The Collected Novels of José Saramago (304 page)

I’m off to do men’s work now, so this time you’ll have to stay at home, Cipriano Algor told the dog, who had run after him when he saw him going over to the van. Obviously Found did not need to be told to get in, they just had to leave the van door open long enough for him to know that they would not immediately shoo him out again, but the real cause of his startled scamper toward the van, strange though this may seem, was that, in his doggy anxiety, he was afraid that they were about to leave him on his own. Marta, who had come out into the yard talking to her father and was walking with him to the van, was holding in her hand the envelope containing the drawings and the proposal, and although Found has no very clear idea what envelopes are or what purpose they serve, he knows from experience that people about to get into cars usually carry with them things which, generally speaking, they throw onto the back seat even before they themselves get in. In the light of these experiences, one can see why Found’s memory might lead him to assume that Marta was going to accompany her father on this new trip in the van. Although Found has been here only a few days, he has no doubt that his owners’ house is his house, but his incipient sense of property does not yet authorize him to look around him and say, All this is mine. Besides, a dog, whatever his size, breed, or character, would never dare to utter such grossly possessive words, he would say at most, All this is ours, and even then, reverting to the particular case of these potters and their property, movables and immovables, the dog Found, even in ten years’ time, will be incapable of thinking of himself as the third owner. The most he might possibly achieve when he is a very old dog is a vague, obscure feeling of being part of something dangerously complex and, so to speak, full of slippery meanings, a whole made up of parts in which each individual is, simultaneously, both one of the parts and the whole of which he is a part. These challenging ideas, which the human brain is more or less capable of conceiving but not, without great difficulty, of explaining, are the daily bread of the various canine nations, both from the merely theoretical point of view and as regards their practical consequences. Don’t go thinking, however, that the canine spirit is like a serene cloud floating by, a spring dawn full of gentle light, a lake in a garden with white swans swimming, were that the case, Found would not have suddenly started whimpering pitifully, What about me, he was saying, what about me. In response to the heartrending cries of this soul in torment, Cipriano Algor, weighed down as he was by the responsibility of the mission taking him to the Center, could find nothing better to say than, This time you’ll have to stay at home, but what consoled the troubled creature was seeing Marta take two steps back once she had handed the envelope to her father, and thus Found realized that they were not, in fact, going to leave him all alone, for even though each part in itself constitutes the whole to which it belongs, as we hope we demonstrated above with a + b, two parts, when put together, make a very different total. Marta waved a weary good-bye to her father and went back into the house. The dog did not follow her at once, but waited until the van, having driven down the hill to the road, had disappeared behind the first house in the village. When, shortly afterward, he went into the kitchen, he saw his mistress sitting in the same chair where she had been working during the last few days. She kept wiping her eyes with her hands as if trying to rid them of some shadow or some pain. Doubtless because he was still green in years, Found had not yet had time to gain clear, definitive, formed opinions on the importance or meaning of tears in the human being, however, considering that these liquid humors are frequently manifest in the strange soup of sentiment, reason and cruelty of which the said human being is made, he thought it might not be such a very grave mistake to go over to his weeping mistress and gently place his head on her knees. An older dog and, always assuming that age carries with it a double load of guilt, a dog of an unnecessarily cynical turn of mind, would take a sardonic view of such an affectionate gesture, but this would only be because the emptiness of old age had caused him to forget that, in matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little. Touched, Marta slowly stroked his head and, since he did not move, but remained there staring up at her, she picked up a piece of charcoal and began sketching out on a piece of paper the first lines of a drawing. At first, her tears prevented her from seeing properly, but, gradually, as her hand grew more confident, her eyes grew clearer, and the dog’s head, as if emerging from the depths of a murky pool, appeared to her in all its beauty and strength, all its mystery and probing curiosity. From this moment on, Marta will love the dog Found as much as we know Cipriano already loves him.

The potter had left behind him the village and the three isolated houses that no one now will ever raise from the rubble, he is skirting the stream choked with putrefaction and will cross the abandoned fields, past the neglected wood, he has made this journey so often that he scarcely notices the surrounding desolation, but today he has two things to worry about, both of which justify his air of absorption. One of them, of course, the commercial proposition that is taking him to the Center, requires no particular mention, but the other, and there is no way of knowing how long its effects will last, is the one that most troubles his mind, the impulse, utterly unexpected and inexplicable, to pass by the street where Isaura Estudiosa lives, to find out what has happened to the water jug, to find out if subsequent use has revealed some hidden defect, if it pours well, if it keeps the water cool. Cipriano has known the woman for some time now, indeed it is highly unlikely that there is anyone in the village whom he has not met in the course of his work, and although he had never been on what you might call friendly terms with the family, he and his daughter had gone to the cemetery to attend the funeral of the late Joaquim Estudioso, which is the family name by which Isaura, who, on marrying, had moved from a village far from there, came, as is the custom in villages, to be known. Cipriano Algor can remember giving her his condolences as he left the cemetery, in the same spot where months later they would meet again to exchange impressions and promises regarding a broken water jug. She was just another widow in the village, another woman who would wear deep mourning for six months, to be followed by another mandatory six months of half-mourning, and she was one of the fortunate ones, because there was a time when deep mourning and half-mourning, each in turn, weighed upon the female body and, who knows, upon the soul too, for a whole year of days and nights, not to mention those women who, given their age, the law of custom obliged to live swathed in black until the end of their days. Cipriano Algor was wondering if, in the long interval between those two meetings in the cemetery, he had ever spoken to Isaura Estudiosa, and the answer surprised him, I’ve never even seen her, and it was true, except that we should not really be so very surprised by the apparent singularity of that situation, for in matters ruled by fate, it makes no difference whether you live in a city of ten million or in a village of only a few hundred inhabitants, only what has to happen happens. At this point, Cipriano Algor’s thoughts tried to divert to Marta, it seemed as if he was about to blame her again for the fantasies going round and round in his head, but what prevailed were his ever-vigilant impartiality and honesty of judgment, Don’t try to hide from the facts, leave your daughter out of it, she said only the words you wanted to hear, now all that matters is finding out whether you have anything more to give Isaura Estudiosa than a water jug, and, of course, to find out if she is prepared to receive what you imagine you have to give her, always assuming that you do manage to imagine something. This soliloquy was brought up short by that, for the moment, insuperable obstacle, and this abrupt halt was immediately pounced upon by his second motive for concern, or, rather, three motives in one, the clay figurines, the Center, and the head of the buying department, What, I wonder, if anything, will come of all this, muttered the potter, a syntactically rather contorted sentence which, if looked at closely, could serve equally well to deck out, in the frivolous clothes of distracted, tacit complicity the more exciting topic of Isaura Estudiosa. Too late, we are already driving through the Agricultural Belt, or Green Belt, as it continues to be called by those who simply love to disguise harsh reality with words, this slush color that covers the ground, this endless sea of plastic where the greenhouses, all cut to the same size, look like petrified icebergs, like gigantic dominoes without the spots. Inside, there is no cold, on the contrary, the men who work there suffocate in the heat, they cook in their own sweat, they faint, they are like sodden rags wrung out by violent hands. There are many ways to describe it, but the suffering is the same. Today the van is empty, Cipriano Algor no longer belongs to the guild of sellers for the irrefutable reason that people are no longer interested in buying what he produces, now he has only half a dozen drawings on the seat beside him, which is where Marta left them, and not on the back seat as the dog Found imagined, and those drawings are this journey’s sole, fragile compass, fortunately he had already left home when the person who made those drawings felt, for a few moments, that all was lost. They say that landscape is a state of mind, that we see the outer landscape with our inner eye, but is that because those extraordinary inner organs of vision are unable to see these factories and these hangars, this smoke devouring the sky, this toxic dust, this never-ending mud, these layers of soot, yesterday’s rubbish swept on top of the rubbish of every other day, tomorrow’s rubbish swept on top of today’s rubbish, here even the most contented of souls would require only the eyes in his head to make him doubt the good fortune he imagined was his.

Beyond the Industrial Belt, on the road, on the bleak plots occupied by the shacks, lies a burned-out truck. There is no sign of the merchandise it was carrying, merely a few scattered, blackened boxes bearing no clue as to contents or origin. Either the cargo went up in flames along with the truck, or they managed to unload it before the fire took hold. The surrounding area is wet, which indicates that the fire brigade must have attended the accident, but since the truck has been completely destroyed, it would seem that they arrived too late. Parked in front are two cars belonging to the traffic police, on the other side of the street is a military personnel carrier. The potter slowed down in order to get a better look at what had happened, but the policemen, brusque, blank-faced, immediately ordered him to drive on, he just had time to ask if anyone had died, but they ignored him. Drive on, drive on, they shouted, frantically waving their arms. Just then Cipriano Algor glanced to the side and noticed soldiers moving around among the shacks. Because of the speed he was traveling at he could see no more, except that they seemed to be forcing the inhabitants out of their houses. It was clear that this time the attackers had not been satisfied with merely looting. For some unknown reason, for such a thing had never happened before, they had set fire to the truck, perhaps the driver had responded with equal violence to his attackers or perhaps the organized groups from the shantytowns had decided to change their tactics, although it is hard to see what possible advantage they could hope to gain from such violent actions, which, on the contrary, will only serve to justify the equally violent actions taken by the authorities, As far as I know, thought the potter, this is the first time that the army has gone into the shantytowns, up until now, the police have always dealt with any trouble, in fact, the shantytowns relied on them, the police would arrive, sometimes ask a few questions, sometimes not, arrest a few men, and life would go on, as if nothing had happened, and sooner or later the arrested men would reappear. The potter Cipriano Algor has forgotten all about Isaura Estudiosa, the woman to whom he had given the water jug, and about the head of the Center’s buying department, the man whom he will have to convince of the aesthetic appeal of the dolls, his thoughts are focused entirely on the truck so badly damaged by the flames that not a trace of its load remains, if, that is, it was carrying one. If, if. He repeated the conjunction like someone who, having tripped over a stone, turns back in order to trip over it once more, as if by striking it again and again a spark might emerge from within, but the spark seems disinclined to appear, Cipriano Algor had already spent a good three kilometers on this thought and was on the point of giving up, Isaura Estudiosa was preparing to dispute the territory with the head of the buying department, when the spark suddenly leaped up, and illumination came, the truck had not been burned by the people in the shacks, but by the police themselves, it was just an excuse to bring in the army, I’ll bet my boots that’s what happened, muttered the potter, and then he felt very tired, not from the mental effort, but because he had suddenly seen what the world was like, how there are many lies and no truths, well, there must be some out there, but they are continually changing, and not only does a possible truth give us insufficient time to consider its merits, we also have to check first that this possible truth is not, in fact, a probable lie. Cipriano Algor glanced at his watch, but if he was hoping to find out what time it was, this gesture was of little help, because since it had been made as an immediate consequence of the debate between the probability of lies and the possibility of truths, it was as if he had been hoping to find the answer in the position of the hands, a right angle that would mean yes, an acute angle that would place before him a prudent perhaps, an obtuse angle telling him roundly no, a straight line saying that it would be best not to think about it any more. When he glanced back at the face of the watch moments later, the hands were indicating only hours, minutes, and seconds, they had reverted to being the real, functional, obedient hands of a watch, I’m on time, he said, and it was true, he was on time, after all, we are always on time, behind time, in time, but never out of time, however often we are told that we are. He had reached the city now and was heading along the avenue that would lead him to his destination, ahead of him, traveling faster than the van, ran his thoughts, head of the buying department, head of department, head of buying, Isaura Estudiosa, poor thing, had been left behind. At the end of the avenue, on the towering gray wall blocking the road he could see an enormous white, rectangular poster on which these words were written in letters of a brilliant intense blue, live in security, live at the center. Underneath, in the right-hand corner, there is another short line, just four words, in black, which Cipriano Algor’s myopic eyes cannot manage to decipher at this distance, and yet they deserve no less consideration than the big message, we could, if we wished, describe them as complementary, but never as merely superfluous, ask for more information was their advice. The poster appears there from time to time, repeating the same words, only the colors vary, sometimes they show images of happy families, the thirty-five-year-old husband, the thirty-three-year-old wife, an eleven-year-old son, a nine-year-old daughter, and also, but not always, a grandfather or grandmother of indefinite age, with white hair and few wrinkles, all obliged to smile and reveal their respective sets of teeth, perfect, white, gleaming. Cipriano Algor took the invitation as a bad omen, he could already hear his son-in-law announcing, for the hundredth time, that they would all go and live at the Center as soon as he got his promotion to resident guard, We’ll end up on a poster like that, he thought, we’ve already got Marta and her husband as the couple, I would be the grandfather if they managed to persuade me, there’s no grandmother, she died three years ago, and for the moment there are no grandchildren, but in their place in the photo we could put Found, a dog always looks good in advertisements featuring happy families, strange though this may seem, dealing as we are with an irrational being, it confers on the people a subtle, although instantly recognizable, touch of superior humanity. Cipriano Algor turned right into a street that runs parallel with the Center, all the time thinking, no, that would be impossible, the Center doesn’t take dogs or cats, at most they take caged birds, parakeets, canaries, goldfinches, waxbills, and, no doubt, aquarium fish, especially if they are of the tropical variety with too many fins, but no cats, far less dogs, that’s all we need, to leave poor Found homeless again, once was enough, just then an image slips into Cipriano Algor’s thoughts, the image of Isaura Estudiosa standing next to the cemetery wall, then the image of her clutching the water jug to her breast, then her waving to him from the door, but she vanished as quickly as she had appeared, for he has arrived at the entrance to the basement where one leaves one’s merchandise and where the head of the buying department checks the delivery note and the invoices and decides what to take and what not to take.