Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by José Saramago Page B

moment in life has S. been or is ever likely to be this portrait? As I looked from one picture to another, I thought how interesting it would be to show the portrait from the storeroom to Olga the secretary without telling her who it was supposed to be (ah, this business of writing can be so ambiguous). Having known him in bed, would Olga the secretary be capable of recognizing S. once disfigured? Am I trying to say this knowledge is disfiguring? That it is comparable with this other disfigurement I have achieved in the picture, both of them presupposing knowledge or its pursuit? And why is the pursuit itself not disfigured? What was I to Adelina when, even though we knew each other, I still had not been to bed with her? What am I to her in my own eyes, knowing that I have been to bed with Olga the secretary without Adelina knowing?
    I drank a large cup of coffee without anything to eat. My cleaner arrived midmorning. She has been coming here for three years, yet I cannot say I know much about her. She looks older than me but is probably younger. Formidable, sharp and taciturn, she works with the efficiency of a machine. She washed up the dishes, changed the sheets (she must find it painful if it reminds her of the moments of pleasure she experienced before being widowed), she cleaned the rest of the flat without touching the studio and departed. She asked no questions, knows that I always lunch out and that she is paid weekly. But what does my cleaner Adelaide really think of me? What first and second portrait would she paint of me if she were a (bad) painter like me? I can hear the shuffling of her slippers as she descends the stairs and discover (to be frank, rediscover) that I am interested in the noise people make when they descend the stairs; I store them in a useless but seemingly indispensable archive, like some harmless yet obsessive foible. Once more I find myself alone in the silence of my studio, the forgotten street beneath my windows and the other rooms recovering their interrupted solitude while objects which have been moved, suddenly transferred or ever so slightly adjusted either become accustomed to their new position by spreading out with sheer relief, like fresh bed linen, or trying to come to terms with the outrage, just like those soiled sheets rolled up in the laundry bag and smelling of cold sweat.
    Seen from a distance, I have the gestures of Rembrandt. Like him, I mix the colors on my palette, like him I extend a steady arm and apply firm brushstrokes. But the paint does not settle in the same way, there is a slight turning of the wrist, a greater or lesser pressure exerted by the bristles of my brush, unless Rembrandt used some other kind of brush, which might explain the difference? If I were to take a microscopic photograph of a tiny section from one of Rembrandt’s pictures, surely this would confirm the difference? And would that difference not be precisely what separates genius (Rembrandt) from mediocrity (me)? (Between parentheses: I put Rembrandt and me between parentheses to avoid writing “genius from mediocrity,” an absurdity which not even a writer as inexperienced as myself would let slip.) But since all the painters of my generation use brushes similar to mine, there must be other differences to make critics praise them and not me, so that although they are different among themselves, they are all considered to be better than me and I am judged as being worst of all. A question of how one holds the brush? A question of what then? I can remember words by Klee: “A naked man should be painted in such a way that the viewer admires the anatomy of the picture rather than that of the man.” If this is the case, what is wrong with the anatomy of these faces I am painting, if they fail to arouse any admiration for the anatomy of the pictures themselves? Even though I know perfectly well that a microscopic photograph of a painting by Rembrandt would look nothing like a similar photograph