José Saramago - The Collected Novels of José Saramago

Dom João V ponders how he will spend these enormous sums of money and such excessive wealth, he ponders the matter today just as he pondered it yesterday, only to come to the same conclusion, that the soul must be his primary consideration, we must preserve our soul by all possible means, especially when it can also be consoled by material comforts on this earth. Let the friar and nun have what is necessary, even what is superfluous, because the friar remembers to put me first when he prays, and the nun arranges the folds of my sheet and provides other little comforts, and if we pay Rome handsomely for the upkeep of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, she is paid even more for less cruel services, in exchange for ambassadorships and gifts, and if from this impoverished land of illiterates, rustics, and unskilled craftsmen one cannot expect refined arts and crafts, let them be brought from Europe for my convent at Mafra, and let all the other necessary adornments and embellishments be bought with the gold from my mines and revenues from my estates, whereby, as one friar will record for posterity, artisans abroad will get rich while we shall be admired for the splendours of our realm. From Portugal all that is required are the stone, tiles, and wood for burning, and men of brute force and empty hands. If the architect is German, the master-carpenters, master-builders, and master-masons are all Italian, and if the traders and other rogues from whom we buy everything are English, French, and Dutch, then you can be quite certain that they import from Rome, Venice, Milan, Genoa, Liège, France, and Holland the bells and carillons, the oil lamps and chandeliers, the candlesticks, the bronze torch-holders, the chalices and the silver-gilt monstrances, the tabernacles and statues of saints to whom the King is particularly devoted, the adornments for the altars, the altar fronts, the dalmatics, the chasubles, the copes, the cords and tassels, the canopies, the baldachins, the albs, the lace cloths, and three thousand walnut panels for the sacristy cupboards and choir stalls, a wood much esteemed by St Charles Borromeo for this purpose, and from the countries of Northern Europe come whole shiploads of timber for the scaffolding, sheds, and lodging huts, and ropes and hawsers for the winches and pulleys, from Brazil, innumerable planks of angelin wood for the doors and windows of the convent, for the flooring of the cells, dormitories, refectory, and other outbuildings, including the steps of the delousing booths, because it is a wood that does not perish, unlike this splintering Portuguese pine, which is only good for heating saucepans and for people to sit on who do not weigh much and have nothing in their pockets. Eight years have now gone by since the first stone was laid for the basilica in the town of Mafra, this one, thank God, came from Pêro Pinheiro, the rest of Europe should remember us with gratitude for the large sums of money they received in advance, not to mention what they charged in instalments as the work progressed and what they received when the project was finally completed, for they provided the silversmiths and goldsmiths, the bell founders, the sculptors responsible for the statues and bas-reliefs, the weavers, lace-makers, and needlewomen, the clock-makers, the engravers and painters, the rope-makers, the sawyers and carpenters, the embroiderers, the tanners, the carpet-weavers, the bell-makers, and the ship-riggers, if the cow that so placidly allows itself to be milked dry cannot be ours, or as long as it cannot be ours, at least let it remain with the Portuguese, for soon they will be buying a pint of milk from us on credit to make milk puddings and meringue desserts, If Your Majesty would care for another helping, Mother Paula solicitously reminds him, you need only ask.

The ants swarm around the honey, around the sugar spilled on the floor and the manna that has fallen from heaven, all of them moving in the same direction, like certain maritime birds that gather in their hundreds on the shores to worship the sun, no matter if the wind is behind them, ruffling their feathers, their concern is to follow the travelling eye of the sky, and with short runs they pass in front of one another, until the beach abruptly terminates or the sun disappears, tomorrow we shall come back to this same spot, and if we do not come our children will. The twenty thousand people gathered on the site are nearly all men, the few women who are present remain on the periphery, not so much because of the custom of segregating the sexes at Mass, but because of the risks they might run in the thick of that gathering, for though they might emerge alive, they would in all probability be violated, to adopt a modern expression, Do not tempi the Lord thy God, and if you do, then don’t go complaining that you’ve become pregnant.

As we have explained, Mass is being celebrated. Between the site and the Ilha da Madeira there is a vast space trampled by the comings and goings of the workers and furrowed by the wheels of the carts that travel back and forth, fortunately, the ground is quite dry at present, this is the virtue of spring just as she is about to fall into the arms of summer, soon the men will be able to kneel on the ground without worrying about getting their trousers wet, although these people are not greatly bothered about cleanliness and they wash in their own sweat. On an elevation at the far end a wooden chapel has been erected, and if those who have come to attend Mass imagine that they will all fit in by some miraculous means, then they are greatly mistaken, it would be easier to multiply the loaves and the fishes, or to put two thousand wills into a glass phial, this is no miracle, but the most natural thing in the world when one so desires it. The winches creak and the noise is enough to open the gates of heaven and hell, each with its own distinctive appearance, those of the House of God are made of crystal, while those of Satan are made of bronze, and even the resounding echoes are different, here, however, the din is coming from the friction of the wood, the front of the chapel is lifted slowly, until the wall is transformed into a porch and at the same time the sides are drawn back, it is as if invisible hands were opening up a tabernacle, and the first time this happened, there were not all that many workers on the site, but one could always be sure of a congregation of some five thousand faithful who would gasp in admiration, Ah, in every age there is always some new wonder to Astound mankind until they grow accustomed to it and lose interest, the chapel is finally opened wide, to reveal the celebrant and the altar within, can this be a Mass like any other, it seems impossible that this is an ordinary Mass, but all these people have already forgotten that the Holy Ghost once flew over Mafra, Masses preceding military campaigns are different, who knows, when the dead are counted and buried, whether I shall not be among them, so let us profit from the Holy Sacrifice, unless the enemy attack first, either because they have been to an earlier Mass or because they adhere to a religion that dispenses with any such observance.

From his wooden cage, the celebrant preached to the sea of faces, and had it been a sea of fishes, what a lovely sermon he might have repeated here, with its clear, wholesome doctrine, but in the absence of any fishes his sermon was that deserved by men and heard only by those who were standing near the altar, however, if it is true that the habit does not make the monk, faith undoubtedly does, anyone in that congregation, upon hearing the word heathen, knows that it was heaven, that eternal was infernal, that Zeus was Deus, and when he hears no other word or echo, it is because the sermon has ended and we can now disperse. It is frightening to think that Mass is over and that they have not ended up dead on the ground or been struck down when the sun shone straight on to the monstrance, causing it to sparkle, times are much changed, for once when the Bethshemeshites were cutting their wheat in the fields, they happened to lift their eyes to heaven and saw the Ark of the Covenant from the land of the Philistines, which sufficed to make fifty thousand and seventy of them fall flat on their faces, now there were twenty thousand watching, Were you there, I didn’t see you. This is a religion that can grow very lax, especially when the congregation is so large that it becomes impossible to hear confessions and give holy communion to everyone, so they will remain here, come what may, if anything comes at all, staring, quarrelling, having their way with women up against fences and in more secluded places, until tomorrow, when they go back to work.