The History of the Siege of Lisbon

Raimundo Silva is less concerned, however, with names and taste buds as may appear, despite the extent and duration of these latest debates, perhaps simply indicative of that oblique thinking Dr Maria Sara thought she could detect, even before she really got to know him. What really worries the proof-reader, now that he has accepted Mogueime as his character, is to find him in contradiction, if not in flagrant falsehood, a situation for which there can be no other alternative than the truth, inasmuch as there is no space left here for a new fountain of Atamarma capable of offering in conciliation, waters that are neither yea nor nay. Mogueime described, and explained quite clearly, how he climbed on to Mem Ramires's shoulders to secure the ladder between the battlements, which, moreover, would serve to demonstrate, on the basis of historical evidence, what we might imagine those ages to have been, so close to the golden age that they still retained the brilliance of certain deeds, in this case that a nobleman from the court of Dom Afonso should have loaned his precious body as support, plinth and pedestal for the thoroughly plebeian feet of a soldier with no other apparent merit than that of having grown more than the others. But what Mogueime said, and, on the other hand, is confirmed by Fray Antonio Brandão, contradicts the earliest version of The Chronicle of the Five Kings, where it is written, no more no less, that Dom Mendo was most anxious lest he should arouse suspicions by making a noise so he paused for a moment in silence and then asked the young Mogueime to bend over and he climbed on to his back with the king's approval and hoisted the ladder against the wall, and notwithstanding the lexical and orthographical peculiarities of the original text, it is quite clear that Mogueime, obeying orders, bent over so that Mem Ramires might climb on to his shoulders, and all the interpretations and linguistic casuistry of this world cannot justify a different reading. Raimundo Silva has the two versions of the text before him, he compares them, there can no longer be any doubt, Mogueime is a liar, as we can logically deduce both from the difference in their rank, the one a common soldier, the other a captain, as from the particular source on which he relies, the much earlier Chronicle of the Five Kings. People who are only interested in broad historical syntheses are certain to find these issues far-fetched, but we have to consider Raimundo Silva, who has a task to complete and who from the outset finds himself struggling with the problem of coping with such a dubious character, this Mogueime, Moqueime or Moigema, who, as well as being unable to prove his identity, is probably abusing the truth which, as an eyewitness, it is his duty to respect and transmit to posterity, namely, to us.

But as Jesus said, let him who is without sin cast the first stone. It is, in fact, very easy to make accusations, Mogueime is lying, Mogueime lied, but those of us here present, who know rather more about the lies and truths of the last twenty centuries, with psychology nurturing souls, and the much misinterpreted psychoanalysis, together with all the rest which it would take some fifty pages to list, should not hold the defects of others up to ridicule, when we tend to be so indulgent with our own, the proof being that there is no recorded evidence of anyone who, as a severe and intransigent judge of their own actions, carried that judgment to the extreme of stoning their own body. Besides, returning to the quotation from the gospel, we are entitled to question whether the world at that time was so hardened by vice that its salvation could only be brought about by the Son of a God, for it is the episode itself about the adulteress which illustrates that things were not going all that badly there in Palestine, not like today when they are at their worst, consider how on that remote day not another stone was thrown at the hapless woman, Jesus only had to utter those fatal words for aggressive hands to withdraw, their owners declaring, confessing and even proclaiming in this manner that, yes, Sir, they were sinners. Now a people that was capable of acknowledging its sins in public, however implicitly, could not have been entirely lost, it preserved intact an inner principle of kindness, thus authorising us to conclude, with the minimum risk of being proved wrong, that there was some precipitation in the coming of the Saviour. Today, His coming would have done some good, for not only do the corrupt persevere on the path of corruption, but it becomes increasingly difficult to find any reason for interrupting the stoning once it gets under way.