The Collected Novels of José Saramago (288 page)

So far there had been nothing new in the Registrar’s speech, although it was true that this was the first time that anyone in the
Central Registry had heard something resembling a solemn declaration of principles. The uniform mentality of the staff had been based on providing a service, which was regulated in the early days by rigour and precision, but, due perhaps to a certain degree of historical institutional weariness, had allowed among more recent generations the grave and continuing acts of neglect mentioned before and which were worthy of censure even from the most benevolent of viewpoints. Their dulled consciences touched, the staff assumed that this would be the main subject of the unexpected lecture, but they were soon undeceived. Besides, if they had paid a little more attention to the expression on the Registrar’s face, they would have realised at once that his objective was not of a disciplinary nature, it wasn’t a general reprimand, in which case his words would have sounded like sharp blows and his whole face would have been filled with a look of scornful indifference. None of these signs was apparent in the attitudes the Registrar struck, merely a feeling as of someone who, having been accustomed always to winning, finds himself for the first time in his life confronted by a force greater than his. And the few, in particular the deputies and the odd senior clerk, who thought they had deduced from the Registrar’s last words that he was about to announce the immediate introduction of modernisations which were already current coinage beyond the walls of the Central Registry, were soon forced to recognise, much to their amazement, that they had been wrong. The Registrar continued to speak, Do not imagine, however, that the thoughts to which I refer are merely such thoughts as would lead us to open our doors to modern inventions, that would not even require any thought, we would simply call in the appropriate technician and within twenty-four hours we would have the place full of machinery of every kind. Much as it pains me to say this and however scandalous it may seem to you, the matter that my thoughts called into question, much to my surprise, was one of the
fundamental aspects of Central Registry tradition, that is, the spatial distribution of the living and the dead, their obligatory separation, not only into different archives, but in different areas of the building. There was a faint whispering, as if the common thought of the astonished workers had become audible, there can be no other explanation, since none of them would have dared to utter a word. I realise that this troubles you, continued the Registrar, because, when I first thought it, I too felt almost as if I had committed a heresy, worse still, I felt guilty of offending against the memory of those who held this position of authority before me, and against those who worked at the desks now occupied by you, but the irresistible pressure of evidence forced me to confront the weight of tradition, a tradition which, all my life, I had considered immovable. Becoming aware of these facts was no chance occurrence nor the fruit of a sudden revelation. On two occasions since I have been head of the Central Registry, I have received two premonitory warnings, to which, at the time, I attributed no particular importance, except that I reacted to them in a way which I myself can only describe as primitive, but which I now realise paved the way for me to welcome with an open heart a third and more recent warning, about which I wül not speak on this occasion, for reasons which I believe should remain secret. The first occasion, which you will all doubtless remember, was when one of my deputies here present proposed that the archive of the dead should be arranged the other way around, that is, with the oldest farthest off and the most recent nearest. Because of the amount of work involved in such a change and bearing in mind the small staff we have at our disposal, the suggestion was manifestly impracticable, and I conveyed those feelings to the proposer of the idea, however, I did so in terms that I would prefer now to forget and that I would like him to forget too. The deputy referred to blushed with satisfaction and turned around to show himself, before turning back to face his
superior, nodding slightly, as if he were thinking, You see, if you paid a little more attention to what other people told you. The Registrar went on, I did not realise then that behind an apparently absurd idea, which, from the operational point of view, was indeed absurd, lay an intuition of something absolutely revolutionary, an unwitting, unconscious intuition its true, but no less effective for that. Of course, one could expect no more from the brain of a mere deputy, but as Registrar, I was obliged, both by the duties imposed on me by my post and by reason of experience, to understand immediately what the seeming futility of the idea concealed. This time the deputy did not turn around, and if he blushed with hurt pride no one saw it because he kept his head bowed. The Registrar paused to give a deep sigh and then went on, The second occasion was when the researcher went missing in the archive of the dead and was only discovered a week later, almost at death’s door, when we had nearly lost hope of finding him alive. Since it was, in a sense, such a common occurrence, for I cannot believe that anyone here has not, at least once in his life, got lost in there, I merely took the necessary precautions, issuing an order imposing the obligatory use of Ariadne’s thread, a classical, and if I may say, ironic description, of the length of string that I keep in the drawer. The fact that since then nothing similar has occurred is proof that it worked. In light of the direction my talk is taking, one might ask what conclusions I should have drawn from the affair of the lost genealogist, and I would say, with all humility, that but for certain other recent events and the thoughts which those events aroused in me, I would never have come to understand the double absurdity of separating the dead from the living. It is absurd in the first place from the archivistic point of view, when one considers that the easiest way of finding the dead would be to look for them among the living, since the latter, because they are alive, are always there before us, but it is equally absurd from the mnemonic point of view,
for if the dead are not kept in the midst of the living, sooner or later they will be forgotten and then, if you’ll forgive the rather vulgar expression, it’s the Devils own job to find them when we need them, which, again, sooner or later, we always do. For all those listening to me, without regard to rank or personal circumstance, it will be clear that I have been talking only about the Central Registry, not the outside world, where, in order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead. But I would go so far as to say that an identical need for physical hygiene and mental health should ensure that we of the Central Registry, we who write and manipulate the papers of life and death, should reunite the dead and the living in one single archive which we will call the historic archive, and where they will be inseparable, a circumstance which, beyond these walls, law, custom and fear do not allow. I will issue an order that will specify, firstly, that from this date on, the dead will remain in the same place that they occupied in the archive while alive, secondly, that gradually, file by file, document by document, from the most recent to the most ancient, we will move towards the reintegration of the past dead into the archive which will then become everyone’s present. I know that the second part of the operation will take several decades to carry out, that we will no longer be alive, nor, probably, will the subsequent generation, when the papers of the last dead person, torn, worm-eaten, darkened by the dust of ages, return to the world from which, by one last, unnecessary act of violence, they were removed. Just as definitive death is the ultimate fruit of the will to forget, so the will to remember will perpetuate our lives. Were I expecting you to express an opinion you would perhaps argue, with what you fondly imagine to be subtlety, that such a perpetuity will be of no use to those who have died. That would be the argument of one who sees no further than the end of his own nose. In that case, and always assuming I took the trouble to respond, I would have to explain to you that I have been talking only about life here, not death, and if you failed to realise that before, that is because you will never be capable of understanding anything at all.

The reverential silence in which the final part of his speech had been heard was rudely shaken by the sarcasm of those last words. The Registrar had gone back to being the boss they had always known, arrogant and ironic, implacable in his judgements, rigorous as regards discipline, as he immediately went on to demonstrate, Purely in your interests, not in mine, I must make it clear to you that you would be making the biggest mistake of your lives if you were to consider the fact that I have spoken to you with an open heart and mind a sign of personal weakness or a diminution of official authority. The reason I did not simply issue an order for the reintegration or unification of the two archives to take place, without further explanation, as I would have been perfectly entitled to do, was that I wanted you to understand the deeper reasons behind the decision, it was because I wanted the work awaiting you to be carried out in the spirit of one who feels he is engaged in building something and not with the sense of bureaucratic alienation of one who has simply been ordered to put one set of papers together with another. Discipline in the Central Registry will continue to be what it has always been, no distractions, no daydreaming, no word not direcdy concerned with work, no unpunctuality, no negligence in matters of personal behaviour, in either manners or appearance. Senhor José thought, He must mean me, because I haven’t shaved, but this didn’t worry him, the reference was probably intended to be a general one, but, just in case, he lowered his head very slowly, like a student who has not learned his lesson and wants to avoid being called to the blackboard. It seemed that the speech had reached its end, but no one moved, they had to await the order to go back to work, which is why they all jumped when the Registrar said in a loud, sharp tone, Senhor José. Senhor José got swiftly to his feet, What can he want of me, he no longer thought that the reason for that abrupt call could be his unshaven beard, something far more serious than a simple reprimand was about to take place, or so he judged from the severe expression on the Registrars face, at least that was what a terrible fear was beginning to scream at him inside his head when he saw the Registrar advancing in his direction, stopping in front of him, Senhor José can barely breathe, he awaits the first word as a condemned man waits for the blade to fall, for the rope to tighten or for the firing squad to shoot, then the Registrar said, That beard. He then turned on his heel and signalled to his deputies for work to recommence. There was a certain look of placid calm on his face now, an air of strange peace, as if he too had come to the end of a day’s work. No one will share these impressions with Senhor José, in the first place, so as not to fill his head with even more fantasies, secondly, because the order is clear, No word not direcdy concerned with work.

One enters the cemetery via an old building with a façade which is the twin sister of the Central Registry façade. There are the same three black stone steps, the same ancient door in the middle, the same five narrow windows above. Apart from the great two-leaved door alongside the façade, the only observable difference would be the sign above the entrance, in the same enamelled lettering, that says General Cemetery. The large door was closed many years ago, when it was clear that access through there had become impracticable, that it had ceased satisfactorily to fulfil the end for which it had been intended, that is, to allow easy passage not only for the dead and their companions, but also for those who would visit the dead afterwards. Like all cemeteries in this or any other world, it was tiny when it started, a small patch of land on the outskirts of what was still the embryo of a city, turned to face the open air of the fields, but later, alas, with the passing of time, the inevitable happened, it kept growing and growing and growing, until it became the immense necropolis that it is today. At first, it was surrounded by a wall and, for generations, whenever the pressure inside began to hinder both the orderly accommodation of the dead and the free circulation of the living, they did the same as in the Central Registry, they would demolish the walls and rebuild them a little farther on. One day, it must be close to four centuries ago, the then keeper of the
cemetery had the idea of leaving it open on all sides, apart from the area facing onto the street, alleging that this was the only way to rekindle the sentimental relationship between those inside and those outside, much diminished at the time, as anyone could see just by looking at the neglected state of the graves, especially the oldest ones. He believed that, although walls served the positive aims of hygiene and decorum, ultimately, they had the perverse effect of aiding forgetfulness, which is hardly surprising, given the popular wisdom which has declared, since time began, that what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over. We have many reasons to think that the motives behind the Registrar’s decision to break with tradition and routine and to unify the archives of the dead and of the living, thus reintegrating human society in the specific documentary area under his jurisdiction, were purely internal. It is, therefore, all the more difficult for us to understand why no one immediately applied the earlier lesson provided by a humble, primitive cemetery keeper, who, as was only natural in his line of work and bearing in mind the times he lived in, was doubtless not particularly well educated, but was, nevertheless, a man of revolutionary instincts, and who, sad to say, has not even been given a decent gravestone to point out the fact to future generations. On the contrary, for four centuries now, curses, insults, calumnies and humiliations have been heaped upon the memory of the unfortunate innovator, for he is held to be the person historically responsible for the present state of the necropolis, which is described as disastrous and chaotic, mostly because not only does the General Cemetery still have no walls about it but it could never possibly be walled in again. Allow us to explain. We said earlier that the cemetery grew, not, of course, because of some intrinsic reproductive powers of its own, as though, if you will permit us a somewhat macabre example, the dead had engendered more dead, but simply because the city’s population grew and so therefore did its
size. Even when the General Cemetery was still surrounded by walls, something occurred which, in the language of municipal bureaucracy, is called an urban demographic explosion, and this happened more than once and in successive ages. Little by little, people came to live in the wide fields behind the cemetery, small groups of houses appeared, villages, hamlets, second homes, which grew in turn, occasionally contiguous, but still leaving between them large empty spaces, which were used as farmland or woods or pasture or areas of scrub. Those were the areas into which the General Cemetery advanced when its walls were demolished. Like floodwaters that begin by encroaching on the low-lying land, snaking along valleys and then, slowly, creeping up hillsides, so the graves gained ground, often to the detriment of agriculture, for the besieged owners had no alternative but to sell off strips of land, at other times, the graves skirted orchards, wheat fields, threshing floors and cattle pens, always within sight of the houses, and, often, if you like, right next door. Seen from the air, the General Cemetery looks like an enormous felled tree, with a short, fat trunk, made up of the nucleus of original graves, from which four stout branches reach out, all from the same growing point, but which, later, in successive bifurcations, extend as far as you can see, forming, in the words of an inspired poet, a leafy crown in which life and death are mingled, just as in real trees birds and foliage mingle. That is why the main door of the General Cemetery ceased to serve as a passageway for funeral processions. It is opened only very infrequently, when a researcher into old stones, having studied one of the very early funerary markers in the place, asks permission to make a mould of it, with the consequent deployment of raw materials, such as plaster, tow and wires, and, a not unusual complement, delicate, precise photographs, the sort that require spotlights, reflectors, batteries, light meters, umbrellas and other artifacts, none of which are allowed through the small door that leads from the building into the cemetery because it would disturb the administrative work carried on inside.