The Notebook. José Saramago

about certain ideological concerns of the past, but it would be shutting our eyes to the simple historical truth if we were not to recognize that the democratic trinity—politics, economics, culture, each part complementing and enabling the others—at the height of its prosperity as an idea for the future represented one of the most passion-inspiring civic flags that in recent history has ever managed to awake consciences, mobilize wills, move hearts. Today, scorned and thrown into the rubbish heap of formulas that have been worn down by use and stripped of their true nature, the idea of economic democracy has given way to a market that is obscenely triumphant, even at the moment of an extremely serious crisis on its financial axis, whilst the idea of a cultural democracy has ended up being replaced by an alienating industrialized mass marketing of culture. We are not progressing, we are regressing. And it becomes ever more absurd to speak of democracy if we insist on mistakenly identifying it exclusively with the quantitative and mechanical expressions of it that we call political parties, parliaments, and governments, without paying any attention to their actual content and the distorted, abusive use they tend to make of the vote that justified them and placed them where they are.

      You should not conclude from what I have just written that I am against the existence of parties: I am a member of one of them myself. You should not think that I abhor parliaments or their members: I would wish both to be better, more active and responsible in all things. Nor should you believe that I am the Providential creator of a magic recipe that will allow people henceforth to live without having to put up with bad government and waste time on elections that rarely solve the problems: I just refuse to accept that it is only possible to govern and wish to be governed according to the supposedly democratic models currently in use, which to my mind are distorted and incoherent, and which certain politicians (not always in good faith) want to make universal, along with the false promises of social development that barely manage to disguise the egotistical and relentless ambitions that really motivate them. We nurture these ills in our own home, then behave as though we were the inventors of a universal panacea capable of curing all the ills of the body and the spirit of the planet’s six thousand million inhabitants. Ten drops of our democracy three times a day and you will be happy forever. The truth is, the only really deadly sin is hypocrisy.

       October 9: God and Ratzinger

      What might God think of Ratzinger? What might God think of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church of which this Ratzinger is sovereign pope? As far as I know (and it is fair to say that I know rather little), no one has ever yet dared to formulate these heretical questions, perhaps knowing in advance that there are not nor will there ever be answers to them. As I once wrote during a spell of vain metaphysical inquiry, a good fifteen years ago, God is the silence of the universe and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence. It is in the Lanzarote Notebooks and it has been quoted frequently by theologians of the neighboring country who have been so kind as to read my work. Of course, for God to think something of Ratzinger or of the church that the pope has been trying to rescue from a totally predictable death—whether from starvation or from failing to find ears to hear it or faith to reinforce its foundations—it would be necessary to demonstrate the existence of said God, the most impossible of tasks, in spite of the supposed proofs offered by Saint Anselm; even Saint Augustine confessed that trying to explain the Trinity was like emptying the ocean with a bucket into a hole in the sand. The reason that God, if he exists, ought to be grateful to Ratzinger is the concern the pope has shown in recent times for the delicate condition of the Catholic faith. People do not go to mass, they have stopped believing in the dogmas and acting on the prejudices that generally made up the basis of spiritual life for their forefathers, and of their material life too, as happened, for example, with many of those bankers established in the very first years of capitalism, who were strict Calvinists and, as far as one can gather, of a personal and professional honesty that was proof against any devilish temptation of a subprime variety. The reader might perhaps be thinking that this sudden switch in the transcendent subject I began by broaching—that is, the Episcopal synod gathered in Rome—was a more or less dialectic ploy to introduce a critique of the irregular behavior (to say the least) of contemporary bankers. That was not my intention, nor is this my area of expertise, if I have such a thing.

      So then, let us return to Ratzinger. Something occurred to this man, who is undoubtedly intelligent, with an extremely active life within and around the Vatican (suffice it to say that he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the successor, though using other methods, of the ominous Holy Office, formerly better known as the Inquisition), something that one might not expect from someone with his degree of responsibility, whose faith we should respect while not respecting the expression of his medieval thinking. Scandalized by secularism, frustrated at the church’s abandonment by the faithful, he opened his mouth at the mass with which the synod began to let loose such outrageous remarks as “If we look at history, we are forced to admit that this distancing alienation and rebellion of inconsistent Christians is not unique. As a consequence, God, though never breaking his promise of salvation, had to resort frequently to punishment.” In my village they used to say that God punishes with neither stick nor stones, and that’s why we have to be afraid of another one of those floods coming to drown all the atheists, the agnostics, the secularists in general, along with other promoters of spiritual disorder en masse. But God’s designs are boundless and unknown, so perhaps the current president of the United States has already been a part of the punishment reserved for us. Anything is possible if God wills it. On the crucial condition that he exists, of course. If he doesn’t exist (or at least he has never spoken to Ratzinger), then these are all just stories that no longer frighten anyone. God, they say, is eternal, and he has time for everything. Eternal he may be; we can allow that much so as not to contradict the pope, but his eternity is only that of eternal not-being.

       October 13: Eduardo Lourenço

      I have stubbornly remained in debt to Eduardo Lourenço since 1991—for exactly seventeen years. It is a rather unique debt, because although it would be natural for him, as the creditor, never to have forgotten it, it is rather less common that I, the debtor, contrary to the nature of my kind, have never denied it. However, if it is indeed true that I have never pretended to be oblivious to my debt, it should also be said that he has never allowed me to be deceived by his tactical silences on the subject, which he intermittently breaks, saying, “So what about those photographs?” My response is always the same: “Oh hell, I’ve been very busy with work, but the worst thing is I’ve still not been able to send them off to get the copies made.” And he, every bit as consistent as I am, “There are six of them: you keep three and give me back the rest.” “No, never, that would be absurd, you should have them all,” I always reply, hypocritically magnanimous. Now, the time has really come for me to explain what these photos are. We were—he and I—in Brussels, at Europalia, and were wandering about like any other curious people from hall to hall, commenting on the beauties and opulence displayed, and Augusto Cabrita was with us, camera at the ready, in search of the immortal moment. What he was expecting to find at the moment when Eduardo Lourenço and I stood with our backs to a baroque tapestry of some historical or mythical scene, I don’t really know. “Right there,” commanded Cabrita, with that fierce air that photographers have in what I imagine they consider critical situations. To this day I have no idea what little demon made me not take the solemnity of the moment seriously. I began by straightening Eduardo’s tie, then invented something about his glasses not being on straight and devoted myself to putting them in their proper place, where in fact they had been all along. We started laughing like two little boys, he and I, while Augusto Cabrita with one shot after another took advantage of the occasion that had been offered him on a platter. That is the story of the photographs. A few days later, Augusto Cabrita, who died two years ago, sent me the pictures, thinking no doubt that they would be in good hands. They were indeed good hands, or not altogether bad hands, but, as I have explained, not very effective ones.

      Some time after that I came to write the novel All the Names, which, as I thought at the time and continue to believe today, could have had no one better than Eduardo to present it. I made this