The Collected Novels of José Saramago (409 page)

If death had dreamed hopefully of some surprise to distract her from the boredom of routine, she was well served. Here was that surprise, and it could hardly be bettered. The first time the letter was returned could have been put down to a mere accident along the way, a castor come off its axle, a lubrication problem, a sky-blue letter in a hurry to arrive that had pushed its way to the front, in short, one of those unexpected things that happen inside machines, or, indeed, inside the human body, and which can throw off even the most exact calculations. The fact that it had been returned twice was quite different, it clearly showed that there was an obstacle at some point along the road that should have taken it straight to the home of the addressee, an obstacle that sent the letter rebounding back to where it had come from. In the first instance, given that the return had taken place on the day after it had been sent, it was still possible that the postman, having failed to find the person to whom the letter should have been delivered, instead of putting the letter through the mailbox or under the door, had returned it to the sender, but omitted to give a reason. All this was pure supposition, of course, but it could explain what had happened. Now, however, things were different. Between coming and going, the letter had taken less than half an hour, probably much less, for it was there on the desk when death raised her head from the rather hard resting-place of her forearms, that is from the cubit and the radius, which are intertwined for that very purpose. A strange, mysterious, incomprehensible force appeared to be resisting the death of that person, even though the date of his demise had been fixed, as it had for everyone, from the day of his birth. It’s impossible, said death to the silent scythe, no one in this world or beyond has ever had more power than I have, I’m death, all else is nothing. She got up from her chair and went over to the filing cabinet, from which she returned with the suspect file. There was no doubt about it, the name agreed with that on the envelope, so did the address, the person’s profession was given as cellist and the space for civil status was blank, a sign that he was neither married, widowed nor divorced, because in death’s files the status of bachelor is never recorded, well, you can imagine how silly it would be for a child to be born, an index card filled out, and to note down, not his profession, because he wouldn’t yet know what his vocation would be, but that the newborn’s civil status was bachelor. As for the age given on the card that death is holding in her hand, we can see that the cellist is forty-nine years old. Now, if we needed proof of the impeccable workings of death’s archives, we will have it now, when, in a tenth of a second, or even less, before our own incredulous eyes, the number forty-nine is replaced by fifty. Today is the birthday of the cellist whose name is on the card, he should be receiving flowers not a warning that in a week’s time he’ll be dead. Death got up again, walked around the room a few times, stopped twice as she passed the scythe, opened her mouth as if to speak or ask an opinion or issue an order, or simply to say that she felt confused, upset, which, we must say, is hardly surprising when we think how long she has done this job without, until now, ever having been shown any disrespect from the human flock of which she is the sovereign shepherdess. It was then that death had the grim presentiment that the incident might be even more serious than had at first seemed. She sat down at her desk and started to leaf back through last week’s list of the dead. On the first list of names from yesterday, and contrary to what she had expected, she saw that the cellist’s name was missing. She continued to turn the pages, one, then another, then another and another, one more, and only on the eighth list did she find his name. She had erroneously thought that the name would be on yesterday’s list, but now she found herself before an unprecedented scandal: someone who should have been dead two days ago was still alive. And that wasn’t the worst of it. The wretched cellist, who, ever since his birth, had been marked out to die a young man of only forty-nine summers, had just brazenly entered his fiftieth year, thus bringing into disrepute destiny, fate, fortune, the horoscope, luck and all the other powers that devote themselves by every possible means, worthy and unworthy, to thwarting our very human desire to live. They were all utterly discredited. And how am I going to put right a mistake that could never have happened, when a case like this has no precedents, when nothing like it was foreseen in the regulations, thought death, especially when the man was supposed to have died at forty-nine and not at fifty, which is the age he is now. Poor death was clearly beside herself, distraught, and would soon start beating her head against the wall out of sheer distress. In all these thousands of centuries of continuous activity, there had never been a single operational failure, and now, just when she had introduced something new into the classic relationship between mortals and their one and only causa mortis, her hard-won reputation had been dealt the severest of blows. What should I do, she asked, what if the fact that he didn’t die when he should have has placed him beyond my jurisdiction, how on earth am I going to get out of this fix. She looked at the scythe, her companion in so many adventures and massacres, but the scythe ignored her, it never responded, and now, oblivious to everything, as if weary of the world, it was resting its worn, rusty blade against the white wall. That was when death came up with her great idea, People say that there’s never a one without a two, never a two without a three, and that three is lucky because it’s the number god chose, but let’s see if it’s true. She waved her right hand, and the letter that had been returned twice vanished again. Within two minutes it was back. There it was, in the same place as before. The postman hadn’t put it under the door, he hadn’t rung the bell, and there it was.

Obviously, we have no reason to feel sorry for death. Our complaints have been far too numerous and far too justified for us to express for her a pity which at no moment in the past did she have the delicacy to show to us, even though she knew better than anyone how we loathed the obstinacy with which she always, whatever the cost, got her own way. And yet, for a brief moment, what we have before us is more like an image of desolation than the sinister figure who, according to a few unusually perspicacious individuals lying on their deathbed, appears at the foot of the bed at our final hour to make a gesture similar to the one she makes when she dispatches the letters, except that the gesture means come here, not go away. Due to some strange optical phenomenon, real or virtual, death seems much smaller now, as if her bones had shrunk, or perhaps she was always like that, and it’s our eyes, wide with fear, that make her look like a giant. Poor death. It makes us feel like going over and putting a hand on her hard shoulder and whispering a few words of sympathy in her ear, or, rather, in the place where her ear once was, underneath the parietal. Don’t get upset, madam death, such things are always happening, we human beings, for example, have long experience of disappointments, failures and frustrations, and yet we don’t give up, remember the old days when you used to snatch us away in the flower of our youth without a flicker of sadness or compassion, think of today when, with equal hardness of heart, you continue to do the same to people who lack all the necessities of life, we’ve probably been waiting to see who would tire first, you or us, I understand your distress, the first defeat is the hardest, then you get used to it, but please don’t take it the wrong way when I say that I hope it won’t be the last, I say this not out of any spirit of revenge, well, it would be a pretty poor revenge, wouldn’t it, rather like sticking my tongue out at the executioner who’s about to chop off my head, although, to be honest, we human beings can’t do much more than stick out our tongue at the executioner about to chop off our head, that must be why I can’t wait to see how you’re going to get out of the mess you’re in, with this letter that keeps coming and going and that cellist who can’t die at forty-nine because he’s just turned fifty. Death made an impatient gesture, roughly shrugged off the fraternal hand we had placed on her shoulder and got up from her chair. She seemed taller now, larger, a proper dame death, capable of making the earth tremble beneath her feet, with her shroud dragging behind her, throwing up clouds of smoke with each step she takes. Death is angry. It’s high time we stuck out our tongues at her.

APART FROM A FEW RARE INSTANCES, AS WITH THOSE UNUSUALLY
perspicacious people whom we mentioned before, who, as they lay dying, spotted her at the foot of the bed in the classic garb of a ghost swathed in a white sheet or, as appears to have happened with proust, in the guise of a fat woman dressed in black, death is usually very discreet and prefers not to be noticed, especially if circumstances oblige her to go out into the street. There is a widely held belief that since death, as some like to say, is one side of a coin of which god is the reverse, she must, like him, by her very nature, be invisible. Well, it isn’t quite like that. We are reliable witnesses to the fact that death is a skeleton wrapped in a sheet, that she lives in a chilly room accompanied by a rusty old scythe that never replies to questions, and is surrounded only by cobwebs and a few dozen filing cabinets with large drawers stuffed with index cards. One can understand, therefore, why death wouldn’t want to appear before people in that get-up, firstly, for reasons of personal pride, secondly, so that the poor passers-by wouldn’t die of fright when, on turning a corner, they came face to face with those large empty eye-sockets. In public, of course, death makes herself invisible, but not in private, at the critical moment, as attested by the writer marcel proust and those other unusually perspicacious people. The case of god is different. However hard he tried, he could never manage to make himself visible to human eyes and not because he can’t, since for him nothing is impossible, it’s simply that he wouldn’t know what face to wear when introducing himself to the beings he supposedly created and who probably wouldn’t recognize him anyway. There are those who say we’re very fortunate that god chooses not to appear before us, because compared with the shock we would get were such a thing to happen, our fear of death would be mere child’s play. Besides, all the many things that have been said about god and about death are nothing but stories, and this is just another one.

Anyway, death decided to go into town. She took off the sheet, which was all she was wearing, carefully folded it up and hung it over the back of the chair where we have seen her sitting. Apart from the chair and the desk, apart, too, from the filing cabinets and the scythe, the room is otherwise bare, save for that narrow door which leads we know not where. Since it appears to be the only way out, it would be logical to think that death will pass through there in order to go into town, however, this proves not to be the case. Without the sheet, death seemed to lose height, she’s probably, at most, in human measurements, a meter sixty-six or sixty-seven, and when naked, without a thread of clothing on, she seems still smaller, almost a tiny adolescent skeleton. No one would say that this is the same death who so violently rejected our hand on her shoulder when, moved by misplaced feelings of pity, we tried to offer solace in her sadness. There really is nothing in the world as naked as a skeleton. In life, it walks around doubly clothed, first by the flesh concealing it, then by the clothes with which said flesh likes to cover itself, if it hasn’t removed them to take a bath or to engage in other more pleasurable activities. Reduced to what she really is, the half-dismantled scaffolding of someone who long ago ceased to exist, all that remains for death now is to disappear. And that is precisely what is happening to her, from her head to her toes. Before our astonished eyes, her bones are losing substance and solidity, her edges are growing blurred, what was solid is becoming gaseous, spreading everywhere like a tenuous mist, it’s as if her skeleton were evaporating, now she’s just a vague sketch through which one can see the indifferent scythe, and suddenly death is no longer there, she was and now she isn’t, or she is, but we can’t see her, or not even that, she simply passed straight through the ceiling of the subterranean room, through the enormous mass of earth above, and set off, as she had privately determined to do when the violet-colored letter was returned to her for the third time. We know where she’s going. She can’t kill the cellist, but she wants to see him, to have him there before her gaze, to touch him without his realizing. She’s convinced that she will one day find a way of getting rid of him without breaking too many rules, but meanwhile she will find out who he is, this man whom death’s warnings could not reach, what powers he has, if any, or if, like an innocent fool, he continues to live, never once thinking that he ought to be dead. Shut up in this cold room with no windows and only a narrow door leading who knows where, we hadn’t noticed how quickly time passes. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and death must already be in the cellist’s house.