Os azuis mais azuis, os rosas mais rosas
The
contraption was flying just above the ground I don´t know for how long and
covered I don´t know how many meters, when, suddenly, it started to lose
altitude crashing into the ground. Why this experiment failed? Maybe the amber,
maybe the diameter of the spheres wasn´t appropriate or maybe certain metals
didn´t work because the priest´s iron will was beyond all doubt.
I read this
book long before of coming here. I cannot tell you the title because I don´t
remember it, albeit, for me, is one of the best I have read. It is also true
that I have not read many books.
There is a priest
—I believe to remember he was a priest or something— who was developing a
flight machine. We don´t forget that the story happens when are beginning the
hot-air balloons experiments.
There is a
woman who has the power of seeing the inside of the objects and, more
intriguing, the inside of the people.
There is a
former soldier, one-handed person, who are looking a way of survive and he
doesn´t know what to do because all he has done in his life is fight and now, in
his condition, he is useless.
And there is
an Italian musician who, for those dates, taught in the court.
The novel
starts when a Portuguese king wants to build a convent in order to thanks to
God the birth of his heir. His wife, the queen, didn´t get pregnant on no
account, and we won´t know if it was her fault, his fault or both. We won´t
know either if that pregnancy had any extra help. This king decides to construct
the convent to the north of Lisbon and, with the gold and silver from Brazil —he
was shitting money!— a humble convent seems little for such a divine manoeuver,
so the monarch makes a great complex, something of greater significance. What splash
out! This makes this place a kind of eighteenth-century Expo. How many nerves! With
this event the loony sod is in his element. Because it will be many people who
will go to Mafra to seek their fortune. That would be full of narks, crooks,
barmy, tarts and crumbies. Every man-Jack taking his cut.
Saramago, the
master, mixes history and fiction and gets you to read more and more anxiously;
he describes the same old story about corruption amongst politicians and men of
the church and the tremendous oppression suffered by the poor on the part of
the powerful.
Those who
have visited it say that the treasure of this palace is the library, not only
for the marbles and noble woods that they used, but for the knowledge that
their books contain.
It is
unforgivable that being less than three hours by car I have not been yet. This
has to be ‘fixed’.
From my
Borstal
LDR
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