The Collected Novels of José Saramago (320 page)

The package Marçal had left with the guard at the door contained two masks, not one. Just in case the air-purifying system in one of them goes wrong, said the note. And again that plea, Please look after Marta for me. It was almost lunchtime. A wasted morning, thought Cipriano Algor, remembering the molds, the clay waiting for him, the cooling kiln, the rows of dolls inside. Then, halfway down the avenue, with his back to the Center where the phrase You’re our best customer, but don’t tell your neighbor set out with ironic impudence the relational diagram that defined the city’s unconscious complicity with the conscious deception that was manipulating and absorbing it, it occurred to Cipriano Algor that not only had the morning been wasted, but the assistant head of department’s obscene phrase had done away with what remained of the reality of the world in which he had learned how to live and in which he had grown used to living, from now on everything would be little more than appearance, illusion, absence of meaning, questions with no answers. I might as well just drive the van into a wall, he thought. He wondered why he didn’t do so and why he probably never would, then he listed his reasons. Although inappropriate in the context of his analysis, after all, being alive is, at least in principle, the main reason why people kill themselves, the first of Cipriano Algor’s strong reasons for not doing so was the fact of being alive, this was immediately followed by his daughter Marta, and close behind, so intimately bound up with her father’s life that it was as if he had thought of both simultaneously, came the pottery, the kiln and, of course, his son-in-law Marçal, who is such a good lad and really does love Marta, and Found, although it may strike many people as scandalous to say so, and, objectively speaking, it is inexplicable that even a dog can bind someone to life, and then, and then, then what, Cipriano Algor could find no other reasons, and yet he had a feeling that there was another reason, what could it be, then suddenly, with no warning, memory threw in his face the name and features of his late wife, the name and features of Justa Isasca, because, if Cipriano Algor was looking for reasons not to crash the van into a wall and if he had already found enough of them in number and substance, namely, himself, Marta, the pottery, the kiln, Marçal, the dog Found, and even the mulberry tree, which we forgot to mention earlier, it was absurd that the last of those reasons, that unexpected reason, whose existence he had queasily glimpsed like a shadow or a mirage, should be someone who was no longer of this world, it’s true that she isn’t just anyone, she is, after all, the woman he married and worked with, the mother of his daughter, but, even so, however much dialectical talent you add to the pot, it will be hard to sustain that the memory of a dead person can be reason enough for a living person to want to go on living. A lover of proverbs, adages, maxims, and other popular sayings, one of those rare eccentrics who imagines he knows more than he was taught, would say that there’s something so fishy going on here, you can even see the fish’s tail. With apologies for the inappropriate and disrespectful nature of the comparison, we would say that, in the case in question, the fish’s tail is the late Justa Isasca, and that in order to find the rest of the fish, all one has to do is to grab the tail. Cipriano Algor will not do so. However, when he reaches the village, he will leave the van at the cemetery gate, for the first time since that other day, and walk over to his wife’s grave. He will spend a few minutes there thinking, perhaps to say thank you, perhaps to ask, Why did you suddenly reappear, perhaps to hear someone else ask him, Why did you suddenly reappear, then he will glance up as if looking for someone. In this heat, at lunchtime, that’s highly unlikely.

The first fifty to emerge from the kiln were the Eskimos, which were nearest to hand, right inside the door. This was, in Marta’s immediate view, a fortunate coincidence, Just to get used to the technique we couldn’t have a better start, they’re easy to paint, in fact, only the nurses, who are all dressed in white, will be easier. When the figurines had cooled completely, they took them over to the drying shelves, where Cipriano Algor, armed with a spray gun and protected by the filter of his face mask, methodically covered them with the matte white of the undercoat. He grumbled to himself that it wasn’t worth having that thing covering his mouth and nose, I’d just need to make sure I had the wind behind me, and the paint would be carried away from me, it wouldn’t even touch me, but then he thought that he was being unfair and ungrateful, especially considering that, with the good weather they’ve been having, there could be days when there wasn’t any breeze at all. When he had finished his part of the work, Cipriano Algor helped his daughter to set out the paints, the jar of oil, the brushes, the colored drawings on which she had based the dolls, he brought her the bench she would be sitting on, but as soon as he saw her make the first brushstroke, he said, This isn’t going to work, if you have the figurines in a row like that, you’re going to have to keep moving the bench along and it’ll be too tiring, and Marçal said, What did Marçal say, asked Marta, That you should be very careful not to wear yourself out, What I find really tiring is having to hear the same advice over and over, It’s for your own good, Look, if I put a dozen figurines in front of me, like that, they’re all within easy reach and I’ll only have to move the bench four times, besides it does me good to move around a bit, and now that I’ve explained to you how this assembly line in reverse is going to work, I would remind you that there is nothing more off-putting to someone working than the presence of those who are not, which, in this instance, seems to be you, Right, I’ll remember to say the same to you when I’m working, You already have, worse than that, you sent me away, All right, I’m going, there’s obviously no talking to you today, Just two things before you go, first, if there’s anyone you can talk to, it’s me, And second, Give me a kiss. Yesterday it was Cipriano Algor who had asked his son-in-law for a hug, now it’s Marta asking her father for a kiss, something is happening to this family, any moment now there’ll be comets appearing in the sky, aurora borealises, and witches on broomsticks, Found will sit howling all night at the moon, even when there is no moon, and from one moment to the next the mulberry tree will turn barren. Unless, of course, this is just the result of overly impressionable sensibilities, Marta because she is pregnant, Marçal because Marta is pregnant, Cipriano Algor for all the reasons we already know and some that only he knows. Anyway, father kissed daughter, daughter kissed father, and they made a bit of a fuss of Found too when he tried to join in, so he will have no reason for complaint either. And that, as they say, is that. Cipriano Algor went into the pottery to start making the molds for the next three hundred figurines, and Marta, in the shade of the mulberry tree, beneath the conscientious eye of Found, who had resumed his responsibilities as guard, prepared herself to start painting the Eskimos. Alas, she could not, she had forgotten that first she had to sand them down, remove any sharp edges, any irregularities or imperfections in the finish, then clean off the dust, and, since misfortunes never come singly and since one omission usually reminds you of another, she would not be able to paint them as she had at first thought, moving seamlessly from one color to the next, until the last brush stroke. She remembered the page in the manual where it explicitly stated that only when one color has completely dried should you apply the next, Now I really could do with an assembly line, she said, with the figurines passing before me, once to receive the blue, then the yellow, then the violet, then the black and the red and the green and the white, and, of course, for the final blessing, the one that carries within it all the colors of the rainbow, May God make you good, for I have done what I could, and it won’t be so much because of any additional goodness that God, as subject as any ordinary mortal to lapses and oversights, may contribute to crown my efforts, but because of a humble awareness that the reason we didn’t do any better was simply because we couldn’t. Arguing with what must be has always been a waste of time, as far as what must be is concerned, arguments are more or less random groups of words waiting to be placed in a syntactical order that will give them a sense they themselves are not entirely sure that they have. Marta left Found to keep an eye on the dolls and, declining all further debates with the inevitable, she went into the kitchen to get the only bit of fine sandpaper in the house, This won’t last long, she thought, I’ll have to buy some more. If she had looked round the door of the pottery, she would have seen that things were not going well in there either. Cipriano Algor had boasted to Marçal that he had invented a few shortcuts to speed up the work, which, from, shall we say, a global perspective, was true, but speed had soon proved itself to be incompatible with perfection, and produced a far larger number of defective dolls than had been the case with the first batch. When Marta went back to her work, the first spoiled figurines had already been placed on the shelf, but Cipriano Algor, having calculated time gained and figurines lost, decided not to give up his fecund, but, on the other hand, neither reprehensible nor ever fully explained shortcuts. And so the days passed. The Eskimos were followed by the clowns, then came the nurses, then the mandarins and the bearded Assyrians, and finally the jesters, who had been placed along the back wall of the kiln. On the second day, Marta had gone down to the village to buy two dozen sheets of sandpaper. This was the shop where Isaura had just started work, as Marta already knew, having visited Isaura after the latter’s troubling encounter, emotionally speaking, of course, with Marta’s father. These two women do not see each other very often, but there are plenty of reasons for them to become great friends. Discreetly, so that her words did not reach the ears of the owner of the shop, Marta asked Isaura if she was settling into the job, and Isaura said yes, she was, I’ll get used to it, she said. She spoke without any show of pleasure, but firmly, as if she wanted to make it clear that pleasure had nothing to do with it, that it had been will, and will alone, that had made her accept the job. Marta remembered the words that Isaura had spoken some time ago, Any job will do, as long as I can go on living here. In the question that Isaura asked next, while she was rolling up the sheets of sandpaper, loosely, as prescribed, Marta heard an echo, distorted but still recognizable, of those words, And how’s everyone at home, Oh, tired, working very hard, but pretty well really, Marçal, poor thing, had to stoke the kiln on his day off, his back is probably killing him now. The sheets of sandpaper had been rolled up. While she was taking the money and returning the change, Isaura, without looking up, asked, And how’s your father. Marta could say only that her father was fine, an anxious thought had just flashed through her mind, What will this woman do with her life when we leave. Isaura said good-bye, she had to serve another customer, Give him my regards, she said, and if, at that moment, Marta had asked her, What will you do with your life when we leave, she would perhaps have replied as calmly as she had before, I’ll get used to it. Yes, we often hear it said, or we say it ourselves, I’ll get used to it, we say or they say, with what seems to be genuine acceptance, because there really isn’t any other way, at least none has yet been discovered, of expressing in as dignified a way as possible our sense of resignation, what no one asks is at what cost do we get used to things. Marta left the shop almost in tears. With a kind of desperate remorse, as if she were accusing herself of having deceived Isaura, she was thinking, She has no idea, she doesn’t even know that we’re about to leave.

Twice they forgot to give the dog his food. Recollecting his days as an indigent, when hope for the morrow was all the food he had after many hours spent with his stomach longing for sustenance, Found did not complain, instead, neglecting his duties as guard dog, he simply lay down beside the kennel, for it is ancient knowledge that a prone body can withstand hunger far longer, waiting patiently until one of his owners struck his or her head and exclaimed, Oh, damn, we’ve forgotten about the dog. It is hardly surprising, since, during that time, they had almost forgotten about themselves. But it was thanks to that total absorption in their respective tasks and to the hours stolen from their sleep, even though Cipriano Algor kept telling Marta, You must rest, you must rest, it was thanks to that parallel effort that, when the time came for Cipriano Algor to go and pick up his son-in-law from the Center again, the three hundred figurines that had emerged from the kiln were sanded, brushed, painted, and dried, every single one of them, and that the other three hundred, erect and impeccable in their raw clay, with no visible defects, were also, with the help of the heat and the breeze, perfectly dry and ready to be fired. The pottery seemed to be resting after a great labor, the silence had lain down to sleep. In the shade of the mulberry tree, father and daughter looked at the six hundred figurines lined up on the shelves and it seemed to them that they had done an excellent job. Cipriano Algor said, I won’t work in the pottery tomorrow, that way Marçal won’t have to deal with the kiln all alone, and Marta said, I think we should rest for a few days before we launch into the second batch, and Cipriano Algor said, What about three days, and Marta replied, It’s better than nothing, and Cipriano Algor asked, How are you feeling, and Marta said, Tired, but well, and Cipriano Algor said, I feel great, and Marta said, That must be what we call the reward of a job well done. Although it might not seem like it, there was no irony in these words, only a weariness that could be described as infinite if such a description were not a manifestly wild exaggeration. Whatever it was, it was not so much the physical tiredness, but having to stand helplessly by, unable to do anything, watching her father’s bitter disappointment and ill-concealed sadness, his ups and downs, his pathetic attempts to appear confident and authoritative, the obsessive, categorical restating of his doubts as if, by doing so, he could remove them from his head. And then there was that woman, Isaura, Isaura Madruga, she of the water jug, to whom she had replied only, He’s fine, to the question Isaura had murmured, eyes lowered, while she was counting out the change, And how’s your father when what she should have done was to take her by the arm, march her to the pottery where her father was working and say, Here he is, and then close the door and leave them inside until words came to their rescue, because silences, poor things, are just that, silences, everyone knows how often even apparently eloquent silences have given rise to mistaken interpretations, with serious and sometimes fatal consequences. We’re too fearful, too cowardly to risk doing something like that, thought Marta, looking at her father, who seemed to have fallen asleep, we are too caught in the net of so-called proprieties, in the web of what is proper and improper, if anyone found out I had done it, they would immediately come to me and say that throwing a woman at a man like that, because that’s the expression they would use, shows a complete lack of respect for another person’s identity, that it was an act of irresponsible imprudence, after all, who knows what might happen to them in the future, people’s happiness is not something that we can build today with any certainty that it will still be there tomorrow, later on, we might meet one disunited half of the couple we had united and risk hearing them say, It was all your fault. Marta did not want to give in to that commonsense argument, the logical and skeptical result of many hard battles with life, It’s ridiculous to throw away the present just because you’re afraid there might not be a future, she said to herself, adding, Besides, not everything will necessarily happen tomorrow, some things will happen only the day after tomorrow, What did you say, asked her father abruptly, Nothing, she said, I’ve just been sitting here quietly so as not to wake you, But I wasn’t asleep, Well, I thought you were, You said that there are some things that will happen only the day after tomorrow, How odd, did I really say that, asked Marta, Yes, I wasn’t dreaming it, Then I must have dreamed it, I must have fallen asleep and then immediately woken up again, that’s what dreams are like, you can make neither head nor tail of them, not because they don’t have a head and a tail, but because the head and the tail aren’t where you expect them to be, which is why dreams are so hard to interpret. Cipriano Algor got up, It’s nearly time to go and pick up Marçal, but I was just thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea to go a bit earlier and drop in at the buying department to tell them that the first three hundred are ready and to agree on a delivery date, That seems like a good idea, said Marta. Cipriano Algor went to change his clothes, put on a clean shirt and some different shoes, and in less than ten minutes he was getting into the van, See you later, he said, See you later, Pa, go carefully, And come back even more carefully of course, Of course, because then there will be two of you, You see what I mean, there’s no arguing with you, you have an answer for everything. Found came over to ask his master if this time he could go with him, but Cipriano Algor said no, be patient, cities are not the best places for dogs.