The Collected Novels of José Saramago (328 page)

When Cipriano Algor left his room, later than usual, his son-in-law had already gone off to work. Still half-asleep, he said good morning to his daughter, sat down to eat his breakfast, and at that moment, the phone rang. Marta went to answer it and came right back, It’s for you. Cipriano Algor’s heart skipped a beat, For me, who would want to speak to me, he asked, already convinced that his daughter would reply, It’s Isaura, but instead what she said was, It’s the buying department, one of the assistant heads of department. Caught between disappointment that the call was not from the person he would have liked it to be from and relief at not having to explain to his daughter this sudden intimacy with Isaura, although it might easily have been something to do with Found, that he was pining for example, Cipriano Algor went to the phone, gave his name and, shortly afterward, the nice assistant head of department was saying at the other end of the line, I was most surprised to learn that you had come to live at the Center, as you see, the devil isn’t necessarily lurking behind every door, it’s an old saying, but much truer than you might think, Quite right, said Cipriano Algor, The reason I’m calling is to ask if you could drop by this afternoon so that we can pay you for the figurines, What figurines, The three hundred that you gave us for the survey, But none of them were sold, so there’s nothing to pay, My dear sir, said the assistant head of department in an unexpectedly severe tone, please allow us to be the judges of that, but anyway, you should know that even when payment represents a loss of more than one hundred percent, as in this case, the Center always pays its debts, it’s a matter of ethics, now that you’re living among us you will doubtless come to understand this better, Fine, but what I can’t understand is how you can possibly make a loss of more than one hundred percent, It’s precisely because people fail to take such things into consideration that whole families fall into ruin, If only I had known that earlier, Now listen, first, we’re going to pay the exact value of the figurines that you invoiced us for, not a penny less, Right, I’m with you so far, Second, we will obviously also have to pay for the survey, that is, the materials used, the people who analyzed the data, and the time it took, now, when you think that those materials, those people, and that time could have been employed on more profitable tasks, you don’t have to be gifted with great intelligence to reach the conclusion that we did in fact suffer a loss of over one hundred percent, when you take into account what we did not sell and what we spent on concluding that we should not sell, Well, I’m sorry the Center lost money because of me, It’s an occupational hazard, sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, but it wasn’t a matter of any great consequence, it was a very minor deal, Of course, I too, said Cipriano Algor, could invoke my own ethical scruples and refuse to be paid for work that people declined to buy, but the fact is that I could do with the money, That’s a very good reason, the best possible reason, All right, I’ll drop by this afternoon, then, You don’t need to ask for me, just go straight to the till, since this is the last commercial transaction we will have with your now extinct company, we want you to have the best possible memories of us, Thank you, Enjoy the rest of your life, you’re certainly in the right place to do so, Exactly what I’ve been thinking myself, sir, Take advantage of the tide of fate, That’s precisely what I’m doing. Cipriano Algor put down the phone, They’re going to pay us for the figurines, he said, so we won’t have lost out entirely. Marta gave a nod which could have meant anything, resignation, disagreement, indifference, and went back into the kitchen. Aren’t you feeling well, asked her father, standing at the door, Oh, I’m just a bit tired, it must be the pregnancy, You seem a bit down, distracted, you should get out more, go for a walk, What, like you, you mean, Yes, like me, Are you really interested in all that stuff out there, asked Marta, now think twice before you answer, Once is quite enough, no, it doesn’t interest me in the least, I’m just pretending, To yourself, of course, You’re old enough to know that there is no other way of pretending, although it might not seem like it, we are only ever pretending to ourselves, never to other people, Well, I’m pleased to hear you say that, Why, Because it confirms what I’ve been thinking about you with regard to Isaura Madruga, The situation has changed, Even better, If the occasion arises, I’ll tell you, but, for the moment, I’m like Marçal, a closed mouth.

Cipriano Algor’s auricular expedition achieved nothing, afterward, over lunch, by some kind of tacit accord, none of the three dared touch on the awkward subject of the excavations and what might have been uncovered. Father-in-law and son-in-law left at the same time, Marçal to resume his work of listening and spying, which would no doubt prove as fruitless as it had that morning for both of them, and Cipriano Algor to find out, for the first time, how to get from inside the Center to the buying department. He realized that his resident’s badge, complete with photo and fingerprint, would allow him a certain ease of movement when the guard responded to his request for directions as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Keep straight on down this corridor and, when you reach the end, you just have to follow the signs, you can’t miss it, he said. He was on the ground floor, at some point in the journey he would have to go down to the basement where, in happier times, although this is probably not a view shared by the nice assistant head of department, he used to go to unload his plates and his mugs. An arrow and an escalator told him where to go. I’m going down, he thought. I’m going down, I’m going down, he repeated, and then, How stupid, of course I’m going down, that’s what stairs are for except when they’re for going up, with stairs, those that don’t go down, go up, and those that don’t go up, go down. He seemed to have reached an unanswerable conclusion, of the sort for which there is no possible logical rebuttal, but suddenly, with the brilliance and instantaneity of a lightning flash, another thought crossed his mind, Go down, yes, down there. Yes, go down there. Cipriano Algor has just decided to try to join Marçal tonight when he is on guard duty, between two and six in the morning, if you remember. Good sense and prudence, which always have something to say in such situations, had already asked him how, without knowing the way, he thought he would reach such a recondite place, and he replied that while the combinations and compositions of chance are indeed many, they are not infinite, and that it is always better to take a risk and climb the fig tree in order to pick the fig than to lie down in the shade of the tree and wait for the fig to fall into your mouth. The Cipriano Algor who presented himself at the till of the buying department, having first gotten lost twice, despite the help of all those arrows and signs, was not the man we thought we knew. His hands were trembling badly, not because of the petty thrill of receiving for his work money he had not been expecting, but because the orders and directions sent by his brain, occupied now with matters of more transcendent importance, were arriving at their respective terminals in incoherent, confused, and contradictory form. When he returned to the commercial part of the Center, he seemed slightly calmer, all his agitation had disappeared inside him. Freed now from having to worry about hands, the brain was busily planning ruses, tricks, ploys, stratagems, dodges, and subterfuges, it even went so far as to consider the possibility of resorting to telekinesis to whisk the impatient body it was having such difficulty controlling from the thirty-fourth floor down to the mysterious excavations.

Although he still had long hours of waiting ahead of him, Cipriano Algor decided to go back to the apartment. He tried to give his daughter the money he had received, but she said, No, you keep it, I don’t need it, and then she said, Would you like a cup of coffee, Yes, that’s a good idea. The coffee was made, poured into a cup and drunk, everything indicates that, for now, there will be no further words between them, it seems, as Cipriano Algor has sometimes thought, although we failed to record these thoughts at the time, that the apartment in which they are now living has the malign gift of silencing its inhabitants. Meanwhile, Cipriano Algor’s brain, now that it has had to abandon the idea of telekinesis, lacking as it does the necessary training, has a burning need for a particular bit of information without which his plan for a nighttime raid will, to put it bluntly, go down the tubes. That is why he throws out the question, while apparently distractedly stirring the little coffee that remains in the bottom of his cup, Do you happen to know how far down the excavation is, Why do you want to know, Just curious, that’s all, Marçal never said. Cipriano Algor concealed his frustration as best he could and said he was going to have a nap. He spent all afternoon in his room and only came out when his daughter called him for supper, Marçal was already sitting at the table. As had happened at lunch, no one mentioned the excavation until after supper, and it was only when Marta said to her husband, You should try to rest until it’s time for you to go down there, otherwise you won’t get any sleep at all, and he said, It’s too early, I’m not sleepy, that Cipriano Algor, grabbing this unexpected opportunity, repeated his question, How far down is the excavation, Why do you want to know, Just to get an idea, out of curiosity really. Marçal hesitated before replying, but it seemed to him that the information did not fall into the strictly confidential category, Access is from floor zero five, he said at last, Oh, I thought the diggers had been working deeper down than that, It’s still fifteen or twenty meters below ground, said Marçal, Yes, you’re right, that is pretty deep. They did not mention the subject again. Marçal did not appear annoyed by the brief conversation, on the contrary, one might almost say that he was somewhat relieved to have been able to speak a little about the matter that was clearly preoccupying him, but without touching on any dangerous or secret matters. Marçal is no more fearful than the average person, but he is not at all looking forward to the prospect of spending four hours down in a hole, in utter silence, knowing what lies behind him. We weren’t trained for these situations, one of his colleagues had said to him, let’s hope those specialists the captain talked about arrive soon, so that we don’t have to do this any more, Were you afraid, asked Marçal, Well, no, I don’t know that I was afraid, but I warn you now that you’re going to feel all the time as if someone behind you was about to put their hand on your shoulder, Worse things could happen, That depends on the hand, to be honest, I spent the whole four hours fighting off a desperate urge to run away, to escape, to get out of there, Forewarned is forearmed, at least I know what to expect, No, you don’t, you just think you do, and you’re wrong, his colleague said. Now it is half past one in the morning, Marçal is saying good-bye to Marta with a kiss, she says, Don’t hang around when you come off duty, No, I’ll come straight back and I promise that tomorrow I’ll tell you everything. Marta went with him to the door, they kissed again, then she came back in, tidied up a few things and returned to bed. She wasn’t sleepy. She told herself that there was nothing to worry about, that other guards had already been on duty down there and survived, how often the most trifling of incidents have formed the bases for terrible mysteries, as if they were some hydra-headed monster, and yet, when looked at closely, they were just smoke, air, illusion, the desire to believe in the unbelievable. The minutes passed and sleep was still a long way off, Marta had just said to herself that she might as well turn on the light and read a book when she thought she heard her father’s bedroom door opening. Since he was not in the habit of getting up during the night, she listened carefully, he probably needed to go to the bathroom, but the footsteps she heard shortly afterward, cautious but audible, were in the small entrance hall. Perhaps he’s going to the kitchen to get a drink of water, she thought. At the unmistakable sound of the door latch, however, she sprang to her feet. She pulled on her dressing gown and left her room. Her father had his hand on the door handle. Where are you off to at this hour, Marta asked, Oh, just out, said Cipriano Algor, You can go where you like, I mean, you’re old enough to do as you please, but you can’t just go off without a word, as if there was no one else living here, Look, I can’t hang around here wasting time, Why, are you afraid you might get there after six, asked Marta, If you already know where I’m going then you don’t need any explanations, You should at least consider the problems you might be creating for your son-in-law, As you yourself said, I’m old enough to do as I please, and Marçal can’t be held responsible for my actions, His bosses may think otherwise, No one will see me, and if someone does order me away, I’ll just tell them that I walk in my sleep, This is no time for jokes, All right, I’ll be serious, And I should think so, Something is going on down there that I need to know about, Whatever it is can’t stay a secret forever, and Marçal said that he’d tell us all about it when he finishes his shift, That’s fine, but a description isn’t enough for me, I want to see it with my own eyes, In that case, just go then and don’t torture me any more, said Marta, crying. Her father went over to her, put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug, Please, don’t cry, he said, do you know what the worst thing is, the fact that we haven’t been the same since we moved here. He gave her a kiss, then left, slowly closing the door behind him. Marta went to get a blanket and a book, sat down on one of the small sofas in the living room and covered her knees. She did not know how long she would have to wait.

Cipriano Algor’s plan could not have been simpler. He would go down in a service elevator as far as floor zero five and then abandon himself to fate and to chance. Battles have been won with fewer weapons, he thought. Then, in order to be totally impartial, he added, and many more have been lost. He had noticed that the service elevators, probably because they were intended exclusively for transporting materials, were not fitted with closed-circuit cameras, at least none that he could see, and if there were any of those tiny camouflaged ones, the guards on duty would probably be concentrating their attention on the outer doors and on the floors containing the shops and the attractions. If he was wrong, he would soon find out. In the first place, assuming that the residential floors above ground level formed a block with the ten underground floors, it would be best if he used the service elevator that was nearest the inner façade in order not to waste time looking for a way through the thousands of containers that he imagined would be kept belowground, especially on zero five, the particular floor that interested him. Nevertheless, he was not that surprised when he found a large open space, clear of all merchandise, which was obviously intended to facilitate access to the excavation. One section of a supporting wall, between two pillars, had been demolished, and it was through there that one entered. Cipriano Algor looked at his watch, it was two forty-five. Despite the dim lighting on that floor, there was no way of telling if there was any light inside the excavation itself to alleviate the blackness of the great maw about to swallow him. I should have brought a flashlight, he thought. Then he remembered having read once that the best thing to do when entering a dark place, if you wanted to be able to make out what was inside as soon as you got in there, was to close your eyes before going in and open them afterward. Yes, he thought, that’s what I should do, close my eyes and plummet down into the center of the earth. He did not plummet anywhere. To his left, almost at floor level, was a tenuous glow which, once he had advanced a few more steps, gradually revealed itself as a line of lights. They illuminated a dirt ramp that led down to a landing from which another downward ramp emerged. The silence was so thick, so dense that Cipriano Algor could hear his own heart beating. Here we go, he thought, poor Marçal is going to get the fright of his life. He began walking down the ramp, he reached the first landing, went down the next ramp to another landing and stopped. In front of him two spotlights, one on either side, so that the light would not fall directly into the interior, revealed the oblong shape of the cave entrance. On some cleared ground to the right stood two small diggers. Marçal was sitting on a low bench, beside him was a table on which stood a flashlight. He had not yet seen his father-in-law. Cipriano Algor emerged from the half-darkness of the final landing and said out loud, Don’t be frightened, it’s me. Marçal leaped to his feet, what else would he do, he that would have replied nonchalantly, Hi, fancy seeing you here, let him cast the first stone. It was only when his father-in-law was standing right in front of him that Marçal, still with some difficulty, managed to say, What are you doing here, what kind of stupid idea was it coming down here, and yet, contrary to the demands of logic, there was no anger in his voice, what there was, apart from the natural relief of someone who has just realized that he is not being threatened by some malign spirit, was a kind of shamefaced satisfaction, something like an intense feeling of gratitude to which he might even admit one day. What are you doing here, he said again, I just came to have a look, said Cipriano Algor, And I suppose it didn’t occur to you to think of the trouble I might get into if anyone found out, it didn’t occur to you that it might cost me my job, Just tell them that your father-in-law is a complete idiot, an irresponsible fool who should be locked up in a lunatic asylum in a straitjacket, Oh, yes, that would really help. Cipriano Algor looked over at the cave and said, Have you seen what’s inside, Yes, said Marçal, What is it, Go and see for yourself, here’s the flashlight if you need it, Come with me, No, I went alone too, Is there some path marked out, a passageway, No, you just have to keep left all the way and never lose contact with the wall, you’ll find what you’re looking for at the end. Cipriano Algor switched on the flashlight and set off. I forgot to close my eyes, he thought. The indirect light from the spotlights allowed him to see only about three or four meters in front of him, beyond that it was as black as the inside of someone’s body. There was a fairly gentle, albeit uneven slope. Very cautiously, touching the wall with his left hand, Cipriano Algor began to descend. At one point, he thought he could see something to his right that appeared to be a platform and a wall. He said to himself that on his way back, he would find out what it was, It’s probably some structure to shore up the earth, and then he continued on down. He had the impression that he had already come some distance, perhaps thirty or forty meters. He looked back at the mouth of the cave. Lit only by the spotlights, it looked a long way off, I haven’t really come very far, he thought, I’m just getting disoriented. He noticed that panic had started to grate insidiously on his nerves, and he had thought he was so brave, so much better than Marçal, and now he was almost ready to turn tail and stumble his way back up to the top. He leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, I’d rather die first, he said, and started walking again. Suddenly, the wall appeared in front of him, as if it had turned back on itself to form a right angle. He had reached the end of the cave. He shone the beam downward to see if he was on firm ground, took two steps and was just taking a third when his right knee struck something hard, and he cried out. The shock made the flashlight flicker, and, for a moment, there appeared before his eyes what seemed to be a stone bench, and, the following moment, a row of vague shapes appeared and disappeared. A violent tremor ran through Cipriano Algor’s limbs, his courage faltered like a piece of fraying rope, but inside him he heard a voice calling him to order, Remember, you’d rather die first. The tremulous light from the torch swept slowly over the white stone, caught some bits of dark cloth, then moved upward to reveal a human body sitting there. Beside it, covered in the same dark fabric, were five other bodies, all sitting as erect as if a metal spike had been put through their skulls to keep them fixed to the stone. The smooth rear wall of the cave was about ten spans away from their hollow eye sockets, in which the eyeballs had been reduced to mere grains of dust. What is this, murmured Cipriano Algor, what nightmare is this, who were these people. He went closer, shone the flashlight beam on the dark, parched heads, this is a man, this is a woman, another man, another woman and another man and another woman, three men and three women, he saw the remnants of the ropes that had been used to keep their necks from moving, then he shone the light lower down, identical ropes were around their legs. Then slowly, very slowly, like a light in no hurry to show itself, but which had come in order to reveal the truth of things, even those hidden in the darkest and most hidden crannies, Cipriano Algor saw himself going into the kiln again, he saw the stone bench that the builders had left there and he sat down on it, he heard Marçal’s voice, although the words were different now, they call and call again, anxiously, from afar, Pa, can you hear me, say something. The voice echoes around the inside of the cave, the echoes bounce off the walls, they multiply, if Marçal doesn’t keep quiet for a moment, we won’t be able to hear Cipriano Algor’s voice, sounding as distant as if it too were an echo, I’m fine, don’t worry, I won’t be long. His fear had vanished. The flashlight once more caressed the wretched faces, the skin-and-bone hands folded on the knees, and, more than that, it guided Cipriano Algor’s own hand when it touched, with a respect that would have been religious had it not been merely human, the dry forehead of the first woman. There was nothing more to do there, Cipriano Algor had understood. Like the circular route of a calvary, which will always find a calvary ahead, the climb back up was slow and painful. Marçal had come down to meet him, he held out his hand to help him, and when they emerged from the darkness into the light, they had their arms around each other, though they could not have said for how long they had been like that. Drained of all his strength, Cipriano Algor flopped down on the bench, rested his head on the table and, noiselessly, his shoulders almost imperceptibly shaking, he began to cry. It’s all right, Pa, I cried too, said Marçal. A little while later, more or less recovered, Cipriano Algor looked at his son-in-law in silence, as if at that moment he had no better way of telling him how fond he was of him, then he asked, Do you know what that is, Yes, I remember reading something about it once, replied Marçal, And do you know that, since that’s what it is, what we saw there has no reality, cannot be real, Yes, I do, And yet I touched the forehead of one of those women with my own hand, it wasn’t an illusion, it wasn’t a dream, if I went back there now, I would find the same three men and the same three women, the same cords binding them, the same stone bench, the same wall in front of them, If they can’t be those other people, since they never existed, who are they, asked Marçal, I don’t know, but after seeing them, I started thinking that perhaps what really doesn’t exist is what we call nonexistence. Cipriano Algor got slowly to his feet, his legs were still shaking, but, on the whole, his physical strength had returned. He said, When I was going down there, I thought at one point that I passed something like a wall and a platform, if you could just change the direction of one of those spotlights, he did not need to complete the sentence, Marçal started turning a wheel, working a lever, and the light spread across the ground until it came to the base of a wall that crossed the cave from side to side, though without touching the cave walls. There was no platform, just a passageway alongside the wall. There’s only one thing missing, muttered Cipriano Algor. He walked forward a few steps and suddenly stopped, Here it is, he said. There was a large black stain on the ground, the ground was scorched, as if a fire had burned there for a long time. There’s no point now asking if they existed or not, said Cipriano Algor, the proof is here, each person must draw his own conclusions, I’ve drawn mine already. The spotlight returned to its place, as did the darkness, then Cipriano Algor asked, Do you want me to stay and keep you company, Thanks, but no, said Marçal, you’d better get back home, Marta must be worried sick, doubtless fearing the worst, See you in a while, then, See you, Pa, there was a pause, and then, with a half-embarrassed smile, like that of an adolescent who draws back at the same moment as he gives himself, Thanks for coming.