The Collected Novels of José Saramago (314 page)

It is said that a long time ago a god decided to make a man out of the clay from the earth that he had previously created, and then, in order that the man should have breath and life, he blew into his nostrils. The whisper put around by certain stubborn, negative spirits, when they do not dare to say so out loud, is that after this supreme act of creation, the god never again practiced the arts of pottery, a roundabout way of denouncing him for, quite simply, having downed tools. Given its evident importance, this is too serious a matter to be treated in simplistic terms, it requires thought, complete impartiality and a great deal of objectivity. It is a historical fact that from that memorable day onward, the work of modeling clay ceased to be the exclusive attribute of the creator and passed to the incipient skills of his creatures, who, needless to say, are not equipped with sufficient life-giving puff. As a result, fire was given responsibility for all the subsidiary operations that can, through color, sheen or even sound, endow whatever emerges from the kilns with a reasonable semblance of life. However, this would be to judge by appearances. Fire can do a great deal, as no one can deny, but it cannot do everything, it has serious limitations and even some grave defects, for example, a form of insatiable bulimia which causes it to devour and reduce to ashes everything it finds in its path. Returning, however, to the matter in hand, to the pottery and its workings, we all know that if you put wet clay in a kiln it will have exploded in less time than it takes to say so. Fire lays down one irrevocable condition if we want it to do what we expect of it, the clay must be as dry as possible when it is placed in the kiln. And this is where we humbly return to that business about breathing into nostrils, and here we will have to recognize how very unjust and imprudent we were to take up and adopt as our own the heretical idea that the said god coldly turned his back on his own work. Yes, it is true, that no one ever saw him again, but he left us what was perhaps the best part of himself, the breath, the puff of air, the breeze, the soft wind, the zephyr, the very things that are now gently entering the nostrils of the six clay dolls that Cipriano Algor and his daughter have, with great care, just placed on one of the drying shelves. That god, a writer as well as a potter, knew how to write straight on crooked lines, for, not being here himself to do the blowing, he has sent someone to do the job for him, so that the still fragile life of these clay figures will not be extinguished tomorrow in the blind and brutal embrace of the fire. When we say tomorrow, that is, of course, just a manner of speaking, because if it is true that, in the beginning, one puff of air was enough for the clay of the man to gain breath and life, many more will be necessary before the jesters, clowns, bearded Assyrians, mandarins, Eskimos, and nurses, those who are here now and those who will later form serried ranks on these same shelves, gradually lose, by evaporation, the water without which they would never have become what they are, and can thus go safely into the kiln in order to be transformed into what they will be. The dog Found had got up on his hind legs and rested his paws on the edge of the shelf to get a closer view of the six idols lined up in front of him. He sniffed once, twice, and immediately lost interest, but not quickly enough to avoid the sharp, painful slap his master dealt him on the head nor the repetition of the harsh words he had heard before, Get out of here, how could he explain that he wasn’t going to harm any of the figurines, he just wanted to have a closer look and to sniff them, it was unfair of you to hit me for such a minor offense, anyone would think you didn’t know that dogs do not have only eyes with which to investigate the outside world, our nose is like an extra eye, it sees what it smells, at least this time, though, she didn’t shout, Down, boy, fortunately, there’s always someone capable of understanding the motives of others, even those who, dumb by nature or lacking vocabulary, do not know how or do not have words enough to explain themselves, You didn’t have to hit him, Pa, he was just curious, said Marta. It is likely that Cipriano Algor himself had not wanted to hurt the dog, he just acted out of instinct, which, contrary to what most people think, we human beings have still not lost and are not about to lose either. It lives side by side with the intelligence, but is infinitely faster, which is why the poor thing is so often made fun of and frequently spurned, that was what happened in this case, the potter reacted out of the fear of seeing something over which he had labored destroyed, exactly as a lioness would react at seeing her cub in danger. Not all creators neglect their creations, be they cubs or clay figurines, not all of them go away and leave in their place an inconstant zephyr that only blows now and then, as if we had no need to grow and go into the kiln to find out who we are. Cipriano Algor called the dog, Come here, Found, come here, there really is no understanding either of these creatures, they lash out and immediately stroke the creature they hit, if you hit them, they immediately kiss the hand that did the hitting, maybe this is just a consequence of the problems we have been encountering since the very beginning of time in our attempts to understand each other, we dogs and we humans. Found has already forgotten the blow he was dealt, but his master has not, his master remembers, he will forget tomorrow or in an hour’s time, but for the moment he cannot forget, in these cases memory is like the instantaneous touch of the sun on the retina that burns the surface, a tiny, unimportant thing, but bothersome while it lasts, the best thing would be to call the dog over and say, Found, come here, and Found will go, he always does, and he licks the hand that strokes him because that is the way dogs kiss, soon the burn will vanish, sight will return to normal, and it will be as if nothing had happened.

Cipriano Algor went to check how much wood they had and realized that it wasn’t enough. For years he had cherished the idea that the time would come when the old wood-burning kiln would be demolished and in its place would rise a new kiln, a modern, gas-fired one, capable of reaching extremely high temperatures very fast and of producing excellent results. Inside himself, though, he knew that this would never happen, first, because it would require a lot of money, more than he would ever have, but also for other less materialistic reasons, such as knowing beforehand that it would sadden him to destroy what his grandfather had built and what his father had later perfected, if he did, it would be as if he were, quite literally, wiping them from the face of the earth, for the kiln sits precisely on the face of the earth. He had another reason, less easy to own up to, which he could dispatch in three words, I’m too old, but which, objectively, implied the use of pyrometers, pipes, security pilot lights, burners, in short, new techniques and new problems. There was, therefore, no alternative but to continue fueling the old kiln in the old way, with wood and wood and more wood, perhaps that is the hardest part of working with clay. Just like the stokers on steam trains, who used to spend all their time shoveling coal into the furnace, the potter, at least this one, Cipriano Algor, who cannot afford to pay an assistant, spends hour upon wearisome hour feeding this archaic fuel into the kiln, twigs that the fire enfolds and devours in an instant, branches that the flame gradually nibbles and licks into embers, it is best when fed with pinecones and sawdust, which burn more slowly and produce more heat. Cipriano Algor will get supplies from the surrounding area, order a few cartloads of wood from foresters and farmers, buy a few sacks of sawdust from sawmills and carpenter’s workshops in the Industrial Belt, preferably from hardwoods like oak, walnut, and chestnut, and he will do all this alone, it does not even occur to him to ask his daughter to come with him and help him load the sacks onto the van, especially now that she’s pregnant, he will take Found with him, just to show that they’re friends again, which seems to indicate that the burn in Cipriano Algor’s memory has not yet fully healed. The wood in the shed will be more than enough for firing the six figures to be used as molds, but Cipriano Algor hesitates, he finds absurd, crazy, unforgivably wasteful, the huge disproportion between the means to be used and the ends to be achieved, in other words, in order to fire the ridiculously small number of six dolls, he will have to use the kiln as if it were packed to the roof. He said as much to Marta, who agreed and half an hour later came up with a solution, The book explains how to solve the problem, it even gives a helpful drawing. It is quite possible that, when he was starting out as a potter, Marta’s great-grandfather, who lived in the olden days, might once have used the process of pit firing, which was antiquated even then, but the installation of the first kiln must have gradually dispensed with that rustic practice and, in a way, consigned it to oblivion, for it was not passed on to Cipriano Algor’s father. Fortunately, there are books. We can leave them on a shelf or in a trunk, abandon them to the dust and the moths, dump them in dark cellars, we may not even lay eyes on them or touch them for years and years, but they don’t mind, they wait quietly, closed in upon themselves so that none of their contents are lost, for the moment that always arrives, the day when we ask ourselves, I wonder where that book about firing clay has got to, and the book, summoned at last, appears, it’s here in Marta’s hands while her father, beside the kiln, is digging a small hole about half a meter deep and half a meter wide, that is all the space the dolls need, then he arranges on the bottom a layer of small branches and sets light to them, the flames rise and caress the walls, getting rid of any surface moisture, then the fire will die down and all that will remain are the hot ashes and a few small embers, and it is on these that Marta, having passed the book, open at the relevant page, to her father, very carefully places, one by one, the six test pieces, the mandarin, the Eskimo, the bearded Assyrian, the clown, the jester, and the nurse, inside the pit, the hot air still shimmers, it touches the gray epidermises and the dense interiors of the bodies, from which almost all the water has already evaporated thanks to the effects of the light wind and the breeze, and now, over the mouth of the pit, for lack of a proper grille especially made for the purpose, Cipriano Algor is placing, not too close together, not too far apart, as the book tells him, some narrow iron bars, through which will fall the embers from the fire that the potter had already begun to kindle. So happy were they to have found that invaluable book, neither father nor daughter had noticed that the near-twilight hour at which they had started work would mean that they would have to keep feeding the fire throughout the night, until the embers had filled the hole completely and the firing was over. Cipriano Algor said to his daughter, You go to bed and I’ll stay and watch the fire, and she said, I wouldn’t miss this for all the gold in the world. They sat down on the stone bench to watch the flames, from time to time, Cipriano Algor gets up and puts on more wood, smallish branches so that the embers will fall between the bars, when it was time for supper, Marta went into the house to prepare a light meal, which they ate afterward in the light that flickered on the side kiln wall as if the kiln too were burning inside. The dog Found shared what there was to eat, then lay down at Marta’s feet, staring into the flames, he had been near other fires in his time, but none like this, well, that is probably not quite what he meant, fires, large and small, are all very similar, burning wood, sparks, charred logs, and ashes, what Found was thinking was that he had never been as he was now, lying at the feet of two people upon whom he had bestowed forever his doggy love, next to a stone bench suited for serious meditations, as he himself, from then on and from direct personal experience, will be able to attest. Filling half a cubic meter with embers takes some time, especially if the wood, as in this case, is not completely dry, and the proof of this is that you can see the last drops of sap sizzling at the ends of the logs that have not yet caught fire. It would be interesting, were it possible, to look inside, to see if the embers have already reached the dolls’ waists, but all one can do is to imagine what it must be like inside the pit, vibrant and glowing with the light from the many brief flames that consume the small pieces of incandescent wood as they fall. As the night grew colder, Marta went into the house to fetch a blanket which they, father and daughter, wrapped about their shoulders to keep warm. They did not need anything in front, what was happening now was what used to happen when, in times past, we would go over to the fireside to warm ourselves on winter nights, our backs freezing while our faces, hands and legs were scalding hot. Especially our legs because they were nearest to the fire. Tomorrow the hard work begins, said Cipriano Algor, I’ll help, said Marta, Oh, you’ll help, all right, you’ve no alternative, although I don’t like it, But I’ve always helped, Yes, but now you’re pregnant, Only a month, if that, it doesn’t make any difference yet, I feel absolutely fine, What worries me is that we might not be able to see this through to the end, We’ll manage, If only we could find someone to help us, You yourself said that no one wants to work in potteries any more, besides, we’d just waste our time teaching whoever came and for very negligible gains, Right, agreed Cipriano Algor, suddenly distracted. He had just remembered that Isaura Estudiosa, or Isaura Madruga, as she seemed to call herself now, was looking for work, and that if she didn’t find anything she would leave the village, but this thought barely troubled him, indeed he did not even want to imagine that Madruga woman working at the pottery, with her hands in the clay, the only talent she had shown for the job so far was the way she had clasped a water jug to her breast, but that’s no help when what you’ve got to do is manufacture figurines, not just clasp them to you. Anyone can do that, he thought, although he wasn’t entirely sure that this was true. Marta said, What we could do is get someone in to take care of the household chores, leaving me free to work in the pottery, We can’t afford a maid or a domestic or a char or whatever they’re called, said Cipriano Algor sharply, It could be someone who needs something to do and who doesn’t mind not earning very much for a while, insisted Marta. Her father impatiently removed the blanket from his shoulders as if he were too hot, If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, we’d better stop this conversation right now, What we don’t know is whether it only entered your mind because I thought of it, said Marta, or if you had already thought of it when it entered mine, Please, don’t play with words, you’re very good at it and I’m not, it’s certainly not a talent you inherited from me, There must be some part of us which is all our own work, but anyway, what you call playing with words is just a way of making them more visible, Well, you can cover those particular words up again, because I’m not interested. Marta replaced the blanket, draping it over her father’s shoulders again, They’re already covered up, she said, and if ever anyone uncovers them again, I can guarantee that it won’t be me. Cipriano Algor pushed the blanket off again, I’m not cold, he said, and went to put more wood on the fire. Marta was touched by the meticulous way in which he placed the new logs on the burning embers, careful and precise, like someone who, in order to drive out troubling thoughts, gives all his attention to some unimportant detail. I shouldn’t have brought the matter up again, she said to herself, especially not now when he’s said that he’ll come with us to the Center, besides, if they did get on well enough to want to live together, we would be faced by a difficult, not to say, impossible problem, it’s one thing going to the Center with your daughter and son-in-law, it’s quite another taking your wife, we wouldn’t be one family, we’d be two, I’m sure they wouldn’t take us then, Marçal told me that the apartments are tiny, so they would have to stay here and live on, what exactly, two people who hardly know each other, how long would their understanding last, I’m not so much playing with words as playing with the feelings of other people, with the feelings of my own father, what right have I, what right have you, Marta, just put yourself in his place, you can’t, of course, well, then, if you can’t, just be quiet, they say each person is an island, but it’s not true, each person is a silence, yes, that’s it, a silence, each of us with our own silence, each of us with the silence that is us. Cipriano Algor came back to the stone bench, and he himself wrapped the blanket around his shoulders even though his clothes were still warm from the fire, Marta snuggled up to him, Pa, she said, Pa, What, Oh, nothing, just ignore me. It was gone one o’clock when the pit began to fill up. We can go in now, said Cipriano Algor, in the morning, when they’ve cooled off, we can remove the figurines and see how they’ve turned out. The dog Found accompanied them to the door of the house. Then he went back to the fire and lay down. Beneath the fine layer of ashes, the embers still glowed, giving off a tenuous light. It was only when the embers had burned out completely that Found closed his eyes to go to sleep.