The Collected Novels of José Saramago (100 page)

As for Mary’s talents, these are even less apparent, but no more than we might expect of a sixteen-year-old girl who, although married, is still a baby, as it were, for even in those days people used such expressions. Notwithstanding her frail appearance, she works as hard as all the other women, carding, spinning, and weaving cloth, baking the family bread each morning, fetching water from the well and then carrying it up the steep slope, a large pitcher balanced on her head and another on her hip. In the late afternoon she sets off through the byways and fields of the Lord, gathering wood and cutting stubble and filling an extra basket with cow’s dung and the thistles and briers that thrive on the upper slopes of Nazareth, the best thing God could ever have devised for lighting a fire or braiding a crown. It would have been easier to load everything onto a donkey’s back, but Joseph needs the beast to carry his lumber. Mary goes barefoot to the well, goes barefoot into the fields, in clothes that are forever getting soiled and torn and that constantly need washing and mending, because new clothes are reserved for her husband, women like Mary making do with very little. When she attends the synagogue, she enters by the side door, as the law requires of women, and even if she finds thirty other women there, or all the women of Nazareth, or even the entire female population of Galilee, they must wait until at least ten men arrive for the service, in which the women will participate only passively. Unlike Joseph her husband, Mary is neither upright nor pious, but she is not to blame for this, the blame lies with the language she speaks if not with the men who invented it, because that language has no feminine form for the words upright and pious.

Now one fine day, four weeks after that unforgettable morning when the clouds in the sky turned a mysterious violet, Joseph happened to be at home. The sun was about to set and he was sitting on the floor, eating his food with his fingers, as was then the custom, while Mary stood waiting for him to finish before having her own supper. Neither spoke, for he had nothing to say and she was unable to express what was on her mind. Suddenly a beggar appeared at the gate outside, a rare occurrence in this village, where people were so poor, a fact unlikely to have escaped the begging fraternity, which had a nose for places where there were pickings, and that was certainly not the case here. Nevertheless Mary ladled into a bowl a good portion of the lentils with chopped onions and mashed chickpeas set aside for her own supper, and took it out to the beggar, who sat on the ground. She did not need her husband’s spoken permission, he merely nodded, for as everyone knows those were times when words were few and a simple thumbs down or up was enough to condemn a man to death or save him, as in the arenas of ancient Rome. The sunset, although quite different, was spectacular, too, with its myriad wisps of cloud scattered through the sky, rose-colored, mother-of-pearl, salmon-pink, cherry, adjectives used here on earth so that we may understand one another, for none of these colors, as far as we know, have names in heaven. The beggar must have gone without food for three days to have scraped and licked his bowl clean so quickly, and back he comes to return the bowl and express his gratitude. Mary, opening the door, finds him standing there, but somehow he looks broader and taller than before. So it must be true that there is a great difference between going hungry and just having eaten, for this man’s face and eyes are glowing, his tattered clothes flap in a strange wind, blurring her vision so that his rags take on the appearance of rich raiment, a sight that must be seen to be believed. Mary put out her hands to receive the earthenware bowl, which, through some extraordinary optical illusion, perhaps due to the light of the sky, was transformed into a vessel of the purest gold. And, as the bowl passed from his hands into hers, the beggar said in resonant tones, because even the poor man’s voice had changed, May the Lord bless you, good woman, and give you all the children your husband desires, and may He also protect you from my sad fate, for, alas, I have nowhere to rest my head in this wretched world. Mary held the bowl in cupped hands, one chalice held by another, as if waiting for the beggar to fill it, which is what he did. Without warning he bent down and gathered a handful of earth and, raising his arm, allowed it to trickle through his fingers while reciting in a low voice, Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, nothing begins without coming to an end, every beginning comes from an ending. Mary was puzzled and asked him, What does that mean, but the beggar simply replied, Good woman, you have a child in your womb and that is man’s only destiny, to begin and end, to end and begin. How do you know I’m with child. Even before the belly swells, a child can be seen shining through its mother’s eyes. If that is true, then my husband would already have seen his child in my eyes. Perhaps he does not look at you when you look at him. Who are you who knows so much without hearing it from my own lips. I am an angel, but tell no one.

Then his shining robe turned back to rags, he shriveled as if licked by fire, and this wondrous transformation took place just in time, thanks be to God, for no sooner had the beggar quietly disappeared than Joseph emerged in the doorway, his suspicions aroused by whispering voices and Mary’s absence. What else did the beggar want, he asked, and Mary, at a loss for words, could only repeat, From earth to earth, from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust, nothing begins without coming to an end, nothing ends without having a beginning. Was that what he said. Yes, and he also said that a father’s child shines through its mother’s eyes. Look at me. I am looking. I can see a light in your eyes, said Joseph, and Mary told him, It must be your child. As the evening sky changed from blue to the somber shades of night, the bowl began to glow with a radiance that changed Mary’s face, and her eyes seemed to belong to a much older woman. Are you pregnant, Joseph finally asked her. Yes, I am, replied Mary. Why didn’t you tell me sooner. I meant to tell you today, I was waiting for you to finish eating. And then the beggar turned up. That’s right. What else did he have to say, for he certainly took his time. That the Lord should give me all the children you wished for. What do you have in that bowl to make it shine so. Nothing but earth. Soil is black, clay green, and sand white, of these three sand alone shines in the day, but it is night. Forgive me, I am only a woman and cannot explain these things. You say he took some earth from the ground and dropped it into the bowl, at the same time uttering the words, Earth to earth. Yes, those very words.

Joseph went to open the gate, looked right and left. No sign of him, he’s vanished, he told her, and feeling reassured, Mary returned to the house, for the beggar, if he really was an angel, could only be seen if he wished. She set the bowl down on the stone slab of the hearth, took a live coal from the fire and lit the oil lamp, blowing until she raised a tiny flame. Puzzled, Joseph came inside, tried to hide his suspicions, moved with the solemnity of a patriarch, which looked odd in someone so young. Furtively he examined the bowl filled with luminous earth, his expression ironic and skeptical, but if he was trying to assert
superiority, he was wasting his time, for Mary’s eyes were lowered and her thoughts elsewhere. Using a small stick, Joseph poked at the earth, fascinated as he watched it darken when disturbed, only to regain its brilliance, light sparkling in all directions over the dull surface. There’s a mystery here I can’t fathom, either the beggar brought this earth with him and you thought he gathered it here, or there is some magic at work, for who ever saw shining earth in Nazareth. Mary remained silent. She was eating what was left of her lentils with bread dipped in oil. As she broke bread, she observed the holy law by giving thanks in the humble tone befitting a woman, Praise be to You, Adonai, Lord God and King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. She continued eating in silence while Joseph mused at length, as if interpreting a verse from the Torah in the synagogue or a phrase from the prophets, the words Mary had spoken, words he himself spoke when breaking bread, and he tried to imagine what grain might grow out of luminous earth, what bread it would produce, and what light we would carry within us if we ate such bread. Are you sure the beggar took it from the ground, he asked Mary a second time, and Mary answered, Yes, I’m sure. Perhaps it was shining all the time. No, it wasn’t shining on the ground. This should have allayed the fears of any husband, but Joseph believed, like all men at that time and in that place, that the truly wise man is on his guard against the wiles and deceptions of women. To converse little with them and pay them even less heed must be the motto of a prudent husband mindful of the advice of Rabbi Josephat ben Yochanan, for at the hour of death each man must give account of any idle conversations he has held with his wife. Joseph asked himself whether this conversation with Mary was necessary, and having decided that it was, given the unusual nature of what had happened, he swore to himself that he would never forget the holy words of the rabbi, his namesake, for Josephat is the same as Joseph, rather than suffer remorse at the hour of death, which, God willing, will be peaceful. Then he asked himself whether he should tell the elders of the synagogue about this curious affair of the mysterious beggar and the luminous earth, and decided he should, to ease his conscience and keep the peace in his own home.

Mary finished eating. She took the bowls outside to wash them, but not the bowl used by the beggar. There are now two lights in the house, that of the oil lamp struggling valiantly against the darkness of night, and the aura from the bowl, flickering yet constant, like a sun that is slow in appearing. Seated on the floor, Mary waits for her husband to resume the conversation, but Joseph has nothing more to say to her, he is mentally rehearsing the speech he will make tomorrow before the council of elders. How frustrating it is, not to know precisely what transpired between his wife and the beggar, not to know what else they might have said to each other, but he decides to question her no further. He might as well believe the story she has now told him twice, because if she is lying, he will never know, while she will know and almost certainly be laughing at him, her mantle covering her face, just as Eve laughed at Adam, but behind his back, for in those days people did not wear mantles. One thought led to another, and Joseph soon convinced himself that the beggar had been sent by Satan. The great tempter, aware that times had changed and that people were now more cautious, was offering not one of nature’s fruits but the promise of a different, luminous soil, counting once more on the credulity and weakness of women. Joseph’s mind is in turmoil, but he is pleased with himself and the conclusion he has reached. Unaware of her husband’s tortuous thoughts about Satan’s intrigue, Mary is troubled by a strange feeling of emptiness now that she has told him of her pregnancy. Not an inner emptiness, to be sure, for she knows perfectly well that her womb, and in the strict sense of the word, is full, but an outer emptiness, as if the world has receded and become remote. She recalls, but as if evoking another life, that after supper and before unrolling the mats for the night she always had some task in hand to fill the hours, but now she feels no inclination whatever to rise from where she sits gazing at the light that glows back at her over the rim of the bowl, gazing and awaiting the birth of her child. If truth be told, her thoughts are not that clear, for thought, when all is said and done, as others and we ourselves have observed before, is like a great ball of thread coiled around itself, loose in places, taut in others, inside our head. It is impossible to know its full extent, one would have to unwind and then measure it, but however hard one tries or pretends to try, this cannot be done without assistance. One day, someone will come and tell us where to cut the cord that ties man to his navel and thought to its origin.

The following morning, after a restless night in which he was constantly disturbed by the same nightmare, where he saw himself falling time and time again inside an enormous upturned bowl as if under a starry sky, Joseph went to the synagogue to seek the advice of the elders. His story was extraordinary, though more extraordinary than he knew because, as we know, he had not been told the whole story. Were it not for the high esteem in which he was held by the old men of Nazareth, he would have had to go home with his tail between his legs and the reproachful words of Ecclesiasticus in his ears, To trust a man hastily shows a shallow mind. And he, poor fellow, would not have had the presence of mind to reply with words from the same Ecclesiasticus, regarding the dream that had haunted him all night, What you see in a dream is but a reflection, a face in a mirror. When he finished telling his story, the elders looked at one another and then at Joseph, and the oldest man there, translating the silent mistrust of the council into a direct question, asked, Is this the truth you have spoken, whereupon the carpenter replied, The truth, the whole truth, as God is my witness. The elders then debated among themselves while Joseph waited at a discreet distance, until finally they summoned him and said that they would send three envoys to question Mary herself about this mysterious event in order to discover the identity of the beggar whom no one else had seen, by learning what he looked like, the exact words he used, and if anyone could remember seeing him beg for alms in Nazareth or provide any information about the stranger. Joseph was pleased because, although he would never admit it, he did not want to confront his wife alone. Her habit in recent days of keeping her eyes lowered was beginning to disconcert him. There was modesty in it, but also, unmistakably, something provocative, as in the look of a woman who knows more than she is prepared to disclose or wants others to notice. Verily I say unto you, the treachery of women knows no limits, especially when they feign innocence.

And so the envoys depart, Joseph leading the way, and they are Abiathar, Dothan, and Zacchaeus, names recorded here to forestall any suspicion of historical inaccuracy in the minds of those who have acquired their version of the story from other sources, a version perhaps more in accordance with tradition but not necessarily more factual. The names having been revealed and the existence of the men who used them established, there can be no remaining doubts. The unusual sight of three elders moving in solemn procession through the streets, their robes and beards caught by the breeze, soon drew the local urchins, who gathered around them and began aping their walk as children will, jeering and shouting and chasing after the envoys all the way from the synagogue to the house of Joseph, who was much put out by this boisterous parade. Attracted by the noise, women began to appear in the doorways of the neighboring houses and, sensing something amiss, they sent their children to find out what such a delegation was doing at Mary’s door. To no avail, because only the elders were allowed to enter. The door was firmly closed behind them, and no woman of Nazareth, however inquisitive, learned or knows to this day what took place in the house of Joseph, the carpenter. Forced to invent something to satisfy the hunger of their curiosity, they accused the beggar, whom they had never set eyes on, of being a common thief. A great injustice, because the angel, if angel is what he was, did not steal the food he ate, and even delivered a holy prophecy in exchange. While the two senior elders interrogated Mary, the third, the youngest, Zacchaeus, went around the immediate vicinity gathering any details people could remember about a beggar who answered the description given by the carpenter’s wife, but none of the neighbors could help, No, sir, no beggar passed this way yesterday, and if he did, he didn’t knock at my door, it must have been a thief passing through, who when he found someone at home pretended to be a beggar and then left in a hurry, the oldest trick in the book.