The Collected Novels of José Saramago (151 page)

Accompanied by the canopy of birds overhead, the travelers are heading for Granada and the surrounding region, when they are obliged to seek assistance at the crossroads, for the map they are using does not indicate the village of Orce, how very inconsiderate on the part of the cartographers, I’ll bet they didn’t forget to indicate their own hometowns, in future they should remember how vexing it is for someone to check out his birthplace on a map only to find a blank space, this has given rise to the gravest of problems for those trying to establish personal and national identities. Along the route, they pass Seat cars and Pegaso trucks, these can be recognized immediately by their insignia and license plates, and the villages through which Deux Chevaux passes have that sleepy air said to be characteristic of the south, the people here are accused by northern tribes of being indolent, facile and arrogant remarks of racial disparagement made by those who have never had to work with the sun beating down on them. But it is true that there are differences between one world and another, everybody knows that on Mars the inhabitants are green, while here on earth they are every color except green.

From an inhabitant of the north we would never hear what we are about to hear, if we stop to ask the man going by astride a donkey what he thinks about this extraordinary business, the Iberian peninsula’s having separated from Europe, he will pull the donkey’s reins, Whoa!, and reply without mincing his words, The whole thing’s a joke. Roque Lozano judges from appearances, they have helped him to form his own judgment, which is easy to understand, behold the bucolic tranquillity of these fields, the serene sky, the harmony of the rocks, the mountains of Morena and Aracena, which have remained unaltered since they were born, or, if not that long, since we were born. But television has shown the whole world how the Pyrenees have split open like a watermelon, let us say for argument’s sake, using a metaphor within the grasp of rustic minds, I don’t trust television, unless I can see things with these eyes of mine that the earth will one day devour, I don’t believe in them, Roque Lozano replies without dismounting, So what are you going to do, I’ve left my family to look after my business and I’m off to see if it’s true, With these eyes of yours that the earth will devour, With these eyes of mine that the earth hasn’t devoured yet, And do you expect to arrive there riding a donkey, When it can’t carry my weight any longer, we’ll both go by foot, What name does your donkey answer to, A donkey doesn’t answer to anything, it’s called by its master, So what do you call your donkey then, Platero, and we’re both making the journey, Platero and I, Can you tell us where Orce is, No sir, I don’t know, It would appear to be a little way beyond Granada, Oh, in that case, you’ve still got some way to go, and I must bid you gentlemen from Portugal farewell, for my journey is much longer and I’m riding a donkey, Probably by the time you get there, you won’t be able to see Europe any longer, If I don’t see it, that’ll be because the place never existed. Roque Lozano is absolutely right when all is said and done, because for something to exist there are two essential conditions, that a man should see it and that he be able to give it a name.

Joaquim Sassa and José Anaiço spent the night in Aracena, following in the footsteps of our King, Dom Afonso III, who conquered the town from the Moors, but his victory was the briefest of false dawns, for those were the Dark Ages. The starlings disappeared into the various trees in the vicinity, being too many to stay together as a flock, as they would have preferred. In the hotel, already lying down, each in his own bed, José Anaiço and Joaquim Sassa discuss the threatening images and words they have seen and heard on television, Venice in peril, and that appeared to be true, St. Mark’s Square flooded at a time
when the water is not normally high, a smooth, liquid surface that reflected in every detail the campanile and the façade of the Basilica, As the Iberian peninsula gradually moves away, the announcer said in solemn, measured tones, the damaging effect on tides is certain to worsen, grave consequences are predicted throughout the entire Mediterranean basin, the cradle of civilization, we must save Venice, this is our plea to humanity, even if it means making one fewer hydrogen bomb, one fewer nuclear submarine, if it is not too late. Joaquim Sassa, like Roque Lozano, has never seen the Pearl of the Adriatic, but José Anaiço could vouch for its existence, it is true that he had not given it either its name or its sobriquet, but he had seen it with his own living eyes, had touched it with his own living hands, What a terrible tragedy if Venice should be lost, he said, and these anguished words affected Joaquim Sassa more than the agitated waters in the canals, the tumultuous currents, the encroaching tide penetrating the ground floors of the palaces, the flooded quaysides, the awesome spectacle of an entire city sinking, an incomparable Atlantis, a submerged cathedral, the Moors, their eyes blinded by water, striking the bell with their bronze hammers until seaweed and barnacles paralyze the mechanism, liquid echoes, the Christ Pantocrator of the Basilica finally in theological conversation with the seagods subordinate to Jupiter, the Roman Neptune, the Greek Poseidon, and Venus and Amphitrite, now deliberately restored to the waters from which they emerged. Only the God of Christians is without a wife. Perhaps I’m to blame, Joaquim Sassa murmured, Don’t overestimate yourself to the point of thinking you’re to blame for everything, I’m referring to Venice, the loss of Venice, If Venice should be lost, everyone will be to blame, and that goes for past generations as well, the city has been declining for some time through neglect and speculation, I’m not talking about that, the whole world is suffering on that account, I’m referring to what I did, I threw a stone into the sea and some people believe that that caused the peninsula to break away from Europe. If you should have a son one day, he will die because you were born, no one will absolve you from this crime, the hands that make and weave are the same hands that dismantle and undo, right engenders wrong, wrong produces right, Poor consolation for a man in distress, There is no consolation, I’m afraid, man is a creature beyond consoling.

Perhaps Joaquim Sassa, who voiced this opinion, is right, perhaps man is a creature who cannot and will not be consoled, but certain human actions, with no meaning but that of being to all appearances meaningless, sustain the hope that man will one day come to weep on man’s shoulder, probably when it is too late, when there is no longer time for anything else. The television announcer mentioned one of these actions in the news bulletin and tomorrow the newspapers will debate it further, with detailed statements from historians, critics, and poets, this was the secret landing in France, on a beach near Collioure, of a band of Spanish citizens and men of letters, who in the dead hours of the night, fearing neither hooting owls nor ghosts, burst into the cemetery where the poet Antonio Machado had been buried for many years. They had a brush with the gendarmes, who, alerted by some nighthawk, pursued the grave robbers but could not catch up with them. The sack containing the poet’s mortal remains was thrown into a launch waiting on the beach, its engine running quietly, and within five minutes the pirate ship was out in the open sea, on the shore the gendarmes fired into the air, just to give vent to their annoyance, not because they felt bereft of the poetic bones. In an interview with France-Presse, the
moire
of Collioure tried to discredit the deed, even going so far as to insinuate that no one could be sure after all this time that the remains were those of Antonio Machado, nor is it worth inquiring how many years have passed, only through some improbable oversight on the part of the local authorities would they still be found there, despite the particular reverence with which the bones of poets are usually handled.

The journalist, a man of much experience, but so lacking in skepticism that he did not even appear to be French, stated that in his opinion, the cult of relics requires only a suitable object, its authenticity is of no importance, for the sake of verisimilitude one asks for nothing more than a mild resemblance, consider the Cathedral of Valencia, where in times gone by the faith was promoted with a collection of precious relics, namely, the chalice used by Our Lord during the Last Supper, the shirt He wore as a boy, some drops of Our Lady’s milk, locks of Her hair, fair in color, and the comb She used, and also some fragments from the Holy Cross, some indefinable object that had belonged to one of the Holy Innocents, two of those thirty pieces, made of silver after all, with which Judas allowed himself to be bought through no fault of his own, and, to end the list, one of St. Christopher’s teeth, four fingers in length and three in width, dimensions undeniably excessive, that will surprise only those unaware of the saint’s gigantic proportions. Where will the Spaniards bury the poet now, asked Joaquim Sassa, who had never read Machado, and José Anaiço replied, If, despite the ups and downs of life and the reversals of fortune, everything has its place and every place claims what belongs to it, what remains of Antonio Machado today must be buried somewhere in the fields of Soria, beneath a holm oak, the Castilian word is
encina,
without any cross or tombstone, nothing but a tiny mound of earth, it doesn’t even have to look like a stretched-out corpse, in the fullness of time earth will turn to earth and all will be equal. And we Portuguese, what poet should we go and look for in France, if any of our poets ever stayed there, As far as I know, only Mario de Sà Cameiro, but in his case there’s no point even trying, first of all, because he wouldn’t have wanted to come, second, because the cemeteries in Paris are well protected, third, because so many years have passed since he died, the administration of a capital city would not commit the errors of a provincial town, especially one with the additional excuse of being Mediterranean, And besides, what purpose would it serve to remove him from one cemetery in order to put him in another, now that in Portugal it is forbidden to bury the dead in an unauthorized place or in the open air, not even his bones would rest in peace if we were to leave him in the shade of an olive tree in the Parque Eduardo VII, But are there any olive trees left in the Parque Eduardo VII, That’s a good question, but I can’t give you an answer, and now let’s get some sleep, for tomorrow we must go in search of Pedro Orce, the man who can feel the earth shaking. They switched off the light, lay there with open eyes waiting to drop off, but, before sleep arrived, Joaquim asked another question, And what about Venice, what’s going to happen there, Believe me, the easiest of all the difficult tasks in this world would be to save Venice, all they would have to do would be to close the lagoon, and link the islands together so that the sea wouldn’t be able to enter so readily, if the Italians aren’t capable of carrying out the job on their own, let them send for the Dutch, they could dry out Venice in no time at all, We should help, we have certain responsibilities, We are no longer Europeans, well, perhaps that’s not entirely true, For the time being you are still in territorial waters, interrupted an unknown voice.

In the morning, as they were paying their bill, the manager started to unburden himself, the hotel was almost empty at the height of the season, such a pity, Joaquim Sassa and José Anaiço, absorbed in their own affairs, had not even noticed the dearth of guests. And the grottoes, no one is visiting the grottoes, the man repeated in dismay, for no one to visit the grottoes was the worst of catastrophes. On the street there was great excitement, the children of Aracena had never seen so many starlings together, not even when they went bird-watching in the countryside, but the pleasure of this novelty did not last long, no sooner had the Portuguese Deux Chevaux started off in the direction of Seville than the starlings took flight as if the entire flock were a single bird, they circled twice as if saying farewell or trying to get their bearings, and disappeared behind the castle of the Knights Templar. The morning is clear, you could touch the sky with your fingers, and today promises to be less hot than yesterday, but the journey is long, From here to Granada it’s more than three hundred kilometers, and then we have to go in search of Orce, let’s hope we’re successful and we find the man, these were the words of José Anaiço, that they might not find the man was a possibility that only now came to mind, And if we do find him, what are we going to say to him, now it was Joaquim Sassa’s turn to be doubtful. In the merciless light of another day, or perhaps as a result of night’s evil counsel, he suddenly found all these events absurd, could it be true that a continent had divided simply because someone had thrown a stone into the sea, a stone that exceeded the strength of the person who threw it, yet there was no shadow of doubt that a stone had been thrown and the continent had divided, and a Spaniard swears that he can feel the earth shaking, and a flock of demented birds is following a Portuguese schoolmaster everywhere, and who knows what else has happened or is about to happen throughout the peninsula, Let’s talk about your stone and my starlings, and he will talk about the earth that shook or is still shaking, And then, Then, if there is nothing more to see, nothing to experience and learn, we’ll go home, you to your job, I to my school, pretend it was all a dream, and by the way, you still haven’t told me what you do for a living, I work in an office, I also work in an office, I’m a teacher. They both laughed, and Deux Chevaux, ever prudent, pointed out on the gauge that they were running out of gas. They refilled the tank at the first service station they encountered, but they had to wait more than half an hour, the line of vehicles stretched way down the road, everyone was anxious to have a full tank. They got back on the road, Joaquim Sassa was now seriously worried, There’s a run on gas, very soon they’ll close the pumps, and then what, We should have been prepared for this, gas is a sensitive commodity, unstable, whenever there’s a crisis it’s the first indication, some years ago there was a ban here on supplies of gas, I don’t know if you can remember that or even heard about it, it was utter chaos, I’m beginning to think we’ll never reach Orce, Don’t be a pessimist, I’m a born pessimist.