The History of the Siege of Lisbon

For two minutes, Raimundo has been staring so hard that he looks distracted, at the page where these immutable facts of history are recorded, not because he suspects that some final error may be lurking there, some perfidious misprint skilfully concealed between the folds of this tortuous rhetoric, and now wilfully provoking him, safe from his tired eyesight and the drowsiness that is fast creeping in and making him feel numb. Although it would be more accurate to say, the drowsiness that was

making him feel numb. Because for the last three minutes, Raimundo Silva is as wide awake as if he had taken one of the benzedrine pills left over from a prescription given by an idiot of a doctor and which he stores behind some books. As if fascinated, he reads over and over again, keeps going back to the same line, the one that emphatically asserts that the crusaders will help the Portuguese to capture Lisbon. As chance would have it, or perhaps it was fate, these unequivocal words occupied a single line and have all the impact of an inscription, a distich or some irrevocable maxim, but they are also provocative, as if saying ironically, Make me say something else, if you can. The tension became so great that Raimundo Silva suddenly could not bear it any longer, he got to his feet, pushed back his chair, and is now nervously pacing up and down within the confined space that the bookcases, sofa and desk leave free, saying over arid over again, Such rubbish, such utter rubbish and, as if needing to confirm this radical opinion, he picked up the sheet of paper once more, thanks to which, we can now dismiss any earlier doubts and confirm that there is no such nonsense, for it is clearly stated there that the crusaders will help to capture Lisbon, and the proof that this actually happened, we shall find on subsequent pages, where there is a description of the siege, the assault on the ramparts, the fighting in the streets and inside the houses, the indiscriminate slaughter and the sacking of the city. So, Mr Proof-reader, show us where you found this blunder, this error that escapes us, true, we don't have your vast experience, we sometimes look without seeing, but we can read, we assure you, yes, you're absolutely right, we do not always understand everything, easy to see why, we lack the necessary training, Mr Proof-reader, the necessary training, and besides, we have to admit that we are often too lazy to verify the meaning of a word in the dictionary, with inevitable consequences. It is preposterous, insists Raimundo Silva as if he were giving us his answer, Never would I do such a thing, and why should I, a proof-reader takes his work seriously, he does not play games or tricks, he respects what has been established in grammars and reference books, he is guided by the rules and makes no attempt to modify them, he obeys an ethical code which is unwritten but sacrosanct, he must respect tradition, observe the conventions, and suppress his private inclinations, any doubts he may have, he keeps to himself and, as for putting a not

where the author wrote yes,

this proof-reader simply would not do it. The words just spoken by Mr Jekyll try to contradict others we could not hear, words spoken by Mr Hyde, nor do we need to mention these two names in order to see that in this antiquated building in the district of Castelo we are watching yet another titanic struggle between an angel and a demon, the two conflicting sides of human beings, without excepting proof-readers. But unfortunately it is Mr Hyde who will win this battle, as is clear from the smile on Raimundo Silva's face and a look of utter malevolence we would not have expected of him, all traces of Jekyll have gone from his face, he has obviously taken a decision, and such a bad one, he holds his biro with a steady hand and adds a word to the page, a word the historian never wrote, that for the sake of historical truth he could never have brought himself to write, the word Not,

and what the book now says is that the crusaders will Not help the Portuguese to conquer Lisbon, thus it is written and has come to be accepted as true, although different, what we would call false has come to prevail over what we would call true, falsehood has replaced the truth, and someone would have to narrate the history anew, and how.