José Saramago - The Stone Raft

During the remaining days the three friends spent in Albufeira, the riot police, bolstered by a special squad, tried to clear one of the hotels by force, but the joint and coordinated resistance of the new arrivals and the owners, the former resolved to hold out to the last, the latter fearful of the havoc usually caused by the so-called rescuers, resulted in the suspension of the operations, which were postponed until another opportunity might arise when time and promises would have weakened the rebels' vigilance. By the time Pedro Orce, Joaquim Sassa, and José Anaiço resumed their journey to Lisbon there already existed democratically elected residents' committees in the occupied buildings, with subcommittees responsible for such matters as hygiene and maintenance, kitchen and laundry, entertainment and recreation, cultural activities, education and counseling, gymnastics and sports, everything, in short, that is essential for the smooth and efficient running of any community. On their own improvised flagpoles the squatters hoisted banners and pennants of every conceivable color, they used anything that came to hand, flags of foreign countries, of sports clubs, of various associations, under the aegis, as it were, of the national colors fluttering at the top, there were even bedspreads hanging from the windows, in admirable imitation of these decorations.

However, an adversative adverb that invariably denotes opposition, restriction, or difference, and that, applied to this situation, reminds us that even the things that are good for some are precisely those that disadvantage others, the savage occupation of these hotels was the drop of water that caused the disquiet that from the outset gripped the rich and powerful to overflow. Many of them, afraid that the peninsula might sink, sweeping away their property and their lives, had fled at once during the exodus of tourists, which obviously does not mean that the former were suddenly foreigners in their own country, although people can belong in various degrees to the country that is naturally and administratively theirs, as history has shown time and time again.

Now, amid the general condemnation of these outrages, which was more universal than general, if we leave aside the incongruous attitude of that insignificant Neapolitan paper, there occurred a second emigration, so massive one feels justified in thinking that it had been carefully planned once it became clear to all that the wounds inflicted on Europe would never heal, that the physical structure of the peninsula had split, who would ever have believed it, just where it seemed strongest. The huge bank accounts suddenly dwindled, leaving a bare minimum, just a token sum, about five hundred escudos in Portugal, about five hundred pesetas in Spain, or perhaps a little more, current accounts were practically wiped out, time deposits were closed with some loss of interest, and everything, all of it, gold, silver, precious stones, jewels, works of art, bonds, everything was carried off by the strong gusts of wind that swept the fugitives' personal property over the sea, in all thirty-two directions of the compass, they hoped to recover the rest one day, with time and patience. Clearly, these great removals could not be achieved within twenty-four hours, but a week was all that was needed for the social physiognomy of these two Iberian countries to be transformed from top to bottom, from side to side. Any observer unaware of the facts and motives, and allowing himself to be taken in by appearances, would have come to the conclusion that the Portuguese and the Spaniards had been reduced to poverty from one minute to the next, when in fact all that had happened was that the rich had gone away, and without them the demographics soon showed a dramatic decline.

To those observers who can see an entire Olympus of gods and goddesses where there are nothing but passing clouds, or to those who have Jupiter Tonans before their eyes but refer to him as atmospheric vapor, we shall never tire of pointing out that it is not enough to speak of circumstances, with their bipolar division into antecedents and consequences, as one does to reduce the mental effort, but that one must rather consider what is infallibly situated between the former and the latter, let us spell them all out in the right order, time, place, motive, means, person, deed, manner, for unless we measure and ponder everything, we are bound to make some fatal mistake in the very first opinion we offer. Man is undoubtedly an intelligent being, but not as intelligent as one would like, and this is a proof and confession of humility, which should always begin at home, as one says of charity in the proper sense of the word, before you reproach us.

They arrived in Lisbon as night was falling, at that hour when the gentle light fills souls with sweet remorse, now one sees how right that admirable judge of sensations and impressions was when he maintained that landscape was a state of mind, what he was not able to tell us was what it looked like in the days when there was nothing but pithecanthropus in the world, with as yet scant soul, and not just scant but confused as well. Thousands of years later, and thanks to evolution, Pedro Orce can now recognize in the apparent melancholy of the city the faithful image of his own intimate sadness. He had grown accustomed to the company of these Portuguese who had come to look for him in those inhospitable parts where he was born and lived, soon they will have to go their separate ways, each man to his own destination, not even families can resist the erosion of necessity, so what are mere acquaintances to do, friends of recent vintage and delicate roots.

Deux Chevaux crosses the bridge slowly, at the lowest speed permitted, to give the Spaniard time to admire the beauty of the views of land and sea, and also the impressive feat of engineering that links the two banks of the river, this construction, we are referring to the sentence, is periphrastic, and is used here to avoid repeating the word bridge, which would result in a solecism, of the pleonastic or redundant kind. In the various arts, and above all in that of writing, the shortest distance between two points, even if close to each other, has never been and never will be, nor is it now, what is known as a straight line, never, never, to put it strongly and emphatically in response to any doubts, to silence them once and for all. The travelers were so absorbed in the wonders of the city, so thrilled by this prodigious achievement, that they did not even notice how the starlings suddenly took fright. Drunk on altitude, gliding dangerously close to the enormous pillars that rose from the waters to support the sky, on this side the city with its windowpanes aflame, beyond the sea and the sun, and below the great river flowing past, like a sluggish current of lava burning beneath the ashes, the birds abruptly changed course, with a rapid cascade of wing-flaps, and it was as if the earth were rotating around the bridge, the north becoming east and then south, the south west and then north, where in the world shall we end up when we ourselves are forced one day to move just as much or even more. As we have already stated, men, even when they see these things, fail to understand them, nor did these men understand what they saw on this occasion.

They were halfway across the bridge when Pedro Orce murmured, Nice city, words as amiable as these call for no reply, except perhaps for a modest, Yes, isn't it. There would still be enough timé to leave Pedro Orce settled in a hotel and continue their journey, at least as far as the town in Ribatejo where José Anaiço lives, and where Joaquim Sassa could if he wished spend another night beneath the fig tree, but it would have been impolite to abandon their visitor, so the two Portuguese had made a joint decision, they would remain there for a few days, sufficient time for the Spaniard to get to know the city and once back in Orce to make his own the words of that old saying that innocently boasts, Lisbon the lovely, Lisbon the fair, Never to see her's to miss something rare, praise be to God who has given us rhymes without denying us His blessings.