The Collected Novels of José Saramago (381 page)

of action is suspended until further orders, you will receive your instructions tomorrow, once I have read through any messages from the ministry, and, if necessary, so as to speed up the work, I will make any changes I see fit. He said good night again, Good night, sir, replied his two subordinates, and then he went into his room. As soon as the door had closed, the second assistant prepared to continue the conversation, but the other man quickly put a forefinger to his lips and shook his head, indicating to him not to speak. He was the first one to push back his chair and say, Right, I’m off to bed, if you’re staying up, be careful not to wake me when you come in. Unlike their leader, these two men, as the subordinates they are, do not have the right to a room of their own, they are both going to sleep in a large room with three beds, a kind of small dormitory which is rarely fully occupied. The bed in the middle is always the one least used. When, as in this case, there were two agents, they invariably used the beds on either side, and if only one policeman was sleeping there, he was also sure to prefer to sleep in one of those, never in the middle bed, perhaps because sleeping there would make him feel as if he were under siege or a prisoner under arrest. Even the hardest, most thick-skinned of policemen, and these two have not yet had the opportunity to prove that they are, need to feel protected by the proximity of a wall. The second assistant, who had understood the message, got to his feet and said, No, no, I’m not sitting up, I’m going to bed too. According to rank, first one, then the other, made use of the bathroom which was, as it should be, equipped with everything necessary for their ablutions, for we have not at any point in this report mentioned that the three policemen each brought with them only a small suitcase or a simple rucksack with a change of clothing, a toothbrush and a razor. It would be surprising if an enterprise christened with the fortunate name of providential did not take care to provide those to whom it gave temporary shelter with the various articles and products essential for their comfort and for the successful fulfilment of the mission with which they had been charged. Half an hour later, the two assistants were in their respective beds, wearing their official pajamas, with the police emblem over their heart. So the plan from the ministry of the interior’s planning department was useless, said the second assistant, It’s always the same when they don’t take the elementary precaution of consulting the people who’ve got the experience, replied the first assistant, Our leader’s got plenty of experience, said the second assistant, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be where he is today, Sometimes, being too close to the centers of decision-making brings on myopia, makes you shortsighted, replied the first assistant sagely, Do you mean to say that if we ever get to a position of real power, like the chief, the same thing will happen to us, asked the second assistant, There’s no reason why, in this particular case, the future should be any different from the present, replied the first assistant wisely. Fifteen minutes later, both were asleep. One was snoring, the other wasn’t.

It was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, when the group leader, already washed, shaved and dressed, came into the room where the ministry’s plan of action, or, to be more precise, the interior minister’s plan of action that had been so rudely loaded onto the patient shoulders of the police authorities, had been torn to shreds by his two assistants, albeit with praiseworthy discretion and considerable respect, and even a slight touch of dialectical elegance. He had no problem in acknowledging this and bore them no rancor, on the contrary, he was clearly very relieved. With the same energetic strength of will with which he had overcome the incipient insomnia that had caused him to toss and turn for a while in bed, he took total control of operations, generously rendering unto caesar what could not be denied to caesar, but making it quite clear that, in the end, all benefits will sooner or later revert to god and to authority, god’s other name. It was, therefore, a serene, confident
man whom the two sleepy assistants found when, minutes later, they, in turn, shuffled into the living-room, still in their dressing-gowns, which were also adorned with the police emblem, and in their pajamas and bedroom slippers. Their chief had calculated as much, he had foreseen that the first point of the day would go to him, and he had already noted it on the blackboard. Good morning, boys, he said in a cordial tone, I hope you slept well. Yes, sir, said one. Yes, sir, said the other, Let’s have breakfast, then get yourselves washed and dressed, who knows, we might catch him still in his bed, that would be fun, by the way, what day is it today, Saturday, today is Saturday, no one gets up early on Saturday, you wait, he’ll open the door looking just the way you do now, in dressing-gown and pajamas, shuffling down the corridor in his slippers, and consequently with his defenses down, psychologically at a low ebb, come on, come on, who’s the brave man who’s going to volunteer to make breakfast, Me, said the second assistant, knowing full well that there was no third assistant to do the job. In a different situation, that is, if, instead of being thrown out, the ministry’s plan had been accepted without further discussion, the first assistant would have stayed behind with his chief to agree and fine-tune, however unnecessarily, some detail of the investigation they were about to embark upon, but, in the circumstances, especially now that he, too, had been reduced to the inferiority of bedroom slippers, he decided to make a great gesture of camaraderie and say, I’ll help you. Their leader agreed, it seemed a good idea, and he sat down to go over some notes he had made before going to sleep. Barely fifteen minutes had passed when the two assistants reappeared carrying a tray each, bearing the coffee pot, the milk jug, a packet of plain biscuits, orange juice, yoghurt and jam, no doubt about it, the catering corps of the political police had once again done honor to their hard-won reputation. Resigned to drinking their coffee with cold milk or having to reheat it, the assistants
said that they were going to get washed and dressed and would be back in a moment, We’ll be as quick as we can. In fact, it seemed to them a grave lack of respect, with their superior there in suit and tie, to join him in their disheveled state, unshaven, eyes blinking, and emanating the thick, nocturnal smell of unwashed bodies. There was no need for them to explain, what was left unspoken was, for once, more than eloquent. Naturally, given this new atmosphere of peace, and with his assistants put firmly back in their places, it cost their chief nothing to urge them to sit down and share bread and salt with him, We’re colleagues, we’re in the same boat, a fine boss I’d be if I had to keep flaunting my stripes in order to get people to obey me, anyone who knows me knows I’m not like that, sit down, sit down. Slightly embarrassed, the assistants sat down, conscious that, whatever anyone said, there was something improper about the situation, two down-and-outs having breakfast with a person who, in comparison, looked like a dandy, they were the ones who should have got their asses out of bed early, more than that, they should have had the table set and ready for when their chief came out of his room, in dressing-gown and pajamas if he so wished, but us, no, we should have been properly dressed and with our hair combed, it is these small cracks in the varnish of behavior, rather than noisy revolutions, which, slowly, through repetition and persistence, finally bring down the most solid of social edifices. It is a wise dictum that says, If you want to be respected, don’t encourage familiarity, let us hope, for the good of the job, that this particular chief does not have reason to regret this moment. In the meantime, he seems confident of his authority, we have only to hear him, This operation has two objectives, a main one and a secondary one, the secondary objective, which I’ll deal with now so as not to waste time, is to find out as much as possible, but without, in theory, too much outlay of energy, about the supposed murder committed by the woman who led the group of six blind people mentioned in the letter, the main objective, to which we will apply all our efforts and abilities and for which we will use all reasonable means, whatever they may be, is to establish whether or not there is any connection between this woman, who is said to have retained her sight while the rest of us were all staggering around blind, and this new epidemic of blank ballot papers, It won’t be easy to find her, said the first assistant, That’s why we’re here, all attempts to unearth the roots of the boycott have failed up until now and it might well be that this guy’s letter won’t get us very far either, but it at least opens a new line of inquiry, It seems pretty unbelievable to me that this woman could be behind a movement that involves some hundreds of thousands of people and that, tomorrow, if we don’t stamp the whole business out now, she might gather together millions and millions more, said the second assistant, Both things are equally impossible, but if one of them happened, so could the other one, replied the chief, and concluded, with the look of someone who knows more than he is authorized to say, never imagining how true his words will prove to be, Impossibilities never come singly. With this happy concluding phrase, the perfect close to a sonnet, breakfast also came to an end. The assistants cleared the table and carried the crockery and what remained of the food into the kitchen, We’ll go and get washed and dressed now, we won’t be a moment, they said, Wait, said the chief, then, addressing himself to the first assistant, You’d better use my bathroom, otherwise we’ll never get out of here. The lucky assistant blushed with contentment, his career had just taken a great leap forward, he was going to pee in his chief’s toilet.

In the underground garage a car was waiting for them, the keys of which had been deposited the day before on the chief’s bedside table, along with a brief explanatory note indicating its make, color, registration number and the parking place where the vehicle had been left. Avoiding the foyer, they took the lift straight down to the garage
and had no difficulty in finding the car. It was nearly ten o’clock. The chief said to the second assistant as the latter was opening the back door for him, You drive. The first assistant sat in the front, next to the driver. It was a pleasant, very sunny morning, which shows yet again that the punishments of which the sky was such a prodigal source in the past, have, with the passing of the centuries, lost their force, those were good and just times, when any failure to obey the divine diktat was enough for several biblical cities to be annihilated and razed to the ground with all their inhabitants inside. Yet here is a city that cast blank votes against the lord and not a single bolt of lightning has fallen upon it, reducing it to ashes, as happened, in response to far less exemplary vices, to sodom and gomorrah, as well as to admah and to zeboyim, burned down to their very foundations, although the last two cities are mentioned less often than the first, whose names, perhaps because of their irresistible musicality, have remained forever in people’s ears. Nowadays, having abandoned their blind obedience to the lord’s orders, lightning bolts fall only where they want to, and, as has become manifest, one can clearly not count on them to lead this sinful city and caster of blank votes back to the path of righteousness. In their place, the ministry of the interior has sent three of its archangels, these three policemen, chief and subalterns, who, from now on, we will designate by their corresponding ranks, which are, following the hierarchical scale, superintendent, inspector and sergeant. The first two sit watching the people walking along, none of them innocent, all of them guilty of something, and they wonder if that venerable-looking old gentleman, for example, is not perhaps the grand master of outer darkness, if that girl with her arms about her boyfriend is not the incarnation of the undying serpent of evil, if that man walking along, head down, is not going to some unknown cave where the potions that poisoned the spirit of the city are distilled. The sergeant, whose lowly condition means that he is under no obligation to think elevated thoughts or to harbor suspicions about what lies beneath the surface of things, has rather homelier concerns, like this one with which he is about to dare to interrupt his superiors’ meditations, With weather like this, the man might have gone to spend the day in the country, What country, asked the inspector in an ironic tone, What do you mean what country, The real country is on the other side of the frontier, on this side, it’s all city. It was true. The sergeant had missed a golden opportunity to remain silent, but he had learned a lesson, asking such questions would get him nowhere. He concentrated on his driving and swore to himself that he would only open his mouth if asked to. That was when the superintendent spoke, We will be hard and implacable, we won’t resort to any of the classic tricks, like that old, outmoded hard cop, soft cop routine, we are a commando of operatives, feelings don’t count here, we will imagine that we are machines made to perform a specific task and we will simply carry out that task without so much as a backward glance, Yes, sir, said the inspector, Yes, sir, said the sergeant, breaking his own oath. The car turned into the street where the man who wrote the letter lives, over in that building, on the third floor. They parked the car a little further on, the sergeant opened the door for the superintendent, the inspector got out the other side, the commando is complete, on the firing line, fists clenched, action.

Now we see them on the landing. The superintendent gestures to the sergeant, who rings the doorbell. Total silence inside. The sergeant thinks, You see, I was right, he has gone to spend the day in the country. Another gesture, another ring on the doorbell. A few seconds later, they hear someone, a man, ask from behind the door, Who is it. The superintendent looks at his immediate subordinate, who says in a loud voice, Police, One moment, please, said the man, I have to get dressed. Four minutes passed. The superintendent made the same gesture, the sergeant again rang the doorbell,
this time keeping his finger pressed down. One moment, one moment, please, I’m coming, I’ve only just got up, these last words were spoken with the door open by a man wearing shirt and trousers and still in his slippers, Today is the day of the slipper, thought the sergeant. The man did not seem alarmed, he wore the look of someone finally seeing the arrival of the visitors he has been waiting for, any hint of surprise was probably due only to the fact that there were so many of them. The inspector asked him his name and he told them, adding, Do come in, and I apologize for the state the place is in, I never imagined you would come so early, besides, I thought you would call me in to make a statement, but you’ve come to me instead, it’s about the letter, I assume, Yes, it’s about the letter, said the inspector bluntly, Come in, come in. The sergeant went in first, sometimes the hierarchy works in reverse, followed by the inspector, with the superintendent bringing up the rear. The man shuffled down the corridor, Follow me, this way, he opened a door that gave onto a small sitting-room and said, Sit down, please, and if you don’t mind, I’ll just go and put some shoes on, this is no way to receive visitors, We’re not exactly what you would call visitors, remarked the inspector, No, of course not, it was just a manner of speaking, Go and put some shoes on, then, and be quick about it, we’re in a hurry, No, we’re not, we’re not in any hurry at all, said the superintendent, who had not until then said a word. The man looked at him, and this time he did so with an air of slight alarm, as if the tone in which the superintendent had spoken was not what had been agreed, and all he could think of to say was, You can, I assure you, count on my entire cooperation, sir, Superintendent, said the sergeant, Superintendent, repeated the man, and you, sir, Don’t worry, I’m just a sergeant. The man turned to the third member of the group, replacing his question with an interrogative lift of the eyebrows, but the answer came from the superintendent, This gentleman is an inspector and my chief officer, then he added, Now
go and put some shoes on, we’ll wait for you. The man left the room. I can’t hear anyone else in the apartment, it looks as if he lives alone, whispered the sergeant, His wife’s probably gone to spend the day in the country, said the inspector with a smile. The superintendent signaled to them to be quiet, I’ll ask the first questions, he said, lowering his voice. The man came back in and, as he sat down, said May I, as if he were not in his own house, and then, Here I am, now how can I help you. The superintendent nodded kindly, then began, Your letter, or, rather, your three letters, because there were three of them, Yes, I thought it was safer that way, because you never know, one of them might have got lost, the man began, Don’t interrupt, just answer any questions I ask you, Yes, superintendent, Your letters, I repeat, were read with great interest by their recipients, especially as regards what you say about a certain unidentified woman who committed a murder four years ago. There was no question in these words, it was a simple reiteration of facts, and so the man said nothing. There was an expression of confusion and perplexity on his face, he could not understand why the superintendent did not get straight to the heart of the matter instead of wasting time on an episode which he had only mentioned in order to cast a still darker light on an already disquieting portrait. The superintendent pretended not to notice, Tell us what you know about that murder, he asked. The man suppressed an urge to remind the superintendent that this had not been the most important part of the letter, that, compared with the country’s current situation, the murder was the least of it, but no, he wouldn’t do that, prudence told him to follow the music they were asking him to dance to, later on, they were sure to change the record, I know that she killed a man, Did you see her do it, were you there, asked the superintendent, No, superintendent, but she herself confessed, To you, To me and to other people, You do know, I assume, the technical meaning of the word confession, More or less, superintendent, More or less isn’t enough,
either you do or you don’t, In the sense that you mean, no, I don’t, Confession means a declaration of one’s own mistakes or faults, it can also mean an acknowledgement of guilt or of the truth of an accusation by the accused to someone in authority or in a court of law, now, can these definitions be applied rigorously to this case, No, not rigorously, superintendent, Fine, continue, My wife was there, my wife witnessed the man’s death, What do you mean by there, There, in the old insane asylum where we were quarantined, Your wife, I assume, was also blind, As I said the only person who didn’t go blind was her, Who’s her, The woman who committed the murder, Ah, We were in a dormitory, And the murder was committed there, No, superintendent, in another dormitory, So none of the people from your dormitory were present when the murder was committed, Only the women, Why only the women, It’s difficult to explain, superintendent, Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of time, There were some blind men who took over and started terrorizing us, Terrorizing, Yes, superintendent, terrorizing, How, They got hold of all the food and if we wanted to eat, we had to pay, And they demanded women as payment, Yes, superintendent, And that woman killed a man, Yes, superintendent, Killed him how, With a pair of scissors, Who was this man, The one who was in charge of the other blind men, She’s obviously a brave woman, Yes, superintendent, Now tell us why you reported her, But I didn’t, I only mentioned it because it seemed relevant, Sorry, I don’t understand, What I meant to say in the letter was that someone who was capable of doing that was capable of doing the other thing. The superintendent did not ask what other thing this was, he merely looked at the person whom he had, using navy language, called his chief officer, inviting him to continue the interrogation. The inspector paused for a few seconds, Would you mind asking your wife to join us, he asked, we’d like to talk to her, My wife isn’t here, When will she be back, She won’t, we’re divorced, When did that happen,
Three years ago, Would you object to telling us why you got divorced, For personal reasons, Naturally they would be personal, For private reasons then, As with all divorces. The man looked at the inscrutable faces before him and realized that they would not leave him in peace until he had told them what they wanted to know. He cleared his throat, crossed and uncrossed his legs, I’m a man of principle, he began, Oh, we know that, said the sergeant, unable to contain himself, I mean, I know that, I had the privilege of reading your letter. The superintendent and the inspector smiled, it was a justifiable blow. The man looked at the sergeant, bewildered, as if he had not expected an attack from that quarter, and, lowering his eyes, he went on, It was to do with those blind men, I couldn’t bear the fact that my wife had done it with those vile men, for a whole year I put up with the shame of it, but, in the end, it became unbearable, and so I left her, got a divorce, How odd, I thought you said that these other blind men gave you food in exchange for your women, said the inspector, That’s right, And your principles, I assume, did not allow you to touch the food that your wife brought to you after she had, to use your expression, done it with those vile men. The man hung his head and did not reply. I understand your discretion, said the inspector, it really is too private a matter to be bandied about amongst strangers, oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to wound your sensibilities. The man looked at the superintendent as if pleading for help, or at least asking him to replace the pincers with a spell on the rack. The superintendent obliged and applied the garrotte, In your letter, you referred to a group of seven people, Yes, superintendent, Who were they, Apart from the woman and her husband, Which woman, The one who didn’t go blind, The one who acted as your guide, Yes, superintendent, The one who, in order to avenge her fellow women, stabbed the leader of the bandits with a pair of scissors, Yes, superintendent, Go on, Her husband was an ophthalmologist, We know that, There was a prostitute too, Did she tell
you she was a prostitute, Not that I remember, no, superintendent, So how did you know she was a prostitute, By her manner, it was clear from her manner, And, of course, manners never deceive, go on, And there was an old man who was blind in one eye and wore a black eye-patch, and he and she lived together afterward, Who’s she, The prostitute, Were they happy, I’ve no idea, You must have some idea, During the year that we still saw each other, yes, they seemed happy. The superintendent counted on his fingers, There’s still one missing, he said, Yes, there was a boy with a squint who had lost his parents in all the confusion, Do you mean that you all met in the dormitory, No, superintendent, we had all met before, Where, At the ophthalmologist’s where my then wife took me when I went blind, in fact, I think I was the first person to go blind, And you infected the others, the whole city, including your visitors today, It wasn’t my fault, superintendent, Do you know the names of these people, Yes, superintendent, Of all of them, Apart from the boy, if I knew his name then, I’ve forgotten it now, But you remember the others, Yes, superintendent, And their addresses, Yes, unless they’ve moved in the last three years, Of course, unless they’ve moved in the last three years. The superintendent glanced round the small room, and his gaze lingered on the television as if he were hoping for some inspiration from it, then he said, Sergeant, pass your notebook to this gentleman and lend him your pen so that he can write down the names and the addresses of the people of whom he has spoken so warmly, apart from the boy with the squint, who wouldn’t be of any use to us anyway. The man’s hands trembled when he took the pen and the notebook, they continued to tremble as he wrote, he was telling himself that there was no reason to feel afraid, that the police were there because he had, in some way, summoned them himself, what he didn’t understand was why they didn’t talk about the blank ballot papers, the insurrection, the conspiracy against the state, about the only real reason he had written his letter. His hands were trembling so much that his writing was almost illegible, May I use another sheet, he asked, Use as many as you like, replied the sergeant. His writing began to grow steadier, it was no longer a motive for embarrassment. While the sergeant retrieved the pen and handed the notebook to the superintendent, the man was wondering what gesture, what word could win him, even if only belatedly, the sympathy of these policemen, their benevolence, their complicity. Suddenly, he remembered, I’ve got a photograph, he exclaimed, yes, I think I’ve still got it, What photograph, asked the inspector, Of the group, it was taken shortly after we had recovered our sight, my wife didn’t want it, she said she’d get a copy, she said I should keep it so that I wouldn’t forget, Were those her words, asked the inspector, but the man did not reply, he had stood up and was about to leave the room, when the superintendent ordered, Sergeant, go with this gentleman, if he has any trouble finding the photograph, help him, don’t come back without it. They were absent for only a few minutes. Here it is, said the man. The superintendent went over to the window to be able to see better. In a line, side by side, the six adults stood in pairs, couple by couple. On the right, alongside his wife, stood the man himself, plainly recognizable, to the left there stood, without a shadow of a doubt, the old man with the black eye-patch and the prostitute, and in the middle, by a process of elimination, two people who could only be the doctor’s wife and her husband. In front, kneeling down like a football player, was the boy with the squint. Next to the doctor’s wife was a large dog looking straight at the camera. The superintendent beckoned to the man to join him, Is that her, he asked, pointing, Yes, superintendent, that’s her, And the dog, If you like, I can tell you the story, superintendent, No, don’t bother, she’ll tell me. The superintendent left first, followed by the inspector and then the sergeant. The man who had written the letter watched them go down the stairs. The building has no lift and there is little hope that it ever will.