The Lives of Things (4 page)

He had almost passed the petrol-pump before he noticed it. There was a placard announcing ‘Out of Petrol’, and the car moved on without the slightest detour or reducing its speed. He did not want to think about the car. He was smiling again. Leaving the city behind, he reached the suburbs, close to the place he was looking for. He entered a road that was under construction, turned left, then right, until he came to a deserted narrow track with a ditch on either side. It was starting to rain when he stopped the car.

His idea was simple. All he had to do was to get out of his raincoat by wriggling his arms and body, then slither out like a snake shedding its skin. In the presence of other people he would never have the courage, but there, all alone, with wilderness all around him, and the city remote and hidden by the rain, nothing would be easier. But he was mistaken. Not only was his raincoat stuck to the back of his seat, but also his jacket, his sweater, his shirt, his vest, his skin, his muscles and bones. This is what he was unconsciously thinking ten minutes later as he twisted and turned inside the car, calling out and close to tears. Desperate. He was imprisoned in the car. However much he struggled to get out through the open door where the rain was being driven in by sudden icy gusts of wind, however much he pressed his feet against the protruding speedometer, he could not pull himself out of his seat. Using both hands he held on to the roof and tried to hoist himself up. He might just as well have been trying to lift the universe. He threw himself over the wheel, howling and terrified out of his wits. Before his eyes, the windscreen wipers, which he had involuntarily set in motion in his agitation, went back and forth with the dry sound of a metronome. From afar came the noise of a factory siren. Next moment a man riding a bicycle came round the bend, his head and shoulders covered with a large sheet of black plastic, the rain trickling down as if it were sealskin. The cyclist looked inquisitively inside the car and pedalled on, perhaps disappointed or intrigued to see a man on his own and not a couple, as he had surmised from a distance.

What was happening was preposterous. No one had ever been imprisoned like this inside his own car, by his own car. There must be some way or other of getting out. Certainly not by force. Perhaps in a garage. But how would he explain it? Should he call the police? And then what? People would gather round, everyone staring, while an officer grabbed him by an arm and asked those present to help him, but in vain, because the back of the seat was gently clasping him in its embrace. Journalists and photographers would soon rush to the scene and photographs would appear in all the newspapers next day, showing him trapped inside his car and looking as mortified as a shorn animal out in the rain. There had to be another solution. He switched off the engine and without interrupting the gesture threw himself violently outwards as if launching a surprise attack. With no result. He knocked his head and his left hand and the pain made him feel quite dizzy, while a sudden and uncontrollable desire to urinate released an endless flow of warm liquid that ran down between his legs on to the floor of the car. No sooner did he feel this happening than he began to sob quietly, moaning in his misery, and there he remained until a mangy dog emerged from the rain and came up to the car door to bark at him without much conviction.

He slowly went into gear with the heavy movements of some subterranean nightmare and proceeded along the narrow track trying hard not to think, not to allow the situation to prey on his mind. He was vaguely aware that he must find someone to help him. But who? He was reluctant to alarm his wife, but what else could he do. Perhaps she might be able to come up with a solution. At least he would not feel so wretchedly alone.

He drove back into the city, observing the traffic signals and moving as little as possible in his seat, as if anxious to appease the powers holding him there. Several hours went by and the light was fading. He saw three petrol-pumps but the car did not react. All three displayed a placard announcing: ‘Out of Petrol’. Once he entered the city he began to see cars abandoned in the oddest places and displaying red triangles in the back window, a sign which on other occasions would have meant a breakdown, but which now nearly always meant out of petrol. Twice he came across groups of men pushing vehicles on to the pavements, with wild gestures of exasperation beneath the rain which was still falling.

When he finally reached the street where he lived he had to think how he could summon his wife. He stopped the car in front of the door, disorientated, almost on the brink of another nervous crisis. He waited for the miracle to happen whereby his wife would come down in answer to his silent plea for help. He waited for some time before an inquisitive lad from the neighbourhood approached whom he was able to persuade with the promise of a reward to go up to the third floor and tell the lady who lived there that her husband was waiting below in the car. That she should come at once for it was very urgent. The boy went and came down again, said the lady was coming and ran off having earned his reward.

His wife came down in her house attire, having forgotten even to bring an umbrella, and now she was standing there in the doorway, undecided, involuntarily turning her eyes towards a dead rat at the edge of the pavement, a limp rat with bristling hairs; hesitant about crossing the pavement in the rain, somewhat annoyed with her husband who had made her come down needlessly when he could so easily have come up himself to tell her what he wanted. But when she saw her husband gesticulating inside the car, she took fright and ran to him. She reached out for the door-handle, anxious to escape the rain, and when she finally opened the door, she confronted her husband’s open hand pushing her away without actually touching her. She persisted and tried to get in but he shouted that she must not, that it was dangerous, and he explained what was happening as she leaned over, getting all the rain on her back and bare head, her whole face twitching with horror. And she watched her husband in that warm and misted cocoon isolating him from the world, writhing in his seat as he struggled unsuccessfully to get out of the car. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled in disbelief, unable to budge him an inch. And since it was all too horrible to contemplate, they remained there staring at each other in silence until she thought her husband must be mad and was pretending not to be able to get out. She must go and fetch someone to help him, to take him wherever such mental disorders are treated. In soothing tones she told her husband to be patient while she went to fetch someone to help her release him, she would not be long, they would even be able to lunch together and he could ring the office and say he had flu. And therefore he would not need to go to work that afternoon. He must remain calm, there was nothing to worry about, it would not be long now until he was free.

But when she disappeared upstairs, he once more imagined himself surrounded by onlookers, his photograph in the papers, the mortification of having peed down his legs, and he waited a few more minutes. And while his wife was upstairs making telephone calls everywhere, to the police, to the hospital, trying to persuade them to believe her and not to be taken in by the natural tone of voice in which she gave her name and that of her husband, the colour of the vehicle, the make and registration number, he could no longer bear to wait and switched on the engine. When his wife came back downstairs, the car had gone and the rat had finally slipped off the edge of the pavement and was rolling down the sloping road, carried off by the water running from the gutters. The woman called out, but it was some time before anyone appeared, and how was she to explain what had happened?

Until darkness fell the man drove around the city, passing empty petrol-pumps, finding himself in queues quite unintentionally, worried because his money was running out and he did not like to think what would happen once he had no money left and the car stopped in front of a petrol-pump to fill up with more petrol. But no such thing happened for the simple reason that nearly all the pumps were closing and any remaining queues were waiting for them to re-open next morning, and so the best solution was to avoid any pump that might still be working so as not to have to stop. On a long, broad avenue with very little traffic, a police car accelerated and overtook him, and as it passed him, the policeman waved him down. But once again he lost his nerve and drove on. He could hear the police siren behind him and also saw, coming from who knows where, a motorcyclist in uniform who was almost on his tail. But the car, his car, sped away with one almighty roar and headed for the access to the motorway. The police followed him at a distance, ever further away, and by nightfall there was no longer any sign of them and his car was speeding along another road.

He was feeling hungry. He had peed again, much too humiliated to feel any shame. And he was a little delirious: humiliated, homiliated. He went on declining, altering the consonants and syllables in an unconscious and obsessive exercise which shielded him from reality. He did not stop because he did not know what he should stop for. But in the early hours of morning he parked the car on several occasions at the side of the road and tried to ease himself out ever so slowly, as if in the meantime he and the car had made a truce and this was the moment to put their goodwill to the test. Twice he spoke in a low voice when the seat held on to him, twice he tried to coax the car to release him, twice in that freezing and nocturnal wilderness, where the rain never ceased, he broke down, wailing and weeping in blind despair. The open wounds on his head and hand began bleeding again. While he, sobbing his heart out and whining like a frightened animal, went on driving the car. Allowing himself to be driven.

He travelled all night without knowing where he was going. He passed through villages unknown to him, covered long, straight roads, went up and down mountain slopes, circled curves and bends, and as dawn broke, he was somewhere on an old road where the rain had formed puddles rippling on the surface. The engine rumbled furiously as it dragged its wheels through the mud, and the whole car was vibrating and making the most alarming noises. Morning came without any sign of the sun appearing but the rain suddenly stopped. The road became a simple track which, further ahead, constantly gave the impression of losing itself amidst boulders. Where had the world gone? Before him he saw mountains and an ominously low sky. He screamed and beat on the wheel with clenched fists. Just then he saw that the indicator was pointing to zero. The engine appeared to be starting up by itself and dragged the car another twenty metres. Beyond, he could see the paved road again but he had used up all his petrol.

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Overcome with nausea, he could feel a veil being drawn over his eyes three times. Groping, he opened the door to prevent himself from suffocating and, at that moment, either because he was dying or the engine had gone dead, his body slumped to the left and slid out of the car. It slipped a little further and ended up lying on the road. The rain had started again.

Reflux

First of all, since everything must have a beginning, even if that beginning is the final point from which it cannot be separated, and to say cannot is not to say wishes not, or must not, it is simply impossible, for if such a separation were feasible, we all know that the entire universe would collapse, inasmuch as the universe is a fragile construction incapable of withstanding permanent solutions – first of all, the four routes were opened up. Four wide roads divided the country, starting from their cardinal points in a straight line or ever so slightly bent to follow the earth’s curvature, and therefore as rigorously as possible tunnelling through mountains, dividing plains, and overcoming, supported on pillars, passing over rivers and valleys. Five kilometres from the place where they would intersect, if this were the builders’ intention or rather the order received from the royal personage at the appropriate moment, the roads divided off into a network of major and secondary routes, like enormous arteries which had to transform themselves into veins and capillaries in order to proceed, and this self-same network found itself confined within a perfect square which clearly measured ten kilometres on each side. This square which also had started out, bearing in mind the universal observation that opened the story, as four rows of trig points set out on the ground, subsequently became – once the machines that opened, levelled and paved the four roads appeared on the horizon, coming, as we said, from the four cardinal points – subsequently became a high wall, four curtain-walls which could soon be seen, as was already clear from the drawing-boards, delimiting a hundred square kilometres of flat or levelled ground, because a certain amount of clearing had to be done. Land chosen to meet the basic need of equidistance from that place to the frontiers, a relative advantage, which was fortunately confirmed later by a high lime content which not even the most optimistic had the courage to forecast in their plans when asked for their opinion: all of this simply brought greater glory to the royal personage, as might have been predicted from the outset if greater attention had been paid to the dynasty’s history: all its monarchs had always been right, and others less so, according to the accounts of events which were officially recorded. Such a project could never have been carried out without a strong will and the money that permits one to have a will and the hope of seeing it fulfilled, the reason why the nation’s coffers paid for this gigantic enterprise on a per capita basis, which naturally meant levying a general tax on the entire population, not according to income but in the inverse order of life expectancy, since this was considered to be just and readily understood by everyone: the older the person, the higher the tax.

There were some remarkable feats in carrying out a project of this magnitude; endless problems arose, and workers who had been sent ahead met their death even before the cemetery was finished, many were buried in a landslide, some fell from great heights, calling out in vain, others were struck down by sunstroke, or suddenly froze on the spot, lymph, urine and blood having turned to cold stone. All of them victims of being in the vanguard. But the accolade of genius, provisional immortality, excepting that inherent in the King which was guaranteed to last longer, was bestowed by luck and merit on the discreet civil servant who argued that the gates in the walls on the original plan were unnecessary. He was right. It would have been absurd to make and install gates which had to remain open at all hours of day and night. Thanks to this diligent civil servant, some savings were made: the money it would have cost to make four main gates and sixteen secondary gates, twenty gates in all, distributed equally along the four sides of the square and strategically placed along each wall: the main gate in the middle of each wall and two secondary gates on each side. Therefore there were no gates but only openings where the roads ended. The walls did not need gates to support them. They were solid, thick from the base to a height of three metres, then narrowing progressively to the top, nine metres from the ground. Needless to say, the side entrances were served by roads forking from the main road at a convenient distance. And as one might expect, this simple geometrical lay-out was linked by means of suitable junctions to the general network of roads throughout the country. If everything ends up everywhere, everything would end up there.

The structure, four walls served by four roads, was a cemetery. And this cemetery was to be the only one in the land. This had been decided by the royal personage. When supreme greatness and supreme sensibility are united in a king, a single cemetery is possible. All kings are great, by definition and birth: any king who might wish otherwise will wish in vain (even the exceptions of other dynasties are great amongst their peers). But they may or may not be sensitive, and here one is not speaking of that common, plebeian sensibility, which expresses itself with a tear in the corner of an eye or by an irrepressible tremor on the lip, but of another sensibility, unprecedented to such a degree in the history of this nation and perhaps even of the universe: a sensibility incapable of confronting death or any of the paraphernalia and rituals associated with death, whether it be the mourning of relatives or the commercial manifestations of bereavement. Such was this king. Like all kings and presidents, he had to travel and visit his domains, to caress little children selected by protocol beforehand, to receive bouquets of flowers already inspected by the secret police in case they might have poison or a bomb concealed inside, to cut ribbons in fast, non-toxic colours. All this and more the King carried out with good grace. But each visit caused him endless suffering: death, nothing but death wherever one looked, signs of death everywhere, the pointed tip of a cypress tree, a widow’s black shawl and, more than once, the unbearable sight of some funeral procession the master of ceremonies had inexcusably overlooked, or which, setting out late or early, unexpectedly appeared at the most solemn moment of all, just as the King was passing or about to pass. After these visits the King would return to his palace in a state of distress, convinced he was about to die. And the sorrows of others and his own fear of death caused him so much anguish that, one day when he was relaxing on the highest terrace in the palace and looking into the distance (this being the clearest day ever recorded not only throughout the history of that dynasty but throughout its entire civilization), he saw four resplendent white walls and these gave him the idea of building one central cemetery to be used by everyone.

For a nation accustomed for thousands of years to burying its dead in public for all to see, this provoked the most awful revolution. But those who feared revolution began to fear chaos, when the King’s idea, with that resolute and rapid progress ideas make, especially when thought up by kings, went further and became what evil tongues described as delirium: all the cemeteries in the land had to be cleared of bones and remains, whatever their degree of decomposition, and put into new coffins which would be transported for burial in the new cemetery. Not even the royal ashes of the sovereign’s ancestors were exempt from this mandate: a new pantheon would be built in a style probably inspired by the ancient Egyptian pyramids, and there, in due course, once calm was restored, their remains would be carried with all pomp and ceremony along the main northern road lined on either side with loyal subjects, until they eventually reached the final resting-place for the venerable bones of all those who had been crowned since the time when one man managed to persuade the others by means of words and force, saying: ‘I want a crown on my head, make me one.’ Some claim that this egalitarian decision helped more than anything to pacify those who saw themselves deprived of the remains of their dear departed. Another factor of some weight must have been the tacit satisfaction of all those who took the opposite view and were tired of the rules and traditions which turn the dead, because of the demands they make, into transitional beings between what is no longer life and a death that is not yet real. Suddenly everyone decided the King’s idea was the best thing any man had ever conceived and no other nation could boast of having such a king, and since fate had decreed that the King should be born and reign there, it was up to the people to obey him gladly, also for the solace of the dead who were no less deserving. The history of nations knows moments of utter bliss: this was such a moment and this nation rejoiced.

When the cemetery was finally completed, the enormous task of disinterment began. At first it was easy: the thousands of existing cemeteries, large, medium and small, were also surrounded by walls, and, so to speak, within their perimeter it was enough to excavate to the stipulated depth of three feet for greater safety, and remove everything, cubic metre upon cubic metre of bones, rotten planks of wood, dismembered bodies shaken out of their coffins by the excavators; then the rubble had to be transferred into coffins of different sizes, for new-born babes as well as for the very old, emptying some bones or flesh into each of them at random, two skulls and four hands, odd bits of rib, a breast that was still firm along with a withered belly, a simple bone or hip, or one of Buddha’s teeth, even the shoulder-blade of some saint or the blood missing from the miraculous phial of St Januarius. It was decided that each part of a corpse would count as a whole corpse, and they lined up the participants in this infinite funeral which came from every corner of the nation, carefully wending its way from villages, towns and cities, along routes which became increasingly wider as far as the main road network and from there, by means of junctions specially built, on to roads subsequently known as the roads of the dead.

In the beginning, as stated earlier, there were no problems. But then someone remembered, unless the idea came from the country’s precious monarch, that before this ruling about cemeteries had been enforced, the dead had been buried everywhere, on mountains and in the valleys, in churchyards, under the shade of trees, beneath the floorboards of the very houses in which they had lived, in any convenient spot, and only a little deeper than the depth, for example, of a ploughshare. Not to mention the wars, the vast trenches for thousands of corpses, all over the world, from Asia and Europe and other continents, even though probably with fewer corpses, for naturally there had also been wars in this king’s realm and therefore bodies had been buried at random. There was, it had to be confessed, a moment of great perplexity. The King himself, had this latest idea been his, would not have kept it to himself for that would have been impossible. New orders were given and, since the country could not be turned over from end to end, as the cemeteries had been turned over, wise men were summoned before the King to hear this injunction from his royal lips: with all possible haste they must invent instruments capable of detecting the presence of buried remains, just as instruments had been invented to find water or metal. It would be no mean feat, the wise men acknowledged, once gathered together. They spent three days in discussion and then each of them locked himself away in his own laboratory. The State coffers were opened once more, and a new general tax was imposed. The problem was finally resolved but, as always happens in such cases, not all at once. To give an example, the case of that wise man could be cited who invented an instrument which lit up and made a noise whenever it encountered a body, but it had one serious drawback insofar as it could not distinguish between live or dead bodies. As a result, this instrument, handled of course by living people, behaved like someone possessed, screeching and flashing its indicators in a frenzy, torn between all the reactions from both the living and the dead surrounding it, and in the end, incapable of providing any reliable information. The entire nation mocked this unfortunate scientist, then lavished tributes and honours on him several months later, when he found the solution by introducing into the instrument a kind of memory or fixed idea. If one listened attentively, it was possible to detect a constant sound coming from inside the mechanism which went on repeating: ‘I must only find dead bodies or remains, I must only find dead bodies or remains, dead bodies or remains, or remains . . .’

Fortunately, there was one remaining drawback, as we shall see. No sooner did the instrument begin to function than people realised that, this time, it could not tell the difference between human and non-human bodies, but this new flaw, which explains why I earlier used the word fortunately, turned out to be an advantage: when the King understood the danger he had escaped, he had the shivers: in fact, all death is death, even the non-human kind, and there would be no purpose in removing dead men from sight, when dogs, horses and birds go on dropping before our eyes. And all other creatures, with the possible exception of insects which are only half-animal (as was firmly believed by the nation’s scientists at that time). Then a full-scale investigation was ordered, a Cyclopean task which went on for years. Not so much as a hand-breadth of land remained to be examined, even in places which had been uninhabited for as long as anyone could remember: not even the highest mountains escaped or the deepest rivers, where thousands of dead bodies were discovered; the deepest roots did not escape, sometimes entangled around the remains of someone higher up who had been trying, out of desire or necessity, to reach the sap of some tree. Nor did the roads escape, which had to be lifted in many places and rebuilt. Finally, the kingdom found itself released from death. One day, when the King himself formally announced that the country was cleansed of death (his words), he declared a public holiday and national rejoicing. On such days it is customary for more people than usual to die, because of accidents, muggings, etc., but the National Life Service (as it was called) employed rapid, up-to-date methods: once death had been confirmed, the corpse followed the shortest route to the great highway of corpses, which had inevitably come to be known as no-man’s-land. Having got rid of the dead, the King could be happy. As for the people, they would have to get used to it.