The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago

BY CHANCE, PERHAPS as the result of some change in the atmosphere, the commanding officer found himself thinking about his wife and children, she five months pregnant and they, a boy and a girl, six and four years old respectively. The primitive people of the time, barely emerged from primeval barbarism, pay so little attention to delicate feelings that they rarely make use of them. Certain emotions may already be fermenting away in the laborious process of creating a coherent and cohesive national identity, but that quintessentially portuguese feeling of yearning and nostalgia known as saudade, and all its by-products, had not yet been embraced by portugal as a habitual philosophy of life, and this has given rise to not a few communication difficulties in society in general and to some degree of perplexity on a personal level as well.

For example, basic common sense tells us that it would be inadvisable to go over to the commanding officer now and ask, Tell me, sir, would you describe what you feel for your wife and your little children as saudade. The officer, although not entirely lack ing in taste and sensibility, as we have had the opportunity to observe already at various points in this story, although always maintaining the utmost discretion so as not to offend against the character's natural modesty, would stare at us, astonished by our patent lack of tact, and give us some vague and airy answer, neither here nor there, that would leave us, at the very least, with serious concerns about the couple's private life. It's true that the commanding officer has never sung a serenade nor, as far as we know, written a single sonnet, but that doesn't mean that he is not, by nature shall we say, perfectly capable of appreciating the beautiful things created by his ingenious fellow creatures.