The Collected Novels of José Saramago (187 page)

The first dubious point, according to the inverse order of the narrative, is that fanciful idea that there existed on the parapets of the verandahs of minarets, marks in the stone which, probably in the form of arrows, pointed in the direction of Mecca. However advanced at that time the geographical and surveying skills of the Arabs and other Moors, it is most unlikely that they knew how to determine with the accuracy insinuated, the position of a Kaaba on the surface of the planet, where there is certainly no lack of stones, some more sacred than others. All these things, whether they be reverences, genuflections or upward and downward glances, are performed by way of approximation, upon sensing, if we may be allowed this expression, that what really matters is that God and Allah can read into hearts and do not take offence when, out of ignorance, we turn away, and when we speak of ignorance it can be as much ours as theirs, for they are not always to be found where they promised to be. The proof-reader belongs to that age when a man was taught to trust and firmly believe in road-signs, therefore, do not be surprised that he should have fallen into this anachronistic temptation, perhaps driven by sudden compassion, bearing in mind the muezzin’s blindness. It is well known that, no matter the quality of the cloth, knots are inevitable, some even claim that the better the cloth the more knots there are likely to be, and that where there is one knot there are bound to be two, and there we have the second error, and this time much more serious, because it would lead the unsuspecting reader, had it been written, but fortunately it never was, to accept the description of the muezzin’s actions after waking up, as being correct and in accordance with the Moslem way of life. This is wrong, we insist, inasmuch as the muezzin, the term preferred by the historian, did not carry out the ritual ablutions before summoning the faithful to prayer, consequently finding himself in a state of impurity, a most improbable situation if we consider how close we still are in time to the early origins of Islam, a little over four centuries, in the cradle, as it were. Later on there will be much laxness, no strict observation of fasting, spurious interpretations of the rules that seem reasonably clear, the problem being that there is nothing that tires people more than the strict observance of precepts, before the flesh submits the spirit has already weakened, but no one takes the spirit to task, it is the poor flesh they revile, insult and censure. Even in these days of total faith, the muezzin would be the lowest of men if he were to dare climb the minaret without having purified his soul and having first washed his hands, and so he is declared innocent of the crime attributed to him by the unpardonable flippancy of the proof-reader. Despite the professional competence with which we hear him express himself during the conversation with the historian, it is time to introduce the first hint of doubt about the consequences of the trust invested in him by the author of
The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
perhaps in a moment of despondent weariness, or worried about a forthcoming journey, when he permitted that the final reading of the proofs should be the exclusive task of the expert in
deleaturs,
without any control. We shudder to think that the muezzin’s description of dawn might abusively find a place in the author’s scientific text, both the one and the other, the fruit of assiduous study, extensive research, detailed comparisons. It is doubtful, for example, although it is always wise to question one’s own doubt, that the historian would mention dogs and the barking of dogs in his narrative, because he knows that the dog, for the Arabs, is an unclean animal, just like the pig, and therefore, it would be a display of crass ignorance to assume that the Moors of Lisbon, zealous as they are, would be living cheek by jowl with a pack of dogs. A pigsty by the door of the house and a dog-kennel or wicker basket for one’s lap-dog are Christian inventions, it is not by accident that the Moslems refer to the warriors of the cross as dogs, and they might well have called them pigs, although there is no evidence to prove it. Clearly, if this is true, then it is a pity not to be able to count any more on a dog barking at the moon or scratching its ear infested by fleas, but the truth should we ever discover it, must be put above all other considerations, whether it be for or against, wherefore we should here and now take as unwritten the words that described the last tranquil dawn of Lisbon, were we not already aware that that spurious discourse, although coherent, and that is the greatest danger of all, never emerged from the proof-reader’s mind and was nothing more than absurd and fanciful daydreaming.

It is proven, therefore, that the proof-reader was mistaken, that if he was not mistaken then he was confused, that if he was not confused then he was imagining things, but let him who has never erred, been confused or imagined things, throw the first stone. To err, as the wise man said, is only human, which means that, unless we are wrong to take things literally, anyone who never errs cannot be a real man. Nevertheless, this supreme maxim cannot be used as a universal pretext to absolve all of us from lame judgments and warped opinions. He who does not know should have the humility to ask, and the proof-reader should always be mindful of this simple precaution, especially since he does not even need to leave the house or abandon his study where he is now working, for here he has all the reference books he needs to clarify matters, assuming he has been wise and prudent enough not to believe blindly in what he thinks he knows, because this rather than ignorance is the cause of the greatest blunders. On these crammed bookshelves, thousands and thousands of pages await a spark of awakening curiosity or that direct light which is nothing other than doubt in search of its own clarification. Let us then give credit to the proof-reader for having collected throughout his life so many different sources of information, although a mere glance reveals that the inventory does not include a computer, but his finances, alas, do not cover everything, and this profession, it should be said, is one of the worst paid in the world. One day, but Allah is greater, every proof-reader of books will have a computer at his disposal which he will connect umbilically, night and day, to the central databank, so that all he, or we, need worry about is that amongst these comprehensive data, no tempting error has crept in, like the devil invading a convent.

In any case, until that day comes, the books are here, like a pulsating galaxy, and the words, inside them, form another cosmic dust hovering in anticipation of that glance which will impose some meaning or will search therein for some new meaning, for just as the explanations of the universe tend to vary, so does the statement that once seemed for ever immutable, suddenly offer another interpretation, the possibility of some latent contradiction, the evidence of his own error. Here, in this study, where the truth can be no more than a face superimposed on endless different masks, stand the usual dictionaries and vocabularies of the Portuguese language, Morais, Aurélio, Moreno and Torrinha, several grammars, the
Handbook of the Model Proof-reader,
the vade-mecum of the profession, but there are also histories of Art, of the World in general, of the Romans, Persians, Greeks, Chinese, Arabs, Slavs and Portuguese, in short, of almost everything that constitutes an individual race and nation, and the histories of Science, Literature, Music, Religions, Philosophy, Civilization, the pocket
Larousse,
the abridged
Quillet,
the concise
Robert,
the
Encyclopaedia of Politics,
the
Luso-Brazilian Encyclopaedia,
the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
incomplete, the
Dictionary of History and Geography,
a World Adas on these subjects, that of Joao Soares, ancient, the
Historical Yearbooks,
the
Dictionary of Contemporaries,
the
Universal Biography,
the
Manual for Booksellers,
the
Dictionary of Fable,
the
Dictionary of Mythology,
the
Biblioteca Lusitana,
the
Dictionary of Comparative Geography, Ancient, Medieval and Modern,
the
Historical Atlas of Contemporary Studies,
the
General Dictionary of Literature, Fine Arts and Moral and Political Sciences,
and, to conclude, not the general inventory, but what is most in evidence, the
General Dictionary of Biography and History, Mythology, Ancient and Modern Geography, Antiquities and Greek, Roman, French and other Foreign Institutions,
without forgetting the
Dictionary of Rarities, Inverisimilitudes and Curiosities,
which, a surprising coincidence, fits in perfectly with this adventurous account and contains as an example of error the affirmation by the wise Aristotle that the common domestic fly has four legs, an arithmetical reduction that subsequent authors continued to repeat for centuries thereafter, when even children knew from their cruel experiments that the fly has six legs, for since the time of Aristotle, they have been pulling them off and voluptuously counting one, two, three, four, five, six, but these very same children, when they grew up and came to read the Greek sage, said amongst themselves, The fly has four legs, such is the influence of learned authority, to such an extent is truth undermined by certain lessons we are always being taught.

This unexpected incursion across the frontiers of entomology shows us, conclusively, that the errors ascribed to the proof-reader are not his after all, but of those books which have gone on repeating, unchallenged, much earlier works, and, this being so, we regret that he came to be the victim of his own good faith and of another’s error. It is true that, by being so condescending, we might fall for that universal excuse we have already censured, but we shall not do so without one prior condition, namely, that for his own good, the proof-reader reflect on the extraordinary lesson about errors given by Bacon, another sage, in his book entitled
Novum organum.
He divides errors into four categories, as follows,
idola tribus,
or the errors of human nature,
idola specus,
or the errors of individuals,
idola fori,
or linguistic errors, and finally,
idola theatri,
or errors of systems. In the first instance, these result from the imperfection of the senses, from the influence of preconceptions and passions, from our habit of judging everything according to inherited wisdom, from our insatiable curiosity notwithstanding the limitations imposed on our mind because of our tendency to find more analogies amongst things than actually exist. In the second instance, the source of errors comes from the difference between minds, some that lose themselves in details, others in vast generalisations, as well as from our preference for certain sciences to which we are inclined to reduce everything. As for the third category, that of linguistic errors, the problem is that words often no longer have any meaning, or that meaning is indeterminate, and, finally, in the fourth category, there are so many errors of systems that we should never finish if we were to start listing them here. So let the proof-reader avail himself of this catalogue and he will prosper, and let him also take advantage of that statement by Seneca, reticent as befits this day and age,
Onerat discentem turba, non instruit,
the perfect maxim which the proof-reader’s mother, many years ago, without knowing any Latin and very little about her native language, translated with blatant scepticism, The more you read, the less you learn.

But if there is anything to be saved from this inquiry and debate, it is the confirmation that it was not wrong to write, for, after all, it is written, that the muezzin was blind. The historian, who only speaks of minaret and muezzin, is probably unaware that nearly all muezzins, at that time and for some time to come, were blind. And if he is aware of this fact, perhaps he imagines that the chanting of prayers is the special vocation of the disabled, or that the Moorish communities so decided, partly, as has always been and always will be the practice, to solve the problem of giving work to people without the precious organ of sight. An error on his part, this time, which invariably affects everyone. The historical truth, take note, is that the muezzins were chosen from amongst the blind, not because of any humanitarian policy of providing work or professional training they could cope with physically, but to prevent them from infringing upon the privacy of the courtyards and roof terraces from the dominant position at the top of the minaret. The proof-reader no longer remembers how he came by this information, he almost certainly must have read it in some book he trusted, and since nothing has changed, he can now insist that, yes, Sir, muezzins were blind. Almost all of them. Yet when he happens to think about this, he cannot help wondering whether they did not pierce the bright eyes of these men, as they once did and perhaps still do to nightingales, so that they might experience no other manifestation of light than the voice heard in the darkness, theirs, or perhaps the darkness of that Other who does nothing except repeat the words we are inventing, those words with which we try to say everything, blessing and malediction, even that which shall forever be nameless.