The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  Death examines the card and finds nothing on it that she has not seen before, that is, the biography of a musician who should have died a week ago and who, nevertheless, continues to live quietly in his modest artist's home, with his black dog who climbs onto ladies' laps, with his piano and his cello, his nocturnal bouts of thirst and his striped pajamas. There must be a way of resolving this dilemma, thought death, it would be preferable, of course, if the matter could be sorted out without drawing too much attention to it, but if the highest authorities serve any purpose, if they are not there merely to have honors and praise heaped upon them, then they now have an excellent opportunity to show that they are not indifferent to those down here laboring away on the plains, let them change the regulations, let them impose some special measures, let them authorize, if it comes to that, some act of dubious legality, anything but allow such a scandal to continue. The curious thing about this case is that death has no idea who they actually are, these high authorities who should, in theory, resolve this dilemma. It's true that in one of the letters she had written and which was published in the press, the second one if we're not mistaken, she had referred to a universal death who would, although no one knew when, do away with all manifestations of life in the universe down to the last microbe, but this, as well as being a philosophical commonplace, since nothing, not even death, can last forever, originated, in practical terms, from a common-sense deduction that had long been doing the rounds of the various deaths in their different sectors, although it remained to be confirmed by a knowledge backed up by study and experience. It's us sectorial deaths, thought death, who do the real work of removing any excrescences, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if, should the cosmos ever disappear, it won't be as a consequence of some solemn proclamation by that universal death, echoing around the galaxies and the black holes, but merely the accumulation of all those little private and personal deaths that are our responsibility, one by one, as if the proverbial chicken, instead of filling its crop grain by grain, grain by grain, began foolishly to empty it out, because that, I reckon, is what is most likely to happen with life, which is busily preparing its own end, with no need of any help from us, not even waiting for us to give it a helping hand. Death's perplexity is perfectly understandable. She was placed in this world so long ago that she can no longer remember from whom she received the necessary instructions to carry out the job she was charged with. They placed the regulations in her hands, pointed out the words thou shalt kill as the one guiding light of her future activities and told her, doubtless not noticing the macabre irony, to get on with her life. And she did, thinking that, in case of doubt or some unlikely mistake, she would always have her back covered, there would always be someone, a boss, a superior, a spiritual guru, of whom she could ask advice and guidance.

  It's hard to believe, therefore, and here we enter at last into the cold, objective analysis for which the situation of death and the cellist has long been crying out, that an information system as perfect as the one that has kept these archives updated over millennia, continually revising the data, making index cards appear and disappear as people were born or died, it's hard to believe, we repeat, that such a system should be so primitive and so unidirectional that the information source, wherever it is, isn't, in turn, constantly receiving all the data resulting from the daily activities of death on the ground, so to speak. And if it does receive that data and fails to react to the extraordinary news that someone didn't die when they should have, then one of two things is happening, either, against all our logic and natural expectations, it finds the episode of no interest and therefore feels no obligation to intervene in order to neutralize any difficulties caused, or we must assume that death, contrary to what she herself believes, has carte blanche to resolve, as she sees fit, any problem that may arise during her day-to-day work. The word doubt had to be spoken once or twice here before it rang a bell in death's memory, for there was a passage in the regulations which, because it was written in very small print and appeared only as a footnote, neither attracted nor fixed the attention of the studious. Putting down the cellist's index card, death picked up the book. She knew that what she was looking for would be neither in the appendices nor in the addenda, that it must be in the early part of the regulations, the oldest and therefore the least often consulted part, as tends to be the case with basic historical texts, and there she found it. This is what it said, In case of doubt, death must, as quickly as possible, take whatever measures her experience tells her to take in order to fulfill the desideratum that should at all times guide her actions, that is, to put an end to human lives when the time prescribed for them at birth has expired, even if to achieve that effect she has to resort to less orthodox methods in situations where the person puts up an abnormal degree of resistance to the fatal judgment or where there are anomalous factors that could not have been foreseen at the time these regulations were drawn up. It couldn't be clearer, death has a free hand to act as she thinks best. This, as our examination of the matter will show, was hardly a novelty. Just look at the facts. When death, on her own account and at her own risk, decided to suspend her activities from the first day of January this year, the idea didn't even enter her empty head that some superior in the hierarchy might ask her to justify her bizarre behavior, just as she didn't even consider the high probability that her picturesque invention of the violet-colored letters would be frowned on by that same superior or by another even higher up. These are the dangerous consequences of working on automatic pilot, of stultifying routine, of doing the same job for too long. A person, or death, it really doesn't matter, scrupulously fulfills her duties, day after day, encountering no problems, no doubts, concentrating entirely on following the rules established by those above, and if, after a time, no one comes nosing around into how she carries out her work, then one thing is sure, that person, and this is what happened with death, will end up behaving, without her realizing it, as if she were queen and mistress of all that she does, and not only that, but of when and how she should do it too. That is the only reasonable explanation for why it never occurred to death to ask her superiors for authorization when she made and implemented the important decisions we have described and without which this story, for good or ill, could not exist. She didn't even think to do so. And now, paradoxically, precisely at the moment when she cannot contain her joy at discovering that the power to dispose of human lives as she sees fit is, after all, hers alone and that she will not be called upon to explain herself to anyone, not today or ever, just when the scent of glory is threatening to befuddle her senses, she cannot suppress the kind of fearful thought that might assail someone who, just as they were about to be found out, miraculously, at the very last moment, escaped exposure, Phew, that was a close shave.

  Nevertheless, the death who now rises from her chair is an empress. She shouldn't be living in this freezing subterranean room, as if she had been buried alive, but on top of the highest mountain presiding over the fates of the world, gazing benevolently down on the human herd, watching them as they rush hither and thither, unaware that they're heading in the same direction, that one step forward will take them just as close to death as one step back, that it makes no difference because everything will have but one ending, the ending that a part of yourself will always have to think about and which is the black stain on your hopeless humanity. Death is holding the index card in her hand. She is conscious that she must do something with it, but she doesn't know quite what. First, she must calm down and remember that she is the same death she was before, nothing more, nothing less, that the only difference between today and yesterday is that she is more certain of who she is. Second, the fact that she can finally have it out with the cellist is no reason to forget to send today's letters. She had only to think this and instantly two hundred and eighty-four index cards appeared on the desk, half were of men and half of women, and with them two hundred and eighty-four sheets of paper and two hundred and eighty-four envelopes. Death s
at down again, put the index card to one side and began to write. The very last grain of sand in a four-hour hourglass would have just slipped through as she finished signing the two hundred and eightieth letter. An hour later, the envelopes were sealed and ready to be dispatched. Death went to fetch the letter that had been sent three times and returned three times and placed it on the pile of violet-colored envelopes, I'm going to give you one last chance, she said. She made the customary gesture with her left hand and the letters disappeared. Not even ten seconds had passed before the letter to the musician silently reappeared on the desk. Then death said, If that's how you want it, fine. She crossed out the date of birth on the index card and changed it to the following year, then she amended his age, and where fifty was written, she changed it to forty-nine. You can't do that, said the scythe, It's done, There'll be consequences, Only one, What's that, The death, at last, of that wretched cellist who's been having a laugh at my expense, But the poor man doesn't know he should be dead, As far as I'm concerned, he might as well know it, Even so, you don't have the power or the authority to change an index card, That's where you're wrong, I have all the power and authority I need, I'm death, and never more so than from this day forward, You don't know what you're getting into, warned the scythe, There's only one place in the world that death can't get into, Where's that, What they call a coffin, casket, tomb, funeral urn, vault, sepulcher, I can't enter there, only the living can, once I've killed them, of course, All those words to say the same sad thing, That's what these people are like, they're never quite sure what they mean.

  DEATH HAS A PLAN. CHANGING THE MUSICIAN'S YEAR OF birth was only the opening move in an operation which, we can tell you now, will deploy some quite exceptional methods never before used in the history of the relationship between the human race and its oldest, most mortal enemy. As in a game of chess, death advanced her queen. A few more moves should open the way to a checkmate, and the game will end. One might now ask why death doesn't simply revert to the status quo ante, when people died simply because they had to, with no waiting around for the postman to bring them a violet-colored letter. The question has its logic, but the reply is no less logical. It is, firstly, a matter of honor, determination and professional pride, for if death were to return to the innocence of former times, it would, in the eyes of everyone, be tantamount to admitting defeat. Since the current process involves the use of violet-colored letters, then these must be the means by which the cellist will die. We need only put ourselves in death's place to understand the rationale behind this. As we have seen on four previous oc casions, there remains the principal problem of delivering that now weary letter to its addressee, and if the longed-for goal is to be achieved, that is where the exceptional methods we referred to above come in. But let us not anticipate events, let us see what death is doing now. At this precise moment, death is not actually doing anything more than she usually does, she is, to use a current expression, hanging loose, although, to tell the truth, it would be more exact to say that death never hangs loose, death simply is. At the same time and everywhere. She doesn't need to run after people to catch them, she will always be where they are. Now, thanks to this new method of warning people by letter, she could, if she chose to, just sit quietly in her subterranean room and wait for the mail to do the work, but she is, by nature, strong, energetic and active. As the old saying goes, You can't cage a barnyard chicken. In the figurative sense, death is a barnyard chicken. She won't be so stupid, or so unforgivably weak, as to repress what is best in her, her limitlessly expansive nature, therefore she will not repeat the painful process of concentrating all her energies on remaining at the very edge of visibility without actually going over to the other side, as she did the previous night, and at what a cost, during the hours she spent in the musician's apartment. Since, as we have said a thousand and one times, she is present everywhere, she is there too. The dog is sleeping in the garden, in the sun, waiting for his master to come home. He doesn't know where his master has gone or what he has gone to do, and the idea of following his trail, were he ever to try, is something he has ceased to think about, for the good and bad smells in a capital city are so many and so disorienting. We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion. Death, however, knows that the cellist is sitting on the stage of a theater, to the right of the conductor, in the place that corresponds to the instrument he plays, she sees him moving the bow with his skillful right hand, she sees his no less skillful left hand moving up and down the strings, just as she herself had done in the half-dark, even though she has never learned music, not even the basics of music theory, so-called three-four time. The conductor stopped the rehearsal, tapping his baton on the edge of the music stand to make some comment and to issue an order, in this passage, he wants the cellists, and only the cellists, to make themselves heard, while, at the same time, appearing not to be making a sound, a kind of musical charade which the musicians appear to have mastered without difficulty, that is what art is like, things that seem impossible to the layperson turn out not to be. Death, needless to say, fills the whole theater, right to the very top, as far as the allegorical paintings on the ceiling and the vast unlit chandelier, but the view she prefers at the moment is the view from a box just above the stage, very close, and slightly at an angle to the section of strings that play the lower notes, the violas, the contraltos of the violin family, the cellos, which are the equivalent of the bass, and the doublebasses, which have the deepest voice of all. Death is sitting there, on a narrow crimson-upholstered chair, and staring fixedly at the first cellist, the one she watched while he was asleep and who wears striped pajamas, the one who owns a dog that is, at this moment, sleeping in the sun in the garden, waiting for his master to return. That is her man, a musician, nothing more, like the almost one hundred other men and women seated in a semicircle around their personal shaman, the conductor, and all of whom will, one day, in some future week or month or year, receive a violet-colored letter and leave their place empty, until some other violinist, flautist or trumpeter comes to sit in the same chair, perhaps with another shaman waving a baton to conjure forth sounds, life is an orchestra which is always playing, in tune or out, a titanic that is always sinking and always rising to the surface, and it is then that it occurs to death that she would be left with nothing to do if the sunken ship never managed to rise again, singing the evocative song sung by the waters as they cascade from her decks, like the watery song, dripping like a murmuring sigh over her undulating body, sung by the goddess amphitrite at her birth, when she became she who circles the seas, for that is the meaning of the name she was given. Death wonders where amphitrite is now, the daughter of nereus and doris, where is she now, she who may never have existed in reality, but who nevertheless briefly inhabited the human mind in order to create in it, again only briefly, a certain way of giving meaning to the world, of finding ways of understanding reality. But they didn't understand it, thought death, nor will they, however hard they try, because everything in their lives is provisional, precarious, transitory, gods, men, the past, all gone, what is will not always be, and even I, death, will come to an end when there's no one left to kill, either in the traditional manner, or by correspondence. We know that this is not the first time such a thought has passed through whatever part of her it is that thinks, but it was the first time that thinking it had brought her such a feeling of profound relief, like that of someone who, having completed a task, slowly leans back to take a rest. Suddenly the orchestra fell silent, all that can be heard is the sound of a cello, it's what they call a solo, a modest solo that will last, at most, two minutes, it's as if from the forces invoked by the shaman a voice had arisen, speaking perhaps in the name of all those who are now silent, even the conductor doesn't move, he's looking at the same musician who left open on a chair the sheet music of suite number six opus one thousand and twelve in d major by johann sebastian bach, a suite he will never play in this theater, because
he is merely a cellist in the orchestra, albeit the leader of his section, not one of those famous concert artistes who travel the world playing and giving interviews, receiving flowers, applause, plaudits and medals, he's lucky that he occasionally gets a few bars to play solo, thanks to some generous composer who happened to remember the side of the orchestra where little of anything out of the ordinary tends to happen. When the rehearsal ends, he'll put his cello in its case and take a taxi home, a taxi with a large trunk, and maybe tonight, after supper, he'll put the sheet music for the bach suite on the stand, take a deep breath and draw the bow across the strings so that the first note thus born can console him for the irredeemable banalities of the world and so that the second, if possible, will make him forget them, the solo ends, the rest of the orchestra covers the last echo of the cello, and the shaman, with an imperious wave of his baton, has returned to his role as invoker and guide of the spirits of sound. Death is proud of how well her cellist played. As if she were a family member, his mother, his sister, his fiancée, not his wife, though, because this man has never married.