At a reception given by the German ambassador in Lisbon, the former king of Italy, Umberto, in quite a long conversation with the communist leader Cunhal, kept paying him compliments, while Cunhal, for his part, was always kind enough to open the door for the former king or to draw up an armchair for him. It was as though I had, throughout the evening, been witness to a thoroughly friendly conversation in which the former monarch was constantly praising communist world revolution, and the communist leader was constantly praising the achievements of the monarchy. Finally, Umberto invited Cunhal to visit him at his house in Sintra, the most charming and, indeed, the most beautiful spot in Portugal, and Cunhal accepted the invitation. In the middle of the night, on my way home through Lisbon, the clamor of the angry crowds was a perverse political contradiction.

Fruitfulness

FRUITFULNESS

In Portugal, dogs that have been killed or have simply died are not buried as they are in our country, but decompose and shrivel up in the open. In the Alentejo region, for example, they lie there, if they are even dragged off the street, on the left and right of the streets with their legs splayed and their tails rigid. We met smart farmers who throw dead dogs under their orange trees, which then always bear at least twice as much fruit as the others.

Coming to Terms

COMING TO TERMS

At the University of Coimbra, where I had been invited to give a lecture, a professor of the history of law with whom I was having dinner in a small wine bar after my lecture said that on the day of the so-called First Revolution all the members of his faculty had been hanged in the university’s so-called natural history room because they refused to declare their solidarity with the revolutionaries of the day. Two years later, on the day of the so-called Second Revolution, those who had hanged his colleagues two years earlier were hanged in the very same natural history room. In answer to my question as to why he himself was still alive, he replied that he had foreseen everything that he had related to me—and which was actually true—in a dream. He knew that the dream he had had a year before the actual occurrences would become reality and had accepted an invitation, arranged for him by a friend who had been teaching there for some years, to teach for four years in England at the University of Oxford. In the nature of things, he said, he found it depressing that he was still alive and teaching at the University of Coimbra, but he had long since come to terms with this constant depression.

Decision

DECISION