The Collected Novels of José Saramago (372 page)

TWENTY-THREE DEATHS SO FAR, AND WE’VE NO IDEA HOW MANY MORE
they’ll find under the rubble, that’s at least twenty-three deaths, interior minister, said the prime minister, bringing the flat of his hand down on the newspapers that lay open on his desk, The media are almost unanimous in attributing the attack to some terrorist group with links to the insurrection by the blankers, sir, Firstly, purely as a matter of good taste, please do me the great favor of not using the word blanker in my presence, secondly, please explain what you mean by the expression almost unanimous, It means that there are only two exceptions, two newspapers who do not accept the version that is doing the rounds and who are demanding a proper investigation, Interesting, Read what this one says, sir. The prime minister read out loud, We Demand To Know Who Gave The Order, And this one, sir, less direct, but along the same lines, We Want The Truth Whoever It May Hurt. The interior minister went on, It’s nothing to get alarmed about, I don’t think we need worry, in fact, it’s rather a good thing that there should be a few doubts, that way people can’t say they’re all speaking with their master’s voice, Do you mean that twenty-three or more deaths don’t worry you, It was a calculated risk, sir, In the light of what happened, a very badly calculated one, Yes, I suppose you could see it like that, We assumed it would be a less powerful bomb, just something to give people a bit of a fright, There was clearly an unfortunate failure in the chain of command, If only I could be sure that was the only reason, The order was, I can assure you, correctly given, you have my
word, sir, Your word, interior minister, For what it’s worth, sir, Yes, for what it’s worth, In either case, we knew there would be deaths, But not twenty-three, Even if there had been only three, they would have been no less dead than these twenty-three, it isn’t a question of numbers, No, but it is also a question of numbers, May I remind you that he who wills the ends, wills the means, Oh, I’ve heard that refrain many times before, And this won’t be the last time, even if, next time, you hear it from someone else’s lips, Appoint a commission of inquiry at once, minister, To reach what conclusions, prime minister, Just set it to work, we’ll sort that out later, Very good, sir, Give all necessary help to the families of the victims, both those who died and those who are currently in hospital, tell the council to take charge of the funerals, In the midst of all this confusion, I forgot to inform you that the council leader has resigned, Resigned, why, Well, to be more precise, he walked out, At this precise moment, I don’t really care whether he resigned or walked out, my question is why, He arrived at the station immediately after the explosion took place and his nerve went, he couldn’t cope with what he saw, No one could, I know I couldn’t, indeed, I imagine even you couldn’t, minister, so there must be some other reason for his abrupt departure, He thinks the government is responsible, and he didn’t just hint at his suspicions either, he was quite explicit about it, Do you think he was the one who passed the idea on to those two newspapers, Frankly, prime minister, I don’t, and, believe you me, I would love to be able to lay the blame at his door, What will the man do now, His wife is a doctor, Yes, I know her, They’ll have to get by until he finds a new job, And meanwhile, Meanwhile, prime minister, I will keep him under the strictest possible surveillance, if that’s what you mean, Whatever was the man thinking of, he seemed so trustworthy, a loyal party member, with an excellent political career, a future, The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live,
some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they’re just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skilfully, to justify their cowardice, You’re obviously something of an expert on the subject, did you glean all this from your own experiences, If I had, would I be in the post of interior minister, No, I suppose not, but everything is possible in this world, no doubt our finest torture specialists kiss their children when they get home, and some may even cry at the cinema, And I sir, am no exception, in fact, I’m just an old sentimentalist really, Glad to hear it. The prime minister leafed slowly through the newspapers, he looked at the photographs one by one with a mixture of repugnance and apprehension, and said, You probably want to know why I don’t sack you, Yes, sir, I’m curious to know your reasons, Because if I did, people would think one of two things, either that, independent of the nature and degree of guilt, I considered you directly responsible for what had happened, or that I was quite simply punishing you for your supposed incompetence for not having foreseen the possibility of such an act of violence in abandoning the capital to its fate, Yes, knowing as I do the rules of the game, I thought those would be your reasons, Obviously, there’s a third reason, possible, as all things are, but improbable, and therefore out of the question, What’s that, That you might make public the truth behind the attack, You know better than anyone that no interior minister, in any age or in any country in the world, has ever opened his mouth to speak of the mean, dishonorable, treacherous, criminal deeds committed in the course of his work, so you can rest easy on that score because I will prove no exception, If it becomes known that we ordered the bomb to be planted, we will give the people who cast the blank votes the final reason they needed, If you’ll forgive me, prime minister, that way of thinking offends against logic, Why, And, if you’ll allow me to say so, it does an injustice to the usual rigor of your thinking, Get to the point, Whether they find out or not, if they are then shown to
be right, it’s because they were right already. The prime minister pushed the newspapers away and said, This whole business reminds me of the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice, the one who couldn’t control the magical forces he had unleashed, Who, in your view, prime minister, is the sorcerer’s apprentice in this case, them or us, Well, I very much fear that both of us are, they set off down a dead-end road with no thought for the consequences, And we followed them, Exactly, and now it’s just a matter of waiting to see what the next step will be, As far as the government is concerned, we simply have to keep up the pressure, although after what has just happened, we obviously don’t want to take any further action right now, And what about them, If the information I received before coming here is true, then they are preparing to hold a demonstration, What on earth do they hope to achieve by that, demonstrations never achieve anything, if they did, we wouldn’t allow them, Presumably they want to protest against the attack, and as for getting authorization from the ministry of the interior, on this occasion, they won’t even have to waste their time asking for it, Will we ever get out of this mess, That is not a matter for sorcerers, prime minister, the fully qualified or the apprentices, but, in the end, as always, the strongest side will win, The one who is strongest at the last moment will win, and we haven’t yet reached that moment, the strength we have now may not be sufficient by then, Oh, I have every confidence, prime minister, an organized state cannot possibly lose a battle like this, it would be the end of the world, Or the beginning of another, Now I’m not quite sure what I should make of those words, prime minister, Well, don’t go spreading it around that the prime minister is entertaining defeatist ideas, Such a thought would never even enter my head, Just as well, You were clearly speaking hypothetically, Of course, If you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll get back to work, The president tells me he’s had a brilliant idea, What’s that, He didn’t want to go into detail, he is awaiting events, To some purpose one hopes, He is the president, That’s what I meant, Keep me informed, Yes, prime minister, Goodbye, Goodbye, prime minister.

The information received by the ministry of the interior was correct, the city was preparing for a demonstration. The final death toll had risen to thirty-four. No one knows where or how the idea came about, but it was immediately taken up by everyone, the bodies were not to be buried in cemeteries like the ordinary dead, their graves were to remain per omnia sæ sæculorum in the landscaped area opposite the station. However, a few families known for their right-wing allegiances and who were utterly convinced that the attack had been the work of a terrorist group with, as all the media affirmed, direct links to the conspiracy against the present government, refused to hand over their innocent dead to the community. Yes, they clamored, they truly were innocent of all guilt, because they had all their lives respected their own rights and those of others, because they had voted as their parents and their grandparents had, because they were orderly people and had now become the victims and martyrs of this murderous act of violence. They also alleged, in another tone entirely, perhaps so as not to scandalize anyone with such a lack of civic solidarity, that they had their own historical family vaults and it was a deep-rooted family tradition that those who had always been united in life should remain so after death, again per omnia sæcula sæculorum. The collective burial would not, therefore, be of thirty-four bodies, but twenty-seven. This was still a large number of people. Sent by who knows who, but certainly not by the council, which, as we know, will be without a leader until the interior minister approves the necessary appointment of a replacement, anyway, as we were saying, sent by who knows who, there appeared in the garden a vast machine with many arms, one of those so-called multipurpose machines, like a gigantic quick-change artist, which can uproot a tree in the time it takes to utter a sigh and which would have been capable of digging twenty-seven graves in less time that it takes to say amen, if the gravediggers from the cemeteries, who were equally attached to tradition, had not turned up to carry out the work by hand, that is, using spade and shovel. What the machine had, in fact, come to do was to uproot half a dozen trees that were in the way, so that the area, once trodden down and leveled, looked as if it had been born to be a cemetery and a place of eternal rest, and then it, the machine that is, went off and planted the trees and the shade that they cast elsewhere.

Three days after the attack, in the early morning, people started to flood out into the streets. They were silent and grave-faced, many carried white flags, and all wore a white armband on their left arm, and don’t let any experts in the etiquette of funeral rites go telling you that white cannot be a sign of mourning, when we are reliably informed that it used to be so in this very country, and we know that it has always been so for the Chinese, not to mention the Japanese, who, if it was left up to them, would all be wearing blue. By eleven o’clock, the square was already full, but all that could be heard was the great breathing of the crowd, the dull whisper of air entering and leaving lungs, in and out, feeding with oxygen the blood of these living beings, in, out, in, out, until suddenly, we will not finish the phrase, that moment, for those who have come here, the survivors, has not yet come. There were innumerable white flowers, quantities of chrysanthemums, roses, lilies, especially arum lilies, the occasional translucent white cactus flower, and thousands of marguerites which were forgiven their black hearts. Lined up twenty paces apart, the coffins were lifted onto the shoulders of the relatives and friends of the deceased, those who had them, and carried in procession to the graves, where, under the skilled guidance of the professional gravediggers, they were slowly lowered down on ropes until, with a hollow thud, they touched bottom. The ruins of the
station still seemed to give off a smell of burned flesh. It will seem incomprehensible to some that such a moving ceremony, such a poignant display of collective grief, was not graced by the consolatory influence that would doubtless have come from the ritual practices of the country’s sundry religious institutions, thus depriving the souls of the dead of their most certain viaticum and depriving the community of the living of a practical demonstration of ecumenicalism that might have contributed to leading the straying population back to the fold. The reason for this deplorable absence can only be explained by the various churches’ fear that they might become the focus of suspicions, possibly tactical, or at worst strategic, of conniving with the blank-voting insurgency. This absence might also have to do with a number of phone calls, with minimal variations on the same theme, made by the prime minister himself, The nation’s government would find it deeply regrettable if the chance presence of your church at the funeral service, while, of course, spiritually justified, should come to be considered, and subsequently exploited, as evidence of your political, and even ideological, support for the stubborn and systematic disrespect with which a large part of the capital’s population continues to treat the legitimate and constitutional democratic authority. The burials were, therefore, purely secular, which is not to say that, here and there, a few private, silent prayers did not rise up to the various heavens to be welcomed there with benevolent sympathy. The graves were still open, when someone, doubtless with the best of intentions, stepped forward to give a speech, but this was immediately repudiated by the other people present, No speeches, we each have our own grief and we all feel the same sorrow. And the person who came up with this clear formulation of feelings was quite right. Besides, if that were the intention of the frustrated orator, it would be impossible to make a funeral oration for twenty-seven people, both male and female, not to mention some small child with no history at all. Unknown soldiers do not need the names that they used in life in order to be showered with the right and proper honors, and that’s fine, if that’s what we agree to do, but if these dead, most of them unrecognizable, and two or three of them still unidentified, want anything, it is to be left in peace. To those punctilious readers, showing a praiseworthy concern for the good ordering of the story, who want to know why the usual, indispensable DNA tests were not carried out, the only honest answer we can give is our own total ignorance, allow us, however, to imagine that the famous and much-abused expression, Our dead, so commonplace, so much part of the routine patter of patriotic harangues, were to be taken literally in these circumstances, that is, if these dead, all of them, belong to us, we should not consider any of them exclusively ours, which would mean that any DNA analysis which took into account all the factors, including, in particular, the non-biological ones, and however hard it rummaged around inside the double helix, would only succeed in confirming a collective ownership which required no proof anyway. That man, or perhaps woman, had more than enough reason to say, as we noted above, Here, we each have our own grief and we all feel the same sorrow. Meanwhile, the earth was shoveled back into the graves, the flowers were shared out equally, those who had reasons to weep were embraced and consoled by the others, if such a thing is possible with such a recent grief. The loved one of each person, of each family, is here, although one does not know quite where, perhaps in this grave, perhaps in that, it would be best if we wept over all of them, as a shepherd once so rightly said, although heaven knows where he learned it, One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.