The History of the Siege of Lisbon

From the balcony of the minaret, the muezzin heard the fateful turmoil, so different from the uproar of animated voices that had reached his ears in that very same spot, when the crusaders departed. This time he did not need to come rushing down to find out what was happening, he knew all too well that the battle was starting up again after the pause following the loss of the nearby suburb, but he was not worried, the cries he heard coming from his brethren were not those of despair and defeat, but of courage, that is how they sounded to him, and he knew he was right because, being blind, he had been compensated with the keenest of hearing which did not abandon him even in old age. On the other minarets throughout the city, the muezzins were probably hearing the same uproar, some six, eight, ten blind men assigned to other mosques and perched between heaven and earth in total darkness. All of them were responsible for this attack, they were the ones who had given the order, but, innocent as they were, they did not connect the words spoken with their obvious effect, each of them no doubt saying to himself, what a coincidence, and preferring to think, as the echoes of their holy summons to prayer continued to hover in the air, although already mingled with the howls and curses of the combatants, that it was as if the palpable presence of Allah were protecting the city, an enormous cupola made from the myriads of other vibrant little cupolas that were descending all the way down the slope from the castle as far as the river, while all around, the God of the Christians appears to have been lacking in enough shields to defend his sceptical soldiers from the missiles raining down from on high. Startled by the commotion, dogs are barking on these slopes, they run for shelter and start burying bones, their instinct must serve some purpose when even people endowed with judgment can foretell evil times ahead.

This allusion to Moorish dogs, that is to say, the dogs that still lived with the Moors at the time, clearly in their condition as the most impure of animals, but who would soon begin to feed with their foul flesh on the emaciated bodies of the human creatures of Allah, this allusion, as we were saying, reminded Raimundo Silva of the dog on the Escadinhas de'São Crispim, unless, on the other hand, it was an unconscious memory on his part, that led to the introduction of the allegorical picture with that brief commentary about judgment and instinct. As a rule, Raimundo Silva boards the tram at the Portas do Sol, although the distance is greater, and he comes back the same way. If we were to ask him why he does it, he would reply that because he has such a sedentary occupation, it is good for him to walk, but that is not entirely true, the fact is that he would not mind descending the hundred and thirty-four steps, gaining time and benefiting from those sixty-seven flections of each knee, if, out of male pride, he did not also feel obliged to climb up them with the inevitable weariness everyone suffers if they pass this way, as we can see from the small number of mountaineers around. A reasonable compromise would be to go down that way as far as the Porta de Ferro and come back up by the longer but easier route, but to do this would mean acknowledging, all too clearly, that his lungs and legs are no longer what they were, a mere assumption, because the period when Raimundo Silva was in his prime does not come into this history of the siege of Lisbon. On the two or three occasions that he took this route down in recent weeks, Raimundo Silva did not encounter the dog, and thought to himself that, tired of waiting for even the barest ration from the miserly neighbours, the dog had emigrated to richer pastures, or had simply given up the ghost when it could wait no longer. He remembered his act of charity and told himself that he could have done it more often, but when it comes to dogs, you know what it is like, they live with the fixation of acquiring a master, to encourage and feed them is to have them at your feet for evermore, they stare at us with that neurotic anxiety and there is no other solution than to put a collar round their neck, pay for a licence and take them home. The alternative would be to leave them to die of hunger, so slowly that there would be no room for remorse, and, if possible, on the Escadinhas de'São Crispim, where no one ever passes.