Pereira Maintains

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Passarono gli anni e, qualche tempo fa, mi capitò nuovamente sotto mano. Mi dissi: "Perché no?" e riprovai a leggerlo, trovandoci molti più spunti di riflessione e un'imprevista bellezza. Ma ancora non mi aveva convinto appieno. It helps that all the voices, from the bland, arrogant editor-in-chief to that of an assassin, are plausible and familiar. And somehow it's this chorus of plausibilities that makes Pereira Maintains into the extraordinary work it is. (...) Pereira Maintains is a ravishing literary performance, dark and dazzling in execution and convincing in its depiction of human life pushed up against the puppet shows of the worst things in the world. It has a gravity and a moral seriousness that leave most fiction in the shade and Tabucchi shows a mastery of exposition that makes this book a compelling political thriller that is also, with no ambiguity in the world, a remarkable work of art." - Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald The Reviewer maintains she took a sip of honey-sweetened lemonade, as she doesn’t drink alcohol and has abandoned refined sugar, adding that she thought those words spoke of the fleeting nature of life, the elusiveness of happiness and the need to seize those special moments before they get lost in the midst of the ordinary, the humdrum routine, the minutiae of everyday life. Moments that urge us to regard the past as a collection of memories and nothing but memories so it won't tyrannize so violently over our present. The Reviewer maintains she dreamed a lovely dream about one of such moments that are worth seizing. A dream which made her feel nostalgia for things that never existed, the kind of nostalgia discussed decades ago in a book filled with disquiet to which she had referred recently. It was a long dream. But the Reviewer prefers not to say how it went on because her dream has nothing to do with these events, she maintains. Afirma Pereira que ele é apenas um senhor com peso a mais, fruto de uma dieta pouco diversificada, de omeletes e limonadas. But when Pereira meets a magnetic young man rebelling against the brutal regime his inner world starts slowly changing.

It’s 1938, the time of the Spanish Civil War. Fascism under Franco of Spain is creeping into neighboring Portugal as well under its dictator Salazar. A kosher meat shop the main character frequents is vandalized by fascist thugs. Eu afirmo que ele, sem o admitir, era um revolucionário em potência, numa luta permanente contra ele próprio, mas sempre em busca de ideais que incutem prurido político.

Into this vacuum comes a young philosophy student named Monteiro Rossi. Impressed by his wide reading, Pereira asks Rossi to contribute newspaper articles, and a friendship develops. Under the younger man’s influence, Pereira becomes less politically naive and wonders if journalism can serve as a weapon against oppression. His sense of decorum is offended one day by the sight of anti-Semitic graffiti on a kosher butcher’s shop. The threat of increased oppression now makes neutrality impossible. When Pereira learns that Rossi is on a mission to recruit volunteers for the anti-Franco cause in neighbouring Spain, he realises he must act. He had chosen Honorine, a story about repentance which he intended to publish in three or four instalments. Pereira does not know why, but he had a feeling this story about repentance might come into someone’s life like a message in a bottle. Because there were so many things to repent of, he maintains, and a story about repentance was certainly called for, and this was the only way he had of sending a message to someone ready and willing to receive it. En Pereira és innocent, o vol ser-ho. No vol saber quina és la situació real a Lisboa, la seva vida és la literatura i les seves truites a les fines herbes del bar de sota la redacció. I went to view the remains at two in the afternoon. The chapel was deserted. The coffin was uncovered. The gentleman was Catholic, and they had placed a wooden crucifix on his chest. I stood beside him for nearly 10 minutes. He was robust or, rather, fat. When I knew him in Paris, he was about 50, svelte and agile. Old age, perhaps a hard life, had turned him into a fat, flabby old man. Lisbon, once; Buenos Aires, always—like a plain sheet of paper, then crumpled, trying to regain its original state.

La storia di Pereira, un uomo tranquillo, innocuo, giornalista a fine carriera che scrive sulla pagina culturale di un piccolo giornale di Lisbona. E’ il 1938, durante il regime dittatoriale di Salazar. No skin off his nose, retorted Dr Cardoso, because there’s the state censorship and every day, before your paper appears, the proofs are examined by the censors, and if there’s something they don’t like don’t you worry it won’t be printed, they leave blank spaces, I’ve already seen Portuguese papers with huge blank spaces in them, and it makes me very angry and very sad. At the foot of the coffin, on a small lectern, lay a register open to receive the signatures of visitors. A few names had been written there, but none I recognised. Perhaps they were old colleagues, people who lived through the same battles, retired journalists. Despite the young man's unwillingness and inability to conform to the standards the newspaper editor (or rather the political circumstances) requires, Dr. Pereira tries to be of help to him.But Pereira is a man of many regrets, the greatest of which is that he never had children. Into his life walks a young man named Rossi who, Pereira tells his wife’s picture, is "about the age of our son if we'd had a son.” Pereira starts to treat Rossi in a rather fatherly fashion. Rossi is broke and needs a job. Pereira hires him to write obituaries in advance for writers and famous people who might die in the future. Additionally, Rossi often asks Pereira to advance him money on these articles which Pereira does even though he deems every article Rossi hands in as unpublishable. Pereira not only continues to give Rossi money he unwittingly becomes more and more embroiled in this young man’s life, changing the trajectory of his own life. Tanmateix, la seva perspectiva comença a canviar quan coneix en Mario Rossi i la seva nòvia Marta, els quals comencen a parlar de termes com justícia i revolució. En Pereira es troba ajudant la parella sense voler-ho, o volent-ho, i una sèrie de fets simbòlics fan que es replantegi tota la seva existència i que s'impliqui fins a límits insospitats. Davanti allo specchio, fece dunque un gesto profondamente letterario: dimostrò che autore e personaggio possono convivere nella stessa persona pur essendo differenti. Qual è più vero non importa, è una domanda oziosa: se è più vero lo scrittore senza baffi che parla del suo romanzo seduto al tavolino di una libreria o quello che, sul quotidiano di quello stesso giorno è ritratto con i baffi, è domanda che non ha risposta. Di certo è un’alleanza e almeno un’evidenza: uno scrittore non è mai soltanto uno. È doppio? Sarebbe solo una semplificazione per far tornare i conti. By the way, I used the book-reviewing framework suggested in an excellent post by Litlove at Tales from the Reading Room to help me construct this review. I found her suggested questions very helpful, and took more time than usual in thinking about this review up front – I even used a pen and paper, imagine that! I think I’ll use this approach more often.

This short novel has elements of mystery but it isn’t by any means a conventional mystery. A sense of mystery is kept alive partly by Pereira’s willful naivete and the reader’s awareness that more is going on around Pereira than he is willing to notice. Another element of mystery come in the form of three different characters who suggest different things to Pereira which would impact his blinkered existence if he follows through on their suggestions. These characters come in the form of a Jewess reading a book by Thomas Mann, a doctor whom he meets at a sanatorium, and a priest. Will they have an impact on Pereira? Sullo sfondo di questa storia c'è un Portogallo schiacciato dal giogo della dittatura salazarista, un paese quasi "sospeso" in un limbo a se stante, apparentemente ignaro di quanto i fuochi dell'imminente Seconda Guerra Mondiale stiano covando in tutta Europa. Smorzate giungono anche le notizie dalla limitrofa Spagna, insanguinata dalla guerra civile che vede coinvolti repubblicani e franchisti. Un conflitto che interessa più o meno indirettamente buona parte delle nazioni del Vecchio Continente. I love the first, simple quotation that you use, because it sums up so well where Pereira is early in this story: if it’s out of sight, it must not be happening. He’s sort of an everyman who wants nothing more than to go about his business, but the events of the real world – that have dire consequences for others – keep impinging on his tranquility until he has to be involved. For me it was really clever because that phrase made me think he would be arrested in the end, but then he seems to foil the censors and make his heroic declaration and probably be on his way to live in France… and yet the use of that narrative device raises a much more menacing possibility, as you say. It stops it from being a purely happy, heroic ending and makes it something more sinister and uncertain. I hadn’t thought of that other possibility, of him testifying against fascism – that’s also a possibility.

A surprising amount of this tense, impassioned novel, with no word wasted, is concerned with literature, as Pereira contemplates translating a story by Daudet or a chapter of Bernanos's Diary of a Country Priest. But the miracle of these references is that they are absolutely integrated into the dramatic logic of this superb, darkly-lit novella that manages to show how everything is warped into politics at a moment of extremism and infamy.

The sparring between the careful Dr. Pereira and the irresponsible and troublemaking (so Dr. Pereira) Monteiro Rossi continues. About my Pereira, however, I began to know many things. In his nocturnal visits he told me that he was a widower who suffered from heart disease and unhappiness. He loved French literature, especially Catholic writers between the wars, such as François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos. He was obsessed with the idea of death. His closest confidant was a Franciscan named Father Antonio, to whom he shuddered to confess his heresy: he didn't believe in the resurrection of the body. The power of this slim book is inversely proportional to its size and modest, unassuming tone. (...) Tabucchi's spare prose is elegant. Its economy, and the growing sense of foreboding, seize the reader's attention and leave palpable threats hanging. (...) Creagh's translation is, for the most part, fluid and unobtrusive though there are rare clumsy touches." - Leyla Sanai, The Independent Una novela magnífica por todo lo que consigue trasmitir Tabucchi en ciento ochenta páginas gracias a un personaje como Pereira, que se hace querer tan rápidamente.The title refers to a recurring feature of the book: it is presented as a series of declarations by Pereira. In the sweltering summer of 1938, with Lisbon in the grip of Portugal's dictatorship of António Salazar, a journalist is coming to terms with the rise of fascism around him and its insidious impact on his work. Consumed by the passing of his wife and the child he never had, Pereira lives a quiet and lonely existence. One day, the young and charismatic Monteiro Rossi enters his life, changing everything. A man who once shied away from criticizing Portugal's authoritarian regime finds himself unable to stay quiet any longer, resulting in his political awakening and a devastating act of rebellion. E dunque, pur non essendo più tra i vivi, regolarmente Antonio Tabucchi vive: lo fa presentandosi coi baffi da dentro le pagine di un quotidiano, partecipe ancora del contemporaneo, mettendo il piede nella porta delle cose che succedono. Come ogni personaggio, fa il pendolare tra la morte e la vita, va avanti e indietro impunemente rendendo visibile ciò che non si vede, trasformando le parole in vita vera, in corpo, in sensazioni. Much of Pereira Maintains is taken up with the protagonist's mundane attempts to bumble his way through life. There is the sympathetic doctor at a health spa, the Franciscan priest who tells him that he seems to be becoming a heretic but that the church's tendency to trundle to Franco is disturbing and that Pereira should look at the denunciations of French writers such as Mauriac and Bernanos. Growing apprehension, however, is assisted by something oblique and disjointed in the prose -- the slight lag behind words and phrases experienced even in excellent translations." - Ophelia Field, The Observer