veranda, where I can remember feeling much more indifferent than I am today. I was expelled onto the veranda of another house after being given two hard smacks (or was it three? or four?) when I was discovered in bed with a little girl who was not much older than myself (by now she must be ancient). What were the two of us up to? Obviously, nothing. We were simply experimenting, trying to imitate what we had both seen our parents do in bed when they thought we were asleep and our hearts beat furiously as we were confronted by this mystery from which we were excluded. Seated on the long veranda at the back of the house, which looked onto a vast expanse of yards, one for each tenement (how often I flew over those yards in my dreams), she and I wept, not because of our interrupted lesson but because of the sting of those smacks and the shame those shrieking women tried to inflict on our souls. Those same women who, in the privacy of their bedrooms, sighed and moaned once they and their husbands (our fathers) had made up their minds that we were fast asleep and there was no danger of our waking up. Childhood is full of so many little episodes.

  I have not been out much. Adelina went back home, as one would say, to spend her holidays with her mother. She cultivates this tranquil, bourgeois habit of going home for a fortnight (the third week she reserves for us, as we agreed, not the entire week but the odd day here and there) to a village where she was either born or brought up. She gets back to her roots, as that man would say who, after being set down on the moon or Mars to live and work, returns to earth for a holiday or simply to readapt (if worth
his while) to customs here and bring himself up to date with the ways and passing convictions of the inhabitants of this third planet of the solar system, counting from the one closest to the sun to the one farthest away. In short, back to earth. Summer is over and I am alone. It is still easy to find parking space, the gutters can be seen again, the streets seem to have regained their appearance of old, the traffic moves without difficulty. But I am alone. Nearly all of my friends are away. Some said goodbye. Others not even that. And why should they? Carmo and Sandra are probably in the Algarve, or were they heading for Spain? I’ve forgotten. Chico is still infatuated with an English dancer appearing at the Casino in Estoril, and no one sees him these days. He calls me now and then to brag. As for Ana and Francisco (it is easier for me to refer to the other Francisco as Chico), I get the impression their affair is cooling off. Probably no bad thing. They gave everything they had, perhaps convinced that in this way they would satisfy those forever vague precepts about love, and prove to friends and acquaintances that they took their affair seriously. And it was serious. It continues to be serious but different. They still go around holding hands, but this is a role they learned to play, which an appreciative audience once acclaimed, but now all they can expect is the occasional handclap. I can sense their disquiet, how anxious they are to keep up the pretense, to smile as they put a brave face on things, and my heart goes out to them. I think of them with affection and put it in writing. As for Antonio, he has not been seen ever since that disastrous scene (or episode) of the canvas covered in black paint, which I alone knew was hiding a portrait I had been unable to finish. I would like to see him, to talk to him. There is probably a masochistic streak in my nature. At this moment (just at this moment, for I am sure to change my mind almost immediately) I would like to hand him these written pages. Perhaps to take my revenge, perhaps to throw down the gauntlet once more. A challenge I might lose, but the gesture itself would ensure me some kind of irrefutable victory. Of this I am convinced.