Читать книгу The Notebook - José Saramago - Страница 9

When Pilar and I settled in Lanzarote in February 1993, while still keeping our Lisbon house, my sister- and brother-in-law, María and Javier, who had already lived there for some years, along with Luis and Juanjo, who had recently arrived, offered me a notebook, which I was to use to record our days in the Canary Isles. They imposed just one condition: that I should give them a mention every once in a while.

I never wrote anything in that notebook, but it was thanks to this gift, and for no other reason, that the Lanzarote Notebooks¹

were born and lived for five years. Today I find myself in an unexpectedly similar situation. This time, however, the motivating forces are Pilar, Sérgio and Javier, who take care of the blog. They told me they had reserved me a blog space and that I ought to write for it—commentary, reflections, simple opinions about this and that, in short whatever happened to occur to me. Being much more disciplined than I often seem, I replied yes, indeed, I would do it, on the condition that this notebook would not demand the same diligence that I had obliged myself to show with the others. For what that is worth, you can count on me.

1 Published in the 1990s, the Lanzarote Notebooks are an account of Saramago’s life as a writer on the island. They have not yet been translated into English.