José Saramago - Baltasar and Blimunda

Exhausted after all that walking and going up and down stairs, Blimunda and Baltasar returned to the estate, seven pale suns and seven waning moons, Blimunda suffering from the most unbearable nausea, as if she were returning from a battlefield after witnessing a thousand bodies being blown to pieces by artillery, and if Baltasar wanted to divine what Blimunda was witnessing, all he had to do was merge into a single recollection his experiences of war and those in the slaughterhouse. They lay together without any desire to make love, not so much because of their fatigue, which, as we know, can often be a wise counsellor of the senses, but because of their acute awareness of their internal organs, as if these were protruding through their skin, perhaps a difficult thing to explain, but it is by means of the skin that bodies come to recognise, know, and accept one another, and if certain deep penetrations, certain intimate contacts occur between the mucus and the skin, the difference is barely perceptible, it is as if one had sought and found a more remote skin. They are both asleep covered by an old blanket and still wearing their clothes, and it is cause for wonder to see such a mighty enterprise entrusted to two vagabonds, who look worse now that the bloom of youth has vanished, like foundation stones soiled by the earth they reinforce and perhaps, like them, overwhelmed by the weight they will have to bear. The moon was slow in appearing that night, they slept and did not see it, but the moonlight filtered through the chinks and slowly pervaded the entire coach-house, the flying machine and, in passing, lit up the glass phial and clearly exposed the dark clouds inside, perhaps because no one was watching or because moonlight is capable of revealing the invisible.

Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço was satisfied with the day's collection, it was only the first day, and they had been out at random into the heart of a city afflicted by disease and mourning, there were twenty-four wills to be added to the list. After a month, they calculated that they had stored a thousand wills in the phial, a force of elevation that the priest considered sufficient for one globe, so Blimunda was given a second phial. In Lisbon, rumours were rife about this strange couple who roved the city from one end to another, without fear of succumbing to the epidemic, he walking behind, she in front, never breaking their silence as they passed through the streets and entered houses, where they did not tarry, and she lowered her eyes when she had to pass him, and if this daily ritual did not provoke greater suspicion and wonder, it was because of the rumour that they were both doing penance, a ruse invented by Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço when people started to gossip. Had he been a little more imaginative, he would have passed off the mysterious couple as two envoys sent from heaven to assist the dying and to reinforce the effects of extreme unction, which might have weakened from overuse. It takes little or nothing to undo reputations, the merest trifle makes and remakes them, it is simply a question of finding the best means of engaging the confidence or interest of those who are to become one's unsuspecting echoes or accomplices.

When the epidemic finally began to pass and deaths from the plague became much rarer than deaths from other causes, two thousand wills all told had been collected in the phials. Then Blimunda was taken ill. There was no pain or fever, but she was desperately thin and a deep pallor made her skin look transparent. She lay on the pallet, her eyes closed day and night, yet she did not appear to be sleeping or resting, with those tensed eyelids and that agonised expression on her face. Baltasar never left her side except to prepare some food or to relieve himself, for it did not seem right to do it there. Looking sombre, Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço sat on the stool, remaining there for hours. At times he seemed to be praying, but no one could make out those mutterings or to whom they were addressed. The priest no longer heard their confessions, Baltasar raised the subject twice, since he felt obliged to mention that when sins are accumulated they are easily forgotten, whereupon the priest replied that God sees into the hearts of men and needs no one to give absolution in His name, and if a man's sins were so serious that they should not go unpunished, God would see to it that he was judged and dealt with in the proper place on the Day of Judgment, unless in the meantime his good deeds compensated for his evil ones, although it may also come to pass that everything will end with a general amnesty or universal punishment, all that remains to be known is who will pardon or punish God. But, watching Blimunda waste away and withdraw from this world, the priest bit his nails and felt remorse that he had exposed her so relentlessly to encroaching death, so that her own life was now in danger, for one could see that she was facing that other temptation of leaving life painlessly, like someone who has stopped holding on to the margins of this world and allows herself to go under.

Each night, returning to the city by obscure paths and narrow byways that descended towards Santa Maria and Valverde, the priest began to wish in his semi-delirium that he would be ambushed by bandits, perhaps even by Baltasar himself with his rusty sword and deadly spike, to avenge Blimunda and so end his torment. But Sete-Sóis was already in bed at this hour, he covered Sete-Luas with his good arm and murmured, Blimunda, and that name traversed a vast, dark wilderness full of shadows, took a long time to reach its destination, and just as long to return, the shadows slowly dispersing, her lips moving with difficulty, Baltasar, and outside, there was the sound of rustling trees, from time to time the cry of some nocturnal bird, blessed be the night, which conceals and protects things fair and foul with the same indifferent mantle, come, time-honoured and unchanging night. The rhythm of Blimunda's breathing altered, a sign that she had fallen asleep, and Baltasar, prostrate with anxiety, could sleep at last and there rediscover Blimunda's smile, and what would become of us if we were not to dream.

During her illness, if it was an illness and not merely a protracted regression of her own will into the inaccessible confines of her body, Domenico Scarlatti called frequently, first he came to visit Blimunda and find out if there was any improvement, then he would linger to converse with Sete-Sóis, and one day he removed the canvas cloth from the harpsichord, sat down, and began to play with such sweetness and delicacy that it was as if the music could scarcely bring itself to part from those gentle chords, subtle vibrations as of a winged insect hovering in mid-air, before suddenly moving from one to another, up and down, and all of this independent of the movements of his fingers over the keyboard, as if the vibrations were choosing the notes, music does not come from the movements of the fingers, how could it, when the keyboard has a first and last key, whereas music has no beginning or end, it comes from yonder to my left, and goes to that other remote point, on my right, but at least music has two hands, unlike certain gods. Perhaps this was the medicine that Blimunda was awaiting, or that thing inside her which was still awaiting something, for each of us consciously expects only what we know or find familiar or what we have been told is useful in each case, blood-letting, were the body not so weak, a tongue from St Paul if the epidemic had not left the beaches bare, some berries from the alkegengi plant, some foxglove leaves, a root of creeping thistle, the Frenchman's elixir, unless this is just a harmless mixture whose only merit is that of not causing any further harm. Blimunda could not have known that upon hearing that music her breast would swell in this way, and give out a deep sigh like that of someone about to die or be born, Baltasar leaned over her, fearful that she might expire just as she was reviving. That night Domenico Scarlatti remained on the estate, playing for hours on end, until daybreak, Blimunda's eyes were now open, and the tears streamed slowly down her face, had there been a doctor present, he would have diagnosed that she was expelling the humours of a damaged optic nerve, perhaps he would be right, perhaps tears are nothing other than the assuagement of some wound.