In the case of The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Romeo is fully aware that he will not find much cause for rapture, although Raimundo Silva, in the preliminary and somewhat labyrinthine conversation about the correction of errors and errors of correction, had told the author that he liked the book, and, in fact, he was not lying. But what does liking mean, we ask ourselves, between liking something a lot and not liking it at all, there is less and little, and it is not enough to write it in order to know how much yes, or no, or maybe, means in all of this, you would have to utter it aloud, hearing invariably captures the ultimate vibration, and when we are deceived or allow ourselves to be deceived it is only because we did not listen sufficiently to our hearing. It must be recognised, however, that there was no such deception in that dialogue, and it soon became clear that this was a vague or distracted kind of liking, as lukewarmly expressed by Raimundo Silva, I like it, and no, sooner had he uttered these words than they turned cold. In those four hundred and thirty-seven pages he did not find a single new fact, controversial interpretation, unpublished document, even as much as a fresh reading. Nothing more than yet another regurgitation of those interminable, played-out accounts of the siege, the description of places, the speeches and deeds of the royal personage, the arrival of the crusaders at Oporto and their navigation until they entered theTagus, the events that occurred on the feast of St Peter, the ultimatum given to the city, the efforts that went into the siege, the battles and assaults, the surrender, and finally the sacking of the city, die vero quo omnium sanctorum celebratur ad laudem et honorem nominis Christi et sanctissimae ejus genitricis purificatum est templum, words attributed to Osbern, who entered the pantheon of literature thanks to the siege and capture of Lisbon and what has been written about them, these Latin words, translated roughly by someone who knows the language, mean that on All Saints Day the corrupt mosque became the most holy Catholic church, and now the muezzin will definitely no longer be able to summon the faithful for prayers to Allah, he will be replaced by a bell or carillon after one god has been substituted for another, and what a pity they did not let him go. He is blind, poor man, but then just as blind with sanguinary wrath was the crusader Osbern, the same only in name, when, with sword in hand, he saw an elderly Moor who did not even have the strength to escape, floundering there on the ground, waving his arms and legs as if trying to bury himself under the earth, this fear being real while that other was imaginary, and he will have his wish, as sure as he is still alive, but not for much longer, say we, nor will he be able to bury himself because by then he will be dead, the proof-reader thought to himself, meanwhile the common graves are being dug. From time to time, the low bleating of a foghorn can be heard coming from the river, it has been doing this since morning, to warn ships, but only now has Raimundo Silva noticed, perhaps because of the great silence that has suddenly descended upon him.
It is January and darkness falls early. The atmosphere in the study is heavy and airless. The doors are closed. To protect himself from the cold, the proof-reader has a shawl over his knees, the heater right up against the desk almost scalding his ankles. Easy to see that the house is old and lacking in comfort, dating from more spartan and primitive times, when to go outdoors with the weather at its coldest was still the best solution for anyone who had nothing better than a freezing corridor where he could march up and down in an effort to keep warm. But on the very last page of The History of the Siege of Lisbon Raimundo Silva will discover the impassioned expression of a fervent patriotism, which he will have no difficulty in recognising unless a monotonous and humdrum existence has dampened his own patriotism, now he will shiver, that is true, but from that unmistakable breath that comes from the souls of heroes, note what the historian wrote, On the summit of the fortification, the Moslem moon made its final descent, and definitively and for evermore, alongside the cross which announced to the world the holy baptism of a new Christian city, slowly rising into the blue sky above, kissed by light, tossed by the breeze, the standard of Dom Afonso Henriques which bears the five shields of the Portuguese coat of arms is proudly unfurled in jubilant triumph, shit, and do not imagine that the proof-reader is insulting the national emblem, on the contrary this is the legitimate outburst of someone who, having been ironically reprimanded for inventing ingenuous errors, will have to allow the errors of others to pass, when what he is tempted to do, and rightly so, is to fill the margins of the page with a flurry of indignant deleaturs, however, we know he will do no such thing, because any such corrections would offend the author, Let the cobbler stick to his last, for that is all he is paid to do, said the impatient Apelles categorically. Now these errors are not as serious as those we found regarding the word sling or catapult, these are mere trifles hovering uncertainly between a possible yes or no, for in all truth, we do not give a damn nowadays whether these weapons are described as balearicas or as something else, but what' is wholly unacceptable is this nonsense of referring to coats of arms in the time of Dom Afonso, the First, when it was only during the reign of his son Sancho that they appeared on the Portuguese flag, nor do we know how they were depicted, whether forming a cross in the centre, or each emblem in a separate corner, or filling up the entire space, this final hypothesis being the most likely according to the most reliable sources. A serious blot, but not the only one, which will forever stain the closing page of The History of the Siege of Lisbon, otherwise so richly orchestrated with resounding trumpets, with drums and rapturous outbursts, with the troops lined up on parade, and let us try to picture the scene, foot-soldiers and cavalrymen watching that abominable standard being lowered and the insignia of Christian Portugal being raised in its place, and calling out in one voice, Long live Portugal, and striking their shields vigorously with their swords in an outburst of military zeal, followed by a march past in the presence of the king, who is vindictively trampling underfoot, not only Moorish blood, but that Moslem crescent of the moon, a second error and totally absurd, for no such flag was ever raised above the walls of Lisbon and, as the historian ought to know, the crescent of the moon on a flag was an invention of the Ottoman empire, two or three centuries later. The tip of Raimundo Silva's biro was still poised over the shields in the coat of arms, but then he thought that if he were to remove them and the crescent, it would provoke an earthquake on the page, everything would come crashing down, an inconclusive history in keeping with the greatness of the moment, and this is an excellent way of teaching people the importance of something which, at first sight, appears to be nothing other than a piece of cloth in one or more colours, with designs also in different colours, such as castles or stars, lions, unicorns, eagles, suns, scythes or hammers, wounds, roses, sabres or machetes, compasses, wheels, cedars, elephants or oxen, birettas, hands, palm-trees, hones or candelabra, as I know all too well and, without a guide or catalogue, you could get lost in this museum, even more so if someone has remembered to embellish the flags with coats of arms, all belonging to the same family, for then it becomes an endless list of fleurs-de-lis, shells, buckles, leopards, bees, bells, trees, croziers, mitres, spikes, bears, salamanders, herons, rings, drakes, doves, wild boars, virgins, bridges, ravens, caravels, lances, books, yes, even books, the Bible, the Koran, Das Kapital, written by whom do you think, and so forth and so on, from which we may conclude that men are incapable of saying who they are unless they can claim to be something else, and this would be reason enough for leaving aside the episode of the flags, the one reviled, the other exalted, but bearing in mind that the whole thing is a lie, useful to some extent, the ultimate disgrace, simply because we did not have the courage to correct it or know how to replace it with the honest truth, the most ambitious but constant aspiration of all, and may Allah have mercy, on us.