Just a few months after he finished Price, in mid-August 2009, Saramago opened a new file of notes on his laptop, dedicated to the new novel he was about to start. An old idea was looking for a place in the writer's prose work, and in those days it found the immediate impetus of an event that could be used to embody it. "Eventually, perhaps, I will write another book," reads the first line of his notes.
Since, in 2006, while he was working on Little memories, the disease moved into his everyday life, time rushed him. The rhythm of literature accelerated in the face of death. The writer himself, aware that an evil fate is slowly driving him into a corner, explained it with an eloquent metaphor: "Perhaps the perfect analogy for this is a candle that emits its highest flame at the very moment it is about to be extinguished." To testify to the achievements of that candle and its power plamsaja are there, except Travels of an Elephant (2008) FABRIC (2009) and flashes Notebooks (2009) and Volumes 2 (2009). Four works created during the same period in which his illness was gaining momentum.
And now again, without interruption, Saramago found refuge in writing. He was closing the door and still had more to say. Will he have enough time to express it? "It is possible", "who knows", "maybe", he revealed, cautiously but full of hope, in the opening line of his notes, the first words of an adventure on the breath of life, inevitably started in the heart of darkness. And therefore a reasonable mistrust, imposed by fragile reality, subtly permeated the driving force of his firm will. But something else was waiting to be said and, therefore, had to be said, or at least an attempt had to be made.
If in Little memories acknowledged the intimate and nameless memory of childhood, An Elephant's Journey, his most Cervantesian book, served him to pay tribute to the Portuguese language and to glorify storytelling as the essence of literature. Then, on the pages Price, will seriously destroy the myth of religion, with a process whose roots should be sought in Voltaire. A few years before that, in Essay on lucidity (2004), penetrated deeply into the weaknesses and deviations of democracy, touching on the political and social space and public morality. He looked Smrti in the eye ahead of time, with the help of humor and the categorical logic of the plot, in Death and its whims (2005). Blindly, ten years earlier, he founded the allegorical cycle of his work, when he decided to cross the road from statue to stone and to go deeper into the nature of modern man and his circumstances; on the pages of that essay, he struck the foundations of a great parable about dehumanization and irrationality, which, in his opinion, are destroying the world and clouding our destiny.
What doors is left for him to close on the edifice of his work, in looking at various aspects of human evil and delusions, at the end of his life? What kind of urgency did he feel? Perhaps he entrusted the task of appeasement to a new book, to which he originally intended to give the title Belona d.o.o.; then, in December 2009, Company Belona d.o.o.; and finally, Halberds, halberds, flintlocks, flintlocks. He will decide on the final title at the beginning of February 2010, taking the epigraph, which he had decided to put before the beginning of the story, from the tragicomedy Incitement to war, by playwright Jules Vicente. On February 2010, 2020, a little more than a month after he chose the quote and impatiently complained about the break in writing the novel - "I haven't written for two months. At this rate, the book may be finished in 26..." (December 2009, XNUMX) - he noted with satisfaction in his digital notebook: "Changes again, it's finally good: Halberds, halberds, flintlocks, flintlocks. That will be the title." Circumstances did not allow him to sit in front of the computer and continuously work on the novel, but in his mind he kept returning to that story and thinking about it. He had something to say.
The beginning of the idea went back to an old unknown that did not give Saramago peace: for what reason are strikes unknown in the arms industry? He later added to that guiding idea an event he learned about that left a strong impression on him: during the Spanish Civil War, a bomb dropped on Popular Front troops in Extremadura failed to explode due to sabotage, and a piece of paper was found in it with a short message in Portuguese: "This bomb won't go off."
The novelist initially attributed the notice to André Malraux, believing the news came from a book Hope. He quickly resolved the confusion, but was unable to determine the specific source of the event. Nevertheless, in Malraux's pages he found the support he needed to move forward in the realization of his plan. On September 2009, XNUMX, he mentioned the error in his notes file: "My memory fails me, this episode is not in Hope. Not even in Hemingway's novel For whom the bell tolls. I read that somewhere, but I don't remember where. Luckily for me, Malraux made a remark (a passing one) in his novel about Milan workers who were shot for sabotaging howitzer shells. And for my purposes, that's quite enough." The interest from Milan provided him with enough coverage and served as a "hook" "to start the story". The rest will be upgraded by imagination. He planned the backbone of the book and looked for supports to support and materialize the idea, since the intention seemed to be clear from the very beginning.
Episodes of sabotage of war equipment, associated with messages of encouragement to the Republican ranks, are not unknown in the pages of Spanish literature, nor in the newspapers of the period, such as People's militia. The most frequently mentioned literary testimony is given by Arturo Barea in Flame, the third part of the trilogy How the rebel behaved. The missile fired in Madrid did not explode; when an artilleryman dismantled the lighter, a piece of paper was found inside, written in German, on which could be read: "Comrades, do not be afraid. The howitzers I load do not explode. One German worker.” Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese workers put themselves at risk by sabotaging weapons in the Civil War, sending messages of support and solidarity received at very different points of Spanish geography: in Madrid, Jaen, Alicante, Sagunto, Cáceres, Badajoz…
Saramago was touched by the fraternal gestures in Milan and Spain, especially the latter, whose message he transcribed in the original language. At the same time, they gave him valuable material for a novel, close to his earlier preoccupation with factories and the arms trade, the absence of strikes in that area and the ethical conflicts that arose from it. Those ingredients gave energy and narrative character, but also the density of moral contrast, adapting very well to the writer's ultimate goal of condemnation, even though he didn't get to put it on paper in the end.
He worked tirelessly to complete the novel's three opening chapters, twenty-two leaves. In the first, he outlined the character of the most important characters, first of all the main heroes - Artur Paz Semedo and his wife, and the dramatic counterpoint of Felicia; he showed a company for the production of weapons Belona d.o.o., including what seemed to be the heart of the action, the "depths of the file"; he presented the future setting of events, which were presented as an investigation or quest that, from the third chapter onwards, would unravel the thread of the plot. The background investigation will focus on the company's connections Belona d.o.o. with the wars of the 1930s. Saramago seemed satisfied with the result: “After the interruption caused by the publication Price, and the resulting tumultuous events, I returned to writing Belone d.o.o. ", he writes in his notes from the twenty-fourth of October 2009. "I corrected the first three chapters (it's amazing how something that seemed good no longer is) and here I promise to work on the new book with greater diligence. It will appear in public next year if I live."
But the life slowly drained out of him, just when he believed he had already directed the flow of the novel's story, the story needed to set forth the ideas and behaviors he actually wanted to discuss. He exhaustively covered the first chapter, in which he shrewdly summarized, on seven pages, the most important elements of his occupation: Hope, sabotage during the Spanish Civil War, a message in Portuguese found in a bomb, a hint of a factory strike sometime in the 2009s, an arms trade ("I believe we will finish that book. The first chapter, reworked, not rewritten, turned out well, but some directions are indicated in which that 'human' story can develop"), the relationship between Arthur and Felicia. "The characters of Felicia and the husband seem pretty defined," he added in the September XNUMX, XNUMX, notes.
The first cards were thrown on the table: the main characters were roughly outlined, as well as the motive of the plot, the tone of the plot and certain connections between the heroes... The music of the prose took on its own modulation, while the attributes typical of the narrative landscape that began to grow were already visible: the expression purified from excessive decorations, reduced, direct and calm; agile dialogues, rooted in everyday language; Saramago's famous omniscient storyteller, wise, thoughtful and comprehensive; mechanics of jacquard weaves; the foreshadowed figure, at the end of his days, of another energetic and stubborn woman, Felicia, the new Blimunda of peace, the mirror of moral consistency and hope of humanity, opposite Arthur Paz Semedo, bureaucrat, weakling, flatterer and colorless personality; hints of the writer's skeptical irony; the stage of a great moral conflict; a detective structure that articulates suspense; Saramag's ability to frame closed environments; the rhythm of a dark and antagonistic search... The recognizable world of Saramag, which in its first outlines reminds of the specific atmosphere from All names and establishes ties with the period of writing begun Blindly.
However, all these and other threads appear sketched on only a few sheets of paper. The rich surprises that the creative process brings to the author were waiting ahead. They were waiting for changes that are imposed suddenly by solving technical problems. Unforeseen discoveries that are made on the fly awaited. And finally, it was necessary to write a novel, a literature for which emptiness always strives. The writer felt solid ground under his feet, although there were still some practical issues to be resolved, such as the detailed description of the building or the formal flow of the story. How he continued, we will never know. Saramago left only a few brief notes in the computer, and those guidelines would naturally later be subjected to a tension inseparable from the further progress of the narrative. On September 2009, 2010, he took to making some observations about the relationship between Felicia and Arturo Paz Semedo, and this allowed him to leave a clue about the future conflict: "The biggest difficulty is to construct a 'human' story that will fit." One of the ideas is for Felicia to return home when she realizes that her husband is beginning to be overcome by curiosity and a certain spiritual restlessness. He will leave again when the management 'bought' her husband by putting him in charge of accounting for the heavy weapons department.'' the last note with which he will finally introduce, directing the formal progress of the book, contentedly but cautiously, one of the great open questions that did not give him peace, namely how to continue the novel: "Ideje appear when they are needed. The fact that the acting director, who will later be called only an engineer, carried the thought of writing the history of the company may be what will save the narrative from the danger of falling into a quagmire, the best thing that could have happened to me. We'll see if that's the case."
While the disease occupied an ever-increasing space in his life, Saramago was building a story in his head. Since the end of October 2009, he has not been able to return to writing, but he persistently thought about the story, created it in himself, without giving up. The perseverance with which the writer, on the edge of a great precipice, clung to literature is astonishing. The extraordinary energy that emerges from the stories, even before they are put on paper and reach the reader, in the narrator's imagination and will, is surprising. That irresistible force only confirms the lucid observation of the poet Roberto Juaros: "Reality created man because something in it, in its depths, mysteriously seeks stories." Or said in a different way, as if somewhere deep in reality there is a demand for a story, for enlightenment, for a vision and maybe even for an action that should be provided by people, whether it still makes some sense or not."
Saramago believed that "literature is what inevitably leads to thinking." He understood the novel as an exercise of the mind, a method of programming the verbal stages of thought, and therefore as a means of thinking. The creations of his mind thought and led to thinking, until they were set, metaphorically, as some kind of experiments with characters. The demand for ideas and values from the very beginning is connected with Saramago's creativity, and is at the roots of his literary attitude and motivation: "I am a somewhat atypical writer. I write only because I have ideas," he repeated at different times. And therefore, his work rises as a monumental narrative landmark of zealous thinking about today's evil and delusions, careful observation of human deviations, the purpose of which, finally, is to point out the many varieties of inhumanity that destroy us. From Blinded he persistently and carefully examined and illuminated those areas of the shadow that affect and injure human dignity, penetrating into the consciousness and ways of establishing connections of the subject in recent times.
Along with the demand for reflection, Saramago's intellectual engagement challenged indifference and moral apathy. Even to this day, his strict condemnation and request for a return to ethics, the urge to be the main heroes of the rebellion of virtue in the context of decline, resonate strongly, and he boldly applied this principle to his texts. "I realized, in recent years, that I was searching for a definition of ethics: I want to express, through my books, the ethical meaning of existence, and I want to formulate it in a literary way," he admitted in 1996. This re-arming of morals, opposed to the languor of the spirit, was supposed to contribute to the development of human nature, and in his opinion, the anchorage should be found in everyday behavior, in everyday life: "When we say good or evil... it implies a whole series of small satellites that orbiting those great planets – little goodness, little malice, little envy, little devotion. In essence, this is what human life is made of, i.e. from flaws and weaknesses." In various ways, he warned about the need for our time to take on an "ethical sense of existence", and this mobilization was supposed to emphasize its own consistency and internalize relationships of respect, relying based on the most basic and generally valid axiom: do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.
So what door was he in a hurry to close? What kind of urgency did he feel? Halberds, halberds, flintlocks, flintlocks, the last narrative exhalation of José Saramago, tried to inscribe himself in that space bounded by thought and ethics: a novel of ideas with a strong component of demands for morality, a revulsion of moral philosophy for the conscience of its readers, taking for its plot the complex and rough world of the production and use of weapons. The writer's intention, announced at the time in a circle of trusted people, although we will never know how it was translated into reality, was to dissect the moral paradox of the exemplary employee of the weapons factory Arturo Paz Semedo, who in his established habits does not care about the consequences disciplined and efficient performance of their work. Saramago was interested in examining the common dissociation between behavior and the consequences it causes. And he was about to deal with it on an individual level, through the figure of a common man, a bureaucrat, respected, efficient, helpful, obedient and cowardly: an apparently good citizen. The opposite role, in which uneasiness and truth were combined, was reserved for one woman, Felicia, whose profile began to be outlined with the heart and vigor characteristic of the main heroines recognizable in his work, bearers of the flame of hope and greatness. These and some other reflections I had the opportunity to hear, in the presence of his wife Pilar del Río and close friends, in several conversations during his last months of life in Lanzarote, when José shared with others some of his anxieties about the novel that kept the flame of his life alive. that he was holding on to by a thin thread.
In the last instance, it was only a matter of constructing Saramago's vision of the banality of evil, a controversial topic that Hannah Arendt brought before the eyes of the intellectual public. Saramago planned to explore in detail the subject's moral responsibility, to himself and to society, arising from his actions; therefore, he intended to dive into and closely touch the daily alienation of his own consciousness, to shake paradoxes and excuses, hidden indifferences and contradictions. It was perhaps the last door that he was in a hurry to close or to open, it depends how one wants to look at it: the door of individual moral responsibility, addressing each reader individually, digging into his consciousness to cause discomfort, disturb and bring the challenge of renewal into the realm of the personal : the eventual possibility, although experienced with skepticism, to put the alternative of a more humane world on the right path.
Saramago believed that neither irresponsibility nor hiding behind obedience exempts from guilt. His literature is an active example of suspicion towards a clear conscience, based on the conviction that giving up thinking and moral requirements, above all - in Notebooks from Lanzarote he synthesized his belief that if "ethics does not rule reason, reason will despise ethics" - it carries the risk of taking a path that leads to the eventual possibility of evil, where it does not take extremely depraved creatures to win. Unfortunately, evil is also a superficial, vain habit, apart from being a constant threat to the social order. If a community aspires to achieve success, at least relative, then it requires the existence of responsible, consistent beings who will search for good, owners of a critical will, ready, finally, to recognize others and themselves in the new human right to protest and disobedience proposed by Einstein : "There is, in addition, another human right, rarely mentioned, although one day it will become very important: it is the right, or duty, possessed by a citizen not to cooperate in what he considers to be wrong or harmful."
How those and other preoccupations in the background of the unfinished novel should have been realized - is lost in the dark swirl of disappearance. Such is death, you were there before and now you are gone - emphasized the author. And if you are not there, then the possibility of a word suddenly uttered here disappears: on the contrary, there is a gloomy cessation of silence. In the condensed notes that José Saramago left while working on the piece Halberds, halberds, flintlocks, flintlocks, however, made sure to clarify the end of the text. Forewarning the end of his predicted absence, he outlined the framework of the narrative interlude, which has a beginning and an end, as if placing in the hands of the reader an invitation to fill in the content of the road map of the moral adventure that had to be created and as if he, the reader as a person, is personally examining him. On the 2009th of November XNUMX, he wrote down the words with which he decided to finish the yet-to-be-written novel, just in case, so that there would be no doubt as to what his point of view and intention are when it comes to indifference and moral bankruptcy: "The book will end with a juicy ' you don't care about your head', what she will say. An exemplary ending." Saramago in a clean state to the last of his letters, including those that could not be written in the place intended for them by will, but those letters, in spite of everything, still resonate strongly from the freedom of his powerful and restless, irreplaceable conscience.
Translated from Spanish by Gordana Mihajlović
