The Collected Novels of José Saramago (198 page)

As everyone knows, we spend a third of our short lives sleeping, and we can confirm this from our own experience, between going to bed and getting up, counting is easy, allowing for the wakeful hours of those who suffer from insomnia and, in general, the time devoted to the nightly sessions of the art of loving, still enjoyed and practised as a rule at dead of night, despite the increasing popularity of more flexible timetables which, in this and other particulars, appear to be guiding us towards the fulfilment of the golden dreams of anarchy, namely, that desired age in which each one of us can do as we please, provided we do not prejudice or restrict what pleases others. Yes, there is nothing simpler, but the fact that up to the present we have not succeeded in even identifying our neighbours amidst a multitude of strangers with any lasting certainty, goes to prove, were such proof necessary, what tradition has taught us, that the difficulty of achieving the simple is infinitely more complicated than any other task or skill, that is to say, it is less difficult to conceive, create, construct and manipulate an electronic brain than to find in our own the wherewithal to be happy, but, in the words of Jesus, one age succeeds another, and hope is the last thing to be lost, Alas, we might start losing it right away, because the time it will take to achieve universal happiness has to be counted in astronomical measurements, and this generation does not aim to live that long, disheartened as it clearly is.

Such lengthy circumlocution, made irresistible by the way in which words bring others in their wake, thus giving the impression that all they do is to obey the will of someone who will finally have to answer for them, but misleading him, to the extent of frequently leaving the point of the narrative abandoned somewhere without name or history, pure discourse, without reason or objective, whose fluctuation will transform it into the perfect stage set or backdrop for any old drama or fiction, this circumlocution, which began by probing the hours of sleep and wakefulness in order to finish off with a feeble reflection on the transience of human life and the longevity of hope, this circumlocution, let us conclude, will be justified if we suddenly ask ourselves how often in life a person goes to the window, how many days, weeks, months has that person spent there and for what reason. We usually go to the window to see what the weather is like, to examine the sky, to follow the clouds, to dream with the moon, to respond to someone’s cry, to observe the neighbours, and also to occupy our roving eyes by distracting them, while our thoughts accompany the images they capture, born just as words are born, just like them. They are mere glimpses, instants, and lengthy musings about what cannot be seen, a smooth, blank wall, a city, the grey river or the water dripping from the eaves.

Raimundo Silva has not opened the window, he is watching through the window-panes, and is holding the book in his hands, opened at that false page, just as one speaks of false coinage minted by some forger. The dull patter of rain plays on the zinc roof of the verandah, and he does not hear it, although we would describe it, in an attempt to find a suitable comparison, as being like the distant sound of a cavalcade, a stamping of hooves on the soft, damp soil, a splashing of water from the marshes, a strange occurrence, inasmuch as wars were always suspended in winter, otherwise what would become of the men on horseback, scantily clad beneath their leather corslets and sleeveless coats of mail, with the drizzle penetrating the holes, rents and gashes, and the less said about the foot-soldiers the better, tramping practically barefoot in the mud and with their hands so frostbitten that they can scarcely hold the puny weapons with which they have come to conquer Lisbon, what a memory the king must have, to go to war in this appalling weather, But the siege took place in summer, murmured Raimundo Silva. Although less heavy, the rain on the verandah roof could now be heard clearly, as the sound of trotting horses returning to barracks grew fainter. With a rapid movement, surprising in someone not given to gestures, Raimundo Silva threw the window wide open, some of the drizzle sprinkled on to his face, but got nowhere near the book since he had taken the necessary precautions, and the same impression of brimming vitality took possession of him, body and soul, this is the city that was besieged, the ramparts descend over there all the way down to the sea, a name worthy of a river as wide as this one, and then they rise sharply until lost from sight, this is the Lisbon of the Moors, were the atmosphere less grey than on this winter’s day we should have a better view of the olive-groves on the slope that goes down to the estuary, and also those on the other bank, at present invisible, as if covered by a cloud of smoke. Raimundo Silva looked and looked again, the universe murmuring beneath the rain, dear God, such sweet and gentle sorrow, may we never be without it, not even in moments of happiness.

C
ERTAIN AUTHORS
, perhaps out of conviction or an attitude of mind not much given to patient investigation, hate having to acknowledge that the relationship between what we call cause and what we subsequently describe as the effect is not always linear and explicit. They allege, and with some justification, that ever since the world began, although we may have no way of knowing when it began, there has never been an effect without a cause, and every cause, whether because pre-ordained or by some simple mechanism, has brought about and will go on bringing about some effect or other, which, let it be said, is produced instantly, although the transition from cause to effect may have escaped the observer or only come to be more or less reconstituted much later. Going further, somewhat rashly, these authors argue that all the visible and recognisable causes have already produced their effects, and that now we need only wait for them to manifest themselves, and they also insist that all effects, whether manifest or about to be made manifest, have their inevitable causality, although our manifold limitations may have prevented us from identifying it in terms of establishing the respective relationship, not always linear or explicit, as we said at the outset. Putting it plainly, and before such laboured arguments draw us into more complicated problems, such as Leibniz’s demonstration of the world’s contingency or Kant’s theory of cosmology, which would oblige us to ask whether God really exists or if He has been misleading us with vagaries unworthy of a superior being who ought to be able to do and say everything with the utmost clarity, what these writers claim is that there is no point in our worrying about tomorrow, because one way or another, everything that might happen has already happened, and as we have seen that is not quite the contradiction it might appear, because if the stone cannot be retrieved by the hand that threw it, we shall not escape the blow and wound if it has been well aimed and we do not get out of the way in time because we are distracted or unaware of the danger. In short, life is not only difficult, it is almost impossible, especially in those cases where in the absence of any apparent cause, the effect, if it can still be called that, raises questions, demanding that we should explain its basis and origin, and also its cause which in its turn it has started to become, inasmuch, as everyone knows, in this entire quadrille, it is up to us to find meanings and definitions, when we would rather close our eyes quietly and let this world go by, for it exercises much greater control over us than it allows us to exercise in return. If this should happen, that is to say, if we are confronted by what to all appearances looks like being an effect, and we can perceive no immediate or direct cause, the solution is to delay, to let time take its course, since the human species, about whom, let us remember, however absurd it may seem, we have no other opinion than that which it has of itself, is destined to await the effects for evermore, and go on seeking the causes for all eternity, at least, that is what it has done up to the present.

This conclusion, as providential as it is uncertain, allows us, by means of a subtle shift in the narrative plan, to return to the proof-reader Raimundo Silva at the precise moment when he is carrying out an act, the motives of which we ignore, distracted as we were in this exhaustive investigation of cause and effect, fortunately interrupted when it threatened to lapse into the traumas of existence and paralysing Angst. This action, like any other, is an effect, but its cause, probably just as obscure for Raimundo Silva, strikes us as being impenetrable, for it is difficult to understand, taking into account the details we know, why this man is pouring down the kitchen-sink that highly esteemed restorative lotion he had been using to mitigate the ravages of time. In fact, without a proper explanation, which only he himself could give, and not wishing to hazard any assumptions and hypotheses, which would be no more than reckless, foolhardy judgments, it becomes impossible to establish that desired and reassuring direct relationship which would convert any human life to an irresistible chain of logical facts, all of them braced to perfection with their points of support and calculated arrows. So let us content ourselves, at least for now, with the knowledge that Raimundo Silva, on the morning following his visit to the publisher, and after a night of relentless insomnia, went into his study, grabbed the concealed bottle of hair-dye, and within a second, barely enough time for any further hesitation, poured the entire contents into the sink and turning the tap on full, literally made that ingenious lotion, misnamed The Fountain of Youth, disappear in a flash from the face of the earth.

Having made this remarkable gesture, he then proceeded to follow the usual routine, mentioned here for the last time unless there should be any significant variation, such as shaving, having a bath, preparing something to eat, and then opening the window to air every nook and cranny in the apartment, the bed, for example, with the sheets drawn right back and already cold, without any vestige of restless insomnia, even less of the dreams he had when he finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, mere fragments, meaningless images where no light reaches, impenetrable even for the narrator, whom the ill-informed believe to know all the facts and to be holding all the keys, were this so, one of the good things the world still possesses would be lost, privacy, the mystery surrounding characters. The weather is still wet, but the rain much less heavy than yesterday, the temperature appears to have dropped, so he might as well close the window, especially now that the air has been freshened by the breeze coming in from the straits, Time to work.

The History of the Siege of Lisbon
is lying on the bedside table. Raimundo Silva picked up the book, allowed it to fall open by itself, the pages are as we know them, there will be no further reading. He went and sat at his desk, where the unfinished book of poems awaits him, that is to say he still has to finish the proof-reading, and he has only read one third of the novel, amended the odd lack of agreement, suggested some clarifications, and even discreetly corrected several spelling mistakes, after all, Costa assured him there was no urgency. Raimundo Silva put these obligatory tasks aside and, with
The History of the Siege of Lisbon
before him, rested his forehead on arched fingers and stared hard at the book, but soon no longer seeing it, as became apparent from the distracted expression that came into his face.
The History of the Siege of Lisbon
soon joined the novel and book of poems, the top of the desk has a clean, smooth surface,
tabula rasa,
to use the correct expression, the proof-reader sat there staring for a while, the vague sound of rain coming from outside, nothing more, the city appearing no longer to exist. Then Raimundo Silva reached out for a blank sheet of paper, also clean and smooth, also
tabula rasa,
and, at the top, with the clear, neat handwriting of a proof-reader, he wrote
The History of the Siege of Lisbon.
He underlined the words twice, touched up the odd letter, and the next moment was tearing up the sheet, he tore it four times, any less and it might still have served some purpose, any more would have seemed an obsessive precaution. He took another sheet of paper, but not to write, since he scrupulously laid it out so that all four sides were parallel with the four sides of the desk, this meant twisting his entire body, what he wants is something he can ask, What am I going to write, and then wait for the reply, wait until his vision becomes blurred and he can no longer see the white, sterile surface of the page, nothing except a muddle of words emerging from the depths like drowned bodies just about to sink once more, they have not seen enough of the world, that is all they came for, they will return no more.

What am I going to write, this is not the only question, because another occurred to him almost immediately, just as peremptory and with such a sense of urgency that we might be tempted to accept it as the effect of a sudden reflex, but prudence tells us that we should not return to the debate in which we lost ourselves earlier, and which would require us, lest we end up mentally confused once more, to draw a distinction between essential and intimate relationships and casual relationships, this at the very least, since it would tell us whether Raimundo Silva after having asked, What am I going to write, then asked, Where shall I begin. You could say the first question is the more important of the two, inasmuch as it will determine the objectives and lessons of the book he is about to write, but Raimundo Silva is unable and unwilling to go so far back that he will end up having to draft
A History of Portugal,
fortunately brief having begun so few years ago and because its end is already in sight, which is, as has been said,
The Siege of Lisbon
and, because of the inadequate narrative framework in this story which only begins at that moment when the crusaders rejected the king’s plea for help, then the second question assumes the character of a factual and chronological reference difficult to grasp, which is the same as asking in plain language, Where do I start from.