The Collected Novels of José Saramago (316 page)

How did they turn out, asked Marta when her father came in, All right, I think, but we need to wash off any ash still clinging to them. Marta poured some water into a small earthenware basin, Wash them in here, she said. The first to enter the water and, whether by chance or coincidence, also the first to leave the ashes, this nurse may have her reasons to complain in the future, but she won’t be able to complain about any lack of attention. How’s this one, asked Marta, unaware of the debate on gender that has been going on, All right, said her father again tersely. It was indeed all right, evenly fired, a lovely red color, with no imperfections, not even the tiniest crack, and the other figurines were all equally perfect, apart from the bearded Assyrian, who had a black stain on his back, the fortunately limited effect of incipient carbonization caused by an unwanted indraft of air. It doesn’t matter, it won’t affect it, said Marta, and now will you please sit down and rest while I prepare your breakfast, that body of yours has been up since before dawn, Yes, I woke up and couldn’t back get to sleep again, The figurines could have waited for daylight, But I couldn’t, As the saying goes, a worried man can’t sleep, Or else he sleeps, but dreams all night about his problems, Is that why you woke up so early, so as not to dream, asked Marta, Some dreams are best escaped from quickly, Was that what happened last night, Yes, it was, Do you want to talk about it, There’s no point, In this house, the problems of one have always been the problems of all, But not dreams, Unless they’re dreams about problems, Honestly, there’s no arguing with you, In that case, don’t waste any more time and tell me, All right, I dreamed that Marçal had been promoted and that the order had been canceled, They’re not likely to cancel the order, That’s what I think too, but anxieties get tangled up together like cherries, one gets caught on another and, in two shakes, the basket’s full, as for Marçal’s promotion, we know that could happen any day now, That’s true, The dream was a warning to work fast, Dreams don’t act as warnings, Unless the person who dreamed them feels that he has been warned, You’ve woken up in a very aphoristic mood this morning, dear father, Every age has its defects, and that’s the defect that has been afflicting me of late, Oh, I don’t mind, I like your aphorisms, I’m learning from them, Even when I’m just playing with words, like now, asked Cipriano Algor, Yes, I think words were born to play with each other, they don’t know how to do anything else, and contrary to what people may say, there are no such things as empty words, Now who’s being aphoristic, It runs in the family. Marta put the breakfast on the table, coffee, milk, scrambled eggs, toast, butter, and some fruit. She sat down opposite her father to watch him eat. What about you, asked Cipriano Algor, I’m not hungry, she said, That’s a bad sign in your state, They say that lack of appetite is quite common in pregnant women, But you need to eat well, logically speaking, you should be eating for two, Or for three, if I’m carrying twins, No, I’m being serious, Don’t worry, soon I’ll start getting morning sickness and other such delights. There was a silence. The dog curled up under the table, feigning indifference to the smell of food, when what he really feels is resignation, knowing, as he does, that his turn won’t come for a few hours yet. Are you going to start work now, asked Marta, As soon as I finish eating, replied Cipriano Algor. Another silence. Pa, said Marta, what if Marçal phoned today to say that he’d been promoted, Have you any reason to think he will, No, it’s just a hypothesis, All right, let’s imagine that the phone is ringing right now and you get up to answer it, and it’s Marçal telling us he’s been promoted to resident guard, What would you do then, Pa, I would finish my breakfast, take the figurines over to the pottery, and start making the molds, As if nothing had happened, As if nothing had happened, Do you think that’s a sensible decision, don’t you think it would be more logical to stop making them and simply turn the page, My dear daughter, folly and illogicality may be a duty to the young, but the old have a perfectly respectable right to them too, Thanks, I’ll make a note of the part that concerns me, Even if you and Marçal have to move to the Center first, I’ll stay here until I’ve finished the order, then I’ll come and join you as I promised, That’s mad, Pa, Mad, foolish, illogical, you don’t have a very high opinion of me, It’s mad wanting to do this work alone, how do you think I would feel knowing what’s going on here, And how do you think I would feel if I abandoned the work halfway through, you don’t seem to understand that, at my age, I don’t have that many things to hold on to, You’ve got me, you’ll have your grandchild, Sorry, but that’s not enough, It will have to be enough when you come and live with us, Yes, I suppose it will, but at least I will have completed my last job, Don’t be so melodramatic, Pa, who knows when your last job will be. Cipriano Algor got up from the table. Have you suddenly lost your appetite, asked his daughter, seeing that there was still food left on the plate, I find it hard to swallow, my throat feels tight, It’s nerves, Yes, it must be. The dog had got up too, ready to follow his master. Ah, said Cipriano Algor, I forgot to mention that Found spent the night under the stone bench keeping a watch on the fire, So one can learn from dogs too, Yes, what one learns above all is not to discuss what has to be done, simple instinct has its advantages, Are you saying that it’s in stinct that is telling you to finish the job, that in human beings, or at least in some, there is a behavioral factor similar to instinct, asked Marta, All I know is that reason would have only one piece of advice for me, What’s that, Not to be so stupid, the world won’t end if I don’t finish the figurines, Well, yes, what importance can a few clay figurines have to the world, You wouldn’t be so offhand about it if instead of figurines we were talking about ninth or fifth symphonies, unfortunately, my dear, your father was not born a musician, If you really thought I was being offhand, I’m sorry, No, of course I didn’t, forgive me. Cipriano Algor was about to leave the kitchen, but he paused for a moment at the door, Anyway, reason is capable of coming up with some useful ideas too, when I woke up in the early hours, it occurred to me that it would save a lot of time and material if we made the figurines hollow, they dry and fire much more quickly and we’ll save on clay, Well, long live reason, But then again, you see, birds know to make their nests hollow, but they don’t go around boasting about it.

From that day on, Cipriano Algor interrupted his work in the pottery only to eat and to sleep. His lack of experience of the necessary techniques meant that he mistook the proportions of plaster and water needed for making the mold piece, made everything worse by getting the wrong quantities of clay, water, and deflocculant to make a balanced mixture for the casting slip, and then poured the resulting mixture in far too quickly, thus creating air bubbles inside the mold. The first three days were spent making and unmaking, despairing over his mistakes, cursing his own clumsiness and trembling with joy whenever some delicate operation turned out well. Marta offered to help, but he asked her, please, to leave him in peace, a turn of phrase that bore very little resemblance to the reality inside the old workshop, what with plasters that hardened too soon and water added too late, what with clay that wasn’t dry enough and slips that were too thick to be sieved, it would have been far nearer the truth if he had said, Just leave me in peace to wage my own war. On the morning of the fourth day, as if the mischievous, slippery goblins, which were the various materials he was using, had repented of their cruel treatment of this unexpected beginner in the new art, Cipriano Algor began to find softnesses where before he had found only harshness, docilities that filled him with gratitude and secrets that willingly unveiled themselves to him. Every five minutes, he consulted the manual, all sticky and marked with fingerprints, which he kept open on the worktop, sometimes he misunderstood what he had read, at others, a sudden intuition would illuminate a whole page, it would be no exaggeration to say that Cipriano Algor’s mood swung between lacerating misery and utter bliss. He got up at first light, bolted his breakfast and then stayed in the pottery until lunchtime, after lunch, he worked all afternoon and into the evening, with only a brief interval for supper, whose frugality owed nothing to the previous meals. His daughter protested, You’ll get ill working so hard and eating so little, I’m fine, he said, I’ve never felt better in my life. This was both true and untrue. At night, when he finally went to bed, having washed away the smells of his labors and the dirt from his work, his joints creaked and his whole body ached. I can’t do as much as I used to, he said to himself, but deep down in his consciousness, a voice which was also his disagreed, You’ve never been able to do as much, Cipriano, you’ve never been able to do as much. He slept as one imagines a stone must sleep, without dreaming, without stirring, almost it seemed without breathing, laying on the world the whole weight of his infinite weariness. Sometimes, like an anxious mother, unwittingly anticipating future broken nights, Marta would get up and look in to see how her father was. She went silently into his room, walked slowly to the bed, bent over him slightly to listen, then left with her worries unassuaged. That big man, with his white hair and battered face, her father, was also a son, anyone who refuses to understand this knows little of life, the webs that weave around human relationships in general and family relationships in particular, especially close family relationships, are more complex than they seem at first sight, we talk about parents and children, and think we know perfectly well what we mean, and we do not ask ourselves about the profound reasons for the affection that lies therein or indeed the indifference or the hatred. Marta leaves his room and is thinking, He’s sleeping, and those words apparently do no more than express the verifiable truth, and yet those eleven letters, those three syllables were capable of translating all the love that a human heart can hold at any one moment. It is worth saying, for the enlightenment of the innocent, that in matters of sentiment, the more grandiloquent the feeling the less true.

The fourth day happened to be the day on which he had to go to the Center to fetch Marçal for his day off, which we would call weekly if it were not, as we know, decimal, that is, every ten days. Marta told her father that she would go, so that he wouldn’t have to interrupt his work, but Cipriano Algor said no, what an idea, There are fewer robberies on the road, it’s true, but there’s always a risk, If there’s a risk for me, then there’s a risk for you too, In the first place, I’m a man, in the second place, I’m not pregnant, Respectable reasons which do you credit, There’s a third reason too, the most important, And what’s that, I wouldn’t be able to do any work until you got back, so it won’t make any difference if I go, besides the journey will help to clear my head, which certainly needs an airing, all I can think about are molds, mold pieces, and slips, It would help to clear my head too, so why don’t we both go and pick Marçal up, and Found can stay here to guard the castle, If that’s what you want, Don’t be silly, I was just kidding, you usually go and fetch Marçal and I usually stay at home, so long live usually, No, seriously, we can both go, No, seriously, you go. They both smiled, and the debate on the central question, that is, the objective and subjective reasons we usually do what we do, was postponed. That afternoon, at the appointed hour, and still in his work clothes so as not to waste time, Cipriano Algor set off. As he was leaving the village, he realized that he had not turned his head when he went past the street where Isaura Madruga lives, and when we say turned his head, that could be in either direction, because in recent days, Cipriano Algor had sometimes turned to see if he could spot her, and sometimes turned away so that he would not see her. It occurred to him to wonder what interpretation to put on that troubling indifference, but a stone in the middle of the road distracted him and the moment was gone. The journey to the city passed without incident, he was delayed only once by a police block that was stopping every other car to check the drivers’ documents. While he was waiting for them to return his documents, Cipriano Algor had time to notice that the boundary of the shantytown seemed to have shifted closer to the road, Any day now and they’ll push it back again, he thought.

Marçal was there waiting for him. Sorry I’m late, said his father-in-law, I didn’t leave the house early enough, and then the police wanted to have a nose through my papers, How’s Marta, asked Marçal, I didn’t manage to phone yesterday, She’s fine, I think, but you should ask her yourself really, she’s not eating much, no appetite, but she says that’s normal in pregnant women, and maybe it is, I don’t know much about these things, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be too sure, Right, I’ll talk to her, don’t worry, maybe it’s because she’s just in the very early stages of pregnancy, We men haven’t a clue really, confronted by these things, we’re like lost children, you should take her to the doctor. Marçal did not reply. His father-in-law fell silent. They were both probably thinking the same thing, that she would get the best possible treatment at the hospital in the Center, at least that’s what people say, although, as the wife of an employee, being resident in the Center isn’t a necessary condition for receiving decent treatment. After a moment, Cipriano Algor said, I can bring Marta in any time you want. They had left the city and so could drive more quickly. Marçal asked, How’s the work going, We’re still only at the beginning really, we’ve fired the figurines we made, and now I’m tackling the molds, How’s that going, We fool ourselves, we think that clay is just clay, that if you can do one thing with it, you can do anything, and then you realize that it simply isn’t true, that we have to relearn everything from scratch. He paused, then added, But I feel happy, it’s a bit like trying to be born again, well, not quite, Tomorrow I’ll give you a hand, said Marçal, I know next to nothing about making pottery, but I’m sure I can be of some help, You need to spend time with your wife, go for a walk somewhere, No, tomorrow we’ll be having lunch with my parents, they still don’t know about Marta being pregnant, it’ll start to show soon, and you can imagine what they’d say then, And quite right too, I mean, be fair, said Cipriano Algor. Another silence. Nice weather, remarked Marçal, Let’s hope it lasts another two or three weeks, said his father-in-law, the dolls need to be as dry as possible before we put them in the kiln. Another silence, longer this time. The police block had been removed, and the road was free. Twice Cipriano Algor was about to speak, the third time he did, Any news about your promotion, he asked, No, not yet, replied Marçal, Do you think they’ve changed their minds, No, there are various procedures that have to be gone through, the bureaucracy in the Center is as nitpicking as anywhere else, With police patrols checking driving licenses, insurance policies, and health certificates, Yes, that’s about the size of it, We don’t seem to know how else to do things, Perhaps there isn’t another way, Or perhaps it’s too late to find another way They did not speak again until they reached the village. Marçal asked his father-in-law to stop at the door to his parents’ house, I won’t be a minute, I just want to tell them that we’ll be coming to lunch tomorrow. It was, indeed, not a long wait, but, again, Marçal seemed unhappy when he got back in the van. What was it this time, asked Cipriano Algor, Oh, I don’t know, nothing seems to go right between me and my parents, Don’t exaggerate, man, family life was never what you might call a bed of roses, we have good times and bad times, and we’re extremely lucky if most of the time it’s just so-so, Well, I went in, and my mother was there alone, my father hasn’t got back yet, and I said what I had to say and then, to jolly things along a bit, I put on a sort of half-solemn, half-happy face and said that I had a big surprise for them tomorrow, And, guess what my mother’s response was, My prophetic gifts don’t stretch that far, She asked if the big surprise was them coming to live with me at the Center, And what did you say, I said it wasn’t worth saving the secret until tomorrow, I have to tell you, I said, that Marta is pregnant, we’re going to have a baby, She was pleased, of course, Oh, yes, she couldn’t stop hugging me and kissing me, So what are you complaining about, It’s just that with them there’s always some dark cloud looming in the sky, at the moment, it’s their obsession with wanting to go and live at the Center, You know I don’t mind giving up my place to them, No, that’s out of the question, and it’s not that I’m exchanging my parents for my father-in-law, it’s just that they have each other, but you’d be left on your own, Well, I wouldn’t be the only person in the world to live on his own, As far as Marta is concerned, I can guarantee that you would, Oh dear, I don’t know what to say, Some things are just the way they are and need no explanation. Faced by such a categorical display of basic wisdom, the potter again found himself lost for words. Another contributory factor to this sudden silence might be that, at that precise moment, they just happened to be passing Isaura Madruga’s street, and, unlike on the outward journey, Cipriano Algor’s consciousness was unable to remain indifferent. When they reached the pottery, Marçal had the unexpected pleasure of being greeted by Found as if he were wearing not the intimidating uniform of a Center security guard, but the plainest and most pacific of clothes. The young man’s sensitive soul, still smarting from the unfortunate conversation with his mother, was so moved by the animal’s effusions that he embraced him as if he were the person he loved most in the world. These are exceptional moments, needless to say, the person Marçal loves most in the world is his wife, and she is waiting beside him, smiling sweetly, for her turn to be embraced, but just as there are times when all it takes for us to dissolve into tears is for someone to place a hand on our shoulder, so the disinterested joy of a dog can reconcile us for one brief minute to the pains, sorrows, and disappointments of this world. Given that Found knows little of human emotions, be they positive or negative, but of whose existence there is ample proof, and given that Marçal knows still less about canine emotions, about which there are few certainties and a myriad of doubts, someone will one day have to explain to us the reasons, apparently perfectly comprehensible to both parties involved, why these two should be locked in an embrace when they do not even belong to the same species. Since the making of molds was such a novelty, Cipriano Algor could not really avoid showing his son-in-law what he had been up to for the past few days, but his pride, which had already led him to refuse his daughter’s help, trembled at the thought that Marçal might notice some mistake, some botched repair, or any of the other innumerable signs that provided such clear evidence of the mental agonies he had suffered within those four walls. Although Marçal was far too preoccupied with Marta to pay much attention to clay, sodium silicate, plaster of Paris, mold frames, and molds, the potter decided not to work after supper and to spend the evening with them, thus affording him the opportunity to discourse with a degree of theoretical exactitude on a subject whose practical pitfalls and disastrous consequences he knew better than anyone. Marçal warned Marta that they would be having lunch with his parents the next day, but he did not even mention the painful conversation he had had with his mother, which made his father-in-law think that this was a subject that had moved into the private domain, a problem to be analyzed in the privacy of the bedroom, not to be picked over and analyzed in a three-way conversation, unless, of course, with praiseworthy prudence, Marçal merely wanted to avoid falling yet again into a debate on the thorny topic of moving to the Center, we have seen far too often how it begins and have seen far too often where it usually ends.