A novel unravelling?: The History of teh Siege of Lisbon

To be honest I'm not sure I understand what's going on as we close in on the end of Jose Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon; I get it, as noted in previous posts, that there's a parallel set of stories - the siege of Lisbon that Raimundo is writing and his "siege" of Maria Sara's heart and affections, and we watch as the stories somehow entwine - as they build their relationship into a serious and passionate love affair, the military history of the siege of Lisbon that R is writing start to focus more on the "relationships," notably the attraction that one of the soldiers with a really odd name beginning w/ M feels toward the "widowed" "concubine" that a German mercenary/crusader soldier left behind - her name also weird and begins w. O. OK. So, now the history of the siege that we're reading involves M pursuing O from place to place outside the walls of Lisbon, while the city is under siege by the Portuguese and the Moors inside the walls are being starved into submission; eventually, M gets the nerve to talk to O - kind of like Raimundo getting the nerve to call Maria - and, like R., he's surprised by her willingness to tie herself to him. But the parallels are by no means exact, so I'm not quite sure what Saramago's point is here - and then, he moves the "siege" narrative to an even stranger place, devoting many pages the the miracles that a priest worked, after he received a vision telling him to rebury the body of the German mercenary's squire - and then comparing the miracles to others worked by St. Anthony, in various places in Italy. Huh? What's the point of this? Rather than pulling strands together, Saramago seem to be intentionally unravelling his novel as it nears its conclusion - in every way, he's a highly unconventional and unpredictable novelist - plenty to ponder here, but surely not to everyone's taste.