The Collected Novels of José Saramago (110 page)

Mary is pregnant again. No angel disguised as a beggar came knocking at the door this time to announce the child’s arrival, no sudden gust of wind swept the heights of Nazareth, no luminous earth was discovered in the ground. Mary told Joseph in the simplest words, I’m with child. She did not say to him, for example, Look into my eyes and see how our second child is shining there, nor did he reply this time, Don’t think I hadn’t noticed, I was waiting for you to tell me. He just listened, remained silent, and eventually said, Is that so, and carried on planing a piece of wood with apparent indifference, but, then, we know that his thoughts are elsewhere. Mary also knows, since that night of torment when her husband blurted out the secret he had kept to himself, and she was not altogether surprised, she had been expecting something like this after the angel told her in the cave, You will have a thousand cries all around you. A good wife would have said to her husband, Don’t fret, what’s done is done, and besides, your first duty was to rescue your own child. But Mary has changed and is no longer what one would normally refer to as a good wife, perhaps because she heard the angel utter those grave words that excluded no one, I am not an angel who grants pardons. Had she been allowed to discuss these deep matters with Joseph, who was so well versed in
Holy Scripture, he might have pondered the nature of this angel who appeared from nowhere to announce that he did not grant pardons, a statement which seems superfluous, since everyone knows that the power to pardon belongs to God alone. For an angel to say that he does not grant pardons is either meaningless or much too meaningful. An angel of judgment, perhaps, might exclaim, You expect me to forgive you, what a silly idea, I did not come to forgive, I came only to punish. But angels, by definition, leaving aside those cherubim with flaming swords who were posted by the Lord to guard the path to the tree of life lest our first parents or we, their descendants, try to return to steal the fruits, angels, as we were saying, are not vigilantes entrusted with the corrupt albeit socially necessary enforcement of repression. Angels exist to make our lives easier, they protect us when we are about to fall down a well, help us cross the bridge over the precipice, pull us to safety just as we are about to be crushed by a runaway chariot or a car without brakes. An angel worthy of the name could have spared Joseph all this torment simply by appearing in a dream to the fathers of the children of Bethlehem to warn them, Gather your wife and child and flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you to return, for Herod means to slaughter your child. In this way the children could have all been saved, Jesus hidden in the cave with his parents and the others on their way to Egypt, where they would remain until the same angel returned to tell the fathers, Arise, gather your wife and child and return to Israel, for he who tried to kill your children is dead. Thus the children would return to the places where they came from and where eventually they would meet their deaths at the appointed hour, because angels, however powerful, have their limitations, just like God. After much thought, Joseph might have reached the conclusion that the angel who appeared in the cave was an infernal creature, an agent of Satan disguised this time as a shepherd, and further proof of the weakness and gullibility of women, who can be led astray by a fallen angel. If Mary could speak, if she were less secretive and revealed the details of that strange annunciation, things would be different, Joseph would use other arguments to support his theory, most important, the fact that this so-called angel did not proclaim, I am an angel of the Lord, or, I come in the name of the Lord. He simply said, I am an angel, before adding cautiously, Keep this to yourself, as if afraid for anyone else to know. Some may argue that such details contribute nothing new to our understanding of what is an all-too-familiar story, but as far as this narrator is concerned, it is crucial to know, when interpreting past and future events, whether the angel came from heaven or from hell. Between angels of light and angels of darkness there are differences not just of form but also of essence, substance, and content, and while it is true that whoever created the former also created the latter, He subsequently attempted to correct His mistake.

Mary, like Joseph, but for different reasons, often looks distracted, her expression becomes blank, her hands drop in the middle of some task, her gestures are suddenly interrupted, she stares into the distance, not so surprising for a woman in her condition, were it not for the various thoughts that occupy her mind and that can be summed up in the following question, Why did the angel announce the birth of Jesus yet say nothing of this second child. Mary looks at her firstborn crawling on all fours as children do at that age, she studies him and tries to perceive a special trait, some mark or sign, a star on his forehead, a sixth finger on his hand, but she sees a child like any other, who slobbers, gets dirty, and cries, the only difference being that he is her son. His hair is black like that of his parents, his irises are already losing that whitish tinge inaccurately called milky and assuming their natural, inherited color, a dark brown which gradually turns a somber green if one can
so describe a color, but these features are hardly unique, important only when the child belongs to us, or, as in this case, to Mary. Within weeks he will be making his first attempts to stand up and walk, he will fall on his hands countless times, stay there staring, lifting his head with some difficulty as he hears his mother say, Come here, come here, my child. And he will begin to feel the urge to speak, sounds will form in his throat, at first he will not know what to do with them, he will get them mixed up with sounds he already knows and makes, such as gurgling and crying, until he begins to realize that they must be articulated in a different and more deliberate way, and he will move his lips as his father and mother do, until he succeeds in pronouncing his first word, perhaps da or dada or daddy, or perhaps even mummy, in any case after that little Jesus will not have to poke the forefinger of his right hand into the palm of his left hand if his mother and her neighbors ask him for the hundredth time, Where does the hen lay her egg. This is just another of those indignities to which a human being is subjected, trained like a lapdog to respond to certain sounds, a tone of voice, a whistle, or the crack of a whip. Now Jesus is able to answer that the hen can lay her egg wherever she wishes so long as she does not lay it in the palm of his hand. Mary looks at her little son, sighs, downhearted that the angel is not likely to return. You will not see me again for a while, he told her, but if he were to appear now, she would not be as intimidated as before, she would ply the angel with questions until he gave her an answer. Already a mother and expecting her second child, Mary is no innocent lamb, she has learned, to her cost, what suffering, danger, and worry mean, with all that experience on her side she can easily tip the scales to her advantage. It would not be enough for the angel to reply, May the Lord never allow you to see your child as you see me now, with nowhere to lay my head. First, the angel would have to identify this Lord in whose name he claimed to speak, secondly, convince her that he told the truth when he said he had no place to lay his head, which seemed unlikely for an angel unless he meant it only in his role as beggar, thirdly, what future did those dark, threatening words augur for her son, and finally, what was the mystery surrounding that luminous earth buried near the door, where a strange plant had grown after their return from Bethlehem, nothing but stalk and leaves, which they had given up pruning after trying to pull it up by the roots, only to have it reappear with even greater vigor. Two of the elders of the synagogue, Zacchaeus and Dothan, came to inspect the phenomenon, and although they knew little about botany, they were in agreement that the seed must have been in the mysterious soil and then sprouted at the right moment, for as Zacchaeus observed, Such is the law of the Lord of life. Once she became accustomed to this stubborn plant, Mary decided it added a festive touch at the entrance to the house, while Joseph, still suspicious, moved his carpenter’s bench to another part of the yard rather than have to look at the thing. He cut it back with an ax and saw, poured boiling water over it, even scattered burning coals around the stalk, but superstition prevented him from taking a spade and digging up the bowl of luminous earth that had been the cause of so much trouble. This was how matters stood when their second child, whom they named James, was born.

Over the next few years there were not many changes in the family, apart from the arrival of more children, including two daughters, while the parents lost the last vestiges of youth. In the case of Mary that was not surprising, for we know how childbearing, and she had borne many children, gradually saps whatever freshness and beauty a woman possesses, causing her face and body to age and wither, suffice it to say that after James came Lisa, after Lisa came Joseph, after Joseph came Judas, after Judas came Simon,
then Lydia, then Justus, then Samuel, and if any more followed, they perished without trace. Children are the pride and joy of their parents, as the saying goes, and Mary did her utmost to appear contented, but after carrying for months on end all those fruits that greedily consumed her strength, she often felt impatient, resentful, but in those days it would never have occurred to her to blame Joseph, let alone Almighty God who governs the life and death of His creatures and assures us that the very hairs of our heads are counted. Joseph had little understanding of the begetting of children, apart from the practical rudiments, which reduce all enigmas to one simple fact, namely, that if a man and woman come together, he will likely impregnate her, and after nine months, or on rare occasions after seven, a child is born. Released into the female womb, the male seed, minute and invisible, transmits the new being chosen by God to continue populating the world He has created. Sometimes, however, this fails to happen, and the fact that the transmission of seed into womb is not always sufficient to create a child is further evidence of the impenetrability of God’s design. Allowing the seed to spill onto the ground, as did the unfortunate Onan, whom the Lord punished with death for refusing in this way to give his brother’s widow children, rules out any possibility of the woman’s becoming pregnant. On the other hand, time and time again, as someone once said, the pitcher goes to the fountain until there is no more water and it comes back empty. For it was clearly God who put Isaac into the little seed that Abraham was still able to produce, and God who poured it into Sarah’s womb, because she was past conceiving children. Looking at things from a theogenetic angle, as it were, we may conclude without offending logic, which must preside over everything in this and every other world, that it was God Himself who spurred Joseph to keep having intercourse with Mary, so that they might have lots of children, helping Him assuage the remorse that plagued Him ever since He permitted, or willed, without considering the consequences, the massacre of those innocent children of Bethlehem. But the strangest thing of all, and which goes to show that the ways of the Lord are not only inscrutable but also disconcerting, is that Joseph truly believed he was acting of his own accord and obeying God’s will, as he made strenuous efforts to beget more and more children, to compensate for all those killed by Herod’s soldiers, so that the numbers would tally in the next census. God’s remorse and Joseph’s were one and the same, and, if people in those days were already familiar with the expression God never sleeps, we now know that the reason He never sleeps is that He made a mistake which no man would be forgiven. With every child begotten by Joseph, God raised His head a little higher, but He will never raise it fully, because twenty-seven infants were massacred in Bethlehem, and Joseph did not live long enough to impregnate one woman with that many children, and Mary, worn out in body and soul, could never have withstood that many pregnancies. The carpenter’s house and yard, though full of children, might as well have been empty.

On reaching the age of five, Joseph’s son started going to school. Each morning his mother took him to the synagogue and left him in the charge of the steward who taught beginners, and it was there in the synagogue-and-classroom that Jesus and the other little boys of Nazareth under the age of ten observed the wise man’s precept, The child must be instructed in the Torah just as the ox is bred in the corral. The lesson ended at the sixth hour, which we now refer to as midday. Mary would be waiting for her child, and the poor woman was not allowed to ask him what he was learning, even this simple right was. denied her, for as the wise man’s maxim categorically states, Better that the law go up in flames than it be entrusted to women. Besides, if by any chance little Jesus had already been taught the true status of women in this world, including mothers, he
might have given her the wrong answer, the kind of answer that reduces one to insignificance. Take Herod, for example, with all his wealth and power, yet if we were to see him now, we would not even be able to say, He is dead and rotting, because he is nothing but mold, dust, bones, and filthy rags. When Jesus arrived home, his father asked him, What did you learn today, and Jesus, having been blessed with an excellent memory, repeated word for word and without a moment’s hesitation the lessons of the day. First the children were taught the letters of the alphabet, then the most important words, and finally whole sentences and passages from the Torah, which Joseph accompanied, beating out the rhythm with his right hand and slowly nodding his head. Standing aside, Mary looked on and learned things she was forbidden to ask, a clever stratagem on the part of women and practiced to perfection throughout the ages. Listening, they soon learn everything, even the difference between falsehood and truth, which is the height of wisdom. But what Mary did not understand, or understand completely, was the mysterious bond between her husband and Jesus, although even a stranger would have noticed the look of wistful tenderness on Joseph’s face when he spoke to his firstborn, as if he was thinking to himself, This beloved son of mine is my sorrow. All Mary knew was that Joseph’s nightmares, like a scourge on his soul, refused to go away, and were now so frequent that they became as much a habit as sleeping on the right side or waking up with thirst in the middle of the night. Mary, as a good and dutiful wife, still worried about her husband, but for her the most important thing of all was to see her son alive and well, a sign that Joseph’s crime had not been too serious, otherwise the Lord would have punished him without mercy, as was His wont. Take Job, broken and leprous, yet he had always been an honest, upright, and God-fearing man. Job’s misfortune was that he became involuntarily the cause of a dispute between Satan and God Himself, each clinging tenaciously to his own idea and prerogative. And yet they are surprised when a man despairs and cries out, Perish the day I was born and the night in which I was conceived, let that day turn to darkness and be erased from the calendar and that night become sterile and void of all happiness. It is true that God compensated Job by repaying him twice as much as He had taken, but what of all those other men, in whose name no book was ever written, men deprived of everything and given nothing in return, to whom everything was promised and nothing fulfilled.