The Collected Novels of José Saramago (424 page)

The commanding officer is on his fourth or fifth reading of amadis. As in any other chivalric novel, there is no shortage of bloody battles, with arms and legs lopped off at the root and bodies sliced in two, which says a great deal for the brute force of those spiritual knights, given that the cutting virtues of metal alloys made of vanadium and molybdenum, to be found nowadays in any ordinary kitchen knife, were unknown then, indeed unimaginable, which just goes to show how far we have progressed, and in the right direction too. The book recounts in pleasurable detail the troubled loves of amadis of gaul and oriana, both of whom were the children of kings, although this did not prevent amadis being abandoned by his mother, who gave orders that he be placed in a wooden box, with a sword beside him, and put to sea, at the mercy of the maritime currents and the force of the waves. As for oriana, poor thing, she found herself, against her will, promised in marriage by her own father to the emperor of rome, when she had placed all her desires
and hopes in amadis, whom she had loved since she was seven and he was twelve, although physically he looked more like a fifteen-year-old. Seeing each other and falling in love had taken but one dazzling moment that continued to dazzle them all their lives. This was a time when knights errant had pledged to complete god’s work and eliminate evil from the planet. It was also a time when love was only deemed to be love if it was of an extreme and radical nature, when absolute fidelity was a spiritual gift as natural as eating and drinking are to the body. And speaking of bodies, it is worth pondering just what state amadis’s body would have been in, covered in scars as it was, when he embraced the perfect body of the peerless oriana. Armor, without the help of molybdenum and vanadium, would be of little use, and the narrator of the story makes no attempt to disguise the frailty of corselets and coats of mail. A simple blow with a sword was enough to render a helmet useless and to split open the head inside. It’s astonishing that those people survived into the present century. That’s what I’d like to do, sighed the commanding officer. He wouldn’t mind giving up the rank of captain, at least for a while, in exchange for setting out on horseback, like a new amadis of gaul, along the beaches of ilha firme or through the woods and mountains where the enemies of the lord were hiding. In times of peace, the life of a portuguese cavalry captain is one of complete idleness, and you really have to rack your brains to find something with which you can usefully occupy the empty hours of the day. The captain imagines amadis riding through the rugged countryside, with the pitiless stones punishing his horse’s hooves and his squire gandalim telling his friend that it is time to rest. This fantastical wish caused the captain’s thoughts to deviate onto an
entirely non-literary matter to do with the most basic rules of military discipline, that of carrying out orders. If the commanding officer had been able to enter into the cogitations of king dom joão the third at the moment we described earlier, when that royal personage imagined solomon and his entourage crossing the vast, monotonous lands of castile, he would not be here now, going up and down these ravines, dodging dangerous slopes, while the ox-driver tries to find paths that do not take him too far out of his way whenever the incipient and ill-defined tracks disappear beneath rubble and shale. Although the king did not actually express an opinion and no one dared ask him to opine on such a trivial matter, the general of the cavalry gave his approval, yes, the route across the plains of castile was definitely the best and the easiest, almost, one might say, a stroll in the country. This, then, was how things stood, and there would, it seemed, have been no reason to reconsider the itinerary had the king’s secretary, pêro de alcáçova carneiro, not happened to learn of this agreement and decided to intervene. What you are calling a stroll in the country, sir, is not, I feel, a good idea, he said, if we’re not very careful, it could have negative consequences of a serious, even grave nature, Well, I don’t see why, What if we should meet with difficulties in obtaining food or water supplies from the local population while we’re crossing castile, what if the people there refuse to do business with us, even though that goes against their own best interests at the time, That is a possibility, agreed the general, What if bandits, far more numerous there than here, seeing the meager protection given to the elephant, because, after all, a troop of thirty cavalrymen is nothing, Now there I must disagree with you, sir, the general broke in, if there had been thirty portuguese soldiers at thermopylae, for example, on whichever side, the battle would have turned out quite differently, Forgive me, sir, it was certainly not my intention to cast doubt upon the bravery of our glorious army, but, as I was saying, what if those bandits, who doubtless know the value of ivory, were to join forces and attack us, kill the elephant and tear out his tusks, Some claim that the hide of an elephant is impermeable to bullets, That may be true, but there would certainly be other ways of killing him, what I’m asking your majesty to consider, above all, is the shame that would befall us if we lost our gift to archduke maximilian in a skirmish with spanish bandits and on spanish territory, So what do you think we should do then, There is only one alternative to the castile route, our own, along the frontier, heading north, as far as castelo rodrigo, Those are very bad roads, said the general, you clearly don’t know the area, No, but we have no other option, and it does bring with it another advantage, Which is, That of being able to make most of the journey on portuguese soil, An important detail, no doubt about it, you think of everything, secretary.

Two weeks after this conversation, it became evident that the secretary, pêro de alcáçova carneiro, had not, in fact, thought of everything. A messenger from the archduke’s secretary arrived bearing a letter in which, amongst other trifles that seemed to have been deliberately included in order to distract the reader’s attention, he asked precisely where on the frontier the elephant would cross, because a detachment of spanish or austrian soldiers would be there to receive him. The portuguese secretary replied through the same messenger, informing him that they would cross the frontier at castelo
rodrigo, and then he immediately launched a counterattack. Now while such an expression may seem a gross exaggeration, bearing in mind that peace reigns between the two iberian countries, pêro de alcáçova carneiro’s sixth sense had reared up at the word used by his spanish colleague, receive. The man could have used such words as greet or welcome, but no, he had either said more than he intended or, as they say, the truth had slipped out by mistake. A few instructions to the cavalry captain on how to proceed will avoid any misunderstandings, thought pêro de alcáçova carneiro, if the other side is of the same mind. The result of this strategic planning is being announced by the sergeant, in another place and a few days later, at this very moment, There are two horsemen behind us, sir. The commanding officer looked at the approaching horses, which were obviously thoroughbreds judging by their long stride and their speed, and they were clearly in a hurry. The sergeant had ordered the column to halt, and just in case, made sure that a few muskets were kept discreetly trained on the new arrivals. Limbs shaking and foam dripping from their mouths, the horses were breathing hard when they came to a stop. The two riders greeted the officer and one of them said, We come bearing a message from secretary pêro de alcáçova carneiro for the commanding officer of the troops accompanying the elephant, I am that commanding officer. The man opened his knapsack and took out a piece of paper folded in four and sealed with the official stamp of the king’s secretary, then handed it to the commanding officer, who moved a few paces away in order to read it. When he rejoined them, his eyes were shining. He called the sergeant to one side and said, Sergeant, tell the quartermaster to give these men some food and prepare them some provisions for the journey back, Yes, sir, And announce that the time allowed today for the afternoon rest will be reduced by half, Yes, sir, We have to reach castelo rodrigo before the spanish do, which should be possible, since they, unlike us, have not been forewarned, And if we don’t, sir, the sergeant made so bold as to ask, We will, but anyway, the first to arrive will have to wait. As simple as that, the first to arrive will have to wait, it hardly seemed worth pêro de alcáçova carneiro writing such a letter. There must be more to it than that.

T
HE WOLVES APPEARED
the following day. Perhaps they had heard us mention them earlier and finally decided to show up. They don’t appear to have come in a spirit of war, possibly because the results of their hunting during the latter part of the night were enough to fill their stomachs, besides, a convoy like this of more than fifty men, many of them armed, instills a certain sense of respect and prudence, wolves might be bad, but they’re not stupid. They’re experts at weighing up the relative strength of the forces involved on either side and never let themselves be carried away by enthusiasm, never lose their heads, perhaps because they have no flag or military band to sweep them to glory, no, when they launch an attack, they do so in order to win, a rule to which, however, as we will see later on, there is the occasional exception. These wolves had never seen an elephant. It would not surprise us to learn that some of the more imaginative wolves, always assuming wolves have thought processes parallel to those of human beings, had thought how lucky it would be for the pack to have at its dis posal
all those tons of meat just outside the lair, the table always set for lunch, dinner and supper. The ingenuous canis lupus signatus, the latin name of the iberian wolf, does not know that the elephant’s skin is impervious to bullets, although one must, of course, bear in mind the enormous difference between old-fashioned bullets, which you could never be sure would go precisely where you wanted them to, and the teeth of these three representatives of the lupine race gazing down from the top of a hill at the lively spectacle of that column of men, horses and oxen preparing for the next stage of their journey to castelo rodrigo. It’s quite possible that solomon’s skin would not have resisted for long the concerted action of three lots of very sharp teeth honed over the centuries by the need to survive and to eat absolutely anything that crossed their path. The men are talking about the wolves, and one of them says to those nearby, If you’re ever attacked by a wolf and all you have is a stick to defend yourself with, on no account let the wolf get his teeth round it, Why, asked someone, Because the wolf will gradually work his way up the stick, all the time keeping a firm grip on the wood, until he’s close enough to pounce, Devilish creatures, To be fair, though, wolves are not the natural enemies of man, and if they sometimes appear to be, that’s only because we’re an obstacle to their having a free run of everything the world has to offer an honest wolf, Those three don’t look as if they harbor any particularly hostile intentions, They must have eaten already, besides there are too many of us for them to dare to attack, say, one of those horses, which for them would be a very tasty morsel indeed, There they go, shouted a soldier. It was true. The wolves, who, from the moment they arrived, had been sitting utterly motionless, silhou etted
against the backdrop of clouds, were now moving off, as if gliding rather than walking, until they disappeared, one by one. Will they be back, asked the soldier, Possibly, perhaps just to see whether or not we’re still here or if an injured horse has been left behind, said the man who knew about wolves. Up ahead, the bugle sounded the order to assemble. More or less half an hour later, the column lumbered into action, with the ox-cart at the front, followed by the elephant and the porters, then the cavalry and, bringing up the rear, the quartermaster’s wagon. They were all exhausted. Meanwhile, the mahout had informed the commanding officer that solomon was tired, not so much because of the distance they had traveled from lisbon, but because of the terrible state of the roads, if they merited that name. The commanding officer informed him that in a day or, at most, two, they would be within sight of castelo rodrigo, If we arrive first, he added, the elephant will be able to rest for however many days or hours it takes for the spanish to join us, as will everyone else in our party, men and beasts, And what if we arrive after them, That depends on how much of a hurry they’re in and what their orders are, although I imagine that they, too, will want at least one day’s repose, We’re in your hands, sir, and my one desire is that your interests might also be our interests, They are, said the commanding officer. He dug in his spurs and rode on ahead, to encourage the ox-driver, for the speed of the convoy’s progress depended in large measure on his driving skills, Come on, man, get those oxen moving, he shouted, it’s not far to castelo rodrigo now and it won’t be long before we can sleep under a roof again, And eat like human beings, I hope, said the ox-driver in a low murmur so that no one would hear him. At any rate, the command ing officer’s orders did not fall on deaf ears. The driver used his prod to urge the oxen on, then shouted a few words of encouragement in that dialect common to all ox-drivers, with immediate and effective results, an impetus that was maintained for the next ten minutes or quarter of an hour, or for as long as the ox-driver could keep the flame burning. Feeling more dead than alive, starving but too weary to eat, the convoy pitched camp when the sun had already set and night was upon them. Fortunately, the wolves had not come back. If they had, they would have been able to saunter round half the encampment and choose the most succulent victim from among the horses. True, such a grandiose theft would have come to no good, a horse being too large an animal to be dragged off just like that, but if they had succeeded, we would not have found words strong enough to describe the travelers’ fear when they realized that wolves had infiltrated the camp, and it would be a matter then of every man for himself. Let us give thanks to heaven that we were spared that test. Let us also thank heaven that the imposing towers of the castle have just come into view, it makes one feel like saying, as someone else once did, Today you will be with me in paradise, or, to use the commanding officer’s more down-to-earth words, Tonight we’ll sleep under a roof, but then, no two paradises are alike, some have houris and some do not, however, to find out just what kind of paradise we’re in, all we need do is peer round the door. With a wall to protect you from the cold north wind, a roof to keep off the rain and the damp night air, you need very little else to enjoy the greatest comfort in the world. Or the delights of paradise.