All the Names

by José Saramago

Senhor José’s decision appeared two days later. Generally speaking, we don’t talk about a decision appearing to us, people jealously guard both their identity, however vague it might be, and their authority, what little they may have, and prefer to give the impression that they reflected deeply before taking the final step, that they pondered the pros and cons, that they weighed up the possibilities and the alternatives, and that, after intense mental effort, they finally made a decision. It has to be said that things never happen like that.

as if he had been on the point of setting off to discover a mysterious island and, at the last moment, with his foot already on the gangplank, someone had come up to him holding an outspread map, There’s no point in your going now, the unknown island you wanted to find is here, look, on latitude so-and-so, longitude such and such, it’s got ports and cities, mountains and rivers, all with their names and histories, you’d better just resign yourself to being who you are.

he went into a stationer’s and bought a thick notebook with lined pages, like the ones students use to make notes on their school subjects, believing that they are actually learning them as they do so.

The frightened child will have to eat a lot of bread and a lot of salt before she begins to learn from life, by then, she will no longer be surprised to discover that, when the occasion arises, even the good can become hard and tyrannical,

Compared with you I know nothing and I’m fifty, You’d be amazed how much you learn between fifty and seventy,

Are you married, No, You’ve never lived with a woman, No, I couldn’t really say I’ve lived with one, Just passing relationships, temporary, Not even that, I live alone, when I feel the need, I do what everyone else does, I look for a woman and I pay,

from the very beginning of his life, Senhor José has known that he only needs time in order to use patience, and from the very beginning he has been hoping that patience will not run out of time.

the care in the selection of staff, so as to exclude dreamers who might sit staring eternally at one picture, letting their minds wander, like idiots watching the clouds drift by.

perhaps I am rather melancholy by nature, but that’s hardly a defect, and as for temptations, well, I have to say that I am little inclined to them either by my age or my circumstances, I mean, I don’t seek them out and they don’t seek me,

The wisdom of ceilings is infinite, If you’re such a wise ceiling, then give me an idea, Keep looking at me, sometimes it works.

faithful as to the meaning, less so as regards form, which is both understandable and forgivable, since memory, which is very sensitive and hates to be found lacking, tends to fill in any gaps with its own spurious creations of reality, but more or less in line with the facts of which it has only a vague recollection, like what remains after the passing of a shadow.

In civilised countries, the correct practice, with advantages proven by experience, is for bodies to remain beneath the earth for a few years, five usually, at the end of which, apart from the odd case of miraculous incorruptibility, what little is left after the corrosive work of quicklime and the digestive work of worms is dug up to make room for the new occupants. In civilised countries, they do not have this absurd practice of plots in perpetuity, this idea of considering any grave forever untouchable, as if, since life could not be made definitive, death can be.

his decision to spend the night here was not made in the hope that the silence would come and whisper it in his ear or that the moonlight would kindly sketch it out for him among the shadows of the trees, he is simply like someone who, having climbed a mountain to reach the landscapes beyond, resists going back down into the valley until his astonished eyes have taken their fill of vast horizons.

I swear by all that I hold most sacred, And what exactly do you hold most sacred, I don’t know, Everything, Or nothing, It’s a bit of a vague oath, don’t you think, I can’t come up with a better one, Swear on your honour, that used to be the surest oath, All right then, I’ll swear on my honour, but, you know, the head of the Central Registry would die laughing if he heard one of his clerks swearing on his honour, Between a shepherd and a clerk it’s a serious enough oath, not laughable at all,

11. ”Meaning and sense were never the same thing,” writes Saramago; “meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, . . . while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide. . . .