José Saramago - The History of the Siege of Lisbon

But the disadvantage with sources, however truthful they try to be, is their lack of precision in matters of detail and their impassioned account of events, we refer to a certain internal faculty of contradictory germination which operates within facts or the version of those facts as provided, sold, or proposed, and stemming like spores from the latter, the proliferation of secondary and tertiary sources, some copied, others carelessly transmitted, some repeated from hearsay, others who changed details in good or bad faith, some freely interpreted, others rectified, some propagated with total indifference, others proclaimed as the one, eternal and irreplaceable truth, the last of these the most suspect of all. Naturally, everything depends on the greater or lesser quantity of documents available for consultation, on how much or how little time one is prepared to devote to this irksome task, but, in order to get an updated idea of the nature of the problem in hand, we need only imagine, in this day and age in which Raimundo Silva is living, that he or one of us needs to verify some regurgitated truth, constantly being modified by dint of repetition, in the newspapers, yet notwithstanding, the country is small and the population littlè given to reading,-scanning the titles alone gives them vertigo because, frankly, there are far too many of them, the Diário de Notícias, the Correio de Manhã, O'Século, the Capital, O Dia, the Diário de Lisboa, the Diàrio Popular, O Diário, the Comércio do Porto, the Jornal de Notícias, O Europeu, the Primeiro de Janeiro, the Diário de Coimbra, and these are only the daily newspapers, because after glossing, summarising, commenting, forecasting, announcing, speculating, we have the weekly newspapers and magazines, O Expresso, O Jornal, O Semanário, O Tempo, O Diabo, O Independente, O'Sábado, and O Avante, and Acção Socialista, and O Povo Livre, and the list would be never-ending if, in addition to the most important and influential publications, we were to include all the newspapers and magazines published further afield, where people also have the right to exist and voice their opinions.

Fortunately the proof-reader has other things to worry him, he wants to know who those foreigners were, who during those hot summer days engaged in conversation with our King Afonso Henriques, it áppeared that everything had been clarified by consulting The History of the Siege of Lisbon, beyond what had already been gathered from the manuscript attributed to Osbern and other ancient works of similar interest, such as Arnulfo and Dodequino, and marginally, the narrative account in the Indiculum Fundationis Monasterii Sancti Vincentii, but no, Sir, nothing has been explained, since, for example, in The Chronicle of the Five Kings of Portugal, which must have had its own good reasons for revealing so little, sometimes extracting, sometimes adding, no important foreigners are mentioned apart from Guillaume of the Long Arrow, Gilíes de Rolim, and another Dom Gilíes whose surname is not given, note that none of these men are mentioned in The History of the Siege of Lisbon, allegedly based on the testimony of Osbern, in similar cases one generally opts for the earliest of the documents because closer to events, but we do not know what Raimundo Silva will do, since he clearly likes the medieval flavour of the name Guillaume of the Long Arrow, a knight whose very name destined him to carry out the most incredible feats of chivalry. One expedient is to look for a solution in a work of greater authority, such as, in this case, the Chronicle of Dom Afonso Henriques himself, written by Fray Antonio Brandão but, alas, this will not untangle the plot, only make it worse by referring to Guillaume of the Long Arrow as Guillaume of the Long Sword, and by introducing, according to the version of Setho Calvisio, a certain Euric, King of Damia, a bishop from Bremen, a duke from Burgundy, a certain Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and with reasonable likelihood, the aforementioned Gilíes de Rolim, also known as Childe Rolim, and Dom Lichertes, and Dom Ligel, and the brothers Dom Guillaume and Dom Robert de La Corni, and Dom Jordáo, and Dom Alardo, some of them French, others who were Flemish, Norman, or English, although it is doubtful whether in certain circumstances they would have revealed their nationality when questioned, considering that in those days and for some considerable time to come, a man, whether a nobleman or commoner, did not know his country of origin or still had not made up his mind.

But having reflected on these discrepancies, Raimundo Silva decided that ascertaining the truth would not be of much help, insofar as no more will be heard of these and other crusaders, however aristocratic or plebeian, once the king has made his speech, for whatever the consequences, the truth demands the negation inserted into this one and only copy of The History of the Siege of Lisbon. But since we are not dealing with unintelligent people, who, moreover, could rely on a multitude of clergymen to act as interpreters and spiritual counsellors, there must have been some serious motive behind their refusal to assist the Portuguese with the siege and capture of Lisbon, otherwise several hundred men would never have taken the trouble to disembark, while more than twelve thousand wait in the ships for the order to go ashore with weapons, coffers and knapsacks, and accompanied by the women travelling on board of whom no warrior should be deprived, even when engaged in holy wars, otherwise how could they possibly relieve and satisfy their corporeal needs. What that motive might have been, we must now investigate, if we are to give the slightest credibility and verisimilitude to this new account.

Let us see. The first hypothesis to come to mind is the climate, but this can be ruled out at once for, as we all know, foreigners, without exception, adore this warm sunshine, these gentle breezes, this incomparable blue sky, you only have to consider that we are already in late June, yesterday was the Feast of St Peter, and the city and the river were one and the same glory, but no one could tell whether beneath the gaze of the God of the Christians or the Allah of the Moor, unless both were enjoying the spectacle together and laying wagers. A second hypothesis could be the aridity of the land, a veritable desert, a scene of utter desolation, but such nonsense could only be conceived by someone unfamiliar with Lisbon and its immediate surroundings, a garden to regale any good man's soul, just look at all those orchards stretching along the banks of the resplendent estuary wending inland, in this Baixa nestling between the hill on which the city is perched and the one in front lying to the west, the perfect manifestation of just how skilful the Moors are in cultivating the land. A third and final hypothesis, to conclude, would be an outbreak of deadly pestilence, not unlike those plagues that from time to time decimate the population throughout Europe and its immediate frontiers, not excepting the crusaders, but a few endemic cases are no cause for alarm, a person can get used to anything, it is like living on the edge of a volcano, foolish comparisons if we think about it for earthquakes are rather more common on the earth, as we shall see more clearly within the next six hundred years or so. Here then are three hypotheses and not one of them plausible. Therefore, hard as we may find it to accept, the reason, cause, motive and explanation must be looked for, and perhaps even found, in the king's speech. There, and there alone.

Raimundo Silva will turn back the pages of the book until he comes to the harangue discussed earlier, in order to read between the lines, to eliminate any superfluous embellishments and proliferations and reduce the text to the bare essentials, and then, by somersaulting like an acrobat, by forcing himself to identify with the mentality of the people who bore these names, origins and characteristics, to feel welling up inside him a rage, indignation and displeasure that would give him the courage to say adamantly, Your Majesty, here we remain, notwithstanding that warm sun you have there, those fertile plains, those pure skies, that wondrous river where sardines leap, Your Majesty keep it and much good may it do you, farewell. As he read this for a second time, it occurred to Raimundo Silva that the crux of the problem might lie in those words, not entirely his own, as we have seen, with which Dom Afonso Henriques tries to persuade the crusaders to carry out the operation on the cheap, telling them, presumably with an innocent expression on his face, Of one thing, however, we are certain, and that is that your piety will lead you to join us in this great crusade rather than any promise of financial rewards. This is what I, the crusader Raimundo Silva, heard with my own ears, and I was astonished that such a Christian king should have failed to observe those divine words, which as king he ought to have embraced as his guiding principle in politics, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's, which, here in our narrative, means that the King of Portugal should not confuse two quite separate issues, it is one thing for me to serve God, another that I should be justly rewarded on this earth for this and other services, especially when I am risking my skin in the enterprise, and not just my skin but everything it carries inside. Of course there is a blatant contradiction between this passage of the royal speech and that other coming immediately before, when he affirms that he considers at your disposal, that is to say, of the crusaders, all that our land possesses, but it is just possible that this was an expression of courtesy used at the time and which no well-educated person would have dreamt of taking literally, just as nowadays we say to people whom we have just met, I'm entirely at your disposal, imagine if they were to take us at our word and start treating us as if we were some flunkey.