The Collected Novels of José Saramago (425 page)

Anyone who has been following this story with due atten tion will have found it odd that, after the amusing episode in which solomon kicked the village priest, there has been no further reference to other encounters with the local inhabitants, as if we were crossing a desert rather than a civilized european country, a country, moreover, as even schoolchildren know, that gave new worlds to the world. There were some encounters, but only in passing, in the most literal sense of the phrase, in that people came out of their houses to see who was coming and found themselves face to face with the elephant, and while some crossed themselves in amazement and fear, others, though equally afraid, burst out laughing, probably at the sight of the elephant’s trunk. This, however, is nothing in comparison with the enthusiasm and the sheer number of boys and the occasional idle adult who came running from the town of castelo rodrigo when they heard the news about the elephant’s journey, although no one knows quite how it got there, the news, that is, not the elephant, who will take some time yet to hove into view. Nervous and excited, the commanding officer gave orders to the sergeant to send someone to ask one of the older boys if the spanish soldiers had arrived. The boy was obviously a galician because he replied with another question, Why are they coming here, is there going to be a war, Answer the question, have the spaniards arrived or not, No, sir, they haven’t. The information was passed to the commanding officer, on whose face there immediately appeared the most beatific of smiles. There was no doubt about it, fate seemed determined to favor the portuguese troops.

It took nearly an hour for the whole convoy to enter the town, a caravan of men and beasts so tired that they could barely stand, and with scarcely enough strength to raise an arm
or twitch an ear in acknowledgment of the applause with which the inhabitants of castelo rodrigo greeted them. A representative of the mayor guided them to the castle’s parade ground, which could easily have accommodated at least ten such convoys. Three members of the castellan’s family were waiting there, and they then accompanied the commanding officer on an inspection of the areas available to provide shelter for the men, not forgetting any shelter that the spaniards might need should they decide not to camp outside the castle. The mayor, whom the commanding officer went to see afterwards in order to pay his respects, said, They’ll probably pitch camp outside the castle walls, which, apart from anything else, would have the advantage of reducing any possibility of a confrontation, What makes you think there might be a confrontation, asked the commanding officer, You never can tell with spaniards, they’ve been very cocky since they’ve had an emperor, and it will be even worse if, instead of the spaniards, the austrians appear, Are they bad people, asked the commanding officer, They think they’re superior to everyone else, That’s a common enough sin, I, for example, judge myself to be superior to my soldiers, and my soldiers judge themselves to be superior to the porters who came with us to do the heavy work, And the elephant, asked the mayor, smiling, The elephant doesn’t have an opinion, he’s not of this world, replied the commanding officer, Yes, I watched from a window to see him arrive, and he really is a superb creature, might I have a closer look, He’s all yours, Why, I wouldn’t know what to do with him, apart from feed him, Well, I should warn you, sir, that he gets through a lot of food, So I’ve heard, and I certainly have no ambitions to own an elephant, I’m just a town mayor, af ter
all, That is to say neither a king nor an archduke, Precisely, neither a king nor an archduke, I have only what I can call my own. The commanding officer got to his feet, I won’t take up any more of your time, sir, thank you very much for your kind welcome, In welcoming you, captain, I was merely serving the king, however, if you would accept my invitation to be a guest in my house for as long as you stay in castelo rodrigo, that would be another matter, Thank you for an invitation that does me far more honor than you can imagine, but I must stay with my men, Yes, I understand, indeed, I have no option but to understand, but I hope you will at least come to supper one day soon, With great pleasure, although that depends on how long I have to wait, what if the spaniards turn up tomorrow, for example, or even today, My scouts outside the walls will give us due warning, How will they do that, With carrier pigeons. The commanding officer gave him a skeptical look, Carrier pigeons, he asked, I’ve heard of them, but frankly, I can’t believe that a pigeon can fly for as many hours as people say, covering enormous distances, only to end up unerringly in the pigeon-house it was born in, You will have the opportunity to see this phenomenon with your own eyes, for with your permission, I will send for you when the pigeon arrives so that you can witness for yourself the removal and reading of the message tied to the bird’s leg, If it’s true, it won’t be long before messages can fly through the air with no need of a pigeon, That would be rather more difficult, I imagine, said the mayor, smiling, but as long as there’s a world, anything’s possible, As long as there’s a world, That’s the only way, captain, the world is essential, Look, I mustn’t take up any more of your time, It’s been a great pleasure talking to you, For me too, sir, indeed, after this long journey, it’s been like a glass of cool water, A glass of water that I failed to offer you, Next time perhaps, Don’t forget my invitation, said the mayor as the captain was going down the stone steps, I’ll be there, sir.

As soon as he entered the castle, the commanding officer summoned the sergeant, to whom he gave orders regarding the immediate fate of the thirty porters. Since they would no longer be needed, they would rest the next day, but go back to lisbon the day after, Tell the quartermaster to prepare a reasonable amount of food for them, thirty men means thirty mouths, thirty tongues and an enormous number of teeth, obviously it won’t be possible to provide them with enough food for the entire journey back to lisbon, but they can sort themselves out en route, working or, Or stealing, said the sergeant to fill in the pause, Let’s just say they can make do as best they can, said the commanding officer, resorting, for lack of anything better, to one of those phrases that form part of the universal panacea, the perfect example of which is that most barefaced expression of personal and social hypocrisy, namely, urging patience on the poor person to whom one has just refused alms. Those who had taken on the role of foreman wanted to know when they would be paid for their work, and the commanding officer sent word that he did not know, but that they should present themselves at the palace and ask to speak to the secretary or his representative, But I advise you, and the sergeant repeated this advice word for word, not to go there as a group, because that might give entirely the wrong impression, thirty ragamuffins standing outside the palace gate as if about to launch an attack, in my view, only the foremen should go and, when they do, they should make every effort to look as clean and tidy as possible. Later on, one of these men, happening to meet the commanding officer, asked permission to speak and said how much he regretted not being able to continue on to valladolid. The commanding officer didn’t know what to say, and for a few seconds, the two men looked at each other in silence, then went about their business.

The commanding officer gave his soldiers a rapid summary of the situation, they would wait for the spanish to arrive, although it wasn’t yet known when this would be, there having been no news on that point so far, and he refrained at the last moment from making any reference to carrier pigeons, aware of the dangers of any relaxation of discipline. He was unaware that among his subordinates were two pigeon-fanciers, a term that did not exist at the time, except perhaps among initiates, but which was doubtless going around knocking at doors, with the absent-minded air affected by all new words, asking to be let in. The soldiers were standing at ease, a position they assumed ad libitum, without making any attempt at elegance. The time will come when standing formally at ease will cost a soldier as much effort as standing to attention does the guards, with the enemy lying in wait on the other side of the street. Bales of hay had been strewn about the floor, thick enough to cushion the soldiers’ shoulder blades against the intractable hardness of the flagstones. The muskets were arranged in stacks along one wall. Let’s just hope they don’t have to use them, thought the commanding officer, concerned that the act of handing over solomon might, through a lack of tact on one side or the other, become instead a casus belli. He clearly remembered the words of the secretary pêro de alcáçova carneiro, not just those in the letter, of course, but the unwrit ten
words he could read between the lines, namely, that if the spanish, or the austrians, or both, behaved in an unpleasant or provocative manner, he should proceed accordingly. The commanding officer could not imagine why the soldiers marching toward them, be they spanish or austrian, would behave provocatively or indeed unpleasantly. A cavalry captain lacks both the intelligence and the political nous of a secretary of state, and he would therefore be wise to allow himself to be guided by someone who knows more than he does, until the moment for action arrived, if it did. The commanding officer was pondering these thoughts when subhro came into the improvised bedroom for which the sergeant had thoughtfully reserved a few bales of hay. When he saw subhro, the commanding officer felt an awkwardness that could only be attributed to an uneasy awareness that he had not yet inquired about solomon’s state of health, had not even been to see him, as if once they had reached castelo rodrigo, his mission would be at an end. How’s solomon, he asked, When I left him, he was sleeping, replied the mahout, He’s a valiant creature, exclaimed the commanding officer with feigned enthusiasm, He just went where he was led, and he was born with whatever strength and resistance he has, they’re not personal virtues, You’re being very hard on poor solomon, Perhaps because of a story that one of my assistants just told me, What story is that, asked the commanding officer, The story of a cow, Do cows have stories, asked the commanding officer, smiling, This one did, she spent twelve days and twelve nights in the galician mountains, in the cold, rain, ice and mud, among stones as keen as knives and scrub as sharp as nails, enjoying only brief intervals of rest in between fighting and fending off attacks, amid howls and mooing, the story of a cow who was lost in the fields with her calf and found herself surrounded by wolves for twelve days and twelve nights, and was obliged to defend herself and her calf during a long-drawn-out battle, enduring the agony of living on the very edge of death, encircled by teeth and gaping jaws, prone to sudden assaults, knowing that every thrust with her horns had to hit home, as she fought for her own life and for that of the little creature who could not yet fend for itself, and dreading those moments when the calf sought its mother’s teats and slowly suckled, while the wolves closed in, crouching low, ears pricked. Subhro took a deep breath, then went on, At the end of those twelve days, the cow and her calf were found and saved and led in triumph to the village, but the story doesn’t end there, it went on for two more days, at the end of which, because the cow had turned wild and learned to defend herself, and because no one could tame her or even get near her, she was killed, slaughtered, not by the wolves she had kept at bay for twelve whole days, but by the very men who had saved her, possibly by her actual owner, incapable of understanding that a previously docile, biddable creature, having learned how to fight, could never stop fighting.

A respectful silence reigned for a few seconds in the large stone room. The soldiers present were not very experienced in war, indeed the youngest of them had never even smelled gunpowder on a battlefield, and thus they were astonished at the courage shown by an irrational creature, a cow, imagine that, who had revealed herself to have such human sentiments as love of family, the gift of personal sacrifice, and self-denial carried to the ultimate extreme. The first to speak was the soldier who appeared to know a lot about wolves, That’s a very nice story,
he said to subhro, and that cow deserved, at the very least, a medal for bravery and merit, but there are a few things about your account that remain unclear and don’t quite ring true, For example, asked the mahout in the tone of someone squaring up for a fight, For example, who told you the story, A galician, And where did he hear it, He must have heard it from someone else, Or read it, As far as I know he can’t read, All right, perhaps he heard it and memorized it, Possibly, but I was simply interested in retelling it as best I could, You have an excellent memory, and the language in which you told the story was far from ordinary, Thank you, said subhro, but now I would like to know which bits of the story remain unclear to you and failed to ring true, The first is that we are given to understand or, rather, it is explicitly stated that the struggle between the cow and the wolves lasted twelve days and twelve nights, which would mean that the wolves attacked the cow on the very first night and only withdrew on the twelfth, presumably having sustained some losses, We weren’t there to see what happened, No, but anyone who knows anything about wolves would know that, although they live in a pack, they hunt alone, What are you getting at, asked subhro, I’m saying that the cow wouldn’t have been able to withstand a concerted attack by three or four wolves for one hour, let alone twelve days, So the whole story of the battling cow is a lie, No, the lie consists only in the exaggerations, linguistic affectations and half-truths that try to pass themselves off as whole truths, So what do you think happened, asked subhro, Well, I think the cow really did get lost, was attacked by a wolf, fought him off and forced him to flee, possibly badly injured, and then stayed where she was, grazing and suckling her calf until she was found, Couldn’t another wolf have come along, Yes, but that would be unlikely, and having fought off one wolf is more than enough to justify a medal for bravery and merit. The audience applauded, thinking that, all things considered, the galician cow deserved the truth as much as she deserved the medal.