The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  The dog Found did not like marçal. There were so many things to tell, so much news, so many highs and lows in hopes and spirits, that during the journey from the Center to the pottery, it did not even occur to Cipriano Algor to mention to his son-in-law the dog's mysterious arrival or his equally unusual behavior since. Nevertheless, a love of truth, pricked on by a narrator's natural scrupulousness, will not allow to go unmentioned one brief resurfacing of that remarkable episode in the potter's faulty memory, this, however, did not get any further because marçal, with more than justified resentment, interrupted his father-in-law's story to ask why the devil neither he nor Marta had thought to inform him of what was going on at home, the idea of the dolls, the drawings, their attempts at modeling, It's as if I don't really exist for either of you, he remarked bitterly. Caught out, Cipriano Algor mumbled some excuse citing the intensity and concentration inevitable in all artistic creation, the extreme unfriendliness with which the person who answered the phone responded to calls from the family members of guards living outside the Center, and, finally, a few decorative, halfgarbled words to pad out his speech and bring it to a close. Fortunately, the sight of the burned-out truck helped divert attention from a dispute that could easily have evolved into a family quarrel, which, let it be said, it will not, although marçal Gacho is determined to take up the matter again when he is alone with his wife in their bedroom and behind closed doors. With visible relief, Cipriano Algor left the subject of clay dolls in order to explain the suspicions that the fire had aroused in his mind, a view to which Manual, still angry about the lack of consideration with which he had been treated, responded rather brusquely in the name of deontology, ethical awareness, and the high standard of behavior for which, by definition, the armed forces in general and the administrative and police authorities in particular have always been known. Cipriano Algor shrugged, You're just saying that because you work as a security guard at the Center, if you were a civilian like me, you would see things differently, The fact that I work as a guard at the Center doesn't make me a policeman or a soldier, retorted marçal, No, it doesn't, but you're pretty close, on the border, Oh, I suppose now you're going to tell me that you feel ashamed to have a security guard from the Center sitting here beside you in your van, breathing the same air, The potter did not reply at once, he regretted having given in yet again to the stupid and gratuitous desire to provoke his son-in-law, Why do I do it, he asked himself, as if he didn't already know the answer, this man, this marçal Gacho wanted to take his daughter from him, indeed he already had taken her away, irremediably and irrevocably, by marrying her, Even if, in the end, I get tired of saying no and go with them to live at the Center, he thought. Then, speaking slowly, as if he had to drag each word out one after the other, he said, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, I didn't mean to be unpleasant, but sometimes I can't help it, it just comes out, and there's no point asking me why, I wouldn't be able to give you an answer or, if I did, I'd just be telling you a pack of lies, because there are reasons, if you look you'll always find them, there's never been any shortage of reasons, even if they're not the right ones, no, it's the changing times, it's the old who age a day for every hour, it's the work which isn't what it used to be, and we, who can only be what we were, suddenly realize that we're not needed in the world, always assuming we ever were, of course, but believing that we were seemed to be enough, seemed sufficient, and that belief was, in a sense, eternal for as long as we remained alive, which is, after all, what eternity is. marçal said nothing, he merely placed his left hand on his father-in-law's right hand, which was holding the steering wheel. Cipriano Algor swallowed hard, looked at the hand which, gently but firmly, seemed to want to protect his, looked at the oblique, jagged scar that cut across the skin from one side to the other, all that remained of a terrible burn which, by some astonishing stroke of good fortune, had not reached the veins beneath. Inexperienced and inept, marçal had wanted to help in stoking the kiln in order to impress the girl he had been going out with for a matter of only a few weeks, perhaps to impress her father too, to show him that he was a grown man, when, in fact, he was only just out of adolescence and when the one thing in life and in the world about which he felt he knew all there was to know was that he loved the potter's daughter. No one who has at some time in their life known such certainties will have any difficulty whatsoever in imagining the feelings of enthusiasm that filled him as he dragged the logs one by one from the woodshed and then fed them into the kiln, the supreme prize for him at that moment would have been Marta's delight and surprise, her mother's benevolent smile and her father's grave, reluctant look of approval. And suddenly, though no one ever found out why, for such a thing had never happened before in the memory of potters, a flame, slender, swift and sinuous as the tongue of a snake, erupted with a roar from the mouth of the kiln and cruelly bit the hand of the boy, so near, so innocent, so unprepared. That was the origin of the Gacho family's secret antipathy for the Algor family, who had not only acted with unforgivable negligence and irresponsibility, but had also, according to the inflexible Gacho mind, flagrantly abused the feelings of an ingenuous lad by making him work for nothing. It is not only in villages far from civilization that the human cerebral appendage is capable of generating such ideas. Marta frequently dressed marçal's hand, she frequently consoled and cooled it with her breath, and the couple were so steadfast in their desires that, after some years, they were able to get married, though this did nothing to unite the families. At the moment, their love appears to have gone to sleep, but never mind, this seems to be the natural effect of time and life's anxieties, but if ancient knowledge serves for anything, if it can still be of some use to modern ignorance, let us say, softly, so that people don't laugh at us, that while there's life, there's hope. For it is true that however thick and black the clouds over our heads, the sky above the clouds is permanently blue, but then again the rain, hail and lightning always fall downward, and indeed, when faced with such facts, it is hard to know quite what to think. marçal has withdrawn his hand, that's how it is between men, manly displays of affection have to be quick and instantaneous, some people put this down to masculine modesty, and perhaps they're right, but it would have been much more manly, in the full sense of the word, and certainly no less masculine, if Cipriano Algor had stopped the van and embraced his son-in-law right there and then and thanked him for that gesture with the only possible words, Thank you for placing your hand on mine, that is what he should have said, instead of taking advantage of the seriousness of the moment to complain about the ultimatum imposed by the head of the buying department, Can you believe it, he gave me two weeks to take away the whole lot, Two weeks, Yes, two weeks, and with no one to help me either, I'm only sorry I can't lend a hand, Well, you can't, of course, you haven't got time and it wouldn't do your career much good to be seen working as a porter, and the worst thing is that I have no idea what to do with a load of pots that nobody wants, You might still manage to sell some, We've got more than enough at the pottery, In that case, you really have a problem, We'll see, I might just leave it here by the roadside, The police wouldn't let you, If this old crock wasn't a van but one of those dump trucks, nothing could be easier, I'd just have to push a button and, hey presto, in less than a minute, there it would all be in the gutter, You might get away with it a couple of times, but the traffic police would be bound to catch you at it in the end, Another solution would be to find a cave out in the countryside somewhere, it wouldn't have to be a very big cave, and put everything inside, can you imagine how funny it would be if, in a couple of thousand years, we were to listen in on the debates of archaeologists and anthropologists about the origin of all these earthenware plates, mugs, and dishes, and why there were so many of them and what possible use they could have been in an uninhabited place like that, It may be uninhabited now, but in a couple of thousand years it's quite possible that the city will have spread as far as here, remarked Marçal. He paused, as if the words he had just
uttered required him to go back and think about them, and then, in the perplexed tone of one who, without quite understanding how, has reached a logically impeccable conclusion, he added, Or the Center. Now, knowing, as we do, that in the lives of this particular father-in-law and son-in-law the vexed question of the Center has been anything but easy, it seems odd that the security guard Marçal Gacho's unexpected allusion to the Center should have had no further consequences, that the dangerous remark, Or the Center, should not have immediately sparked off another argument that would repeat all the old misunderstandings and the usual litany of recriminations, tacit or explicit. The reason that both remained silent, always assuming that it is possible for us, observing from the outside, to uncover what, in all probability, was not even clear to them, was the fact that those words, spoken by Marçal, especially given the context in which they were pronounced, constituted a genuine novelty. Some will say that this is not the case, that, on the contrary, by admitting the possibility that the Center could, at some point in the future, as part of the process of unstoppable territorial expansion, do away with the fields that the van is now driving past, the security guard Marçal Gacho is himself underlining and secretly applauding the expansionist potential, in both space and time, of the company that pays him his modest salary. That interpretation would be perfectly valid and would settle the matter once and for all if it were not for that almost imperceptible pause, if that moment of apparent suspension of thought did not correspond, if you will permit such an audacious suggestion, with the appearance of someone quite simply capable of thinking differently Were that the case, it is understandable that marçal Gacho proved unable to advance along the road that opened up before him, since that road was destined for someone else. As for the potter, he has lived long enough to know that the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud. He therefore stored away his son-in-law's words in his memory and pretended not to comprehend their real meaning. They did not speak again until they reached the village. As he usually did when he brought his son-in-law back from the Center, Cipriano Algor stopped at the door of Manual's disagreeable parents, just time enough for marçal to go in, kiss his mother and his father, if his father was at home, find out how they had been since last he saw them, and leave saying, I'll drop by tomorrow when I've got more time. In general, five minutes was more than enough for this routine of filial sentiment to be accomplished, other news and more substantial conversation would wait until the following day, sometimes over lunch, sometimes not, but almost always without Marta's presence. Today, though, five minutes was not enough, nor ten, and almost twenty minutes had passed before marçal reappeared. He got quickly into the van and slammed the door. His face was very serious, almost somber, with an adult hardness of expression for which his young features were not prepared. You took a long time today, is anyone ill, is there some problem with the family, asked his father-in-law kindly, No, it's nothing, I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long, You're annoyed about something, Like I said, it's nothing, don't worry. They are almost home, the van turns left in order to begin the climb up to the pottery, and as he changes gear, it occurs to Cipriano Algor that he drove past Isaura Estudiosa's house without giving her a thought, and it is then that a dog comes running down the hill, barking, marçal's second surprise of the day, or the third, if the second was the visit to his parents. Where did that dog come from, he asked, He turned up a few days ago and we let him stay, he's a nice dog, we've called him Found, although, if you think about it, we were the ones who were found, not him. When the van reached the top of the drive and stopped, a few things happened all at once, or at minimal intervals of time, Marta came to the kitchen door, the potter and the security guard got out of the van, Found growled, Marta ran toward marçal, marçal ran toward Marta, the dog gave a deeper growl, husband embraced wife, wife embraced husband, then they kissed, the dog stopped growling and attacked marçal's boot, marçal shook his leg, the dog would not let go, Marta shouted, Found, her father shouted too, the dog released the boot and tried to grab marçal's ankle instead, marçal aimed a fairly gentle kick at him, Marta said, Don't hurt him, marçal protested, He bit me, That's because he doesn't know you, Not even the dogs know me here, these terrible words left marçal's mouth as if he had sobbed them out rather than merely spoken them, each word filled with unbearable pain and sorrow, Marta threw her arms around her husband's neck, Don't ever say that again, and of course he didn't, there are some things that are only ever said once and never again, Marta will hear those words in her head until the last day of her life, and as for Cipriano Algor, if we wanted to know what he was doing at this moment, the easiest response would be, Nothing, were it not for the revealing fact that when he heard what marçal said, he immediately looked away, so he did do something. The dog had backed away toward the kennel, but halfway there, he stopped, turned, and stood there looking. Now and then a growl would emerge from his throat. Marta said, He doesn't know about people embracing, he must have thought you were attacking me, but Cipriano Algor, in order to clear the air, offered a more trivial suggestion, Perhaps he's just got it in for uniforms, it wouldn't be the first time. marçal did not respond, he was caught between two feelings, regret for having spoken words that would stand for all time as a public confession of a deep-seated sorrow kept hidden until then, and an instinctive intuition that the fact of having uttered those words might mean that he was about to leave one road and follow another, even though it was still far too soon to know where it might lead him. He kissed Marta on the head and said, I'll go and change my clothes. Evening was coming on fast, in less than half an hour it would be dark. Cipriano Algor said to his daughter, I talked to the man in the buying department, Of course, what with all the fuss about the dog, I almost forgot to ask how the interview went, He said that he might be able to give me an answer tomorrow, That's quick, It's hard to believe, isn't it, and even harder to believe that the answer could well be yes, but that's what he seemed to be saying, Let's hope you're right, Alas, the only rose without thorns I know is you, What do you mean, what's all this about roses and thorns, I mean that every good piece of news is generally followed by some bad, And what's today's bad news, I've got two weeks to remove any crockery of ours that they still have in the warehouse, Well, I'll come and help you, No way, if the Center gives us the order, we'll need every spare moment we have to make the final models, create the molds, work on the modeling, do the painting, load and unload the kiln, besides, I'd like to deliver the first part of the order before we remove all our stuff from the warehouse, just in case the man changes his mind, And what are we going to do with those surplus pots, Don't worry, I've sorted that out with Manual, I'll leave them in the countryside somewhere, in a cave, and if anyone wants them they can have them, With so much moving about, most of them will get broken anyway, Probably. The dog came over and touched Marta's hand with its nose, as if asking her to explain the new composition of the family unit, as people used to call it. Marta scolded him, Just you behave yourself from now on, and I'll tell you one thing, if it comes to a choice between my husband and you, I'll always choose my husband. The last bit of shade cast by the mulberry tree was gradually shrinking to nothing as it began to form part of the darker shade of approaching night. Cipriano Algor murmured, We'll have to be careful with marçal, what he said just now came as a real body blow, It was a body blow and it really hurt. The light above the kitchen door came on. marçal appeared in the doorway, he had changed into the ordinary clothes he wore around the house. The dog Found looked at him closely, and, head up, advanced a few steps toward him, then stopped expectantly. marçal went over to him, Are we friends now, he asked. The dog's cold nose lightly brushed the scar on his left hand, We're friends. The potter said, You see, I was right, our dog Found doesn't like uniforms, Everything in life is a uniform, said marçal, the only time our bodies are truly in civilian dress is when we're naked, but there was no bitterness in his voice now.

  Duri
ng supper, they talked a lot about how Marta had come up with the idea of making the dolls, as well as about the doubts, fears, and hopes that had shaken the house and the pottery during the last few days, and then, passing on to more practical matters, they calculated how much time would be needed for each phase of production, as well as the respective safety margins, which differed in both cases from those required by the products they usually made, It all depends on what quantities they order, neither too much nor too little would be best, which is a bit like asking for sun for the threshing and rain for the turnips, as people used to say in the days before plastic greenhouses, said Cipriano Algor. When they had cleared the table, Marta showed her husband the sketches she had made, the various drafts, the experiments with color, the old encyclopedia from which she had copied the models, at first sight, it looked like a very small amount of work to have provoked such large anxieties, but one must understand that in life's circumnavigations what for some is a gentle breeze, for others is a fatal storm, it all depends on the draft of the ship and on the state of its sails. In their bedroom, with the door shut, marçal decided that there was no point asking Marta to explain why she had not told him about her idea to make the dolls, first, because that particular water had passed under the bridge several hours since, sweeping along with it all the spite and bad temper, second, because he was concerned now about something far more serious than feeling or merely imagining that he had been ignored. Something more serious and no less urgent. When a man returns to home and wife after a separation of ten days, especially a young man like Marçal, or, indeed an old man, assuming that age has not yet killed off his amatory instincts, the natural impulse is to want to give immediate satisfaction to the tremor of the senses, and to leave any talking until afterward. Women tend to think otherwise. If there is no particular pressure of time, if, on the contrary the night is ours, or indeed the afternoon or the morning, the woman would probably prefer the act of love to be preceded by a leisurely, unhurried conversation, if possible about something other than the idée fixe that is spinning like a humming top inside the man's head. Like a deep, slowly filling water jug, the woman very gradually draws closer to the man, although it would perhaps be more accurate to say that she draws him closer to her, until the urgency of the one and the longing of the other, declared, concurrent, and unpostponable, make the unanimous water rise singing to the brim. There are exceptions, though, and one such is marçal who, however much he would like simply to drag Marta off to bed, cannot do so until he has emptied out the heavy bag of anxieties he has been carrying, not from the Center, not from the conversation he had with his father-in-law on the way back, but from his parents' house. Nevertheless, the first word will still be spoken by Marta, The dogs may not know you, marçal, but your wife certainly does, I really don't want to talk about that, But we should talk about the things that hurt us, It was stupid of me and unfair, Well, let's leave stupid to one side, because you're certainly not that, let's just stay with unfair, Look, I've already said that I was, But you weren't being unfair either, Don't let's complicate things, Marta, please, what's said is said, The things that seem to be over are always the things that never really are, we're the ones who have been unfair, Who's we, My father and me, especially me, my father has a married daughter and is afraid of losing her, he doesn't need any further justification, And what about you, Well, I have no excuse whatsoever, Why, Because I love you and sometimes, too often, I give the impression that I've forgotten that I do, no, sometimes I do actually forget that the person to whom I owe that love is a real person, complete in himself, not someone who should make do with some rather diffuse emotion which gradually resigns itself to its own fatal vagueness, as if that were a fate against which there were no possible appeal, That's what marriage is like, that's how people live, you just have to look at my parents, There's something else I'm guilty of too, Don't go on, please, Let me finish now, marçal, let me finish, Please, Marta, You don't want me to go on because you know what it is I'm going to say, Please, When you said that not even the dogs know you, what you were saying to your wife was that not only does she not know you, she hasn't made the slightest effort to get to know you either, well, almost none, That's not true, you do know me, no one knows me better than you, Only enough to understand the meaning of your words, but I'm no more intelligent in that respect than my father, who cottoned on as quickly as I did, Of the two of us, you're the adult, I'm still a child, Maybe you're right, at least you seem to be saying that I'm right, yet this marvelous adult, marçal Gacho's terribly sensible wife, was incapable of seeing, as she should have done, what it means to be a person who has the simplicity and honesty to say of himself that he is a child, Not that I'll always be a child, No, you won't, which is why, while there's still time, I'll have to do everything I can to understand you as you are and doubtless reach the conclusion that, in your case, being a child is actually just a different way of being an adult, If you carry on like this, I won't know who I am, Cipriano Algor will tell you that this is a frequent occurrence in life, You know, I think I'm beginning to get on better with your father, You cannot imagine, or perhaps you can, how happy that makes me. Marta clasped marçal's hands and kissed them, then pressed them to her breast, Sometimes, she said, we need to return to certain ancient gestures of tenderness, How would you know, you weren't alive in the days of bowing and hand-kissing, No, but I've read about it in books, which is the same as having been there, anyway it wasn't bowing and hand-kissing I had in mind, They had different customs, different ways of feeling and communicating quite unlike our own, Strange though the comparison may sound, to me gestures are more than just gestures, they are like drawings made by one body on another body. The invitation could not have been more explicit, but marçal pretended not to have heard, although he knew that the moment had come to draw Marta to him, to stroke her hair, slowly kiss her cheek, her eyelids, gently, as if he felt no desire at all, as if he were merely distracted, it would be a grave mistake to think that what happens on such occasions is that desire takes absolute control of the body in order to make use of it, forgive the materialistic, utilitarian simile, as if we were talking about a tool with multiple applications, as capable of smoothing as of carving, as powerful a transmitter as a receiver, as precise at counting as at measuring, as capable of going up as going down. What's wrong, asked Marta, suddenly uncertain, Nothing important, just a few niggling little problems, At work, No, What then, We have so little time together and yet they still won't leave us alone, We don't live in a bell jar, I dropped in at my parents' house, Did something happen, some complication. marçal shook his head and went on, They started asking lots of questions about whether I had heard anything about when I might be promoted to resident guard, and I said that I hadn't, and that I didn't even have any solid proof that it would happen, You're almost sure that you will be, though, Yes, almost sure, but you know what they say, don't wash your basket out, until the last grape's in, I know, I know, so what else did they say, They kept circling around and around the subject, and I just couldn't make out what it was they were getting at, until finally, they told me their great idea, And what great idea would that be, Only that they're thinking of selling their house and coming to live with us, With us, where, At the Center, Am I understanding you right, your parents want to come and live at the Center with us, Exactly, And what did you say, I started by pointing out that it was still a bit early to be thinking about that, but they said that selling a house wasn't something that happened overnight, that they weren't going to wait until we had moved in, you and me, and that they would start looking for a buyer, And what did you say, Well, thinking that it would settle the matter, I said that we were intending having your father to live with us when we moved, so that he wouldn't be left alone here, especially now that the pottery is going through a crisis, You told them that, Yes, but they took no notice, they practically started yelling at me and crying, well, my mother did, my father's not really the sloppy type, he just protested and waved h
is arms around a lot, what kind of a son am I, putting the interests of people who aren't of the same blood over the needs of my own progenitors, they actually used the word progenitors, heaven knows where they found it, that they would never have imagined that one day they would hear me saying that I was rejecting the very people to whom I owe my life, the people who brought me up and educated me, that there's certainly a deal of truth in the old saying that a son is a son until he gets him a wife, but nothing had prepared them for such indifference, anyway I wasn't to worry about them, they hadn't quite been reduced to begging in the streets, but one day I would regret what I'd done, not perhaps while they were alive, but after they were dead, which is always much worse, and they just hoped I didn't have children who would treat me as cruelly as I was treating my own parents, And that was the final word, To be honest, I don't know if it was or not, I've probably forgotten a few others, but they were all out of the same mold, You should have explained that they needn't worry, you know my father doesn't want to live at the Center, Yes, but I didn't want to tell them that, Why not, That would just encourage them to think that they're the only candidates, If they insist, you'll have no option, In that case, I won't accept the promotion, I'll just have to find some convincing excuse to give the Center, Well, I doubt you'll find one. They were sitting on the bed, almost touching, but the moment for caresses had passed, apparently as distant now as the days of hand-kissing and bowing, or even as that other moment when the man's two hands were kissed and then pressed to the woman's breast. marçal said, I know a son shouldn't say things like this, but the fact is that I don't want to live with my parents, Why, We've never really understood each other, I've never understood them and they've never understood me, They're your parents, Yes, they're my parents, and on one particular night, they went to bed, happened to be in the mood, and I was the result, when I was little I remember hearing them say, like someone telling a funny story, that he was drunk at the time, With or without wine, that's the way we're all born, Look, I know it's unreasonable, but I hate the idea that my father was drunk when I was conceived, it's as if I were the son of another man, it's as if the man who really should have been my father couldn't be there, as if his place had been taken by another, the one who said to me today that he hoped my children would be cruel to me, That isn't quite what he said, But it's what he thought. Marta took marçal's left hand, held it between hers, and murmured, All fathers were sons once, many sons become fathers, but some forget what they were and no one can explain to the others what they will become, That's a bit deep, Oh, I don't understand it myself really, it just came to me, pay no attention, Let's go to bed, All right. They got undressed and lay down. The moment for caresses came back into the room and apologized for having spent so much time outside, I got lost, it said, by way of an excuse, and suddenly, as sometimes happens with moments, it became eternal. A quarter of an hour later, their bodies still entwined, Marta said softly, marçal, What is it, he asked sleepily, I'm two days late.