Читать книгу The Notebook - José Saramago - Страница 22

A lot has been written and much more chattered about the virtues of hope. Utopias have always been and always will be Paradise as dreamed of by skeptics. Yet not only skeptics but also fervent believers, the Mass and Communion kind of believers who look forward to Heaven, still ask the compassionate hand of God to shade their heads, protect them from rain and heat, and deliver in this life at least a small portion of the rewards that he has promised in the next. Which is why anyone who isn’t satisfied with what has fallen to his lot in the unequal distribution of the planet’s assets, especially the material assets, clings to the hope that it won’t always be the devil who is at the door and that one day—sooner rather than later—it will be wealth that comes in through the window. Someone who has lost everything, but has been lucky enough to retain at least his sad life, considers that he is owed the most human right of hoping that tomorrow will not be as wretched as today. Presuming, of course, that there is justice in the world. Well, if in this place and in these times there did exist something worthy of the name justice, not the mirage of a tradition able to deceive our eyes and our mind but a reality that we could touch with our hands, it is obvious that we wouldn’t have to carry hope around with us every day, cradling it to us, or be carried around cradled by it. Simple justice (not that of courtrooms, but the justice of that fundamental respect that should preside over relations between human beings) would take charge of putting things in their proper places. In the past, the poor man asking alms would be denied with the hypocritical words “Have patience.” I don’t think advising someone to have hope is all that different from advising him to have patience. It is common to hear recently elected politicians say that impatience is antirevolutionary. Perhaps so, but I incline toward the view that, on the contrary, many revolutions have been lost through an excess of patience. I have nothing against hope, obviously, but I prefer impatience. It’s time for impatience to make itself felt in the world, to teach a thing or two to those who would prefer us to feed on hopes. Or on dreams of utopia.