The Collected Novels of José Saramago (56 page)

These are titles of property and occupation, the tomb of Dona Dionísia de Seabra Pessoa inscribed on the front, under the overhanging eaves of this sentry box where the sentinel, a romantic touch, is sleeping. Below, at the height of the door’s lower hinge, another name and nothing more, that of Fernando Pessoa, with the dates of his birth and death, and the gilded outline of a funeral urn that says, I am here. Ricardo Reis repeats the words aloud, He is here. At that moment it starts raining again. He has traveled so far, all the way from Rio de Janeiro, days and nights on the high seas, the voyage seems so recent and yet so remote, now what is he to do, alone in this road, among graves, his umbrella open. Time to be thinking about lunch. In the distance he could hear the hollow sound of a bell tolling, the sound he had expected to hear upon arrival, when he touched these railings, his soul gripped by panic, a deep laceration, an inner turmoil, like great cities collapsing in silence because we are not there, porticoes and white towers toppling. In the end nothing but a gentle sensation of burning in one’s eyes, no sooner felt than gone, not even time to think about it or be troubled by the thought. There is nothing more to be done in this place, what he has done is nothing. Inside the tomb is a mad old woman who cannot be left to roam at will. Under her watchful eye is also the decomposing body of a composer of verses who left his share of madness in the world. The great difference between poets and madmen is the destiny of the madness that possesses them. He felt afraid, thinking about grandmother Dionísia lying in there, and about her afflicted grandson Fernando, she keeping vigil with eyes wide open, he with eyes averted, looking for a gap, a breath of air, a glimmer of light, his uneasiness turned to nausea as if he were being assailed and suffocated by a great sea wave, he who throughout the fourteen days of the voyage had not once been seasick. Then he thought, It must be my empty stomach, and he was probably right, for he had eaten nothing all morning. The rain came pouring down, arriving just in time. Now Ricardo Reis will have his answer ready if anyone questions him, No, I didn’t spend much time there, it was raining so heavily. As he started to climb the road, walking slowly, he felt the nausea pass. All that remained was a slight headache, perhaps an emptiness in his head, like an absence, a piece of brain missing, the piece relinquished by Pessoa. He found his informant standing in the doorway of the registry, and it was obvious from the grease on the man’s lips that he had just finished eating lunch. Where, right here, a napkin spread out on his desk, the food he brought from home, still warm because wrapped in newspapers, or perhaps reheated on a gas flame, there at the far end of the filing cabinets, interrupting his chewing three times to file. So I must have spent more time there than I thought. Then you found the tomb you were looking for. I found it, Ricardo Reis replied, and as he went through the gate he repeated, Yes, I found it.

Famished and in a hurry, he gestured toward the row of taxis. Who knows if he can still find a restaurant or eating house prepared to serve him lunch at this late hour. The driver was methodically chewing a toothpick, passing it from one corner of his mouth to the other with his tongue. It must have been with his tongue, since his hands were occupied with the steering wheel. From time to time he noisily sucked the saliva between his teeth. The sucking sound, the intermittent warbling of digestion, made two simultaneous notes like birdsong, Ricardo Reis thought to himself and smiled, but at the same moment his eyes filled with tears. Strange that such a sound should have such an effect. Or it might have been the sight of a little angel being carried to its grave on a white bier, some Fernando who did not live long enough to become a poet, some Ricardo who could not become a doctor or poet. Perhaps the reason for this outburst of weeping is simply that the moment had come for the release of pent-up emotions. These physiological matters are complicated, let us leave them to those who understand them, particularly if it should prove necessary to follow the path of sentiment into the tear glands themselves, to determine, for example, the chemical difference between tears of sadness and tears of joy, almost certainly the former are more salty, which explains why one’s eyes smart so much. In front, the driver pushed the toothpick between his canine teeth on the right. Silently he moved the toothpick up and down, respecting the passenger’s sorrow, something he is used to doing when he picks up people at the cemetery. The taxi descended the Canada da Estrela, turned at the Cortes, heading toward the river, and then, reaching the Baixa, went up the Rua Augusta. As it entered the Rossio, Ricardo Reis suddenly remembered, Stop at the Irmãos Unidos, the restaurant just ahead, draw up on the right, there is an entrance at the back, in the Rua dos Correeiros. One can be sure of a good meal here, the food is excellent, the atmosphere traditional, because the restaurant is situated on the very spot where the Hospital de Todos os Santos once stood many years ago. You would think we were narrating the history of another nation. An earthquake comes along, and behold the result, but whether we change for better or for worse depends on how alive we are and hopeful.

Ricardo Reis lunched without worrying about his diet. Yesterday had been an act of weakness on his part. When a man comes ashore after an ocean voyage he is like a child, sometimes seeking a woman’s shoulder on which to rest his head, at other times ordering one glass of wine after another in some tavern until he finds happiness, provided happiness has been poured in that bottle beforehand. At other times it is as if he has no will of his own. Any Galician waiter can decide what he should eat, I’d suggest a little chicken if you are feeling queasy, sir. Here no one wishes to know whether he disembarked yesterday, whether tropical dishes have ruined his digestion, what special food will cure his nostalgia for his native land, if that is what he suffers from. If not, why did he come back. From the table where he is sitting, between the gaps in the curtains he can see the trams pass outside, he can hear them creaking on the turns, the tinkling of their little bells, a liquid sound in the rain, like the bells of a submerged cathedral or the strains of a harpsichord echoing ad infinitum within a well. The waiters hover patiently, waiting for this last customer to finish his lunch. He arrived late and pleaded with them to serve him, and his request was granted, although the kitchen staff was already clearing away the pots and pans. Now he’s done, he thanks the waiters, politely wishing them a pleasant afternoon as he leaves by the door to the Rua dos Correeiros, which opens onto that Babylon of iron and glass, the Praça da Figueira. Still bustling with activity, the market is calm by comparison with the morning hours, when the noisy cries of the tradesmen grow louder and louder. One inhales a thousand pungent odors, kale trampled and wilting, the excrement of rabbits, the feathers of scalded chickens, blood, bits of flayed skin. They are washing the benches and the alleyways with buckets, hoses, and brooms with tough bristles. From time to time you can hear the scraping of metal, then a sudden boom as a shutter is rolled down, Ricardo Reis went around the square from the southern side and turned into the Rua dos Douradores. The rain almost over, he could now close his umbrella and look up at the tall, grimy façades. Rows of windows at the same height, some with sills, others with balconies, the monotonous stone slabs extending all along the road until they merge into thin vertical strips which narrow more and more but never entirely disappear. Down in the Rua da Conceiçâo, appearing to block the road, rises a building of similar color with windows and grilles of the same design or only slightly modified. All exude gloom and humidity, releasing into the courtyards the stench of cracked sewers, with scattered whiffs of gas. Little wonder that the shopkeepers standing in their doorways have an unhealthy pallor. Dressed in their smocks or aprons of gray cotton, their pens stuck behind one ear, they look disgruntled, because this is Monday and Sunday was disappointing. The road is paved with rough irregular stones, the gravel almost black where the metal wheels of the carts have bounced as they passed. It used to be that in the dry season, which this is not, the iron shoes of the mules gave off sparks when the loads they hauled exceeded the strength of man and beast. Today only lighter freight is carried, such as those sacks of beans which appear to weigh about sixty kilos and are now being unloaded by two men, or should one say liters when referring to beans and seeds. Since the bean by its nature is light, every liter of beans weighs approximately seven hundred and fifty grams, so let us hope that those who filled the sacks took this into account and reduced the load accordingly.

Ricardo Reis started walking back to his hotel and suddenly remembered the room where he had spent his first night like a prodigal son under a paternal roof. He remembered it as if it were his home, not the one in Rio de Janeiro, nor in Oporto, where we know he was born, nor here in Lisbon, where he lived before sailing off to exile in Brazil, none of these, even though they had all been homes to him. A strange sign, and of what, a man thinking of his hotel room as if it were his own home. Disquieted, uneasy at being out for so long, since early morning, he murmured, I’ll go back at once. He fought down the urge to hail a taxi, allowed a tram to pass that would have dropped him almost at the hotel door, managed in the end to quell this absurd anxiety, to force himself to be simply someone going back to his hotel, unhurried yet without any needless delay. He may see the girl with the paralyzed arm in the dining room this evening, it is a possibility, like that of seeing the fat man, the thin man in mourning, the pale children and their ruddy parents, who knows what other guests, mysterious arrivals from an unknown place enshrouded in mist. Thinking about them, he felt a consoling warmth in his heart, a deep sense of reassurance, Love one another were the words once spoken, and it was time to begin. The wind blew with force, channeled into the Rua do Arsenal, but it was not raining, all that fell on the pavements were some heavy drops shaken from eaves. Perhaps the weather will change for the better, this winter cannot last forever. For the last two months there has been nothing but heavy showers, the taxi driver told him yesterday, in the tone of one who no longer believes that things will improve.

A sharp buzz as he opened the door, and it was as if he were being welcomed by the statue of the Italian page. Pimenta looked down the steep flight of stairs from the landing above, waiting to greet him, deferential and punctilious, his back slightly stooped, perhaps the result of those loads he is constantly carrying. Good afternoon, Doctor. The manager Salvador also appeared on the landing, saying the same words but in a more refined tone. Ricardo Reis returned their greetings. No longer manager, hotel porter, and doctor, they became simply three men smiling, pleased to be seeing one another again after such a long time, not since early that morning, just imagine, and such nostalgia, dear God. When Ricardo Reis entered his room and observed how carefully it had been cleaned, the bedspread neatly arranged, the washbasin shining, the mirror spotless despite the dents it had collected over the years, he sighed with
satisfaction. Changing his clothes and getting into slippers, he pulled open one of the bedroom windows, the gesture of someone who is glad to be home, then settled in the armchair. It was as if he had fallen into himself, a sudden violent fall inside. And now, he asked, And now, Ricardo Reis or whoever you are, as others might say. In an instant he understood that the real conclusion of his voyage was this precise moment, that the time which had elapsed since he set foot on the quay at Alcântara had been spent, so to speak, in the maneuvers of berthing and dropping anchor, probing the tide, throwing the cables, because this was what he’d been doing when he looked for a hotel, read those first newspapers, then visited the cemetery, lunched in the Baixa, strolled down to the Rua dos Douradores. That sudden longing for his room, the impulse of indiscriminate, universal affection, the welcome extended by Salvador and Pimenta, the immaculate bedspread, and finally the wide-open window, its net curtains fluttering like wings. And what now. The rain has started up again, making a noise on the rooftops like sand being sieved, numbing, hypnotic. Perhaps during the great flood God in His mercy put men to sleep in this way so death might be gentle, the water quietly penetrating their nostrils and mouths without suffocating them, rivulets gradually filling, cell after cell, the entire cavity of their bodies. After forty days and forty nights of sleep and rain, their bodies sank slowly to the bottom, at last heavier than water itself. Ophelia, too, allows herself to be swept away by the current, singing, but she will inevitably die before the end of act four. Each human being has his own way of sleeping and dying, but the flood continues, time rains on us, drowns us. On the waxed surface of the floor raindrops collected and spread, having entered through the open window or spluttered from the sill. Some careless guests give no thought to humble labor, perhaps believing that the bees not only make the wax but also spread it on the floorboards and rub it and buff it until it shines, but it is maids, not insects, who do this work, and without them these shining floors would be drab and grimy. The manager will soon rebuke and punish them, because that is a manager’s job, and we are in this hotel for the greater honor and glory of God, whose deputy is Salvador. Ricardo Reis rushed to close the window, with the newspapers mopped up most of the water, and having no other means to finish the job properly he rang the bell. That’s the first time I’ve used it, he thought, like someone begging his own pardon.

He heard steps in the corridor, knuckles tapped discreetly on the door. Come in, words of entreaty rather than command. When the maid opened the door, he said, scarcely bothering to look at her, The window was open, the rain came in, there was water all over the floor. Then he fell silent, realizing that he had produced doggerel, he, Ricardo Reis, the author of Sapphic and Alcaic odes. He almost continued in stupid anapests, Could you do me a favor and clean up this mess. But the maid, without verses, understood what had to be done. She went out and returned with a mop and bucket, and down on her knees, her body wriggling, did her vigorous best to remove the offending moisture. Tomorrow she will give the floor another coat of wax. Can I do anything else for you, Doctor. No, much obliged. They looked straight into each other’s eyes. Beating heavily on the windowpanes, the rain’s rhythm accelerated, ruffling like a great drum, causing those who were asleep to wake up in alarm. What is your name. Lydia, sir, she replied, then added, At your service, Doctor. She could have expressed it more formally, saying, for example, in a louder voice, I was instructed to do my utmost to please the doctor, for the manager said, Look here, Lydia, take good care of the guest in room two hundred and one, Doctor Reis. The doctor made no reply, he appeared to be whispering the name Lydia in case he should need to call her again. There are people who repeat the words they hear, because we are all like parrots repeating one another, nor is there any other way of learning. This reflection is inappropriate, perhaps, since it was not made by Lydia, who is the other interlocutor and already has a name, so let us allow her to leave, taking her mop and bucket with her. Ricardo Reis remains there smiling ironically, moving his lips in a way that deceives no one. Lydia, he repeats, and smiles, and smiling goes to the drawer to look for his poems, his Sapphic odes, and reads the verses which catch his eye as he turns the pages.
And so, Lydia, sitting by the hearth, Lydia, let the image be thus, Let us show no desire, Lydia, at this hour, When our autumn
comes, Lydia, Come sit with me, Lydia, on the riverbank, Lydia, the most abject existence is preferable to death.
There is no longer any trace of irony in his smile, if the word
smile
is an apt description for those parted lips exposing his teeth, the facial muscles fixed into a sneer or pained expression, with which one might say, This, too, shall pass. Like his face reflected in a tremulous mirror of water, Ricardo Reis leans over the page and recomposes old verses. Soon he will be able to recognize himself, It is I, without irony, without sorrow, content to feel not even contentment, as a man who desires nothing more or knows that he can possess nothing more. The shadows in the room thicken, some black nimbus must be passing in the sky, a cloud black as lead, like those summoned for the deluge. The furniture suddenly falls asleep. Ricardo Reis makes a gesture with his hands, groping the colorless air, then, barely able to distinguish the words he traces on the paper, writes,
All I ask of the gods is that I should ask nothing of them.
Having written this, he does not know how to continue. There are such moments. We believe in the importance of what we have just said or written, if for no other reason than that it is impossible to take back the sounds or erase the marks, but the temptation to be silent pervades our body, the fascination of silence, to be silent and immobile like the gods, watching and nothing more. He moves over to the sofa, leans back, closes his eyes, feels that he could sleep, is already half asleep. From the closet he takes a blanket, wraps himself in it, now he will sleep, and dream that it is a sunny morning and he is strolling along the Rua do Ouvidor in Rio de Janeiro, not exerting himself, for it is very hot. In the distance he hears shooting, bombs, but does not awaken. This is not the first time that he has had this dream, nor does he hear the knocking at the door and a voice, a woman’s voice asking, Did you call, Doctor.