The Collected Novels of José Saramago (34 page)

The bells of the Church of St Andrew down in the valley rang out the Angelus. Above the Ilha da Madeira, in the streets and squares, in the taverns and hostels, there is a continuous drone of conversation, like the sound of the sea in the distance. It could be the sound of twenty thousand men reciting the Angelus or telling one another the story of their lives. Go and see for yourselves.

L
OOSE SOIL, GRAVEL
, and pebbles that the gunpowder or the pick had prised from the stony ground were loaded on to the handcarts and dumped in the valley, which is rapidly being filled with the rubble blasted from the mountain and dug up from the new excavations. Heavier loads are transported on the larger carts, which are reinforced with iron plates and drawn by mules and oxen that pause only to load and unload. By means of firmly braced wooden ramps, men mount the scaffolding with the stone slabs suspended from yokes that rest on their necks and shoulders, forever be praised whoever invented the pad that lessens the pain. These labours, as we have already said, can be described more easily because they require brute force, however, by constantly coming back to them we are less likely to forget things that are so common, and call for so little skill, that they tend to be overlooked, it is rather like distractedly watching our own fingers write, so that in one sense or another the agent of the doing remains concealed beneath the thing which is being done. We would see much more, and much farther, if we were to look from above, for example, and hover in the flying machine over this place called Mafra, the much-trodden mountain, the familiar valley, the Ilha da Madeira, which the seasons have darkened with rain and sunshine, and where some of the planking is already rotting, on the felling of trees in the pine forest of Leiria, and on the boundaries of Torres Vedras and Lisbon, on the smoke fumes that rise day and night from the hundreds of furnaces of bricks and lime between Mafra and Cascais, the ships that carry different bricks from the Algarve and from Entre-Douro-e-Minho to be unloaded in the Tagus, through a branching canal at the docks of Santo António do Tojal, on the carts that transport these and other materials through Monte Achique and Pinheiro de Loures to His Majesty’s convent, and on those other carts, which carry the stones from Péro Pinheiro, there is no finer lookout than the one where we are now standing, and we should have had no idea of the magnitude of the project at Mafra if Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço had not invented his Passarola, what supports us in mid-air are the wills that Blimunda gathered into the metal globes, down below, other wills move around, stuck to the globe of the earth by the laws of gravity and necessity, if we were able to count the carts that travel back and forth along these routes, from near and afar we would count up to twenty-five hundred, seen from up here, they appear to be motionless, such is the weight of their load. But the men would have to be much closer before we could see them.

For many months Baltasar pulled and pushed hand-carts, until one day he decided that he was tired of being a beast of burden, of constantly being sent back and forth, and having given ample evidence of his diligence in the presence of his masters, he was allowed to handle one of the many yokes of oxen the King had purchased. José Pequeno was a great help in securing this promotion, for the estate manager found the little hunchback’s appearance so amusing that he could not resist observing that the drover’s face only came up to the muzzles of his oxen, and this was almost true, but if he thought the remark would offend José Pequeno he was much mistaken, for the little hunchback suddenly became aware of the pleasure it gave him to look with his human eyes straight into those large gentle eyes of the oxen, where he saw his own head and torso reflected, until his legs disappeared on the lower fringe of the immense eyelids, when a man can fit his entire being into the eyes of an ox, he is finally convinced that the world is well made. José Pequeno was a great help, because he remonstrated with the estate manager that Baltasar Sete-Sóis should be promoted to drover, and if there was already one disabled man in charge of the oxen, there might as well be two, and they could keep each other company, and if the fellow doesn’t know anything about the job, no harm will be done, for he can always go back to pushing a cart, after all, it only takes one day to judge a man’s capabilities. Baltasar knew a great deal about oxen, even though he had not handled them for many years, and it needed only two trips to prove that his hook was no real drawback and that his right hand had not forgotten any of the know-how of goading oxen. When he arrived home that night, he was as happy as the day he discovered an egg in a bird’s nest for the first time, when he possessed a woman for the first time, and when he first heard a bugle call as a young recruit, and as dawn broke, he dreamed about his oxen and his left hand, he wanted for nothing, even Blimunda was mounted on one of the animals, and anyone who knows anything about dreams will understand.

Baltasar had not been long in his new job when he was told that he was being sent to Pêro Pinheiro to collect an enormous stone that was intended for the portico of the church, the stone was so huge that it was estimated to require some two hundred yoke of oxen to transport it, as well as hordes of men to assist with the job. In Pêro Pinheiro a special cart had been constructed to carry the stone, a kind of man-of-war on wheels, as described by someone who had seen it nearing completion, and who had presumably also set eyes on the vessel with which he was drawing comparison. Obviously he was exaggerating, much better that we should judge it with our own eyes, along with all the men who get up in the middle of the night and set off for Pêro Pinheiro, accompanying the four hundred oxen and more than twenty carts with the necessary equipment to transport the stone, namely, ropes and hawsers, wedges, brakes, spare wheels made to the same measurement as the existing ones, spare axles in case some should crack under the weight, braces of various sizes, hammers, pincers, metal plates, scythes for cutting hay to feed the animals, and provisions for the men, to be supplemented with fresh produce en route, so many things weigh down the carts that any man who imagined he would be riding down to Pêro Pinheiro in comfort soon finds he has to walk, but it is not any great distance, three leagues there and three leagues back, although, admittedly, the roads are not good, but the oxen and men have made this journey so many times with other transports that they only have to put down their hooves or the soles of their feet to know that they are treading familiar territory, however difficult it might be to climb, or dangerous to descend. From the men we got to know the other
day, José Pequeno and Baltasar have been chosen for the trip, and each leads his own yoke of oxen, and among the labourers who have been hired for their strength is the fellow who has left a wife and children back in Cheleiros and whose name is Francisco Marques, as well as Manuel Milho, who gets the strangest ideas and cannot imagine where they come from. There are other fellows, too, named José, Francisco, and Manuel, very few named Baltasar, but many named João, Álvaro, António, and Joaquim, and perhaps even the odd Bartolomeu though never the one who disappeared, as well as Pedro, Vicente, Bento, Bernardo, and Caetano, every possible name for a man is to be found here and every possible kind of existence, too, especially if marked by tribulation and, above all, by poverty, we cannot go into the details of the lives of all of them, they are too numerous, but at least we can leave their names on record, that is our obligation and our only reason for writing them down, so that they may become immortal and endure if it should depend on us, names such as Alcino, Brás, Cristóvão, Daniel, Egas, Firmino, Geraldo, Horácio, Isidoro, Juvino, Luís, Marcolino, Nicanor, Onofre, Paulo, Quitério, Rufino, Sebastião, Tadeu, Ubaldo, Valério, Xavier, Zacarias, each representing a letter of our alphabet, perhaps not all of these names are fitting for the time and place, much less for the men concerned, but as long as there are those who labour there will be no end to labours, and some of these labours will in the future belong to those who are waiting for someone to come along and assume their name and trade. From among the men who are represented in this sample alphabet and are going to Péro Pinheiro, we should have liked to say more about Brás, who is red-haired and has no sight in his right eye, it will not be long before people start getting the impression that this is a land of disabled men, some with a hump, some with only one hand or one eye, and to accuse us of exaggerating, when all believe that heroes should be handsome and dashing, lithe and sound of limb, that is certainly how we should have preferred them, but there is no avoiding the truth, and the reader should be grateful that we have not wasted any time counting up all those who are blubber-lipped stutterers, lame, heavy-jowled, bow-legged, epileptic, big-eared, half-witted, albinos, and dolts, or suffering from scabies, sores, ringworm, and scurvy, then you would certainly see a long procession of hunchbacks and lepers wending its way out of Mafra in the early hours of the morning, just as well that by night every cat looks black and every man a shadow, if Blimunda had seen those men off while still fasting, what would she have seen in each of them, other than the will to be someone else.

The sun had no sooner risen than the day became hot, as one might well expect, since it is the month of July. Three leagues is no great distance for this race of wanderers, especially since most of them adjust their gait to that of the oxen, and the oxen can find no good reason for hurrying. Detached from the carts and simply yoked in pairs, the animals are suspicious of such largesse, and almost feel envious of their fellow oxen who are drawing carts with all the equipment, and they feel like the fattened calf before the slaughter. The men, as we already mentioned, proceed slowly, some in silence, others conversing, each man seeking out his own kind, but one of them has been feeling positively lustful since the convoy left Mafra, he breaks into a brisk trot as if he were racing to Cheleiros to save his father from the gallows, it is Francisco Marques, who is taking this opportunity of going to push himself between his wife’s legs, which are waiting to receive him, or perhaps this is not what he has in mind, perhaps he simply wishes to be with his children and pay his respects to his wife without fornicating, for any sexual intercourse would have to be hasty, because his workmates are catching up with him, and he must reach Pêro Pinheiro at the same time as they do, they’re already passing our door, After all, we’ve always slept together, the baby is asleep and won’t hear a thing, we can send the others out to see if it is raining, and they’ll understand their father wishes to be with their mother, just think what would become of us if the King had ordered the convent to be built in the Algarve, and when she asks, Are you leaving so soon, he replies, I’ve got to go now, but on the way back, if we set up camp nearby, I’ll come and spend the whole night with you.

When Francisco Marques arrived at Pêro Pinheiro, worn out and weak on his legs, the camp had already been set up, there were no huts or tents and the only soldiers to be seen were on guard, it looked more like a country fair, with more than four hundred head of cattle and the men dispersed among the cattle, shooing them to one side, some of the animals took fright and began to toss their heads wildly, though without malice, before settling down to eat the hay as it was unloaded from the carts, they had a long wait ahead, the men who wielded the spades and hoes were eating quickly, for they were needed up front. It was already mid-morning and the sun beat fiercely on the hard, parched ground covered with marble chips and splinters, on both sides of the deep quarry, massive blocks of stone were waiting to be transported to Mafra. Their departure was assured, but not today.

Some men had gathered in the middle of the road, while those behind them tried to look over their heads or force their way through, when Francisco Marques arrived and compensated for his lateness by eagerly inquiring, What’s going on, it might have been the red-haired fellow who replied, It’s the stone, and another added, I’ve never seen anything like it in my whole life, shaking his head in amazement. At this point the soldiers approached and broke up the gathering with force and shouted, Get back there, men are as inquisitive as street urchins, and the officer from the Inspectorate who was in charge of the expedition came in person to warn them, Break it up, clear the way, whereupon the men withdrew, tripping over one another, and then it appeared, The stone, just as the red-haired, one-eyed Brás had described it.

The slab was enormous and rectangular in shape, a massive block of unpolished marble set on two trunks of pine, drawing closer we would undoubtedly hear the sap groaning, just as we hear, at this very moment, the groan of fear escaping from the men’s lips, as the colossal dimensions of the stone came into full view. The officer from the Inspectorate General comes up and places his hand on it, as if he were taking possession of the stone in His Majesty’s name, but if all these men and oxen are unable to provide the necessary strength, all the King’s power will be as wind, dust, and little else. However, they will do their best. This is why they have come, this is why they have abandoned their fields and labours, labours that also called for strength on lands that drained their energy, and the inspector may rest assured that no one here will let him down.