The Collected Novels of José Saramago (373 page)

The trouble with these narrative digressions, taken up as we have been with bothersome detours, is that one can find, too late, of course, almost without noticing, that events have moved on, have gone
on ahead, and instead of us announcing what is about to happen, which is, after all, the elementary duty of any teller of tales worth his salt, all we can do is to confess contritely that it already has. Contrary to what we had supposed, the crowd has not dispersed, the demonstration continues and is now advancing en masse, filling the streets, in the direction, as the shouts are telling us, of the presidential palace. And on the way lies neither more nor less than the prime minister’s official residence. The journalists from press, radio and television, who are at the head of the demonstration, take nervous notes, describe the events over the phone to the offices where they work, and excitedly unburden themselves of their professional and citizenly disquiets, No one seems to know quite what is going to happen, but we have reason to fear that the crowd is preparing to storm the presidential palace, which does not exclude, indeed we would say it remains highly likely, the possibility that they will also sack the prime minister’s official residence and any ministerial buildings they pass on the way, this is not some apocalyptic vision, the mere fruit of our own fears, you have only to see the people’s distraught faces, it would be no exaggeration to say that each of those faces is calling for blood and destruction, and thus, although it pains us to have to say this out loud and to the whole country, we reach the dreadful conclusion that the government, which has shown itself to be so efficient in other ways and was, for that very reason, applauded by all honest citizens, acted with a reprehensible lack of caution when it decided to abandon the city to the instincts of the angry mob, without the fatherly, dissuasive presence of the police on the streets, with no riot squads, with no tear-gas, no water-cannon, no dogs, in a word, unchecked. This speech warning of certain disaster reached a peak of media hysteria when they came in sight of the prime minister’s residence, a bourgeois mansion, late-eighteenth-century in style, where the journalists’ shouts became screams, Now, now, anything could happen, may the holy virgin protect us all, may the glorious and revered spirits of our nation, up there in the empyrean into which they ascended, quell the wrathful hearts of these people. Anything could have happened, it’s true, but, in the end, nothing did, apart from the demonstration, the small section of it that we can see, coming to a halt at the crossroads where the mansion, with its small surrounding park, occupies one corner, the rest of the crowd spilled over onto the pavements, into the adjoining squares and streets, if the police arithmeticians were here, they would say that, all in all, there were only about fifty thousand people, when the exact number, the real number, because we counted them all, one by one, was ten times higher.

It was here, where the demonstration had come to a halt and was standing in absolute silence, that a sharp-eyed television reporter discovered amidst that sea of heads a man whose face, despite half of it being covered by a dressing, he nonetheless recognized, especially since he had been lucky enough to catch a fleeting glimpse of his normal, healthy face, which, as is perfectly understandable, both confirms and is confirmed by the wounded half. Dragging his cameraman along behind him, the reporter began pushing his way through the crowd, saying to the people on either side of him, Excuse me, excuse me, may I come through, out of the way, please, this is very important, and then, when he was getting close, Sir, sir, excuse me, although what he was thinking was less polite, What the hell is this guy doing here. Reporters usually have good memories and this particular reporter had not forgotten the public attack delivered by the council leader on the night of the bomb blast and of which the news networks had been the entirely undeserving targets. Now the council leader would find out just how wounded they had been. The reporter stuck the microphone in his face and made a kind of secret sign to the cameraman which could as easily have meant Start recording as Beat him to a pulp, and
which, in the present situation, probably meant both, Sir, may I say how astonished I am to see you here, Astonished, why, For the reason I’ve just given, to see you taking part in this demonstration, Well, I’m a citizen like any other, I can demonstrate when and how I want to, especially now that there’s no need to ask for authorization, But you’re not just any citizen, you’re the council leader, No, I’m not, I stopped being council leader three days ago, I’d have thought that was common knowledge by now, It’s the first I’ve heard of it, we haven’t received any official statement about it as yet, from the council or from the government, You’re surely not expecting me to call a press conference, You resigned, No, I walked out, Why, The only answer I have is a closed mouth, mine, The city’s population will want to know why their council leader, As I said, I’m no longer council leader, Why their council leader has joined an anti-government demonstration, This is not an anti-government demonstration, it’s a demonstration of grief, the people here came to bury their dead, The dead have been buried and yet the demonstration is continuing, how do you explain that, Ask these other people, At the moment, it’s your opinion I’m interested in, Well, I’m just going where they’re going, Do you sympathize with the electors who cast blank votes, with the blankers, They voted as they wanted to vote, and whether I sympathize or not is irrelevant, And what about your party, what will they say when they find out you joined the demonstration, Ask them, You’re not afraid they’ll impose sanctions on you, No, What makes you so sure, For the simple reason that I no longer belong to the party, Did they expel you, No, I left, just as I left the post of council leader, What was the interior minister’s reaction, Ask him, Who has taken over from you or will take over, Find out for yourself, Will we see you on more demonstrations, Turn up and you’ll find out, So you’ve left the party on the right, in which you’ve spent your entire political career, and have gone over to the left, One day, I hope to understand just where it
is I have gone, Sir, Don’t call me that, Sorry, force of habit, and I have to confess to feeling confused, Careful, now, moral confusion, because I’m assuming your confusion is moral, is the first step along the path to disquiet and after that, as you yourselves are so fond of saying, anything can happen, No, I really am baffled, sir, I don’t know what to think, Turn off the recording equipment, your bosses might not like what you just said, and, please, don’t call me sir, The camera is already off, Just as well, that way you won’t get yourself into any trouble, They say that the demonstration is heading for the presidential palace, Ask the organizers, Where are they, who are they, Everyone and no one, I suppose, There must be a leader, movements like this don’t organize themselves, spontaneous generation doesn’t exist, still less in the case of mass actions on this scale, Not until now, no, Do you mean that you don’t believe the blank vote movement was spontaneous, It’s outrageous of you to make such an inference, My impression is that you know much more about this business than you’re letting on, The time always comes when we discover that we knew much more than we thought we did, now, leave me alone and get on with your job, find someone else to question, look, the sea of heads has started to move, What amazes me is that there isn’t a single shout, a single long live or down with, not a single slogan saying what it is the people want, just this threatening silence that sends shivers down your spine, Forget the horror movie language, perhaps people are just tired of words, If people get tired of words, then I’ll be out of a job, You won’t say a truer word all day, Goodbye, sir, Once and for all, I’m not sir any more. The leading front quarter of the demonstration had turned back on itself, now it was going up a steep slope toward a long, broad avenue at the end of which it would turn to the right and receive on its face the cool caress of the breeze from the river. The presidential palace was about two kilometers away, on the flat. The reporters had received orders to leave the demonstration and to run on to take up positions outside the palace, but the general idea, amongst both the professionals working on the ground and those back at the editorial desks, was that, from the point of view of news interest, the coverage had been a pure waste of time and money, or to put it more crudely, a real kick in the balls for the media, or, in more delicate and refined terms, an undeserved slight. These guys aren’t even any good at demonstrations, they said, they might at least throw the odd stone, burn the president in effigy, break a few windows, sing one of the old revolutionary songs, anything to show the world that they’re not as dead as the people they’ve just buried. The demonstration did not live up to their expectations. The people arrived and filled the square, they stood for half an hour staring in silence at the closed-up palace, then they dispersed, and, some walking, others in buses, still others cadging lifts from supportive strangers, they all went home.

This peaceful demonstration did what the bomb had failed to do. Troubled and frightened, the loyal voters of the party on the right and the party in the middle, or the p.o.t.r. and the p.i.t.m., gathered together in their respective family councils and decided, each according to their own lights, but unanimous as regards their final decision, to leave the city. They felt that the current situation, another bomb that might tomorrow be aimed at them, the rabble taking over the streets with absolute impunity, should convince the government of the need to revise the rigorous parameters they had established when imposing the state of siege, especially the scandalous injustice of having the same harsh punishment fall, without distinction, on the steadfast defenders of peace and on the declared fomenters of disorder. So as not to embark on this venture blindly, some of them, with friends in high places, set about sounding out by telephone the government’s likely position on giving authorization, explicitly or tacitly, that would allow those who, quite rightly, were already beginning to describe themselves as prisoners in their own
country, to enter free territory. The answers received, generally vague and in some cases contradictory, while not allowing them to draw hard and fast conclusions regarding the government’s thinking on the matter, were, nevertheless, sufficient for them to admit as a valid hypothesis that, if certain conditions were observed and certain material compensations stipulated, the success of the escape, even though it was relative, even though not all their requests could be met, was, at least, conceivable, which meant that they could at least hold out some hope. For a week, in absolute secrecy, the committee responsible for organizing future convoys of cars, made up in equal numbers of militants of different categories from both parties and with the presence of consultants drawn from the capital’s various moral and religious institutions, debated and finally approved an audacious plan of action which, in memory of the famous retreat of the ten thousand, received, on the suggestion of a learned hellenist from the party in the middle, the name of xenophon. The families who were candidates for emigration were given three days and no more to decide, with pencil in hand and a tear in the eye, what they could take with them and what they would have to leave behind. Human nature being what we know it to be, there were, inevitably, examples of selfish fancies, feigned distractions, treacherous appeals to an all-too-easy sentimentality, deceptively seductive maneuverings, but there were also cases of admirable selflessness, of the kind that still allow us to believe that if we persevere in these and other such gestures of worthy abnegation, we will, in the end, more than fulfil our small part in the monumental project of creation. The withdrawal was set for the early hours of the fourth day, which would, as it turned out, be a night of wild rain, but that would not be a problem, on the contrary, it would give this collective migration a touch of heroism to be remembered and inscribed in the family annals as a clear demonstration that not all the virtues of the race had been lost. Now, having to transport one person
in a car quietly and with the weather in repose is not the same as having to keep the windscreen wipers flailing back and forth like mad things just to keep at bay the sheets of water falling from the sky. One grave problem, which would be minutely debated by the committee, was the question placed on the table as to how the casters of blank votes, commonly known as blankers, would react to this mass flight. It is important to bear in mind that many of these anxious families live in buildings that are also inhabited by tenants who come from the other political shore and who might take a deplorably vengeful attitude and, to put it mildly, obstruct their departure or, more brutally, stop it altogether. They’ll puncture our tyres, said one, They’ll erect barricades on the landings, said another, They’ll jam the lifts, offered a third, They’ll put silicon in the locks of the cars, added the first, They’ll smash the windscreens, suggested the second, They’ll attack us as soon as we step out of the front door, They’ll hold grandpa hostage, sighed another in such a way that made one think that this was, unconsciously, precisely what he wanted. The discussion went on, becoming more and more impassioned, until someone reminded them that the behavior of all those thousands of people during the demonstration had, however you looked at it, been impeccable, I’d even say exemplary, and consequently there seemed little reason to fear that things would now be any different, In fact, I think they’ll be relieved to be rid of us, That’s all very well, intervened a sceptic, they may be lovely people, wonderfully gentle and responsible, but there is something we have, alas, forgotten, What’s that, The bomb. As we said on a previous page, this committee, of public salvation, as it occurred to someone to call it, a name that was immediately rejected for more than justified ideological reasons, was broadly representative, which means that on this occasion there were over two dozen people sitting round the table. You should have seen the reaction. Everyone else present bowed their head, then an admonitory look reduced to silence, for the rest of the meeting, the rash person who appeared to be ignorant of a basic tenet of social behavior which teaches that in the house of the hanged man, one should never mention the word rope. The embarrassing incident had one virtue, it brought everyone together in agreement on the optimistic thesis they had formulated. What happened next would prove them right. At precisely three o’clock on the morning of the appointed day, just as the government had done, the families started leaving home with their suitcases large and small, their bags and their bundles, their cats and their dogs, the occasional tortoise roused from its sleep, the occasional Japanese fish in a bowl, the occasional cage of parakeets, the occasional macaw on a perch. But the doors of the other tenants did not open, no one came out onto the landing to make fun of the spectacle, no one made jokes, no one insulted them, and it was not just because it was raining that no one went and leaned out of the windows to watch the convoys driving off in their different directions. Naturally, with all the noise, just imagine, going down the stairs dragging all that junk, the lifts buzzing up and down, the suggestions, the sudden alarms, Careful with the piano, careful with the tea service, careful with the silver platter, careful with the painting, careful with grandpa, naturally, we were saying, the tenants in the other apartments woke up, but none of them got out of bed to go and peer through the spyhole in the front door, they merely said to each other as they snuggled down beneath the blankets, They’re leaving.