The History of the Siege of Lisbon

They dined in a restaurant in the Baixa, she asked how the history of the siege was coming along, Reasonably well, I'd say, considering how absurd it is, How soon do you expect to finish it, Three lines would be sufficient if I were to adopt the formula of then they married and lived happily ever after, or as in our case, the Portuguese with supreme effort took the city, or I set about listing the arms and baggage, and then I shall never get to the end, one alternative would be to leave the text as it stands, now that we have met each other. I'd rather you finished it, you must resolve the lives of that Mogueime and Ouroana, the rest will be less important, in any case we know how the story must end, the proof being that here we are dining in Lisbon, being neither Moors nor tourists on Moorish territory, The boats probably passed this way carrying the corpses of those who lost their lives when storming the city gates, When we return home I'm going to read it from the beginning, Unless we happen to be doing something more interesting, We have all the time in the world, dear Sir, Besides the history is brief, you will have read all of it within half an hour, I restricted myself, as you will see, to what I thought essentially stemmed from the fact that the crusaders went away without helping the Portuguese, And would make a good novel, Possibly, but when you set me this task, you knew that I was nothing more than an ordinary, run-of-the-mill proof-reader with no other qualities, But enough to take up the challenge, Provocation might be the better word, All right, let's call it provocation, What did you have in mind when you talked me into this, what were you looking for, At the time, I didn't see things too clearly, however much I might have justified them to myself, or to you, if you had asked for some explanation, but it's now quite obvious that I was looking for you, For me, for this thin, serious man with badly-dyed hair, as sad as a dog without a master, A man to whom I felt attracted the moment I saw him, a man who had deliberately committed an error he was obliged to correct, a man who had realised that the distinction between no and yes stems from a mental operation that is only thinking about survival, A good enough reason, It's a selfish reason, And socially useful, Undoubtedly, although everything depends on who the owners are of that yes and no, Let's be guided by norms based on consensus and authority obvious as it is that any variation in the authority varies the consensus, You give no leeway, Because there can be no leeway, we live cooped up in a room and paint the world and the universe on its walls, Don't forget that men have already gone to the moon, Your claustrophobic little room went with them, You're a pessimist, Not quite, I'm simply a sceptic of the radical kind, A sceptic is incapable of love, On the contrary, love is probably the last thing in which the sceptic can still believe, He can, Rather let us say he has to. They finished their coffee, Raimundo Silva asked for the bill, but it was Maria Sara who, with a quick gesture, drew a credit card from her wallet and placed it on the saucer, I'm your boss, I can't allow you to pay for the dinner, there would be no more respect for the hierarchy if underlings were to start outshining their superiors, I'll allow it this time, but don't forget that I'll soon be an author, and then, Then you won't pay under any circumstances, whoever heard of an author treating his editor to dinner, really, you know very little about public relations, I've always been led to believe that editors lunch and dine off their wretched authors, Such shameful slander, a base display of class hatred, As a simple proof-reader, I'm not involved in this conflict, If the idea upsets you, No, not at all, you can pay, but my reasons for allowing it are not what you think, What are they then, Simply that with this long, drawn-out history of the siege, I've scarcely done any proof-reading, and since you're responsible for the precarious state of my finances, it's only right that you should pay and in recompense, I'll make you some toast for breakfast tomorrow, You're going to leave me with a terrible debt on my hands.