The Collected Novels of José Saramago (188 page)

T
HE PROOF-READER
has a name, he is called Raimundo. It is time that we should know the person about whom we have been talking indiscreetly, if name and surnames could ever add anything useful to the normal identifying features and other statistics, age, height, weight, morphological type, skin tone, colour of eyes, whether the hair is smooth, curly or wavy, or has simply disappeared, timbre of voice, clear or harsh, characteristic gestures, manner of walking, since experience of human relationships has shown that, once apprised of these details and sometimes many more, not even this information serves any purpose, nor are we capable of imagining what might be missing. Perhaps only a wrinkle, or the shape of the nails, or the thickness of the wrist, or the line of an eyebrow, or an old invisible scar, or simply the surname that has never been mentioned, the one that is most esteemed, in this case Silva, his complete name being Raimundo Silva, for that is how he introduces himself when necessary, omitting the Benvindo which he does not like. No one is satisfied with his lot in life, this is generally true, and Raimundo Silva, who above all else should appreciate being called Benvindo, which says precisely what it means, bem-vindo or welcome to life, my son, but no Sir, he does not like the name, and fortunately, says he, the tradition has been lost whereby one’s godparents settled the delicate question of proper names, although he recognises that he is very pleased with Raimundo, a name which somehow conveys the solemnity of another age. Raimundo’s parents expected that an inheritance from the woman who had accepted to be his godmother would provide for their son’s future, and for this reason, since it was the custom only to give the godfather’s name, they added that of the godmother in the masculine form. Destiny, as we well know, does not look after everything in quite the same manner, but in this case some concurrence has to be acknowledged between the possessions from which he was never to benefit and a name so resolutely disclaimed, although no one should suspect the existence of a relationship of cause and effect between his disappointment and disavowal. Raimundo Benvindo Silva’s motives, which at no time in his life had been provoked by resentful frustration, nowadays are either merely aesthetic, for he does not like the sound of those two gerunds stuck together, or, in a manner of speaking, ethical and ontological, because according to his disillusioned way of thinking, only the darkest irony would expect anyone to believe that we are truly welcome in this world, without contradicting the evidence of those who find themselves nicely settled.

The river can be seen from the verandah, a narrow projection from another age beneath a porch which still has its coffered ceiling, and it is an immense sea which the eye can capture between one ray and the next, from the red line of the bridge to the flat marshlands of Pancas and Alcochete. A dank mist covers the horizon, brings it almost within reach, what can be seen of the city is reduced to this side, with the cathedral below, halfway down the slope, and staggered roof-tops, descending to the dark, murky water, where a fleeting backwash of white spume opens up as a boat quickly passes, others navigate with difficulty, sluggish, as if they were struggling against a current of mercury, this last comparison being more appropriate at night, rather than at this hour. Raimundo got up later than usual, he had worked into the early hours, a long, drawn-out stint, and when he opened the window in the morning, he was confronted by mist, thicker than the one we are seeing at this hour, noon, when the weather must decide whether it is going to get worse or clear up, as the saying goes. Just then the cathedral towers were nothing other than a faint blur, of Lisbon there was nothing more than the sound of voices and indeterminate sounds, the window-frame, the first roof, a car travelling along the street. The blind muezzin had raised his cry to the heavens, the morning luminous, crimson, and then blue, the colour of the atmosphere between here on earth and the sky overhead, should we choose to believe in the blinkered eyes with which we see the world, but the proof-reader, on this day which is almost as blurred as his blindness, simply muttered, with the ill humour of someone who, after a restless night with troubled dreams about siege, broadswords, cutlasses and deadly slings, is annoyed upon awakening, to find that he cannot recall how these weapons of war were made, we are talking about the slings, and more could be said about the deep conversations of the person who was dreaming, but let us not fall into the temptation of anticipating the facts, for the moment we need only regret the lost opportunity of finally discovering what kind of weapon those so-called slings were, how they were loaded and fired, for it is not all that rare for great mysteries to be revealed in dreams, and amongst them we do not include the winning number in the lottery, the utmost banality and unworthy of any self-respecting dreamer. Still in bed, a puzzled Raimundo Silva was asking himself why he should be so concerned about deadly slings, or catapults as they were sometimes called, and just as effective. Known in Portuguese as
baleares,
the name has nothing to do with the Balearic Islands but comes from the Portuguese word
bala
meaning a pellet or shot, and these as we know are missiles, stones which were fired at walls or over the top of fortifications and aimed at houses and their terrified occupants, but the word
bala
was not in use at the time, words cannot be transported lightly here and there, back and forth, so watch out, otherwise someone will come along and say, I don’t understand. He dozed off, remained like that for ten minutes, and on reawakening, now lucid, he dismissed any further thought of those weapons and rashly allowed the images of swords and scimitars to occupy his mind, he smiled in the shadows of the room, for he was well aware that these are obvious phallic symbols, almost certainly drawn into his dream by
The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
yet undoubtedly rooted in himself, for if sharp pointed weapons can be said to have roots, embedded as they are, you only had to look at the empty bed beside him in order to understand everything. Lying on his back, he crossed his arms over his eyes, and murmured prosaically, One more day, he had not heard the muezzin, how would a deaf Moor of that religious persuasion make sure that he did not miss prayers, especially morning prayers, he would surely ask a neighbour, In the name of Allah, knock loudly on my door and go on knocking until I come to open it. Virtue is not as easy as vice, but it can be aided.

No woman lives in this house. Twice weekly a woman comes from outside, but do not imagine that the empty side of the bed has anything to do with these visits, they meet other needs, and let it be said here and now, that in order to satisfy more pressing urges, the proof-reader goes down to the city, hires a woman, relieves himself and pays, he has always had to pay, no other solution, even when he did not get any satisfaction, for that word has more than one meaning contrary to popular belief. The woman who does not live in is what we might call a daily help, she does his washing, tidies up and does the essential chores, prepares a large pot of soup, always the same, white beans with greens, which will last for several days, not because the proof-reader does not like other food, but this was catered for by going to restaurants, which he frequents from time to time, without making a habit of it. So there is no woman in this house, nor has there ever been. The proof-reader Raimundo Benvindo Silva is a bachelor and has no intention of getting married, I’m in my fifties, he says, who is going to love me at my age, or who am I going to love, although, as everyone knows, it is easier to love than be loved, and this last comment, which sounds like the echo of some past sorrow, now transformed into a precept for the benefit of the presumptuous, this comment, as well as the preceding question, he addresses to himself, for he is much too reserved a man to go around pouring out his heart to those friends and acquaintances he is bound to have, although there will probably be no need to bring them into the story, judging from thè way it is going. He has no brothers or sisters, his parents had died in due course, his relatives, if there are any left, have dispersed, and whenever he receives any news of them, it scarcely brings any reassurance, happiness has gone, there is little point in mourning, and the only thing really close to him are the proofs he is reading, for so long as they might last, the error he must ferret out, and also the odd problem that might arise, although best to let the authors cope since they are the ones who take all the credit, such as this nagging doubt about deadly slings which has come back to haunt him and refuses to go away. Raimundo Silva finally got up, searched for his babouches with his feet, Slippers, slippers, which is the proper term, and he moved into his study while pulling his dressing-gown over his pyjamas. From time to time, the charlady makes some solemn declaration about the need to remove the dust from his books, especially on the upper shelves, where he has placed the ones he rarely consults, the dust is more like an alluvial deposit that has accumulated throughout the centuries, a dust as black as ashes that has come from who knows where, it cannot have been caused by tobacco smoke, because the proof-reader gave up smoking ages ago, it is the dust of time, and there is nothing more to be said. Yet for some reason which remains unclear, the task is always being postponed, one suspects to the satisfaction of his charlady who, absolved ill her own eyes by good intentions, never fails to remind him, You can’t blame me.

Raimundo searches in the dictionaries and encyclopaedias, he consults
Weapons, The Middle Ages,
he consults
War Machines,
and finds the common terms for the primitive arms of the time, suffice it to say that in those days you could not kill the man you were aiming at if he were two hundred paces away, a serious loss, beyond comparison, and when it came to hunting, unless he possessed a bow or crossbow, the hunter had to grapple bare-handed with a bear or the antlers of a stag or the tusks of a wild boar, the only sport involving such dangerous risks nowadays is bullfighting and the toreadors are the last of those ancient warriors. No explanation is to be found anywhere in these weighty volumes, no drawing provides even the vaguest idea of what this deadly weapon looked like that so terrified the Moors, but this lack of information is nothing new for Raimundo Silva, what he now wants to know is why the sling was called
balear à funda,
and he goes from book to book, searches over and over again, loses his patience, until finally, the precious and inestimable Bouillet informs him that the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands were considered in ancient times to be the best archers in the world, that was the obvious explanation, and this is how these islands came to get their name, for the Greek word meaning to shoot is
ballô,
nothing could be clearer, any run-of-the-mill proof-reader is capable of spotting the direct etymological link between
ballô
and Balearic, the mistake in the Portuguese, Sir, having been to describe the sling as
balear
when
balearica
would have been more correct. But Raimundo Silva will not amend it, old habits die hard, usage sometimes becomes law, if not always, and the first of the ten commandments observed by a proof-reader aspiring to sanctity is that you must always try to avoid upsetting the author. He put the book back in its place, opened the window, and at that moment felt the mist on his face, thick, really dense, and if instead of the towers of the cathedral the minaret of the great mosque was still standing, he certainly would not be able to see it, the minaret was so slender, ethereal, almost immaterial, and then, if this were the hour, the muezzin’s voice would come down from the white sky, directly from Allah, for once singing his own praises, something we cannot entirely censure him for, being who He is, He must surely know Himself.

It was mid-morning when the telephone rang. A call from the publisher who wanted to know how the proofs were coming along, the first to speak was Monica from the Production department, who, like everyone else working in this section, has a tendency to speak in the following high-faluting terms, Senhor Silva, she said, Production wishes to inquire, it is almost as if we were hearing, Your Royal Highness should know, and she repeats as court heralds used to repeat, Production wishes to inquire about the proofs, how soon
do you expect to deliver them, but despite all the years they have known each other, Monica has not yet realised that Raimundo Silva hates being addressed simply as Silva, not because he finds the name as common as that of Santo or Sousa, but because he feels the absence of that Raimundo, therefore he replied curtly, unfairly offending Monica, sensitive creature that she is, Tell them the work will be ready tomorrow, I shall tell them, Senhor Silva, I shall tell them, and before she could say another word the telephone was snatched from her hand by someone else, Costa speaking, Raimundo Silva here, the proof-reader managed to reply, Yes, I know, the point is that I need the proofs today, my schedule is getting out of hand, and unless I get the book to the printers by tomorrow morning all hell will be let loose, and just because you’re late with the proofs, Given the type of book, content, and number of pages, the proof-reading has taken no longer than you might expect, Don’t you tell me what I should expect, I want the work finished, Costa had raised his voice, a sign that one of the bosses must be within hearing, a director, perhaps even the owner himself. Raimundo Silva took a deep breath and pointed out, Proofs corrected in a hurry invariably leads to mistakes, And books that come out late prejudice sales, clearly, the owner must be listening in on the conversation, but Costa goes on to say, Let me tell you that it’s preferable to let a couple of misprints pass than to lose a day’s business, no, the owner is not present, nor the director, nor the boss, otherwise Costa would not so readily have approved of misprints for the sake of getting the book out quickly. It’s a question of criteria, replied Raimundo Silva, but the implacable Costa warned him, Don’t talk to me about criteria, I know all too well what your criteria are, and as for mine, they are quite simple, I need those proofs without fail by tomorrow, so it’s up to you, the ball is in your court, I’ve already explained to Monica that the work will be ready by tomorrow, It must be at the press by tomorrow, It’ll be there, you can send someone to collect it at eight o’clock, That’s much too early, at that hour the press is still closed, Then send for them whenever you like, I have no more time to waste, and he rang off. Raimundo is accustomed to Costa’s insolence which he does not take to heart, rudeness without malice in the case of poor Costa, who never stops talking about the Production, one has to keep to a strict schedule in Production, yes, Sir, says he, there may be authors, translators and proof-readers and jacket designers involved, but if it weren’t for our little Production team, I’d like to see what all their skills would achieve, a publishing house is like a football team, some showy moves on the forward line up front, lots of passes, much dribbling, lots of headers, but if the goalkeeper turns out to be paralysed or rheumaticky, all is lost, farewell championship, and Costa sums it up, this time with algebraic precision, In publishing, the Production department is like the goalkeeper of a football team. Costa is right.