The Collected Novels of José Saramago (324 page)

WE WOULD SELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED, BUT WE WOULD PREFER YOU TO NEED WHAT WE HAVE TO SELL
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On the drive back home, or as Marta called it, in order to differentiate it from their new home, their pottery home, father and daughter, despite Marçal’s half-mocking, half-affectionate remarks, spoke little, very little, although the simplest examination of the multiple probabilities arising from the situation would suggest that they had much to think about. To leap ahead, by bold suppositions, or by dangerous deductions, or, worse still, by ill-considered guesswork, to what their thoughts were would not, in principle, if we consider how promptly and impudently the heart’s secrets are often violated in stories of this kind, would not, as we were saying, be an impossible task, but, since those thoughts will, sooner or later, be expressed in actions, or in words that lead to actions, it seems to us preferable to move on and wait quietly for the actions and words to make those thoughts manifest. We do not have to wait long for the first one. Neither father nor daughter spoke during lunch, which must mean that new thoughts were being added to those of the journey, then suddenly she decided to break the silence, That was an excellent idea of yours to take three days off, and quite apart from being very welcome, it was, at the time, perfectly justifiable, but Marçal’s promotion has changed the situation completely, do you realize we have only just over a week to organize the move and to paint the three hundred figurines that are fired and ready in the kiln, we have an obligation to deliver those three hundred at least, Yes, I’ve been thinking about the figurines too, but have reached exactly the opposite conclusion, What do you mean, The Center already has an advance guard of three hundred figurines, which should be enough for now, clay figurines are not like computer games or magnetic bracelets, people aren’t pushing and shoving and screaming I want my Eskimo, I want my bearded Assyrian, I want my nurse, No, I’m sure the Center’s customers aren’t going to come to blows over the mandarin or the jester or the clown, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t finish the job, Of course not, but it just seems to me that there’s no point in rushing, Let me remind you again that we have only a week in which to do everything, I haven’t forgotten, So, So, as you yourself said when we left the Center, it’s not really as if we were moving at all, our pottery home, as you now call it, will still be here, Look, Pa, I know what a lover of enigmas you are, I’m not a lover of enigmas at all, I always like things to be clear, All right, you don’t love enigmas, but you are enigmatic, and I would be very grateful if you could tell me where all this is leading, It’s leading to precisely where we are now, where we will be for another week and, I hope, for many weeks afterward, Don’t make me lose my patience, please, Same here, look, it’s as simple as two plus two makes four, In your head, two plus two always makes five or three or anything but four, You’ll be sorry you asked, I doubt it, All right, imagine that we don’t paint the figurines, that we move to the Center and leave them in the kiln just as they are now, OK, I’ve imagined that, Living at the Center, as Marçal explained very clearly, is not like living in exile, people aren’t imprisoned there, they’re free to leave whenever they want, to spend all day in the city or the countryside and go back at night. Cipriano Algor paused to study his daughter, knowing that soon he would see the dawning of understanding on her face. And so it was. Marta said, smiling, All right, I was wrong, even in your head two plus two can occasionally make four, Didn’t I tell you it was easy, We’ll come and finish the work when we need to, and that way we won’t have to cancel the order for the six hundred figurines still to come, it’s just a matter of agreeing on deadlines with the Center that will suit both sides, Exactly. The daughter applauded her father, her father thanked her for her applause. And you know, said Marta, suddenly filled with enthusiasm by the ocean of positive possibilities that had opened up before her, if the Center really likes the figurines, we could go on making them and we wouldn’t have to close the pottery, Exactly, And not just figurines either, we might have another idea they’d like to take up, or we could add other figures to the six we’ve got already, Precisely. While father and daughter savored these pleasant prospects, which demonstrated yet again that the devil is not always lurking behind every door, let us take advantage of this pause to examine the real value or real meaning of the thoughts of both father and daughter, of those two thoughts which, after that long, long silence, finally found expression. Let us say at once, however, that it will not be possible to reach a conclusion, even a provisional one, as all conclusions are, if we do not start with an initial premise that will doubtless prove shocking to decent, nicely brought up souls, but which is nonetheless true, the premise that, in many cases, the thought actually expressed was, so to speak, dragged into the front line by another thought that preferred not to reveal itself just yet. It is easy enough to see that some of Cipriano Algor’s strange behavior is motivated by his own tormenting concerns about the results of the questionnaire, and that his aim in reminding his daughter that, even once they have moved to the Center, they can still come and work in the pottery, was simply to dissuade her from painting the figurines, so that, should a command arrive tomorrow or later on from the smiling assistant head of department or from his immediate superior canceling the order, she would not have to suffer the pain of leaving her work unfinished or, if finished, redundant. Much more surprising is Marta’s behavior, that impulsive and in some ways unnaturally joyful reaction to the doubtful possibility of coming back to the pottery and keeping it going, unless, of course, one could establish a link between that behavior and the thought that originated it, a thought that has been tenaciously pursuing her ever since she entered the apartment at the Center and which she swore to herself never to confess to anyone, not even to her father, even though he is there by her side, nor, can you imagine it, to her own husband, even though she loves him very much. What went through Marta’s head and put down roots there the moment she crossed the threshold of her new home, in that lofty thirty-fourth floor with its pale furniture and two vertiginous windows that she had not even had the courage to approach, was that she would not be able to stand living there for the rest of her life, with no other identity than that of being the wife of resident guard Marçal Gacho, with no other future than that of the daughter growing inside her. Or the son. She thought about this all the way back to the pottery, she continued to think about it as she was preparing lunch, she was still thinking about it when, not feeling in the least bit hungry, she kept pushing the food on her plate around with her fork, and she was still thinking when she said to her father that, before they moved to the Center, they had a strict obligation to finish the figurines that were still waiting in the kiln. Finishing them meant painting them, and painting was her job, if she could just have three or four days to spend sitting under the mulberry tree with Found lying by her side, his mouth open in a broad grin, his tongue lolling. This was all she asked, like the last desperate wish of a condemned man, and suddenly, with a few simple words, her father had opened up the door to freedom, she would, after all, be able to leave the Center whenever she wanted, unlock the door to her house with the key to her house, find all the things she had left behind in their accustomed places, go into the pottery to see if the clay was the right consistency, then sit down at the wheel and surrender her hands to the cool clay, only now did she understand that she loved these places the way a tree, if it could, would love the roots that feed it and hold it erect in the air. Cipriano Algor was looking at his daughter, reading her face as if it were the page of an open book, and his heart ached because of the entirely false hopes he would have been nurturing in her if the results of the questionnaire turned out to be so negative that the buying department at the Center decided to abandon the figurines once and for all. Marta had got up from her chair and come over to give him a kiss and a hug, What will she feel in a few days’ time, thought Cipriano Algor, reciprocating her affection, but the words he spoke were quite different, they were the usual words, As our grandparents more or less believed, while there’s life, we’re guaranteed hope. The resigned tone in which he said this would perhaps have given Marta pause for thought had she been less absorbed in her own happy expectations. Let’s enjoy our three days off in peace, said Cipriano Algor, we certainly deserve them, and, after all, we’re not stealing them from anyone, then we’ll start getting ready for the move, You set the example, then, and go and have a nap, said Marta, you spent the whole of yesterday working the kiln and today you had to get up early, now even for a father like mine, stamina has its limits, as for the move, don’t worry about that, that’s a matter for the mistress of the house. Cipriano Algor went to his bedroom, got undressed with the weary gestures born of a tiredness that was not purely physical and lay down on the bed with a deep sigh. He did not stay there long. He propped himself up on the pillow and looked around him as if this was the first time he had ever come into this room and as if, for some obscure reason, he had to fix it in his memory, as if this was also the last time that he would come here and as if he wanted his memory to serve some purpose other than merely one day recalling for him that stain on the wall, that line of light on the floor, that photograph of a woman on the chest of drawers. Outside, Found barked as if he had heard a stranger coming up the drive, but then he fell silent, he was probably just responding in somewhat desultory fashion to the barking of a distant dog, or else simply wanted to make his presence felt, he must sense that something is going on that he cannot understand. Cipriano Algor closed his eyes in order to summon up sleep, but his eyes preferred not to. There is nothing as sad, nothing as unutterably sad, as an old man crying.

The news arrived the next day. The weather had changed, there was an occasional heavy downpour that flooded the whole yard in minutes and drummed on the mulberry tree’s crisp leaves like ten thousand drumsticks. Marta had been making a list of the things they should take with them to the apartment, always keenly aware at every moment of the two contradictory impulses battling inside her, one telling her the most perfect of truths, that is, that a move would not be a move if nothing was moved, the other advising her simply to leave everything as it was, Especially, it said, since you’ll often be back here to work and to breathe the country air. As for Cipriano Algor, with the intention of clearing his head of the web of anxieties that made him keep looking at his watch again and again throughout the day, he had busied himself sweeping out and cleaning the pottery from top to bottom, once more refusing Marta’s offer of help, I’d only have to answer to Marçal later on, he said. Found had just been sent back to his kennel after having covered the kitchen floor with the mud clinging to his feet after his first sally forth since the rain had cleared. The rain would never be heavy enough to flood the kennel, but, just in case, his master had placed four bricks underneath it, transforming an ordinary, modern-day canine refuge into a prehistoric stilt house. He was engaged in this when the phone rang. Marta answered and, at first, when she heard the voice say, It’s the Center here, she thought it was Marçal, that they were about to put him through to her, but those were not the words that followed, The head of the buying department would like to speak to Senhor Cipriano Algor. Generally speaking, a secretary knows what her boss is going to say when he asks her to get him a particular number, but an actual telephone operator knows nothing at all, which is why she has the neutral, indifferent voice of someone who is no longer of this world, but let us do her the justice of thinking that she might occasionally have shed sorrowful tears if she could have guessed what would happen after uttering the mechanical words, You’re through. Marta began by imagining that the head of the buying department was phoning to express his annoyance at the delay in delivering the missing three hundred figurines, or even, who knows, the six hundred that they had not even started yet, and when, having told the telephone operator, Just a moment, please, she ran out to call to her father in the pottery, she did so thinking that she would have a quick critical word with him about his mistaken decision not to get on with the work as soon as the first series of figurines was finished. Any recriminatory words, however, remained stuck fast to her tongue when she saw the agitated look on her father’s face as he heard her say, It’s the head of the buying department, he wants to talk to you. Cipriano Algor thought it best not to run, it should be enough that he managed to walk with a firm step to the bar where he would be sentenced. He picked up the receiver that his daughter had left on the table. Hello, Cipriano Algor speaking, and the telephone operator said, I’m just connecting you, there was a silence, a slight buzzing, a crackle, and the loud, sonorous voice of the head of the buying department boomed out at the other end, Good afternoon, Senhor Cipriano Algor, Good afternoon, sir, Now I imagine you know why I’m ringing today, You imagine correctly, sir, please go on, I have before me the results and conclusions of the questionnaire on your products which one of my assistants, with my approval, decided to carry out, And what were the results, sir, asked Cipriano Algor, I regret to inform you that they were not as good as we had hoped, If that’s the case, then no one can regret it more than I do, Your participation in the life of our Center is, I’m afraid, over, New things begin every day, but sooner or later, they all end, Wouldn’t you like me to read out the results, I’m more interested in the conclusions and I know what those are already, the Center won’t be buying any more of our figurines. Marta, who had been listening with ever-increasing concern to her father’s words, raised her hands to her mouth as if to suppress a cry. Cipriano Algor gestured to her to remain calm, at the same time responding to a question from the head of the buying department, Yes, I understand your desire to clarify any doubts in my mind, and I agree that presenting conclusions without first explaining the reasons that led to them might be seen as a rather clumsy way of disguising an arbitrary decision, which would never, of course, be the case with the Center, So glad you agree with me, It would be hard not to, sir, Right, then, these are the results, Go on, The statistical population of customers who were to be sent the questionnaire was defined at the start by the exclusion of all those people who by virtue of age, social class, education, and culture, as well as by their known buying habits, were predictably and radically averse to acquiring articles of this type, it is important that you should know that we took that decision, Senhor Algor, in order not to prejudice you from the outset, Thank you very much, sir, Let me give you an example, if we had selected fifty modern young people, fifty ordinary young men and women, you can be sure, Senhor Algor, that none of them would want to take home one of your figurines, or if they did, it would only be in order to use them as target practice, I understand, We chose twenty-five people of each sex, with average jobs and salaries, people from modest family backgrounds, who still had traditional tastes and in whose houses the rustic nature of the product would not look too out of place, And even then, Yes, Senhor Algor, even then the results were bad, Oh, well, Twenty men and ten women said that they did not like clay figurines, four women said that they might buy them if they were bigger, three that they might buy them if they were smaller, of the five remaining men, four said that they were too old to be playing with dolls and the other man was outraged that three of the figurines represented foreigners, exotic ones to boot, and as for the eight remaining women, two said they were allergic to clay, four said that such objects had bad associations for them, and only the last two replied thanking us very much for the opportunity to decorate their house with such lovely statuettes entirely free of charge, it has to be said that both were elderly people living alone. Well, I’d like to have their names and addresses so that I could write and thank them, said Cipriano Algor, Ah, I’m afraid I’m not authorized to reveal any personal data about those questioned, it’s a strict condition of any such research to respect the anonymity of respondents, Perhaps you could tell me, though, if those people live in the Center, Who do you mean, all of them, asked the head of the buying department, No, sir, just the two who were kind enough to like our figurines, said Cipriano Algor, Since that hardly constitutes factual information, I don’t think I would be betraying the deontology of the questionnaires if I were to tell you that those two women both live outside the Center, in the city, Thank you for that information, sir, Was it any help, Alas, no, sir, Then why did you want to know, Because I might have had the opportunity of meeting them and thanking them personally, but since they live in the city, it would be well nigh impossible, And if they lived here, When, at the beginning of this conversation, you said that my participation in the life of the Center had reached an end, I almost interrupted you, Why, Because, contrary to what you think, despite the fact that you want nothing more to do with the pots, plates, or figurines made by this pottery, my life will continue to be linked to the Center, I don’t understand, please be good enough to explain yourself more clearly, In five or six days’ time I will be living there, my son-in-law was promoted to the position of resident guard and I’ll be going to live there with my daughter and with him, Well, I’m glad to hear it and please accept my congratulations, you are a lucky man after all, you certainly can’t complain, just when you thought you’d lost everything, it turns out you’ve won, Oh, I’m not complaining, sir, Perhaps we would be justified in proclaiming that the Center writes straight on crooked lines, and what it takes away with one hand, it gives with the other, If I remember rightly, that business about crooked lines and writing straight used to be said about God, remarked Cipriano Algor, Nowadays, it comes to pretty much the same thing, I would not be exaggerating if I were to say that the Center, as the perfect distributor of material and spiritual goods, has, out of sheer necessity, generated from and within itself something that almost partakes of the divine, although I realize that this may offend certain of the more sensitive orthodoxies, Do you distribute spiritual goods as well, sir, Oh, yes, and you cannot imagine the extent to which the Center’s detractors, although these are becoming fewer and less combative all the time, are completely blind to the spiritual side of our activities, when the truth is that, thanks to these activities, life has taken on new meaning for millions and millions of people who before were unhappy, frustrated and helpless, and believe me, whether you like it or not, that was not the work of vile matter but of sublime spirit, Yes, I’m sure, Anyway, I just want to say, Senhor Algor, that I have found in you someone to whom, even in difficult situations like the present one, it has always been a pleasure to talk about this and other serious matters, matters in which I take a particular interest because of the transcendent dimension which, in some way, they add to my work, and I hope that, after your imminent move to the Center, we will be able to meet again and continue this exchange of ideas, So do I, sir, Good-bye, Good-bye. Cipriano Algor replaced the receiver on its rest and looked at his daughter. Marta was sitting down with her hands in her lap, as if in response to a sudden need to protect the incipient and still barely perceptible roundness of her belly. Are they not going to buy from us any more, she asked, No, they did a survey of their customers and the results were negative, So they won’t be buying the three hundred figurines that are in the kiln, No. Marta got up and went over to the kitchen door, she looked out at the teeming rain and, turning her head slightly, she asked, Haven’t you anything to say to me, Yes, said her father, Go on then, I’m all ears. Cipriano Algor joined her at the door and, leaning against the doorjamb, took a deep breath and began, This hasn’t come as a surprise, I knew this might happen, one of the assistant heads of department told me that they were going to carry out a survey to find out how their customers felt about the figurines, although the idea almost certainly came from the department head, So I’ve been deceived these past three days, deceived by you, my own father, dreaming about a pottery in full production, imagining us leaving the Center early in the morning, arriving here and rolling up our sleeves, breathing in the smell of the clay, working beside you, having Marçal with me on his days off, It was just that I didn’t want you to suffer, But now I’m suffering twice, your good intentions didn’t save me from any suffering at all, Forgive me, And please don’t waste your time asking my forgiveness, because you know perfectly well that I’ll always forgive you, whatever you do, If the decision had gone the other way, if the Center had decided to buy the figurines, you would never have known anything about the danger we had been in, Now it’s no longer a danger, it’s a reality, We’ve still got the house, we can come here whenever we like, Yes, we have the house, a house with a view of the cemetery, What cemetery, The pottery, the kiln, the drying shelves, the woodshed, what was and is no more, could there be a bigger cemetery than that, asked Marta, on the brink of tears. Her father placed one hand on her shoulder, Don’t cry, I realize now that it was a mistake not to have told you what was going on. Marta did not reply, she reminded herself that she had no right to criticize her father, for she too had a secret that she was keeping from her husband and which she would never tell him, How are you going to manage to live in that apartment now, with all hope gone, she was asking herself. Found had left the kennel, plump drops of water fell on him from the mulberry tree, but he did not dare to venture farther. His paws were muddy, his fur dripping, and he was sure that he would not be well received. And yet he it was that they were talking about at the kitchen door. When she saw him appear there and stop to look at them, Marta had asked, What are we going to do with that dog. Calmly, as if discussing a subject they had talked about thousands of times before and which it was hardly worth mentioning again, her father replied, I’ll ask Isaura Madruga if she’ll have him, Am I hearing right, can you repeat that, please, did you really say that you were going to ask Isaura Madruga if she’ll have Found, You heard me perfectly, that was exactly what I said, You mean Isaura Madruga, If you keep this up, I’ll say Yes, Isaura Madruga and you’ll say You mean Isaura Madruga and we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon going back and forth, It’s just such a surprise, It can’t be that much of a surprise, she’s the person you had in mind too, It isn’t the person that’s the surprise, the surprising thing for me is that you should have had the same idea, There isn’t another person in the village, possibly in the whole world, that I would leave Found with, I’d rather kill him first. Expectantly, slowly wagging his tail, the dog was still watching from afar. Cipriano Algor crouched down and called, Found, come here. The dog began to shake himself, spraying water everywhere, as if he could only go to his master once he was decent and presentable, then he made a quick dash and, an instant later, he had his great head pressed against Cipriano Algor’s chest, so hard it was as if he were trying to burrow inside. That was when Marta asked her father, Just so that everything is perfect, which doesn’t only mean having Found in your arms, tell me if you told Marçal about the survey, Yes, I did, He didn’t say anything to me, For the same reason that I didn’t tell you. At this point in the dialogue, you might be expecting Marta to respond, Honestly, Pa, fancy telling him and leaving me in the dark, that is how people normally react, no one likes to be left out or to have their right to information and knowledge
thwarted, however, every now and then, one still comes across the occasional rare exception in this dull world of repetitions, as the Orphic, Pythagorean, Stoic, and Neoplatonic sages might have called it had they not preferred, with poetic inspiration, to give it the prettier and more sonorous name of the eternal return. Marta did not protest, she did not make a scene, she merely said, I would have been angry with you if you hadn’t told Marçal. Detaching himself from the dog and sending him back to his kennel, Cipriano Algor said, At least I manage to get things right sometimes. They stood watching the endless rain, listening to the mulberry tree’s monologue, and then Marta asked, What can we do about those figurines in the kiln, and her father replied, Nothing. Terse and to the point, the word left no room for doubt, Cipriano Algor did not proffer instead one of those vulgar, everyday phrases which, in their attempt to declare themselves to be definitively negative, happily carry within them two negatives, which, according to the expert opinion of grammarians, should turn them into a positive affirmation, as if one such phrase, for example, We can’t do nothing, were going to all the trouble of denying itself in order to end up meaning that we can do something.