The History of the Siege of Lisbon

CERTAIN AUTHORS, perhaps out of conviction or an attitude of mind not much given to patient investigation, hate having to acknowledge that the relationship between what we call cause and what we subsequently describe as the effect is not always linear and explicit. They allege, and with some justification, that ever since the world began, although we may have no way of knowing when it began, there has never been an effect without a cause, and every cause, whether because pre-ordained or by some simple mechanism, has brought about and will go on bringing about some effect or other, which, let it be said, is produced instantly, although the transition from cause to effect may have escaped the observer or only come to be more or less reconstituted much later. Going further, somewhat rashly, these authors argue that all the visible and recognisable causes have already produced their effects, and that now we need only wait for them to manifest themselves, and they also insist that all effects, whether manifest or about to be made manifest, have their inevitable causality, although our manifold limitations may have prevented us from identifying it in terms of establishing the respective relationship, not always linear or explicit, as we said at the outset. Putting it plainly, and before such laboured arguments draw us into more complicated problems, such as Leibniz's demonstration of the world's contingency or Kant's theory of cosmology, which would oblige us to ask whether God really exists or if He has been misleading us with vagaries unworthy of a superior being who ought to be able to do and say everything with the utmost clarity, what these writers claim is that there is no point in our worrying about tomorrow, because one way or another, everything that might happen has already happened, and as we have seen that is not quite the contradiction it might appear, because if the stone cannot be retrieved by the hand that threw it, we shall not escape the blow and wound if it has been well aimed and we do not get out of the way in time because we are distracted or unaware of the danger. In short, life is not only difficult, it is almost impossible, especially in those cases where in the absence of any apparent cause, the effect, if it can still be called that, raises questions, demanding that we should explain its basis and origin, and also its cause which in its turn it has started to become, inasmuch, as everyone knows, in this entire quadrille, it is up to us to find meanings and definitions, when we would rather close our eyes quietly and let this world go by, for it exercises much greater control over us than it allows us to exercise in return. If this should happen, that is to say, if we are confronted by what to all appearances looks like being an effect, and we can perceive no immediate or direct cause, the solution is to delay, to let time take its course, since the human species, about whom, let us remember, however absurd it may seem, we have no other opinion than that which it has of itself, is destined to await the effects for evermore, and go on seeking the causes for all eternity, at least, that is what it has done up to the present.

This conclusion, as providential as it is uncertain, allows us, by means of a subtle shift in the narrative plan, to return to the proof-reader Raimundo Silva at the precise moment when he is carrying out an act, the motives of which we ignore, distracted as we were in this exhaustive investigation of cause and effect, fortunately interrupted when it threatened to lapse into the traumas of existence and paralysing Angst. This action, like any other, is an effect, but its cause, probably just as obscure for Raimundo Silva, strikes us as being impenetrable, for it is difficult to understand, taking into account the details we know, why this man is pouring down the kitchen-sink that highly esteemed restorative lotion he had been using to mitigate the ravages of time. In fact, without a proper explanation, which only he himself could give, and not wishing to hazard any assumptions and hypotheses, which would be no more than reckless, foolhardy judgments, it becomes impossible to establish that desired and reassuring direct relationship which would convert any human life to an irresistible chain of logical facts, all of them braced to perfection with their points of support and calculated arrows. So let us content ourselves, at least for now, with the knowledge that Raimundo Silva, on the morning following his visit to the publisher, and after a night of relentless insomnia, went into his study, grabbed the concealed bottle of hair-dye, and within a second, barely enough time for any further hesitation, poured the entire contents into the sink and turning the tap on full, literally made that ingenious lotion, misnamed The Fountain of Youth, disappear in a flash from the face of the earth.