The Collected Novels of José Saramago (33 page)

The ants swarm around the honey, around the sugar spilled on the floor and the manna that has fallen from heaven, all of them moving in the same direction, like certain maritime birds that gather in their hundreds on the shores to worship the sun, no matter if the wind is behind them, ruffling their feathers, their concern is to follow the travelling eye of the sky, and with short runs they pass in front of one another, until the beach abruptly terminates or the sun disappears, tomorrow we shall come back to this same spot, and if we do not come our children will. The twenty thousand people gathered on the site are nearly all men, the few women who are present remain on the periphery, not so much because of the custom of segregating the sexes at Mass, but because of the risks they might run in the thick of that gathering, for though they might emerge alive, they would in all probability be violated, to adopt a modern expression, Do not tempi the Lord thy God, and if you do, then don’t go complaining that you’ve become pregnant.

As we have explained, Mass is being celebrated. Between the site and the Ilha da Madeira there is a vast space trampled by the comings and goings of the workers and furrowed by the wheels of the carts that travel back and forth, fortunately, the ground is quite dry at present, this is the virtue of spring just as she is about to fall into the arms of summer, soon the men will be able to kneel on the ground without worrying about getting their trousers wet, although these people are not greatly bothered about cleanliness and they wash in their own sweat. On an elevation at the far end a wooden chapel has been erected, and if those who have come to attend Mass imagine that they will all fit in by some miraculous means, then they are greatly mistaken, it would be easier to multiply the loaves and the fishes, or to put two thousand wills into a glass phial, this is no miracle, but the most natural thing in the world when one so desires it. The winches creak and the noise is enough to open the gates of heaven and hell, each with its own distinctive appearance, those of the House of God are made of crystal, while those of Satan are made of bronze, and even the resounding echoes are different, here, however, the din is coming from the friction of the wood, the front of the chapel is lifted slowly, until the wall is transformed into a porch and at the same time the sides are drawn back, it is as if invisible hands were opening up a tabernacle, and the first time this happened, there were not all that many workers on the site, but one could always be sure of a congregation of some five thousand faithful who would gasp in admiration, Ah, in every age there is always some new wonder to Astound mankind until they grow accustomed to it and lose interest, the chapel is finally opened wide, to reveal the celebrant and the altar within, can this be a Mass like any other, it seems impossible that this is an ordinary Mass, but all these people have already forgotten that the Holy Ghost once flew over Mafra, Masses preceding military campaigns are different, who knows, when the dead are counted and buried, whether I shall not be among them, so let us profit from the Holy Sacrifice, unless the enemy attack first, either because they have been to an earlier Mass or because they adhere to a religion that dispenses with any such observance.

From his wooden cage, the celebrant preached to the sea of faces, and had it been a sea of fishes, what a lovely sermon he might have repeated here, with its clear, wholesome doctrine, but in the absence of any fishes his sermon was that deserved by men and heard only by those who were standing near the altar, however, if it is true that the habit does not make the monk, faith undoubtedly does, anyone in that congregation, upon hearing the word heathen, knows that it was heaven, that eternal was infernal, that Zeus was Deus, and when he hears no other word or echo, it is because the sermon has ended and we can now disperse. It is frightening to think that Mass is over and that they have not ended up dead on the ground or been struck down when the sun shone straight on to the monstrance, causing it to sparkle, times are much changed, for once when the Bethshemeshites were cutting their wheat in the fields, they happened to lift their eyes to heaven and saw the Ark of the Covenant from the land of the Philistines, which sufficed to make fifty thousand and seventy of them fall flat on their faces, now there were twenty thousand watching, Were you there, I didn’t see you. This is a religion that can grow very lax, especially when the congregation is so large that it becomes impossible to hear confessions and give holy communion to everyone, so they will remain here, come what may, if anything comes at all, staring, quarrelling, having their way with women up against fences and in more secluded places, until tomorrow, when they go back to work.

Baltasar crosses the square, some men are playing innocent games of quoits, others are playing games the King has prohibited, such as heads or tails, if the magistrate should come on his rounds, they will be put into the stocks. Blimunda and Inês Antónia are waiting for Baltasar at the agreed place, and there they will be joined shortly, if they have not already been, by Álvaro Diogo and his son. They all go down into the valley together, waiting for them to arrive home is old João Francisco, who can scarcely move his legs, he has to be content with the simple Mass celebrated by the parish priest in the church of St Andrew which is attended by all the members of the Viscount’s household, and perhaps this explains why his sermons are less intimidating, with the one disadvantage, however, that they have to listen to the entire sermon, and João Francisco’s attention wanders, which is only natural, for he is old and weary. They have had their dinner, Álvaro Diogo takes his siesta, the boy goes off to chase sparrows with his playmates, the women knit and darn on the sly, for this is a day of holy observance, when God does not wish the faithful to work, but unless this rip is patched today, the hole will be much bigger tomorrow, and if it is true that God punishes without stick or stone, it is no less true that one should darn only with a needle and thread, although I am not much good at mending, nor is this surprising, for when Adam and Eve were created, the one knew as much as the other, and when they were expelled from paradise, there is no evidence that the Archangel gave them separate lists of jobs suitable for men and women, Eve was simply told, You will suffer pain when giving birth, but even that will no longer be necessary one day. Baltasar leaves his spike and hook at home, he goes with his stump exposed, anxious to see if he can revive those consoling pains in his hand, which are now ever less frequent, that itch on the inside of his thumb and that sensual feeling as he scratches it with the nail of his index finger, no point in telling him that he is imagining it, he will retort that there are no fingers inside his head, others may say, But, Baltasar, you’ve lost your left hand, Who can be so sure, but there is no point in arguing with people who are even capable of denying their own existence.

It is a well-known fact that Baltasar likes a drink, though without getting drunk. He has been drinking since he first heard the sad news of the death of Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço, it came as a terrible blow, as if he had been struck by one of those deep earth tremors that touch the very roots while on the surface the walls remain standing upright. Baltasar drinks because he cannot shut out the memory of the Passarola, there in the Serra do Barregudo on the slopes of Monte Junto, perhaps its presence has already been discovered by smugglers or shepherds, and just to think about such things causes him to suffer as if the rack were being
tightened. But when he drinks there always comes a point when he feels Blimunda’s hand rest on his shoulder, and that is all he needs, Blimunda’s tranquil presence in the house is enough to restrain him, Baltasar reaches out for the tankard filled with wine, which he intends to drink as he also drank all the others, but a hand touches his shoulder, a voice says, Baltasar, and the tankard is returned to the table untouched and his friends know that he will drink no more that day. Baltasar will remain silent, doing nothing except listen, until the torpor induced by the wine passes and the words of the others begin to make sense even as they exchange the same old stories, My name is Francisco Marques, I was born in Cheleiros, which is close to Mafra, some two leagues away, and I have a wife and three small children, all my life I’ve worked for a daily wage, and since there seemed to be no escape from poverty, I decided to come help build the convent, even the friar who secured the King’s pledge was born in my home town, according to what I’ve been told, for I was only a child then, about the same age as your nephew, but I really mustn’t complain, for Cheleiros is not all that far away, from time to time I stretch my legs on the road, the two legs that walk and the one in the middle that means my wife is pregnant once again, whatever money I save I leave there, but poor people like ourselves have to pay for everything we receive, there are no profits for us from trade with India or Brazil, nor do we enjoy appointments or benefices from the Palace, what can I do with a daily wage of two hundred réis when I have to pay for my ration of food and wine, the only people who make any money here are those who provide us with our daily needs, and if it is true that many of them were forced to come here from Lisbon, I live here out of need, and needy I remain, My name is José Pequeno, I have neither father nor mother, nor woman to call my own, I do not even know whether this is really my name or if I had some other name in the past, what is certain is that I was born in a village at the foot of Torres Vedras, and the parish priest baptized me, José is the name I was given at my christening, and Pequeno, which of course means small, was added later because I suddenly stopped growing, with this hump on my back, no woman was keen to marry me, but they all ask for more once I get the chance to mount them, that’s my only consolation in life, Come over here, now off with you,
and once I grow old, I won’t even be fit for that, I came to Mafra because I like working with oxen, oxen are for hire in this world, just like me, My name is joaquim da Rocha, I was born in the region of Pombal, and there I’ve left a wife, I had four children, but all of them died before they were ten years old, two of the black plague, the others from malnutrition and anaemia, I rented a plot of land but it did not yield enough to provide us with food, so I told my wife, I’m off to Mafra, there work is guaranteed and for many years to come, and so far so good, six months have passed since I last went home and I shall probably never go back, there’s no lack of women here, and anyhow mine must have been of dubious stock to have given birth to four children and allowed all of them to die, My name is Manuel Milho, I come from the countryside near Santarem, one day the magistrate’s men arrived to announce that a good wage and good food could be earned on the building site at Mafra, I was hired with a few others, but the two men who came with me were killed in a landslide last year, I don’t care for these parts, not because two of my countrymen perished here, after all, no one can decide where he will die unless he arranges his own death, but because I miss the river of my native land, I know there is plenty of water in the sea, as one can tell even from here, but what does a man want with all that water, with all those waves that beat incessantly against the rocks and sands, the river back home flows between two banks like a procession of penitents, it slowly wends its way as we stand there watching like the ash trees and poplars, and when a man wants to examine his face and to see how much he has aged, the water becomes his mirror, passing, yet at a standstill, and we who appear to be at a standstill are the ones who are really passing, what I cannot explain is why such things come into my head, My name is João Anes, I come from Oporto and I am a cooper, and coopers are also needed when a convent is being built, for who else could be relied upon to mend the vats, the pipes, and the buckets, if a bricklayer is on the scaffolding and they pass him a hod of mortar, he has to wet the stones with a brush so that they make firm contact as he lays one on top of another, that explains why he carries a bucket, and what do animals drink from, they drink from a trough, and who made the troughs, why, the cooper, of course, without wishing to brag, there’s no better trade than mine, even
God was a cooper, just look at that great vat known as the sea, if the work were not perfect and the staves not so well adjusted, its waters would cover the earth and there would be a second great flood, I have little to say about myself, I left my family behind in Oporto, they know how to look after themselves, I haven’t seen my wife for two years, sometimes I dream that I’m lying by her side, but if it’s me lying there, I don’t see my face, next day my work always turns out badly, I would rather see all of myself in my dream, instead of that face without mouth, eyes or nose, I cannot imagine what face my wife sees there at such moments, but I hope it is mine, My name is Juliao Mau-Tempo, I’m a native of Alentejo, and I came to work here in Mafra because of the famine that scourges my province, I don’t know how anyone has survived there, for if we hadn’t grown accustomed to eating grass and acorns, I’ll bet everyone would be dead by now, it’s distressing to travel over that vast territory, as anyone will tell you who has been there, only to find that there is nothing but barren land, there are few signs of habitation or growth, and the rest is wilderness and solitude, it’s a region blighted by warfare, with Spaniards invading and departing as if they were on their own soil, at the moment there is peace, but who knows for how long, when they’re not making us run and exposing us to the risk of being killed, our monarchs and nobles themselves do the running and killing as they go hunting, yet God help the wretched fellow who’s caught with a rabbit in his knapsack, even though he might have found it already dead from some disease or old age, the least he can expect is a dozen lashes on his back to teach him that when God made rabbits it was for the pleasure and stewpot of gentlemen, but those whippings would be worthwhile if we were allowed to keep the animals we poached, I came to Mafra because my parish priest assured us from the pulpit that anyone who came here would soon be a servant of the King, not exactly his servant, but something like that, he also assured us that no one in the King’s service goes hungry, that they are given more meat than one sees in paradise and are well dressed, for if it is true that Adam, having no one to squabble with over food, ate to his heart’s content, he did not have much in the way of clothing, well, I soon discovered that I had been misinformed, I can’t vouch for paradise, because I wasn’t around at the time of Adam, but I can speak
for Mafra, and if I haven’t died from hunger, it’s because I spend everything I earn on food, I’m as shabbily dressed as I ever was, as for becoming one of the King’s servants, I live in hope of seeing my sovereign’s face before I finally pine away after all these years of separation from my family, when a man has children, he is often nourished just by looking at their faces, how reassuring it would be if our children could be nourished just by looking at our faces, we’re fated to consume our lives looking at one another, Who are you, What are you doing here, Who I am and what I am doing here is a question I’ve often asked myself without receiving any answer, no, none of my children has blue eyes, yet I’m certain that they’re all my children, this matter of blue eyes is something that appears from time to time in families, my mother’s mother had eyes this colour, My name is Baltasar Mateus, but everyone calls me Sete-Sóis, José Pequeno knows why he got his name, but I cannot say when and why they put seven suns in our house as if we were seven times more ancient than the only sun that shines on us, so we should be the kings of the world, this is the wild conversation of someone who has been too close to the sun and has had too much to drink, if you hear me talk nonsense, it’s either because of the sun I caught or because of the wine that caught me, what is certain is that I was born here forty years ago, if I have added them up correctly, my mother, who is now dead and buried, was named Marta Maria, my old father can scarcely walk, I’m convinced that roots are growing from his feet, or that his heart is searching out the earth in order to rest, we once had a plot of ground like Joaquim da Rocha, but with all this disturbance of the soil we lost our land, I’ve even transported some of the soil from that plot in my handcart, who’s going to tell my grandfather that a grandson of his has dumped earth that was once tilled and sown, now they’re building a turret on top, These are the changes in life’s fortunes, and my life has seen many changes, in my youth I dug the soil and sowed the fields for the farmers, our family plot was so small that my father worked it all the year round and still had time to cultivate other smallholdings here and there that he rented, real hunger we never experienced, but we were never well off and had barely enough to live on, then I joined the King’s army and lost my left hand, it was only much later that I discovered that with one hand missing I had
become God’s equal, and since I could no longer fight in the war, I returned to Mafra, then I spent some years in Lisbon, and that’s my life in a nutshell, What did you do in Lisbon, João Anes asked him as the only man in the group who could claim to be a skilled worker, I worked in the slaughterhouse in the Palace Square, but only as a porter, And when was it that you got close to the sun. Manuel Milho was anxious to know, since he was probably the only one there who was accustomed to watching the river flow past, That was when I once climbed a very high sierra, so high that by stretching out my hand I could touch the sun, What sierra could that be, for there are no sierras in Mafra high enough to reach the sun, just as there are no sierras in Alentejo, which is a region well known to me, Julião Mau-Tempo asked him, Perhaps it was a sierra that was high on that particular day and is now low, If it takes so much gunpowder to blast a hill like this, surely it would take all the gunpowder in the world to raze a sierra, observed Francisco Marques, who had been the first to comment, but Manuel Milho insisted, You could only have got close to the sun by flying like the birds, there in the marshes you often see hawks soaring up and up in circles until they finally disappear and they become so tiny that they can no longer be seen as they head for the sun, but we humans don’t know the path or doorway that leads there, and you are a man and have no wings, Unless you’re a sorcerer, José Pequeno suggested, like a woman from the region where I was found, who rubbed herself with ointments, straddled a broom, and flew by night from one place to another, at least that’s what people said although I never saw her with my own eyes, I’m not a sorcerer, and if you start to spread such rumours the Holy Office of the Inquisition will arrest me, nor did I say to anyone here that I have ever flown, But you did say that you had been close to the sun, and you also said that you had become God’s equal when you lost your left hand, if such heresies reach the ears of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, nothing will save you, We should all be saved if we were to become God’s equals, said João Anes, If we were to become God’s equals, we should be able to rebuke Him for not having granted us equality from the outset, said Manuel Milho, and Baltasar, who was feeling relieved that they had got off the subject of flying, explained, God has no left hand because the chosen sit at His right and, once the damned are sentenced to hell, no souls remain at His left, now, if no one sits there, why should God need a left hand, and if He doesn’t need a left hand, that means it doesn’t exist, my left hand is no use because it doesn’t exist, and that’s the only difference, Perhaps on God’s left there is another God, perhaps God has been elected by another God, perhaps we are all enthroned Gods, I can’t imagine how these things come into my head, Manuel Milho quipped, and Baltasar rejoined, Then I must be the last one in the row, because no one can sit at my left, and with me the world comes to an end, Who knows why such thoughts should occur to these simpletons, for they are all illiterate except João Anes, who has had some education.