The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  The days passed, and the difficulties continued to increase, they grew worse and multiplied, they sprang up underfoot like mushrooms after rain, but the moral strength of the population did not seem inclined to humble itself or to renounce what it had considered to be a just stance and to which it had given expression through the ballot box, the simple right not to follow any consensually established opinion. Some observers, usually foreign correspondents hurriedly despatched to cover the events, as they say in the jargon of the profession, and therefore unfamiliar with local idiosyncrasies, commented with bemusement on the complete lack of conflict amongst the city's inhabitants, even though they had observed what later proved to be agents provocateurs at work, trying to create the kind of unstable situations which might justify, in the eyes of the so-called international community, the leap that had not yet been taken, that is, the move from a state of siege to a state of war. One of these commentators, in his desire to be original, went so far as to describe this as a unique, never-before-seen example of ideological unanimity, which, if it were true, would make the capital's population a fascinating case, a political phenomenon worthy of study. Whichever way you looked at it, the idea was complete nonsense, and had nothing to do with the reality of the situation, for here, as anywhere else on the planet, people differ, they think differently, they are not all poor or all rich, and, even amongst the reasonably well-off, some are more so and some are less. The one subject on which they were all in agreement, with no need for any prior discussion, is one with which we are already familiar, and so there is no point going over old ground. Nevertheless, it is only natural that one would want to know, and the question was often asked, both by foreign journalists and by local ones, what singular reason lay behind the fact that there had, until now, been no incidents, no fights, no shouting matches or fisticuffs or worse amongst those who had cast blank votes and those who had not. The question amply demonstrates how important a knowledge of the elements of arithmetic is for the proper exercise of the profession of journalist, for they need only have recalled that the people casting blank votes represented eighty-three percent of the capital's population and that the remainder, all told, accounted for no more than seventeen percent, and one must not forget the debatable thesis put forward by the party on the left, according to which a blank vote and a vote for them were, metaphorically speaking, one bone and one flesh, and that if the supporters of the party on the left, and this is our own conclusion, did not all cast blank votes, although it is clear that many did in the second poll, it was simply because they had not been ordered to do so. No one would believe us if we were to say that seventeen people had decided to take on eighty-three, the days when battles were won with the help of god are long since gone. Natural curiosity would also lead one to ask two questions, what happened to the five hundred people plucked from the queues of voters by the ministry of the interior's spies and who subsequently underwent the torment of interrogation and the agony of seeing their most intimate secrets revealed by the lie detector and, the second question, what exactly are those specialist secret service agents and their less qualified assistants up to. On the first point, we have only doubts and no way of resolving them. There are those who say that the five hundred prisoners are, in accordance with that popular police euphemism, still helping the authorities with their inquiries in the hope of clarifying the facts, others say that they are gradually being freed, although only a few at a time so as not to attract too much attention, however, the more sceptical observers believe a third version, that they have all been removed from the city and are now in some unknown location and that, despite the dearth of results obtained hitherto, the interrogations continue. Who knows who is right. As for the second point, about what the secret service agents are up to, that we do know. Like all honest, worthy workers, they leave home every morning, tramp the city from end to end, and when they think the fish is about to bite, they try a new tactic, which consists of dropping all the circumlocutions and saying point-blank to the person they're with, Let's talk frankly now, like friends, I cast a blank vote, did you. At first, those questioned merely gave the answers described above, that no one was obliged to reveal how they voted, that no one can be questioned about it by any authority, and if one of them had the excellent idea of demanding that the impertinent questioner should identify himself and declare there and then on whose power and authority he was asking the question, then we would be treated to the pleasurable spectacle of seeing a secret service agent all in a fluster and scampering off with his tail between his legs, because, of course, it wouldn't occur to anyone that he would actually open his wallet and show them the card that would prove who he was, complete with photograph, official stamp and edged with the national colors. But, as we said, that was at the beginning. After a while, the general consensus deemed that, in such situations, the best attitude to take was to ignore the person asking the question and simply turn your back on them, or, if they proved extremely insistent, to say loudly and clearly Leave me alone, or, if preferred, and with more chance of success, to tell them, even more simply, to go to hell. Naturally, the reports sent by the secret service agents to their superiors camouflaged these rebuffs and disguised these setbacks, instead restating the stubborn and systematic absence of any collaborative spirit amongst the suspect sector of the population. You might think that things had reached a point very like that of two wrestlers endowed with equal strength, one pushing this way, the other pushing that, and while it was true that they had not moved from the spot where they had started, neither had they managed to advance even an inch, and, consequently, only the final exhaustion of one of them would give victory to the other. In the opinion of the person in charge of the secret services, this stalemate would be rapidly resolved if one of the wrestlers were to receive help from another wrestler, which, in this particular situation, would mean abandoning, as futile, the persuasive techniques employed up until then and adopting, without reserve, dissuasive methods that did not exclude the use of brute force. If the capital, for its own many faults, finds itself under a state of siege, if it is up to the armed forces to impose discipline and proceed accordingly in the case of any grave disruption of the social order, if the high command take responsibility, on their word of honor, not to hesitate when it comes to making decisions, then the secret services will take it upon themselves to create suitable focal points of unrest that would justify a priori the harsh crackdown which the government, very generously, has tried, by all peaceful and, let us repeat the word, persuasive means, to avoid. The insurrectionists would not be able to come to them later with complaints, assuming they wanted to and assuming they had any. When the interior minister took this idea to the inner council, or emergency council, which had been formed meanwhile, the prime minister reminded him that he still had one weapon as yet undeployed in the resolution of the conflict and only in the unlikely event of that weapon failing would he consider this new plan or any others that happened to arise. Whilst the interior minister expressed his disagreement laconically, in four words, We are wasting time, the defense minister needed far more to guarantee that the armed forces would do their duty, As they always have throughout our long history, giving no thought to the sacrifice entailed. And that was how the delicate matter was left, the fruit, it seemed, was not yet ripe. Then it was that the other wrestler, grown tired of waiting, decided to risk taking a step. One morning, the streets of the capital were filled by people wearing stickers on their chest bearing the words, in red letters on a black background, I cast a blank vote, huge placards hung from windows declaring, in black letters on a red background, We cast blank votes, but the most astonishing sight, waving above the heads of the advancing demonstrators, was the endless stream of blank, white flags, which would lead one unthinking correspondent to run to the telephone and inform his newspaper that the city had surrendered. The police loudspeakers bellowed and screamed that gatherings of more than five people were not allowed, but there were fifty, five hundred, five thou
sand, fifty thousand, and who, in such a situation, is going to bother counting in fives. The police commissioner wanted to know if he could use tear-gas and water-cannon, the general in charge of the northern division if he was authorized to order the tanks to advance, the general of the southern airborne division if the conditions were right to send in paratroopers, or if, on the contrary, the risk of them landing on rooftops made this inadvisable. War was, however, about to break out.

  Then it was that the prime minister revealed his plan to the government, who had been brought together in plenary session and with the president in the chair, The time has come to break the back of the resistance, he said, let's call a halt to all the psychological game-playing, to the espionage, the lie detectors and the other technological contraptions, since, despite the interior minister's worthy efforts, these methods have all proved incapable of solving the problem, I must add, by the way, that I also consider inappropriate any direct intervention by the armed forces, given the more than likely inconvenience of a mass slaughter which it is our duty to avoid at all costs, what I have to offer you instead is neither more nor less than a proposed multiple withdrawal, a series of actions which some may perhaps feel to be absurd, but which I am sure will lead us to total victory and a return to democratic normality, these actions are, namely, the immediate removal of the government to another city, which will become the country's new capital, the withdrawal of all the armed forces still in place, and the withdrawal of all police forces, this radical action will mean that the rebel city will be left entirely to its own devices and will have all the time it needs to understand the price of being cut off from the sacrosanct unity of the nation, and when it can no longer stand the isolation, the indignity, the contempt, when life within the city becomes a chaos, then its guilty inhabitants will come to us hanging their heads and begging our forgiveness. The prime minister looked about him, That is my plan, he said, I submit it to you for your examination and discussion, but, needless to say, I am counting on your unanimous approval, desperate diseases must have desperate remedies, and if the remedy I am prescribing is painful to you, the disease afflicting us is, quite simply, fatal.

  IN WORDS THAT CAN BE GRASPED BY THE INTELLIGENCE OF THOSE CLASSES, who, though less educated, are nonetheless not entirely ignorant of the gravity and diversity of the many and various ailments that threaten the already precarious survival of the human race, what the prime minister had proposed was neither more nor less than a flight from the virus that had attacked the majority of the capital's inhabitants and which, given that the worst is always waiting just behind the door, might well end up infecting all the remaining inhabitants and even, who knows, the whole country. Not that he and his government were themselves afraid of being contaminated by the bite of this subversive insect, for apart from a few clashes between certain individuals and a few very minor differences of opinion, which were, anyway, more to do with means than ends, we have had ample proof of the unshakeable institutional cohesion of the politicians responsible for the running of a country which, without a word of warning, had been plunged into a disaster never before seen in the long and always troubled history of the known world. Contrary to what certain ill-intentioned people doubtless thought or suggested, this was not the coward's way out, but rather a strategic move of the first order, unparalleled in its audacity, one whose future results can almost be touched with the hand, like ripe fruit on a tree. Now all that was needed for the task to be crowned with success was that the energy put into carrying out the plan should be up to the resolve of its aims. First, they will have to decide who will leave the city and who will stay. Obviously, his excellency the president and the whole of the government down to under-secretary level will leave, along with their closest advisors, the members of the national parliament will also leave so that the legislative process suffers no interruption, the army and the police will leave, including the traffic police, but all the members of the municipal council will remain, along with their leader, the fire fighters' organizations will stay too, so that the city does not burn down because of some act of carelessness or sabotage, just as the staff of the city cleansing department will stay in case of epidemic and, needless to say, the authorities will ensure continued supplies of water and electricity, those utilities so essential to life. As for food, a group of dieticians, or nutritionists, have already been charged with drawing up a list of basic dishes which, while not bringing the population to the brink of starvation, would make them aware that a state of siege taken to its ultimate consequences would certainly be no holiday. Not that the government believed things would go that far. It would not be many days before the usual delegations appeared at a military post on one of the roads out of the city, bearing the white flag, the flag of unconditional surrender not the flag of insurgency, the fact that both are the same color is a remarkable coincidence upon which we will not now pause to reflect, but there will be plenty of reasons to return to the matter later on.