The Collected Novels of José Saramago (145 page)

The engineers were not on the spot when this incredible event took place, but they noticed that something abnormal had occurred, the dials on the observation panels indicated that the river had stopped feeding the great aquatic basin. Three technicians set off in a jeep to investigate the intriguing development, they made their way along the edge of the weir, considered the different possible hypotheses, they had plenty of time to do so for they traveled almost five kilometers, and one of those hypotheses was that a subsidence or landslide on the mountain might have diverted the river’s course, another was that it might be the work of the French, typical Gallic perfidy, notwithstanding the bilateral agreement about fluvial waters and their hydroelectric uses, yet another hypothesis, and the most radical of all, was that the source, the fountainhead, the spring, had dried up, the eternity that appeared to exist but did not exist after all. On this point, opinions were divided. One of the engineers, a quiet man, the thoughtful type, and someone who enjoyed life in Orbaiceta, feared that they might send him to some remote place, the others rubbed their hands with glee, perhaps they might be transferred to one of the dams on the Tagus, or closer to Madrid and the Gran Via. Debating these personal worries they reached the far end of the reservoir, where they found a drainage ditch but no river, nothing but a thin trickle of water still seeping from the soft earth, a muddy swirl that would not have enough power to turn a toy waterwheel. Where the devil can the river have got to, exclaimed the driver of the jeep, and he couldn’t have been more forthright and explicit. Puzzled, amazed, uneasy and concerned, the engineers once more began discussing among themselves the various hypotheses mentioned earlier, and when they saw that there was nothing to be gained from this discussion, they returned to the offices attached to the dam, then went on to Orbaiceta where the administrators awaited them, having already been informed of the river’s mysterious disappearance. There were recriminations, exclamations of disbelief, telephone calls to Pamplona and Madrid, and the final outcome of these exhausting discussions was expressed in an order of the utmost simplicity, broken down into three successive and complementary stages, follow the course of the river upstream, find out what happened, and say nothing to the French.

Next morning before sunrise, the expedition set out for the frontier, keeping alongside or in sight of the parched river, and when the inspectors arrived, weary, they realized that there would be no more Irati. Through a crack that could not have been more than three meters wide, the waters rushed into the earth, roaring like a tiny Niagara. On the other side, the French had already started to gather, it would have been sublimely naive to think that their neighbors, astute and Cartesian, would have failed to notice the phenomenon, but at least they showed themselves to be as amazed and dumbfounded as the Spaniards on this side, and all brothers in ignorance. The two sides got around to speaking, but the conversation was neither wide-ranging nor profitable, little more than exclamations of justified alarm, a tentative airing of new hypotheses on the part of the Spaniards, in short, a general atmosphere of irritation that could find no obvious target, the French were soon smiling, after all they continued to be masters of the river down to the frontier, they would not need to modify their maps.

That afternoon, helicopters from both countries flew over the area, took
photographs, observers were lowered with windlasses and suspended over the cataract, they looked and saw nothing, only the black gaping hole and the curving line and the shining surface of the water. In order to make some useful progress, the municipal authorities of Orbaiceta on the Spanish side, and of Larrau on the French side, met near the river under a tent set up for the occasion and dominated by the three flags, the Spanish bicolor and the French tricolor alongside the flag of Navarre, with the intention of examining the tourist potential of a natural phenomenon that must certainly be unique in the world, and how it might be exploited to their mutual advantage. Having considered the inadequacy and undoubtedly makeshift nature of the methods of analysis at their disposal, the gathering failed to draw up any document defining the obligations and rights of each party, so a joint commission was nominated and entrusted with preparing an agenda for another formal meeting, with all possible haste. At the last minute, however, a complication arose that upset the relative consensus they had reached, this being the almost simultaneous interventions, in Madrid and Paris, of the two States’ delegates to the permanent commission charged with settling boundary disputes. These gentlemen expressed grave misgivings. The first thing to do was to see where the hole was opening up, whether toward the Spanish side or toward the French side. It seemed a trivial detail, but once the essentials had been explained, the delicacy of the matter became clear. It was clearly beyond question that from now on the Irati belonged entirely to France, under the jurisdiction of the district authorities in the Lower Pyrenees, but if the crack was entirely on the Spanish side, in the province of Navarre, further negotiations would be needed, since both countries, in a sense, would bear an equal share. If, on the other hand, the crack extended to the French side as well, then the problem was entirely French, just as the respective primary resources, the river and the gaping hole, belonged to them. Faced with this new situation, the two authorities, concealing any mental reservations, agreed to keep in touch until some solution could be found to this crucial problem. In their turn, with a joint declaration that had been laboriously drafted, the two nations’ Ministries for Foreign Affairs announced their intention of pursuing urgent talks within the scope of the aforesaid permanent commission for boundary matters, to be advised, as one would expect, by their respective teams of geodetic experts.

It was about this time that vast numbers of geologists from all over the world began to appear on the scene. Between Orbaiceta and Larrau there were already a considerable number of foreign geologists, if not quite as many as suggested earlier. But now all the wise men of this and other lands began to arrive in force, the inspectors of landslides and natural disasters, erratic strata and blocks, each carrying a tiny hammer in one hand, tapping on everything that so much as looked like stone. A French journalist called Michel, something of a wit, quipped to a Spanish colleague, a serious fellow named Miguel, who had already reported to Madrid that the crack was de-fi-nite-ly Spanish, or, to speak in geographical and nationalist terms, Navarrese, Why don’t you people just keep it, was what the insolent Frenchman said, if the crack gives you so much pleasure and you need it so badly, after all, in the Cirque de Gavarnie alone we have a waterfall four hundred and twenty meters high, we don’t need any inverted artesian wells. Miguel could have replied that on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees there are also plenty of waterfalls, and some of them very fine and high, but the problem was different here, a waterfall open to the sky presents no mystery, always looks the same, in full view of everyone, while in the case of the Irati, you can see where the crack originates, but no one knows where it ends, just like life itself. But it was another journalist, a Galician, moreover, who was passing through, as often happens with Galicians, who came up with the question that had yet to be asked, Where does this water go. This was at a time when geologists in both camps were engaged in scientific discussions, and the question, like that of a timid child, was barely heard by the person who is now putting it on record. Since the accent was Galician, therefore discreet and cautious, it was drowned out by Gallic rapture and Castilian bluster, but then others arrived to repeat the question, proudly claiming to have thought of it first, but then no one pays any heed to tiny nations, this is not a persecution mania, but a historical fact. The debate among the wise men had become almost incomprehensible for the layman, yet two basic theories emerged nonetheless from their discussions, that of the monoglaciologists and that of the polyglaciologists, both inflexible, and soon in opposition, like two conflicting religions, the one monotheist, the other polytheist. Certain statements even sounded interesting, such as the one about deformations, certain deformations that might be due either to a tectonic elevation or to an isotonic compensation for erosion. All the more so, they added, since our examination of the actual forms of the cordillera allows us to conclude that it is not old, that is to say, not old in geological terms. All this, probably, had something to do with the crack. After all, when a mountain is subjected to such play of traction, it is not surprising that there comes a day when it finds itself obliged to give way, to splinter, to collapse, or, as in this instance, to crack open. This was not the case with the great slab lying inert on the mountains of Alberes, but the geologists had not seen it, the slab was far away, in a remote spot, no one came near it, the dog Ardent chased after the rabbit and did not return.

After two days, the members of the commission for boundaries were engaged in field work, taking measurements with their theodolites, checking against their tables, calculating with their instruments, and comparing all these data against the aerial photographs, the French somewhat disgruntled because there was no longer any doubt that the crack was Spanish, as the journalist Miguel had been the first to argue, when suddenly there was news of another fracture. No more was said about tranquil Orbaiceta nor about the River Irati, now cut off,
sic transit gloria mundi
and of Navarre. The journalists, some of whom were women, swarmed on to the crucial site in the Eastern Pyrenees, fortunately endowed with excellent means of access, so many and so excellent that within a few hours everyone who mattered was assembled there, people had even come from as far away as Toulouse and Barcelona. The highways were congested, and by the time the police on both sides of the border intervened to divert the flow of traffic it was much too late, the cars stretched for kilometer after kilometer, mechanical chaos, it soon became necessary to take drastic measures, to make everyone turn back in the other lane, which meant pulling down barriers, jamming the sides of the road with cars, an inferno, the Greeks had good reason to locate hell in this region. Particularly useful in dealing with the crisis were the helicopters, those flying constructions or airships capable of landing almost anywhere, and, whenever it proves impossible to land, they imitate the hummingbird, drawing close until they almost touch the flower, the passengers do not need a ladder, a little jump and that is all, they enter the corolla at once, amid the stamens and pistils, breathing in the aroma, frequently that of naphtha and charred flesh. Heads lowered, they set off running, anxious to find out what has happened, some of them have come straight from the Irati, already experienced in structural geology, but not equipped to cope with anything quite like this.

The crack cuts across the road and the entire parking area and runs on, thinning out on both sides, heading toward the valley, where it disappears from sight, and winding up the mountain slope, until it finally vanishes among the bushes. We are standing right on the frontier, the real one, the line of separation in this nameless limbo between the stations of the two police forces, the
aduana
and the
douane, la bandera
and
le drapeau.
At a prudent distance, for one cannot rule out the possibility of a landslide if the edges of the ruptured area should cave in, technicians exchange phrases devoid of any meaning or purpose, one cannot refer to that babble of voices as dialogue, and, to make matters worse, use loudspeakers to hear each other better, while the experts, inside the pavilions, speak on the telephone, one minute among themselves, the next with Madrid and Paris. No sooner have they landed than the journalists are off to discover what happened, and they all pick up the same story with some embroidered variants, which they will embellish further with their imagination, but in simple language, the person who vouched for the occurrence was the motorist who, passing through as darkness fell, sensed his car give a sudden lurch, as if the wheels had bounced across a pothole in the middle of the road, and he got out to see what it was, thinking they might be resurfacing the road and had unwisely forgotten to put up a warning sign. By this time, the crack was half a span wide and at most some four meters long. The man, who was Portuguese, called Sousa, and traveling with his wife and parents-in-law, went back to the car and told them, It looks as if we’re already in Portugal, would you believe it, there’s an enormous pothole in the road, it’s a miracle it didn’t flatten the tires or snap the axle. It was no pothole, nor was it enormous, but the words, as we have written them, have one real advantage, simply because they are exaggerated, they allay fear, calm the nerves, why, precisely because they dramatize. The wife, without paying much attention to what he said, replied, You’d better take a look, and he decided to heed her advice, although that was not her intention, the woman’s words were more an exclamation than an order, one of those exclamations that often serve as a reply, he got out of the car again and went to check the tires, fortunately there was no apparent damage. Within the next few days, back in his native Portugal, he will become a hero, be interviewed on radio and television, make statements to the press. You were the first to see it happen, Senhor Sousa, give us your impression of that terrible moment. He will repeat his story countless times, and he will always finish off his embroidered version of events with an anxious, rhetorical question, calculated to make the listener shudder as he himself shudders with delicious ecstasy. Just think, if the hole had been bigger, as they say it now is, we would have fallen in, God knows how far down, and the Galician must have been thinking more or less the same when he asked, as you may recall, Where does that water go.

How far, that is the crucial question. The first practical step would be to examine the damage, to check the depth, and then to study, define, and put into operation the appropriate measures in order to fill in the breach, no word could be more apt, it is universal, after all, and one is tempted to believe that someone thought of it one day, or invented it, so that it could be fittingly invoked whenever the earth should crack open. The investigation, once completed, registered a depth of little more than twenty meters, of no real significance, given the resources of modern engineering in carrying out public works. From Spain and from France, from near and from afar, concrete mixers were brought in, those interesting machines that with their simultaneous movements remind one of the earth in space, of rotation, of removal, and upon reaching the spot they poured out the concrete, torrential, measured to achieve the right effect with great quantities of rough stones and fast-setting cement. The filling-up operation was well under way when one imaginative expert suggested that they should attach some clamps, a method once used to heal human wounds, large clamps made of steel, which would secure the edges, assisting, as it were, and speeding up the process of closing the breach. The idea was approved by the bilateral commission coping with the emergency, the Spanish and French metallurgists immediately began carrying out the necessary tests, checking the alloy, the thickness and the section of the material, the relationship between the size of the spike that would be driven into the ground and the space covered, in short, technical details intended for the specialist and here mentioned somewhat superficially. The crack swallowed up the torrent of stones and gray sludge as if it were the River Irati pouring into the depths of the land, deep echoes could be heard coming from the earth, it was even speculated that there might be some gigantic hollow down below, a cavern, some kind of insatiable gorge, And if this is the case, there is no point in carrying on, you simply build a bridge over the gap, probably the easiest and most economical solution of all, and bring in the Italians, who have a great deal of experience when it comes to building viaducts. But, after God knows how many tons and cubic meters had been poured in, the sounding line registered a depth of seventeen meters, then fifteen, then twelve, the level of the concrete went on rising, the battle was won. The technicians, laborers, and policemen embraced each other, flags were waved, the television announcers, excited, read the latest bulletins and gave their own opinions, praising this titanic struggle, this collective victory, international solidarity in action, even from Portugal, that tiny country, a convoy of ten concrete mixers set out, they have a long journey ahead, more than one thousand five hundred kilometers, an extraordinary achievement, the cement they are carrying won’t be necessary, but history will remember their symbolic gesture.