Now there have been disturbances in Funchal and in other places on the island, with crowds looting public offices and dairy farms, and people have been killed or wounded. The situation must be serious, because two warships have been sent out, along with a fleet of airplanes and squads of hunters with machine guns, a military force capable of waging a civil war Portuguese-style. Ricardo Reis does not fully grasp the reason for the uprising, which need not surprise either us or him, because he has only the newspapers to rely on for information. He turns on his ivory-colored Pilot radio. Perhaps the words we hear are more believable than the words we read, the only drawback is that we cannot see the announcer's face, because a look of hesitation, a sudden twitch of the mouth will betray a lie at once, let us hope that someday human inventiveness will make it possible for us, sitting in our own homes, to see the face of the announcer, then at last we will be able to tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and the era of justice will truly begin, and let us say, Amen. The arrow on the dial points to the Portuguese Radio Club, and while the tubes are heating up, Ricardo Reis rests his weary forehead on the radio case. From inside comes a warm odor that makes him feel a little giddy, a distracting sensation, then he notices that the volume knob is switched off. He turns it, at first hears only the deep hum of the carrier wave, then a pause, a sudden burst of music, the song Cara al sol con la camisa nueva, the anthem of the Falange for the pleasure and comfort of the select Spanish colony in the hotels of Estoril and at the Brangança. At this very moment in the casino they are having a dress rehearsal for the Night of Silver, to be presented by Erico Braga, and in the hotel lounge the guests glance suspiciously at the green-tinted mir ror. The Radio Club announcer then reads a telegram sent by veteran Portuguese legionnaires who served in the fifth division of the Spanish Foreign Legion, they greet their former comrades who are taking part in the siege of Badajoz, a shiver goes up our spine as we listen to those military sentiments, the Christian fervor, the fraternity of arms, the memory of past triumphs, the hope in a bright future for the two Iberian fatherlands united in one Nationalist cause. After listening to the final news bulletin, that three thousand soldiers from Morocco have landed in Algiers, Ricardo Reis switches off the Pilot and stretches out on the bed, desperate at finding himself so alone. He is not thinking about Marcenda, it is Lydia who occupies his thoughts, probably because she is closer at hand, one might say, although there is no telephone in this apartment, and even if there were one, he could hardly call the hotel and say, Good evening, Senhor Salvador, this is Doctor Ricardo Reis speaking, do you remember me, we haven't spoken to each other in ages, I say, those were extremely happy weeks I spent in your hotel, no, no, I don't need a room, I simply wanted to speak to Lydia, could you ask her to come around to my apartment, excellent, how very kind of you to let her off for a couple of hours, I am feeling very lonely, no, it isn't for that, all I need is a little company. He gets up from the bed, gathers together the pages of the newspaper lying all over the floor and on the bedspread, and runs his eye down the list of entertainments, but nothing stirs his interest. For a moment he wishes he were blind, deaf, and dumb, thrice the cripple Fernando Pessoa says we all are, then among the news items from Spain he notices a photograph that had escaped him previously, army tanks bearing the Sacred Heart of Jesus. If this is the coat of arms they are using, then there can be no doubt that this will be a war waged without mercy. He remembers that Lydia is pregnant, with a baby boy, as she constantly tells him, and this baby boy will grow up and go to the wars that are now in the making. One war leads to another, let us do some calculations, the baby comes into the world in March of next year, if the average age when youths go to war is twenty-three or twenty-four, what war will we have in nineteen sixty-one, and where, and why, and over what wasteland. With the eyes of imagination Ricardo Reis sees the boy riddled with bullets, dark and pale like his father but only his mother's son, for his father will not acknowledge him.
Badajoz has surrendered. Spurred by the rousing telegram from the veteran Portuguese legionnaires, the Spanish Foreign Legion achieved miraculous victories, whether at a distance or in hand-to-hand combat, and singled out for special honor were the brave Portuguese legionnaires of the new generation who were anxious to prove themselves worthy of their predecessors, one should add that it always helps to feel that one's native land is not far away. Badajoz has surrendered. Reduced to ruins by continuous bombardment, swords broken, scythes blunted, clubs and hatchets smashed, the city has surrendered. General Mola declared, The hour has come to settle accounts, and the bull ring opened its gates to receive the militiamen taken captive, then closed them, the fiesta is under way, machine guns shout ole, ole, ole, the noise is deafening in the bull ring of Badajoz, and the minotaurs dressed in cheap cotton fall on top of one another, mingling their blood in mutual transfusion. When not a single monster is left standing, the matadors will liquidate with their pistols those who were simply wounded, and if any escape this mercy, it is only to be buried alive. All that Ricardo Reis knew about this event was what he read in the Portuguese newspapers, but one newspaper accompanied its report with a photograph of the bull ring in which bodies could be seen scattered here and there, a wagon looked completely out of place, was it meant for deliveries or removals, for bulls or minotaurs. Ricardo Reis learned the rest from Lydia, who had been told by her brother, who had been told by who knows whom, perhaps it was a message from the future when all will finally be resolved. No longer crying, Lydia tells him, Two thousand lost their lives, her lips are trembling, her cheeks flushed. Ricardo Reis tries to console her, takes her by the arm, but she pulls away, not out of any rancor but simply because today she cannot bear it. Later, in the kitchen, as she is washing the dirty dishes that have accumulated, she begins to cry again, and for the first time she asks herself why she comes to this apartment. Is she the doctor's maid, his cleaner, she is certainly not his lover, because that word implies equality, no matter whether male or female, and they are not equal. Then she does not know if she is crying for the dead of Badajoz or for her own death, which is the death of feeling that she is nobody. Sitting in his study, Ricardo Reis has no idea what is going on. To take his mind off the two thousand dead, a truly incredible number, if Lydia was telling the truth, he reopened The God of the Labyrinth, to continue where he had left off, but could get no meaning from the words. He realized that he had forgotten the narrative, so he went back once more to the beginning, The body, discovered by the first chess player, occupied with its outstretched arms the squares of the King and Queen's pawns as well as the next two squares in the direction of the enemy camp. Reaching this point, Ricardo Reis again lost the thread, seeing the chessboard as a desert and the sprawled corpse as a young man who was no longer a young man, then he saw a circle inscribed in that huge square, an arena strewn with bodies crucified on their native soil, and Sacred Hearts of Jesus went from one to the other making sure that there were no survivors. When Lydia walked into the study, done with her chores, Ricardo Reis was sitting with the book closed in his lap, he appeared to be sleeping and looked, caught unawares like this, almost old. She stared at him as if he were a stranger, then left without making a sound. She begins to think, I won't come back here, but she cannot be certain.