of thirty metres several months later, and then he taps three times with his crozier on the main door, which was closed, at the third stroke, God's sacred number, the door opened and the procession entered, and we regret that Alvaro Diogo and Ines Antonia were unable to get into the church, and Blimunda too, accompanying them with reluctance, where they could have witnessed the solemnities, some of which were truly sublime, others deeply moving, some compelled one to prostrate oneself, while others uplifted the soul, such as when the Patriarch used the tip of his crozier to write characters in Greek and Latin on piles of ashes set on the church floor, it sounds more like witchcraft, I inscribe and divide you, than a canonical rite, and the same is true of all that freemasonry that is standing over there, gold dust, incense, more ashes, salt, white wine in a silver carafe, lime and powdered stone on a tray, a silver spoon, a golden shell, and heaven knows what else. There is no lack of hieroglyphics, scribblings, toings, and froings, back and forth, holy oils, blessings, the relics of the twelve apostles, twelve of them, and this took up the entire morning and the greater part of the afternoon, and it was five o'clock when the Patriarch began to celebrate the pontifical High Mass, which, needless to say, took some considerable time, the service finally ended, and the Patriarch then came out on to the balcony for the Benediction, and blessed the people waiting outside, some seventy or eighty thousand people, who with a great flurry of gestures and rustling of garments fell to their knees, a moment I shall never forget as long as I live, Dom Tomas de Almeida, up there on the pulpit, recites the words of blessing, anyone with good eyesight can see those lips moving, but no one can possibly hear what he is saying, and if those ceremonies were being enacted today, electronic fanfares would resound throughout the world, the papal blessing
Blimunda told her in-laws, I'm coming straight back. She made her way down the slope to the deserted town. In their haste, some of the town's inhabitants had left their doors and shutters open. The fires were spent. Blimunda entered the shed to retrieve the cloak and the knapsack. Then she went into the house and collected some provisions, a wooden bowl, a spoon, some clothing for herself and for Baltasar. She packed everything into the knapsack and left. It was already growing dark, but she no longer feared the night, for there was no greater night than her inner darkness.
...
FOR NINE LONG years, Blimunda searched for Baltasar. She came to know every road and track from the dust and mud, the sandy soil and treacherous stones, experienced many severe frosts and two blizzards, which she survived only because she had no intention of dying just yet. In summer she was blackened by the sun like a log drawn from the fire before it turns to ashes, and her skin wrinkled like that of a parched fruit, she was a scarecrow amid cornfields, a ghostly presence amongst the villagers, an awesome vision in tiny hamlets and abandoned settlements. Wherever she arrived, she inquired if anyone had seen a man with his left hand missing, as tall as any soldier from the royal guard, with a full beard already turning grey but, should he have shaved it off in the meantime, a face not easily forgotten, At least I haven't forgotten it, and he could be travelling along the common nighways or along paths crossing the countryside, just as he might have fallen from the sky in a bird made of iron and wicker with a black sail, balls of yellow amber, and two globes in base metal that contain the greatest secret in the world, even if nothing should be left of all this except the remains of the man and the bird, lead me to them, for I need only touch them in order to know who they are. People thought that she must be mad, but if she lingered there for any time they found her so rational in everything else she said and did that they began to doubt their initial impression that she was unsound of mind. She soon became known from one province to the next, so that her reputation often preceded her and they called her the Flying Woman on account of the strange tale she told. She would sit in doorways conversing with the women, who confided their grievances and woes, less frequently their joys, which were all too few, besides, joys are better kept to oneself, lest they be lost. Wherever she passed, there remained a ferment of disquiet, the men did not recognise their womenfolk, who suddenly began to stare at them, sorry that they, too, had not disappeared so that they, too, might go in search of them. But these same men asked, Has she already gone, with an inexplicable sorrow in their heart, and if the women replied, She is still wandering about, the men went out again in the hope of finding her in that wood, or in those ripe cornfields, bathing her feet in the river or stripping behind a canebrake, it did not matter which, because they could do no more than feast their eyes on her body, for between the hand and the fruit there was an iron spike, but fortunately, nobody else was to die. Blimunda never entered a church if there were people inside, otherwise she would rest a while, seated on the floor and leaning against a pillar say, I just came in for a moment, I'm off now, for this is not my house. Priests, upon hearing people speak of her, sent messages urging Blimunda to come and be confessed, anxious to probe the mysteries surrounding this wandering pilgrim, to know what secrets were lurking in that inscrutable face, in those expressionless eyes, which rarely closed and which at certain moments, under a certain light, gave the impression of lakes where the shadows cast by clouds hovered. She sent word back to the priests that she would accept their offer whenever she had some sin to confess, no reply could have provoked a greater scandal, since we are all sinners, but when she discussed this matter with other women, she often gave them food for thought, after all, what are these sins of ours, of yours, of mine, if we women are truly the lamb that will take away the sins of the world, the day when this message is understood, it will be necessary to start everything anew. But her experiences along the way were not always in this vein, sometimes she was stoned and mocked, and in one village where she was subjected to abuse, she worked such a miracle that they almost took her for a saint, for it so happened that there was a serious drought in this locality, because all the fountains were exhausted and the wells had dried up, and Blimunda, after having been driven out of the village, roved the outskirts using her fasting and powers of vision, and the following night, when the inhabitants were asleep, she stole back into the village and, standing in the middle of the public square, called out that in such-and-such a place, at such-and-such a depth, there flowed a rivulet of pure water which she herself had seen, and this explains why she was given the name Eyes of Water, the first eyes to bathe therein. She also encountered eyes capable of generating water, many such eyes, and when she said that she had come from Mafra, women asked her if she had known a man there with such-and-such a name with such-and-such physical characteristics, for he was my husband, my father, my brother, my son, my betrothed, and he was dragged off to work on the convent by order of the King, and I never saw him again for he never returned, he must have died there, or perhaps got lost on the way, for nobody has ever been able to give me any news of him, his family has lost its breadwinner and his land has been neglected, or he might have been carried off by the devil, but I already have another man, for that is one animal that never fails to appear if a woman allows him into her lair, if you get my meaning. Blimunda passed through Mafra and heard from Ines Antonia how Alvaro Diogo had met his death, but there was nothing to suggest that Baltasar had died, or, for that matter, that he was still alive.
Blimunda searched for nine long years. She started off counting the seasons, until they lost any meaning. At the outset, she also tried to calculate the number of leagues she walked each day, four, five, sometimes six, but she soon began to get muddled, and there came a point when space and time ceased to matter, she then began appraising everything in terms of morning, afternoon, night, rain, the midday sun, hail, fog, and mist, deciding whether the road was good or bad, whether the slope went up or down, whether this was plain, mountain, seashore, or river-bank, and then there were those faces, thousands upon thousands of faces, countless faces, which exceeded by far those that had gathered in Mafra, and among the faces those of the women, which invited questions, those of the men, which might provide the answers, and among the latter neither the very young nor the very old, but a man who was forty-five years old when we left him yonder in Monte Junto, that day he went up into the sky, and in order to work out how old he is now, we only need to add one year at a time, for every month add on so many wrinkles, for each day so many white hairs. How often Blimunda imagined herself seated in some village square begging alms, and a man coming up to her who, instead of offering alms, would extend his iron hook,
