The Collected Novels of José Saramago (266 page)

The cleaning woman went to the harbormaster’s office to collect the keys, then she boarded the boat,
where two things proved useful to her, the palace broom and the warning about the seagulls, she was only halfway up the gangplank joining the side of the ship to the quay when the wretches hurled themselves upon her, screaming furiously, beaks open, as if they wanted to devour her on the spot. They didn’t know who they were dealing with. The cleaning woman set down the bucket, slipped the keys down her cleavage, steadied herself on the gangplank and, whirling the broom about her as if it were a broadsword of old, managed to scatter the murderous band. It was only when she actually boarded the ship that she understood the seagulls’ anger, there were nests everywhere, many of them abandoned, others still with eggs in them, and a few with nestlings waiting, mouths agape, for food, That’s all very well, but you’re going to have to move house, a ship about to set sail in search of the unknown island can’t
leave looking like a henhouse, she said. She threw the empty nests into the water, but left the others where they were for the moment. Then she rolled up her sleeves and started scrubbing the deck. When she had finished this arduous task, she went and opened the sail lockers and began carefully examining the sails to see what state the seams were in after so long without going to sea and without being stretched by the vigorous winds. The sails are the muscles of the boat, you just have to see them swelling and straining in the wind to know that, but, like all muscles, if they’re not used regularly, they grow weak, flabby, sinewless. And the seams are like the sinews of the sails, thought the cleaning woman, glad to find she was picking up the art of seamanship so quickly. Some seams were fraying, and these she carefully marked, since the needle and thread which, only yesterday, she had used to darn the pages’ socks, would
not suffice for this work. The other lockers, she soon discovered, were empty. The fact that there was no gunpowder in the gunpowder locker, just a bit of black dust in the bottom, which she at first took to be mouse droppings, did not bother her in the least, indeed there is no law, at least not to the knowledge of a cleaning woman, that going in search of an unknown island must necessarily be a warlike enterprise. What did greatly annoy her was the complete absence of food rations in the food locker, not for her own sake, for she was more than used to the meager pickings at the palace, but because of the man to whom this boat was given, the sun will soon be going down, and he’ll be back clamoring for food, as all men do the moment they get home, as if they were the only ones who had a stomach and a need to fill it, And if he brings sailors back with him to crew the ship, they’ve always got monstrous appetites, and then, said the cleaning woman, I don’t know how we’ll manage.

She needn’t have worried. The sun had just vanished into the ocean when the man with the boat appeared at the far end of the quay. He was carrying a package in his hand, but he was alone and looked dispirited. The cleaning woman went to wait for him by the gangplank, but before she could open her mouth to find out how the rest of the day had gone, he said, Don’t worry, I’ve brought enough food for both of us, And the sailors, she asked, No one came, as you can see, But did some at least say they would come, she asked, They said there are no more unknown islands and that, even if there were, they weren’t prepared to leave the comfort of their homes and the good life on board passenger ships just to get involved in some oceangoing adventure, looking for the impossible, as if we were still living in the days
when the sea was dark, And what did you say to them, That the sea is always dark, And you didn’t tell them about the unknown island, How could I tell them about an unknown island, if I don’t even know where it is, But you’re sure it exists, As sure as I am that the sea is dark, Right now, seen from up here, with the water the color of jade and the sky ablaze, it doesn’t seem at all dark to me, That’s just an illusion, sometimes islands seem to float above the surface of the water, but it’s not true, How do you think you’ll manage if you haven’t got a crew, I don’t know yet, We could live here, and I could get work cleaning the boats that come into port, and you, And I, You must have some skill, a craft, a profession, as they call it nowadays, I have, did have, will have if necessary, but I want to find the unknown island, I want to find out who I am when I’m there on that island, Don’t you know, If you don’t step outside
yourself, you’ll never discover who you are, The king’s philosopher, when he had nothing to do, would come and sit beside me and watch me darning the pages’ socks, and sometimes he would start philosophizing, he used to say that each man is an island, but since that had nothing to do with me, being a woman, I paid no attention to him, what do you think, That you have to leave the island in order to see the island, that we can’t see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves, you mean, No, that’s not the same thing. The blaze in the sky was dying down, the waters grew suddenly purple, now not even the cleaning woman could doubt that the sea really is dark, at least at certain times of the day. The man said, Let’s leave the philosophizing to the king’s philosopher, that’s what they pay him for after all, and let’s eat, but the woman did not agree, First, you’ve got to inspect your boat, you’ve only seen it from the outside, What sort of state did you find it in, Well, some of the seams on the sails need reinforcing, Did you go down into the hold, has the ship let in much water, There’s a bit in the bottom, sloshing about with the ballast, but that seems normal, it’s good for the boat, How did you learn these things, I just did, But how, The same way you told the harbormaster that you would learn to sail, at sea, We’re not at sea yet, We’re on the water though, My belief was that, with sailing, there are only two true teachers, one is the sea and the other the boat, And the sky, you’re forgetting the sky, Yes, of course, the sky, The winds, The clouds, The sky, Yes, the sky.

It took them less than a quarter of an hour to go round the whole ship, a caravel, even a converted one, doesn’t really allow for long walks. It’s lovely, said the man, but if I can’t get enough crew members
to work it, I’ll have to go back to the king and tell him I don’t want it any more, Honestly, the first obstacle you come across and you lose heart, The first obstacle was having to wait three days for the king and I didn’t give up then, If we can’t find sailors willing to come with us, then we’ll have to manage alone, You’re mad, two people on their own couldn’t possibly sail a ship like this, why, I’d have to be at the helm all the time, and you, well, I couldn’t even begin to explain, it’s madness, We’ll see, now let’s go and eat. They went up to the quarterdeck, the man still protesting at what he called her madness, and there the cleaning woman opened the package he had brought, a loaf of bread, hard goat’s cheese, olives and a bottle of wine. The moon was now but a hand’s breadth above the sea, the shadows cast by the yard and the mainmast came and lay at their feet. Our caravel’s really lovely, said the woman, then
corrected herself, I mean your caravel, It won’t be mine for very long I shouldn’t think, Whether you sail it or not, it’s yours, the king gave it to you, Yes, but I asked him to give it to me so that I could go in search of an unknown island, But these things don’t just happen from one moment to the next, it all takes time, my grandfather always used to say that anyone going to sea must make his preparations on land first, and he wasn’t even a sailor, With no crew members we can’t sail, So you said, And we’ll have to provision the ship with the thousand and one things you need for a voyage like this, given that we don’t know where it might lead us, Of course, and then we’ll have to wait for the right season, and leave on a good tide, and have people come to the quay to wish us a safe journey, You’re making fun of me, Not at all, I would never make fun of the person who got me to leave the palace by the door of
decisions, Forgive me, And I won’t go back through that door whatever happens. The moonlight was falling directly on the cleaning woman’s face, Lovely, really lovely, thought the man, and this time he didn’t mean the caravel. The woman did not think anything, she must have thought all she had to think in those three days during which she would open the door now and then to see if he was still out there, waiting. There wasn’t a crumb of bread or cheese left, not a drop of wine, they had thrown the olive stones into the sea, the deck was as clean as it had been when the cleaning woman had wiped a cloth over it for the last time. A steamship’s siren let out a potent growl, such as leviathans must have made, and the woman said, When it’s our turn, we won’t make so much noise about it. Although they were still in the harbor, the water lapped slightly as the steamship passed, and the man said, But we’ll certainly sway about a lot
more. They both laughed, then fell silent, after a while, one of them suggested that perhaps they should go to sleep, Not that I’m particularly sleepy, and the other agreed, No, I’m not either, then they fell silent again, the moon rose and continued to rise, at one point, the woman said, There are bunks down below, the man said, Yes, and that was when they got up and went below decks, where the woman said, See you tomorrow, I’m going this way, and the man replied, I’m going this way, see you tomorrow, they did not say port or starboard, probably because they were both new to the art. The woman turned back, Oh, I forgot, and she took two candle stumps out of her apron pocket, I found them when I was cleaning, but I don’t have any matches, I do, said the man. She held the candles, one in each hand, he lit a match, then, protecting the flame beneath the dome of his cupped fingers, he carefully applied it to the old
wicks, the flame took, grew slowly like the moonlight, lit the face of the cleaning woman, there’s no need to say what he thought, She’s lovely, but what she thought was this, He’s obviously got eyes only for the unknown island, just one example of how people can misinterpret the look in another person’s eyes, especially when they’ve only just met. She handed him a candle, said, See you tomorrow, then, sleep well, he wanted to say the same thing, only differently, Sweet dreams, was the phrase he came out with, in a little while, when he is down below, lying on his bunk, other phrases will spring to mind, wittier, more charming, as such phrases should be when a man finds himself alone with a woman. He wondered if she would already be asleep, if it had taken her long to fall asleep, then he imagined that he was looking for her and couldn’t find her anywhere, that the two of them were lost on a vast ship, sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they’re lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another, the woman is sleeping only a few yards away from him and he cannot reach her, yet it’s so very easy to go from port to starboard.