The History of the Siege of Lisbon

The river can be seen from the verandah, a narrow projection from another age beneath a porch which still has its coffered ceiling, and it is an immense sea which the eye can capture between one ray and the next, from the red line of the bridge to the flat marshlands of Pancas and Alcochete. A dank mist covers the horizon, brings it almost within reach, what can be seen of the city is reduced to this side, with the cathedral below, halfway down the slope, and staggered roof-tops, descending to the dark, murky water, where a fleeting backwash of white spume opens up as a boat quickly passes, others navigate with difficulty, sluggish, as if they were struggling against a current of mercury, this last comparison being more appropriate at night, rather than at this hour. Raimundo got up later than usual, he had worked into the early hours, a long, drawn-out stint, and when he opened the window in the morning, he was confronted by mist, thicker than the one we are seeing at this hour, noon, when the weather must decide whether it is going to get worse or clear up, as the saying goes. Just then the cathedral towers were nothing other than a faint blur, of Lisbon there was nothing more than the sound of voices and indeterminate sounds, the window-frame, the first roof, a car travelling along the street. The blind muezzin had raised his cry to the heavens, the morning luminous, crimson, and then blue, the colour of the atmosphere between here on earth and the sky overhead, should we choose to believe in the blinkered eyes with which we see the world, but the proof-reader, on this day which is almost as blurred as his blindness, simply muttered, with the ill humour of someone who, after a restless night with troubled dreams about siege, broadswords, cutlasses and deadly slings, is annoyed upon awakening, to find that he cannot recall how these weapons of war were made, we are talking about the slings, and more could be said about the deep conversations of the person who was dreaming, but let us not fall into the temptation of anticipating the facts, for the moment we need only regret the lost opportunity of finally discovering what kind of weapon those so-called slings were, how they were loaded and fired, for it is not all that rare for great mysteries to be revealed in dreams, and amongst them we do not include the winning number in the lottery, the utmost banality and unworthy of any self-respecting dreamer. Still in bed, a puzzled Raimundo Silva was asking himself why he should be so concerned about deadly slings, or catapults as they were sometimes called, and just as effective. Known in Portuguese as baleares, the name has nothing to do with the Balearic Islands but comes from the Portuguese word bala meaning a pellet or shot, and these as we know are missiles, stones which were fired at walls or over the top of fortifications and aimed at houses and their terrified occupants, but the word bala was not in use at the time, words cannot be transported lightly here and there, back and forth, so watch out, otherwise someone will come along and say, I don't understand. He dozed off, remained like that for ten minutes, and on reawakening, now lucid, he dismissed any further thought of those weapons and rashly allowed the images of swords and scimitars to occupy his mind, he smiled in the shadows of the room, for he was well aware that these are obvious phallic symbols, almost certainly drawn into his dream by The History of the Siege of Lisbon, yet undoubtedly rooted in himself, for if sharp pointed weapons can be said to have roots, embedded as they are, you only had to look at the empty bed beside him in order to understand everything. Lying on his back, he crossed his arms over his eyes, and murmured prosaically, One more day, he had not heard the muezzin, how would a deaf Moor of that religious persuasion make sure that he did not miss prayers, especially morning prayers, he would surely ask a neighbour, In the name of Allah, knock loudly on my door and go on knocking until I come to open it. Virtue is not as easy as vice, but it can be aided.