When they finished eating, Baltasar and Blimunda lay down under the machine, covered with Baltasar’s cloak and a canvas cloth that they removed from the chest, and Blimunda whispered, Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço is ill, he no longer seems to be the same man, He hasn’t been the same man for a long time, but what can we do, How can we help him, I don’t know, perhaps tomorrow he will reach some decision. They heard the priest move away, dragging his feet through the undergrowth, muttering to himself, and they felt more relieved, the most trying thing of all was the silence, and despite the cold and discomfort, they dozed off. They both dreamt that they were flying through the air, Blimunda in a carriage drawn by winged horses, Baltasar riding a bull that wore a mantle of fire, suddenly the horses lost their wings and the fuse ignited, causing fireworks to explode, and in the midst of these nightmares they woke up, having slept very little, the sky lit up as if the world were on fire and they saw the priest with a flaming branch in one hand setting the machine alight, and the cane framework was crackling as it caught fire, Baltasar jumped to his feet, ran to the priest, grabbed him by the waist, and pulled him away, but the priest put up a struggle, forcing Baltasar to tighten his grip and throw him to the ground before stamping out the firebrand, while Blimunda used the canvas cover to beat out the flames, which had started to spread from shrub to shrub, and gradually the fire was extinguished. Overwhelmed and resigned, the priest rose to his feet. Baltasar covered the embers with soil. They could scarcely see each other amid the shadows. Blimunda asked him in a low, neutral voice, as if anticipating his reply, “Why should you want to destroy our machine, and Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço replied in the same indifferent tone, as if he had been expecting the question, If I have to be burnt in a fire, let it at least be this one. He withdrew into the shrubbery on the side of the slope, they saw him descend rapidly, and when they looked a second time, he had disappeared, some urgent call of nature, perhaps, if a man who has tried to set fire to his dream still experiences such things. Time passed and the priest did not reappear. Baltasar went to look for him. He was nowhere to be seen. He called out his name, but there was no reply. The moon appeared and masked everything with hallucinations and shadows, Baltasar felt the hairs on his head and body stand on end. He thought of werewolves and ghosts, of phantoms in every guise and form, of wandering souls, he was convinced that the priest had been carried off by Satan himself, and before Satan could carry him off, too, to writhe in hell, he said a paternoster to St Giles, the saintly auxiliary and advocate in moments and situations inducing panic, epilepsy, madness, and nightmares. Could the saint have heard his plea, for so far, the devil had not come to fetch Baltasar, but his fears did not subside, and suddenly the whole earth began to murmur, or so it seemed, unless it was the influence of the moon, Seven-Moons is the best saint for me, he thought to himself as he turned to her, still trembling with fright, The priest has disappeared he told her, and Blimunda said, He has gone away and we shall see him no more.
That night they slept badly. Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço did not return. When day breaks, the sun will rise yonder, Blimunda warned Baltasar, If you don’t extend the sail, and firmly stopper the amber balls, the machine will travel on its own, without any manual assistance, perhaps it would be best to release it, so that it might find itself reunited with Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço somewhere on earth or in the sky, and Baltasar added vehemently, Or in hell, the machine stays right here, and he set about extending the tarred sail and shading the amber globes, but he was not satisfied, fearing that the sail might get torn or be blown away by the wind. Using his knife, he lopped off branches from some of the taller shrubs and arranged them over the machine and, after an hour, in the clear light of day anyone looking from afar in that direction would have seen nothing other than a mound of greenery in the centre of that patch of scrub, not that this is anything unusual and it will look much worse when everything starts to wither. Baltasar ate some of the leftovers from their meal of the previous evening, after Blimunda had eaten something, for, as you will recall, she is always the first to eat, with her eyes closed, today she even buried her head under Baltasar’s cloak. There’s nothing more to be done here. What do we do now, one of them asked, and the other replied, We can do nothing more here, Let’s go, then, We can go down past the place where Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço disappeared, and perhaps we can still find some trace of him. Throughout the morning they searched that side of the mountain, as they made their descent, they wondered what these great, round, silent mountains were called, and they found no trace of the priest, not even so much as a footprint or a shred of his black cassock that might have been caught on some thorn, the priest appeared to have vanished into thin air, Where could he be, What now, it was Blimunda who posed the question. We travel on, the sun is over there, the sea lies on our right, and when we reach some inhabited place, we shall find out where we are and what this sierra is called, so that later we can retrace our steps, this is the Serra do Barregudo, a shepherd told him a league ahead, and that high mountain is Monte Junto.
It took them two days to reach Mafra, after a lengthy detour in order to give the impression that they had come from Lisbon. On the road, they met a procession, everyone giving thanks to heaven for the miracle ordained by God, when the Holy Ghost flew over the site of the future basilica.
WE ARE LIVING in an age where a nun, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, is likely to encounter the Child Jesus in the cloister, or an angel playing the harp in the choir, and should she be locked away in her cell, where, in private, the manifestations are of a more corporeal nature, she is tormented by demons who shake her bed and wriggle her body, first the upper part, so that her breasts quiver, then the lower part, where her orifice trembles and perspires, that vista of hell or gate to heaven, the latter when enjoying an orgasm, the former when the orgasm has passed, and one believes in all of this, therefore, Baltasar Mateus, alias Sete-Sóis, cannot go around saying, I’ve flown from Lisbon to Monte Junto, or he will be taken for a madman, which might be just as well, if he wants to avoid the attention of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, for there are plenty of raving lunatics in this land beset by madness. So far, Baltasar and Blimunda have managed to survive with the money Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço had given them, and on a modest diet of cabbage and beans gathered from the kitchen garden, the odd piece of meat, and some salted sardines when there were no fresh ones, and whatever they spent or ate was not so much in order to nourish their own bodies as to ensure the well-being of the flying machine, if they cherished any hope of seeing it fly again.
The machine, if that is what one believes it to be, has flown, and its body demands nourishment, that explains why their dreams soar to such heights, Sete-Sóis cannot even ply his trade as a drover, the oxen have been sold, the cart is broken, and if God were not so inconsiderate, the chattels of the poor would be eternal. If he had his own yoke of oxen and cart, Baltasar would be able to offer his services to the Inspectorate General, and despite his disability they would employ him. But with only one hand, they would seriously question his ability to handle animals for the King, the nobles, or any other wealthy landowners who had lent them to ingratiate themselves with the crown. So, what work can I hope to find, Baltasar asked his brother-in-law, Álvaro Diogo, after supper that same night, for they were all now living in the paternal home, but first Baltasar and Blimunda were given a detailed account by Inês Antónia of the Holy Ghost’s remarkable flight over Mafra, With these very eyes, which the earth will consume one day, I saw the Holy Ghost, my dear Blimunda, and Álvaro Diogo saw the apparition, too, as he was working on the site, Is that not true, husband, whereupon Álvaro Diogo, blowing on a live ember, confirmed that something had passed over the site where they were building the convent, It was the Holy Ghost, Inês Antónia insisted, The friars said as much to all those who cared to listen, and people were so confident that it was the Holy Ghost that they organised a procession of thanksgiving, So it was the Holy Ghost, then, her husband conceded, and Baltasar, looking at a smiling Blimunda, said, There are things in the heavens that we cannot explain, and Blimunda fell in with those sentiments by adding, If we were able to explain them, things in the heavens would be known by other names. In the corner by the hearth, old João Francisco drowsed quietly, bereft of cart, yoke of oxen, land, and Marta Maria, he seemed estranged from their conversation, but muttered before dozing off once more, In this world there is only life and death, they waited for him to finish, and it is strange how the elderly fall silent when they ought to go on speaking, obliging the young to learn everything from scratch. There is someone else here who is asleep and therefore silent, but even if he were awake, it is doubtful whether he would be allowed to say anything, for he is only twelve years old, truth may come out of the mouths of babes, but they have to grow up before they are allowed to speak, and by then they have usually started telling lies, this is the boy who has survived, and he arrives home at night worn out from his labours as a builder’s apprentice and all that climbing up and down scaffolding all day long, and no sooner does he eat his supper than he is fast asleep, There is work for any man who wants it, Álvaro Diogo assured Baltasar, you can run errands or work as a porter with a handcart, your hook is all you need for holding the shaft, these are the misfortunes of life, a man goes to war, he comes back wounded, flies through the air by some mysterious power, and then, when he tries to earn a modest living, this is what he is offered, and he is fortunate, for in all probability there were not even hooks a thousand years ago to substitute for a missing hand, and who knows what will have been invented a thousand years from now.