The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
by José Saramago,
trans. by Giovanni Pontiero
(Harcourt Brace, 314 pp., $24)
"...he holds his biro with a steady hand and adds a word to the page, a word the historian never wrote, that for the sake of historical truth he could never have brought himself to write, the word Not, and what the book now says is that the crusaders will Not help the Portuguese to conquer Lisbon..."
Proofreader Raimundo Silva is a bachelor in his fifties who, with the stroke of a pen, undermines a book (with the same title as the latest novel by José Saramago, of course) to make it seem as if the first Portuguese king, Afonso I (Afonso, not Alfonso; this isn't Spain), didn't require the outside assistance of the Crusaders in expelling the Moors from Lisbon in 1147.
It's an audacious act (of rebellion? or impish delight?), and Silva's colleagues are flabbergasted. It also raises the eyebrows, and piques the interest, of Silva's new supervisor, Dr. Maria Sara, fifteen years his junior. She urges the mischievous proofreader to tell his own history of Lisbon, basing it around the naughty not he'd earlier inserted.
Saramago's distinctive style—sentences and passages like a rolling landscape without end—allows past and present, fiction and history, to wash back and forth across the page. Because Lisbon is such an old city, the events, or even physical remnants, of the era which the story recounts persist to this day. As Silva reworks and develops his story, he can see or visit the actual sites where crucial turning points of the 12th century occurred.
As Silva's revisionist history takes shape, so does his relationship with Maria Sara. Saramago's book needs 200 pages before Silva even gets around to calling his boss at home, but once planted, their passion is quick to bloom. Equally quick to unfold, at this point, is Silva's rehandling of history, which is marked by a budding romance (to balance out his own) between Mogueime, a Portuguese hero/warrior, and Ouroana, concubine of the knight Heinrich.
Presumably the `siege' of Maria Sara, the siege of Lisbon, and the entwined destinies of Mogueime and Ouroana all resonate and echo off of one another, but Saramago's larger concerns seem to be about the `rewriteability' of history and thus the curious relationship between made and made-up. Towards this end, a working knowledge of Portuguese medieval history as well as a familiarity with Lisbon itself would certainly help. Finer points, one feels, are lost—and ironies missed—if one has but the faintest understanding of this small but special country.
The History of the Siege of Lisbon is the fifth of Saramago's novels to find its way into English, and their late translator Giovanni Pontiero will be sorely missed. But Siege is also the most challenging—and trying—of the author's works, its subject matter making it seem more academic (and therefore less `fun') than such earlier gems as Baltasar and Blimunda (just reissued as a Harvest paperback) and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. While the new book rewards the truly patient reader, and may in fact extend Saramago's reputation, I do not think it will extend his readership. For all that, José Saramago is a modern master, there's no doubt of that, and one of the most consistently compelling authors of our time.
Excerpt
(from p. 232):Raimundo ran his hand over his forehead for a second, then said, I used to dye my hair but no longer, white roots are not a pretty sight, forgive me, in time my hair will get back to its natural color, Mine has stopped being natural, because of you I went to the hairdresser today to have these venerable white hairs tinted, They were so few I wouldn't have thought it worth the bother, So you did notice, I looked at you closely enough, just as you must have looked at me and asked yourself how a man of my age could be without white hairs, No such questions entered my mind, it was obvious that you dyed your hair, who did you think you were deceiving, Probably only myself, Just as I've decided to start deceiving myself, It comes to the same thing, What do you mean by the same thing, Your reason for dyeing your hair, mine for no longer dyeing it, Explain yourself, I stopped dyeing my hair in order to be as I am, And what about me, why have I tinted my hair, To go on being as you are, Smart thinking, I can see that I'll have to practice mental gymnastics daily in order to keep up with you, I'm no more intelligent than you are, simply older. Maria Sara smiled quietly, Irremovable evidence that clearly worries you, Not really, our age only matters in relation to that of others, I suspect I'm young in the eyes of someone who is seventy, but I'm in no doubt that a youth of twenty would consider me an old man. And in relation to me, how do you see yourself, Now that you've tinted the few white hairs that you possess and I'm allowing all of mine to show, I've become a man of seventy in the presence of a girl of twenty, You can't count, there is only a difference of fifteen years between us, Then I must be thirty-five, They both laughed...
