Blimunda searched for nine long years. She started off counting the seasons, until they lost any meaning. At the outset, she also tried to calculate the number of leagues she walked each day, four, five, sometimes six, but she soon began to get muddled, and there came a point when space and time ceased to matter, she then began appraising everything in terms of morning, afternoon, night, rain, the midday sun, hail, fog, and mist, deciding whether the road was good or bad, whether the slope went up or down, whether this was plain, mountain, seashore, or river-bank, and then there were those faces, thousands upon thousands of faces, countless faces, which exceeded by far those that had gathered in Mafra, and among the faces those of the women, which invited questions, those of the men, which might provide the answers, and among the latter neither the very young nor the very old, but a man who was forty-five years old when we left him yonder in Monte Junto, that day he went up into the sky, and in order to work out how old he is now, we only need to add one year at a time, for every month add on so many wrinkles, for each day so many white hairs. How often Blimunda imagined herself seated in some village square begging alms, and a man coming up to her who, instead of offering alms, would extend his iron hook, whereupon she would put her hand into her knapsack and bring out a spike forged at the same anvil, the symbol of her constancy and vigil, And so I've found you, Blimunda, And I've found you, Baltasar, Where have you been all these years and what things and misfortunes have befallen you, First tell me about yourself, for it was you who was lost, Let me tell you what happened, and there they would remain, conversing until the end of time.
Blimunda walked thousands of leagues, nearly always barefoot. The soles of her feet became hard and scarred like the bark of a tree. Those feet walked the length and breadth of Portugal, on several occasions they even crossed the Spanish border, because Blimunda failed to notice any line on the ground dividing this territory here from that territory there, she simply heard a foreign language being spoken and turned back. In the space of two years she travelled from the beaches and rocks of the ocean to the frontier, then explored other places and different routes, and her travels and explorations made her realise just how small this country was where she was born. I've been here before, I remember passing through this place, and she came across faces she recognised, Don't you remember me, they used to call me the Flying Woman, Ah, of course I remember, so you found the man you were looking for, You mean my man, That's right, No, I didn't find him, Ah, poor woman, He didn't turn up here by any chance, after I went away, No, he hasn't been seen and I haven't heard anyone mention him in these parts, Well, then, I'm off, farewell, Have a good journey, If only I could find him.
She did find him. She had passed through Lisbon six times and this was the seventh. She had come from the south, from near Pegões. It was almost night when she crossed the river in the last boat to take advantage of the tide. She had not eaten for almost twenty-four hours. There was still some food in her knapsack, but every time Blimunda was about to put it into her mouth, it was as if another hand had been placed on hers and a voice warned her, Don't eat, for the hour has come. Beneath the dark waters of the river, she saw fish swimming past at a great depth, shoals of crystal and silver fish, their elongated backs covered in scales or quite smooth. The light inside each house filtered through its walls like a beacon in mist. She entered the Rua Nova dos Ferros and turned right at the Church of Our Lady of Oliveira towards the Rossio, the same journey she had made twenty-eight years ago. She walked amid phantoms, among mists that were human. Amid the thousand rancid smells of the city, the evening breeze brought to her nostrils that of charred flesh. Crowds were milling around the Church of St Dominic amid the torches, black smoke, and bonfires. Blimunda pushed her way through until she reached the front row, Who are they, she asked a woman holding a child in her arms, I only know three of them, that man there and the woman beside him are father and daughter who have been found guilty of Judaism and are to burn at the stake, and the one at the end is a fellow who wrote comedies for puppet shows named António José da Silva, but I know nothing about the others.
Eleven people have been sentenced. The stake is already ablaze and the faces of the victims are barely distinguishable. The last man to be burned has his left hand missing. Perhaps because of his blackened beard, a miraculous transformation caused by the soot, he looks much younger. And there is a dark cloud in the centre of his body. Then Blimunda said, Come. The will of Baltasar Sete-Sóis broke free from his body, but did not ascend to the stars, for it belonged to the earth and to Blimunda.
Translator's Note
Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão is a historical figure. He was born in Santos, Brazil (1685?) and studied for the priesthood at the Seminary of Belem in Bahia. In 1708 he travelled to Portugal, where he soon attracted attention because of his prodigious memory and his mechanical skills. The following year he sent a memorandum to João V, informing the King that he had invented an instrument "that could travel through the air over land and sea". Lourenço then published a treatise on the art of air navigation. His theories were ridiculed in satirical verses, and he was called "O Voador" (The Flying Man). He confounded his critics by inventing a rudimentary airship, which he launched August 8, 1709. A sketch of this strange invention circulated in Lisbon, and because of its resemblance to an enormous bird it was called "La Passarola".
From 1713 until 1716 Lourenço studied in Holland. Upon his return to Portugal, he completed a doctorate in canon law at Coimbra. Such was his prestige in academic circles that João V made him a member of the Academy of History and appointed him to a chaplaincy in the royal household. Lourenço went on to invent many other devices, including a machine for grinding sugar-cane.
It has not been established precisely when he converted to Judaism, but when he realised that the Inquisition had begun investigating him and was about to order his arrest, he fled from Lisbon in September 1724 and found sanctuary in Spain. He died several months later at the Hospital de la Caridad in Toledo, finally reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church.
Today, Lourenço is largely remembered as a pioneer of aviation
Publishers' Note
The English text as originally published embodied a number of editorial amendments which the author requested be overruled; the labour of reinstating the text in accordance with the author's wishes was undertaken by Giovanni Pontiero. The text of the present edition is thus in conformity with the author's and the translator's wishes.
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my deep gratitude to José Saramago, Stefanie Goodfellow, Teresa Nunes, Carlos Sachs, Maria Fernanda Româo, Paul Berman, Drenka Willen, Neil Ferguson, and Thomas Colchie. Their encouragement and assistance proved invaluable in the preparation of this translation
GIOVANNI PONTIERO
Manchester 1986
THE YEAR OF THE DEATH OF RICARDO REIS
Translated by Giovanni Pontiero
A Harvest Book • Harcourt, Inc.
Orlando Austin New York San Diego London
© José Saramago e Editorial Caminho, SARL Lisboa, 1984
English translation copyright © 1991 by Harcourt, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saramago, José.
[Ano da morte de Ricardo Reis. English]
The year of the death of Ricardo Reis /
José Saramago; translated
from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Translation of: O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis.
ISBN 978-0-15-199735-0
ISBN 978-0-15-699693-8 (pbk.)
I. Title
PQ9281. A66A8413 1991 869.3'42—dc20 90-33401
Designed by Camilla Filancia
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest edition 1992
S R Q P O N M L K
Wise is the man who contents himself with the
spectacle of the world.
—RICARDO REIS
To choose ways of not acting was ever the concern
and scruple of my life.
—BERNARDO SOARES
If they were to tell me that it is absurd to speak
thus of someone who never existed, I should reply
that I have no proof that Lisbon ever existed, or I
who am writing, or any other thing wherever it might be.
—FERNANDO PESSOA
Here the sea ends and the earth begins. It is raining over the colorless city. The waters of the river are polluted with mud, the riverbanks flooded. A dark vessel, the Highland Brigade, ascends the somber river and is about to anchor at the quay of Alcântara. The steamer is English and belongs to the Royal Mail Line. She crosses the Atlantic between London and Buenos Aires like a weaving shuttle on the highways of the sea, backward and forward, always calling at the same ports, La Plata, Montevideo, Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Las Palmas, in this order or vice versa, and unless she is shipwrecked, the steamer will also call at Vigo and Boulogne-sur-Mer before finally entering the Thames just as she is now entering the Tagus, and one does not ask which is the greater river, which the greater town. She is not a large vessel, fourteen thousand tons, but quite seaworthy, as was demonstrated during this crossing when, despite constant rough weather, only those unaccustomed to ocean voyages were seasick, or those accustomed but who suffer from an incurably delicate stomach. On account of the homey atmosphere and comforts on board, the ship has come to be affectionately known, like her twin the Highland Monarch, as the family steamer. Both vessels are equipped with spacious decks for games and sunbathing, even cricket, a field sport, can be played on deck, which shows that for the British Empire nothing is impossible. When the weather is fine, the Highland Brigade becomes a garden for children and a paradise for the elderly, but not today, because it is raining and this is our last afternoon on board. Behind windowpanes ingrained with salt the children peer out at the gray city, which lies flat above the hills as if built entirely of one-story houses. Yonder, perhaps, you catch a glimpse of a high dome, some thrusting gable, an outline suggesting a castle ruin, unless this is simply an illusion, a chimera, a mirage created by the shifting curtain of the waters that descend from the leaden sky. The foreign children, whom nature has endowed more generously with the virtue of inquisitiveness, are curious to know the name of the port. Their parents tell them or it is spelled out by their nurses, amas, bonnes, Fräuleins, or perhaps by a passing sailor on his way to some maneuver. Lisboa, Lisbon, Lisbonne, Lissabon, there are four different ways of saying it, leaving aside the variants and mistaken forms. And so the children come to know what they did not know before, and that is what they knew already, nothing, merely a name, causing even greater confusion in their childish minds, a name pronounced with the accent peculiar to the Argentinians, if that is what they happen to be, or to the Uruguayans, the Brazilians, the Spaniards. The latter, writing Lisbon correctly in their respective versions of Castilian or Portuguese, then pronounce it in their own way, a way beyond the reach of ordinary hearing or any representation in writing. When the Highland Brigade sails up the straits early tomorrow morning, let us hope there will be a little sunshine and a clear sky, so that the gray mist does not completely obscure, even within sight of land, the already fading memory of those voyagers who passed here for the first time, those children who repeated the word Lisbon, transforming it into some other name, those adults who knitted their eyebrows and shivered with the general dampness which penetrates the wood and metal, as if the Highland Brigade had emerged dripping from the bottom of the sea, a ship twice transformed into a phantom. No one by choice or inclination would remain in this port.
A few passengers are about to disembark. The steamer has docked, the gangplank has been lowered and secured, unhurried baggage handlers and stevedores appear below, guards emerge from the shelter of their huts and sheds, and the customs officers begin to arrive. The rain has eased off and almost stopped. The passengers gather at the top of the gangplank, hesitant, as if in some doubt as to whether permission has been granted to disembark, or whether there could be a quarantine, or perhaps they are apprehensive about those slippery steps. But it is the silent city that frightens them, perhaps all its inhabitants have perished and the rain is only falling to dissolve into mud what has remained standing. Along the quayside grimy portholes glow dimly, the spars are branches lopped from trees, the hoists are still. It is Sunday. Beyond the docksheds lies the somber city, enclosed by façades and walls, as yet protected from the rain, perhaps drawing back a heavy, embroidered curtain, looking out with vacant eyes, listening to the water gurgling on the rooftops, down the drainpipes to the gutters below, and onto the gleaming limestone of the pavement to the brimming drains, some of their covers raised where they have flooded.
The first passengers disembark. Their shoulders bent under the monotonous rain, they carry sacks and suitcases and have the lost expression of those who have endured the voyage as if in a dream of flowing images, between sea and sky, the prow going up and down like a metronome, the waves rising and falling, the hypnotic horizon. Someone is carrying a child in his arms, a child so silent it must be Portuguese. It does not ask where they are, or else it was promised that if it went to sleep at once in that stuffy berth, it would wake up in a beautiful city where it would live happily ever after. Another fairy tale, for these people have been unable to endure the hardships of emigration. An elderly woman who insists on opening her umbrella has dropped the green tin box shaped like a little trunk that she was carrying under her arm. The box has crashed onto the pebbles on the quayside, breaking open, its bottom falling out. It contained nothing of value, a few souvenirs, some bits of colored cloth, letters and photographs scattered by the wind, some glass beads shattered into smithereens, balls of white yarn now badly stained, one of them disappearing between the quayside and the side of the ship. The woman is a third-class passenger.
As they set foot on land, the passengers run to take shelter. The foreigners mutter about the storm as if we were responsible for the bad weather, they appear to forget that in their beloved France or England the weather is usually a great deal worse. In short, they use the slightest pretext, even nature's rain, to express their contempt for poorer nations. We have more serious reasons for complaint, but we remain silent. This is a foul winter, with whatever crops there were uprooted from the fertile soil, and how we miss them, being such a small country. The baggage is already being unloaded. Under their glossy capes the sailors resemble hooded wizards, while, down below, the Portuguese porters move swiftly in their peaked caps and short jackets weatherproofed and lined, so indifferent to the deluge that they astonish all who watch. Perhaps this disdain for personal comfort will move the purses of the passengers, or wallets as one says nowadays, to take pity on them, and that pity will be converted into tips. A backward clan, with outstretched hand, each man sells what he possesses in good measure, resignation, humility, patience, may we continue to find people who trade in this world with such wares. The passengers go through customs, few in number, but it will take them some time to get out, for there are many forms to be filled in and the handwriting of the customs officers on duty is painstaking. It is just possible that the quickest of them will get some rest this Sunday. It is growing dark although it is only four o'clock, a few more shadows and it will be nig
ht, but in here it is always night, the dim lamps lit all day long and some burned out. That lamp there has been out for a week and still hasn't been replaced. The windows, covered with grime, allow a watery light to penetrate. The heavy air smells of damp clothing, rancid baggage, the cheap material of uniforms, and there is not a trace of happiness in this homecoming. The customs shed is an antechamber, a limbo, before one passes on to what awaits outside.
The Collected Novels of José Saramago Page 42