The Collected Novels of José Saramago (406 page)

Occupied as we were with explaining what happened after the fateful stroke of midnight to the sixty-two thousand five hundred and eighty people left in a state of suspended life, we put off for a more opportune moment, which happens to be this one, our indispensable reflections on the way in which the changed situation affected the eventide homes, the hospitals, the insurance companies, the maphia and the church, especially the catholic church, which was the country’s majority religion, so much so that it was commonly believed that our lord jesus christ would not have wanted to be born anywhere else if he had had to repeat, from a to z, his first and, as far as we know, only earthly existence. To begin with the eventide homes, feelings were much as you would expect. If you bear in mind, as we explained at the very start of these surprising events, that the continuous rotation of inmates was a necessary condition for the economic prosperity of these enterprises, the return of death was bound to be, and indeed was, a reason for joy and renewed hope for the respective managements. After the initial shock provoked by the reading out on television of the famous letter from death, the managers immediately began to do their sums and they all came out right. Not a few bottles of champagne were drunk at midnight to celebrate this unexpected return to normality, and while such behavior may appear to show a gross indifference to and scorn for other people’s lives, what it really showed was the perfectly natural sense of relief, the need to give vent to pent-up emotions, of someone who, standing outside a locked door to which he has lost the key, suddenly sees it swing open and the sun come pouring in. More scrupulous people will say that they should at least have avoided the noisy, frivolous ostentation of champagne, with corks popping and glasses overflowing, and that a discreet glass of port or madeira, a drop of cognac, a touch of brandy in one’s coffee would have been celebration enough, but we know how easily the spirit lets slip the reins of the body when happiness takes over, and know, too, that even though one shouldn’t condone it, one can always forgive. The following morning, the managers summoned the families to fetch their dead, then they had the rooms aired and the sheets changed, and, having gathered all the staff together to tell them that life goes on despite all, they sat down to examine the list of potential customers and to choose from among the applicants those who seemed most promising. For reasons not entirely identical in every aspect, but which, nevertheless, merit equal consideration, the mood among hospital administrators and the medical classes had also improved overnight. However, as we said before, although a large number of patients who were beyond cure or whose illness had reached its end or its final stage, if one can apply such terms to a nosological state deemed to be eternal, had been moved back to their homes and their families, What better hands could the poor wretches find themselves in, they asked hypocritically, the truth is that many of them, with no known relatives and no money to pay the rates demanded by the eventide homes, were crammed in wherever there was space, not in corridors, as has long been the custom in these worthy establishments yesterday, today and always, but in lumber rooms and attics, where they would often be left for days at a time, without anyone taking the slightest notice of them, for, as the doctors and nurses said, regardless of how ill they might be, they couldn’t die. Now they were dead, and had been taken away and buried, and the air in the hospitals, with its unmistakable aroma of ether, iodine and disinfectant, had become as pure and crystalline as mountain air. They didn’t crack open any bottles of champagne, but the happy smiles of administrators and clinical directors were a salve to the soul, and as for the male doctors, suffice it to say that they had recovered their traditionally predatory gaze when they gave the female nursing staff the eye. Normality, in every sense of the word, had been restored. As for the insurance companies, third on the list, there is not as yet much to say, because they haven’t quite figured out whether the present situation, in the light of the changes introduced into life insurance policies and which we described in detail earlier, will be to their advantage or disadvantage. They will not take a step without being quite sure they are walking on firm ground, but when they finally do, they will put down new roots under whatever form of contract they draw up to suit their own best interests. Meanwhile, since the future belongs to god and because no one knows what tomorrow will bring, they will continue to consider as dead any insured person who has reached the age of eighty, that bird at least they have firmly grasped in their hand, and it only remains to be seen if tomorrow they can get two more to fall into the net. Some, however, propose that they should make the most of the current confusion in society, which stands more than ever between the devil and the deep blue sea, between scylla and charybdis, between a rock and a hard place, and that it might not be a bad idea to increase the age of actuarial death to eighty-five or even ninety. The reasoning of those who defend this change is as clear as water, they say that, by the time people reach such an age, not only do they have no relatives to look after them in time of need, indeed, any such relatives might be so old that it makes no odds anyway, they also suffer a real reduction in the value of their retirement pensions because of inflation and the rising cost of living, which means that they are often forced to interrupt payment of their premiums, thus giving insurance companies the best of motives to consider the respective contract null and void. That’s inhuman, object some. Business is business, say the others. We will see how it all ends.

At this same hour, the maphia were also intently talking business. Perhaps because we were too thorough, as we unreservedly admit, the description we gave of the black tunnels through which the criminal organization penetrated the world of funeral directors may have led some readers to wonder what kind of miserable maphia this is that it has no easier or more profitable ways of making money. Oh, but it has, and many and various they are, however, like any of its counterparts scattered throughout the world, skilled in balancing acts and in using tactics and strategies to best advantage, the local maphia did not merely rely on immediate gains, they were aiming higher than that, they had their eye on eternity, on neither more nor less than establishing, with the tacit agreement of families persuaded of the usefulness of euthanasia and with the blessing of politicians who would pretend to look the other way, an absolute monopoly on human deaths and burials, at the same time taking responsibility for keeping the nation’s demographics at a level that was convenient for the country at any one time, turning the tap on and off, to use the image deployed before, or to use a more rigorously technical term, controlling the fluxometer. If they could not, at least in that initial phase, speed up or slow down procreation, it would at least be in their power to accelerate or delay journeys to the frontier, not the geographical one this time, but the eternal frontier. At the precise moment when we entered the room, the debate was focused on how they could make optimum use of the work force that had been left idle since the return of death, and although there was no shortage of suggestions from around the table, some more radical than others, they ended up choosing one with a long proven track record and which would require no complicated mechanisms, namely, the protection business. The very next day, from north to south, in every part of the country, the offices of funeral directors saw two visitors come through their door, usually two men, sometimes a man and a woman, only rarely two women, who politely asked to speak to the manager, to whom they equally courteously explained that his business ran the risk of being attacked and even destroyed, either by bomb or fire, by activists from certain illegal groups of citizens who were demanding the inclusion of the right to eternal life in the universal declaration of human rights and who, frustrated in their desires, were now determined to vent their fury by letting the heavy hand of vengeance fall on innocent companies such as theirs, simply because they were the people who carried the corpses to their final resting place. We are told, said one of the emissaries, that these organized attacks, which could, if they met with any resistance, include the murder of the owner and the manager as well as their families, and if not them, then one or two employees, will start tomorrow, possibly here, possibly elsewhere, But what can I do, asked the poor manager, trembling, Nothing, you can’t do anything, but if you like, we can protect you, Yes, of course, if you can, There are a few conditions to be met, Whatever they are, please, protect me, The first is that you will not talk about this to anyone, not even to your wife, But I’m not married, It doesn’t matter, not even to your mother, your grandmother or your aunt, My lips are sealed, Just as well, because, otherwise, you risk having them sealed forever, And what about the other conditions, There’s only one, to pay whatever we ask, Pay, We’ll have to organize the protection operation, and that, dear sir, costs money, Ah, I understand, We could even protect the whole of humanity if it were prepared to pay the price, but meanwhile, since each age is always followed by another, we still live in hope,
Hm,
I see, How fortunate that you’re so quick on the uptake, How much must I pay, It’s written down on this piece of paper, That’s a lot, It’s the going rate, And is it per year or per month, Per week, But I don’t have that kind of money, we funeral directors don’t earn very much, You’re lucky we’re not asking you for what you, in your opinion, think your life is worth, Well, I only have one, And you could easily lose that, which is why we advise you to take good care of it, All right, I’ll think about it, I need to talk to my partners, You have twenty-four hours, not a minute more, after that, we wash our hands of the matter, the responsibility will be yours alone, if anything should happen to you, we’re pretty sure that the first time won’t be fatal, and at that point, we’ll come back and talk to you again, by then, of course, the price will have doubled and you’ll have no option but to pay us whatever we ask, you can’t imagine how implacable these citizens’ groups demanding eternal life can be, All right, I’ll pay, Four weeks in advance, please, Four weeks, Yours is an urgent case and, as we said before, it costs money to mount a protection operation, In cash or by check, In cash, checks are for a different kind of transaction and for different sums of money, when it’s best if the money doesn’t pass directly from one hand to another. The manager went and opened the safe, counted out the notes and asked as he handed them over, Give me a receipt or some other document guaranteeing me protection, No receipt, no guarantee, you’ll have to be content with our word of honor, Honor, Yes, honor, you can’t imagine how thoroughly we honor our word, Where can I find you if I have a problem, Don’t worry, we’ll find you, I’ll see you to the door, No, don’t bother, we know the way, turn left after the storeroom for coffins, past the make-up room, down the corridor, through reception and there’s the street door, You won’t get lost, We have a very keen sense of direction, we never get lost, for example, in five weeks’ time, someone will come here to receive the next payment, How will I know it’s the right person, You’ll have no doubts when you see him, Goodbye, Yes, goodbye, no need to thank us.

Finally, last but not least, the catholic apostolic church of rome had many reasons to feel pleased with itself. Convinced from the start that the abolition of death could only be the work of the devil and that to help god fight the demon’s works there is nothing more powerful than perseverance in prayer, they had set aside the virtue of modesty which, with no small effort and sacrifice, they usually cultivated, to congratulate themselves unreservedly on the success of the national campaign of prayer whose objective, remember, had been to ask the lord god to bring about the return of death as quickly as possible so as to save poor humanity from the worst horrors, end of quote. The prayers had taken nearly eight months to reach heaven, but when you think that it takes six months to reach the planet mars, then heaven, as you can imagine, must be much farther off, three thousand million light-years from earth, in round numbers. A black cloud, therefore, hung over the church’s legitimate satisfaction. The theologians argued and failed to reach agreement on the reasons that had led god to order death’s sudden return, without at least allowing time for the last rites to be given to the sixty-two thousand dying, who, deprived of the grace of the last sacrament, had expired in less time than it takes to say so. Worrying thoughts as to whether god had authority over death or if, on the contrary, death was above god in the hierarchy quietly gnawed away at the hearts and minds of that holy institution, where the bold affirmation that god and death were two sides of the same coin had come to be considered not so much heresy as an abominable sacrilege. At least that was what was really going on beneath the surface, whereas to others it seemed that the church’s main preoccupation was their participation in the queen mother’s funeral. Now that the sixty-two thousand ordinary dead were safely in their final resting place and no longer holding up the traffic in the city, it was time to bear the venerable lady, suitably enclosed in her lead coffin, to the royal pantheon. As the newspapers all agreed, it was the end of an era.