José Saramago - Baltasar and Blimunda

They are not missed. The cart travels as slowly up the slope as it came down, and if God had any feeling for mankind, He would have made the world as flat as the palm of one's hand, so that stones could be transported more rapidly. This operation is now entering its fifth day, and although the road is better now that the slope has been overcome, the men are ill at ease, every muscle in their bodies aches, but who is complaining, since this is why they have been given muscles. The herd of cattle does not argue or protest, it simply resists, by pretending to pull without pulling, the remedy is to leave them to rest a while and feed them a handful of straw, soon they will start behaving as if they had been resting since yesterday, their buttocks swaying as they move up the road, and it is a pleasure to watch them. Until they arrive at another descent or upward slope. Then the forces gather and distribute their efforts, so many here, so many there, Pull there, heave, a voice cries out, Taratata ta, blares a trumpet, this is a veritable battlefield with its dead and wounded.

In the afternoon, there was a welcome downpour of rain. It rained again during the night, but no one cursed. It is wisest not to pay too much attention to what heaven sends, whether it be sunshine or rain, unless it becomes unbearable, and even then the Great Flood did not suffice to drown the whole of mankind, and drought is never so great that a blade of grass does not survive, or at least the hope of finding one. It rained like this for an hour or so, then the clouds lifted, for even clouds get peevish if they are ignored. The bonfires became bigger, and some of the men stripped to dry their clothes, so that it began to look like a pagan festival, although we know that this was the most Catholic of enterprises, to carry that stone to Mafra, to struggle forth and bring the faith to all who deserved it, a matter we might well have discussed forever if Manuel Milho had not been there to tell his story, there is one listener missing, only I, and you, and you, notice his absence, the others do not even know who Francisco Marques was, some may have seen his corpse, most of them not even that, and who could believe that six hundred men filed past that corpse in a final moving tribute, these are scenes one associates only with epics, so let us get back to our story, One day the Queen vanished from the palace where she lived with her husband the King and their children the infantes, and since there had been rumours that the words exchanged in the cave had been no more like the conversation one might expect between a queen and a hermit than a dance step or a peacock's tail, the King went into a jealous fury and set off for the cave, quite convinced that his honour had been offended, for kings are like that, they are endowed with a sense of honour that is superior to that of other men, as one can see immediately from the crowns on their heads, and when he arrived there, he saw neither hermit nor Queen, but this made him all the more furious, because he saw it as an unmistakable sign that they had fled together, so he sent his army to pursue the fugitives the length and breadth of the realm, and while the search is under way, let us try to get some sleep, for it is late. José Pequeno protested, No one has ever heard such a tale narrated bit by bit, and Manuel Milho reminded him, Each day is a little bit of history, and no one can narrate everything, and Baltasar thought to himself, Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço would surely have approved of this Manuel Milho.

The next day was Sunday, and there was Mass and a sermon. In order to be heard to great advantage, the friar preached from the top of the cart, as dignified as if he were in the pulpit, and the saucy fellow was not aware that he was committing the greatest blasphemy of all by planting his sandals on that altar stone where innocent blood had been sacrificed, the blood of the man from Cheleiros who had a wife and children, and of the man who lost his foot in Pêro Pinheiro before the convoy had even set off, and that of the oxen, let us not forget the oxen, because the local inhabitants who slaughtered them will not readily forget and on this very same Sunday they are having a somewhat better meal. The friar preached and said, as is the wont of all preachers, Beloved children, from heaven above Our Lady and her divine Son look down upon us, from heaven above our father St Antony also watches over us, he for whose love we are carrying this stone to the town of Mafra, it is certainly heavy, but your sins are heavier still, yet you walk with them in your hearts as if you felt no burden, so you must accept this hard labour as penance and also as a devout offering, a singular form of penance and a strange offering, for not only are you being paid a daily wage but you are also being recompensed with an indulgence from heaven, in truth, I say to you, this stone of Mafra is as holy a mission as those ancient crusades that set out for the Holy Places, and know that all who perished there have been rewarded with eternal life, and united with them in the contemplation of the Lord is that companion of yours who was killed the day before yesterday, it was most fortunate that he should have died on a Friday, and no doubt he died unconfessed, for there was no time to summon a confessor, but he was saved because he was struck down in this crusade, just as those who died in the infirmaries of Mafra were saved, or those who fell from the ramparts, except those sinners who were beyond redemption and were carried off by shameful diseases, and such is the mercy of heaven that the gates of paradise are opened even to those who have died from stab wounds in those brawls you all indulge in, never has there been a nation so staunch in its faith yet so disorderly, but never mind, the work goes on, God grant us patience, give you strength, and the King enough money to complete the enterprise, for this convent is much needed in order to strengthen the Franciscan Order and propagate the faith, Amen. The sermon ended, the friar got down from the cart, and since it was Sunday, a holy day of rest, there was nothing more to do, some went to confession, others to communion, but not everyone, and just as well, for there were not enough consecrated hosts to go around, unless some miracle should multiply them, and no such miracle has been witnessed. As the evening drew to a close, a commotion arose between five crusaders on this holy crusade, but we shall spare you the details because it came to nothing more serious than an exchange of punches and one or two bloody noses. Had they lost their lives they would have gone straight to heaven.

That night Manuel Milho concluded his story. Sete-Sóis asked him if the King's soldiers succeeded in capturing the Queen and the hermit, and he replied, No, they did not capture them, they scoured the kingdom from end to end and carried out a house-to-house search without finding any trace of their whereabouts, and with these words he fell silent. José Pequeno asked him, So this is the story it has taken you almost a week to narrate, and Manuel Milho replied, The hermit ceased to be a hermit and the Queen stopped being a queen, but it was never discovered whether the hermit succeeded in becoming a man or the Queen succeeded in becoming a woman, in my opinion, had any such changes occurred, the effects would not have gone unobserved, and should anything like this ever come to pass, it will not happen without a clear sign, but there was no sign, and it all happened so many years ago that they must be long since dead, for all stories end in death. Baltasar tapped with his hook on a loose stone. José Pequeno rubbed his stubbly chin and asked, How does a drover become a man, whereupon Manuel Milho replied, I don't know. Sete-Sóis threw a pebble on the bonfire and said, Perhaps by flying.

They spent yet another night on the road. The journey from Péro Pinheiro to Mafra took eight whole days. When they arrived on the site, they looked like the survivors from some disastrous battle, dirty, ragged, and bereft of spoils. Everyone was astounded at the dimensions of the stone, It's so huge. But looking up at the basilica, Baltasar murmured, It's so small.