I finish with considerable effort. I now realize it has been much easier for me to say who I was than to affirm who I am today. This writing could go on to the end of my life with the same sense of purpose or futility there has been so far. I doubt, however, whether the narration of one’s everyday existence without any plan (I mean the narration and not the day-to-day sequence of events) could interest me sufficiently to go beyond probing (if I ever used the word “analysis,” then I was exaggerating). Meanwhile, alone as I find myself, without art or adequate training, a tension builds up inside me which I have already tried to express with words, and this tension does not allow me to stop. The same tension fills my head with ideas and my sketchpad with drawings; the same tension detains me here before the portrait of the couple from Lapa and the picture copied from Vitale da Bologna, just as it draws me to the easel, where I have set up a canvas without being able to make a start. Because I do not know what to paint there. I have been painting for more than twenty years, but it would be wrong to suggest that I have anything like twenty years’ experience: my experience is of repeating the same portrait for twenty years, a portrait painted in primary tones with a few basic gestures. No matter whether the model be male or female, young or old, plump or thin, fair or dark, intelligent or stupid, all it required of me was a somewhat imitative adaptation: the painter imitated the model. I used a different technique for the portrait of the couple from Lapa, or perhaps not all that different after all. Habits do not change, whatever they may be. And a painter’s technique, which is also a habit, cannot be changed at will from one minute to the next. There are no miracles in painting. The portrait I described as having a different technique is more truthful because it resulted from my sudden inability to react when confronted by new models with that mimetic process which had become second nature. I now realize that my first act of rebellion (how I love that extravagant word) was to attempt to paint a second portrait of S. I painted it in secret, allowing no one to see it, especially the model himself. There was much cowardice in that rebellion. Or timidity. In the presence of the couple from Lapa (reminiscent of certain characters in Portuguese novels: Os Fidalgos da Casa Mourisca by Júlio Dinis, A Morgadinha de Valflor by Pinheiro Chagas, Os Teles de Albergaria by Carlos Malheiro Dias, Os Maias by Eça de Queirós and O Senhor do Paço de Ninães by Camilo Castelo Branco) the chameleon did not change its color. If it was brown, brown it remained, and it was with brown eyes that he registered and transposed any colors which clashed or might have clashed with brown. (On taking a closer look at what I have just written, I can find no reason for preferring the one tense to the other.) I doubt whether Goya was opposed to Carlos IV when he painted him surrounded by the royal family (were there any such opposition on his part, I believe this could be broken down into the three or four elements I mentioned earlier: complacency, patience and disdain, the last of these variable). Confronted by that gathering of degenerates, Goya looked at their faces dispassionately, and having decided there was nothing worth improving in his painting, he made everything uglier. This could be described as opposition, but it is only now we can say for certain, because in the meantime history has surpassed monarchal institutions in general, and this one in particular, and because we know what Goya did not yet know in the year 1800 (the date of the portrait of Carlos IV with the royal family): that in the year 1810 he would do a series of etchings entitled The Disasters of War, that in 1814 he would paint The Second of May and The Executions of the Third of May, and that toward the end of his life he would produce the so-called black paintings and Disparates. Did I oppose the couple from Lapa? I do not think so. It would be truer to say they opposed me. To oppose can simply imply a change of mood, something which comes and goes and more often than not, in my experience, reflects a sense of dependence or subordination. This is where one begins to discover the relationship between inferior and superior. The next step is to rebel in order to get out of the situation, but if this can be done, then the opposition soon transforms itself into being opposed so that the first impulse is sustained and becomes permanent, a state of constant tension, one foot set firmly on the ground we claim as ours, the other foot forward. A thousand blows, one after the other, open a gap in the wall until the wall finally collapses under the constant pressure applied over a sufficiently wide area: the difference between the pickax and the bulldozer.
This is how I feel today within these four walls or when I stroll through the city: opposed to something. But to what? First, to the portraits I painted and to myself for painting them, but not to what I was when I painted them: I cannot oppose what I was, now less than ever. I wanted to summon what I was (and do believe I succeeded) like someone conjuring up his own shadow, which lingered behind and became soiled and ragged around the edges, barely recognizable in that jaded expression we know so well, but as much ours as sweat or sperm. And also opposed to everything around me. I am convinced this is where most of my tension stems from. I feel like the keen soldier who can no longer wait for the enemy to attack and begins to advance, or like the child whose excess energy has exhausted one game and immediately craves another. I liquidated (cleared out, examined, destroyed, annihilated) my past and my previous behavior and now recognize that I did nothing other than prepare the ground. I threw stones, tore up plants, razed anything which obstructed the view, and in this way (as I have already stated with different words and for other reasons) I created a desert. I now stand in the middle of it, knowing that this is where my house must be built (if it is to be a house) but knowing nothing else.
When Goya retired to his country estate (La Quinta del Sordo, or Deaf Man’s Farm), what desert had he created or had been created in him, deaf and therefore isolated, but not simply because of this infirmity? I have no intention of writing out Goya’s biographical details or of providing a potted history of the Spain of his time. I am speaking about myself, not about Goya, and I should really speak about Portugal (were it not so painful) rather than about Spain. However, men who can be so very different are also very similar, and individual countries are a combination of those differences and similarities, combined ad infinitum, at times coinciding beyond frontiers and ages, at other times mutually seeking out or rejecting each other. When, in 1814, Goya painted those two pictures describing the events of May 1808 and Ferdinand VII restored the Inquisition, what had any of this to do with me or Portugal, then or subsequently? Although Portugal is a country which has found itself occupied ten times (by the Americans, Germans, English, French and Belgians) and been dominated by five different monetary policies (monopolist, expansionist, colonial, speculative and fraudulent), we have no May to remember or commemorate in paint or prose, and while this painter may be present, Goya is no longer with us. But if I look back over events in Portugal during my own lifetime and list the names of prominent people—Salazar Cerejeira Santos Costa Carmona Agostinho Lourenço Teotónio Pereira Pais de Sousa Rafael Duque António Ferro Carneiro Pacheco Marcelo Caetano Tomás Moreira Baptista Rebelo de Sousa Adriano Moreira Silva Pais Rui Patrício Veiga Simão Antonio Ribeiro—I am irresistibly tempted to pass Ferdinand VII’s decree here without delay so that part of Portugal’s history may also be explained in passing: “The glorious title of Catholic with which the Kings of Spain were singled out from the other Princes of Christianity, as a reward for banishing from their kingdom anyone who refused to profess the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman faith, has inspired me to strive with all the means God has put at my disposal to be worthy of those epithets. The grave disturbances and war which devastated every province in the Realm for six long years; the presence during all this time of foreign troops of different religious persuasions, nearly all of them contaminated with hatred and aversion to the Catholic Faith; the disorders which invariably come in the wake of such evils, as well as the lamentable failure during these years to nurture religion, gave these sinners complete license to live as they pleased and the opportunity to introduce insidious beliefs which they disseminated among the people by
the same methods used to propagate them in other countries. Bearing in mind, on the other hand, the need to remedy these grave evils and to preserve throughout our domain the holy religion of Jesus Christ, which we love and to which my people has pledged its life and happiness, and also taking into account the duties which the fundamental laws of the Realm impose on the reigning prince, and which I have sworn to protect and observe, and because it is the best means of safeguarding my subjects from internal dissension and ensuring their peace and tranquility, I believe it is important under present circumstances to restore the jurisdiction of the Tribunal of the Holy Office. Wise and virtuous prelates and the major guilds and corporations, both ecclesiastical and secular, have reminded us that it is thanks to this Tribunal that Spain remained untouched by the heresies which provoked such trials and tribulations in other nations throughout the sixteenth century, while our country flourished in all the arts and produced great men of valor and virtue; that one of the principal methods used by the Oppressor of Europe to spread corruption and discord to his advantage was the destruction of this Tribunal on the pretext of its being no longer compatible with the enlightenment of the age; and that the so-called Extraordinary General Courts were later to use the same pretext and invoke the Constitution in order to abolish the Inquisition and bring turmoil and sorrow to the nation. For these reasons, we have been loyally counseled to restore the Tribunal. In accordance with this advice and out of respect for the will of the people, whose deep concern for their religion has already led them to take the initiative and restore the functions of some of the important Tribunals, I have decided that henceforth the Council of the Inquisition and the other Tribunals of the Holy Office should be reestablished and continue to exercise their powers of jurisdiction.” Fortunately (unfortunately), the people whose names I cited earlier have been inspired and go on being inspired by such mellifluous and hypocritical words, or fortunately (unfortunately) by those once uttered by our king, Dom João III (the Pious), when he implored the pope to set up the Inquisition here in Portugal. Fortunately (unfortunately) by the words of more recent tyrants, Mussolini and Hitler, who are already dead. But Franco (the mighty general) was almost certainly inspired by Ferdinand III, Salazar by his masters from Coimbra, the disciples and legitimate sons or bastards of Dom João III and his disreputable lineage which has lasted for four centuries. As for Marcelo Caetano, a student all his life, he looks at the world around him and can find no one to follow. The hour of his putrefaction is nigh.
And I, what am I to do? I, Portuguese, once the portrait painter of the bourgeoisie and now unemployed, I, the portrait painter of the protégés and protectors of Salazar and Marcelo and their oppressive secret police. And for this same reason, I, too, find myself protected by those who protect them, thus protecting themselves, and therefore in practice I am both protected and protector even though not in thought, what am I to do? All around me lies the desert waiting to be filled with what? Copy out, like anything else, a couple of pages by Marx and wholeheartedly believe in them, have enough knowledge and perception to confront them with history and recognize that they make sense? Herr Marx: in the restricted ambience of my profession, the relations of productivity have altered. Who is the painter going to work for now? And why? And for what? Does someone want or need this painter, is someone about to come to this desert and hire him? Nowadays (and not for the first time) abstraction is all the rage among painters: they imitate the illusion created by the kaleidoscope, they shake it gently every so often and carry on doing so, already aware that the human face will never appear in this game with mirrors and colored bits of paper. It may fill the desert but will never populate it. Although (and this my mind can grasp even if I am only a Portuguese painter who does portraits of the bourgeoisie) the topography of faces may not be enough to populate deserts and fill blank canvases. Deserts they remain. But let time take its course. Time only needs time. The popular rising in Madrid in 1808 only found Goya prepared in 1814. It is true that history goes faster than the men who paint and record it. This is probably inevitable. I ask myself, if I were to have some role to play tomorrow, what events of today would be waiting for me? (Unless this hope in a distributive justice turns out to be nothing other than a defensive front for the spirit of abnegation. May willpower assert itself. I should like to know what Goya would have thought about this. And Marx.)
ANTONIO WAS ARRESTED three days ago. I found out this morning through Chico in the advertising agency where I have been working for almost a month. Chico came dashing into my office and blurted out the news, not that there was much to tell. Or perhaps his words only sounded jumbled, for I could scarcely believe my ears: “Antonio under arrest?” Chico and I looked at each other. It seemed incredible, but Chico was certain and we both asked ourselves the same thing: Antonio arrested? But why Antonio? What has he done? Or rather, what was he on the point of doing that they should have arrested him? As far as we knew, Antonio had done nothing wrong. But what did we know about Antonio? I know this is how we both felt, because in the conversation that followed we touched on these things. Antonio had never shown any sign of being involved in politics. It is true that I had not seen him for many months, but Chico, who had been with him only the week before, assured me he had noticed nothing unusual or different in his behavior; they had talked vaguely about several things, as one did in our crowd, Antonio looking as distracted as ever, and they had even agreed to meet for lunch one day soon. “So, as you can see, there was nothing to arouse my suspicions. Do you think Antonio could have been up to something?” I told him, “I know as much as you do. Whenever we discussed politics Antonio never showed any more interest than the rest of us. Although he always seemed a bit too withdrawn, in my opinion. Perhaps he didn’t trust us.” “You must be joking. We’ve always trusted each other in the group.” “But probably not enough for him to be able to take us into his confidence. Besides, what is this group of ours? For Antonio, clearly just like any other group and apparently not the most interesting as far as he was concerned.” Chico listened attentively, carefully pondering my words before making any reply. “By Jove, I believe you’re right.” “How did you find out he’d been arrested?” “Because of our luncheon engagement. I telephoned him at home yesterday and the day before yesterday on several occasions at different times and there was no answer. I thought he might have gone to Santarém to spend a few days with his family, but he’s punctilious in these matters, as you know—one would never suspect he was an architect—and I refuse to believe he’d go off just like that without telling me our arrangement was canceled. I went to his house this morning. I rang the bell for ages and nothing happened. I knocked at his neighbor’s door and a rather attractive woman, as it happened, answered, but the minute I asked about Antonio a look of terror came into her face and I thought she was going to slam the door in my face. She must have been watching me through the peephole. All smiles, I managed to get the whole story out of her. Three days ago, about seven in the morning, the police arrived and got Antonio out of bed. They ransacked the house and took him away. He must be in Caxias.” Chico paused for breath, looked at me and murmured, “Antonio.” The Antonio whom he had probably never shown enough esteem was now being discussed with affection, certainly with respect and perhaps even an indefinable note of admiration and envy. (That petit bourgeois craving for martyrdom.) I got up from my bench, went to the window, looked outside without really noticing or taking in what I was seeing. I turned to Chico. “What’s going to happen to him now?” “He’ll come through. Antonio is tough.” “And what about us, what are we going to do? We’d better warn his family.” “Of course, but who’s likely to know his parents’ address or telephone number? I don’t.” “Nor me. Perhaps one of the others will know. We can only try.” Chico said anxiously, “Leave this to me. I’ll deal with it. I can contact the others.”
No one could tell us anything. From this detail and many others to which we had never really given much thought before, I began to r
ealize just how little Antonio had confided in us. I don’t feel I can blame him. If he was actively involved in politics, then he must have thought of us as being nothing but a fatuous bunch of psychological and social misfits. In fact, everyone (or nearly everyone in the group, because I consider myself an exception) is forever being affectionate and sentimental with just enough cynicism to make it clear we are playing a game. As if we were constantly explaining to each other: Believe what I am about to tell you in such a way that it seems I do not want you to believe me. And besides: If you don’t believe what I am telling you, even while appearing not to want you to believe me, I would know you don’t value me, because if you were to value me you would also know that this is the manner in which intelligent people confide in each other nowadays. And besides, any reaction other than this one would be a sign of discourtesy, of backwardness and a lack of sensibility. Antonio looked on as we played out this farce and preferred to remain silent. I think back, see him with new eyes, try to feel his presence, to reconstitute certain words and phrases he used throughout all those years, only to discover someone who did more listening than speaking. But I clearly remember that it was he who advised me to read Marx’s preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and who, when he asked me sometime later if I had read it, went quite silent when I made the excuse that I still hadn’t found the time. And I also remember that I could not bring myself to tell him when I eventually got around to reading the book, but not all of it. This must be said because it is the truth. I can still visualize that scene when he uncovered the painting in my storeroom, that second portrait of S. covered in black paint (how remote it all seems), and I ponder that episode in the light of the present situation. And in the light of what these pages have done for me. Everything now seems much clearer. Antonio must have been desperate and annoyed with all of us who were there commemorating the end and material outcome of the portrait, annoyed above all with me (and although I cannot explain it, I can understand his attitude). By provoking me, he had exposed my inferiority; things subsequently turned out in such a way that this supposed inferiority became clear to all, and all the more clear as the humiliating situation in which he had left me became more obvious. But if it was inferiority (this is an assumption rather than a statement of fact), then perhaps at the time he had no other outlet: his suppressed aggression finally surfaced. So among the members of the group I was the most vulnerable and perhaps the most useful target. For different reasons both of us felt bad. Looking back, this is how I see it, and if this reflection serves no other purpose, it explains, and this is reassuring, why I never bore him any grudge or ill will. I cannot say that I miss him; I find that unconsciously I was always aware of his absence. Now I feel it even more, and that is all.
Manual of Painting and Calligraphy Page 20