The Collected Novels of José Saramago (137 page)

That’s not good enough, said Jesus, to what others do You refer. Do you really have to know. I do. I refer to those who will escape martyrdom and die from natural causes after having suffered the torments of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and who in order to overcome them will have to mortify their bodies with fasting and prayer, there is even the amusing case of a certain John Schorn, who will spend so much time on his knees praying that he ends up with corns on his knees of all places, and some will say, this will interest you, he has trapped the devil inside a boot, ha ha ha. Me in a boot, said Pastor scornfully, these are old-wives’ tales, any boot capable of holding me would have to be as vast as the world, besides, I’d like to see who would be capable of putting the boot on and taking it off afterward. Perhaps only with fasting and prayer, suggested Jesus, whereupon God replied, They will also mortify their flesh with pain and blood and grime and innumerable penances, hair shirts and flagellation, there will be some who never wash and others who throw themselves onto brambles and roll in the snow to suppress carnal desires that are the work of Satan, who sends these temptations to lure souls from the straight and narrow path that leads to heaven, sends visions of naked women, terrifying monsters, abominable creatures, because lust and fear are weapons the demon uses to torment wretched mankind. Is this true, Jesus asked Pastor, who replied, More or less, I simply took what God didn’t want, the flesh with all its joys and sorrows, youth and senility, bloom and decay, but it isn’t true that fear is one of my weapons, I don’t recall having invented sin and punishment or the terror they inspire. Be quiet, God snapped, sin and the devil are one and the same thing. What thing is that, asked Jesus. My absence. How do your explain Your absence, is it because You withdraw or because mankind abandons You. I never withdraw, never. Yet You allow men to abandon You. Those who abandon Me come looking for Me. And when they do not find You, I suppose You blame the devil. No, he’s not to blame, I’m to blame, because I cannot reach out to those who seek Me, words uttered by God with an unexpected, poignant melancholy, as if He had suddenly found a limitation to His power. Jesus said, Go on.

There are others, God continued slowly, who go into the wilderness, where they lead solitary lives in caves and grottoes, with nothing but animals for company, and others who choose a monastic existence, and others who climb to the top of high pillars and sit there year in year out, and others, His voice fell and died away, God was now contemplating an endless procession of people, thousands upon thousands of men and women throughout the world entering convents and monasteries, some buildings rustic, many palatial, There they will remain to serve you and Me from morning until night, with vigils and prayers, all with the same mission and the same destiny, to worship us and die with our names on their lips, they will call themselves Benedictines, Cistercians, Carthusians, Augustinians, Gilbertines, Trinitarians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Capuchins, Carmelites, Jesuits, and there will be so many of them that I should dearly like to be able to exclaim, My God, why so many. At this point the devil said to Jesus, Note from what He has told us that there are two ways of parting with one’s life, through martyrdom and by renunciation, it isn’t enough for all these people to wait until their time comes, they must run to meet their deaths, be crucified, disemboweled, beheaded, burned at the stake, stoned, drowned, drawn and quartered, skinned alive, speared,
gored, buried alive, sawed in two, shot with arrows, mutilated, tortured, or to die in their cells, chapter houses, and cloisters, doing penance and mortifying the flesh God gave them, without which flesh they would have nowhere to put their souls, these punishments were not invented by the devil who is talking to you. Is that all, Jesus asked God. No, there are the wars and massacres. No need to tell me of massacres, I almost perished in one, and thinking it over, what a pity I didn’t, for then I would have been spared the crucifixion awaiting me. It was I who led your other father to the place where he overheard the soldiers’ conversation and therefore I who saved your life. You saved my life only in order to ordain my death at Your pleasure and convenience, as if killing me twice. The end justifies the means, My son. From what You have told me so far I can believe it, renunciation, cloisters, suffering, death, and now wars and massacres, what wars are they. One war after another and unending, especially those waged against you and Me in the name of a god who has yet to appear. How can there possibly be a god who has yet to appear, any true god can only have existed forever and ever. I know it’s difficult to understand or explain, but what I’m telling you will come to pass, a god will rise up against us and our followers, entire nations, no, there are no words to describe the massacres then, the bloodshed and slaughter, imagine my altar in Jerusalem multiplied a thousandfold, replace the sacrificial animals with men, even then you will have no idea what those crusades were like. Crusades, what are they, and why do You refer to them in the past if they have yet to take place. Remember, I am time, for Me all that will happen has happened already, all that has happened goes on happening every day. Tell me more about the crusades. Well, My son, this region where we now find ourselves, including Jerusalem, and other territories to the north and west, will be conquered by the followers of the god I mentioned, who has been slow in coming,
the followers on our side will do everything possible to expel them from the places you have traveled and I constantly frequent. You haven’t done much to rid this land of the Romans. Don’t distract me, I’m talking about the future. Go on, then. Furthermore, you were born, you lived, and you died here. I’m not dead yet. That’s irrelevant, because as I’ve just explained to you, for Me what will happen and what has happened are the same thing, and please stop interrupting, otherwise I’ll say no more. All right, I’ll be quiet. Now then, future generations will refer to this area as the holy places, because you were born, lived, and died here, so it didn’t seem fitting that the cradle of the religion you represent should fall into the hands of infidels, this justified the coming of great armies from the west, who for almost two hundred years fought to conquer and preserve for Christendom the cave where you were born and the hill where you will die, to mention only the most important landmarks. Are these armies the crusades. That’s right. And did they conquer what they wanted. No, but they slaughtered many people. What about the crusaders themselves. They lost just as many lives, if not more. And all this bloodshed in our name. They will go into battle crying, God wills it. And no doubt die crying, God willed it. Such a nice way to end one’s life. The sacrifice isn’t worth it. To save one’s soul, My son, the body must be sacrificed. And you, Pastor, what do you say about these amazing events that lie ahead. No one in his right mind can possibly suggest that the devil was, is, or ever will be responsible for so much bloodshed and death, unless some villain brings up that wicked slander accusing me of having conceived the god who will oppose this one here. No, you are not to blame, and should anyone blame you, you need only reply that if the devil is false, he could not have created a true god. Who, then, will create this hostile god, asked Pastor. Jesus was at a loss for an answer, and God, who had been silent, remained silent, but a voice came down from the mist and said, Perhaps this God and the one to come are the same god. Jesus, God, and the devil pretended not to hear, but could not help looking at one another in alarm, mutual fear is like that, it readily unites enemies.

Time passed, the mist did not speak again, and Jesus asked, now with the voice of one who expects an affirmative reply, Nothing more. God hesitated, then in a tired voice said, There is still the Inquisition, but if you don’t mind, we’ll discuss that some other time. What is the Inquisition. The Inquisition is another long story. Tell me. It’s best you don’t know, you will only feel remorse today for what belongs to tomorrow. And You won’t God, being God, feels no remorse. Well, since I’m already bearing this burden of having to die for You, I can also endure the remorse that ought to be Yours. I wanted to protect you. You’ve done nothing else from the day I was born. Like most children, you’re ungrateful. Let’s stop all this posturing, tell me about the Inquisition. Also known as the Tribunal of the Holy Office, the Inquisition is a necessary evil, we will use this cruel instrument to combat the disease that persistently attacks the body of your church in the form of wicked heresies and their harmful consequences along with a number of physical and moral perversions, which, lumped together without regard for order of importance, will include Lutherans and Calvinists, Molinists and Judaizers, sodomites and sorcerers, some of these plagues belong to the future, others can be found in every age. And if the Inquisition is a necessary evil, as You say, how will it proceed to eliminate these heresies. The Inquisition is a police force, a tribunal, and will therefore pursue, judge, and sentence its enemies as would any police force. Sentence them to what. Prison, exile, the stake. Did You say the stake. Yes, in days to come, thousands upon thousands of men and women will be burned at the stake. You mentioned some of them earlier. They will be burned alive because they believe in you, others because they doubt you. Isn’t it permitted to doubt me. No. Yet we’re allowed to doubt that the Jupiter of the Romans is god. I am the one and only Lord God, and you are My son. You say thousands will die. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, and on earth there will be much sighing and weeping and cries of anguish, the smoke from charred corpses will blot out the sun, human flesh will sizzle over live coals, the stench will be nauseating. And all this is my fault. You are not to blame, your cause demands it. Father, take from me this cup. My power and your glory demand that you drink it to the last drop. I don’t want the glory. But I want the power. The mist began to lift, and around the boat water could be seen, smooth, somber water undisturbed by a ripple of wind or the tremor of a passing fin. Then the devil interrupted, One has to be God to countenance so much blood.

The mist advanced again, something else was about to happen, some revelation, some new sorrow or new remorse. But it was Pastor who spoke, I have a proposal to make, he said, addressing God, and God, taken aback, replied, A proposal from you, and what proposal might that be. His tone, cynical and forbidding, would have reduced most to silence, but the devil was an old acquaintance. Pastor searched for the right words before explaining, I’ve been listening to all that has been said here in this boat, and although I myself have caught glimpses of the light and darkness ahead, I never realized that the light came from burning stakes and the darkness from great piles of bodies. Does this trouble you. It shouldn’t trouble me, for I am the devil, and the devil profits from death even more than You do, it goes without saying that hell is more crowded than heaven. Then why do you complain. I’m not complaining, I’m making a proposal. Go ahead, but be quick, I cannot loiter here for all eternity. No one knows better than You that the devil too has a heart. Yes, but you make poor
use of it. Today I use it by acknowledging Your power and wishing that it spread to the ends of the earth without the need of so much death, and since You insist that whatever thwarts and denies You comes from the evil I represent and govern in this world, I propose that You receive me into Your heavenly kingdom, my past offenses redeemed by those I will not commit in future, that You accept my obedience as in those happy days when I was one of Your chosen angels, Lucifer You called me, bearer of light, before my ambition to become Your equal consumed my soul and made me rebel against You. And would you care to tell Me why I should pardon you and receive you into My kingdom. Because if You grant me that same pardon You will one day promise left and right, then evil will cease, Your son will not have to die, and Your kingdom will extend beyond the land of the Hebrews to embrace the whole globe, good will prevail everywhere, and I shall stand among the lowliest of the angels who have remained faithful, more faithful than all of them now that I have repented, and I shall sing Your praises, everything will end as if it had never been, everything will become what it should always have been. I always knew you had a talent for leading souls astray, but I never heard you speak with such conviction and eloquence, you almost won me over. So You won’t accept or pardon me. No, I neither accept nor pardon you, I much prefer you as you are, and were it possible, I’d have you be even worse. But why. Because the good I represent cannot exist without the evil you represent, if you were to end, so would I, unless the devil is the devil, God cannot be God. Is that Your final word. My first and last, first because that was the first time I said it, last because I have no intention of repeating it. Pastor shrugged and said to Jesus, Never let it be said the devil didn’t tempt God, and getting to his feet, he was about to pass one leg over the side of the boat, but stopped and said, In your pack there is something that belongs to me. Jesus could not remember having taken the pack with him into the boat, but in fact there it was, rolled up at his feet, What thing, he asked, and on opening the pack he found nothing inside but the old black bowl he had brought from Nazareth. That’s it, that’s it, said the devil, picking up the bowl with both hands, One day this will be yours again, but you won’t know you have it. He tucked the bowl inside his coarse shepherd’s tunic and lowered himself into the water. Without looking at God, he said, as if addressing an invisible audience, Farewell forever, since that is what He has ordained. Jesus followed with his eyes as Pastor gradually swam off into the mist, from a distance he looked once more like a pig with pointed ears, and he was panting furiously, but anyone with a keen ear would have had no difficulty hearing the note of fear in it, fear not of drowning, what an idea, because the devil, as we have just learned, has no end, but of having to live forever. Pastor had disappeared behind the broken fringe of mist when God’s voice suddenly rang out in farewell, I will send a man named John to help, but you will have to prove to him that you are who you are. Jesus looked around, but God was no longer there. Just then the mist lifted and vanished, leaving the lake clear and smooth from mountain to mountain, there was no sign of the devil in the water, no sign of God in the air.