The History of the Siege of Lisbon

DURING THOSE FIRST DAYS after he had thrown away the dyes which for years had concealed the ravages of time, Raimundo Silva, like an ingenuous sower waiting to see the first shoot break through, examined the roots of his hair, day and night, with obsessive interest, morbidly relishing his anticipation of the shock he would almost certainly get once the natural hairs began to appear amongst the dyed ones.

But because one's hair, from a certain age onwards, is slow in growing, or because the last dyeing had tinged, or tinted, even the subcutaneous layers, let it be said in passing that all of this is no more than an assumption imposed by the need to explain what is, after all, not very important, Raimundo Silva gradually lost interest in the matter, and now combs his hair without another thought as if he were in the first flush of yiuth, although it is worth noting a certain amount of bad faith in this attitude, a certain falsification of self with oneself, more or less translatable in a phrase that was neither spoken nor thought, Because I can pretend that I cannot see, I do not see, which came to be converted into an apparent conviction, even less clearly expressed, if possible, and irrational, that the last dyeing had been definitive, like some prize conceded by fate in recompense for his courageous renunciation of the world's vanities.