The Collected Novels of José Saramago (199 page)

Yet it looks as if it might be necessary to step back a little, for example, to begin with the speech of Dom Afonso Henriques, which will permit, moreover, further reflection about the style and the words of the orator, perhaps even the invention of another speech, more in keeping with the age, the person and the place, or simply the logic of the situation, which because of its substance and detail, might justify that fatal refusal by the crusaders. This raises an earlier question, it would be useful to know the names of the king’s interlocutors at that point, whom he was addressing, which people were present when he delivered his discourse. Fortunately, we can find out by turning to the primary sources, the writings of the chroniclers, the real
History of the Siege of Lisbon
sitting on Raimundo Silva’s desk, it could not be more explicit, you only have to browse, search, discover, the information comes from a reliable source, some believe directly from the famous Osbern of Bawdsey, and so we learn that Count Arnold of Aarschot was there, the commander of the warriors from various regions of the German empire, Christian of Ghistelles was there, leader of the Flemings and the men from Boulogne, and that a third of the crusaders were led by four constables, namely, Hervey de Glanville with a contingent of men from Norfolk and Suffolk, Simon of Dover with ships from Kent, Andrew with recruits from London, and Saher of Archelle in charge of the others. We should also mention Willelmus Vitulus of Normandy and his brother Radulphus, neither name easy to pronounce, who were not in charge of any major army, yet were endowed with authority, military power and political influence which allowed them to participate in any discussions.

But the disadvantage with sources, however truthful they try to be, is their lack of precision in matters of detail and their impassioned account of events, we refer to a certain internal faculty of contradictory germination which operates within facts or the version of those facts as provided, sold, or proposed, and stemming like spores from the latter, the proliferation of secondary and tertiary sources, some copied, others carelessly transmitted, some repeated from hearsay, others who changed details in good or bad faith, some freely interpreted, others rectified, some propagated with total indifference, others proclaimed as the one, eternal and irreplaceable truth, the last of these the most suspect of all. Naturally, everything depends on the greater or lesser quantity of documents available for consultation, on how much or how little time one is prepared to devote to this irksome task, but, in order to get an updated idea of the nature of the problem in hand, we need only imagine, in this day and age in which Raimundo Silva is living, that he or one of us needs to verify some regurgitated truth, constantly being modified by dint of repetition, in the newspapers, yet notwithstanding, the country is small and the population littlè given to reading,-scanning the titles alone gives them vertigo because, frankly, there are far too many of them, the
Diário de Notícias,
the
Correio de Manhã, O Século,
the
Capital, O Dia,
the
Diário de Lisboa,
the
Diàrio Popular, O Diário,
the
Comércio do Porto,
the
Jornal de Notícias, O Europeu,
the
Primeiro de Janeiro,
the
Diário de Coimbra,
and these are only the daily newspapers, because after glossing, summarising, commenting, forecasting, announcing, speculating, we have the weekly newspapers and magazines,
O Expresso,
O Jornal, O Semanário, O Tempo, O Diabo, O Independente, O Sábado,
and O
Avante,
and
Acção Socialista,
and
O Povo Livre,
and the list would be never-ending if, in addition to the most important and influential publications, we were to include all the newspapers and magazines published further afield, where people also have the right to exist and voice their opinions.

Fortunately the proof-reader has other things to worry him, he wants to know who those foreigners were, who during those hot summer days engaged in conversation with our King Afonso Henriques, it áppeared that everything had been clarified by consulting
The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
beyond what had already been gathered from the manuscript attributed to Osbern and other ancient works of similar interest, such as Arnulfo and Dodequino, and marginally, the narrative account in the
Indiculum Fundationis Monasterii Sancti Vincentii,
but no, Sir, nothing has been explained, since, for example, in
The Chronicle of the Five Kings of Portugal,
which must have had its own good reasons for revealing so little, sometimes extracting, sometimes adding, no important foreigners are mentioned apart from Guillaume of the Long Arrow, Gilíes de Rolim, and another Dom Gilíes whose surname is not given, note that none of these men are mentioned in
The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
allegedly based on the testimony of Osbern, in similar cases one generally opts for the earliest of the documents because closer to events, but we do not know what Raimundo Silva will do, since he clearly likes the medieval flavour of the name Guillaume of the Long Arrow, a knight whose very name destined him to carry out the most incredible feats of chivalry. One expedient is to look for a solution in a work of greater authority, such as, in this case, the
Chronicle
of Dom Afonso Henriques himself, written by Fray Antonio Brandão but, alas, this will not untangle the plot, only make it worse by referring to Guillaume of the Long Arrow as Guillaume of the Long Sword, and by introducing, according to the version of Setho Calvisio, a certain Euric, King of Damia, a bishop from Bremen, a duke from Burgundy, a certain Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and with reasonable likelihood, the aforementioned Gilíes de Rolim, also known as Childe Rolim, and Dom Lichertes, and Dom Ligel, and the brothers Dom Guillaume and Dom Robert de La Corni, and Dom Jordáo, and Dom Alardo, some of them French, others who were Flemish, Norman, or English, although it is doubtful whether in certain circumstances they would have revealed their nationality when questioned, considering that in those days and for some considerable time to come, a man, whether a nobleman or commoner, did not know his country of origin or still had not made up his mind.

But having reflected on these discrepancies, Raimundo Silva decided that ascertaining the truth would not be of much help, insofar as no more will be heard of these and other crusaders, however aristocratic or plebeian, once the king has made his speech, for whatever the consequences, the truth demands the negation inserted into this one and only copy of
The History of the Siege of Lisbon.
But since we are not dealing with unintelligent people, who, moreover, could rely on a multitude of clergymen to act as interpreters and spiritual counsellors, there must have been some serious motive behind their refusal to assist the Portuguese with the siege and capture of Lisbon, otherwise several hundred men would never have taken the trouble to disembark, while more than twelve thousand wait in the ships for the order to go ashore with weapons, coffers and knapsacks, and accompanied by the women travelling on board of whom no warrior should be deprived, even when engaged in holy wars, otherwise how could they possibly relieve and satisfy their corporeal needs. What that motive might have been, we must now investigate, if we are to give the slightest credibility and verisimilitude to this new account.

Let us see. The first hypothesis to come to mind is the climate, but this can be ruled out at once for, as we all know, foreigners, without exception, adore this warm sunshine, these gentle breezes, this incomparable blue sky, you only have to consider that we are already in late June, yesterday was the Feast of St Peter, and the city and the river were one and the same glory, but no one could tell whether beneath the gaze of the God of the Christians or the Allah of the Moor, unless both were enjoying the spectacle together and laying wagers. A second hypothesis could be the aridity of the land, a veritable desert, a scene of utter desolation, but such nonsense could only be conceived by someone unfamiliar with Lisbon and its immediate surroundings, a garden to regale any good man’s soul, just look at all those orchards stretching along the banks of the resplendent estuary wending inland, in this Baixa nestling between the hill on which the city is perched and the one in front lying to the west, the perfect manifestation of just how skilful the Moors are in cultivating the land. A third and final hypothesis, to conclude, would be an outbreak of deadly pestilence, not unlike those plagues that from time to time decimate the population throughout Europe and its immediate frontiers, not excepting the crusaders, but a few endemic cases are no cause for alarm, a person can get used to anything, it is like living on the edge of a volcano, foolish comparisons if we think about it for earthquakes are rather more common on the earth, as we shall see more clearly within the next six hundred years or so. Here then are three hypotheses and not one of them plausible. Therefore, hard as we may find it to accept, the reason, cause, motive and explanation must be looked for, and perhaps even found, in the king’s speech. There, and there alone.

Raimundo Silva will turn back the pages of the book until he comes to the harangue discussed earlier, in order to read between the lines, to eliminate any superfluous embellishments and proliferations and reduce the text to the bare essentials, and then, by somersaulting like an acrobat, by forcing himself to identify with the mentality of the people who bore these names, origins and characteristics, to feel welling up inside him a rage, indignation and displeasure that would give him the courage to say adamantly, Your Majesty, here we remain, notwithstanding that warm sun you have there, those fertile plains, those pure skies, that wondrous river where sardines leap, Your Majesty keep it and much good may it do you, farewell. As he read this for a second time, it occurred to Raimundo Silva that the crux of the problem might lie in those words, not entirely his own, as we have seen, with which Dom Afonso Henriques tries to persuade the crusaders to carry out the operation on the cheap, telling them, presumably with an innocent expression on his face, Of one thing, however, we are certain, and that is that your piety will lead you to join us in this great crusade rather than any promise of financial rewards. This is what I, the crusader Raimundo Silva, heard with my own ears, and I was astonished that such a Christian king should have failed to observe those divine words, which as king he ought to have embraced as his guiding principle in politics, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s, which, here in our narrative, means that the King of Portugal should not confuse two quite separate issues, it is one thing for me to serve God, another that I should be justly rewarded on this earth for this and other services, especially when I am risking my skin in the enterprise, and not just my skin but everything it carries inside. Of course there is a blatant contradiction between this passage of the royal speech and that other coming immediately before, when he affirms that he considers at your disposal, that is to say, of the crusaders, all that our land possesses, but it is just possible that this was an expression of courtesy used at the time and which no well-educated person would have dreamt of taking literally, just as nowadays we say to people whom we have just met, I’m entirely at your disposal, imagine if they were to take us at our word and start treating us as if we were some flunkey.

Raimundo Silva has risen from his desk, he paces up and down the tiny space left in his study, moves into the corridor to rid himself as quickly as possible of another kind of tension that is getting a grip on him, and thinks aloud, This is not the problem, even though it may have provoked the conflict between the crusaders and the king, it is much more likely that all those disagreements, insults and feelings of mistrust, should we help, should we not help, stemmed from the question of payment for services, the king wants to make savings, the crusaders want rewards, but the problem I have to solve is different, when I wrote
Not
the crusaders went away, therefore my looking for an answer to the question is pointless, Why, in this history accepted as being true, must I myself invent another history so that it might be false and false so that it may be different. He got tired of pacing up and down the corridor, returned to his study, but did not sit down, scanned with nervous irritation the few lines that had survived the damage, six pages, one after the other had been torn up, and as for the amendments, they were like scars still waiting to heal. He realised that until he overcame the problem he would make no progress, and was surprised, accustomed as he was to books in which everything seemed fluent and spontaneous, almost essential, not because it was effectively true, but because any piece of writing, good or bad, always ends up appearing like a predetermined crystallisation, although no one can ever say how or when or why or by whom, he was surprised, as we said, for the following idea had never occurred to him, an idea which should have stemmed naturally from the previous idea, but, on the contrary, refused to emerge, or perhaps not even that, it simply was not there, did not exist even as a possibility. The seventh page was also torn up, the desk once more was clear, smooth, a
tabula
twice
rasa,
a desert, not a single idea. Raimundo Silva reached out for the proofs of the book of poems, he wavered for several more minutes between that nothing and this something, then, little by little, he began to concentrate on his work, time passed, before lunch the proofs had been revised and given another reading, ready for the publishers. Throughout the morning, the telephone had not rung, the postman scarcely ever calls at this address, and the calm in the street was rarely disturbed by the cautious passing of a car, tourist buses never come through this way, they turn into the Largo dos Lóios, and with all the rain there has been recently, few must have ventured all the way up here where there has been nothing to see except overcast skies. Raimundo Silva got to his feet, time to eat, but first he went to the bedroom window, the sky has finally cleared, it is no longer raining, and amidst the fleeting clouds patches of blue sky appear and disappear, a blue as intense as it must have been on that day, despite the difference in the time of year. For a moment, Raimundo Silva could not bring himself to go into the kitchen, heat up that eternal soup, forage amongst the tins of tuna and sardines, play about with a frying-pan or saucepan, not because he fancied eating something more elaborate, but simply, as it were, because of a sudden bout of mental apathy. But neither did he feel like going out to find a restaurant To have to study the menu, to choose between a dish and the price, to sit amongst total strangers, to handle a knife and fork, all these actions, so easy, so commonplace, struck him as being intolerable. He remembered the nearby Café Graciosa where they serve toasted sandwiches with a cheese and ham filling, acceptable even for palates more discriminating than his, and with a glass of wine and coffee to finish off, his appetite will certainly be satisfied.