One word can change everything: The History of the Siege of Lisbon

So the proof-reader who is "reading" the manuscript called The History of the Siege of Lisbon in Jose Saramago's novel The History of the Siege of Lisbon makes a momentous decision: he changes something in the final text, without any author consult or authority to do so. The book he's editing is about an episode - real, I believe - about 1,000 years ago, crusaders on their way to the Holy Land stop in Lisbon for final provisions, and the local Christian-Portuguese community ask them to stay and fight the Muslim "infidels" and return Lisbon to Christian control - a key historic event, as described in yesterday's post. The proof-reader, Raimundo Silva, inserts the word "not," as in, the Crusaders elected not to stay and fight in Lisbon. Well, that does change history - or at least this historical novel. And what exactly is the point? Not sure, but Saramago is very interested in the boundaries between fact and fiction, the unreliability of narration, and of course in the power of language - and we see in this incident all three: a historic narrative can be erroneous in numerous ways and for numerous causes, a fictional work based on a set of facts can transform the fact into fiction - more cause for uncertainty - and a single word, in this case "not" can subvert reality, as much as any army. In the end, I hope he's not arguing that all things are relative and we cannot know truth - but rather that we cannot know truth easily, that discovery of the truth requires investigation and perspicacity.