I have already spoken here of my trip to Brazil, bearing witness to the happy hours we experienced, to the words we heard and spoke, to old friendships and new, and to the painful echoes of the tragedy of Santa Catarina, those torrential rains, those hills turned to mud that buried more than a hundred defenseless people, as is the norm with natural disasters, which seem to prefer the poorest of the poor as their victims. Now we’re back in Lisbon, and this would seem to be the right moment for a general stock-taking, a summary of events, except that the description of my feelings—which I think I’ve revealed amply in my life—requires, this time, only the use of a comprehensive and concise formula: “It all went fine.” If I have any more books in me, I could not wish a better welcome for them than the welcome received by this Elephant’s Journey that took us to Brazil.
Yesterday I posted a few admiring phrases here about the magnificent set-up of the Cultura bookshop in São Paulo. I would like to return to the subject, first to reiterate, as it so richly deserves, the dazzling impression it made on us, Pilar and me, but also for some rather less positive considerations, the result of an inevitable comparison between a vigor that was not merely commercial, because it entailed the good humor of the many buyers present, and the incurable gloom that turns our own bookshops gray, contaminated by the low standards and inadequate professional training of most of those who work there. The bookselling industry of our sister country is a serious and well structured thing, thanks not only to its own merits—which are many—but also to a level of support from the state that is inconceivable to us. The Brazilian government is a major purchaser of books, a sort of public patron always ready to loosen its purse strings when it comes to stocking libraries, stimulating publishing activity, and organizing campaigns to encourage reading that are characterized, as I have had the opportunity to establish for myself, by the effectiveness of their promotional strategies. All in contrast to what happens in here in Portugal, which in many respects remains as yet unexploited, waiting for some sign, for a plan of action, and also, if I might be excused the commercialism, for a check. Money, as the popular wisdom goes, is what you need if you want to buy melons. And also books, and other spiritual goods, Mr. Prime Minister, and you have been rather distracted from these cultural matters. So much the worse for us.
This afternoon the elephant Solomon will return to Belém. That is to say, the literary character (for that is the way that Fate arranges such matters) will be presented at the place from which the real elephant set off in the sixteenth century. The real Solomon traveled from there to Vienna, stopping in Castelo Rodrigo, Valladolid, Rosas, Genoa, Padua, and other places before crossing the Alps and ending his days at Maximilian’s court.
The writer António Mega Ferreira and the teacher and writer Manuel Maria Carrilho will be responsible for leading the conversation, which may have a book as its main subject, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if certain other subjects were broached that concern the three of us because they are, as some journalists say, on the current affairs agenda. Yes, I wouldn’t mind one bit if the presentation of this elephant could serve as an opportunity to talk about the world, this world that is splitting at so many seams because, from the time of the elephant Solomon until now, even the best of seams wasn’t about to hold together. In order to avoid the night drawing in.
I presented The Elephant’s Journey and took advantage of the opportunity to say that my mind is caught up with a new book. Phew!
Many years ago, in Naples, wandering down one of those streets where anything might happen, my curiosity was awakened by a café that looked for all the world as though it had opened its doors only a few days earlier. The woodwork was light, the chrome plating shone, the floor was clean—in short, a feast not only for the eyes but also the nose and the palate, as the excellent coffee they served me proved. The employee asked me where I was from. I replied from Portugal, and he, with all the naturalness of one offering a useful piece of information, said, “This place is Camorra.” Surprised, all I let out of my mouth was an “Oh?” that didn’t commit me at all but that served to try and disguise the disquiet that suddenly was rumbling in the pit of my stomach. The person I had in front of me might be a simple employee with no special responsibilities for his bosses’ criminal activities, but common sense demanded I view him with caution and be suspicious of any out-of-place friendliness, now that I could not pass for a casual customer. I was unable to understand how an apparently incriminating revelation could have been offered with the friendliest of smiles. I paid, left, and out on the street I hurried my pace as though a band of hired assassins armed to the teeth were sent to pursue me. After turning three or four corners, I began to calm down. The café employee might be a criminal, but he had no reason to wish any harm to me. He was clearly satisfied with just telling me something that I, as an inhabitant of this planet, should be duty bound to know: that Naples, all of it, is in the hands of the Camorra, that the beauty of the bay was a deceptive disguise and the tarantella a funeral march.
Years went by, but the episode remained in my memory. And it comes back to me now, as though I’d experienced it yesterday: that light woodwork, the shine of the chrome plating, the complicit smile of the employee, who was no employee but the manager, a man trusted by the Camorra, a Camorrista himself. I think of Roberto Saviano, receiving a death threat for having written a book denouncing a criminal organization capable of kidnapping an entire city and those who live in it. I think of Roberto Saviano, whose head they would have on a plate, and I wonder whether one day we will wake up from the nightmare that is life for so many people, persecuted for telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I feel humble, almost insignificant, faced with the dignity and the courage of the writer and journalist Roberto Saviano, the man who has mastered the art of living.
The street does exist, in Santiago de Chile. It was there that Pinochet’s agents surrounded a single-story house that was the home (or rather, the refuge) of Carmen Castillo and her companion in life and political activity, Miguel Enríquez, main leader of the MIR, the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, which had supported and cooperated with Salvador Allende. Now the party was the object of persecution by the military power that had betrayed democracy and was preparing itself to establish one of the fiercest dictatorships that South America would ever have the misfortune to know. Miguel Enríquez was killed, and Carmen Castillo, who was pregnant, was gravely wounded. Many years later Carmen would record and reconstruct those days in a documentary of striking sincerity and realism that we have been privileged to watch tonight at the King cinema. A documentary that, thanks to the wisdom and sensitivity of its creator, manages also to be cinema of the highest quality. More later.
Today’s gathering is in the Casa do Alentejo, at six in the evening. As the title suggests, it is a tribute. A tribute to whom? To no one in particular, for it will consider Portuguese letters in their entirety—from A to Z, as it were—commemorating them in a program of songs and readings presented by twenty writers, actors and journalists, who have generously put their time and talent at the disposal of an idea that was born at the José Saramago Foundation. The day chosen—today, December 10, 2008—recalls the awarding of the Nobel Prize to a Portuguese writer who in his acceptance speech expressed his understanding that he should share the distinction not just with all the writers who were his contemporaries, without exception, but also all those who came before us, those who, as Camões said, have freed themselves from the tyranny of death. The following authors will be read or sung: Antero de Quental, Padre António Vieira, Vitorino Nemésio, José Cardoso Pires, Ruy Belo, Sophia de Mello Breyner, Pedro Homem de Mello, Miguel Torga, Eça de Queiroz, Natália Correia, David Mourão-Ferreira, Ary dos Santos, Camilo Castelo Branco, Manuel da Fonseca, Almada Negreiros, José Gomes Ferreira, Teixeira de Pascoaes, Raul Brandão, Fernando Pessoa, Jorge de Sena, Aquilino Ribeiro, Almeida Garrett, Luís de Camões, Carlos de Oliveira and Fernando Namora. A real parade of honor, which should be honored by everyone.
In spite of the wild weather, cold and with intermittent showers, the cinema was full. Carmen Castillo had worried that the length of her film, two and a half hours, would end up discouraging the audience, but that wasn’t the case. Not a single person got up to leave, and at the end, with the spectators lost in the power of the images and the chilling testimonies of the members of the MIR who survived the Chilean dictatorship, Carmen received a standing ovation. Those of us from the Foundation were proud of that audience. I’d had confidence in them, but the reality exceeded my most optimistic predictions.
As I write, more than two hundred thousand copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are circulating in the hands of readers of two newspapers, Lisbon’s Diário de Notícias and Oporto’s Jornal de Notícias. And today, December 11, it will be the turn of Baltasar Garzón, who is coming specially from Madrid to talk about human rights, about Chile and Guantánamo. Like the tribute to Portuguese letters that took place so successfully yesterday evening, the Garzón lecture will be held at the Casa do Alentejo, at 6 p.m. It’s a good opportunity to learn. Yes, to learn.
Judge Baltasar Garzón bestowed on Lisbon a lesson in what the law is, or rather, what it should be. The truth is that in the strictest sense what he spoke about at the event organized by the Foundation was justice. And common sense: there are crimes that cannot go unpunished, victims who must have satisfaction, tribunals which must pull up the carpets to see what lies beneath the horrors. Because often, beneath the horrors, there are economic interests, and clearly identifiable criminals, actual people or groups who cannot be ignored by states that claim to be subject to the rule of law. Who knows whether those who are responsible for crimes against humanity, which is the only way I can describe this international financial and economic crisis, might not end up being prosecuted, just like Pinochet or Videla or other terrible dictators who spread such pain? Who knows?
Judge Baltasar Garzón made us understand the importance of not slipping into baseness even once in order not to be base forever. He who tramples on human rights even one time, in Guantánamo for instance, throws years of law and legality overboard. We must not be complicit in the chaos with which the Bush administration has infected half the world. Neither as governments, nor as citizens.
A large and attentive audience followed the judge’s points respectfully and thoughtfully. And applauded, like people who have heard not revealed truths but an effective voice that the world needs if it is not to lapse into condoning abject behavior.
The Foundation is satisfied: we have done what we could to remind people that there is a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that it is not being respected, and that citizens must demand that it does not turn into merely a dead letter. Baltasar Garzón has played his part and we can only be pleased that this was made so clear in Lisbon this evening.
Maria Kodama has returned to Portugal, to be present on the occasion of the inauguration of a monument to Jorge Luis Borges. There were plenty of people in the Arco do Cego park, where the memorial was set. An orchestral group played the Argentine anthem, and then not the Portuguese anthem but the Maria da Fonte anthem, a musical expression of the revolution that was given this name around 1846–1847 and that is played at civil and military ceremonies to this day.
The monument is a simple one, a vertical block of the finest-quality granite, with an open space containing a golden hand, a model taken directly from a mold of Borges’s right hand, holding a pen. It is simple, evocative, and far preferable to a bust or a statue, in which we would soon tire of seeking out resemblances. I improvised a few words about the author of Ficciones, whom I still consider the inventor of virtual literature, that literature of his that seems to have detached itself from reality in order better to reveal its invisible mysteries. It was a good start to the afternoon. And Maria Kodama was happy.
Laughter is a spontaneous thing. Seeing the president of the United States shrinking behind the microphone while a shoe flies over his head is an excellent bit of exercise for those facial muscles responsible for laughter. This man, famous for his abysmal ignorance and constant linguistic absurdities, has made us laugh many times over the past eight years. This man, famous too for other less attractive qualities, such as his entrenched paranoia, has afforded us a thousand reasons to despise him, him and his acolytes, accomplices in falsehood and intrigue, whose perverted minds turned international politics into a tragic farce and made simple dignity the target of pure derision. If the truth be told, in spite of the distressing spectacle our world presents on a daily basis, that world did not deserve a Bush. We have experienced him, and we have suffered through him to such a degree that the victory of Barack Obama has been considered by many people to be a kind of divine justice. Belated, as justice tends to be, but definitive. But in the end we still needed that final blow, still needed those shoes that a journalist from Iraqi television hurled at the lying, shameless façade he saw in front of him, a blow that could be taken in two ways: either those shoes ought to have had feet inside them and the target of the blow should have been that rounded part of the body where a man’s back assumes a different contour and a different name, or Mutazem al Kaidi (may his name survive for posterity) found a more bruising and effective way of expressing his scorn: through ridicule. A couple of kicks wouldn’t have come amiss, but ridicule lasts forever. My vote goes to ridicule.
It is not possible to have a press conference without words—usually lots of them, sometimes too many. Pilar insists on suggesting that I give brief replies, pithy formulas that encapsulate the long speeches that would be out of place there. She is right, but it’s not in my nature. I think each word needs at least one other word to help explain it along. Things have reached the point where, because I have been doing this for a while, I’ve begun to anticipate the questions that I will be asked, a procedure made easier by the advance knowledge that I have accumulated about the sorts of subjects journalists tend to be most interested in. The fun starts with the freedom I allow myself when I begin one of these discourses. Without having to worry about the precise thematic framing that each question will necessarily establish, whether it means to or not, I release the first word, and the second, and the third, like birds whose cage door has just been opened, not really knowing, or really not knowing at all, where they will take me. In this way speaking becomes an adventure, communicating is transformed into the methodical search for a path that leads to whoever is listening, and I am always aware that no communication is definitive and instantaneous, that it is often necessary to retrace one’s steps in order to clarify what has been expressed only summarily. But the most interesting part of all this is discovering that speech, rather than being limited to illuminating and making visible what I thought I personally knew about my work, invariably ends up revealing what was hidden, what was only intuited or foreseen, and which suddenly becomes straightforward evidence with which I’m the first to surprise myself, like someone who has been in the dark and has just opened his eyes to a sudden light. In short, I learn as I go along, through the words I speak. That is a good conclusion, perhaps the best possible one, for this discussion. Which turned out to be a short one after all.
Voltaire had no literary agent. He didn’t have one, and nor did any writer of his time or for a long time afterward. The literary agent simply did not exist. The business—if we want to call it that—functioned with just two interlocutors, author and publisher. The author had the work, the publisher the means of publishing it, with no intermediary between one and the other. It was a time of innocence. I don’t mean by this that the literary agent has been, and continues to be, the tempting serpent born to pervert the harmonies of a paradise that, in reality, never existed. But, whether directly or indirectly, the literary agent was the egg laid by a publishing industry that had begun to concern itself more with the discovery of a chain of bestsellers than with the publication and distribution of works of merit. Writers, naïve people on the whole, who are easily fooled by a literary agent of the jackal or shark variety, run after promises of bulky advances and stellar promotions as though their lives depended on it. But things are not like that. An advance is simply a payment on account, and as for promotions, we must all know from experience how far reality almost always falls short of expectations.
These thoughts are no more than a modest gloss on the excellent lecture given by Basílio Baltasar in Mexico in late November, under the title “The Long-anticipated Death of the Publisher,” following an interview given to El País by the famous literary agent Andrew Wylie. I say famous, and he is, though not always for the best reasons. I wouldn’t dare, nor would it be appropriate here, to summarize Basílio Baltasar’s trenchant analyses, which take as their starting point the foolish statement of the aforementioned Wylie that “The publisher is nothing, nothing,” which reminds me of the words of Roland Barthes when he announced the death of the author. . . Well, the author didn’t die, after all, and the resurgence of the publisher who loves his work is in the publisher’s own hands, if he or she wishes it so. And in the hands of the writers, to whom I enthusiastically commend Basílio Baltasar’s lecture, which ought to be published, along with the debate that followed it.
As everyone knows, UN stands for the United Nations, which is, in reality, nothing or very little. What would the Palestinians in Gaza have to say to that, the people whose food is running out, or has run out already? Because that’s the way the Israeli blockaders decided things should be, since they are apparently determined to condemn to starvation the 750,000 people recognized as refugees there. These no longer even have bread—the flour has been used up, and the oil, lentils, and sugar are all going the same way. Since December 9, the lorries of the UN agencies, loaded up with food, have been waiting for the Israeli army to allow them to enter the Gaza strip, an authorization which will be denied once again, or which will be delayed until the last gasp of the frustrated, famished, and desperate Palestinians. United Nations? United? Counting on international complicity or cowardice, Israel laughs at recommendations, decisions, and protests, does what it chooses, when it chooses, and how it chooses. This goes so far as preventing the entry of books and musical instruments, as though these were products that would put Israel’s security at risk. If ridicule could kill, there wouldn’t be a single Israeli politician left standing, nor a single Israeli soldier, those specialists in cruelty, those graduates in hatred who look down at the world from the height of insolence that is at the root of their education. We understand the Biblical god better when we see his followers. Jehovah, or Yahweh, or whatever you call him, is a ferocious and bitter god whom the Israelis maintain as a permanent presence.
I “died” on the night of December 22, 2007, at four o’clock in the morning, not to be “resuscitated” till nine hours later. A complete organ collapse, a ceasing of bodily function, brought me to the final threshold of life, where it is already too late for good-byes. I don’t remember a thing. Pilar was there, and my sister-in-law Maria was there, too, both of them standing before an inert body, which was bereft of any strength and from which the spirit seemed to be absent, which had more of the irrecoverable corpse about it than of a living being. They tell me today what those hours were like. Ana, my granddaughter, arrived the same afternoon, Violante the next. Their father and grandfather was still, like the pale flame of a candle that their own breath threatened to extinguish. I learned later that my body was going to be displayed in the library, surrounded by books and—if I might put it like this—other flowers too. I escaped. A year of slow, incredibly slow recovery, as my doctors told me it would be, gave me back my health, my energy, my agility of thought. That universal medicine called work was also restored to me. Heading towards life, not death, I have made my own Elephant’s Journey, and here I am. At your service.
Christmas. In the country, snow.
In the cozy homes once more
A feeling that today preserves
Feelings that have gone before.
The heart that challenged all the world,
And that family—so real!
Thus my thought, profound, gives birth
To this longing that I feel.
And how free and white it is
The landscape that is strange to me,
Seen from out the window glass
Of the home I’ll never see!
—Fernando Pessoa
Many years back, as far back as 1993, I wrote a few words in the Lanzarote Notebooks that delighted some theologians from this part of Iberia, in particular Juan José Tamayo, who has since generously bestowed his friendship on me. These were the words: “God is the silence of the universe, and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence.” It is clear that this idea is not badly formulated, with its quantum satis of poetry, its slightly provocative intention, and the implication that atheists are very well able to explore the tricky pathways of theology, even if in the most elementary way. On this day when the birth of Christ is celebrated, another idea has come to me, one that is perhaps even more provocative, indeed revolutionary, which can be expressed in a very few words. These are the words. If it is true that Jesus at the last supper said to his disciples, referring to the bread and the wine on the table, “This is my body, this is my blood,” then it would be legitimate to conclude that the countless suppers, the Pantagruelian feasts, the Homeric orgies of feasting that thousands and millions of stomachs have to digest in order to escape the dangers of a fatal blockage, will be no more than the multiple copy—simultaneously actual and symbolic—of the last supper: believers feed on their god, devour him, digest him, eliminate him, until next Christmas, until the next Christmas supper, following the ritual of a material and mystical hunger that is always unsatisfied. Now let’s see what the theologians have to say.
They are perfect. Well, almost. They talk loud and tirelessly, they are in love with discussion for discussion’s sake, they are often sectarian, violent of speech, though more in style than in substance. The women, of whom there are five, make so much noise, even louder than the men, of whom there are ten. For these men, and women, no subject will ever have been sufficiently discussed. They never give up. The Granada accent frequently makes what they say incomprehensible. It doesn’t matter. Whatever doubts I may have, they claim to be able to understand one another perfectly. They have a very distinctive sense of humor that often goes right past me and not infrequently has me asking myself what the joke was. The boyfriends and girlfriends, the husbands and wives, a group in which I am included, watch, stupefied, and since we cannot beat them, we end up joining in the chorus, except in the rare instance when I prefer to maintain a discreet silence. In twenty years I’ve never seen one of these arguments lead to anyone getting angry, or to any row requiring family counseling and reconciliation. However much it might have rained and thundered earlier, the sky always ends up cloudless. They may not be perfect, but, yes, good people.
I am preoccupied with a new book. When I let this piece of news slip out in the middle of a conversation, the inevitable question I’m asked (my nephew Olmo asked it yesterday) is “What’s it going to be called?” The most comfortable solution for me would be to answer that I don’t have a title yet, that only when I get to the end will I decide between the possible alternatives that occurred to me (assuming some actually have) during the work. Comfortable, certainly, but false. The truth is that even before the first line of the book was written I already knew; I had known for almost three years, since the idea first came to me, what it was going to be called. So, someone will ask, why the secrecy? Because the word of the title (it’s just one word) will tell the whole story all on its own. I’m in the habit of saying that anyone who doesn’t have the patience to read my books can at least cast their eyes over the epigraphs and they’ll learn everything there. I don’t know whether the book I’m working on will have an epigraph. Perhaps not. The title will be enough.
It is not a very good omen that the future president of the United States keeps repeating again and again, without a quiver in his voice, that he will maintain the “special relationship” with Israel that unites the two countries, in particular the unconditional support that the White House has offered for the repressive policies (repressive is putting it mildly) with which the Israeli government (and why not also the governed?) have done nothing but martyr the Palestinian people by every possible means. If Barack Obama isn’t disgusted by the idea of taking tea with executioners and war criminals, bon appetit to him, but then he cannot count on the approval of honest people. Others among his fellow presidents have done the same before him without needing further justification than this “special relationship” that has covered up so many ignominies hatched by the two countries against the national rights of the Palestinians.
Throughout his electoral campaign, Barack Obama, whether through personal experience or political strategy, gave the impression of himself as a diligent father. This leads me to suggest that tonight he tell his daughters a story before they go to sleep, the story of a boat that was transporting four tonnes of medication to assuage the terrible sanitary situation of the people of Gaza, and how this boat, whose name was Dignity, was destroyed in an attack by the Israeli naval forces on the pretext that it had no authorization to dock on its coast. (In my ignorance, I was under the impression that the coast of Gaza was Palestinian. . .) And he should not be surprised if one of his daughters, or the two in unison, should say to him: “Don’t go on, Daddy, we already know what a special relationship is: it means being partners in crime.”