The Collected Novels of José Saramago (19 page)

It is the priest who wants something, not Baltasar, who is as much in the dark as Blimunda. Below you can scarcely make out the outlines of the excavations, black forms against shadows, that must be the basilica down there. Labourers begin to crowd the site, they start to light bonfires and heat up some food, yesterday’s leftovers, before the day’s work begins, soon they will be enjoying broth from their porringers, which they soak up with chunks of rough-grained bread. Blimunda will have to bide her time. Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço says, In this world I have you, Blimunda, and you, Baltasar, my parents are in Brazil, my brothers in Portugal, so I have both parents and brothers, but for this enterprise I need neither parents nor brothers but friends, so listen carefully, I discovered everything there is to know about ether in Holland, it is not what most people believe and teach, and it cannot be obtained by means of alchemy, in order to go up into the sky and fetch it, we would have to be able to fly, and that is something we are still unable to do, but, mark my words, before it rises into the atmosphere to keep the stars aloft and become the air that God breathes, ether is to be found inside men and women, Then it must be the soul, Baltasar concluded, No, it is not the soul, at first I, too, thought that it might be the soul, I also thought that the ether might be formed by souls when death releases them from bodies and before they are finally judged, but ether is not constituted from the souls of the dead, it is constituted, note carefully, from the wills of living souls.

Down below, the men were starting to descend into the excavations, which were still enshrouded in darkness. The priest said, Inside us there is a will and a soul, the soul departs with death and goes where souls await judgment, no one knows for certain, but the will either detaches itself from man while he is still alive, or it is separated from the soul at death, and that will is ether, therefore it is the human will that sustains the stars, it is the human will that God breathes, And what must I do, Blimunda asked, but she guessed the reply, You will see the will inside people, I have never seen their will, just as I have never seen their soul, You do not see their soul because the soul cannot be seen, you have not seen their will because you were not looking for it, What does will look like, It’s like a dark cloud, What does a dark cloud look like, You will recognise it when you see it, try it out with Baltasar, for that is why we have come here, I cannot, for I have promised that I’d never look inside him, Then try it with me.

Blimunda lifted her head, looked at the priest, and saw what she had always seen, that people are more alike inside than outside, and only differ when they are ailing, she took another look and insisted, I cannot see anything. The priest smiled, Perhaps I no longer have any will, but take a closer look, Yes, now I can see, I can see a dark cloud over the cavity of your stomach. The priest made the sign of the cross, Thanks be to God, now I shall fly. He took from his knapsack a glass phial with a flat piece of yellow amber stuck inside the bottom, This amber, which is also known as electron, attracts the ether, carry it with you wherever you are likely to meet people, for example, in processions, at autos-da-fé, or here on the site where the convent is being built, and the moment you perceive that a cloud is about to emerge from anyone, which invariably happens, hold out the open phial and allow the will to filter inside, And when the phial is full, It needs only a single will to make the phial full, but this is the impenetrable mystery of wills, where one can be stored, millions can be stored, one is equal to an infinite number, And what shall we do in the meantime, I’m off to Coimbra, from there, at the right moment, I shall send a message, then you will both travel to Lisbon, you will build the machine, and you, Blimunda, will collect wills, we three shall meet when the day finally comes for us to fly, I embrace you, Blimunda, and beg of you not to look at me so closely, I embrace you, Baltasar, and bid you farewell until we meet again. He mounted his mule and began to descend the slope. The sun had appeared over the crest of the hills. Eat your bread, Baltasar said, and Blimunda replied, Not yet, first I must go and see the wills of those men.

T
HEY HAVE RETURNED
from Holy Mass and are seated under the roof of the oven. A light shower of rain falls gently amid the sunshine, Autumn is early this year, therefore Inês Antónia scolds her little boy, Come away from there or you’ll get wet, but the child pretends not to hear, even in those days it was what one expected of children, although their acts of disobedience were less radical than they are today, and having warned him once, Inês Antónia does not insist, barely three months have passed since she buried his little brother, so why bother nagging this child, let him play in the rain if it makes him happy, splashing around barefoot in the puddles in the yard, May the Virgin Mother protect him from the smallpox that carried off his brother. Álvaro Diogo tells her, I’ve been promised work on the site of the Royal Convent, this was what they appeared to be talking about, but the mother is thinking about the child she has buried, their thoughts are divided, and just as well, for certain obsessions can become unbearable, just like this pain that troubles Marta Maria, a persistent stabbing that pierces her womb like the daggers piercing the heart of the Mother of God, why her heart, when it is in the womb that children are born, it is in the womb that the furnace of life is to be found, and how should one nourish life unless by labour, which explains why Álvaro Diogo is feeling so happy, the building of such a convent will take many, many years to complete, any stone-mason who knows his trade will earn a good living, three hundred réis for a day’s work, five hundred réis when they can work longer hours, And what about you, Baltasar, have you decided to go back to Lisbon, you’re making a big mistake, for there will be plenty of work here, They won’t want disabled men with so many labourers around, With that hook of yours you can do almost as much as any able-bodied man, That’s true, unless you are only trying to spare my feelings, but we must go back to Lisbon, is that not so, Blimunda, and Blimunda, who has remained silent, nods her head in agreement. Lost in thought, the elderly João Francisco is braiding a leather thong, he hears them converse but pays little attention to what they are saying, he knows that his son will leave home during the next few weeks, but he is displeased with him, to leave home once more after all those years of enforced separation because of the war, you would only have yourself to blame if you were to come back without your right hand next time, such is love that people harbour these thoughts. Blimunda rose to her feet, crossed the yard, and went out into the countryside, she walked under the olive trees skirting the road all the way up to the boundaries of the building site, her heavy clogs sinking into the soil, which had been softened by the rain, but even if she had been walking barefoot and stepping over rough stones she would have felt nothing, how could she feel so little pain, when her whole being is filled with horror at her rash behaviour that very morning, when she took communion while still fasting, she had pretended to eat her bread in bed, out of habit and obligation, but she had not eaten it, with lowered eyes and pretending to be contrite and submissive, she went into church, attended Holy Mass as if she were in the presence of Almighty God and listened to the sermon without raising her head, overwhelmed, or so it appeared, by all the threats of hell and damnation that rained from the pulpit, then she finally went up to the altar to receive the Sacred Host, and she saw. During all these years since she had first become aware of the gift she possessed, she had always taken communion in a state of sin, with food in her stomach, but today, without mentioning anything to Baltasar, she had decided that she would take communion while fasting, not to receive God but to see Him, if He truly existed.

She sat on the protruding root of an olive tree, from where she could watch the sea merging with the horizon, it was almost certainly raining heavily out at sea, Blimunda’s eyes filled with tears, her shoulders shaking as she began to sob, and Baltasar stroked her hair, she had not heard him approach, What did you see in the Sacred Host, so she had not deceived him after all, how could she possibly have deceived him, when they spend night after night in each other’s embrace, well, perhaps not every night, but certainly for the last six years they have been living together as husband and wife, I saw a dark cloud, she replied. Baltasar sat on the ground, the plough had not reached this patch of land, and it was overgrown and dried up, though moistened recently by the rain, these countryfolk are used to roughing it and sit or lie down wherever they happen to be, better still if a man can rest his head on a woman’s lap, I’ll wager that this was man’s last gesture before the great flood swamped the earth. Blimunda told him, I was hoping to see Christ crucified or resurrected in glory, but all I could see was a dark cloud, Forget what you saw, Forget it, how can I forget it, if what is inside the Sacred Host is what is inside men, which, after all, is religion, the person we need here is Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço, perhaps he might be able to clear up the mystery, Perhaps, perhaps not, it’s just possible that certain things cannot be explained, who knows, and no sooner were these words spoken than the rain began to fall with greater force, either as a sign of affirmation or denial, the sky is now overcast while a man and woman shelter beneath a tree, bereft of any children, after all, there is no guarantee that situations recur, locations differ as well as the times, and even the tree itself is different, but as for the rain, it has the same comforting touch on one’s skin and on the soil, a life so excessive that it can kill, but this is something to which man has become accustomed since the beginning of creation, when the wind is gentle it mills the grain, when it is strong it tears the windmill’s sails, Between life and death, said Blimunda, hovers a dark cloud.

Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço had written soon after settling in Coimbra, stating simply that he had reached his destination safely, but now a second letter arrived, asking them to proceed to Lisbon without delay, as soon as there was some respite from his studies, he would join them, besides, he had certain ecclesiastical duties to perform at court, and this would provide an opportunity to plan the next stage of their joint enterprise, And now tell me, how are your wills progressing, a seemingly innocent question, which gave the impression that he was inquiring about their wills rather than about the wills of others and about those who had lost them, but he raised the question without expecting any answer, just as in battle, when the captain gives orders or allows the bugle to give them on his behalf, Forward march, and the captain does not stand there waiting until the soldiers have consulted one another and reply, We’ll go, we won’t go, we’re not going, either they start marching at once or find themselves up before a court-martial, We’ll leave next week, Baltasar decided, but another two months were to pass, because in the meantime it was rumoured in Mafra, and confirmed by the parish priest in his sermon, that the King was coming to lay the foundation stone of the future convent with his own royal hands. First it was announced that the inauguration ceremony would be on a date in October, but that would not have allowed enough time to dig the foundations to the right depth, despite the six hundred workers on the site and the constant blasting that rent the air morning, noon, and night, then it was to be in the middle of November, but further postponed because winter had arrived and the King would be in mud up to his garters. May His Majesty come soon, so that Mafra’s age of glory may commence, so that the town’s inhabitants may raise their hands to heaven and witness with their mortal eyes the achievements of this mighty king, thanks to whom we can enjoy a foretaste of heaven before entering those celestial gates, and better to enjoy such bliss while still alive than after death, We’ll watch the festivities then leave for Lisbon, Baltasar decided.

Álvaro Diogo has already been contracted as a stonemason and for the time being he is cutting stone brought from Pêro Pinheiro, massive blocks transported on wagons drawn by ten or twenty yokes of oxen while other labourers are engaged in breaking up inferior stone for the foundations, which are to be almost six metres deep, metre being the modern term, although in those days everything was measured in spans, which are still the standard used by those who measure men both great and small, for example, Baltasar Sete-Sóis, who has never been king, is taller than Dom João V, and Álvaro Diogo, who is no weakling, is accustomed to tackling large-scale constructions, there he is hammering the stone and hacking away at its surface, but he will go on to do other jobs. Having helped to set one block on top of another, he will subsequently become a stone-cutter and carver, for it is a truly royal task to erect a straight wall with a plumb line, and it is quite unlike all that business with battens and nails which occupies the carpenters who are building the wooden church where the solemn act of benediction and inauguration will be held when the King finally arrives. Strong poles are laid out to mark the perimeter where the improvised church will eventually be replaced by the basilica itself, but for the moment the roof is made from sailcloth lined with durable cotton, and the form of a cross is observed to add a note of dignity to this provisional wooden construction, which will one day be rebuilt in stone, and in order to watch these preparations, the inhabitants of Mafra start to neglect their workshops and fields, they have become idle at the sight of this enormous project being erected on the Alto da Vela, although still in its initial stages. Some might be excused, such as Baltasar and Blimunda, who bring their nephew to see his father, and since it is already midday Inês Antónia also comes with a pot of cooked cabbage and a lump of cured pork, the entire family is here except for the grandparents, and if we did not know that this construction is the fulfilment of a sacred vow because an heir was born to the King, we might mistake the crowd for some mass pilgrimage, each and all honouring their pledges to Almighty God, But no one is going to give me back my son, Inês Antónia thinks to herself, and she almost feels hatred for this other son who goes off to play among the rocks.