The Collected Novels of José Saramago (221 page)

Seated at the little table where he has written
The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
looking at the last page as he awaits that providential word that by means of attraction or repulsion will reactivate the interrupted flow, Raimundo Silva was no doubt saying to himself, like Maria Sara on the Escadinhas de São Crispim last night, Let’s go, write, push ahead, develop, abbreviate, annotate, perfect, but without any of the gentle modulation of that other Let’s go, which, incapable of remaining suspended in space, went on reverberating inside them like an echo slowly becoming louder until transformed into glorious song when the bedclothes were drawn back once more to receive them. The memory of that splendid night distracts Raimundo Silva, the surprise of awakening in the morning and seeing and feeling a naked body beside him, the ineffable pleasure of touching it, here, there, softly, as it were one great rose, saying to himself, Slowly, don’t awaken her, let me come to know you, rose, body, flower, then those eager hands, that prolonged, insistent caress, until Maria Sara opens her eyes and smiles, when they said together, My love, and embraced. Raimundo Silva searches for the word, on any other occasion these same words would have served, My love, but it is doubtful whether Mogueime and Ouroana would have used them, not to mention that at this stage, they still had not met, let alone declared such sudden feelings whose expression seems beyond their understanding.

Meanwhile, the unwitting instrument of destiny, knight Heinrich debates in his intimate forum, whether he should take Ouroana with him to Mem Ramires’s quarters, or leave her behind in the royal encampment, under the care and vigilance of his trusted squire. But he is so accustomed to having this squire with him that he does not feel inclined to dispense with his services, so after giving the matter careful consideration, he summoned him and told him to prepare their baggage and arms because early next morning they will descend from these sheltered heights in order to join the troops gathered at the Porta de Ferro, where, under his command and authority, they will build an assault tower, Let’s see who finishes first, us, or the French, or the Normans, at the Portas do Sol and the Porta de Alfama. And what about your concubine, Ouroana, what will you do with her, asked the squire, She will come with me, There are many dangers, down there the Moors and Christians are directly facing each other, Later we’ll see what’s to be done, since I’m certain that these infidels have not dared to engage in battle outside the walls. Having thus agreed, the squire went to warn Ouroana and to organise the move, five of his armed bodyguards would also accompany knight Heinrich, because this German was not such a great lord as to have a private army at his disposal, his speciality was more in the line of engineering, which nearly always depends on having a large number of men to build the machines, and always on the engineer’s knowledge, skill and imagination. Early
next morning, as stated before, after attending holy mass, knight Heinrich went to kiss the king’s hands, Farewell, Your Majesty, I’m going to build the tower. Standing a little way off, were his squire and armed bodyguards who were not entitled to speak with the king, and Ouroana in her litter, more to satisfy her master’s vanity than to display the fairness of her complexion, for in the fields of Galicia where she had been abducted, she was the daughter of peasants and like them she laboured, tilling the soil. Dom Afonso Henriques embraced the knight, May the Holy Virgin Mary accompany and protect you, he said, and help you to erect this tower the likes of which has never been seen before in these parts, you will be working with ship’s carpenters, the only suitable men we could find for the job, but if they should prove to be as good apprentices as you are reputed to be a master, then any further sieges I undertake with assault towers will only be carried out by native craftsmen without hiring any foreign labour, Your Majesty, many reports have reached my country praising the humility, frugality and spirit of abnegation of the Portuguese, ever ready and willing to serve family and fatherland, now if to so many rare qualities they were to add some intelligence and much greater strength of character and willpower, then I can assure Your Royal Highness that no tower will be beyond their capabilities, whether it is built tomorrow or at any other time. These reassuring sentiments made a deep impression on the king, especially coming from whom they came, and such was his satisfaction, that taking knight Heinrich on one side, he confided his private concern, You must have noticed that some of my chiefs of staff are unhappy with this idea of using assault towers, they’re traditionalists who cling to old-fashioned methods of warfare, so if any of them try to put up obstacles or delay the work on some defeatist pretext or other, tell me at once, for as I take pride in being a modern king, I am determined to proceed with this enterprise without further delay, all the more so because this war has drained my finances and the last thing I want is to find myself obliged to pay the soldiers their wages at the end of August when the three months expire, for although our troops earn little, all told it comes to a tidy sum, it would indeed be fortunate if we were to succeed in capturing the city in the meantime, so you can imagine how much I’m relying on these towers, therefore you have all my support and encouragement to forge ahead with this plan, and have no fears about being generously rewarded, for you have all those possessions of the Moors with which to pay yourselves ten times as much. Knight Heinrich assured the king that he could put his mind at rest, with God’s help he would secure victory, he would reveal nothing about the treasury’s difficulties, and under no circumstances should he worry about rewarding him for his services, For the best reward, Your Majesty, is in heaven above, and to gain the citadel of paradise other towers are needed, those erected by good works, such as this pledge of ours not to leave a single Moor alive if they stubbornly go on refusing to surrender. The king took his leave of the knight, thinking to himself that he must bear him in mind, for such a man would make as good a bishop as a general, and if this business of the towers should succeed he will suggest that he should become naturalised and be rewarded with lands and a title to start a new life.

It soon became clear that knight Heinrich had no intention of wasting time for no sooner had he arrived at the Porta de Ferro than he was discussing with Mem Ramires the number of men he needed for this ambitious project, starting at once with the felling of the trees in those parts, some produced by nature, others planted by the Moors themselves, who could not have foreseen that they were literally providing wood for their own sacrifice, these are, let us repeat once more, the ironies of destiny. But we must go no further with these descriptions, without first mentioning the excitement caused by the arrival of the knight and his retinue, and little wonder, for here was a foreign technician, a German, if you please, which is to be a technician twice over, some, sceptical by nature or persuaded by others, were cautious about the enterprise and its outcome, others felt it was wrong to condemn something that had not yet had time to prove its worth, finally the practical and impartially-minded prevailed by acknowledging from the evidence that
it was preferable to fight the Moors in direct confrontation and at the same height rather than have them up there throwing down stones and taking advantage of the laws of gravity, with us down below suffering the effects. Detached from these polemical matters relating to the military-cum-industrial enterprise that was under way, and with eyes only for the woman arriving on a litter, Mogueime could scarcely believe his good fortune. Never more would he need to go prowling around the encampment of Graça, in constant danger of running into a military police patrol, wanting to know, What are you doing here so far away from your own camp, now the mountain truly came to the Prophet, not because the Prophet did not want to go to the mountain, we are all reliable witnesses of how hard he tried, but because above the Prophet as we know there is the sergeant-major, the second lieutenant, the captain, and, this being a time of war, there are even fewer passes for leave than opportunities, even when assisted by invention. This Ouroana who is arriving, if she does not spend all her time shut away in her tent waiting for knight Heinrich to interrupt his carpentry in order to relieve inside her the anxieties which can so easily pass from a soul that wants to be mystical with God to the flesh that only longs to be mystical with flesh, this Ouroana, taking into account the reduced space in this theatre of operations, will be much more often and more readily in sight, when strolling and daydreaming through the encampment or when standing on the river-bank to watch the porpoises leap, during those tranquil hours we associate with evening, when the troops go off to try and recover from their exertions during the fierce heat of the day and the even fiercer heat of battle, It is to be hoped, meanwhile, that all efforts will now be concentrated on building those towers, because given the shortage of able-bodied men it would be tantamount to suicide to disperse them in activities with little chance of success, except for the odd diversion intended to keep the enemy occupied, so that the carpenters can get on in peace with their risky task. In his annotations to Osbern’s letter, Fray Rogeiro provided, though he would make no mention of it in the definitive version, a detailed description of knight Heinrich’s arrival at the encampment at the Porta de Ferro, including a certain reference, clearly irresistible, to the woman accompanying him, Ouroana in name, as lovely as the dawn, as mysterious as moonrise, to cite the words of the friar, which his own chastening prudence, on the one hand, and the delicate modesty of the person to whom these words were being addressed, on the other, advised him to erase. Now it is quite possible that this and other repressed stirrings of the soul might have been the cause, by means of sublimation, of the care with which Fray Rogeiro began to follow the sayings and doings of the German knight until this point, but above all after his unfortunate, but in no sense ignominious death, as will become clear in time. Putting it more clearly, we would say that because he was unable to satisfy his lust for Ouroana, Fray Rogeiro could find no better excuse, beside one he kept to himself, than to praise to the skies the man who enjoyed her favours. When it comes to human nature, you can expect anything.

Senhora Maria came at the usual time after lunch, and no sooner had she arrived than she began muttering in a manner at once discreet and obvious, a difficult feat to achieve, because it has the dual aim of trying to disguise the fact that you know something, while showing at the same time that you are not prepared to allow the other person to play the innocent. It is a diplomatic art
par excellence,
yet guided by intuition, if not by instinct, and which, generally speaking, has achieved its main objective, namely to give the proof-reader a vague feeling of panic, as if his most intimate secrets were about to be revealed in public. Senhora Maria is a sadist without knowing it. She greeted him from the bedroom door, muttered twice to warn Raimundo Silva that she might only be a poor cleaner but she still had enough sense of smell to pick up any remaining traces of perfume in the air. Raimundo Silva returned her greeting and went on writing after giving a rapid glance in her direction, determined to pretend that he did not know what was going on, Senhora Maria, taken aback to begin with, and then with that peculiar expression on her face, as much as to say, Just as I
thought, eyeing the bed, which, instead of the quick tidying-up at which Raimundo Silva was adept lest it be mistaken for a migrant’s bunk, was irreproachable and showed every sign of a woman’s touch. She coughed to attract attention, but Raimundo Silva pretended to be distracted, although his heart was in a state of foolish turmoil, I don’t have to account for my life, he thought, annoyed with himself for seeking cowardly excuses, he who had just embarked on such a serious love affair, so he raised his head and asked, Did you want something, in a dry, brusque tone of voice which disarmed the woman’s impertinence, No, Sir, nothing, I was simply looking. Raimundo Silva could have satisfied himself with this embarrassed reply, but he preferred to taunt her, Looking at what, Nothing, the bed, What’s wrong with the bed, Nothing, it’s been made, So what, Nothing, nothing, Senhora Maria turned away, too intimidated to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue, Who made it, and so would never know what answer Raimundo Silva might have given, not that he knew himself. From then on, Senhora Maria stayed away from the bedroom, as if letting Raimundo Silva know that she considered that part of the house outside her jurisdiction, however, she was either unable or unwilling to repress her ill-tempered frustration, and making no attempt to go silently about her chores, she did her utmost to make as much noise as possible. Raimundo Silva decided to shrug this off with a smile, but the din was so loud that he was obliged to step into the corridor and plead, Could you make less noise, please, I’m trying to work, Senhora Maria could have retorted that she, too, was trying to get on with her work and that she did not have the luck of certain people who can earn a living seated in peace and quiet, but necessity, even when as conflictive as this, is stronger than willpower, and she said nothing. What annoys Senhora Maria most of all is that these dramatic changes are taking place without her knowledge, were she not the astute person she is, and one of these days she will unexpectedly find the other woman in the apartment, without being able to ask him the itching question, Who is this woman, who asked her to come here, men are such insensitive fools,
what would it have cost Raimundo Silva to have taken her into his confidence, for however much it might hurt it would always be something of a palliative, for such bitter jealousy, for this is the evil afflicting Senhora Maria although she does not know it. Other considerations of a practical and prosaic nature also occupy her mind, uppermost amongst them being the danger that she might lose her job if this other woman, assuming it is not just some casual affair, should start to interfere with her work, Clean this again, while holding up a dirty finger that has collected dust from the moulding on the door, that hateful gesture to which no cleaner has ever been known to respond with a phrase worthy of being recorded for posterity, If you stick it up your arse, you’ll collect even more dirt. God help those who only came into this world to take orders, Senhora Maria thinks to herself, and she polishes the door for a second time, while, for no apparent reason, tears spring to her eyes just as she happens to glance into the mirror in the bathroom, and at that moment, not even the sight of her lovely hair consoles her. In the middle of the afternoon the telephone rang, Raimundo Silva took the call, it was from the publishers, a routine conversation about work to Senhora Maria’s disappointment, Yes, I’m available, he was saying, Send me the manuscript at your convenience, unless you’d prefer me to come and pick it up, and the rest of the conversation was in much the same vein, revisions, deadlines, Senhora Maria had heard these monologues so many times before, the only difference being that the person at the other end of the line was inaudible, before it had been a certain Costa, now it was some woman, perhaps this was why Raimundo Silva’s tone of voice became all lovey-dovey, one of Senhora Maria’s favourite expressions, Ah, these men, but for all her cunning it never occurred to her that Raimundo Silva was actually speaking to the woman with whom he had slept the previous night, relishing the ineffable pleasure of using neutral words which they alone could translate into another language, that of emotion and capable of evoking other meanings, to utter the word book and hear the word kiss, to say yes and understand it to mean always, to hear good afternoon and sense the person is really saying, I love you. Had Senhora Maria known anything about the art of cryptography then she would have gone from here with the mystery solved, laughing up her sleeve at anyone who thought they could laugh at her, a somewhat laboured way of thinking because of her resentment, for neither Raimundo Silva nor Maria Sara have any idea that they are making Senhora Maria suffer, and if they did they would not ridicule her, otherwise they would not be deserving of so much happiness. This said, it is not inconceivable that Senhora Maria might come to like Maria Sara, you can expect everything of the heart, even the harmony of its contradictions.