The Collected Novels of José Saramago (392 page)

It was shortly after five o’clock when the superintendent left. He could have taken advantage of the taxi that someone else had just left at the door of the newspaper offices, but he preferred to walk. Oddly enough, he felt light and serene, as if someone had removed from some vital organ the foreign body that had been gradually gnawing away at him, a bone in the throat, a nail in the stomach, poison in the liver. Tomorrow all the cards in the deck would be on the table, the game of hide-and-seek would be over, and so he has not the slightest doubt that the minister, always assuming that the article does see the light of day, and, even if it doesn’t, that news of it reaches his ears, will know immediately at whom to point the accusing finger. Imagination seemed prepared to go further, it even took a first, troubling step, but the superintendent grabbed it by the throat, Today is today, madam, and tomorrow will come soon enough, he said. He had decided to go back to providential ltd, his legs
felt suddenly heavy, his nerves as lax as if they were an elastic band that had been kept fully stretched for far too long, he experienced an urgent need to close his eyes and sleep. I’ll hail the first taxi that appears, he thought. He still had to walk for quite a way, all the taxis that passed were occupied, one didn’t even hear him call, and finally, when he could barely drag his feet along, a small lifeboat picked up the shipwrecked man just before he drowned. The lift hoisted him charitably up to the fourteenth floor, the door opened unresistingly, the sofa received him like a dear friend, and a few minutes later, the superintendent was lying, legs outstretched, fast asleep, or sleeping the sleep of the just, as people used to say in the days when they believed that the just existed. Snuggled up in the maternal lap of providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, whose peaceful atmosphere did full justice to the names and attributes conferred upon it, the superintendent slept for a good hour, at the end of which he awoke with renewed energy, or so at least it seemed to him. When he stretched, he felt the second envelope in his inside jacket pocket, the one he had not delivered, Perhaps I was wrong to bet everything on one horse, he thought, then quickly realized that he could not possibly have had the same conversation twice, that he could not have gone straight from one newspaper to the next and told the same story, and by repetition, worn away at its veracity, What’s done is done, he thought, there’s no point thinking about it any more. He went into his bedroom and saw the light on the answering machine flashing. Someone had phoned and left a message. He pressed the button, the telephonist’s voice spoke first, then that of the police commissioner, Please note that tomorrow, at nine o’clock, I repeat, at nine o’clock, not at twenty-one hundred hours, your colleagues, the inspector and the sergeant, will be waiting for you at post six-north, I should tell you that, not only has your mission failed due to the technical and scientific incompetence of the person in charge, your presence in the capital has now also come to be considered inappropriate both by the interior minister and by myself, I need only add that the inspector and the sergeant are officially responsible for escorting you to my presence and have orders to arrest you if you resist. The superintendent stood staring at the answering machine, and then, slowly, like a person saying goodbye to someone setting off on a long trip, reached out his hand and pressed the erase button. Then he went into the kitchen, took the envelope out of his pocket, soaked it in alcohol and, folding it to form an inverted V in the sink, set fire to it. A gush of water carried the ashes down the drain. Having done that, he went back into the living-room, turned on all the lights, and devoted himself to a leisurely perusal of the newspapers, paying special attention to the paper to which or to whom, in some way, he had handed his fate. When it was time, he went and looked in the fridge to see if he could prepare something resembling supper from whatever was in there, but soon gave up, scarcity was not, in this case, a synonym for either freshness or quality. They should install a new fridge here, he thought, this one has given all it had to give. He went out, ate quickly in the first restaurant he came across and returned to providential ltd. He had to get up early the following day.

THE SUPERINTENDENT WAS AWAKE WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG. HE DID
not get up to answer it, he was sure that it would be someone from the police commissioner’s office reminding him of the order he had received to appear at nine o’clock, note, at nine o’clock, not at twenty-one hundred hours, at military post six-north. They probably won’t phone again, and one can easily understand why, for in their professional lives and, who knows, possibly in their private lives too, policemen make great use of the mental process we call deduction, also known as logical inference. If he doesn’t answer, they would say, it’s because he’s already on his way. How wrong they were. It’s true that the superintendent has now got out of bed, it’s true that he has entered the bathroom to perform the appropriate actions to relieve and cleanse his body, it is true that he has got dressed and is about to leave, but not in order to hail the first taxi that appears and say to the driver, who is looking at him expectantly in the rear-view mirror, Take me to pos: six-north, Post six-north, I’m sorry, but I’ve no idea where that is, it must be a new street, No, it’s a military post, I can show you where it is if you have a map. No, this dialogue will never take place, not now or ever, the superintendent is going out to buy the newspapers, that was why he went to bed early yesterday, not in order to get enough rest and arrive promptly for the meeting at post six-north. The street lamps are still on, the man at the newspaper kiosk has just raised the shutters, he is starting to set out the week’s magazines, and when he finishes this work, as if it were a sign, the street lamps go out and
the distribution truck arrives. The superintendent approaches while the man is still sorting out the newspapers into the order with which we are already familiar, but, this time, there are almost as many copies of one of the less popular newspapers as there are of the papers with a larger circulation. The superintendent felt this was a good omen, but this pleasant feeling of hope was immediately succeeded by a violent shock, the headlines on the first newspapers in the row were sinister, troubling, and all in intense red ink, Murderess, This Woman Killed, Woman Suspect’s Other Crime, A Murder Committed Four Years Ago. At the other end of the row, the newspaper whose offices the superintendent had visited yesterday asked, What Haven’t We Been Told. The headline was ambiguous, it could mean this or that, or the opposite, but the superintendent preferred to see it as a small lantern placed there to guide his stumbling steps out of the valley of shadows. A copy of each, he said. The newsagent smiled, thinking that he seemed to have acquired a good customer for the future, and handed him the plastic bag containing the newspapers. The superintendent looked around for a taxi, he waited in vain for nearly five minutes, then decided to walk back to providential ltd, which is not, as we know, very far from here, but he is carrying a heavy load, a plastic bag bursting with words, it would be easier to carry the world on one’s back. As luck would have it, though, he took a short-cut down a narrow street and came upon a modest, old-style café, the sort that opens early because the owner has nothing else to do and which the customers visit in order to make sure that everything is there in its usual place and where the taste of the breakfast muffin speaks of eternity. He sat down at a table, ordered a white coffee, asked if they served toast, with butter, of course, no margarine, please. The coffee, when it arrived, was merely passable, but the toast had come direct from the hands of an alchemist who had only failed to discover the philosopher’s stone because he had never managed to
get beyond the putrefaction stage. The superintendent had opened the newspaper that most interested him today, he did so as soon as he sat down, and a quick glance was enough for him to see that the trick had worked, the censor had allowed himself to be taken in by the confirmation of what he already knew, and the thought had clearly never even crossed his mind that one must always take great care with what one thinks one knows, because behind it one finds concealed an endless chain of unknowns, the last of which will probably prove insoluble. Nevertheless, there was no point in harboring any great illusions, the newspaper would not be on sale at the kiosks all day, he could already imagine the enraged interior minister brandishing a copy and yelling, Get this garbage impounded at once and find out who leaked this information, the last part of the phrase had attached itself automatically, for the minister would know perfectly well that there was only one possible source for this act of treachery and betrayal. It was then that the superintendent decided that he would visit as many newspaper kiosks as his strength would allow in order to find out if the newspaper was selling in large or small numbers, to see the faces of the people who were buying it and to find out if they turned straight to the article or were distracted by frivolities. He glanced quickly at the four biggest-selling newspapers. Crudely elementary, but effective, the work of poisoning the public was continuing, two and two are four and always will be four, if that’s what you did yesterday, then you must have done the same today, and anyone who has the temerity to doubt that one thing inevitably leads to another is an enemy of legality and order. Pleased, he paid the bill and left. He started with the kiosk where he himself had bought the newspapers and had the satisfaction of seeing that the relevant pile had gone down quite a bit. Interesting, isn’t it, he said to the newsagent, it’s selling really well, Apparently some radio station mentioned an article they published, One hand washes the other and
both hands wash the face, said the superintendent mysteriously, Yes, you’re right, replied the man, although he had no idea what the superintendent meant. So as not to waste time looking for other kiosks, the superintendent asked each newsagent where the next one was, and, perhaps because of his respectable appearance, they always gave him the information, but it was clear that every one of those newsagents would like to have asked him What have they got that I haven’t. The hours passed, the inspector and the sergeant, over there at post six-north, had grown weary of waiting and had asked for instructions from the police commissioner’s office, the commissioner had informed the minister, the minister had explained the situation to the prime minister, and the prime minister had replied, It’s not my problem, it’s yours, you sort it out. Then the expected happened, when he reached the tenth kiosk, the superintendent could not find the newspaper. He asked for it, pretending he was going to buy a copy, but the newsagent said, You’re too late, they took them all away less than five minutes ago, They took them, why, They’re collecting them from all the kiosks, Collecting them, That’s another way of saying impounding them, But why, what was in the newspaper to make them do that, It was something about that woman and the conspiracy, you know, it’s been in all the other papers, well, now it seems she killed a man, Couldn’t you get me a copy, you’d be doing me a great favor, No, I haven’t got one, and even if I had, I wouldn’t sell it to you, Why not, How do I know you’re not a police officer on the prowl to see if I take the bait, You’re quite right, you can’t be too careful, said the superintendent and walked off. He didn’t want to go back to providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, to listen to that morning’s phone call and doubtless others demanding to know where he was, why he wasn’t answering the phone, why he had disobeyed the order to be at post six-north at nine o’clock, but the fact is he has nowhere to go, by now, there must be a sea of people outside the house of the doctor’s wife,
all shouting, some in favor, some against, although they’re probably all in favor, the others would be in the minority, they probably don’t want to risk being insulted or worse. Nor can he go to the offices of the newspaper that published the article, if there aren’t any plain-clothes policemen at the entrance, they’ll be around somewhere, he can’t even phone because all the lines will doubtless be tapped, and when he thought this, he understood, at last, that providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, would be under surveillance too, that all the hotels would have been forewarned, that there is not a single soul in the city who could take him in, even if he or she wanted to. He imagines that the newspaper will have received a visit from the police, he imagines that the director will have been forced, willingly or not, to reveal the identity of the person who provided him with the subversive information they had published, he might even have been reduced to showing them the letter bearing the name providential ltd, and signed in the fugitive superintendent’s own hand. He felt tired, his feet dragged, his body was bathed in sweat, although it wasn’t even particularly hot. He couldn’t wander these streets all day just pointlessly killing time, then, suddenly, he felt a great desire to go to the park with the statue of the woman and the water jar, to sit down by the edge of the pool, to stroke the green water with the tips of his fingers and raise them to his mouth. But then what will I do, he asked. Nothing, except plunge back into the labyrinth of streets, to get disoriented and lost and then turn back, walking and walking, eating even if he isn’t hungry, just to keep his body going, spending a couple of hours in a cinema, distracting himself by watching the adventures of an expedition to mars in the days when it was still inhabited by little green men, and coming out, blinking in the bright afternoon light, considering going to another cinema to waste another two hours traveling twenty thousand leagues under the sea in captain nemo’s submarine, and then entirely giving up the idea because there
is clearly something strange happening in the city, men and women are handing out small sheets of paper that people stop to read and then immediately stuff into a pocket, they’ve just handed one to the superintendent, it’s a photocopy of the article from the impounded newspaper, the one bearing the headline What Haven’t We Been Told, the one which, between the lines, tells the true story of the last five days, the superintendent can control himself no longer, and right there, like a child, he bursts into convulsive sobs, a woman of about his age comes and asks if he’s all right, if he needs help, and he can only shake his head, no, thank you, he’s fine, don’t worry, and since chance does occasionally do the right thing, someone from one of the top storeys of this building hurls out a handful of papers, and another and another, and down below the people hold up their arms to catch them, and the papers float down, they glide like doves, and one of them rests for a moment on the superintendent’s shoulder before sliding to the ground. So, in the end, nothing is lost, the city has taken the matter into its own hands and set hundreds of photocopiers working, and now there are animated groups of boys and girls slipping the sheets of paper into mail boxes or delivering them to people’s doors, someone asks if they’re advertising something and they say, yes, sir, it’s the very best of advertisements. These happy events gave the superintendent a new soul, and as if with a magic wave of the hand, white magic, not black, all his tiredness vanished, this is a different man walking these streets now, this is a different mind doing the thinking, seeing clearly what had been obscure before, amending conclusions that had seemed rock-solid and which now crumble between the fingers that touch them and decide, instead, that it is highly unlikely that providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, since it is a secret base, would have been placed under surveillance, after all, posting police guards there could arouse suspicions as to its importance and significance, although that would not, on the other hand, be particularly grave,
since they could simply take providential ltd somewhere else and the matter would be resolved. This new and negative conclusion cast stormy shadows over the superintendent’s spirit, but his next conclusion, while not entirely reassuring, at least served to resolve the serious problem of accommodation or, in other words, not knowing where he would sleep that night. The matter can be explained in a few brief words. The fact that the ministry of the interior and the police commissioner’s office viewed with more than justifiable displeasure the way that this public servant had unilaterally severed all contact with them did not mean that they had lost interest in where he was and where he could be found if needed urgently. If the superintendent had decided to lose himself in this city, if he had gone to ground in some gloomy backstreet, as outcasts and runaways usually do, they would have the devil’s own job to find him, especially if he had established a network of contacts amongst other subversive elements, an operation which, on the other hand, given its complexity, is not something that can be set in motion in the space of six days or so, which is the time we have spent here. Therefore, far from guarding the two entrances to providential ltd, they would, on the contrary, leave the way free so that the homing instinct that is natural to all creatures would make the wolf return to its cave, the puffin to its hole in the cliffs. So the superintendent could still enjoy a familiar, welcoming bed, always assuming they don’t come and wake him in the middle of the night, having opened the front door with delicate skeleton keys and forced him to surrender with the threat of three guns pointed straight at him. It is true, as we have said before, that there are times in life so grim that it’s either raining on one side or blowing a gale on the other, and this is the situation in which the superintendent finds himself now, obliged to choose between spending an uncomfortable night under a tree in the park, like a tramp, within sight of the woman with the water jar, or comfortably ensconced between the
stale blankets and crumpled sheets of providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance. This explanation did not prove to be quite as succinct as we promised, however, as we hope you will understand, we could not dismiss any of the possible variables without due consideration, detailing, impartially, the diverse and contradictory risk and safety factors, only to reach the conclusion we should have reached at the start, that there is no point running away to baghdad in order to avoid a meeting arranged for you in samarra. Having weighed and considered everything and decided to waste no further time on pondering the various weights down to the last milligram, the last possibility and the last hypothesis, the superintendent took a taxi to providential ltd, this was at the end of the evening, when the shadows cool the path ahead and the sound of water falling into pools grows bolder and, to the surprise of those who pass, becomes suddenly perceptible. There is not a single piece of paper left in the streets. Despite all this, it is clear that the superintendent feels slightly apprehensive and he has reason enough to do so. His own reasoning and the knowledge he has acquired over time regarding the wiles of the police have led him to conclude that no danger awaits him at providential ltd or will assail him later tonight, but this does not mean that samarra is not where it has to be. This thought caused the superintendent to place his hand on his gun and to think, Just in case, I’ll use the time it takes to go up in the lift to leave the gun cocked. The taxi stopped, We’re here, said the driver, and it was at that moment that the superintendent saw, stuck to the windscreen, a photocopy of the article. Despite his fear, all the anxiety and trepidation had been worthwhile. The lobby was deserted, the porter absent, the scene was set for the perfect crime, a stab wound in the heart, the dull thud of the body as it drops to the tiled floor, the door closing, the car with false number plates that draws up and leaves, bearing away the murderer, nothing simpler than killing and being killed. The lift was there, he did not need