"The History of the Siege of Lisbon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Saramago José)

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DURING THESE LAST FEW DAYS, had the muezzin been sleeping heavily, no doubt he would have been roused, if not altogether prevented from sleeping, by the tumult of an entire city living in a state of alert, with armed men up on the turrets and battlements, while the people are all excited, gathered in the streets and marketplaces, asking if the Franks and Galicians are about to attack. They naturally fear for their lives and possessions, but even more distressed are those who have been forced to abandon their homes outside the wall, for the moment being defended by the soldiers, but where the first battles will inevitably be fought, if this should be the will of Allah, praised be his name, and, even if Lisbon should overcome the invaders, this prosperous and thriving suburb will be reduced to ruins. High on the minaret of the largest mosque, the muezzin raised the same shrill cry as he did each day, knowing that he will no longer awaken anyone, at most the innocent children will still be asleep, and contrary to custom, when the final echo of the call to prayer is still hovering in the air, the murmurings of a city at prayer can already be heard, truly there was no need for anyone who had barely dozed off to come out of his sleep. The sky displayed all the beauty of a July morning, the breeze was soft and gentle, and, if experience is anything to go by, we are going to have a warm day. Having finished his prayer, the muezzin prepares to descend, when suddenly from down below comes the most dreadful and alarming uproar that the blind man is panic-stricken and for one moment thinks that the tower is collapsing, the next that those accursed Christians are storming the walls, only to realise in the end that they are cries of jubilation coming from everywhere and setting the city ablaze, the muezzin can now say that he knows what is meant by light, if it has the same effect on the eyes of those who can see as these joyful sounds have on his hearing. But what could be the cause for this rejoicing. Perhaps Allah, moved by the fervent prayers of the people might have sent the angels from his tomb, Munkar and Nakir, to exterminate the Christians, perhaps he might have dropped the inextinguishable flames of heaven on to the armada of the crusaders, perhaps, out of earthly humanity, the King of Evora, warned of the dangers threatening his brothers in Lisbon, has sent word by messenger, Let the villains stew there, for my soldiers from the Alentejo are already on their way, that is how we refer to people who come from beyond the Tagus, pointing out in passing, that the inhabitants of Alentejo existed before the Portuguese. At the risk of bruising his fragile bones on the steps, the muezzin descends the narrow spiral stairway in haste, and when he reaches the bottom, he is overcome by vertigo, he is a poor old man who gives the impression of wanting to bury himself underground, an illusion of ours based on past examples, now he can be seen struggling, to get to his feet, while questioning the darkness all around him, What happened, tell me what happened. Next moment arms reach out to lift him up, and a strong, young voice is almost shouting, The crusaders are leaving, the crusaders are withdrawing. The muezzin fell to his knees with fervour and emotion, but everything in its own good time, Allah will not be offended if the thanks due to him are a little slow in coming, first the faithful must give vent to their feelings of joy. The Good Samaritan lifted the old man off the ground and set him firmly on his feet, straightened his turban which had been knocked sideways in the heat of his descent and collapse, and he told him, Don't worry about your turban, let's go to the rampart and watch the infidels scatter, now these words, spoken without any conscious malice, can only be attributed to the fact that the muezzin's blindness is caused by amaurosis, look, he is watching us, that is to say, he has his eyes fixed in our direction yet cannot see us, how sad, it is difficult to believe that such transparency and clearness are, in the final analysis, the outer surface of absolute opacity. The muezzin raises his hands and touches his eyes, But I cannot see, at this moment the man recognises him, Ah, you're the muezzin, and makes as if to move away, but quickly changes his mind, Never mind, Come with me to the rampart, I'll explain what's happening, kindly acts such as these we used to refer to as Christian charity, which goes to show once more to what extent words become ideologically disoriented.

The man pushed his way through the crowd huddling together as they tried to force their way up the stairway leading to the battlement, Make way for the muezzin, make way for the muezzin, my brothers, he pleaded, and people moved back and smiled with pure fraternal love, but so that all might not be roses, or because all is not roses, there was one suspicious onlooker who cursed this kind deed, he did not have the courage to show his face, but shouted from one of the back rows, Just look at that crafty old fellow trying to push in front of everyone else, and the muezzin who knew this was not the case, replied in the direction from which the voice came, May Allah punish you for such malice, and Allah must have taken careful note of the muezzin's words, because the slanderer will be the first man to die in the siege of Lisbon, even before any Christian, which tells us a great deal about the Almighty's wrath. And so the old man and his protector made it to the top, and by using the same strategy of warning and petition, favourably received by all, they were able to occupy an excellent vantage point, with an open view of the estuary, the wide river, the immense ocean, but it was not this particular splendour that caused the man to exclaim, Ah, such wonder, before saying to the muezzin, If only I could give you my eyes so that you might see what I can see, the fleet of the crusaders sailing down the river, the smooth water glistening as only water can, and all blue, the colour of the sky overhead, the oars move slowly up and down, the ships resembling a flock of birds that drink as they fly close to the surface, two hundred migratory birds named galleys, long-boats, and cargo-ships, and who knows what else, for I am a man of the earth, not the sea, and how swiftly they go, carried by the oars and the tide they anticipated so that they are now departing, those in front must have already felt the wind, they are about to raise their sails, ah, how wonderful if they should turn out to be white, this is a day for celebration, muezzin, yonder on the other bank, our brothers from Almada are waving, as happy as we are, also saved by the will of Allah, He who reigns supreme, the Merciful One, the Eternal, the Living God, The Comforter, the Merciful, thanks to Whom we have been liberated from the terrifying threat of those dogs sailing out of the straits, crusaders they are and may they be crucified, let the beauty of their departure perish and be forgotten with their demise, and may Malik, the custodian of hell, imprison and castigate them for evermore. Those present applauded this final rebuke, except for the muezzin, not because he disagreed, but because he had already done his duty as a moral vigilante, when he prayed that the suspicious and outspoken mischief-maker should be punished, besides it would scarcely be fitting for someone entrusted with summoning his brothers to prayer to be spreading curses, to invoke punishment once daily is more than enough for a simple human being, and we do not know if God Himself can withstand such enormous responsibility for all eternity. Therefore the muezzin remained silent, besides he was blind and unable to see for himself if there was any real cause for so much rejoicing, Have all of them gone, he asked, and his companion, after pausing long enough to check, replied, The ships, certainly, What exactly do you mean, is there something else apart from the ships, It's just that they are lying way out on the margin of the estuary and now they're heading for the Galician encampment, about a hundred men are disembarking, taking arms and baggage with them, it isn't easy to count them from here, but there can't be more than a hundred. The muezzin remarked, If these men have stayed behind, they have either definitely made up their mind not to join the crusade, and have exchanged their lands for this one, or, in the event of there being a siege and battle, they will side with Ibn Arrinque when he attacks us, Do you really believe, muezzin, that with so few men of his own and this small contingent who will join him, that Ibn Arrinque, damn him and his offspring, will lay siege to Lisbon, He once tried with the help of the crusaders and failed, now he'll be anxious to show that he did not need them, the latter serving as witnesses, The spies report that the Galician has no more than some twelve thousand soldiers, scarcely enough men to surround and subdue a city, Perhaps not, unless they starve us into submission, So the future looks black, muezzin, It does, but then I'm blind. At this point another man who was with them stretched out his arm and pointed, Things are moving in the encampment, the Galicians are leaving, So you were mistaken, after all, said the muezzin's companion, Only when you can tell me that there is not a single Christian soldier to be seen anywhere, can I be sure that I was mistaken, Don't worry, I'll stay here to keep watch and then I'll come to the mosque to report, You're a good Moslem, may Allah grant you in this life and for all eternity the rewards you so richly deserve. Let us say here and now, in anticipation, that once again Allah will heed the muezzin's plea, because, as far as this life is concerned, we know that this man whom we have improperly called the Good Samaritan will be the penultimate Moor to die in the siege, and as for eternal life all we can do is to wait for someone who is better informed to come and tell us, when the time comes, what kind of prize that was and for what. For our part, we are taking this opportunity to show that we are also capable of exercising kindness, charity and friendship, now that the muezzin has asked, Who'll help me to go down the stairs. The proof-reader Raimundo Silva is also going to need someone to help him to explain how, after having written that the crusaders did not stay for the siege, some of them appear to have disembarked, about a hundred men, if we are to believe the calculation made by the Moors, from a distance and at a glance. Their presence certainly comes as no surprise, for we already knew ever since that unfortunate episode when Guillaume of the Long Sword spoke so rudely to the king, that several foreign nobles declared there and then that we could count on them, but no one explained the reason for this decision, nor did Dom Afonso Henriques express any desire to know, at least not in public, and, if it was clarified in private, private it remained, nothing has been recorded, nor would it have any bearing on subsequent events. Be that as it may, what Raimundo Silva cannot do is to carry on with his version, in other words, that no crusader was prepared to negotiate with the king, since the Authorised History is there to inform us that, discounting the odd exception of whom we have no details, those gentlemen truly prospered on Portuguese soil, we need only recall, so that no one may think we are speaking in vain or disproving the maxim, Look out for number one, our good king gave Vila Verde to the Frenchman, Dom Alardo, to Dom Jordãno, also French he gave Lourinhã, and to the La Corni brothers, who subsequently changed their name to Correia, was granted Atouguia, but where there is some confusion is with Azambuja, for we have no way of knowing if it was given immediately to Gilles de Rolim or later to one of his sons with the same name, this time it is not a question of there being no records, but the imprecision of those that do exist. Now then, so that these people and others may claim their benefices, it was necessary to begin by making them disembark, and so, there they are, prepared to win them with their arms, thus more or less conciliating the proof-reader's decisive Not with the Yes, or Perhaps and the Even So with which our national history has been written. We will be told that the men gathered there and others who have not been mentioned, will be little more than a half-dozen and that they are greatly outnumbered by the men advancing on the encampment, therefore it is only natural that we should be curious to know who these men are and if they, too, will have their labours rewarded with tides and property. I am aware that this is irrelevant and should be treated with contempt, but it is a sign of sound moral upbringing to be tolerant of blameless ignorance and patient with the reckless, therefore let us make it clear that the majority of these men, apart from a few mercenary conscripts, are servants who came as henchmen to do the loading and unloading, and whatever else might require to be done, without forgetting the three women brought along as concubines or mistresses to serve the particular needs of three nobles, one of them with the expedition from the outset, the others picked up wherever they happened to disembark to replenish their supplies of water, because, frankly speaking, no one has ever discovered better fruit or learned of its existence in unknown territories.

Raimundo Silva put down his biro, rubbed his fingers where the pen had left a crease, then with a slow, weary movement, he leaned back in his chair. He is in the room where he sleeps, seated at a small table which he has placed beside the window, so that by looking to the left he can see the surrounding roof-tops, and here and there, between the gables, the river. He has decided that when proof-reading the work of others he will go on using the study which has no windows, but what he is writing at present, whether it turns out to be the history of the siege of Lisbon or not, he will write in daylight, the natural light falling on to his hands, on to the sheets of paper, on to any words that might appear and remain, for not all words that appear remain, in their turn casting light on our understanding of things, as far as possible, and where, were it not for them, we would never arrive. He jotted down this thought, if it can be called that, on a loose sheet of paper, hoping to use it later, perhaps in some pondered statement about the mystery of writing which will probably culminate, following the definitive lesson of the poet, in the precise and sober declaration that the mystery of writing lies in the absence of any mystery whatsoever, which if accepted, might lead us to the conclusion that if there is no mystery about writing, neither can there be any mystery about the writer. Raimundo Silva amuses himself with this farcical display of profound meditation, his memory as a proof-reader is filled with snatches of verse and prose, the odd line or fragment, and even whole sentences with meaning, hover in his memory like tranquil and resplendent cells coming from other worlds, the sensation is that of being immersed in the cosmos, of grasping the real meaning of everything, without any mystery. If Raimundo Silva could line up in the correct order all the separate words and phrases he has memorised, he would only have to say them, record them on tape, and there he would have, without the tiresome effort of having to write it, the History of the Siege of Lisbon he is still pursuing, and, were the order different, the history, too, would be different, and the siege, and Lisbon, and so on and so forth.

The crusaders are already on the open sea, ridding us of the pressing and awkward presence of thirteen thousand participants, however Raimundo Silva's task was not made much easier for there are at least as many Portuguese, and, if their numbers were to be combined, they are still greatly outnumbered by the Moors inside the city, including the fugitives from Santarém who have finished up here, trying to take shelter behind these fortifications, poor wretches, wounded and humiliated. How is Raimundo Silva to cope with all these people, is the formal question. We suspect he would prefer to take each of them separately, study their lives, their precedents and consequents, their loves, quarrels, the good and bad in them, and he would pay special attention to those who are soon to die, because who could foresee that closer to our own time there would be another opportunity to leave some written record of who they were and what they did. Raimundo Silva is well aware that his limited gifts do not match up to the task, in the first place because he is not God, and even if he were, neither God nor Jesus for all his fame never achieved anything like this objective, in the second place because he is not a historian, a human category which is closer to divinity in its way of looking at things, and in the third place, an initial confession, he never had any talent for writing creative literature, a weakness that will obviously make it difficult for him to manipulate with any conviction this imaginary fable in which we all participate. On the Moorish side, the most he has achieved so far is to have a muezzin appear from time to time and who finds himself in the least favourable situation possible, because being something more than a minor figure, there is not enough to transform him into a character. On the Portuguese side, leaving aside the king, the archbishop, the bishop and a number of well-known nobles who only intervene as the bearers of aristocratic names, what is patent and indiscernible is a great confusion of faces that cannot be identified, thirteen thousand men who speak who knows how and who, presumably possessed of feelings, express them so remotely from our way of thinking that they are closer to their Moorish enemies than they are to us who are their legitimate descendants.

Raimundo Silva gets up and opens the window. From here, if the information given in The History of the Siege of Lisbon which he proof-read is correct, he can see the location where the English, the Aquitanians and the Bretons set up camp, yonder to the south, on the hillside of Trindade and all the way up to the ravine of the Calçada de'São Fransisco, give or take a metre, there stands the church dedicated to the Holy Martyrs, which is well-named. Now, in The New History, it is the encampment of the Portuguese, for the moment reunited, as they wait for the king to decide whether we remain or depart, or what. Between the city and the encampment of the Lusitanians, to give them the name they themselves never used, we can see the wide estuary, so vast, winding inland, that to go around it on foot would mean passing along the eastern strait, near the Rua da Palma, and, along the western strait, near the Rua das Pretas, quite a trek across the fields which only yesterday were carefully cultivated, and now, in addition to being stripped of their crops, are trampled and scorched as if the horsemen of the Apocalypse had passed through with hooves of fire. The Moor had declared that the Portuguese encampment was moving, and so it was, but soon they came to a halt once more because Dom Afonso Henriques wished to receive with his entire army the approaching crusaders who were heading the dwindling posse of soldiers who had disembarked, thus paying them special honour, all the more so since the departure of the others had made him so angry. Familiar as we are with these encounters and assemblies between personages of lineage and influence, it is time to see who else is there, whose soldiers are these, ours, dispersed between the Carmo and the Trindade, awaiting orders, without the consolation of a cigarette, there they are seated or at a standstill or strolling among friends, in the shade of the olive-trees, for with the recent good weather, few tents have been set up, and most of the men have been sleeping in the open air, their heads resting on their shields, absorbing the night's warmth from the soil before warming it in return with the heat of their own bodies, until that day when they will lie side by side, one cold corpse against another, may it be slow in coming. We have good reason to take a close look at these men, poorly armed if one thinks of the modern weapons used by Bond, Rambo and Company, in our search for someone here who might serve as a character for Raimundo Silva, because the latter, timid by nature or temperament, averse to crowds, has lingered at his window in the Rua do Milagre de Santo Antonio, without plucking up the courage to go down on to the street, and his behaviour is ridiculous, if he was not capable of going out alone, he could have asked Dr Maria Sara to accompany him, a woman, as we have seen, who is capable of taking decisive action, or, perhaps as a more romantic and interesting sign of solidarity, if not of blindness, he might have taken the dog on the Escadinhas de'São Crispim with him, what a pretty picture that would make, a rowing-boat crossing the placid estuary, over no man's waters, and a proof-reader rowing, while the dog, sitting astern, inhales the fresh air and, now and then, bites as discreetly as possible the fleas pinching its sensitive parts. So let us leave in peace this man who is not quite ready to look, even though he spends his life revising proofs, and who only occasionally, because of some passing psychological disturbance, notices things, and let us find him someone who, not so much for his own merits, ever questionable, as for some sort of fitting predestination, may take his place in the narrative quite naturally, so that people will come to say, as one says of self-evident coincidences, that they were made for each other, However, easier said than done. It is one thing to take a man and lose him in a crowd, as witnessed elsewhere, another to search for a man in a crowd and, as soon as he is spotted, to say, That's the one. There are very few old men in the encampment, this is an age when most people die young, besides their legs would soon give way and their arms weaken in battle, for not everyone has the resistance of Gonçalo Mendes da Maia, the Warrior who even at the age of seventy gives the impression of being in his prime, and will only at ninety be struck down by the sword of the King of Tangiers and finally die. Let us go searching and listening, what a strange language our people speak, one more problem to add to all the others, for it as difficult for us to understand them as it is for them to understand us, even though we belong to the same Portuguese motherland, so who knows, perhaps what we nowadays refer to as a conflict of generations is nothing more than a question of differences in the language we use. Here there is a circle of men seated on the ground underneath a leafy olive-tree, which, judging from the gnarled trunk and general signs of age, must be at least twice as ancient as the Warrior, and while he wounds and massacres, the tree is content to produce olives, both of them serving the purpose for which they were born, as the saying goes, but these words were invented for olive-trees rather than for men. The ones who are here, for the moment, do nothing except listen to a tall, short-bearded youth, with black hair. Some give the impression of having heard the story a thousand times before, but listen patiently, they are soldiers who were at Santarém at the time of the famous siege, the others, judging from their rapt attention, must be new recruits who have joined the army along the way, and like the others, the sold paid three months in advance, from sold comes soldiering and from soldiering soldier, and, until the war begins, they assuage their thirst for glory with the glorious deeds of others. This man will have to be acknowledged by name, undoubtedly he possesses one like the rest of us, but the problem is that we shall have to choose between Mogueime which he assumes to be his name, and Moigema as he will later come to be known, do not think that such mistakes only occurred in ancient and uncivilised tomes, we have been told that someone in this century spent thirty years saying his name was Diogo Luciano, until the day when he needed to consult some papers only to discover that his real name was Diocletian, and he gained nothing from this exchange, even though the latter was an emperor. You must not discount this question of names, Raimundo could never be José, Maria Sara would not wish to be Carlota, and Mogueime does not deserve to be called Moigema. That said, we can now draw near, sit on the ground if you wish, and listen.

Mogueime narrates, It was at dead of night as we were waiting for dawn to break in a hidden and secluded valley so close to the town that when we heard the sentinels on the wall call out, we quietly took up the reins, making sure the horses did not neigh, and when the quarter moon appeared and our captains were sure that the guards were dozing off, we left, leaving the pages behind in the valley with the animals, taking a byway we were able to reach the fountain of Atamarma, so called because of the sweetness of its waters, and travelling on we approached the wall just as the patrol was passing so that we were forced to wait once more, silent as could be in a field of wheat, and when Mem Ramires, as commander of the soldiers who were with me, thought the moment was right, we lost no time in climbing the slope, the plan was to secure a ladder against the wall by sending it up on a spear, but ill-fortune decreed, or Satan, that we should run into difficulties, the ladder slipped and came crashing down with the most awful din on the roof of a pottery, everyone was in a panic, if the guards were to awaken the enterprise was in danger of failing, we got back down concealed by the shadow cast by the wall, and then, since the Moors were giving no sign of life, Mem Ramires summoned me as the tallest man there, and ordered me to climb on to his shoulders, and I secured the ladder on top, then he climbed up, with me behind him, and another behind me, and as we waited for the rest of the men to follow, the guards woke up and one of them asked, Menfu, which means, Who goes there, and Mem Ramires, who speaks Arabic as well as any Moor, replied that we were with the patrol and had been ordered to return, and the Moor, having come down from his turret, had his head cut off and thrown down, thus reassuring our men that we had entered the stronghold, but the other guard realised who we were and began shouting at the top of his voice, Anauchara, anauchara, which in their language means, An assault by the Christians, at this point there were ten of us on top of the wall as the patrol came running and swords clashed on both sides, Mem Ramires called out, invoking the help of Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, and the king, Dom Afonso, who was down below, shouted back, Santiago and the Holy Virgin Mary come to our assistance, before going on to say, Kill all of them, let no man escape, in a word, the usual incitements, meanwhile elsewhere, twenty-five of our men scaled the wall and rushed to the gates which they only managed to open after smashing the locks and bolts with an iron mallet, and then the king entered with his men, and falling to his knees at the entrance, began giving thanks to God, but rose quickly to his feet when he saw the Moors rushing to defend the gates, but the hour of their death had come and, advancing pell-mell, our soldiers massacred them along with their women and children, and their numerous livestock, and there was so much blood that it flowed though the streets like a river, and this was how Santarém came to be won, a battle in which I took part, and others who are here with me. Some of those named, nodded their heads in agreement, no doubt they would have their own deeds to relate, but being men who are always at a loss for words, firstly because they do not have enough words, secondly because words never come to mind when needed, they remained as they were, seated in silence in a circle and listening to this fellow who was much more loquacious and skilful in the incipient art of speaking Portuguese, disregard this gross exaggeration, for we must have the most advanced language in the world if eight and a half centuries ago, a simple soldier could already concoct such an eloquent speech, where not even the felicities of narration are missing, the alternation of long and short sentences, the sudden break, the transition from one plane to another, the element of suspense, and even a hint of irreverent satire in making the king get to his feet in the middle of his prayers of thanksgiving, in case the scimitar might fall before he can say amen, or, having recourse for the thousandth time to the inexhaustible treasury of popular wisdom, Trust in the Virgin rather than flee, and much good may it do you. One of the recruits, whose only experience of war had been to watch the army file past, but endowed with a sharp mind and commonsense, on seeing that none of the old guard were prepared to speak up, said what everyone else must surely have been thinking, It's fairly obvious that Lisbon is going to be a harder bone to crack, an interesting metaphor which recalls the story about the dog and the dogs, for it would take lots and lots of them to get their teeth into those tall, massive walls confronting us from afar and where weapons and white burnouses are gleaming. This warning plagued the spirits of our companions with dark omens, when it comes to wars you can never tell who is going to lose their life, and there really are fortunes that happen once and nevermore, the Moors would have to be quite mad to settle down to sleep when the fatal hour arrives, we wager that this time it will not be necessary for a sentinel to call out, Menfu, for they know perfectly well who is there and what they want. Fortunately this gloom was dispelled by the presence of two pages who had stayed behind to look after the horses in that hidden and secluded valley of Santarém, and they were frolicking about and laughing their heads off as they recalled what they along with others had done to a number of Moorish women who had fled the town and been guided here by destiny, a black destiny, for after being raped over and over again, they were butchered without mercy, as befitted infidels. Mogueime in the meantime disapproved, using his authority as a front-line combatant, for it may be all right, in the heat of battle, to kill women indiscriminately, but not like this, after having abused them sexually, it would have been more Christian to have let them go, a humanitarian attitude the pages contested, arguing that these women should always be put to death, raped or otherwise, so that they would conceive no more of those damn Moorish dogs. It seemed that Mogueime might have no answer to such a radical statement, but from some hidden recess of his mind he extracted a few words which left the pages speechless, Perhaps you have massacred the sons of Christians in those wombs, and they were at a loss for words, because they might well have replied that they are only Christians if the mother, too, is Christian, what must have silenced them was a sudden awareness of their importance as apostles, leaving traces of Christianity wherever they sowed their seed. A clergyman who happened to be passing, a military chaplain, would finally clarify this issue, erasing any doubts from souls and strengthening convictions and faith, but all the clergy are with the king, awaiting the foreign nobles, and now they must have arrived, judging from the cries of acclamation, each man celebrates as best he can, within limits, on this occasion so much for so little.

As for Raimundo Silva, whose main concern is to defend as best he can the unorthodox theory that the crusaders refused to take part in the conquest of Lisbon, he will be as satisfied with one character as with another, although, obviously, being a somewhat impulsive fellow, he cannot avoid sudden feelings of sympathy or aversion, peripheral, as it were, to the crux of the matter, which often allow acritical preferences or personal antipathies to prevail over rational judgments, or, as in this case, historical facts. He was drawn more by young Mogueime's lack of inhibition than his powers of narration as he listened to his account of the attack on Santarém, more by his humanitarian sentiments than any literary skills, indicative of a sound morality untainted by the negative influences of the milieu, that had led him to take pity on the Moorish women, and it is not because he does not care for the daughters of Eve, however degenerate, for had he been in the valley, instead of striking down their husbands with his sword, he would have indulged his flesh as avidly as the others, but to slit the throats of these women a minute after having kissed and bitten them with sheer pleasure, never. Therefore Raimundo Silva assumes Mogueime as his character, but believes certain points ought to be clarified beforehand, so that there will be no misunderstandings that might later prejudice, once the bonds of inevitable affection that tie the author to his worlds become binding, prejudice, as we were saying, the full assumption of causes and effects that must tighten this knot with the double force of necessity and fatality. It is necessary, in effect, to know who is lying here and who is telling the truth, and we are not thinking about the question of names, whether it is Mogueime or Moqueime as some will get round to calling him, or Moigema, as has been said, names are certainly important, but only become so once we know them, until then, a person is simply a person, and nothing more, we look at him, he is there, we recognise him somewhere else, I know him, we say, and leave it at that. And if we eventually come to know his name, it is more than likely that of his full name we shall limit ourselves to choosing or accepting, with more precise identification, only a part of it, which goes to prove that if the name is important, not all of it has the same importance, that Einstein should have been called Albert is of no real interest, just as we are indifferent to the fact that Homer had other names. What Raimundo Silva would dearly love to confirm is whether the waters of the fountain of Atamarma were really as sweet as Mogueime claimed, announcing the future lesson of The Chronicle of the Five Kings of Portugal, or whether they were, in fact, bitter, as expressly stated by Fray Antonio Brandão, whom we mentioned earlier, in his esteemed Chronicle of Dom Afonso Henriques, who actually goes so far as to say that it was because the waters were so bitter that the fountain was called Atamarma, which if put into the vernacular and made intelligible would strictly be called the Fountain of the Bitter Waters. Although it may not be the most important problem to resolve, Raimundo Silva took the trouble to reflect long enough to conclude that, logically, although as we well know reality does not always follow the straightforward path of logic, it would not make sense, waters on land generally being sweet, to presume to distinguish a fountain by the properties associated with fountains, just as we would not call a fountain surrounded by ferns, a fountain of maidenhairs, then he thought, until he had further evidence of other fountains, historical and authenticated, that the waters of Atamarma must have been bitter, and, continuing to think, that one day he will find out by the most practical means, namely, by drinking them, whereby he will finally reach the firm conclusion, in terms of experimentation and probability, that they are brackish, thus satisfying everyone, since you could say that brackish is somewhere between sweet and bitter.

Raimundo Silva is less concerned, however, with names and taste buds as may appear, despite the extent and duration of these latest debates, perhaps simply indicative of that oblique thinking Dr Maria Sara thought she could detect, even before she really got to know him. What really worries the proof-reader, now that he has accepted Mogueime as his character, is to find him in contradiction, if not in flagrant falsehood, a situation for which there can be no other alternative than the truth, inasmuch as there is no space left here for a new fountain of Atamarma capable of offering in conciliation, waters that are neither yea nor nay. Mogueime described, and explained quite clearly, how he climbed on to Mem Ramires's shoulders to secure the ladder between the battlements, which, moreover, would serve to demonstrate, on the basis of historical evidence, what we might imagine those ages to have been, so close to the golden age that they still retained the brilliance of certain deeds, in this case that a nobleman from the court of Dom Afonso should have loaned his precious body as support, plinth and pedestal for the thoroughly plebeian feet of a soldier with no other apparent merit than that of having grown more than the others. But what Mogueime said, and, on the other hand, is confirmed by Fray Antonio Brandão, contradicts the earliest version of The Chronicle of the Five Kings, where it is written, no more no less, that Dom Mendo was most anxious lest he should arouse suspicions by making a noise so he paused for a moment in silence and then asked the young Mogueime to bend over and he climbed on to his back with the king's approval and hoisted the ladder against the wall, and notwithstanding the lexical and orthographical peculiarities of the original text, it is quite clear that Mogueime, obeying orders, bent over so that Mem Ramires might climb on to his shoulders, and all the interpretations and linguistic casuistry of this world cannot justify a different reading. Raimundo Silva has the two versions of the text before him, he compares them, there can no longer be any doubt, Mogueime is a liar, as we can logically deduce both from the difference in their rank, the one a common soldier, the other a captain, as from the particular source on which he relies, the much earlier Chronicle of the Five Kings. People who are only interested in broad historical syntheses are certain to find these issues far-fetched, but we have to consider Raimundo Silva, who has a task to complete and who from the outset finds himself struggling with the problem of coping with such a dubious character, this Mogueime, Moqueime or Moigema, who, as well as being unable to prove his identity, is probably abusing the truth which, as an eyewitness, it is his duty to respect and transmit to posterity, namely, to us.

But as Jesus said, let him who is without sin cast the first stone. It is, in fact, very easy to make accusations, Mogueime is lying, Mogueime lied, but those of us here present, who know rather more about the lies and truths of the last twenty centuries, with psychology nurturing souls, and the much misinterpreted psychoanalysis, together with all the rest which it would take some fifty pages to list, should not hold the defects of others up to ridicule, when we tend to be so indulgent with our own, the proof being that there is no recorded evidence of anyone who, as a severe and intransigent judge of their own actions, carried that judgment to the extreme of stoning their own body. Besides, returning to the quotation from the gospel, we are entitled to question whether the world at that time was so hardened by vice that its salvation could only be brought about by the Son of a God, for it is the episode itself about the adulteress which illustrates that things were not going all that badly there in Palestine, not like today when they are at their worst, consider how on that remote day not another stone was thrown at the hapless woman, Jesus only had to utter those fatal words for aggressive hands to withdraw, their owners declaring, confessing and even proclaiming in this manner that, yes, Sir, they were sinners. Now a people that was capable of acknowledging its sins in public, however implicitly, could not have been entirely lost, it preserved intact an inner principle of kindness, thus authorising us to conclude, with the minimum risk of being proved wrong, that there was some precipitation in the coming of the Saviour. Today, His coming would have done some good, for not only do the corrupt persevere on the path of corruption, but it becomes increasingly difficult to find any reason for interrupting the stoning once it gets under way.

At first sight, it will not appear that these moralising digressions are in any way related to the reluctance Raimundo Silva has shown in accepting Mogueime as a character, but their usefulness will become apparent when we remember that Raimundo Silva, assuming that he is immune from any greater faults, is habitually guilty of another, certainly no less serious, yet tolerated everywhere because so very widespread and accessible, and that is deception. Besides, he knows there is no real difference between lying about who climbed on to whose back, whether I climbed on to that of Mem Ramires or Mem Ramires on to mine, and; to give but one example, the mundane act of dyeing one's hair, everything, in the final analysis, is a question of vanity, the desire to keep up appearances, both physically and immorally, it being possible even now to imagine a time in which all human behaviour will be artificial, disregarding without further thought sincerity, spontaneity, simplicity, those most excellent and shining qualities of character which were so difficult to define and put into practice in times long since past when, although conscious of having invented falsehood, we still believed ourselves capable of living the truth.

Halfway through the afternoon, during a pause between coping with the problems of the siege and the trivialities of the novel which the publisher is waiting for, Raimundo Silva went out for a break. This was all he had in mind, to take a little stroll, amuse himself, mull over ideas. But on passing a florist's shop, he went in and bought a rose. White. And now he is returning home, a trifle embarrassed to be seen carrying a flower in his hand.