The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  From time to time there are still light showers, at worst a rapid cloudburst, but for most of the day it is sunny, with blue skies and high clouds. The great plastic cover was put up, sewn and reinforced, and now that it looks like rain their progress is arrested, and in three stages, the cover is first unfolded, then stretched, and finally tied down, the awning is protected. Inside the wagon are the driest mattresses ou ever saw, the musty smell and dampness have gone, the interior neat and tidy, things could not be cosier. But now one can see just how much rain there has been in these parts. The land is waterlogged and one has to be careful with the wagon, testing the soft ground at the edge of the road before passing, otherwise it would be a hell of a job to move it, two horses, three men, and two women are not as effective as a tractor. The landscape has altered, they have left the mountains and hills behind, the last undulations are disappearing from sight, and looming up before one's eyes is what looks like an endless plain with such a vast sky overhead that one begins to doubt that the sky is all one, more likely each location, if not each person, has its own sky, greater or smaller, higher or lower, and this has been an amazing discovery, yes indeed, the sky like an infinite succession of encrusted domes, the contradiction in terms is only apparent, you need only look. When Deux Chevaux reaches the summit of the last hill one thinks the world will come to an end before the earth rises again, and since it is quite common for different causes to have the same effect, we have to struggle for breath up here as if we had been carried to the top of Everest, as anyone will tell you who has also been there, unless he has had the same experience as we have had on this flat ground.

  Pedro reckons without his host. But let it be said at once that this Pedro is not Orce, nor does the narrator know who he is, even if he admits that behind the aforementioned Pedro is the apostle of the same name who denied Christ three times, and these are the same calculations God made, probably because he was Triune, and not very good at arithmetic. In Portugal it is customary to say that Pedro knows his sums when the sums done by all Pedros come out wrong, this is a popular and ironic way of saying that some people should leave decisions to others, in other words, Joaquim Sassa was wrong when he estimated they would cover one hundred and fifty kilometers each day. Maria Guavaira was also wrong when she reduced it to ninety. The trader knows about trading, horses know about pulling a wagon, and just as one says, or used to say, Bad money drives out good, so the pace of the old horse moderated that of the young one, unless the latter was showing pity, kindness, human respect, because for the strong to brag about their strength in the presence of the weak is a sign of moral perversion. We have deemed all these words necessary in order to explain that we have been traveling more slowly than was predicted, concision is not a definitive virtue, on occasion one loses out by talking too much, it is true, but how much has also been gained by saying more than was strictly necessary. The horses go at their own pace, they had set off at a trot and they obey the whims or demands of the driver, but little by little, so subtly that no one even notices, Grizzly and Chess start reducing their pace, how they can manage it so harmoniously is a mystery, for no one heard the one say to the other, Slow down, or the other reply, When we get past that tree.

  Fortunately, the travelers are not in a hurry. In the beginning, when they left the already distant lands of Galicia, they felt that they had dates to meet and itineraries to respect, there was even a certain feeling of urgency, as if each of them had to save a father from the gallows, to reach the scaffold before the executioner let the trapdoor fall. Here it is not a question of father or mother, for we know nothing about the one or the other, except for Maria Guavaira's mother, who is senile and no longer lives in La Coruña, unless she returned there once the danger had passed. About the other mothers and fathers, ancient and modern, nothing has been revealed, when children fall silent, questions must also be silenced and inquiries suspended, for when all is said and done, the world begins and ends with each one of us, although this statement might deeply offend the family spirit as showing disrespect for one's heritage and lineage. Within several days, the road became a world outside the world, as with any man who, finding himself in the world, discovers that he is himself a world, nor is this difficult, one need only create a little solitude around oneself, like these travelers who while traveling together travel alone. That is why they are not in a hurry, that is why they stopped measuring the distance they have covered, any stops they make are for selling or taking a rest, and they often feel tempted to stop for no reason other than that same appetite, for which there may always be reasons but we generally do not waste time looking for them. We all end up where we want to be, it is only a question of time and patience, the hare goes faster than the tortoise, perhaps it will arrive first, so long as it does not cross the path of the hunter and his shotgun.

  We have left the barren plain of León, have entered and are traveling through Tierra de Campos where that famous preacher Fray Gerúndio de Campazas was born and flourished, whose words and deeds were recounted in detail by the no less celebrated Padre Isla, as an example to long-winded orators, relentless bores who never stop quoting, compulsive rhymers and tiresome scribblers who go on and on, what a pity we have not learned from their example, which could not be clearer. Let us therefore prune this rambling exordium right at the outset, and say quite simply that the travelers will spend the night in a village called Villalar, not far from Toro, Tordesillas, and Simancas, all of them touching closely on Portuguese history in terms of a battle, a treaty, archives. A teacher by profession, José Anaiço finds these names evocative, but little else. His knowledge of history is only general, other than the rudiments he knows only a few more details than his Spanish and Portuguese audience who must have learned some thing, or can't have forgotten everything, about Simancas, Toro, and Tordesillas, given the wealth of information and patriotic lore to be found in the history books of both countries. But no one here knows anything about Villalar except Pedro Orce who, although a native of Andalusia, has the enlightenment of someone who has traveled throughout the peninsula, the fact that he said he did not know Lisbon when he arrived there two months ago does not rule out this hypothesis, perhaps he simply did not recognize the place, just as the city would no longer be recognized today by its Phoenician founders, its Roman colonizers, or its Visigothic rulers, the Muslims might look on it with a glimmer of recognition, the Portuguese with increasing bewilderment.

  They are sitting in pairs around the bonfire, Joaquim and Maria, José and Joana, Pedro and Constant, the night is a little chilly, but the sky is serene and clear, there are scarcely any stars to be seen, for the early-rising moon floods with light the flat countryside and the nearby rooftops of Villalar, whose friendly mayor raised no objections when this band of Spanish and Portuguese migrants sought to camp so close to the village, despite their being vagrants and peddlers and therefore likely to steal trade from local shopkeepers. The moon is not high but has already taken on that appearance we so enjoy admiring, that luminous disk that inspires trite verses and even more trite sentiments, a silken sieve sprinkling white dust over the submissive landscape. Then we exclaim, What lovely moonlight, and we try to forget the shudders of fear we experience when the heavenly body first appears, enormous, red, threatening, over the curving earth. After thousands and thousands of years, the nascent moon continues even today to dawn like a threat, like a sign of the approaching end, fortunately the anxiety lasts only a few minutes, the moon has risen, become small and white, we can breathe more easily. The animals, too, are fretful, a short time ago when the moon appeared the dog stood there staring at it, tense, rigid, perhaps it might have howled had it not been without vocal cords, but the dog bristled all over as if a frozen hand had ruffled its coat while stroking its back. There are moments when the world leaves its axis, we sense that nothing is secure, and if we could fully express what we are feeling, we would say, with an expressive absence of rhetoric, That was a close call.

  What Pedro O
rce knows about the history of Villalar we are about to find out once they finish their meal. As the flames of the bonfire dance in the still air, the travelers look at them pensively, stretch out their hands as if they were imposing them on or surrendering them to the flames, there is an ancient mystery in this relationship between us humans and fire, even under the open sky, as if we and the fire were inside the original cave, grotto, or matrix. Tonight it is José Anaiço's turn to wash up, but there is no hurry, the hour is peaceful, almost gentle, the light of the flames flickers on their weather-beaten faces, the color of sunrise, the sun is of another order and alive, not dead like the moon, that is the difference.

  And Pedro Orce tells them, You may not know this but many, many years ago, in 1521 there was a great battle here in Villalar, greater for its consequences than for the number of dead, because had it been won by the one who lost it, those of us who are alive today would have inherited a very different world. José Anaiço is well informed about the great battles of history, and if the question were fired at him, he would be able to run off without a moment's hesitation some ten names, beginning classically with Marathon and Thermopylae and proceeding, without regard for chronology, through Austerlitz and Borodino, Marne and Monte Cassino, Ardennes and El Alamein, Poitiers and Alcàcer Quibir, and also Aljubarrota, which means nothing to the world and everything to us, these were paired for no special reason, But I've never heard of the Battle of Villalar, concluded José Anaiço, Well, that battle, explained Pedro Orce, took place when the communes of Spain rebelled against Emperor Charles V, a foreigner, but not so much because he was a foreigner, for in past centuries it was the most natural thing in the world for nations to find a king sneaking in through the back door, someone who spoke another language, the whole business was left to royal houses who gambled away their own countries along with those of others, I don't mean dice or cards, but they played for dynastic interests, entering into fake alliances and marriages of convenience, which is why one cannot really say that the communes rebelled against an unwanted king, nor should anyone imagine it was the eternal war of the poor against the rich, if only things were that simple, the fact is that the Spanish nobility did not approve, not in the slightest, of the Emperor's having conferred appointments on so many foreigners, and one of the first measures taken by these new masters was to raise taxes, an infallible means of paying for luxuries and further ventures, in any event the first city to rebel was Toledo, and others soon followed its example, Toro, Madrid, Avila, Soria, Burgos, Salamanca, and so on and so forth, but the motives of some were not the motives of others, sometimes they coincided, yes indeed, but at other times they were in conflict, and if this was true of the cities it was even more true of the people living in them, certain nobles simply defended their own interests and ambitions and therefore changed sides depending on how the wind was blowing and what would benefit them. Now, as always happens, the people were involved in this for their own reasons, but especially for those of others, this has been the case since the world began, if people were all one, that would be fine, but people are not all one, that's something we cannot get into our heads, not to mention that the masses are generally deceived, how often have their representatives ridden to parliament on their votes and once there, receiving bribes and threats, voted contrary to the will of those who sent them, and strange as it may seem, despite all these divergencies and contradictions, the communes were able to organize militias and fight the king's army, needless to say battles were won and lost, the last battle was lost here in Villalar, and why, habit, mistakes, incompetence, betrayals, people got tired of waiting to be paid and deserted, battle ensued, some won, others lost, it was never discovered exactly how many members of the communes died here, by modern statistics not all that many, some put the figure at two thousand, others swore that there had been fewer than a thousand casualties, perhaps even as few as two hundred, we don't know, nor are we ever likely to know, unless the graves are moved elsewhere one day and the skulk counted, because to count the other bones would only add to the confusion, three of the commune leaders were tried the following day, sentenced to death, and beheaded in the main square of Villalar, their names were Juan de Padilla, born in Toledo, Juan Bravo from Segovia, and Francisco Maldonado from Salamanca. This was the Battle of Villalar, and had it been won by those who lost, Spain's destiny would have changed course. With moonlight such as this, one can imagine what the night and day of battle must have been like, it was raining, the fields were flooded, they fought up to their knees in mud, by modern standards, undoubtedly, few lost their lives, but one is tempted to say that the few who lost their lives in the wars of old had greater influence on history than the hundreds and thousands and millions who died in the twentieth century, the moonlight is the one thing that doesn't change, it covers Villalar just as it covers Austerlitz or Marathon, or, Or Alcàcer Quibir, interrupted José Anaiço, What battle was that, Maria Guavaira asked, If that, too, had been won instead of lost, I can't imagine what Portugal would be like today, replied José Anaiço, I once read in a book that your King Dom Manuel fought in this war, said Pedro Orce, In the textbooks I teach from there's no mention that the Portuguese went to war with Spain at that time, It wasn't fought by the Portuguese themselves, but by fifty thousand crusaders lent by your king to the Emperor, I see, said Joaquim Sassa, with fifty thousand crusaders in the royal forces the communes were bound to lose, for the crusaders always win.

  This night Constant dreamed that it went to unearth bones on the battlefield, it had already gathered one hundred and twenty-four skulls when the moon went down and the earth turned dark, then the dog went back to sleep. Two days later, some boys playing soldiers in the fields reported to the mayor that they had found a heap of skulls in a field of wheat, and no one ever discovered how they came to be there, all gathered into a pile. But the housewives of Villalar have nothing but good to say of those Portuguese and Spaniards who came with a wagon and have already left, For price and quality they were the most honest peddlers who had ever passed this way.

  Overcome evil with good, the ancients used to say, and with good reason, at least they put their time to good use by judging facts that were then new in the light of facts that were already old. Nowadays we make the mistake of adopting a skeptical attitude toward the lessons of antiquity. The President of the United States of America promised that the peninsula would be welcome, and Canada, as we will see, was not pleased. As the Canadians point out, Unless the peninsula changes course, it is we who will be playing host and then we'll have two Newfoundlands here instead of one, little do the people on the peninsula know, poor devils, what awaits them, biting cold, frost, the only advantage for the Portuguese is that they will be close to supplies of that cod they're so fond of. They will lose their summers but have more to eat.

  The spokesman at the White House hastened to explain that the President's speech had been prompted fundamentally by humanitarian considerations without aspiring to political supremacy, especially since the countries of the peninsula had not ceased to be sovereign and independent just because they had gone floating off over the waters, they will have to come to a halt one day and be like every other country, and then added, For our part, we solemnly guarantee that the traditional good-neighbor policy between the United States and Canada will not be affected by any eventuality, and as proof of America's desire to maintain friendly relations with the great Canadian nation, we propose setting up a bilateral committee to examine the various problems arising in the context of this dramatic transformation of the world's political and strategic physiognomy, which certainly constitutes a first step toward the birth of a new international community comprising the United States, Canada, and now the Iberian countries, who will be invited to participate as observers at this meeting since they are still not physically close enough for there to be any immediate prospect of specifying the eventual form of this integration.

  Canada publicly expressed its satisfaction with this explanation but let it b
e known that it considered an early meeting to be inopportune, arguing that any terms proposed might well offend patriotic sensitivities within Portugal and Spain, and suggesting as an alternative a quadrilateral conference to examine what measures should be taken to deal with any violent opposition once the peninsula reached the Canadian coast. The United States agreed forthwith, and its leaders silently thanked God for having created the Azores, for if the peninsula had not veered northward but had moved consistently in a straight line after breaking away from Europe, the city of Lisbon would definitely have remained with its windows facing toward Atlantic City, and after much reflection they came to the conclusion that the more it veered north the better, just imagine what it would be like if Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Providence, and Boston were to be transformed into inland cities with the inevitable decline in the standard of living. There is no doubt that the President had been much too hasty when he made that initial statement. In a subsequent exchange of confidential diplomatic notes, followed by secret meetings of high-ranking officials, Canada and the United States agreed that the best solution would be to arrest the peninsula en route, if at all possible at a point sufficiently close for it to remain outside the European sphere of influence but sufficiently remote to avoid causing any immediate or indirect damage to Canadian and American interests, and meanwhile to set up a committee charged with amending their respective immigration laws so as to strengthen discretionary clauses and discourage the Spanish and Portuguese from thinking that they can enter the North American countries at will on the pretext that we are all close neighbors now.

  The governments of Portugal and Spain protested at the discourtesy of these powers that thus presumed to dispose of their interests and destinies, the Portuguese government with greater vehemence in view of the oaths it swore as a government of national salvation. Thanks to initiatives on the part of the Spanish government, contact will be established between the two peninsular countries to draw up a joint plan for exploiting the new situation to the fullest, in Madrid it is feared that the Portuguese government will enter these negotiations with the tacit hope that sometime in the future it will derive special benefits from its greater proximity to the coasts of Canada and the United States, but that depends. And it is known, or believed to be known, that in certain Portuguese political circles there is a campaign in favor of a bilateral agreement, albeit of a nonofficial nature, with the region of Galicia, which evidently won't please the central powers in Spain at all, intolerant as they are of irredentism, however disguised. There are even some who cynically claim and spread the word that none of this would have happened if Portugal had been on the other side of the Pyrenees, or, better still, had clung to the Pyrenees when the rupture occurred. That would have been one way of ending once and for all this habit of reducing the peninsula to a single country, this problem of being Iberian, but the Spaniards are deceiving themselves, for the problem will persist, and we need say no more. The days before reaching the shores of the New World are counted, a plan of action is under way so that negotiations may get under way at the right moment, neither too soon nor too late, this, after all, is the golden rule of diplomacy.