The Collected Novels of José Saramago (160 page)

The travelers heard this news as they were leaving Lisbon but did not consider it important, just one more report among others pertaining to the separation of the peninsula, which itself seemed to be of no great importance. A person can get used to anything, as can nations with even greater ease and speed, when all is said and done it is as if we were now traveling in an immense ship, so big that it would even be possible to live aboard for the rest of one’s life without ever seeing the prow or the stern, the peninsula was not a ship when it was still attached to Europe and there were still plenty of people who knew no country other than that of their birth, so tell me, if you please, what’s the difference. Now that Joaquim Sassa and Pedro Orce appear to have escaped at last from the obsessive prying of the scientists and there is nothing more to fear from the authorities, they can return to their respective homes, and José Anaiço too, for the starlings have unexpectedly lost interest in him, but the apparition, so to speak, of this woman has sent everything back to square one, this being fairly characteristic of women, although not always in so radical a manner. It was after a meeting in that same park where Joana Carda and José Anaiço had been the day before that the four of them decided, after reexamining the facts, to make the journey together that will take them to the spot marked with a line on the ground, one of those lines we have all had to make in life, but one with singular features, to judge from the agent and witness, coincidently one and the same person. Joana Carda had still not revealed the name of the place or even that of the nearest city, but merely indicated the general direction, We’ll take the highway north, then I’ll show you how to get there. Pedro Orce had taken José Anaiço discreetly aside to ask him if he thought it was a good idea to set out like this, blindly falling in with the whims of an eccentric woman with a stick in her hand, suppose this were a snare, a plot to kidnap them, a cunning ruse, On whose part, José Anaiço wanted to know, That I can’t tell you, perhaps they want to take us to the laboratory of some mad scientist, as you see in films, some Frankenstein or other, Pedro Orce replied smiling, No wonder people are always talking about the Andalusian imagination, it doesn’t take much water to start boiling, José Anaiço commented, It’s not because there isn’t much water, it’s because there’s so much fire, Pedro Orce replied, Forget it, José Anaiço concluded, what must be, will be, and they rejoined the others, who had started a discussion more or less in this vein, I don’t know how it happened, the stick was lying on the ground, I picked it up and drew a line, Did it ever occur to you that it might be a magic wand, It seemed rather big for a magic wand, and I’ve always heard it said that they are made of shimmering gold and crystal, with a star on top, Did you know it was an elm branch, I know very little about trees but in this case I’m sure a matchstick would have produced the same effect, Why do you say that, What has to be, has to be, and that’s something you can’t fight, Do you believe in fate, I believe in what must be, Then you’re just like José Anaiço, said Pedro Orce, he also believes in fate. The morning, with a light wind that blew like a playful mouthful of air, gave little promise of a warm day, Shall we go, José Anaiço asked, Let’s go, they all replied, including Joana Carda who had come to look for them.

Life is full of little episodes that seem unimportant, while others at a certain moment absorb all our attention, when we reappraise them later, in the light of their consequences, we find that our memory of the latter has faded while the former have come to seem decisive or, at
least, a link in a chain of successive and meaningful events, to give the example one expects, there will not be any frenetic loading and unloading, apparently so much to be expected when the luggage of four passengers is packed into a car as small as Deux Chevaux. This tricky operation engages everyone’s attention, each of them makes some suggestion or proposal, tries to lend a hand, but the main question latent in all this, which may well determine the final constellation of the four people in the car, is at whose side Joana Carda will travel. That Joaquim Sassa should drive Deux Chevaux seems right, on the first leg of a journey a car should always be driven by its owner, this is an undisputed fact that bespeaks prestige, prerogative, a sense of possession. The alternative driver, when the right moment comes, will be José Anaiço, since Pedro Orce, not so much because of his age but because he lives in a terrain disturbed by excavations and his job keeps him behind a counter, has never ventured into the complex mechanics of a steering wheel or gearshift, and it is rather soon to be asking Joana Carda if she knows how to drive. In the light of these details, it seems inevitable that these two should travel in the back seat, with the pilot and copilot logically seated in front. But Pedro Orce is Spanish, Joana Carda is Portuguese, neither of them speaks the other’s language, and besides they’ve only just met, later on, when they’ve had time to become acquainted, things will be different. The seat beside the driver, although considered by the superstitious and proved by the statistics to be the dead man’s seat, is generally regarded as a place of honor and should therefore be offered to Joana Carda, putting her on Joaquim Sassa’s right, with the other two men behind, and they should not have much difficulty understanding each other after sharing so many experiences. But the elm branch is much too big to go in front, and Joana Carda has made it clear that nothing will induce her to part with it. So, there being no alternative, Pedro Orce will sit in front for two explicable reasons, each more excellent than the other, first, as we have already said, because it is a place of honor, second, because Pedro Orce is the oldest person here, the one closest to death, on account of what we term, with black humor, the nature of life. But what really counts, more than this twofold reasoning, is that Joana Carda and José Anaiço want to ride together in the back seat, and by means of gestures, pauses, and feigned distractions they’ve managed it. Let us be seated, then, and get on our way.

The journey was uneventful, that’s what novelists in a hurry always say when they think that, in the ten minutes or ten hours they are about to eliminate, nothing has taken place that would warrant any special mention. Strictly speaking, it would be much more correct and honest to put it like this, As in all journeys, whatever their duration and length, there have been a thousand incidents, words and thoughts, and for a thousand you could read ten thousand, but the narrative is dragging, so I’m allowing myself to abbreviate, using three lines to cover two hundred kilometers, bearing in mind that the four people inside the car have traveled in silence, with neither thought nor gesture, pretending that by the end of the journey they will have nothing to relate. In our case, for example, it would be impossible not to derive some meaning from the fact that Joana Carda had quite naturally accompanied José Anaiço when he took over from Joaquim Sassa, who wanted a rest from driving, and that she had managed, God knows how, to squeeze the elm branch into the front, without hampering the driver or blocking his vision. And needless to say, when José Anaiço returned to the back seat, Joana Carda went with him, and so wherever José happened to be Joana was there too, although neither of them could yet say for what reason or purpose, or they knew but cannot bring themselves to say it, each moment has its own flavor and the flavor of this moment has not yet been lost.

There were few abandoned cars on the roads, and those they saw invariably had parts missing, having been stripped of their wheels, headlights, rearview mirrors, windshields, a door, sometimes all the doors, the seats, some cars were even reduced to a bare shell like crabshells with no meat left inside. But the gasoline shortage meant that traffic was thin and there were long intervals between one passing car and the next. Certain incongruities also hit one in the eye, like a cart being drawn by a donkey along the highway, or a squadron of cyclists who even at full speed were far below the minimum speed the signs foolishly continued to impose, indifferent to the force of reality. And there were also people traveling on foot, usually with a knapsack on their back, or, in rustic fashion, with two sacks loosely tied together at the top and strung over one shoulder like a saddlebag, the women with baskets on their heads. Many people were alone, but there were also families, to all appearances entire families with old and young and babes in arms. When Deux Chevaux had to leave the highway farther ahead, the number of pedestrians diminished only in proportion to the relative importance of the road. Three times Joaquim Sassa tried to ask people where they were going, and they all gave him the same answer, We’re on our way to see the world. They must have known that the world, the immediate world, strictly speaking, was now much smaller than before, perhaps for this very reason their dream of knowing all of it had become much more feasible, and when José Anaiço asked, But what about your home and your job, they calmly replied, Our home will be waiting for us and work we can always find, those are the priorities of the past and they must not be allowed to hinder the future. And perhaps it was just as well that people did not ask him the same question, whether too discreet or simply too absorbed in their own affairs, otherwise he would have been forced to explain, We’re accompanying this woman to examine the line she drew on the ground with this stick, and as far as their jobs were concerned they would have made a poor impression, perhaps Pedro Orce would have confessed, I’ve left my patients to look after themselves, and Joaquim Sassa argued, Let’s face it, office clerks are a dime a dozen, I won’t be missed, besides I’m enjoying a well-deserved vacation, and José Anaiço, I’m in the same situation, if I were to go back to school now I wouldn’t find any pupils, until October my time is my own, and Joana Carda, I’ve nothing to tell you about myself, if I’ve revealed nothing so far to these men with whom I’m traveling, there’s no reason why I should confide in strangers.

They had passed the town of Pombal when Joana Carda informed them, Just ahead there is a road to Soure, that’s the one we have to follow, since leaving Lisbon this was the first indication she had given of a specific destination, until now they had felt as if they were traveling through mist, or, adapting this particular situation to general circumstances, they were ancient and ingenuous mariners, We are being carried along by the sea, where will she carry us. They would soon find out. They did not stop in Soure, they went through narrow roads that crossed and forked into two or three branches, and sometimes they seemed to be going around in circles, until they finally reached a village that had a signpost at the limits bearing the name Ereira, and Joana Carda announced, It’s here.

Taken by surprise, José Anaiço, who was driving Deux Chevaux at that moment, put his foot down sharply on the brake, as if the line were right there in the middle of the road and he were about to run over it, not that there was any danger of destroying this prodigious bit of evidence, which Joana Carda had described as indestructible, but because of that holy terror that strikes even the most skeptical of men when routine is broken like the thread that broke as we ran it through our hand, confident and with no responsibility but that of preserving, strengthening, and prolonging this thread, and our hand too, as far as possible. Joaquim Sassa looked outside, he saw houses with trees above the rooftops and low-lying fields, the marshes and rice paddies are visible, it’s the gentle Mondego, better that than arid rock. Had this been what Pedro Orce was thinking, then Don Quixote of the sad countenance would inevitably come into the story, the one he possessed and the one he presented, when, stark naked, he began jumping up and down like a madman amid the peaks of the Sierra Morena, it would be absurd to draw a comparison with such episodes of knight-errantry, therefore Pedro Orce, on getting out of the car and putting his feet on the ground, simply confirms that the earth is still shaking. José Anaiço walked round Deux Chevaux, went, perfect gentleman that he is, to open the door on the other side, he pretends not to notice the ironic, patronizing smile of Joaquim Sassa, and taking the elm branch from Joana Carda, he extends his hand to help her out, she gives him hers, they clasp hands for longer than is necessary in order to guarantee firm support, but this is not the first time, the first and only other time so far was on the back seat, an impulse, but they did not utter a word either then or now, in a louder or softer tone of voice that might embrace the word spoken by the other with equal force.

This is indeed the hour for explanations, but Joaquim Sassa’s question demands others, like the ship’s captain who opens sealed orders suspecting that he may find nothing except a blank page, Now where do we go, Now we take this road, Joana Carda replied, and on the way I’ll tell you the rest of my story, not that it has anything to do with our coming here, but there’s little point in continuing to act like strangers when we’ve traveled all this way together, You could have told us sooner, either in Lisbon or during the journey, José Anaiço remarked, I don’t see why, either you came with me because you were convinced by a single word, or many more words would have been needed to convince you, and then it wouldn’t have done much good, As a reward for having believed in you, It’s for me to decide your reward and when it should be given, José Anaiço refrained from answering, he played for time, started looking at a row of poplars in the distance, but she heard Joaquim Sassa murmur, What a girl, Joana Carda smiled, I’m no girl, and I’m not the bitch you think I am, I don’t think you’re a bitch, Domineering, stubborn, conceited, affected, Good heavens, what a list, why not say mysterious and leave it at that, Well, there is a mystery, and I wouldn’t have brought anyone here who didn’t believe without seeing, not even you in whom no one believes, They’re beginning to believe in us now, But I was more fortunate and only needed to say one word, Let’s hope many more won’t be necessary now. This dialogue was conducted entirely between Joana Carda and Joaquim Sassa, given Pedro Orce’s difficulty in understanding and the obvious impatience of José Anaiço, who had been excluded from the conversation through his own fault. But observe how this curious situation, with the differences that always distinguish situations, simply repeats what happened in Granada, when Maria Dolores conversed with one Portuguese but would have preferred to be conversing with another, in this particular case, however, there will be time to explain everything, the man who is really thirsty will have his thirst quenched.