Certainly my egotism had been satisfied over the years, and I had freed myself from the few things that held me back. Now I was beginning to yearn for a power that would take possession of me; there was little hope of a woman: where was I to see her? In the past there had been on the promenade deck, when a slim hand passed me a telegram and I saw part of a sweet face, an eye, a pretty ear, a lock of hair, through the small hatch. Now there was nothing but women with black jackets, long indigo-coloured trousers and coarse grins.
Not a woman then! What then? A mind in this state, open to outside influences, becomes an easy target for demons eager to prey on a living being like parasites. But at sea there are no spirits, at least so I firmly believed. That absence, or that belief, saved me for a long time; when I yearned to be freed from my emptiness, I would not have excluded even the most malevolent of them. The sea saved me, it’s true. But I wasn’t grateful to the sea.
CHAPTER 7
I
THE DUNGEON was far below ground, as he had been brought down countless steps. He saw neither sun nor moon, the night was black, the day an ashen twilight. Every twenty-four hours, at some point during the morning, the guard would bring him food and a jug of water which, after standing for a few hours, would become turbid and undrinkable, so that after a few times he drank it up at once. His calculation of time was based on the visit of the guard: a scratch on the beams that he could later feel. When there was already a long ladder he asked the guard when it would be his turn. The guard shook his head. When? First the child murderers, and then the deserters.
Then he begged for more light. He still had a gold coin and offered that. But the guard refused and left. He lay down with his face to the wall, ashamed and weary of life. When he looked up many hours later, a narrow beam of light struck his face — a jet of cool spring water could not have been more refreshing. Where did the light come from? Had the guard rolled away a stone up above, so that that the light found its way through a straight, narrow opening? Or had the sun or the moon reached a point in the heavens where the light could shine in through half-collapsed passageways? He suspected the latter. That meant that the light would soon disappear again. He wanted to enjoy every minute of it, drink it in. But the light roused another desire in him and he started writing, half reluctantly at first, perhaps so as to be able to know later, to feel tentatively what these light hours had meant to him, perhaps also so as to stay awake, for as long as it lasted. Then again he reproached himself for not deriving pure enjoyment from the light, instead of using it to write. And he sat and gazed into it and thought of it without moving. But a big cockroach ran across his foot; now it was light, he was able to grab it and kill it; he was seized by a great urge to clean out his cell. He began hunting for them, but there were too many. More and more kept appearing from the corners of the cell. And suddenly it was dark. He blamed himself for having abused the divine light, and resolved, if it came back, to do nothing but worship it. But the following day too poetry and hunting for vermin alternated.
Twelve days after his incarceration, he had to climb back up the steps and stood blindfolded in a room that was anyway in semi-darkness and where black judges sat at a green table. Campos himself conducted the interrogation.
He stated that he had been shipwrecked, and had received a head injury, that he could not remember his name or rank, and had walked from a remote part of the coast to Macao, the light of which he could see at night. No more could be got out of him and he was soon led away again. He hoped that he would be incorporated in the colony’s troops as a private soldier, and that he would have an opportunity to desert and get back to the island. But Fate had decided otherwise. Again he was led up the steps, thrust into the courtroom and he stared into the face of the captain whom he had never expected to see again in this world, sitting next to Campos.
“Do you know who you are now?” the latter asked him.
“I know who I was, Luís Vaz de Camões, but through ill will or resentment I am now a man without a name.”
“No, through the will of the King. A danger to the state and guilty of lese-majesty. You must remain in prison.”
“Stop,” said Campos. “The laws are applied rather differently here. Here every man is of some use. He will be given employment.”
“He’s a deserter.”
Goaded by the captain, Camões became quick-witted.
“Is it desertion if after being washed up on a remote stretch of coast, I walked to Macao with my last remaining strength?”
But he got not further; Campos had him taken away. In the evening he visited the cell. A lantern was put in a corner and shed red light on Camões. Campos himself remained in darkness.
“What did you see over there across the water?”
“Chinese, their houses and their graves. Mainly the latter!”
“Not a white woman hiding anywhere? A young lady of high birth has gone missing for the last three weeks; it’s as though she has been abducted by the Chinese. If you can tell us anything it will be to your advantage.”
Camões shook his head.
“You don’t know anything? You must know. Otherwise you’ll be tortured together with the Dominicans.”
Camões pointed out the impossibility of a shipwrecked sailor in the great unknown country having met a captive of his own race. On the contrary, if the Chinese had abducted her they would certainly have kept her hidden from him. But Campos was not susceptible to reason, seemed to have inherited a sixth sense from the Inquisition, or to have been warned by an instinct that Camões had been in contact with the fugitive. Had his face given anything away? Had something of her remained clinging to him? He had not touched her, but felt himself anyway. He now envied the Chinese their impassive features, not knowing that as a result of all his suffering his own features had acquired almost the same immobility. He feared torture, but knew that he was brave in war and had stayed calm during an earthquake in Lisbon. He had actually revelled in the hurricane that sank the São Bento, but squirmed with revulsion at the thought of having to undergo torture bound and helpless. He imagined what he would do if he really knew nothing. Probably tell some story when he first felt pain; he was inventive. But now he did know… Should he indicate a place as far as possible from the real one? No, now, he knew, he must be silent. He tried to muster his resistance by standing stock-still against a wall, rather than tiring himself out with excessive muscular movements, but his weak body could not take it, and the narrowness of the cell did not permit it either.
When the guard came in, he was lying half dazed in a corner. He leapt up, thinking that he was already being fetched, but the guard, an old Kwantung Chinese, stood in front of him and handed him some brown powder on a willow leaf. Camões stared, not understanding at first that this was a powder that made one insensible to all pain. It finally dawned on him, and he asked to whom he owed this. The guard made it clear to him that he thought it was just to torture child murderers but not a shipwrecked sailor, who was under the jurisdiction of the goddess Amah, who pacifies storms and rescues fishermen and whose priest he had been. No more information could be got out of him. Camões took some of the powder. Very soon he felt himself drifting calmly and languidly into a great feeling of comfort. Suddenly a jolt of mistrust went through his body. Had Pilar heard of his imprisonment and smuggled this poison to the guard through her duenha, with instructions to silence him? Why else would this old Mongol be so sympathetic, contrary to the nature of the Chinese, who see torture as a work of art? Was Pilar so fearful of her safety that she had him calmly murdered in his dungeon? Sorrow turned to hatred, but subsided just as suddenly. For wasn’t she doing him a favour, even by killing him now? Camões stretched out, the stone floor became as soft as velvet, the low, cobweb-covered roof became a heaven sprinkled with stars, with her eyes glittering among them, and everything merged into a light distance. He allowed himself to drift off to sleep, or to death — time would tell.