The Collected Novels of José Saramago (178 page)

They are sitting in pairs around the bonfire, Joaquim and Maria, José and Joana, Pedro and Constant, the night is a little chilly, but the sky is serene and clear, there are scarcely any stars to be seen, for the early-rising moon floods with light the flat countryside and the nearby rooftops of Villalar, whose friendly mayor raised no objections when this band of Spanish and Portuguese migrants sought to camp so close to the village, despite their being vagrants and peddlers and therefore likely to steal trade from local shopkeepers. The moon is not high but has already taken on that appearance we so enjoy admiring, that luminous disk that inspires trite verses and even more trite sentiments, a silken sieve sprinkling white dust over the submissive landscape. Then we exclaim, What lovely moonlight, and we try to forget the shudders of fear we experience when the heavenly body first appears, enormous, red, threatening, over the curving earth. After thousands and thousands of years, the nascent moon continues even today to dawn like a threat, like a sign of the approaching end, fortunately the anxiety lasts only a few minutes, the moon has risen, become small and white, we can breathe more easily. The animals, too, are fretful, a short time ago when the moon appeared the dog stood there staring at it, tense, rigid, perhaps it might have howled had it not been without vocal cords, but the dog bristled all over as if a frozen hand had ruffled its coat while stroking its back. There are moments when the world leaves its axis, we sense that nothing is secure, and if we could fully express what we are feeling, we would say, with an expressive absence of rhetoric, That was a close call.

What Pedro Orce knows about the history of Villalar we are about to find out once they finish their meal. As the flames of the bonfire dance in the still air, the travelers look at them pensively, stretch out their hands as if they were imposing them on or surrendering them to the flames, there is an ancient mystery in this relationship between us humans and fire, even under the open sky, as if we and the fire were inside the original cave, grotto, or matrix. Tonight it is José Anaiço’s turn to wash up, but there is no hurry, the hour is peaceful, almost gentle, the light of the flames flickers on their weather-beaten faces, the color of sunrise, the sun is of another order and alive, not dead like the moon, that is the difference.

And Pedro Orce tells them, You may not know this but many, many years ago, in 1521 there was a great battle here in Villalar, greater for its consequences than for the number of dead, because had it been won by the one who lost it, those of us who are alive today would have inherited a very different world. José Anaiço is well informed about the great battles of history, and if the question were fired at him, he would be able to run off without a moment’s hesitation some ten names, beginning classically with Marathon and Thermopylae and proceeding, without regard for chronology, through Austerlitz and Borodino, Marne and Monte Cassino, Ardennes and El Alamein, Poitiers and Alcàcer Quibir, and also Aljubarrota, which means nothing to the world and everything to us, these were paired for no special reason, But I’ve never heard of the Battle of Villalar, concluded José Anaiço, Well, that battle, explained Pedro Orce, took place when the communes of Spain rebelled against Emperor Charles V, a foreigner, but not so much because he was a foreigner, for in past centuries it was the most natural thing in the world for nations to find a king sneaking in through the back door, someone who spoke another language, the whole business was left to royal houses who gambled away their own countries along with those of others, I don’t mean dice or cards, but they played for dynastic interests, entering into fake alliances
and marriages of convenience, which is why one cannot really say that the communes rebelled against an unwanted king, nor should anyone imagine it was the eternal war of the poor against the rich, if only things were that simple, the fact is that the Spanish nobility did not approve, not in the slightest, of the Emperor’s having conferred appointments on so many foreigners, and one of the first measures taken by these new masters was to raise taxes, an infallible means of paying for luxuries and further ventures, in any event the first city to rebel was Toledo, and others soon followed its example, Toro, Madrid, Avila, Soria, Burgos, Salamanca, and so on and so forth, but the motives of some were not the motives of others, sometimes they coincided, yes indeed, but at other times they were in conflict, and if this was true of the cities it was even more true of the people living in them, certain nobles simply defended their own interests and ambitions and therefore changed sides depending on how the wind was blowing and what would benefit them. Now, as always happens, the people were involved in this for their own reasons, but especially for those of others, this has been the case since the world began, if people were all one, that would be fine, but people are not all one, that’s something we cannot get into our heads, not to mention that the masses are generally deceived, how often have their representatives ridden to parliament on their votes and once there, receiving bribes and threats, voted contrary to the will of those who sent them, and strange as it may seem, despite all these divergencies and contradictions, the communes were able to organize militias and fight the king’s army, needless to say battles were won and lost, the last battle was lost here in Villalar, and why, habit, mistakes, incompetence, betrayals, people got tired of waiting to be paid and deserted, battle ensued, some won, others lost, it was never discovered exactly how many members of the communes died here, by modern statistics not all that many, some put the figure at two thousand, others swore that there had been fewer than a thousand casualties, perhaps even as few as two hundred, we don’t know, nor are we ever likely to know, unless the graves are moved elsewhere one day and the skulk counted, because to count the other bones would only add to the confusion, three of the commune leaders were tried the following day, sentenced to death, and beheaded in the main square of Villalar, their names were Juan de Padilla, born in Toledo, Juan Bravo from Segovia, and Francisco Maldonado from Salamanca. This was the Battle of Villalar, and had it been won by those who lost, Spain’s destiny would have changed course. With moonlight such as this, one can imagine what the night and day of battle must have been like, it was raining, the fields were flooded, they fought up to their knees in mud, by modern standards, undoubtedly, few lost their lives, but one is tempted to say that the few who lost their lives in the wars of old had greater influence on history than the hundreds and thousands and millions who died in the twentieth century, the moonlight is the one thing that doesn’t change, it covers Villalar just as it covers Austerlitz or Marathon, or, Or Alcàcer Quibir, interrupted José Anaiço, What battle was that, Maria Guavaira asked, If that, too, had been won instead of lost, I can’t imagine what Portugal would be like today, replied José Anaiço, I once read in a book that your King Dom Manuel fought in this war, said Pedro Orce, In the textbooks I teach from there’s no mention that the Portuguese went to war with Spain at that time, It wasn’t fought by the Portuguese themselves, but by fifty thousand crusaders lent by your king to the Emperor, I see, said Joaquim Sassa, with fifty thousand crusaders in the royal forces the communes were bound to lose, for the crusaders always win.

This night Constant dreamed that it went to unearth bones on the battlefield, it had already gathered one hundred and twenty-four skulls when the moon went down and the earth turned dark, then the dog went back to sleep. Two days later, some boys playing soldiers in the fields reported to the mayor that they had found a heap of skulls in a field of wheat, and no one ever discovered how they came to be there, all gathered into a pile. But the housewives of Villalar have nothing but good to say of those Portuguese and Spaniards who came with a wagon and have already left, For price and quality they were the most honest peddlers who had ever passed this way.

Overcome evil with good, the ancients used to say, and with good reason, at least they put their time to good use by judging facts that were then new in the light of facts that were already old. Nowadays we make the mistake of adopting a skeptical attitude toward the lessons of antiquity. The President of the United States of America promised that the peninsula would be welcome, and Canada, as we will see, was not pleased. As the Canadians point out, Unless the peninsula changes course, it is we who will be playing host and then we’ll have two Newfoundlands here instead of one, little do the people on the peninsula know, poor devils, what awaits them, biting cold, frost, the only advantage for the Portuguese is that they will be close to supplies of that cod they’re so fond of. They will lose their summers but have more to eat.

The spokesman at the White House hastened to explain that the President’s speech had been prompted fundamentally by humanitarian considerations without aspiring to political supremacy, especially since the countries of the peninsula had not ceased to be sovereign and independent just because they had gone floating off over the waters, they will have to come to a halt one day and be like every other country, and then added, For our part, we solemnly guarantee that the traditional good-neighbor policy between the United States and Canada will not be affected by any eventuality, and as proof of America’s desire to maintain friendly relations with the great Canadian nation, we propose setting up a bilateral committee to examine the various problems arising in the context of this dramatic transformation of the world’s political and strategic physiognomy, which certainly constitutes a first step toward the birth of a new international community comprising the United States, Canada, and now the Iberian countries, who will be invited to participate as observers at this meeting since they are still not physically close enough for there to be any immediate prospect of specifying the eventual form of this integration.

Canada publicly expressed its satisfaction with this explanation but let it be known that it considered an early meeting to be inopportune, arguing that any terms proposed might well offend patriotic sensitivities within Portugal and Spain, and suggesting as an alternative a quadrilateral conference to examine what measures should be taken to deal with any violent opposition once the peninsula reached the Canadian coast. The United States agreed forthwith, and its leaders silently thanked God for having created the Azores, for if the peninsula had not veered northward but had moved consistently in a straight line after breaking away from Europe, the city of Lisbon would definitely have remained with its windows facing toward Atlantic City, and after much reflection they came to the conclusion that the more it veered north the better, just imagine what it would be like if Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Providence, and Boston were to be transformed into inland cities with the inevitable decline in the standard of living. There is no doubt that the President had been much too hasty when he made that initial statement. In a subsequent exchange of confidential diplomatic notes, followed by secret meetings of high-ranking officials, Canada and the United States agreed that the best solution would be to arrest the peninsula en route, if at all possible at a point sufficiently close for it to remain outside the European sphere of influence but sufficiently remote to avoid causing any immediate or indirect damage to Canadian and American interests, and meanwhile to set up a committee charged with amending their respective immigration laws so as to strengthen discretionary clauses and discourage the Spanish and Portuguese from thinking that they can enter the North American countries at will on the pretext that we are all close neighbors now.

The governments of Portugal and Spain protested at the discourtesy of these powers that thus presumed to dispose of their interests and destinies, the Portuguese government with greater vehemence in view of the oaths it swore as a government of national salvation. Thanks to initiatives on the part of the Spanish government, contact will be established between the two peninsular countries to draw up a joint plan for exploiting the new situation to the fullest, in Madrid it is feared that the Portuguese government will enter these negotiations with the tacit hope that sometime in the future it will derive special benefits from its greater proximity to the coasts of Canada and the United States, but that depends. And it is known, or believed to be known, that in certain Portuguese political circles there is a campaign in favor of a bilateral agreement, albeit of a nonofficial nature, with the region of Galicia, which evidently won’t please the central powers in Spain at all, intolerant as they are of irredentism, however disguised. There are even some who cynically claim and spread the word that none of this would have happened if Portugal had been on the other side of the Pyrenees, or, better still, had clung to the Pyrenees when the rupture occurred. That would have been one way of ending once and for all this habit of reducing the peninsula to a single country, this problem of being Iberian, but the Spaniards are deceiving themselves, for the problem will persist, and we need say no more. The days before reaching the shores of the New World are counted, a plan of action is under way so that negotiations may get under way at the right moment, neither too soon nor too late, this, after all, is the golden rule of diplomacy.