I visited Lisbon for the first time like someone walking on an island. I notice a slight tremor, perhaps a shock from the earthquake that devastated the city a hundred thousand days ago, or a memory of what happened forty years ago. I’m not referring to it, but to when the Iberian Peninsula separated from the continent and floated down the ocean. I was then four years away from being born. Can I know for sure if this happened or not? Maybe it happened and the witnesses preferred to forget it. All except, which in 1986 published The stone raft and made half the world imagine the abrupt split. Today I feel it under my feet, even though all the dogs of Iberia are no longer barking at the same time.
I came to Lisbon to carry out an exercise in literary resignation: to renounce my identity, like Faust before Mephistopheles, and assume, without fissures, that I am because I read, and that, therefore, I am what I am because I have read up to the works of Don José Saramago: a Europeanist, a democrat, an Iberianist and a fabulist. Through him, I invent territories that are separated and ties between twinned lands. And for him, when writing I create dreamlike architectures and allegories that are always due to an unreal premise: what would happen if… you could travel inside the paintings in museums… or a volcano in Madrid collected all the blood of the Spanish uncivil war… or sunlight and artificial light were gone in Barcelona? Saramago was the closest thing I had to a literary mentor, and is the very reason I came to Lisbon, other than to present the Portuguese translation of : to accept that I am nothing more than one of his creations. And, for this recognition to be formalized, tomorrow I will tattoo his signature on my body. It will be carved for me by Malik, a Brazilian whose mother works for me. One of the best tattoo artists in Lisbon, they tell me: @numastudio_pt.
Easter Sunday arrived and I woke up on Easter Monday in the bedroom of Saramago’s Lisbon house. I meet Pilar in the kitchen, who has been awake for several hours.
—Happy Easter Monday! —I say smiling—. If this means something…
—He will mean what we want!
He has been kind enough to welcome me into his house these days. He knows that I am a fetishist for the objects of my favorite writers and he was kind enough to open the doors of his home to me. She will be my cicerone in Lisbon, she will present my novel in Portuguese and, although I am not afraid of needles, she will accompany me to tattoo the signature of her husband – who spiritually remains her husband, since the relationship ended due to death, not due to breakup.
—Do you already know where you will get it tattooed?
—I think on the left arm. In a couple of years I will have another catheterization, but I don’t think it will be through the groin again. With luck, they will open a hole in my arm and take part of José’s signature directly to the injured ear.
We walked through Lisbon, so beautiful that I wouldn’t know how to write a chronicle about this city. Upon arriving at the building where the Saramago Foundation is located, of which Pilar is president, I read that it was erected in 1523. I tell her excitedly that 523 is my favorite number, that I drew it in my paintings, I indicated it in some of my texts and I use it as a password.
—I even have it in the last three digits of my cell phone!
—No, yes… he who wants to see coincidences, finds them.
At the door, he points out a century-old olive tree. It comes from Azinhaga, the birthplace of José. The tree was nourished by its ashes to grow. I caress the olive leaves vigorously, which is how olive trees should be caressed; A person from Jaén tells you. And we enter. For a moment, I imagine the similar palace hosting a foundation with my name, and a plaque indicating that you cannot enter with your head uncovered. Maybe a beret vending machine in the hall? In an office, I see a photo where Pilar and José come out hugging.
—One of his last photographs. We walked among volcanoes, in the Fire Mountains.
—Look how the sun comes between you! Is it just a temporary bond or did José’s love stay with you?
—José asked me to continue it. And I continue it.
—I remember that scene.
—“I ask Pilar to continue with me,” he said.
“Do you mind if I tell you that I’ve realized that loving you is the closest I’m going to get to loving him?”
—How can it bother me, if it’s something wonderful!?
—I think I approached you with the intention of discovering José better, but now I realize that the one who was lucky was not you to live with him, but him to have you.
—Dear God… Remember that José is not alive to defend himself (laughs).
—Pilar, I have a weak heart. What would you recommend I do if I stopped in Lisbon these days and met him?
—First of all, breathe, breathing is convenient before and after. Only by breathing do you live in others. Then introduce yourself: it made José happy to see young people who were building worlds where so many people could fit, that’s why he gave his name to a literary award that helps young writers in their beginnings. You can invite him, it would be a good idea, to see Quesada, and the surrounding olive trees, and the mountains, and get to Castril, where the river is born and my mother is, and then continue accompanying him, so you will understand that you are in heaven because you will have combined intelligence and sensitivity to understand the world. But come on, none of this is necessary because your heart is firmly screwed to the earth and you have a lot left to do.
—I think, mind you, that I would go to meet him to feel close to you.
The town of Pilar is a few roads from my town. Quesada and Castril, despite belonging to different provinces—Jaén and Granada—are separated by a mountain, which sometimes gives shade to Pilar and other times to me. Between his town and mine there is no town, just a forest of ancient yew trees. My magical Jándula is, then, also your land.
—If you got married in Castril, José got married in Jándula!
—How do you know about my wedding in Castril?
—Mercedes (de Pablos) told me. Well, I read it in your book about Joseph.
—We arrived directly from Colombia. It was a wedding of several days, among friends, and with a tribute to my mother. And Mercedes took care of the promises.
We talk about Mercedes. I feel that the words he dedicates to her are the same ones that Mercedes uses to describe her: a noble, sensitive person with a sense of universal justice, overflowing energy, the humor of someone who knows how to laugh at themselves and the impetus that the world needs to right itself.
I’m going to bed. The next morning, after being tattooed, I stop being myself. Despite it being my idea, Pilar won’t let me pay for the tattoo. It is not an economic gesture; It is a symbolic gesture. Perhaps it could not be otherwise, since now I live under the literary orders of José.
The signature was very nice. Back at home, Pilar spreads the cream that the tattoo artist gave us and covers it with a transparent gauze. He is absent and I take the opportunity to dive in the library. I read some scribbles on the pages of many books. I touch José’s handwriting as if I were touching the relief on my left shoulder. In my eagerness to come into contact with something more of him, I separate a shelf from the wall looking for a lost object. I collect the dust accumulated on the floor, perhaps still some of it. I remove two more pieces of furniture and find a paper clip. I sit in the kitchen and wait for Pilar to return.
—¿You usas clips?
—Who doesn’t use clips, David?
—Do you think you’ve used this one?
—What do I know! If they are all the same.
Just in case, I keep the metal piece in the deepest pocket of my suitcase. I don’t tell him that I was looking for an object from José, but he senses it.
—Once we went to Fuerteventura just because José wanted to feel Unamuno.
-I know. I read it in your book.
—In what book do I tell that?
-In .
—What I need are clips to tie the memories together!
I stay a few more nights with her. In addition to his home, he shares his good friends with me. She is very generous. Those who know her, know it well. We chatted about Chega!, the Portuguese VOX, and about the speech of one of its deputies just a few days ago, in favor of removing Saramago’s texts from schools as mandatory reading. We both suddenly see our gray irises. Pilar, luckily, soon regains her color. She always sees the glass as half full; Not like José, who, when called a pessimist, always said: “Nothing about that, what I am is a very well-informed optimist.”
At the press conference, live on RTP, I said it very clearly: “If you don’t want Saramago in the classrooms, don’t worry, we’ll keep him!” Luckily, his legacy is international and, unlike the short lives of politicians, immortal.
The last night, before going to sleep, in the quiet of her study, I ask Pilar to put her ear to her chest. I lay my head on it, close my eyes and discover something that I already sensed. It has a duplicate heartbeat.
