On the way, he reviewed the comendador’s life, before and after he had received that title. He began with his business—which was, I think, that of ship’s supplier—then moved on to his family, the parties he had given, the various parish, commercial, and electoral posts he had held, and it was only a step or two from that to sundry rumors and anecdotes. João das Mercês’s vast memory stored away every fact and incident, however large or small, so vividly that they might have happened yesterday, and so completely that not even the people involved could have recounted them in such detail. He knew these things as he knew the Our Father, that is, without having to think about the words—indeed, he would pray as if he were eating or chewing the prayer, which emerged unthinking from his mouth. If the rule was to say three dozen Our Fathers on the trot, João das Mercês would do so without even counting. So it was with other people’s lives; he loved knowing about them, finding out about them, and memorizing them so that he would never again forget them.

Everyone in the parish loved him, because he never meddled or gossiped. With him it was a case of art for art’s sake. Often it wasn’t even necessary to ask any questions. José would tell him about Antônio’s life and Antônio about José’s life. What he did was ratify or rectify one version with the other, then compare their two versions with Sancho’s, then Sancho’s version with Martinho’s and vice versa, and so on and on. This is how he filled his empty hours, of which there were many. Occasionally, while at mass, he found himself thinking about some tale he had heard the previous evening, and the first time this happened, he asked God’s forgiveness, but immediately canceled this request when he realized that he had not missed a single word or gesture of the holy sacrament, so consubstantiate were they with him. The tale he had briefly relived was like a swallow flitting across a landscape. The landscape remains the same, and the water, if there is water, murmurs the same song. This comparison was of his own invention and was more fitting than he imagined, because the swallow, even when it’s flying, is part of the landscape, and the tale was part of him as a person; it was one of the ways in which he lived his life.