waited until everyone had retired to bed before going out into the yard. The night was peaceful, the sky clear, the coolness of the night air barely perceptible. Perhaps at that very moment Baltasar was walking along the river at Pedrulhos, with the spike attached to his left arm instead of the hook, for no one can avoid evil encounters, as we have already had occasion to observe and verify. The moon is shining, which will help Baltasar see the road more clearly, soon we shall almost certainly hear his footsteps, in the cautioning silence of night, he will push open the yard gate, and Blimunda will be waiting there to greet him, the rest we shall not see, because discretion forbids it, and all we need to know is that this woman is haunted by a sense of foreboding.
She has not slept all night. Lying in the manger and wrapped in blankets, which smell of human sweat and sheep's dung, she opened her eyes and looked toward the chinks in the thatching, where the moonlight came filtering through, the moon began to wane, dawn was about to break, and the night had scarcely had time to settle. Blimunda got up with the first glimpse of light and went into the kitchen to find some food, she feels so uneasy, despite Baltasar's warning that he might be delayed, perhaps he will get back around midday, there were lots of repairs on the machine, so old, and exposed to all that wind and rain. Blimunda cannot hear us, for she has already left the house and is walking the familiar route that Baltasar must follow, there is no risk of their missing each other. One person, however, whom they will both miss meeting will be the King when he enters the town of Mafra that same afternoon, accompanied by the Prince Domjose and the Infante Dom Antonio, as well as by all the servants of the royal household, with all due pomp and ceremony, opulent coaches drawn by prancing horses, everything in perfect array as the procession comes into sight, wheels turning, hooves stamping, an amazing sight such as has never been seen before. Royal pomp and ceremony we have experienced elsewhere, and we are aware of the distinctions, a little more brocade here, a little less brocade there, a little more gold here, a little less gold there, but our concern is to follow that woman who asks everyone she meets whether they have seen a man with such-and-such characteristics, the most handsome man in the world, and from this false description it is clear that one cannot always express one's true feelings, who would ever recognise the swarthy, grizzled, one-handed Baltasar from such a description, No, good woman, they tell her, we have not seen him, and Blimunda walks on, now remote from the main roads and taking short cuts, as when they made the journey together, she passes that same mountain, that same wood, those four boulders in a row, those six hills forming a circle, it is getting late and there still is no sign of Baltasar. Blimunda did not pause to eat but chewed some food as she continued walking, but after a sleepless night, she felt exhausted, anxiety is sapping her energies as the food churns in her mouth, and Monte Junto, which can already be seen in the distance, gives the impression of receding, what phenomenon is this. There is no mystery, it is simply the slowness of her progress as she struggles to go on, thinking to herself, At this pace I shall never arrive. There are certain places Blimunda cannot remember having passed, others she suddenly recognises upon seeing a bridge, a merging of slopes, or a meadow set in some valley. She realised that she had already passed this way because at that same door sits that same old woman sewing that same skirt, everything remains unchanged, except Blimunda, who now travels alone.
She recalls that they met a shepherd in these parts who told them that they were in the Serra do Barregudo, beyond stands Monte Junto, which looks just like any other hill, but this was not how she remembered it, perhaps because of its bulge, which makes it look like a miniature of this side of the planet so that one is convinced that the earth is truly round. Now there is neither shepherd nor flock but only a deep silence as Blimunda comes to a halt, only a deep solitude as she looks around her. Monte Junto is so close she has the impression that she need only stretch a hand to touch those foothills, like a woman on her knees who is stretching out an arm to touch her lover's hips. Blimunda was clearly incapable of such subtle thoughts, therefore, we are perhaps not inside these people and cannot tell what they are thinking, all we are doing is putting our own thoughts into the heads of others and then saying, Blimunda thinks, or Baltasar thought, and perhaps we have also imagined them with our own sensations, just as when Blimunda touches her lover's hips and imagines that he has touched hers. She stopped to rest because her legs were trembling, weary after such a long walk and weakened by that imaginary physical contact, but suddenly she felt certain in her heart that she would find Baltasar up there toiling and sweating, perhaps tying the final knots, perhaps slinging his knapsack over one shoulder, perhaps already making his way down into the valley, and this caused her to cry out, Baltasar.
There was no reply, nor could there be, a cry means nothing, it reaches that escarpment and reverberates, a feeble echo that no longer sounds like a human voice. Blimunda began to clamber up rapidly, her strength comes rushing back, she even starts running where the slope diminishes before becoming steep once more, and farther ahead, between two dwarf holm oaks, she can barely perceive the track opened up by Baltasar on the successive journeys, that will lead her to the Passarola. She calls out once more, Baltasar, now he must hear her, for there are no mountains in between, only several hillocks, if she had time to stop, she would surely hear him cry out, Blimunda, she feels so certain that she has heard him call that she smiles and uses her hand to wipe the sweat or tears from her face, or perhaps she is arranging her hair or cleaning her dirty face, that gesture could be interpreted in so many different ways.
There is the place, like the nest of a huge bird that has taken flight. Blimunda's cry, her third, and invoking the same name, was not nearly so loud, a strangled utterance as if the entrails were being ripped from her body by some monstrous claw, Baltasar, and even as she called out his name, she realised that she had known from the start that she would find this place abandoned. Her tears dried at once, as if some scorching wind had blown from the bowels of the earth. She approached by fits and starts, saw the uprooted shrubs and the depression caused by the weight of the flying machine, and on the other side, at a distance of six paces, Baltasar's knapsack lay on the ground. There were no other signs of what might have happened there. Blimunda raised her eyes to the sky, which was now less clear, clouds drifted serenely as the light of day faded, and for the first time she felt the emptiness of space, as if musing, There is nothing beyond, but this was precisely what she refused to believe, Baltasar had to be flying somewhere in that sky and struggling with the sails to make the machine come down. Blimunda looked at the knapsack again and went to retrieve it, she felt the weight of the spike inside and then remembered that if the machine had gone up the previous day, it would have come down at night, so that was why Baltasar was not to be seen in the sky, he must be somewhere on earth, perhaps dead, perhaps alive, but almost certainly injured, for she still remembered how violent their descent had been, although on that occasion the machine had had a heavier load.
She slung the knapsack over her shoulder, there was nothing more to be done there, so she began searching in the vicinity, going up and down the slopes, which were covered with scrub, looking out for vantage points and wishing that her powers of vision were sharper, not the powers she enjoyed when she fasted, but those of the falcon and lynx, which were capable of sighting everything that moved on the surface of the earth. With bleeding feet and her skirt torn by briers and thorns, she went around the northern side of the mountain and then returned to her point of departure in search of a higher level, and it now occurred to her that neither she nor Baltasar had ever reached the summit of Monte Junto, now she must try to get up there before dark, from the top she would have a much wider view, it is true that from a distance the machine would not be all that conspicuous, but sometimes fortune steps in, and perhaps once she was up there she would see Baltasar waving to her with one arm, from beside a fountain where they could both quench their thirst.
Blimunda began to clamber up farther, reproaching herself for not having thought of this sooner, before the evening light began to dim. Unexpectedly, she found a path that went winding up the slope and, higher up, a road wide enough for carts to pass, she was surprised at this discovery, what could there be on the summit of the mountain to have justified opening up this road, it showed every sign of being in use and of having been there for a considerable time, and who knows, perhaps Baltasar had also come across it. Upon turning a bend, Blimunda halted in her tracks. Directly ahead she saw a friar on foot, a Dominican, to judge from his habit, which scarcely disguised his thickset body and bull neck. In her panic, Blimunda hesitated before running or calling out, the friar appeared to have sensed her presence. He halted, looked to one side and the other, and then turned around. He made a gesture as if blessing himself, and waited. Blimunda approached,
