The Collected Novels of José Saramago (88 page)

Lydia arrived, said good afternoon, but seemed a little cold, withdrawn, she asked no questions and he was forced to speak first, I went to Fatima. She asked, Oh, how did you like it. How should Ricardo Reis reply, as a nonbeliever he is not likely to have experienced spiritual ecstasy, on the other hand he did not go purely out of curiosity, therefore he confines himself to generalities, Lots of people, dust everywhere, I had to sleep in the open, as you warned me, fortunately the night was warm. Doctor, you are not the sort of person to be roughing it on pilgrimages. I went to see what it was like. Lydia stays in the kitchen, is now running the hot water to wash the dishes, without saying much she has made it clear that there will be no carnal pleasures today. Could the reason for this embargo be the familiar problem of menstruation, or is it some lingering resentment, or the combination of both blood and tears, two insurmountable rivers making an impassable, murky sea. He sat on a bench in the kitchen watching her as she worked, not something he was in the habit of doing, it was a gesture of goodwill, a white flag waving over the fortifications to test the mood of the enemy general. I didn’t come across Doctor Sampaio and his daughter after all, which was only to be expected with such a crowd, these words are spoken casually, they hover in midair, waiting for someone to pay attention. But what kind of attention, he could be telling the truth, he could be telling a lie, such is the inadequacy, the built-in duplicity of words. A word lies, with the same word one can speak the truth, we are not what we say, we are true only if others believe us. Lydia’s belief is unknown, for she simply asks, Were there any miracles. If there were, I didn’t see them, and no miracles were reported in the newspapers. Poor Senhorita Marcenda, if she went there in the hope of being cured, how disappointed she must have been. She had little hope, How do you know. Lydia fixed her gaze on Ricardo Reis as quick as a startled bird. Trying to catch me, he thought to himself as he replied, When I was still staying at the hotel, Marcenda and her father were already planning a visit to Fatima. Oh, really. These are the little duels with which people wear themselves out and grow old. Better to change the subject, and this is where newspapers become useful, they store facts in one’s memory and help keep conversations going, both for the old men on the Alto de Santa Catarina and for Ricardo Reis and Lydia, because some silences are not preferable to words. What news about your brother, this is just an opening. My brother is fine, why do you ask. I was reminded of him because of something I read in the paper, a speech by a certain engineer named Nobre Guedes, I still have the paper here. I’ve never heard of the gentleman. Given what he has to say about sailors, I doubt that your brother would call him a gentleman. What does he say. Wait, I’ll get the paper. Ricardo Reis left the kitchen, went into the study, returned with
O Século,
the text of the speech took up almost an entire page, This is the speech Nobre Guedes made on the National Radio condemning Communism, and at one point he refers to sailors. Does he say anything about my brother. He doesn’t mention your brother by name, but to give you an example, he had this to say, There is in circulation an execrable leaflet known as
The Red Sailor.
What does execrable mean. Execrable means that something is evil, wretched, very bad. It means you want to curse it. Exactly, to execrate is to curse. I’ve seen
The Red Sailor
and it didn’t make me feel like cursing. Did your brother show it to you. Yes, it was Daniel. Then your brother is a Communist. I’m not sure about that, but he’s certainly in favor of Communism. What’s the difference. To me he doesn’t look different from other people. Do you think that if he were a Communist he would look different. I don’t know, I can’t explain. Well, this engineer Guedes also says that the sailors of Portugal are not red or white or blue, they are Portuguese. What, he thinks Portuguese is a color. That’s very witty, anyone looking at you would say you couldn’t break a plate, yet every so often you pull down a whole cupboard of plates. My hand is steady, I’m not in the habit of breaking plates, take a look, here I am washing your dishes and nothing slips from my hands. You’re an extraordinary girl. This extraordinary girl is only a hotel chambermaid, but tell me, did this fellow Guedes have anything else to say about the sailors. About the sailors, no. I now remember that Daniel did mention a sailor, also Guedes, but his first name was Manuel, Manuel Guedes, and he is waiting to be sentenced, there are forty men altogether who are facing trial. Many have the name Guedes. Well, this one is Manuel. The dishes are washed and left to drain, Lydia has other chores to do, she must change the sheets, make the bed, open the window to air the room, clean the bathroom, put out fresh towels. This done, she returns to the kitchen and is drying the dishes when suddenly Ricardo Reis steals up from behind and puts his arm around her waist. She tries to avoid him, but he kisses her on the neck, causing the plate to slip from her hands, and it breaks into pieces on the floor. So you’ve finally broken a plate, it had to happen sooner or later, no one escapes his fate, he laughed, turning her toward him and kissing her full on the lips. She no longer resisted, but simply said, We cannot today. Now we know that the problem is physiological, the other obstacles have been overcome. It doesn’t matter, he replied, it can keep until next time, and went on kissing her. Later she will have to sweep up the bits of crockery that are scattered all over the kitchen floor.

Then it was Fernando Pessoa who visited Ricardo Reis. Several days later, he appeared just before midnight, when all the neighbors were in bed. He came upstairs on tiptoe, taking this precaution because he was never sure that he would be invisible. Sometimes people looked right through him, he could tell from their lack of expression, but on rare occasions they stared, as if there was something strange about him but they could not put their finger on it. If anyone were to tell them that this man dressed in black was a ghost, they would not believe it, we are so familiar with white sheets and tenuous ectoplasms, but a ghost, if he is not careful, can be the most solid thing in the world. So Fernando Pessoa climbed the stairs slowly and rapped on the door with the agreed signal, anxious not to cause a scene, the clatter of someone stumbling upstairs could bring a bleary-eyed neighbor out on the landing, and she would scream at the top of her voice, Help, a thief. Poor Fernando Pessoa a thief, he who has been robbed of everything, even life. In his study, trying to compose a poem, Ricardo Reis had just finished writing,
Not seeing the Fates that destroy us, we forget their existence,
when the silence that filled the building was broken by a gentle tap-tap. He knew immediately who it was and hastened to open the door, What a pleasant surprise, where on earth have you been. Words can be tricky, these used by Ricardo Reis suggest a note of black humor in the worst possible taste, when he knows as well as we do that Fernando Pessoa has come from in the earth and not on it, from the rustic graveyard at Prazeres, where he does not even rest in peace, because his ferocious grandmother Dionísia, also buried there, demands a detailed account of his comings and goings. I’ve been for a stroll, her grandson replies sourly, just as he is now replying to Ricardo Reis, but without the same irritation. The best words are those that reveal nothing. Fernando Pessoa sank to the sofa with a gesture of infinite weariness, raised his hand to his forehead as if trying to assuage a pain or drive away some cloud, then he ran his fingers down his face, uncertainly over his eyes, pressing the corners of his mouth, smoothing his mustache, stroking his pointed chin. The fingers seemed to want to remodel his features, to restore them to their original design, but the artist has picked up an eraser instead of a pencil, and it obliterates as it passes, one whole side of the face loses its outline, which is only to be expected, because almost six months have passed since Fernando Pessoa’s death. I see less and less of you these days, Ricardo Reis complained. I warned you on the first day, I become more forgetful as time passes, even now, there on the Rua do Calhariz, I had to rack my brains to remember the way to your apartment. You only had to locate the statue of Adamastor. If I had thought of Adamastor I would have been even more confused, I would have started to believe myself back in Durban, eight years old again, and then I would have been twice lost, in time as well as space. Try coming here more often, that will be one way of refreshing your memory. Today I was guided by a lingering smell of onion, A smell of onion, That’s right, onion, your friend, it would appear, has not given up spying on you. That is ridiculous, the police must have precious little to occupy them when they can afford to waste time with someone who is innocent of any crime and has no intention of committing one. You can never tell what is going on in the mind of a policeman, perhaps you made a good impression, perhaps Victor would like to win your friendship but realizes that you live in the world of the chosen, he in the world of the damned, and that is why he whiles away the night gazing up at your window, watching to see if there is any light, like a man madly in love. Go ahead, have your little joke at my expense. You cannot imagine how sad one has to be to joke like this. But this constant spying is totally unjustified. I wouldn’t say totally unjustified, after all is it normal for someone to be visited by a person who comes from the beyond. But no one can see you. That depends, my dear Reis, that depends, sometimes a dead man does not have the patience to be invisible, or sometimes he lacks the energy, and this does not take into account the fact that certain people among the living have eyes that can see the invisible. Surely that isn’t true of Victor. Perhaps, although you must agree that one could hardly imagine a more useful ability in a policeman, by comparison Argos of the thousand eyes would be a nearsighted wretch. Ricardo Reis lifted the sheet of paper on which he had been writing, I have some lines here, I don’t know how they will turn out. Read them to me. They are just a beginning, and they might even begin in a different way. Read them.
Not seeing the Fates that destroy its, we forget that they exist.
I like it, but as I recall, you wrote much the same thing, a thousand times and in a thousand different ways, before you left for Brazil, the tropics don’t appear to have enriched your poetic genius. I have nothing more to say, I’m not like you. You will become like me, don’t worry. My inspiration is what one might call internal. Inspiration is only a word. I am an Argos with nine hundred and ninety-nine eyes and all blind. A nice metaphor, which also implies that you would not be much good as a policeman. By the way, Fernando, did you ever come across a certain Antonio Ferro, Secretary for National Propaganda. Yes, we were friends, I owe it to him that I was awarded a prize of five thousand reis for
Mensagem,
why do you ask. You will see in a moment, I have a piece of news here, did you know that the literary prizes administered by that department were awarded several days ago. How could I have known. Forgive me, I keep forgetting that you can no longer read. Who won the prize this year, Carlos Queirós, Ah, Carlos, Did you know him, Carlos Queirós was the nephew of a woman named Ophelinha, spelled with a
ph
instead of an
f,
whom I loved for a time, we worked in the same office. I cannot imagine you falling in love. We all fall in love at least once in our lifetime, and that is what happened to me. I’m curious to know what kind of love letters you wrote. I remember them as being rather less banal than most love letters. When was this, The affair began as soon as you left for Brazil, And did it last long, Long enough for me to be able to say, like Cardinal Gonzaga, I, too, have known love. I find this hard to believe, Do you think I’m lying, Certainly not, how could you say such a thing, we have never lied to each other, when the need arose, we confined ourselves to using words that lied. What do you find so hard to believe, then. That you should have fallen in love, the fact is that as I see and know you, you are precisely the kind of person who is incapable of loving. Like Don Juan, Yes, like Don Juan, but for a different reason, Explain, In Don Juan there was an excess of lust, which had to be dispersed among the women of his desire, while your situation, as far as I can recall, was pretty much the opposite. And what about you. I am somewhere in the middle, I am ordinary, average, neither too much nor too little. In other words, the well-balanced lover, Not well balanced, it is not a question of geometry or mechanics. Are you telling me that your love life, too, is less than perfect, Love is complicated, my dear Fernando, You can’t complain, you have your Lydia, Lydia is a chambermaid, And Ofélia was a typist. Instead of discussing women, we seem to be discussing their professions. And there is also that girl you met in the park, what was her name, Marcenda, That’s it, Marcenda is nothing to me. You dismiss her so roughly, it sounds like resentment. My limited experience tells me that resentment is the common attitude of men toward women. My dear Ricardo, we should have spent more time together. The empire decreed otherwise.

Fernando Pessoa got to his feet, paced awhile up and down the study, lifted the sheet of paper on which Ricardo Reis had written the lines he had read, How did you express it,
Not seeing the Fates who destroy us, we forget that they exist
, one would have to be blind indeed not to see how the fates destroy us day by day, as the proverb says,
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Fernando Pessoa put down the sheet of paper, You were telling me about Ferro, let’s get back to where we were. During the awards ceremony, Antonio Ferro observed that writers who grumble under repressive regimes, even when the repression is purely intellectual, such as that which emanates from Salazar, forget that creative output has always increased during reigns of law and order. This idea of the benefit of intellectual repression, that the Portuguese have become more creative under the surveillance of Victor, is absurd. Then you don’t agree. History itself disproves what Ferro claims, you need only think of your own youth, of
Orfeu,
tell me if that was a reign of law and order, although your odes, my dear Reis, if one looks at them closely, might be considered a paean to law and order. I never thought of them like that. But that is what they are, human unrest is futile, the gods are wise and indifferent, and above them is fate, the supreme order to which even gods are subject. And what of men, what is their function. To challenge order, to change fate. For the better. For better or for worse, it makes no difference, the point is to keep fate from being fate. You sound like Lydia, she is always talking about fate. Fortunately when it comes to fate, one can say whatever he likes. We were speaking of Ferro. Ferro is a fool, believing that Salazar is Portugal’s fate. The Messiah. Rather the parish priest who baptizes, christens, and marries us, and commends our souls to God when we die. In the name of order. Exactly, in the name of order. As I recall, when you were alive you were much less subversive. When one dies, one sees things differently, and with this irrefutable sentence I take my leave, irrefutable because you, being alive, cannot possibly dispute it. Why are you reluctant to spend the night here. The dead should not fall into the habit of living with the living, just as the living should not keep the dead with them. Humanity consists of both the living and the dead. That is true, but not altogether true, otherwise you would not only have me here, you would have the Court of Appeals judge too and all the other deceased members of his family. How do you know a Court of Appeals judge lived here, I don’t remember ever having told you. It was Victor. Which Victor, mine. No, a Victor who is dead but who also has a tendency to stick his nose into the affairs of others, not even death has cured him of this obsession. Does he stink of onion. He does, but it’s bearable, the smell is gradually disappearing as time passes. Farewell, Fernando. Farewell, Ricardo.