The Collected Novels of José Saramago (416 page)

When the tuning fork had returned to silence and the cello was once more in tune, the phone rang. The musician started, he looked at the watch, it was half past one. Who can be calling at this hour, he wondered. He picked up the receiver and waited for a few seconds. It was absurd, of course, he was the one who should speak and give his name or number, then someone would probably say at the other end, Oh, sorry, I must have mis-dialed, but the voice that spoke asked instead, Is it the dog answering the phone, if it is, could he, please, at least bark. The cellist replied, Yes, it is the dog, but I stopped barking a long time ago, I’ve lost the habit of biting too, apart from biting myself when life plays tricks on me, Don’t be angry, I’m phoning to apologize, our conversation took a dangerous turn, and the result, as you saw, was disastrous, Well, someone took it off along that dangerous turn, and it wasn’t me, It was my fault entirely, usually I’m very balanced and calm, You didn’t seem to me to be either of those things, Perhaps I suffer from a split personality, That makes us equal then, I myself am both dog and man, Irony doesn’t suit you, but your musical ear will doubtless already have told you that, Dissonance also has a role to play in music, ma’am, Don’t call me ma’am, How else should I address you, since I don’t know your name or what you do or what you are, You’ll find out eventually, remember, haste makes a bad counselor, besides, we’ve only just met, You’re one step ahead of me, though, since you have my phone number, That’s what directory assistance is for, the receptionist found it for me, It’s a shame this is such an old phone, Why, Because if it was one of those modern ones, I’d know where you were phoning from, I’m phoning from my hotel room, That much I knew, And as for the antiquity of your phone, I assumed that would be the case, so it doesn’t surprise me in the least, Why, Because everything about you seems old-fashioned, it’s as if you weren’t fifty, but five hundred years old, How do you know I’m fifty, Because I’m very good at guessing people’s ages, I never fail, It seems to me that you boast too much about never failing, Yes, you’re right, today, for example, I failed twice, something which, I can assure you, has never happened before, Sorry, I don’t understand, You see I have a letter to give you and I failed to do so, although I could easily have given it to you either outside the theater or in the taxi, What letter is that, Let’s just say that I wrote it after attending the rehearsal for your concert, You were there, Yes, I was, But I didn’t see you, Of course not, you couldn’t, Anyway, it’s not my concert, As modest as ever, And saying let’s just say isn’t the same as saying what actually happened, Sometimes it is, But not in this case, Congratulations, you’re not only modest, you’re very perceptive too, What letter do you mean, You’ll find out in time, So why didn’t you give it to me if you had the opportunity, Two opportunities, Exactly, so why didn’t you give it to me, That’s what I hope to find out, maybe I’ll give it to you on saturday, after the concert, because by monday I’ll be gone, You don’t live here, Not what you would call live, no, You’ve lost me, talking to you is like finding oneself in a labyrinth with no doors, Now that’s an excellent definition of life, But you’re not life, No, I’m much more complicated than that, Someone wrote that we are all of us life, for the moment, Yes, for the moment, but only for the moment, Let’s just hope all this confusion is cleared up the day after tomorrow, the letter, the reason why you didn’t give it to me, everything, I’m tired of mysteries, What you call mysteries are often intended as protection, Well, protection or not, I want to see that letter, If I don’t fail a third time, you will, And why would you fail a third time, If I do, it could only be for the same reason I failed before, Please, don’t play cat and mouse with me, In that particular game, the cat always ends up catching the mouse, Unless the mouse manages to put a bell around the cat’s neck, A good answer, but that’s just a silly dream, a cartoon fantasy, even if the cat were asleep, the noise would wake it, and then goodbye mouse, Am I the mouse you’re saying goodbye to, If we were playing that game, then one of us would have to be the mouse, and you don’t seem to me to have either the looks or the cunning to be the cat, So I’m condemned to being a mouse for the rest of my life, For as long as that lasts, yes, a mouse cellist, Another cartoon character, Don’t you think all human beings are just cartoon characters, You too, I suppose, You’ve seen what I look like, A very pretty woman, Thank you, Anyone listening in to this conversation would think we were flirting, If the hotel’s switchboard operator amuses herself by eavesdropping on guests’ conversations, she’ll already have reached the same conclusion, Even if we are flirting, it won’t have any serious consequences, the woman in the box, whose name I still don’t know, will be leaving on monday, Never again to return, Are you sure, It’s unlikely that the reasons that brought me here will ever be repeated, Unlikely doesn’t mean impossible, No, but I’ll do all I can not to have to repeat the journey, It was worth it, though, despite everything, Despite what exactly, Forgive me, I was being indelicate, what I meant to say was, Please, don’t bother being nice to me, I’m not used to it, besides, I can guess what you were going to say, but if you feel you owe me a more complete explanation, perhaps we can continue this conversation on saturday, So I won’t see you before that, No. The line was cut. The cellist looked at the receiver still in his hand, which was damp with anxiety, I must be dreaming, he muttered, this isn’t the kind of thing that happens to me. He put the receiver down and addressing the piano, the cello and the shelves, he asked, this time out loud, What does this woman want of me, who is she, why has she appeared in my life. Woken by the noise, the dog looked up at him. There was an answer in his eyes, but the cellist didn’t notice, he paced the room from one side to the other, feeling even more nervous than before, and the answer was this, Now that you mention it, I do have a vague recollection of having slept in a woman’s lap and it might have been hers, What lap, what woman, the cellist would have asked, You were asleep, Where, In your bed, And where was she, Over there, That’s a good one, mister dog, how long has it been since a woman came into this apartment, into that bedroom, go on, tell me, As you should know, a dog’s perception of time is not the same as that of a human being, but it seems to me that it really has been an age since you last received a lady in your bed, and I don’t mean that ironically, So you dreamed it, Probably, we dogs are incorrigible dreamers, we even dream with our eyes open, we just have to see something in the shadows and we immediately imagine that it’s a woman’s lap and jump onto it, Mere doggy imaginings, the cellist would say, Even if that’s true, the dog would reply, we’re not complaining. Meanwhile, in her hotel room, death is standing naked before the mirror. She doesn’t know who she is.

The following day, the woman didn’t phone. The cellist stayed in just in case. The evening passed, and not a word. The cellist slept even worse than he had the night before. On saturday morning, before setting off to his rehearsal, a mad idea occurred to him, to go and ask around all the hotels in the area to see if they had a female guest with her figure, her smile, her way of moving her hands, but he immediately gave up this crazy project, because it was obvious that he would be dismissed with an air of ill-disguised suspicion and an abrupt We are not authorized to give out that information. The rehearsal went reasonably well, he merely played what was there on the page, doing his best not to play too many wrong notes. When it was over, he rushed back home. He was thinking that if she had phoned in his absence, she wouldn’t even have found a miserable answering machine to record her message. I’m not a man born five centuries ago, I’m a troglodyte from the stone age, everyone uses answering machines except me, he muttered. If he needed proof that she hadn’t phoned, the next few hours provided it. In principle, someone who had phoned and got no reply would call again, but the wretched machine remained silent all afternoon, indifferent to the cellist’s ever more desperate looks. All right, so it looks like she won’t get in touch, perhaps for one reason or another she hasn’t had the chance, but she’ll be there at the concert, they’ll come back together in the same taxi, as happened after the last concert, and when they arrive here, he’ll invite her in, and then they can talk calmly, she’ll finally give him the longed-for letter and then they’ll both laugh at the exaggerated words of praise which she, swept away by artistic enthusiasm, had written after the rehearsal where he hadn’t seen her, and he’ll say that he’s certainly no rostropovich, and she’ll say who knows what the future may hold, and when they run out of things to say or when the words start to go one way and their thoughts another, then we’ll see if something happens that will be worth remembering in our old age. It was in this state of mind that the cellist left home, it was this state of mind that carried him to the theater, with this state of mind that he went on stage and sat down in his usual place. The box was empty. She’s late, he said to himself, she must be just about to arrive, there are still people coming into the theater. This was true, the late arrivals were taking their seats, apologizing for disturbing those already seated, but the woman did not appear. Perhaps in the intermission. She still didn’t come. The box remained empty until the end of the performance. Nevertheless, there was a reasonable hope that, having been unable to attend the concert, for reasons she would explain, she’ll be waiting for him outside, at the stage door. She wasn’t there. And since the fate of hopes is always to breed more hopes, which is why, despite so many disappointments, they have not yet died out in the world, she might be waiting for him outside his building with a smile on her lips and the letter in her hand, Here you are, as promised. She wasn’t there either. The cellist went into his apartment like an old-fashioned, first-generation automaton, the sort that had to ask one leg to move in order to move the other one. He pushed away the dog who had come to greet him, put his cello down in the first convenient place and went and lay on his bed. Now will you learn your lesson, you idiot, you’ve behaved like a complete imbecile, you gave the meanings you wanted to words which, in the end, meant something else entirely, meanings that you don’t know and never will know, you believed in smiles that were nothing but deliberate muscular contractions, you forgot that you’re really five hundred years old, even though the years very kindly reminded you of this, and now here you are, washed up, lying on the bed where you were hoping to welcome her, while she’s laughing at the foolish figure you cut and at your ineradicable stupidity. His master’s rebuff forgotten, the dog came over to the bed to console him. He put his front paws on the mattress and pulled himself up to the height of his master’s left hand, which lay there like something futile and vain, and gently rested his head on it. He could have licked it and licked it again, as is the way with ordinary dogs, but nature had, for once, revealed her benevolent side and reserved for him a very special sensitivity, one that allowed him even to invent different gestures to express emotions that are always the same and always unique. The cellist turned toward the dog, and adjusted his position so that his head was only a few inches from the dog’s head, and there they stayed, looking at each other, saying, with no need for words, When I think about it, I have no idea who you are, but that’s not important, what matters is that we care about each other. The cellist’s bitterness gradually ebbed away, the fact is the world is full of such episodes, he waited and she never arrived, she waited and he never came, and just between ourselves, unbelieving skeptics that we are, rather that than a broken leg. This is easy enough to say, but it’s best not to, because words often have very different effects from those intended, so much so that these men and women quite often curse and swear, I hate her, I hate him, then burst into tears when they’ve done so. The cellist sat up in bed, put his arms around the dog, which, in a final gesture of solidarity, had placed his paws on his master’s knees, and said, like someone telling himself off, A little dignity, please, no whining. Then, to the dog he said, You must be hungry. Wagging his tail, the dog replied, Yes, I am hungry, I haven’t eaten for hours, and the two went into the kitchen. The cellist didn’t eat, he didn’t feel like it. Besides, the lump in his throat wouldn’t allow him to swallow. Half an hour later, he was back in bed, having taken a pill to help him sleep, not that it did much good. He kept waking and sleeping, waking and sleeping, always with the same obsessive idea that he should be running after sleep to catch it up and thus prevent insomnia from occupying the other side of the bed. He didn’t dream about the woman, but there was a moment when he woke and saw her standing in the middle of the music room, with her hands pressed to her breast.

The next day was sunday, and sunday is the day he takes the dog for a walk. Love repays love, the animal seemed to be saying, with his lead in his mouth and eager to be off. They entered the park, and the cellist was just heading toward the bench where he usually sat, when he saw that a woman was already sitting there. Park benches are free, public and, usually, gratis, we can’t say to someone who arrives before us, This bench is mine, kindly find another one. A well-brought-up man like the cellist would never do that, and certainly not if he thought he recognized that person as the woman from the theater, the woman who had stood him up, the woman he had seen in the middle of the music room with her two hands pressed to her breast. As we know, at fifty, we can’t always trust our eyes, we start to blink, to screw them up as if we were trying to imitate the heroes of the wild west or the navigators of long ago, on top of a horse or at the prow of a caravel, one hand shading their eyes as they scan distant horizons. The woman is dressed differently, in trousers and a leather jacket, she must be someone else, says the cellist to his heart, but his heart, which has better eyesight, tells him, open your eyes, it’s her, now you behave yourself. The woman looked up, and the cellist knew for certain then that it was she. Good morning, he said, when he stopped by the bench, the last thing I would have expected today was to find you here, Good morning, I came to say goodbye and to apologize for not coming to the concert yesterday. The cellist sat down, removed the dog’s lead, said, Off you go, and without looking at the woman, replied, There’s nothing to apologize for, that sort of thing is always happening, people buy a ticket and then, for one reason or another, they can’t go, it’s perfectly normal, And about our saying goodbye, do you have any views on that, asked the woman, It’s extremely kind of you to think that you should come and say goodbye to a stranger, although I really can’t imagine how you could possibly know that I come to this park every sunday, There are very few things I don’t know about you, Oh, please, let’s not go back to the absurd conversations we had on thursday at the stage door and afterward on the phone, you don’t know anything about me, we’d never even met before then, Remember, I was at the rehearsal, And I really don’t know how you managed that, because the maestro is very strict about strangers being present, and please don’t go telling me now that you know him too, Not as well as I know you, but you are an exception, It would be better if I wasn’t, Why, Do you want me to tell you, do you really want me to tell you, asked the cellist with a vehemence that bordered on despair, Yes, I do, Because I’ve fallen in love with a woman I know nothing about, who is amusing herself at my expense, who will go off tomorrow who knows where, and who I’ll never see again, It’s actually today that I’ll be leaving, not tomorrow, But you said, And it isn’t true that I’ve been amusing myself at your expense, Well, if you haven’t, you certainly did an excellent imitation, As for you falling in love with me, you can hardly expect me to respond, there are certain words my mouth is forbidden to speak, Another mystery, And it won’t be the last, Once we’ve said goodbye, all the mysteries will be resolved, Others might take their place, Please, go away, don’t torment me any more, The letter, Look, I don’t want to know anything about the letter, The fact is I couldn’t give it to you even if I wanted to, I left it at the hotel, said the woman, smiling, Then tear it up, Yes, I’ll have to think what to do with it, There’s no need to think, tear it up and be done with it. The woman got to her feet. Are you leaving already, asked the cellist. He hadn’t moved, he was sitting with his head bowed, he still had something to say. I’ve never even touched you, he murmured, No, I was the one who stopped you touching me, How did you manage that, It wasn’t that difficult, Not even now, Not even now, We could at least shake hands, My hands are cold. The cellist looked up. The woman was no longer there.