The Collected Novels of José Saramago Read online

  The Collected Novels of José Saramago

  José Saramago

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  With an introduction...

  Publisher

  Copyright

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA

  Dom João, the fifth monarch ...

  Our people has been equally ...

  In the course of the ...

  This scruffy-looking fellow with his ...

  Dona Maria Ana will not ...

  To raise this bread to ...

  There is a time for ...

  Baltasar has slept on the ...

  There is now another piece ...

  The prodigal son has returned ...

  Besides the conversation of women, ...

  They have returned from Holy ...

  The wires and irons have ...

  Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço has now ...

  Several months later, a friar ...

  People say that the kingdom ...

  We are living in an ...

  Sitting on his throne amid ...

  Loose soil, gravel, and pebbles ...

  Since the flying machine landed ...

  The basilica of Saint Peter ...

  Yet contented families are still ...

  Heading the procession because of ...

  Blimunda did not sleep that ...

  For nine long years, Blimunda ...

  Translator's Note

  Publishers' Note

  Acknowledgments

  THE YEAR OF THE DEATH OF RICARDO REIS

  Here the sea ends and ...

  After a night of severe ...

  Ricardo Reis had told the ...

  Whether because they themselves believe ...

  Doctor Sampaio and his daughter ...

  Marcenda and her father did ...

  A man must read widely, ...

  He spent the night in ...

  Anyone who says that nature ...

  That same night Ricardo Reis ...

  As one has already seen ...

  Dialogue and passing judgment. Yesterday ...

  Fernando Pessoa appeared two nights ...

  A few days later a ...

  Trusting in God and Our ...

  Invisible, the cicadas sing in ...

  Victor is nervous. This mission ...

  Ricardo Reis now has another ...

  I'm not coming back, Lydia ...

  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST

  The sun appears in one ...

  Night is far from over. ...

  Joseph and Mary lived in ...

  Between the months of Tammuz ...

  Three days later, after promising ...

  Heading south, they crossed the ...

  Since the world began, for ...

  A carpenter among carpenters, Joseph ...

  Eight months had passed since ...

  As if the humiliation inflicted ...

  The months passed, and news ...

  When this war ends, and ...

  Two days later, Jesus left ...

  A large crowd had already ...

  Much has been said about ...

  Tomorrow is another day is ...

  How can I go anywhere ...

  The sun had just set ...

  Months later, on a cold ...

  When Jesus goes to fish ...

  Then the long wait began. ...

  A misty morning. The fisherman ...

  Jesus and his disciples traveled ...

  Like an icy gust of ...

  THE STONE RAFT

  When Joana Carda scratched the ...

  The first crack appeared in ...

  A loving mother, Europe was ...

  This olive tree is cordovil, ...

  They have spoken about stones ...

  The devil had his first ...

  Swept away by the volley ...

  They arrived in Lisbon as ...

  Once the seriousness of the ...

  People neither knew nor suspected ...

  Man proposes, dog disposes, this ...

  The Prime Minister addressed the ...

  One day, Maria Guavaira told ...

  Maria Guavaira woke up with ...

  From our distant vantage point, ...

  The Portuguese government of national ...

  These were also the days ...

  As people return to their ...

  The weather has changed, an ...

  Overcome evil with good, the ...

  Newspapers throughout the world, some ...

  After turning from east to ...

  THE HISTORY OF THE SIEGE OF LISBON

  The proof-reader said, Yes, this ...

  Only when a vision a ...

  The proof-reader has a name, ...

  It was not yet eight ...

  It took thirteen long and ...

  The letter which Raimundo Silva ...

  Certain authors, perhaps out of ...

  It is stated in The ...

  The king slept badly, his ...

  During these last few days, ...

  Without any warning, Japanese aeroplanes ...

  During those first days after ...

  Raimundo Silva's motive for not ...

  If we accept and rely ...

  It is generally considered a ...

  Maria Sara spent the night ...

  Fray Rogeiro states that it ...

  More than two months have ...

  Afterword

  BLINDNESS

  The amber light came on. ...

  On offering to help the ...

  A policeman took the car-thief ...

  The suggestion had come from ...

  I must open my eyes, ...

  We must see if there's ...

  An empty belly wakes up ...

  The arrival of so many ...

  When, at the beginning, the ...

  The old man with the ...

  If, because of a sudden ...

  On the fourth day, the ...

  Say to a blind man, ...

  They dressed and put their ...

  Leaving aside the household dust ...

  Two days later the doctor ...

  The next day, while still ...

  Publishers' Note

  THE TALE OF THE UNKNOWN ISLAND

  A man went to knock ...

  All the Names

  Above the door frame is ...

  Apart from his first name, ...

  Fortunately, there are not that ...

  Senhor José's decision appeared two ...

  Alleging personal reasons of irresistible ...

  Such was the force of ...

  Contrary to what people might ...

  Respect for the facts, and ...

  The next morning, almost as ...

  It's flu, said the doctor, ...

  It took not three days ...

  He went there the following ...

  That night, Senhor José returned ...

  The fact that psychological time ...

  When I'd finished talking, she ...

  One enters the cemetery via ...

  Senhor José got cold during ...

  Determined to catch up on ...

  Senhor José slept like a ...

  The translator would like to ...

  Reading Group Guide

  THE CAVE

  The man driving the truck ...

  The potter stopped the van, ...

  Marçal Gacho phoned back later ...

  Ever since they sent him ...

  Authoritarian, paralyzing, circ
ular, occasionally elliptical ...

  I'm off to do men's ...

  The dog Found did not ...

  In the safe silence of ...

  So the people who live ...

  The very genuine motives for ...

  With remarkable and reassuring unanimity, ...

  The first act of the ...

  Cipriano Algor dreamed that he ...

  From that day on, Cipriano ...

  We have already mentioned the ...

  The first fifty to emerge ...

  The following morning, as agreed, ...

  On the drive back home, ...

  The van had been loaded, ...

  Marta had suggested to her ...

  Your things are here, said ...

  Reading Group Guide

  THE DOUBLE

  The man who has just ...

  Not even Tertuliano Máximo Afonso ...

  Contrary to the erroneous statement ...

  Well, that's not quite true. ...

  By chance or for some ...

  By eleven o'clock in the ...

  Discoveries made over the weekend ...

  He woke late. He had ...

  Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's first task ...

  The days passed and Tertuliano ...

  May I speak to Senhor ...

  Three days later, about midmorning, ...

  It was five minutes past ...

  When Tertuliano Máximo Afonso woke ...

  The arithmetic was easy enough ...

  What Tertuliano Máximo Afonso told ...

  Contrary to what most people ...

  The first to wake in ...

  António Claro's funeral took place ...

  Acknowledgments

  SEEING

  Translator's acknowledgments

  Terrible voting weather, remarked the ...

  Feelings of confusion and stupefaction, ...

  To the minister of defense, ...

  The defense minister's favorite expression, ...

  In words that can be ...

  The lights started to go ...

  The interior minister, whose idea ...

  Twenty-three deaths so far, and ...

  They almost all came back. ...

  This brief scatological interjection, with ...

  The reassuring idea that, later ...

  The letter addressed to the ...

  The three policemen drove around ...

  They did not have lunch ...

  There is an idea abroad ...

  When the superintendent arrived back ...

  The superintendent did not wish ...

  The superintendent was awake when ...

  At ten o'clock in the ...

  DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS

  The following day, no one ...

  Although it had immediately been ...

  One can say almost anything ...

  The protagonists of these dramatic ...

  You might think that after ...

  In this country in which ...

  The envelope was on the ...

  It was much more than ...

  It may be that a ...

  According to the wisdom of ...

  Apart from a few rare ...

  We've all had our moments ...

  Death has a plan. changing ...

  I have a big favor ...

  Wearing the new dress that ...

  Translator's Acknowledgments

  THE ELEPHANT'S JOURNEY

  Strange though it may seem ...

  Three days later, toward the ...

  Ten days after this conversation, ...

  A full moon, august moonlight. ...

  It isn't true that heaven ...

  By chance, perhaps as the ...

  The wolves appeared the following ...

  Gathered together early the next ...

  The commanding officer's suspicions proved ...

  Apart from a minor scuffle ...

  As if in preparation for ...

  There were even those who ...

  The rain was waiting for ...

  That same afternoon, two carrier ...

  There are the alps. Yes, ...

  The following day, the convoy ...

  It is said, once Tolstoy ...

  The elephant died less than ...

  Author's Note

  Translator's Acknowledgments

  With an introduction by

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Boston New York 2010

  Translations by Giovanni Pontiero and Margaret Jull Costa

  Copyright © by Editorial Caminho, SARL Lisboa

  Baltasar and Blimunda, 1982

  The Stone Raft, 1986

  The History of the Siege of Lisbon, 1989

  The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, 1991

  The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, 1991

  Copyright © by José Saramago and Editorial Caminho

  Blindness, 1995

  All the Names, 1997

  The Cave, 2002

  The Double, 2002

  Seeing, 2004

  Death with Interruptions, 2005

  Copyright © by José Saramago

  The Tale of the Unknown Island, 1998

  Copyright © by José Saramago and Editorial Caminho, SA,

  Lisbon, by arrangement with Literarische Agentur Mertin, Inh.

  Nichole Witt e. K., Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  The Elephant's Journey, 2008

  CONTENTS

  Baltasar & Blimunda (1987)

  A heretical priest during the time of the Spanish Inquisition is building a flying machine, with three people to help him: Domenico Scarlatti and a pair of lovers, Baltasar, a one-handed soldier, and Blimunda, the slender daughter of a witch.

  The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1991)

  The year is 1936, the city, Lisbon. Ricardo Reis, a middle-aged doctor and poet, has returned to his native country after sixteen years in Brazil. He spends hours walking the steep rain-filled streets.

  The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1994)

  A deft psychological portrait of a savior who is at once the Son of God and a young man of this earth.

  The Stone Raft (1995)

  One day the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the rest of the continent and drifts away into the Atlantic Ocean.

  The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1997)

  A proofreader alters a key word in an account of the 1147 siege of Lisbon—then under Moorish rule—by crusaders. This uncharacteristic decision will lead him into an affair of the heart that changes the course of European history.

  Blindness (1998)

  A city is struck by an epidemic of "white blindness." Only a doctors wife is spared, and she must guide seven strangers through the dangerous new circumstances.

  The Tale of the Unknown Island (1999)

  This is the story of a man who asks the king for a boat and of the woman who decides to follow him on his adventure.

  All the Names (2000)

  Senhor José, a low-level clerk in the Central Registry, chances upon the records of a young woman and becomes obsessed with the idea of finding her.

  The Cave (2002)

  An elderly potter struggles to make a living. His son-in-law, a security guard at the Center, is assigned to guard an excavation-in-progress that will change the family's life forever.

  The Double (2004)

  Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, a high school history teacher, rents a video and is surprised to discover an extra in the film looks exactly like him. It is, in fact, his double.

  Seeing (2006)

  On election day in the capital, all the citizens rush out to vote, but they leave their ballots mysteriously blank.

  Death with Interruptions (2008)

  Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with her scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: what if people stopped dying?

  The Elephant's
Journey (2010)

  Based on a true story, the tale of an elephant who walked from Lisbon to Vienna in 1551.

  INTRODUCTION

  IT'S FITTING THAT the novels of José Saramago should have an electronic edition, a virtual presence, for it was Saramago who first spoke of virtual literature —a fiction that "seems to have detached itself from reality in order better to reveal its invisible mysteries" (The Notebook). He credits Jorge Luis Borges with the invention of this genre, but he himself brought to it the one quality of greatness that Borges's fictions lack: a passionate and compassionate interest in ordinary people and everyday human life.

  We probably don't really need any more categories, but virtual literature might be a useful one, differing from science fiction and speculative fiction with their extrapolative bent, fantasy with its wholly imagined realities, satire with its meliorative indignation, magic realism which is indigenous to South America, and modernist realism with its fixation on the banal. I see virtual literature sharing ground with all these genres, as indeed they all overlap, yet differing from them insofar as its aim is, as Saramago put it, the revelation of mystery.

  In his books, this is revelation of the most secular and unpretentious kind—no grand epiphanies, only a gathering and slow arrival of light, as in the hour before sunrise. The mystery revealed is that of daylight, of seeing the world clearly, the mystery that happens literally every day.

  Saramago died in the summer of 2010, at eighty-seven. He wrote his first major novel when he was over sixty, and finished his last, Cain, a little before he died.

  I have to go on speaking of him in the present tense, he lives so vividly in his writings, these works of a "senior citizen," our patronizing euphemism for the dreaded words "old man." His extraordinary gifts of invention and narration, his radical intelligence, wit, humor, good sense, and goodness of heart, will shine out to anyone who values such qualities in an artist, but his age gives his art a singular edge. He has news for us all, including old readers tired of hearing the young or the wannabe young telling us the stuff we used to tell everybody when we were young. Saramago has left all the heavy breathing decades behind him. He has grown up. Heresy as it may seem to the cultists of youth, he is more than he was when he was young, more of a man, a person, an artist. He's been farther and learned more. He is the only novelist of my generation who tells me what I didn't know, or rather, what I didn't know I knew: the only one I still learn from. He had the time and the courage to earn that subtle and unpretentious kind of understanding we call, inadequately, wisdom. But it's not the glib reassurance often labeled wisdom. He's anything but reassuring. Though he doesn't parrot the counsels of despair, he has little confidence in that kindly trickster, hope.