Baltasar and Blimunda

Lourenco's quill as he began to write, Et ego in illo, And I am in him, and as dawn broke, he was still writing his sermon about the Body of Christ, and the mosquitoes did not feast that night on the priest's body.

Several days later, when Bartolomeu de Gusmao was in the Royal Chapel, the Italian musician came to see him. Having exchanged the usual pleasantries, they left by one of the doors beneath the King and Queen's dais which led into the passageway that connected with the Palace, they strolled at a leisurely pace, pausing here and there to inspect the tapestries hanging from the walls, the Life of Alexander the Great, the Triumph of Faith, and the Exaltation of the Blessed Sacrament after drawings by Rubens, the Story of lobias after drawings by Raphael, and the Conquest of Tunis, and if these tapestries were to catch fire one day, not a single thread of silk will be salvaged. In a tone of voice that clearly conveyed that this was not the important matter they were about to discuss, Domenico Scarlatti said to the priest, the King keeps on his dais a miniature replica of the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, which he did me the honour of showing me yesterday, He has never conceded me any such favour, but I do not say this out of envy, for I am delighted to see Italy honoured through one of her sons, They tell me that the King is himself a great builder, and perhaps this explains his passion for building with his own hands this architectural monument of the Holy Church, even though on a reduced scale, How very different from the basilica being built at Mafra, which will be so enormous that it will become the wonder of ages, Just as the works men achieve with their hands manifest themselves in many different ways, mine are made from sound, Are you speaking about hands, No, I'm speaking about works, no sooner are they born than they perish, Are you speaking about works, No, I'm speaking about hands for what would become of them if they had no memory and I had no paper on which to write them, So you're speaking about hands, No, I'm speaking about works.

This appears to be nothing more than a witty play on words and their meanings, as was common in those times, without attaching too much importance to the sense, and sometimes even going so far as to obscure the meaning deliberately. It is like the preacher who assails the statue of St Antony in church with loud accusations of, Blackamoor, thief, drunkard, and after having scandalised the congregation with this barrage of insults, goes on to explain the point he is really trying to make, that he used the word blackamoor because of the Saint's dark skin, he called him a thief because he had robbed the divine child from the arms of the Virgin Mary, and a drunkard because St Antony was inebriated by divine grace, but I must warn you, Take heed, oh preacher, when you invert those conceits, for you are unwittingly betraying your secret leanings towards heresy that cause you to toss and turn in your sleep as you repeat, Cursed be the Father, cursed be the Son, cursed be the Holy Ghost, before adding, May the demons roar in hell, and in this way you think you will escape damnation, but He who sees everything, not this blind Tobias, but that other for whom there are no shadows or blindness, knows that you have uttered two profound truths, and He will choose one of the two, His own, for neither you nor I know which is God's truth, and even less whether God Himself is true.

This all appears to be a game of words, the works, the hands, the sound, the flight, But they told me, Padre Bartolomeu de Gusmao, that those very same hands raised a machine from the ground and it flew through the air, They spoke the truth about what they were witnessing at that moment, but were blind to the truth that the first truth concealed, Tell me more, This happened twelve years ago, since then the truth has changed considerably, Do tell me more, Can't you see it's a secret, But I thought only music is aerial, Well, then, tomorrow we shall go and witness a secret. They have come to a standstill before the final tapestry of the series depicting the life of Tobias, and this is the famous episode where the bitter gall taken from the fish restores the blind man's sight, Bitterness is the gaze of clairvoyants, Signor Domenico Scarlatti, One day this will be transposed into music, Padre Bartolomeu de Gusmao.

Next day they mounted their mules and rode to Sao Sebastiao da Pedreira. The patio separating the palace on one side and the granary and coach-house on the other appeared to have been recently swept. Water ran along a funnel, and a chain pump could be heard working. The nearby flower beds had been tended, and the fruit trees had been tidied and pruned, here there were no remaining signs of the wilderness Baltasar and Blimunda had encountered when they first arrived some ten years earlier. Farther ahead, however, the estate was still uncultivated, it would remain like this as long as there were only three hands to work the land, and these were occupied most of the time in doing jobs that had nothing to do with the land. Through the open door of the coach- house came sounds of activity. Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco asked the priest to wait while he went inside. He found Baltasar alone, trimming a long joist with an adze. The priest said, Good afternoon, Baltasar, I've brought a visitor with me to see the machine, Who is it, Someone from the Palace, Surely not the King, No, not on this occasion, but one day soon, for only a few days ago he drew me aside to ask me when he could hope to see the machine flying, no, it is someone else who has come, But surely he'll discover our secret and that was not what we agreed, otherwise we'd not have kept it to ourselves all these years, Since the Passarola is my invention, I'll decide these matters, But we're doing the work and we are under no obligation to stay here, Baltasar, I don't know how to explain, but I'm confident that the person I've brought here is someone we can trust, someone for whom I'd be prepared to put my hand in the fire or pledge my soul, Is it a woman, It's a man, an Italian who has been at court only a few months, a musician who gives the Infanta lessons on the harpsichord and is also music-master of the Royal Chapel, and his name is Domenico Scarlatti, Did you say, Scarlet, Not quite, but there is so little difference that you might as well call him that as so many others do because they cannot pronounce his name. The priest made for the door, but paused to inquire, Where is Blimunda, She's somewhere in the kitchen garden, replied Baltasar.

The Italian had taken shelter in the cool shade of a sprawling plane tree. He did not seem to be curious about his surroundings, but looked impassively at the shuttered windows of the palace, at the coping where weeds were sprouting, the gutters where swallows flitted in search of insects. Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco approached, carrying a cloth in one hand, You must approach the secret blindfolded, he said playfully, and the musician replied in much the same tone, Yet how often one comes away from a secret still blindfolded, I hope this won't be the case, Signor Scarlatti, mind the doorstep and the large stone, now, before you remove the cloth I should tell you a couple lives here, a man named Baltasar Sete-Sois and a woman named Blimunda, whom I have nicknamed Sete-Luas because she lives with Sete-Sois, they are building the invention I am about to show you, I tell them what they have to do and they carry out my instructions, now you may remove your blindfold, Signor Scarlatti. Without haste, as if still calmly watching those swallows chasing insects, the Italian slowly untied the blindfold.

He was confronted by an enormous bird with outspread wings, a fan-shaped tail, an elongated neck, the head still unfinished, which made it difficult to tell whether it would eventually turn out to be a falcon or a swallow, Is this your secret, he asked, Yes, this is our secret, which until this moment has been shared by only three people, now we are four, this is Baltasar Sete-Sois, and Blimunda should be back shortly from the kitchen garden. The Italian gave a slight nod in the direction of Baltasar, who gave a much deeper if somewhat clumsy nod in acknowledgment, after all, he was just a poor mechanic who looked very scruffy and was covered with grime from the forge, and the only thing about him that shone brightly was the hook, polished by constant labour. Domenico Scarlatti went up to the machine, which was balanced on supports at each side, placed his hand on one of the wings as if it were a keyboard, and to his astonishment the entire structure vibrated, despite the enormous weight of the wooden frame, metal plates, and entwined canes, and if there were forces capable of lifting this machine off the ground, then nothing was impossible for man, Are these wings fixed, That's right, But no bird can fly without flapping its wings, Baltasar would tell you that it's sufficient to have the form of a bird to be able to fly, but I can assure you that the secret of flying has nothing to do with wings, Won't you let me into the secret, All I can do is to show you what is here, And for that much I am grateful, but if this bird is to fly, how is it going to get through the door.

Baltasar and Padre Bartolomeu looked at each other in bewilderment, and then looked towards the open door. Blimunda was standing there with a basket filled with cherries, and she replied, There is a time for building and a time for destroying, certain hands tiled this roof, others will demolish it, and all the walls if necessary. This is Blimunda, said the priest, Sete-Luas, the musician added. She had cherries dangling from her ears and had come to show Baltasar and going up to him, she smiled and held out her basket, Venus and Vulcan, the musician reflected, and let us forgive him this rather obvious allusion to classical mythology, for how can he know what Blimunda's body is like underneath the rough garments she is wearing, or that Baltasar is not so scruffy or grimy as he looks at this moment, nor lame like Vulcan, one-handed perhaps, certainly, then, so is God. Not to mention that all the cockerels in the world would sing to Venus if the goddess had Blimunda's eyes, for then Venus would have the power to look into loving hearts, but simple mortals must have some advantages over divinities. Even Baltasar