The Collected Novels of José Saramago (428 page)

Subhro is not entirely sure that he can take much solace from that soothing dictum. Seeing him, perched three meters up and dressed in his brightly colored new suit of clothes, smart enough to wear to visit his godmother, if he had one, and which he’s wearing now, not out of any personal vanity, but to honor the country from which he has come, the gawpers who watch him pass imagine a being endowed with extraordinary powers, when the fact is that the poor indian is shaking at the thought of what his immediate future may hold. He thinks that until they reach valladolid, his job is guaranteed and someone will pay him for his time and his work, because although it may seem easy traveling on the back of an elephant, this could only be the view of someone who has never tried, for example, to make solomon turn right when he wants to turn left. Beyond valladolid, though, the waters grow murky. He thought he had good reason to believe that, from the very first day, his mission was to accompany solomon to vienna, this assumption, however, exists in the realm of the implicit, that if an elephant has his own personal mahout, it’s only natural that where one goes, the other goes too. But no one has ever actually looked him in the eye and told him so. That he’ll travel as far as valladolid, yes, but nothing more. It is,
therefore, inevitable that subhro’s imagination should lead him to expect the worst of all possible situations, arriving in valladolid and finding another mahout waiting to take up the baton and continue the journey to vienna, where, thereafter, that new mahout will live high on the hog in the court of archduke maximilian. However, contrary to what one might think, accustomed as we are to placing base material interests above genuine spiritual values, it wasn’t the food and the drink and the freshly made bed each day that made subhro sigh, but the sudden revelation that he loved the elephant and did not want to be parted from him, this was not, strictly speaking, either sudden or a revelation, more a latent state of mind, but such states of mind are not to be discounted. If another mahout really was waiting in valladolid to take charge, subhro’s reasons of the heart would weigh very little in the archduke’s impartial scales. It was then that subhro, swaying to the rhythm of the elephant’s steps, said out loud, up there where no one could hear him, I need to have a serious talk with you, solomon. Fortunately, there was no one else present, because they would have thought the mahout was mad and that, as a consequence, the safety of the convoy was at serious risk. From that moment on, subhro’s dreams took a different direction. As if he and solomon were a pair of star-crossed lovers, to whose love everyone, for some reason, was violently opposed, subhro, in his dreams, fled with the elephant across plains, climbed hills and scaled mountains, skirted lakes, waded rivers and crossed forests, always keeping one step ahead of their pursuers, the cuirassiers, whose swift-galloping horses proved of little advantage, because an elephant, when he wants to, can move at a fair old pace. That night, subhro, who never slept far from solomon, went
over to him, taking care not to wake him, and began to whisper in his ear. He poured his words into that ear in an unintelligible murmur, that could have been hindi or bengali or some other tongue known only to them, a language born and raised during their years of solitude, which was still solitude even when interrupted by the shrieks of the petty noblemen from the court at lisbon, or the mocking cries of the populace of the city and environs, or, before that, the sailors’ jibes on the long voyage that brought him and solomon to portugal. Since we have no idea what language he was speaking, we cannot reveal what subhro was saying, but knowing, as we do, the uneasy thoughts preoccupying him, it is not impossible to imagine the conversation. Subhro was simply asking for solomon’s help, making certain practical suggestions to him as to how he might behave, for example, showing, by all the expressive, even radical, means open to an elephant, how unhappy he was at his enforced separation from his mahout, should that prove to be the case. A skeptic will object that you can’t expect much from a conversation like that, given that the elephant not only did not respond to the mahout’s plea, but continued to sleep serenely. That person clearly knows nothing about elephants. If you whisper in their ear in hindi or in bengali, especially when they’re asleep, they’re just like the genie in the lamp, which, as soon as it’s out of the bottle, asks, What is your wish, sir. Whatever the facts, we happen to know that nothing untoward will happen in valladolid. Indeed, the following night, subhro, feeling repentant, asked solomon to ignore what he had said, he had been acting out of rank egotism, which was no way to solve matters, If things turn out as I fear they
will, I’m the one who will have to take responsibility and try to convince the archduke to allow us to stay together, but whatever happens, don’t do anything, all right, nothing. The same skeptic, were he here, would have no option but to set aside his skepticism for a moment and say, A very nice gesture, this mahout is a very decent fellow, and it’s quite true that the best lessons always come from simple folk. With his spirit at peace, subhro went back to his straw mattress and, within a matter of moments, was asleep. When he woke the following morning and remembered his decision of the previous night, he could not help but ask himself, What would the archduke want with another mahout when he already has one. And he continued to unravel his own reasoning, I have the captain of the cuirassiers as my witness and guarantor, he saw us in the castle and couldn’t have failed to think how rare it was to see such a perfect conjunction of man and beast, true, he doesn’t know much about elephants, but he knows a lot about horses, and that’s something. Everyone recognizes that solomon has a good heart, but I wonder if, with another mahout, he would have bade farewell to the porters in the way he did. Not that I taught him to do that, I want to make that quite clear, it just sprang spontaneously from his soul, I myself assumed he would go over to them and would, at most, give a little wave with his trunk or trumpet loudly, do a couple of dance steps and then, so long, goodbye, but, knowing him as I do, I began to get an inkling that he was concocting something in that great head of his, something that would astonish us all. I expect a lot has been written about elephants as a species and much more will be written in the future, but I doubt that any of those au thors will have been witness to or even heard of an elephantine prodigy that could compare with what I witnessed in castelo rodrigo, barely believing what my own eyes were seeing.

There is some dissension among the cuirassiers. Some, perhaps the younger, still impetuous and more hot-blooded among them, say that their commanding officer, whatever the cost, should have defended to the last the strategy with which he arrived at castelo rodrigo, namely, gaining the immediate and unconditional surrender of the elephant, even if it proved necessary to use force as a persuasive tool. Anything but his sudden capitulation to the provocative stance adopted by the portuguese captain, who seemed almost eager for a fight, even though he must have known with mathematical certainty that, in any confrontation, he would be defeated. They thought that a mere gesture for effect, such as forty swords being simultaneously unsheathed ready for the attack, would have demolished the apparent intransigence of these grubby portuguese and made the doors of the castle swing open to let in their austrian conquerors. Others, equally bemused by the captain’s submissive attitude, felt that his first mistake had been to arrive at the castle and, without more ado, declare, Hand over the elephant, we have no time to lose. Any austrian, born and brought up in central europe, knows that in circumstances such as these, you have to know how to talk and charm, that you should first inquire after the health of the family, make some flattering comment about the excellent condition of the portuguese horses and the imposing majesty of castelo rodrigo’s fortifications, and only then, like someone suddenly remembering that he had some other matter to deal with as well, Ah, of course, the elephant. Still other soldiers, more aware of the harsh realities of life, argued that if things had gone as their colleagues had wished, they would now be on the road with the elephant, but with nothing to give him to eat, because it would hardly have made sense for the portuguese to dispatch the ox-cart, laden with the bundles of forage and the water trough, while they stayed on at castelo rodrigo for who knows how long, waiting to go home, There’s only one explanation, said a rather studious-looking corporal, which is that the captain did not, in fact, have orders from the archduke or whoever to demand that the elephant be handed over immediately, and it was only later, en route or once he had reached castelo rodrigo, that the idea occurred to him, If I could cut the portuguese out of this game of cards, he thought, all the glory would go to me and my men. It would be reasonable to ask how anyone harboring such thoughts and so totally lacking in sincerity could possibly have been appointed captain of a troop of austrian cuirassiers, because, as even a child could understand, that friendly allusion to the soldiers was a mere tactic to disguise his own, all-excluding ambition. A shame really. We are, more and more, our own defects and not our qualities.

A
S IF IN PREPARATION
for a major procession, the city of valladolid had decided to put on all its pomp to receive the long-awaited pachyderm, even going so far as to adorn the balconies with draperies and some rather faded bunting that fluttered in the now almost autumnal breeze. Dressed as cleanly as was feasible in those unhygienic times, families filled the not so clean streets, impelled by two principal objectives, finding out where the elephant was and what would happen afterwards. There were a few spoilsports who declared that the elephant was just a rumor, who might possibly appear one day, although there was no telling when that might be. There were others who swore that the poor, exhausted creature had been resting since its arrival yesterday, after the long, hard road it had traveled in order to reach valladolid, first from lisbon to figueira de castelo rodrigo, and then from the portuguese frontier to this city which, for the last two years, has had the honor of being home to those lofty personages, his royal highness the archduke maximilian and his wife, maria, daughter of the em peror
charles the fifth, in their roles as regents of spain. We note this only to show the importance of these people, all of them belonging to the most royal of royalties, who lived in the time of solomon and, somehow or another, not only had direct knowledge of his existence, but also of his epic and so far pacific exploits. Right now, the archduke and his wife are watching, entranced, as the elephant is being washed, in the presence of distinguished members of the court and the clergy and a few artists expressly summoned in order to immortalize on paper, wood and canvas the animal’s face and his imposing physique. The elephant’s alter ego subhro is in charge of operations, which, once again, feature large quantities of water and that same long-handled broom. Subhro is happy because, since he arrived more than twenty-four hours ago, he has seen no sign of a replacement mahout, although he has been told officially by the archduke’s steward that, from now on, solomon will be called suleiman. He disliked this change of name intensely, but, as they say, you might lose your rings, but you still have your fingers. Suleiman, let us resign ourselves, we have no option but to call him that, was greatly improved by this general clean-up, but he became truly splendid, dazzling even, when a few servants, after much effort, managed to throw over him a vast saddlecloth on which twenty embroiderers had labored ceaselessly for weeks, a work whose peer it would be hard to find anywhere in the world, such was the abundance of gems, which, while not all precious stones, glittered as if they were, not to mention the gold thread and the opulent velvets. A ridiculous waste, grumbled the archbishop to himself, from his seat not far from the archduke, instead of squandering money on that beast, they could have embroidered a magnifi cent
canopy for the cathedral, so that we don’t always have to process beneath the same old one, as if we were some second-rate village somewhere, not the city of valladolid. A gesture from the regent interrupted these subversive thoughts. There was no need to understand his words, the movements made by the royal hands were enough, pointing first up, then down, it was clear that the archduke wished to speak to the mahout. Accompanied by a minor court dignatory, subhro felt as if he were dreaming a dream he had already dreamed, when, in the filthy enclosure at belém, he was led over to a man with a long beard who turned out to be the king of portugal, joão the third. The gentleman who has just summoned him has no beard, his face is perfectly clean-shaven, and he is, we can say without fear or favor, a fine figure of a man. Beside him sits his beautiful wife, the archduchess maria, the beauty of whose face and body will not last long because she will go on to give birth no less than sixteen times, ten boys and six girls. Monstrous. Subhro is now standing before the archduke, waiting for the questions to begin. As was perfectly foreseeable, the first question was inevitably, What is your name, My name is subhro, sir, Sub what, Subhro, sir, that is my name, And does your name mean anything, It means white, sir, In which language, In bengali, sir, one of the languages of india. The archduke fell silent for a few seconds, and then asked, Are you from india, Yes, sir, I traveled to portugal with the elephant two years ago, Do you like your name, It wasn’t my choice, it was the name I was given, sir, Would you choose another if you could, I’m not sure, sir, I’ve never thought about it, What would you say if I made you change your name, Your highness would need to have a reason, And I do. Subhro did not respond, he knew all too
well that one is not allowed to ask questions of kings, that must be why it has always been so difficult, not to say impossible, to get an answer out of any of them regarding the doubts and perplexities besetting their subjects. Then archduke maximilian said, Your name is hard to pronounce, So I have been told, sir, No one in vienna will be able to understand it, That will be my misfortune, sir, But there is a remedy, from now on you will be called fritz, Fritz, said subhro in a pained voice, Yes, it’s an easy name to remember, besides there are an enormous number of fritzes in austria already, so you’ll be one among many, but the only one with an elephant, If your highness permits, I would prefer to keep my own name, No, I’ve decided, and I warn you, I’ll be angry if you ask again, just get it into your head that your name is fritz and no other, Yes, sir. Then the archduke, rising from his sumptuous seat, said in a loud and sonorous voice, Listen closely, this man has just accepted the name of fritz, which I have bestowed on him, and this fact, as well as the responsibility he bears as keeper of the elephant suleiman, leads me to determine that he be treated by all of you with consideration and respect, and anyone disregarding my wishes will suffer the consequences of my displeasure. This warning was not well received, the momentary murmur that followed was full of all kinds of emotions, disciplined deference, benevolent irony, wounded irritation, imagine, having to behave as respectfully toward a mahout, an animal-tamer, a man who stinks of wild beasts, as if he were a peer of the realm, although one thing is sure, the archduke will soon forget this caprice of his. It should be said, for truth’s sake, that another murmur quickly followed the first, one devoid of any hostile or contradictory feelings, because it was a murmur of pure ad miration,
when the elephant lifted the mahout up with the aid of his trunk and one of his tusks and deposited him on his ample shoulders, as spacious as a threshing floor. Then the mahout said, We were subhro and solomon, now we will be fritz and suleiman. He was not speaking to anyone in particular, he was talking to himself, knowing that those names meant nothing, even though they had replaced their original names, which did mean something. I was born to be subhro, not fritz, he thought. He guided suleiman into the enclosure assigned to him, a courtyard in the palace, which, despite being an inner courtyard, had easy access to the outside, and there he left him with his food and his water trough, as well as the company of the two assistants who had come with them from lisbon. Subhro, or fritz, it’s going to be hard to get used to that change of name, needs to speak to the commanding officer, our commanding officer, for the captain of the austrian cuirassiers has not reappeared, he must be doing penance for the pathetic figure he cut at figueira de castelo rodrigo. It isn’t quite time to say goodbye, for the portuguese don’t leave until tomorrow, he simply wants to talk a little about the life that awaits him and to tell the captain that his name and the elephant’s have been changed. And to wish the captain and his soldiers a safe journey home and, yes, to say goodbye forever. The soldiers are camped a little way from the city, in a leafy place with a clear stream running through it, a stream in which most of them have already bathed. The commanding officer went to meet subhro and, seeing the worried look on his face, asked, Has something happened, They’ve changed our names, I’m fritz now and solomon is suleiman, Who changed them, The only person who could, the archduke, But why, He presumably has his
reasons, but in my case it was because he found subhro too hard to pronounce, We got used to it, Yes, but he doesn’t have anyone to tell him that he ought to get used to it. There was an awkward silence, which the commanding officer broke as best he could, We’re leaving tomorrow, he said, Yes, I know, replied subhro, I’ll come and say goodbye then, Will we see each other again, asked the commanding officer, Probably not, vienna is a long way from lisbon, That’s a shame, now that we’re friends, Friend is a big word, sir, and I’m just a mahout who has been ordered to change his name, And I’m just a captain of cavalry who has undergone some inner change during this journey, Was it seeing wolves for the first time, Oh, I saw one years ago, when I was a child, I can’t quite remember when, Seeing wolves must change people a lot though, They weren’t the reason for the change, The elephant then, That’s more likely, although, while I can more or less understand a cat or a dog, I can’t understand an elephant, Cats and dogs live side by side with us, and that makes the relationship easier, even if we get things wrong, that continuous intimacy is sure always to resolve any problems, on the other hand, we don’t know if they, too, get things wrong and are aware that they do, And the elephant, As I said to you once before, the elephant is a different matter altogether, every elephant contains two elephants, one who learns what he’s taught and another who insists on ignoring it all, How do you know, When I realized that I’m just like the elephant, that a part of me learns and the other part ignores everything I’ve learned, and the longer I live, the more I ignore, Your word games are beyond me, It’s not me playing games with words, it’s them playing games with me, When does the archduke leave, In three days’ time, I be lieve, Well, I’ll miss you, And I’ll miss you, said subhro, or fritz. The commanding officer held out his hand to him, and subhro shook it very gently, as if not wanting to hurt him, We’ll see each other tomorrow, he said, Yes, we’ll see each other tomorrow, repeated the captain. Then they turned their backs on each other and walked away. Neither of them turned round.