The Forbidden Kingdom Read Online Free PDF Page B

praised his appearance in choice terms, but received only a surly reply.
    A table had been laid for the two of them in the high-ceilinged , echoing dining room. Judith was not there. In reply to Luis’s question his father said that she was staying with her parents.
    “So does that mean there’s another bastard on the way?”
    He nodded, without looking up. They ate. Now and then the father asked about life at court, about an acquaintance, about the King, and then enquired hesitantly whether his poem had progressed. This was a sign for Luis to kick back his chair and burst into a flood of curses at the demon that still tormented and rendered him completely unfit for action.
    “Why was I surrounded by statues since childhood, graceful and silent, as if that were the attitude one shouldtake to life? Why so many paintings on the wall, so that it seemed to me that they were the windows, giving a view of a world where everything was beautiful and harmonious and near at hand, making it unnecessary to travel dangerous roads! If only you’d brought me up in the woods with an axe and double-edged hunting knife for my toys and the fleeing game as my target, then I’d have become efficient and decisive! As it is, I’ve done nothing but ponder and my deeds were badly aimed shots at a vaguely glimpsed reality.”
    Luís drank a mouthful of wine, and old Camões surveyed him with silent sadness.
    “I never forced you to write poems, though I was happy when I found them.”
    “But you ambushed me with the Odyssey in the summerhouse ! And I knew Homer was the blind man with a staff hanging in the entrance hall, I knew that he described distant journeys. That’s why I wanted to read it, and when I read it I was transported far away and wanted to try to achieve that myself, because I wasn’t yet allowed to travel. But it cheated my wanderlust and rocked me to sleep. Now I’m twenty and have never left Portugal.”
    “Do you want to travel to Italy and Greece then?”
    “No, never ever! If I do, I’ll be addicted for good.”
    “Why do you want to leave? We have a large castle and extensive possessions. And the mountains are notfar away. Why don’t you stay here and continue with your poetry? Do you think victories that eventually turn to defeats, commercial ventures that produce first profit, then loss are more illustrious? And all that travel will teach you nothing except that the earth is the same everywhere. Why not try to emulate Homer instead? Portugal will be forgotten and our name will live on.”
    “What does it matter to me what happens to my name later? I’m living now and want the world! Anyway, I no longer have any choice. In a month’s time I must board ship. I’ve been exiled.”
    “Exiled!” cried the old man. “Now I’ve only a year left to live? Don’t go! Hide here!”
    “In six months’ time I’ll be in Goa. Now that I can’t have the woman I want, I want to forget everything, my homeland, my origins, but especially antiquity, poems and that woman.”
    “Who is she? Tell me! You shall have her if I have to travel there myself.”
    “Can you give me the woman who will shortly be Queen of Portugal? The King won’t survive his next stroke; the Infante will marry soon, since he is afraid she will be abducted.”
    The father slumped back into his chair; Luís went into the garden.
    He stayed a few more days. Little more was said; the father suffered, but no longer complained. When they parted he hung a reliquary round his son’s neck and tucked a book in his saddle bag. Luís returned to Lisbon on a narrow river barge, having chosen it so as to be the only passenger and not to have to share the deck with priests and merchants. Once the craft had rounded the bend, he tossed the reliquary into the river. He leafed through the book for a while. It was the first temptation of his youth; he hesitated, but finally let this souvenir too be carried away by the current.

I
Macao, in the year of Our Lord