The Collected Novels of José Saramago (397 page)

A terrible threat is endangering the survival of our industry, declared the president of the federation of insurance companies to the media, referring to the many thousands of letters which, all couched in more or less identical terms, as if they had been copied from a single draft, had, in the last few days, been flooding their offices, all calling for the immediate cancellation of the life insurance policies of the undersigned. These letters stated that, given the well-known fact that death had put an end to itself, it would be absurd, not to say downright stupid, to continue paying exorbitant premiums which would only serve to make the companies still richer, with no kind of balancing recompense for them. I’m not pouring money down the drain, said one particularly disgruntled policy-holder in a postscript. Some went further, demanding the return of sums already paid, but in these cases, it was clear that they were just making a stab in the dark, trying their luck. In answer to the inevitable question from journalists about how the insurance companies intended to fend off this sudden salvo of heavy artillery, the president of the federation said that, while their legal advisors were, at that very moment, carefully studying the small print of policies for some kind of interpretative loophole that would allow them, always keeping strictly to the letter of the law, of course, to impose on these heretical policy-holders, even if it were against their wishes, the obligation to continue paying premiums for as long as they remained alive, that is, for all eternity, the more likely option would be to reach some form of consensus, a gentlemen’s agreement, which would consist in the addition to policies of a brief addendum, with one eye on rectifying the current situation and with the other on the future, and which would set eighty as the age of obligatory death, in a purely figurative sense of course, the president was quick to add, smiling benevolently. In this way, the companies would receive the premiums, as normal, until the date when the happy policy-holder celebrated his eightieth birthday, at which time, now that he had become someone who was, virtually speaking, dead, he would promptly be paid the full sum stipulated in the policy. He should also add, and this would be of no small interest, that, if they so desired, customers could renew their contract for another eighty years, at the end of which, they would, to all intents and purposes, register a second death, and the earlier procedure would then be repeated, and so on and so forth. Among the journalists who knew their actuarial calculus, there were some admiring murmurs and a brief flutter of applause which the president acknowledged with a brief nod. Strategically and tactically, the move had been perfect, so much so that the following day letters started pouring in again to the insurance companies declaring the previous letters null and void. All the policy-holders declared themselves ready to accept the proposed gentlemen’s agreement, and indeed one might say, without exaggeration, that this was one of those very rare occasions when no one lost and everyone gained. Especially the insurance companies, which had been saved from catastrophe by the skin of their teeth. It is assumed that at the next election, the president of the federation will be re-elected to the post he fills so very brilliantly.

ONE CAN SAY ALMOST ANYTHING ABOUT THE FIRST MEETING
of the interdisciplinary commission except that it went well. The blame, if such a weighty term can be applied here, rests on the dramatic memorandum sent to the government by the eventide homes, especially those final ominous words, Rather death, prime minister, than such a destiny. The philosophers, divided as always between frowning pessimists and smiling optimists, readied themselves to recommence for the thousandth time the ancient dispute over whether the glass was half full or half empty, a dispute which, when transferred to the matter they had been summoned there to discuss, would probably come down to a mere inventory of the advantages and disadvantages of being dead or of living forever, while the religious delegates, from the outset, presented a united front, hoping to set the debate on the only dialectical terrain that interested them, that is, the explicit acceptance that death was fundamental to the existence of the kingdom of god and that, therefore, any discussion about a future without death would be not only blasphemous but absurd, since it would, inevitably, presuppose an absent or, rather, vanished god. This was not a new attitude, the cardinal himself had already put his finger on the implications of this theological version of squaring the circle, when, in his phone conversation with the prime minister, he admitted, although not in so many words, that if there was no death, there could be no resurrection, and if there was no resurrection, then there would be no point in having a church. Now, since this was clearly the only agricultural implement god possessed with which to plough the roads that would lead to his kingdom, the obvious, irrefutable conclusion is that the entire holy story ends, inevitably, in a cul-de-sac. This bitter argument came from the mouth of the oldest of the pessimistic philosophers, who did not stop there, but went on, Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat. The religious delegates did not bother to protest. On the contrary, one of them, a highly regarded member of the catholic sector, said, You’re absolutely right, my dear philosopher, that, of course, is why we exist, so that people will spend their entire life with fear hanging round their neck, and when their time comes, they will then welcome death as a liberation, You mean paradise, Paradise or hell, or nothing at all, what happens after death matters to us far less than is generally believed, religion, sir, is an earthly matter, and has nothing to do with heaven, That isn’t what we’re usually told, We had to say something to make the merchandise attractive, So does that mean you don’t believe in eternal life, We pretend we do. For a minute no one spoke. The oldest of the pessimists allowed a wry smile to spread across his face and he adopted the air of someone who has just seen a particularly difficult laboratory experiment crowned with success. In that case, said a philosopher from the optimistic wing, why are you so alarmed by the fact that death has ended, We don’t know that it has, we know only that it has ceased to kill, which is not the same thing, Agreed, but given that this doubt remains unresolved, I repeat my question, Because if human beings do not die then everything will be permissible, And would that be a bad thing, asked the old philosopher, As bad as nothing being permissible. There was another silence. The eight men seated round the table had been asked to reflect upon the consequences of a future without death and to construct from the present information a plausible forecast of what new problems a society would have to confront, quite apart, of course, from an inevitable exacerbation of the old problems. The trouble is that the future is already here, said one of the pessimists, before us we have, among others, statements drawn up by the so-called eventide homes, by hospitals, by funeral directors, by insurance companies, and apart from the latter, who will always find a way of profiting from any situation, one must admit that the prospects are not just gloomy, they’re terrible, catastrophic, more dangerous by far than anything even the wildest imagination could dream up, Without wishing to be ironic, which, in the current circumstances, would be in appalling taste, remarked an equally highly regarded member of the protestant sector, it seems to me that this commission is dead before it’s been born, The eventide homes are right, rather death than such a destiny, said the catholic spokesman, What do you propose we do then, asked the oldest of the pessimists, apart from the immediate dissolution of this commission, which is what you appear to want, We, the catholic apostolic roman church, will organize a national campaign of prayer, asking god to bring about the return of death as quickly as possible so as to save poor humanity from the worst horrors, Does god have authority over death, asked one of the optimists, They’re two sides of the same coin, on one side the king and on the other the crown, In that case perhaps it was god who ordered death to withdraw, One day we will know why he set us this test, meanwhile we will put our rosaries to work, We will do the same, by which I mean that we, too, will pray, no rosaries for us, of course, smiled the protestant, And we will arrange processions throughout the country calling on death to return, just as we used to do
ad petendam pluviam,
to ask for rain, translated the catholic, We won’t go that far, such processions have never been part of our customs, said the protestant, smiling again, And what about us, asked one of the optimistic philosophers in a tone that seemed to announce his imminent enlistment in the ranks of the opposition, what are we going to do now, when it seems that all doors are closed to us, To start with, replied the oldest philosopher, let’s adjourn this session, And then what, We will continue to philosophize since that is what we were born to do, even if all we have to philosophize about is the void, What for, I don’t know what for, All right, then, why, Because philosophy needs death as much as religions do, if we philosophize it’s in order to know that we will die, as monsieur de montaigne said, to philosophize is to learn how to die.

Even among those who were not philosophers, at least not in the usual meaning of the term, some had managed to learn that path. Paradoxically, they had not themselves learned how to die, because their time had not yet come, but to ease the deaths of others, by helping death. The method used, as you will soon see, was yet another manifestation of the human race’s inexhaustible capacity for inventiveness. In a village, a few miles from the frontier with one of the neighboring countries, there was a family of poor country people who, for their sins, had not one relative, but two, in that state of suspended life or, as they preferred to call it, arrested death. One of them was a grandfather of the old sort, a sturdy patriarch reduced by illness to a mere shadow, although it had not entirely robbed him of the power of speech. The other was a child of only a few months to whom they had not even had time to teach the words for life or death and to whom actual death had refused to show herself. They were neither dead nor alive, and the country doctor who visited them once a week said that there was nothing that could be done for or against them, not even by injecting each of them with a kindly lethal drug, which, not long ago, would have been the radical solution to such problems. At most, it might push them toward the place where death presumably was, but it would be pointless, futile, because at that precise moment, as unreachable as ever, she would take a step back and keep her distance. The family went to ask for help from the priest, who listened, raised his eyes to heaven and said that we are all in god’s hands and that his divine mercy is infinite. Well, it might be infinite, but not infinite enough to help the poor little child who has done no wrong in this world. And that was how things stood, with no way forward, with no solution to the problem and no hope of finding one, when the old man spoke, Come over here someone, he said, Do you want a drink of water, asked one of his daughters, No, I don’t want any water, I want to die, The doctor says that’s not possible, papa, remember, no one dies anymore, The doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about, ever since the world was the world, there has always been an hour and a place to die, Not anymore, That’s not true, Calm down, papa, you’ll make your fever worse, I haven’t got a fever and even if I had, it wouldn’t matter, now listen to me carefully, All right, I’m listening, Come closer, before my voice gives out, What is it. The old man whispered a few words into his daughter’s ear. She shook her head, but he insisted and insisted. But that won’t solve anything, papa, she stammered, astonished and pale with horror, It will, And if it doesn’t, We lose nothing by trying, And if it doesn’t work, That’s simple enough, you just bring me back home, And the child, The child goes too, and if I stay there, he stays with me. The daughter tried to think, her warring emotions etched on her face, then she asked, Why can’t we bring you back and bury you both here, You can imagine how that would look, two deaths in a country where no one, however hard they try, can die, how would you explain that, besides, given the way things stand now, I’m not sure death would allow us to return, It’s madness, papa, Maybe, but I don’t see any other way out of this situation, We want you alive, not dead, Yes, but not in my current state, alive but dead, dead but apparently alive, If that’s what you want, we’ll do as you ask, Give me a kiss. The daughter kissed him on the forehead and left the room, crying. With her face still bathed in tears, she went and told the rest of the family about her father’s plan, that they should take him, that same night, across the border, where death was still functioning and where, or so he believed, death would have no alternative but to accept him. This announcement was received with a complicated mixture of pride and resignation, pride because it is not every day that one sees an old man, of his own volition, offering himself up to elusive death, and resignation because they had nothing to lose either way, what could they do, you can’t fight fate. It is said that one cannot have everything in life, and the courageous old man will leave behind him only a poor, honest family who will certainly always honor his memory. The family wasn’t just this daughter who had left the room in tears and the child who had done no wrong in this world, there was another daughter too and her husband, the parents of three children who were all, fortunately, in good health, plus a maiden aunt who was long past marrying age. The other son-in-law, the husband of the daughter who left the room in tears, is living in a distant land, where he emigrated to earn a living, and tomorrow, he will discover that he has lost the only child he had and the father-in-law he loved. That’s how life is, what it gives with one hand one day, it takes away with the other. We are more aware than anyone how unimportant it must seem this account of the relationships in a family of country folk whom we will probably never see again, but it seemed to us wrong, even from a purely technical, narratorial point of view, to dismiss in two lines the very people who will be the protagonists of one of the most dramatic episodes in this true, yet untrue story about death and her vagaries. So there they stay. We forgot to say that the maiden aunt expressed one doubt, What will the neighbors say, she asked, when they notice the absence of these two people who were at death’s door, but couldn’t die. The maiden aunt does not usually speak in such a precious, roundabout way, but if she did so now it was in order not to break down in tears, which is what she would have done had she spoken the name of the child who had done no wrong in this world and the words, my brother. The father of the three other children said, We’ll simply tell them what happened and await the consequences, we’ll probably be accused of making secret burials, outside the cemetery and without the knowledge of the authorities, and, worse still, in another country, Well, let’s just hope they don’t start a war over it, said the aunt.