Half an hour later the affable Salvador is able to inform him, No, you must have mistaken them for someone else, as far as I know they have never visited Brazil, they've been coming here for the last three years, we have often chatted and they would almost certainly have told me about such a voyage. Ah, so I was mistaken, but you say they have been coming here for the last three years. That's right, they are from Coimbra, they live there, the father is Doctor Sampaio, a lawyer. And the girl. She has an unusual name, she is called Marcenda, would you believe it, but they belong to an aristocratic family, the mother died some years ago. What is wrong with her hand. I believe her whole arm is paralyzed, that's why they come to stay here in the hotel for three days every month, so that she can be examined by a specialist. Ah, every month for three days. Yes, three days every month, Doctor Sampaio always warns me in advance so that I can keep the same two rooms free. Has there been any improvement during the last three years. If you want my frank opinion, Doctor, I don't think so. What a pity, the girl is so young. That's true, Doctor, perhaps you could offer them some advice next time, if you are still here. It's most likely I shall be here, but in any event I am not specialized in that field, I practice general medicine, I did some research into tropical diseases but nothing that would be helpful in a case like hers. Never mind, but it's very true that money doesn't bring happiness, the father so rich and the daughter a cripple, no one has ever seen her smile. You say she's called Marcenda. Yes, sir. A strange name, I've never come across it before. Nor I. Until tomorrow, Senhor Salvador, Until tomorrow, Doctor.
Upon entering his room, Ricardo Reis sees that the bed has been prepared, the bedspread and sheet neatly tucked back at an angle, discreetly, not that unsightly clutter of bedclothes tossed aside every which way. Here there is merely a suggestion, should he wish to lie down, his bed is ready. Not just yet, first he must read the one and a half stanzas he left on the sheet of paper, examine them critically, look for the door that this key, if key it is, can open, and imagine other doors beyond, doors locked and without a key. In the end, after much persistence he found something, it had been left there out of weariness, his or someone else's, but whose, and so the poem ended, Neither tranquil nor troubled, I wish to lift my being high above this place where men know pleasure and pain, the pause in the middle, the spondee, should be changed. Good fortune is a burden that oppresses the happy man, because it is no more than a particular state of mind. He then went to bed and fell asleep at once.
Ricardo Reis had told the manager, I would like breakfast brought up to my room at nine-thirty. Not that he intended to sleep so late, but he wished to avoid having to jump out of bed half-awake, struggling to slip his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown, groping for his slippers, and feeling panic that he wasn't moving quickly enough to satisfy whoever was standing outside his door, arms laden with a huge tray bearing coffee and milk, toast, a sugar bowl, perhaps some cherry preserve or marmalade, a slice of dark grainy quince paste, a sponge cake, brioches with a fine crust, crunchy biscuits, or slices of French toast, those scrumptious luxuries served in hotels. We shall soon learn if the Brangança goes in for such extravagance, because Ricardo Reis is about to sample his first breakfast. It would be nine-thirty on the dot, Salvador promised him, and did not promise in vain, for here at nine-thirty on the dot Lydia is knocking on the door. The observant reader will say that this is impossible, she has both her arms occupied, but we would be in a sorry state if we had to hire only servants who possess three arms or more. This maid, without spilling a drop of milk, manages to knock gently with her knuckles, while the hand belonging to those knuckles continues to support the tray. One must see this to believe it, as she calls out, Your breakfast, Doctor, which is what she was instructed to say, and although a woman of humble origins, she has not forgotten her instructions. If Lydia were not a maid, there is every indication that she would make an excellent tightrope walker, juggler, or magician, for she has talent enough for any of those professions. What is incongruous about her is that, being a maid, she should be called Lydia and not Maria. Ricardo Reis is already dressed and presentable, he has shaved and his dressing gown is tied at the waist. He even left the window ajar to air the room, for he detests nocturnal odors, those exhalations of the body from which not even poets are exempt. The maid finally entered, Good morning, Doctor, and proceeded to put down the tray, less lavish in its offerings than he had imagined. Nevertheless, the Brangança deserves an honorable mention, and it is no wonder that some of its guests would never dream of staying at any other hotel when they visit Lisbon. Ricardo Reis returns the greeting, then dismisses her, No, many thanks, that will be all, the standard reply to the question every good maid asks, Can I get you anything else, sir. If the answer is no, she must withdraw politely, backing away if at all possible, for to turn your back would be to show disrespect to one who pays your wages and gives you a living. But Lydia, who has been instructed to be especially attentive to the doctor's needs, goes on to say, I don't know if you have noticed, Doctor, but the Cais do Sodré is under water. Trust a man not to notice, the water could be forcing its way under his door and he wouldn't see it, having slept soundly all night. He woke up as if he had only been dreaming about the rain. And even in a dream he would not dream that there has been so much rain that the Cais do Sodré is flooded. The water comes up to the knees of a man who finds himself obliged to cross from one side to the other, barefoot, his clothes hitched up, carrying an elderly woman on his back through the flood, she much lighter than the sack of beans carried from the cart to the warehouse. Here at the bottom of the Rua do Alecrim the old woman opens her purse and finds a coin, with which she pays Saint Christopher, who has already gone paddling back into the water, for on the other side there is already someone else making frantic gestures. The second person is young and sturdy enough to cross on his own, but, being smartly dressed, he has no desire to get his clothes dirty, for this water is more like mud than water. If only he could see how silly he looks riding piggyback with his clothes all crumpled, his shins exposed, revealing green garters over white long underwear. Some are laughing now at the spectacle, in the Hotel Brangança, on the second floor, a middle-aged guest is grinning, and behind him, unless our eyes are deceiving us, stands a woman also grinning, yes, a woman, without a shadow of doubt, but our eyes do not always see right, because this one appears to be a maid. It is hard to believe that that is really her station, unless there has been some dangerous subversion of social class and ranking, a thing greatly to be feared, we hasten to add, yet there are occasions, and if it is true that occasion can turn a man into a thief, it can also cause a revolution such as the one we are witnessing. Lydia, daring to look out of the window, stands behind Ricardo Reis and laughs, as if she were his equal, at a scene they both find amusing. These are fleeting moments of a golden age, born suddenly and dying at once, which explains why happiness soon grows weary. The moment has already passed, Ricardo Reis has closed the window, Lydia, once more simply a maid, backs toward the door. Everything must now be done in haste because the slices of toast are getting cold and no longer look quite so appetizing. I shall ring for you to come and remove the tray, Ricardo Reis tells her, and this happens about half an hour later. Lydia quietly enters and quietly withdraws, her burden not as heavy, while Ricardo Reis pretends to be absorbed as he sits in his room leafing through the pages of The God of the Labyrinth without actually reading.
Today is the last day of the year. Throughout the world where this calendar is observed, people amuse themselves by weighing the resolutions they intend to put into practice during the incoming year. They swear that they will be honest, just, and forbearing, that their reformed lips will utter no more words of abuse, deceit, or malice, however much their enemies may deserve them. Clearly we are speaking about the common people. The others, uncommon and superior, have their own good reasons for being and doing quite the opposite whenever it suits or profits them, they do not allow themselves to be deceived, and laugh a
t us and our so-called good intentions. In the end we learn from experience, no sooner is January upon us than we forget half of what we promised, and then there is little point in trying to carry out the rest. It is rather like a castle made of cards, better for the upper part to be missing than have the whole thing collapse and the four suits mixed up. This is why it is questionable whether Christ departed from life with the words we find in the Holy Scriptures, those of Matthew and Mark, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me, or those of Luke, Father, into Thine hand I commit my spirit, or those of John, It is fulfilled. What Christ really said, word of honor, as any man on the street will tell you, was, Good-bye, world, you're going from bad to worse. But the gods of Ricardo Reis are silent entities who look upon us with indifference and for whom good and evil are less than words, because they never utter them, and why should they, if they cannot even tell them apart. They journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them. We were taught this lesson lest we wear ourselves out making new and better resolutions for the incoming year. Nor do the gods judge, knowing everything, but this may be false. The ultimate truth, perhaps, is that they know nothing, their only task being precisely to forget at each moment the good as well as the evil. So let us not say, Tomorrow I shall do it, for it is almost certain that tomorrow we will feel tired. Let us say instead, The day after tomorrow, then we will always have a day in reserve to change our mind and make new resolutions. It would be even more prudent, however, to say, One day, when the day comes to say the day after tomorrow, I shall say it, but even that might not prove necessary, if definitive death comes first and releases me from the obligation, for obligation is the worst thing in the world, the freedom we deny ourselves.
It has stopped raining, the sky has cleared, and Ricardo Reis can take a stroll before lunch without any risk of getting soaked. He decides to avoid the lower part of the city because the flood has still not subsided completely in the Cais do Sodré, its paving stones covered with fetid mud which the current of the river has lifted from deep and viscous layers of silt. If this weather persists, the men from the cleaning department will come out with their hoses. The water has polluted, the water will clean, blessed be the water. Ricardo Reis walks up the Rua do Alecrim, and no sooner has he left the hotel than he is stopped in his tracks by a relic of another age, perhaps a Corinthian capital, a votive altar, or funereal headstone, what an idea. Such things, if they still exist in Lisbon, are hidden under the soil that was moved when the ground was leveled, or by other natural causes. This is only a rectangular slab of stone embedded in a low wall facing the Rua Nova do Carvalho and bearing the following inscription in ornamental lettering, Eye Clinic and Surgery, and somewhat more austerely, Founded by A. Mascaró in 1870. Stones have a long life. We do not witness their birth, nor will we see their death. So many years have passed over this stone, so many more have yet to pass, Mascaró died and his clinic was closed down, perhaps descendants of the founder can still be traced, they pursuing other professions, ignoring or unaware that their family emblem is on display in this public place. If only families were not so fickle, then this one would gather here to honor the memory of their ancestor, the healer of eyes and other disorders. Truly it is not enough to engrave a name on a stone. The stone remains, gentlemen, safe and sound, but the name, unless people come to read it every day, fades, is forgotten, ceases to exist. These contradictions walk through the mind of Ricardo Reis as he walks up the Rua do Alecrim, where tiny rivulets of water still course along the tram tracks. The world cannot be still, the wind is blowing, the clouds soaring, don't let us talk about the rain, there has been so much of it. Ricardo Reis stops before a statue of Eça de Queirós, or Queiroz, out of respect for the orthography used by the owner of that name, so many different styles of writing, and the name is the least of it, what is surprising is that these two, one called Reis, the other Eça, should speak the same language. Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is. Once language has said all it has to say and falls silent, I wonder how we will go on living. Problems already begin to appear, perhaps they are not problems as yet, rather different layers of meaning, displaced sediments, new questioning formulations, take for example the phrase, Over the great nakedness of truth, the diaphanous cloak of imagination. It seems clear, compact, and conclusive, a child would be able to understand and repeat it in an examination without making any mistakes, but the same child might recite with equal conviction a different phrase, Over the great nakedness of imagination, the diaphanous cloak of truth, which certainly gives one more to ponder, more to visualize with pleasure, the imagination solid and naked, the truth a gauzy covering. If our maxims are reversed and become laws, what world will be created by them. It is a miracle that men do not lose their sanity each time they open their mouths to speak. The stroll is instructive, a moment ago we were contemplating Eça, now we can observe Camoes. They forgot to put any verses on his pedestal. Had they done so, what would they have put, Here with deep sorrow, with mournful song. Better to leave the poor, tormented creature and climb what remains of the street, the Rua da Misericórdia formerly the Rua do Mundo, unfortunately one cannot have it both ways, it has to be either Mundo or Misericórdia. Here is the old Largo de Sao Roque, and the church dedicated to that saint, whose festering wounds caused by plague were licked by a dog. The plague was almost certainly bubonic, the animal hardly of the same breed as the bitch Ugolina that knows only how to tear and devour. Inside this famous church you will find the chapel of Sao João Baptista, its decorations entrusted to Italian artists by Dom João V, king, mason, and architect par excellence, who won such renown during his reign. Take a look at the convent of Mafra and also the aqueduct of Águas Livres, of which the full history has yet to be written. Here too, on the diagonal of the two kiosks that sell tobacco, lottery tickets, and spirits, stands the monument in marble erected by the Italian colony to commemorate the marriage of King Dom Luis, the translator of Shakespeare, and Dona Maria Pia di Savōia, the daughter of Verdi, that is to say, of Vittorio Emmanuele, King of Italy, the only monument in the entire city of Lisbon which resembles a chastising rod or carpet beater with its five eyelets. At least that is what it suggests to the little girls from the orphanages, with their startled eyes, or if blind, they are so informed by their seeing companions, who from time to time pass this way dressed in little smocks and walking in formation, getting rid of the stench of the dormitory, their hands still smarting from the latest caning. This is a traditional neighborhood, exalted in name and location, but low in its way of life, for the laurel branches on the doors of the taverns alternate with women of easy virtue, al though, because it is still morning and the roads have been washed by the recent rain, you can sense a freshness, an innocence in the air, an almost virginal breeze. Who would have thought this possible in such a disreputable place, but the canaries affirm it with their song, their cages hanging out on the balconies or at the entrances to the taverns, they warble as if demented. One has to take advantage of the fine weather, especially when it is not expected to last, for once the rain starts up again their singing will die away, their feathers will ruffle. One little bird, more prescient than the others, buries its head under its wing and pretends to be asleep, its mistress is coming to fetch it indoors, and now only rain can be heard, also the strumming of a guitar nearby, where it is coming from Ricardo Reis cannot tell. He has taken shelter in this doorway at the beginning of the Travessa da Agua da Flor. It's often said that the sun is here then gone again, the clouds that let it through cover it quickly, but showers, too, come and go, the rain pours down, passes, the eaves and verandahs trickle water, the wash on the clotheslines is dripping, then a cloudburst so sudden there is no time for the women to do anything, to shout, as is their wont, It's raiiiiining, passing the word from one to another like soldiers in their sentry boxes at night. But the canary's mistress is on t
he alert and manages, in the nick of time, to retrieve it. Just as well that its frail little body has been protected, see how its heart is beating, Jesus, such violence, such speed. Was it the fright, no, it is always like this, a heart that lives for a short time beats fast, in compensation. Ricardo Reis crosses the park to take a look at the city, the castle with its walls in ruins, the terraced houses collapsing along the slopes, the whitish sun beating on the wet rooftops. Silence descends on the city, every sound is muffled, Lisbon seems made of absorbent cotton, soaked, dripping. Below, on a platform, are several busts of gallant patriots, some box shrubs, a few Roman heads out of place, so remote from the skies of Latium, as if one of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro's native rustics had been set up to make a rude gesture to the Apollo Belvedere. The entire terrace is a belvedere as we contemplate Apollo, then a voice joins the guitar and they sing a fado. The rain appears to have finally disappeared.
The Collected Novels of José Saramago Page 47