The ghostly battle lasted for many hours. Finally, as the sky was turning grey as if it were morning, the defenders, including him, jumped out of the windows, and drove the attackers back. He saw them close up, and at first did not understand why he was fighting against them and with the others, since they were both equally alien to him.
Then he saw that those he was fighting belonged to a race of which he had recently been part, but he remained indifferent; he could just as well have turned round and fought with them against the defenders of the church, but he did not.
He stopped, with the musket, which he intended to use as a club, and stood at ease. A black adversary mistook his ease for fear and leapt on him; he saw the bulging eyes in front of him and a wild fury at the thought of being seized by someone of the race of slaves led him to attack again: he jumped back and felled the black with a blow of his gun butt. Then he dived back into the fray, seeing nothing more, fighting his way forward until he collapsed and lay where he fell. He could feel himself being walked over, but not being carried away.
III
THE NEXT MORNING the Procurador sat alone in the quietest and darkest room in his house, but there too he could hear the bells ringing and there were many of them, summoning the population to the churches. Thanksgiving masses were celebrated in all the churches. The Procurador’s absence from the cathedral would be noticed, and his reputation as a priest-hater would grow further. He bit back his fury, unable to rejoice at being rescued from the awkward siege.
Had it not been for two events, the victory of his small garrison of two hundred men (the rest were away on an expedition along the coast destroying nests of pirates) over a seaborne army of two thousand would have been eternally attributed to him. But Father Antonio’s well-aimed shot, which hit the powder magazine of the flagship, saved Macao as its ammunition was on the point of running out.
He had had to visit the hero in the Dominican hospital and was the first to recognize him.
The embassy had been given up for years. Not a soul had returned; a later embassy, which did manage to reach Beijing, had heard no word of them. So it was assumed that all had perished en route from hunger, or been murdered by hostile Chinese.
Camões.
Even more dangerous than when he washed up here: if he could then be safely presented as a deserter, now the people would sing his praises and it was harder to frustrate the people than the priesthood. He must be eliminated at all costs.
As the Procurador leant over him and with seeming pity surveyed his deathly pale face, he had quickly made a plan. He gave orders for the sick man to be brought to his house. His own physician would attend him. It had been an unexpected triumphal procession, with himself on horseback ahead of the litter, but he was well aware that the acclaim was for the stranger, whose body was covered by the canvas, and not for him.
After a day he regained consciousness. Campos had ordered the guard, his oldest servant, who knew no Portuguese, to call him immediately when the patient opened his eyes. Cautiously he began questioning him.
“What happened? Where were you attacked?”
From his first answers Campos realized to his great relief that Camões must have lost his memory and no longer knew anything about it. Greatly satisfied, he left the sickroom. He would have no further trouble from this quarter: Father Antonio was old and would soon die. He was still reminded of Velho’s enmity now and then, when negotiations with a Cantonese mandarin suddenly and inexplicably broke down. And it was sometimes as if in Lisbon Macao had been forgotten about as a possession; sometimes no ship or orders arrived for a whole year. The city freed itself and stood alone at a vast distance, with no need for rebellion to gain its freedom.
He had the sick man transferred at night by two trusted agents to the Casa de Misericordia, with instructions that he should not receive good care.
After a few days he had escaped and soon the rumour spread that the hero of the siege, who had saved the city, had become a hermit and was living in a kind of cave on the hill above the city. A flat stone lay across two boulders, creating a kind of shelter, under which it was fairly cool and dry. At first people did come to him to seek a cure for ailments, and to ask him to lay on hands, but he never answered and he was soon forgotten, so that Campos did not need to intervene.
He received two more visits before he was totally swallowed up by oblivion. Father Antonio, who had led the defence of São Paulo cathedral, came and was anxious to make him a religious hero, if possible a saint, whose confused utterances could be interpreted as visions. But Camões said nothing at all and stared blankly right through the monk.
The second visit was from Pilar, who apart from her father was the only one to recognize him. She almost fell to her knees when she saw what he had become. He did not recognize her, which actually came as a relief. Since she had borne Ronquilho’s children, she had resigned herself to the fate that, as she now knew, awaits almost all women, all Chinese and virtually all white women: to acquire a husband they do not love, who is at best indifferent to them, and to conceive and bring up his children. Campos’s prophecy had proved correct: when there were children, fanciful passions evaporated by themselves.
From her robe she produced a bundle of parchment sheets and placed it in front of Camões. He seemed to recognize them, stroked them as if they were the skin of someone he had loved. She embraced him cautiously, felt no response and left. Now he sat writing for as long as light shone in through the chink. He lived in what he wrote and as soon as he was no longer in it and sat in the dark, he ceased to exist.
A few days later Campos put him aboard a ship, the oldest and most decrepit in the fleet.
IV
I COLLAPSED BY A STONE, somewhere in the interior, and woke up in a dirty Chinese hotel in Macao. I only realized I was there when I went out into the street. So I had escaped the Loch Catherine disaster, perhaps as the sole survivor. I would probably never discover how. I remembered dream events as distant adventures.
I walked around a bit, down the alleys and along the waterfront, where only junks were moored; I peered across towards the mainland and drank a glass of beer in a liquor shop. Bars, dives and other establishments to which seamen on shore resort did not exist here. I had heard that there are many sights in Macao from the olden days: churches, monuments and suchlike, a cave where a poet lived and wrote a great poem to the voyages of Vasco da Gama. But whoever visits somewhere like that? I stayed and sat in the semi-darkness of the shop and enquired when there was a boat to Hong Kong, because I realized I wasn’t going to find a ship here. Not until the next day. So I had to wait here till then.
There’s nothing else to do in Macao. Opium is smoked in closed houses with thick stone walls, while in others, open day and night, fan-tan is played, for cash, by poor coolies; there are probably brothels too. One occasionally meets a Portuguese. Most of them are fat and ponderous and do nothing. I once saw a procession approaching. I thought they were feeble and handicapped inmates from an institution. When they got closer I saw they were wearing uniforms and were the soldiers who were supposed to protect the colony.