TE19 Iberian Adventure

Autobiografia

theenginepulling oneof thoseenormous cobblestoneswith tires, the doors automatically opening. He remembered Olivais, the full dimension of Olivais surrounding him outside those walls, end of afternoon as on those pages he had been writing, and he remembered Lanzarote. After finishing the novel, alone in the office, Saramago might have felt the dimension of Lanzarote— José pondered that possibility. But upon completion of the novel, Saramago was complete. He had that object before himself, born letter by letter out of his hands; the novel uniformed the complexity of that instant; the world was a perfect system. José felt like the opposite of that, shattered in thousands of pieces, both his body and all his days, a future that seemed incapable of standing on itself. Before nightfall, propping himself up on his arms to sit up on the floor, he recalled that the main character in the new Saramago novel was named José, Mr. José, the author himself had told him. He welcomed that news as a privilege, as good luck, and only now did he notice the amount of Josés. Soon, after publishing, everyone would meet the protagonist of that novel, All the Names, all the names. In elementary simplicity, matrix, José perhaps held within himself all men’s names. But what would become of the other Josés? Where did they advance towards? His head repeated these questions with suffering, weakness, fear, and prostration. It was discouragement amid wreckage. Dragging his minced body, he managed to reach the doors below the kitchensink, where he kept hidden away from himself a bottle of firewater.

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