The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  After two days, the members of the commission for boundaries were engaged in field work, taking measurements with their theodolites, checking against their tables, calculating with their instruments, and comparing all these data against the aerial photographs, the French somewhat disgruntled because there was no longer any doubt that the crack was Spanish, as the journalist Miguel had been the first to argue, when suddenly there was news of another fracture. No more was said about tranquil Orbaiceta nor about the River Irati, now cut off, sic transit gloria mundi and of Navarre. The journalists, some of whom were women, swarmed on to the crucial site in the Eastern Pyrenees, fortunately endowed with excellent means of access, so many and so excellent that within a few hours everyone who mattered was assembled there, people had even come from as far away as Toulouse and Barcelona. The highways were congested, and by the time the police on both sides of the border intervened to divert the flow of traffic it was much too late, the cars stretched for kilometer after kilometer, mechanical chaos, it soon became necessary to take drastic measures, to make everyone turn back in the other lane, which meant pulling down barriers, jamming the sides of the road with cars, an inferno, the Greeks had good reason to locate hell in this region. Particularly useful in dealing with the crisis were the helicopters, those flying constructions or airships capable of landing almost anywhere, and, whenever it proves impossible to land, they imitate the hummingbird, drawing close until they almost touch the flower, the passengers do not need a ladder, a little jump and that is all, they enter the corolla at once, amid the stamens and pistils, breathing in the aroma, frequently that of naphtha and charred flesh. Heads lowered, they set off running, anxious to find out what has happened, some of them have come straight from the Irati, already experienced in structural geology, but not equipped to cope with anything quite like this.

  The crack cuts across the road and the entire parking area and runs on, thinning out on both sides, heading toward the valley, where it disappears from sight, and winding up the mountain slope, until it finally vanishes among the bushes. We are standing right on the frontier, the real one, the line of separation in this nameless limbo between the stations of the two police forces, the aduana and the douane, la bandera and le drapeau. At a prudent distance, for one cannot rule out the possibility of a landslide if the edges of the ruptured area should cave in, technicians exchange phrases devoid of any meaning or purpose, one cannot refer to that babble of voices as dialogue, and, to make matters worse, use loudspeakers to hear each other better, while the experts, inside the pavilions, speak on the telephone, one minute among themselves, the next with Madrid and Paris. No sooner have they landed than the journalists are off to discover what happened, and they all pick up the same story with some embroidered variants, which they will embellish further with their imagination, but in simple language, the person who vouched for the occurrence was the motorist who, passing through as darkness fell, sensed his car give a sudden lurch, as if the wheels had bounced across a pothole in the middle of the road, and he got out to see what it was, thinking they might be resurfacing the road and had unwisely forgotten to put up a warning sign. By this time, the crack was half a span wide and at most some four meters long. The man, who was Portuguese, called Sousa, and traveling with his wife and parents-in-law, went back to the car and told them, It looks as if we're already in Portugal, would you believe it, there's an enormous pothole in the road, it's a miracle it didn't flatten the tires or snap the axle. It was no pothole, nor was it enormous, but the words, as we have written them, have one real advantage, simply because they are exaggerated, they allay fear, calm the nerves, why, precisely because they dramatize. The wife, without paying much attention to what he said, replied, You'd better take a look, and he decided to heed her advice, although that was not her intention, the woman's words were more an exclamation than an order, one of those exclamations that often serve as a reply, he got out of the car again and went to check the tires, fortunately there was no apparent damage. Within the next few days, back in his native Portugal, he will become a hero, be interviewed on radio and television, make statements to the press. You were the first to see it happen, Senhor Sousa, give us your impression of that terrible moment. He will repeat his story countless times, and he will always finish off his embroidered version of events with an anxious, rhetorical question, calculated to make the listener shudder as he himself shudders with delicious ecstasy. Just think, if the hole had been bigger, as they say it now is, we would have fallen in, God knows how far down, and the Galician must have been thinking more or less the same when he asked, as you may recall, Where does that water go.

  How far, that is the crucial question. The first practical step would be to examine the damage, to check the depth, and then to study, define, and put into operation the appropriate measures in order to fill in the breach, no word could be more apt, it is universal, after all, and one is tempted to believe that someone thought of it one day, or invented it, so that it could be fittingly invoked whenever the earth should crack open. The investigation, once completed, registered a depth of little more than twenty meters, of no real significance, given the resources of modern engineering in carrying out public works. From Spain and from France, from near and from afar, concrete mixers were brought in, those interesting machines that with their simultaneous movements remind one of the earth in space, of rotation, of removal, and upon reaching the spot they poured out the concrete, torrential, measured to achieve the right effect with great quantities of rough stones and fast-setting cement. The filling-up operation was well under way when one imaginative expert suggested that they should attach some clamps, a method once used to heal human wounds, large clamps made of steel, which would secure the edges, assisting, as it were, and speeding up the process of closing the breach. The idea was approved by the bilateral commission coping with the emergency, the Spanish and French metallurgists immediately began carrying out the necessary tests, checking the alloy, the thickness and the section of the material, the relationship between the size of the spike that would be driven into the ground and the space covered, in short, technical details intended for the specialist and here mentioned somewhat superficially. The crack swallowed up the torrent of stones and gray sludge as if it were the River Irati pouring into the depths of the land, deep echoes could be heard coming from the earth, it was even speculated that there might be some gigantic hollow down below, a cavern, some kind of insatiable gorge, And if this is the case, there is no point in carrying on, you simply build a bridge over the gap, probably the easiest and most economical solution of all, and bring in the Italians, who have a great deal of experience when it comes to building viaducts. But, after God knows how many tons and cubic meters had been poured in, the sounding line registered a depth of seventeen meters, then fifteen, then twelve, the level of the concrete went on rising, the battle was won. The technicians, laborers, and policemen embraced each other, flags were waved, the television announcers, excited, read the latest bulletins and gave their own opinions, praising this titanic struggle, this collective victory, international solidarity in action, even from Portugal, that tiny country, a convoy of ten concrete mixers set out, they have a long journey ahead, more than one thousand five hundred kilometers, an extraordinary achievement, the cement they are carrying won't be necessary, but history will remember their symbolic gesture.

  When the gap had finally been filled in, the general excitement exploded into wild euphoria, as if this were another New Year's Eve, with fireworks and the bullfight of Sâo Silvestre. The air vibrated with the horns of the motorists who had not budged from the spot even after the roadways had been cleared, the trucks let off the hoarse bellowing of their avertisseurs and bocinas, and the helicopters hovered triumphantly overhead, like seraphim endowed with powers that were probably far from celestial. The cameras clicked incessantly, the television crews, overcoming their fears, moved in, and there, close to the edges of the crack that no longer existed, they filmed great layers of
the rough concrete, the evidence of man's victory over the vagaries of nature. And this was how spectators, remote from the scene, in the comfort and safety of their own homes, were able to see pictures transmitted directly from the Franco-Spanish frontier at Coll de Pertus, laughing and clapping their hands and celebrating the event as if they themselves had been responsible for its success, this was how they saw, unable to believe their own eyes, the concrete surface, still moist, begin to shift and sink, as if the enormous mass were about to be sucked under, slowly but surely, until the gaping breach became visible once more. The crack had not widened, and this could only mean one thing, namely that the depth of the hole was no longer twenty meters, as before, but much deeper, God alone knew just how deep. The workers drew back in horror, but a sense of professional duty, which had become second nature, kept the cameras turning, shaking in their holders' hands, and the world could now see faces change their expression, in the wild panic shouting could be heard, cries of horror, there was a general stampede, within seconds the parking area was deserted, the concrete mixers were abandoned, here and there some were still working, the drums turning, filled with concrete that three minutes ago ceased to be necessary and was now quite futile.

  For the first time, a shudder of fear went through the peninsula and nearby Europe. In Cerbère, not very far away, the people, running impulsively out into the streets like their dogs before them, said to each other, It was written, whensoever they should bark, the world would end, but it was not quite like that, it had never been written, but great moments call for great words and it is difficult to say why this expression, It was written, figures so prominently in books record ing prophetic statements. With greater justification than anyone else, the terror-stricken inhabitants of Cerbère began to abandon the town, migrating en masse onto firmer soil, in the hope that they would be safe there from the world's encroaching end. In Banyuls-sur-Mer, Port-Vendrès, and Collioure, to mention only the villages and hamlets dotted along the coastline, there was not a living soul to be seen. The dead souls, having died, stayed behind, with that persistent indifference that distinguishes them from the rest of humanity, if anyone ever said otherwise, or suggested, for example, that Fernando Pessoa visited Ricardo Reis, the one being dead and the other alive, it was his foolish imagination and nothing else. But one of these dead men, in Collioure, stirred ever so slightly, as if hesitating, shall I go or not, but never into France, he alone knew where, and perhaps one day we shall know too.

  Amid the thousand items of news, opinions, commentaries, and roundtable conferences that occupied the press, television, and radio the following day, the brief statement by an orthodox seismologist passed almost unnoticed. What I should dearly like to know is why all this is happening without so much as an earth tremor, to which another seismologist, of the modern school, pragmatic and flexible, replied, All will be explained in due course. Now, in a village in southern Spain, a man, listening to these conflicting opinions, left his house and set off for the city of Granada, to tell the television men that he had felt an earth tremor more than a week ago, that he had not spoken up sooner because he feared that no one would believe him, and that he was now here in person, so that people could see how a simple man can be more sensitive than, all the seismologists in the world put together. As luck would have it, a journalist listened to what he had to say, either out of heartfelt sympathy or because he was intrigued by the unusual occurrence, and this latest scoop was summed up in four lines, and, although there were no pictures, the news was given on television that night, with a cautious smile. Next day, Portuguese television, lacking any material of its own, took up the man's story and developed it further by interviewing a specialist in psychic phenomena who, to judge from his one important state ment, could add nothing to what was already known on the subject, As in all situations of this kind, everything depends on one's sensibility.

  Much has been said here about causes and effects, taking great care to weigh the facts, proceed logically, be guided by common sense, and reserve any judgment, for it must be clear to all that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It is only natural and right, therefore, that we should doubt that the line drawn on the ground by Joana Carda with an elm branch was the direct cause of the Pyrenees' cracking open, which is what has been insinuated from the beginning. But one cannot deny this other fact, which is entirely true, that Joaquim Sassa went off in search of Pedro Orce after having heard his name mentioned in the evening news bulletin, and having listened to what he had to say.

  A loving mother, Europe was saddened by the misfortune of her westernmost lands. Along the entire Pyrenean cordillera, the granite split open, the cracks multiplied, other roads appeared to have been severed, other streams and torrents sank into the depths until they disappeared. Seen from the air, a continuous black line suddenly opened up on the snowcapped peaks like a trail of dust, where the snow was sliding and disappearing with the white sound of a tiny avalanche. The helicopters came and went incessantly, observing the summits and valleys aswarm with experts and specialists of every kind who might prove to be useful, geologists, these present of their own accord, although their habitual domain was currently obstructed, seismologists, perplexed, because the earth insisted on remaining firm, without so much as a tremor, not even a vibration, and also volcanologists, secretly hopeful, despite the clear sky, free of any signs of smoke or fire, the perfect, blue glaze of an August sky. The trail of smoke was merely a comparison, and we should never take comparisons literally, this or any other, unless we learn to treat them with caution. Human strength could do nothing on behalf of a cordillera that was opening up like a pomegranate, with no apparent suffering, and simply, who are we to know, because it had matured and its time had come. Only forty-eight hours after Pedro Orce had said what he said on television, it was no longer possible to cross the frontier at any point from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, either on foot or by surface transport. And in the low-lying coastlands, the seas, each from its own side, began to find their way into new channels, mysterious unknown gorges, increasingly deeper, with those sheer walls, dropping vertically all the way, the clean cut exposing the arrangement of ancient and modern strata, the synclines, the intercalations of clay, the conglomerates, the extensive concretions of soft limestone and sandstone, the beds of shale, the black, siliceous rocks, the granites, and all the rest, which cannot be listed here because of the narrator's lack of knowledge and time. Now we know what reply should have been given to the Galician who asked, Where does this water go. It ends up in the sea, we should tell him, transformed into the finest rain, into dust, into a waterfall, depending on the height from which it drops and on the amount of water, no, no we are not talking about the Irati, that is some distance away, but you can be sure that everything will end up by conforming to the laws of nature, as jets of water, even as a rainbow, once the sun is able to penetrate the somber depths.

  On both sides of the frontier, along a narrow strip extending about a hundred kilometers, the population abandoned their homes and withdrew to the relative security of the interior, but matters were complicated in the case of Andorra, which we were inexcusably forgetting, that's what tends to happen to little countries, which could just as easily have turned out to be bigger. At the beginning, as there was great uncertainty about the final outcome of the cracks, they existed on both sides, on the two frontiers, and also because some of the inhabitants were Spanish, others French, and yet others Andorran, each one gravitated to his native soil, so to speak, or was influenced by what seemed right or in his best interests at that moment, even if it meant breaking up families and other relationships. Finally, the continuous line of the fracture settled once and for all on the French border, several thousand French nationals were evacuated by air, in a brilliant rescue operation that was given the code name Mitre d'Evêque, a name that incurred the grave displeasure of the Bishop of Urgel, who unintentionally provided the inspiration, but this did not detract from his satisfaction when he
realized that in future he would become the sole overlord of the principality, provided that the latter, barely encircled by the Spanish side, did not end up in the sea. All that was left in the desert created by the general evacuation were some military detachments who went around with a prayer on their lips, under the constant surveillance of the helicopters hovering overhead, ready to gather up personnel at the slightest sign of any geological instability, and, as one might expect, the inevitable looters, generally alone, for catastrophes always bring snakes out of their lairs, or their eggs, and who, in this case, just like the soldiers who shot them without pity or remorse, also went around with a prayer on their lips, just which prayer depended on the faith they professed, every living being has the right to the love and protection of his god, bearing in mind, in allowance and defense of the robbers, that one could argue that those who have abandoned their homes do not deserve to live there and enjoy them, besides, as the proverb rightly says, All birds eat corn, only the sparrow pays, let each of you decide whether there is any connection to be found between the general principle and this particular case.