The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  Over the next three days, apart from the time it took her to run to the subterranean room, hurriedly write the letters and send them off, death was more than his shadow, she was the very air he breathed. Shadows have a grave defect, they lose their place, they vanish the moment there's no source of light. Death traveled next to him in the taxi that took him home, she went into his apartment when he did, she observed benevolently the dog's wild effusions at the arrival of his master, and then, like someone invited to spend a little time there, she made herself comfortable. It's easy enough for someone who doesn't need to move, she doesn't mind whether she's sitting on the floor or perched on top of a wardrobe. The orchestra rehearsal had finished late, it will soon be dark. The cellist gave the dog some food, then prepared his own supper from the contents of two cans, heated up whatever needed heating up, put a cloth on the kitchen table, along with knife, fork and napkin, poured some wine into a glass and, unhurriedly, as if he were thinking about something else, put the first forkful of food in his mouth. The dog sat down beside him, any leftovers that his master might leave on his plate and proffer to him on his hand will serve as his dessert. Death looks at the cellist. She can't really tell the difference between ugly people and pretty people, because, since she is familiar only with her own skull, she has an irresistible tendency to imagine the outline of the skull beneath the face that serves as our shop window. Basically, if truth be told, in death's eyes we are all equally ugly, even in the days when we might have been beauty queens or their male equivalent. She admires the cellist's strong fingers, she guesses that the tips of the fingers on his left hand must have gradually grown harder, perhaps even slightly calloused, life can be unfair in this and other ways, the left hand is a case in point, for even though it does all the hard work on the cello, it receives far less applause from the audience than the right hand. Once supper was over, the cellist washed the dishes, carefully folded the tablecloth and the napkin, put them in a drawer in the cupboard and, before leaving the kitchen, looked around to see if anything was out of place. The dog followed him into the music room, where death was waiting for them. Contrary to the supposition we made while in the theater, the cellist did not play the bach suite. One day, in conversation with some colleagues in the orchestra who were talking jokingly about the possibility of composing musical portraits, genuine ones, not just pictures of types, like mussorgsky's portraits of samuel goldenberg and schmuyle, he said that, assuming such a thing really were possible in music, they would find his portrait not in any cello composition, but in the briefest of chopin études, opus twenty-five, number nine, in g flat major. When asked why, he replied that he simply couldn't see himself in any other piece of music and that this seemed to him the best of reasons. And that in the space of fifty-eight seconds chopin had said all there was to say about someone he could never possibly have met. For a few days, by way of an amiable joke, the wittier orchestra members called him fifty-eight seconds, but the nickname was far too long to stick, and, besides, it's impossible to keep up a dialogue with someone who has decided to take fifty-eight seconds to reply to any question put to him. In the end, the cellist won this friendly contest. As if he had sensed the presence in his house of a third person, to whom, for unexplained reasons, he felt he should talk about himself, and wishing to avoid having to make the long speech which even the simplest of lives requires in order to say anything of substance, the cellist sat down at the piano, and after a brief pause for the audience to settle, he launched into the piece. Lying half asleep next to the music stand, the dog didn't appear to give much importance to the storm of sound unleashed above his head, perhaps because he had heard it before, perhaps because it added nothing to what he already knew about his master. Death, however, who, in the line of duty, had listened to a great deal of music, notably that same composer chopin's funeral march and the adagio assai from beethoven's third symphony, she, for the first time in her very long life, had a sense of what might well be the perfect blend of what is said and the way in which it is said. She didn't much care if it was or wasn't the musical portrait of the cellist, it's likely that he'd fabricated in his mind any alleged similarities, real or imagined, but what impressed death was that she seemed to hear in those fifty-eight seconds of music a rhythmical and melodic transposition of every and any human life, be it run-of-the-mill or extraordinary, because of its tragic brevity, its desperate intensity, and also because of that final chord, like an ellipsis left hanging in the air, something yet to be said. The cellist had fallen into one of the least forgivable of human sins, that of presumption, when he thought he could see his face, and his alone, in a portrait in which everyone could be found, a presumption which, however, if we think about it, if we choose not to remain on the surface of things, could equally be interpreted as a manifestation of its polar opposite, that is, of humility, since if it is a portrait of everyone, then I must be included in it too. Death hesitates, she can't quite decide between presumption and humility, and to break the deadlock, to decide once and for all, she amuses herself now by observing the cellist, waiting for the expression on his face to reveal to her what she needs to know, or perhaps his hands, for the hands are like two open books, not for the real or supposed reasons put forward by chiromancy, with its heart lines and its life lines, yes, life, ladies and gentlemen, you heard correctly, life, but because they speak when they open and close, when they caress or strike, when they wipe away a tear or disguise a smile, when they rest on a shoulder or wave goodbye, when they work, when they are still, when they sleep, when they wake, and then death, having finished her observations, concluded that it isn't true that the antonym of presumption is humility, even if all the dictionaries in the world swear blind that it is, poor dictionaries, who have to rule themselves and us only with the words that exist, when there are so many words still missing, for example, this word that should be the polar opposite of presumption, but never the bowed head of humility, the word that we see clearly written on the face and hands of the cellist, but which cannot tell us what it is called.

  The next day, it so happened, was a sunday. When the weather is fine, as it is today, the cellist is in the habit of spending the morning in one of the city parks with his dog and a book or two. The dog never wanders far, even when instinct makes him move from tree to tree sniffing his fellow canines' pee. He lifts his leg now and then, but goes no further in the satisfaction of his excretory needs. The other, shall we say, complementary procedure, he conscientiously carries out in the garden of the house where he lives, so that the cellist doesn't have to chase after him to pick up his excrement and deposit it in a plastic bag with the help of a little spade specially designed for the purpose. This might have been merely a notable example of good canine training were it not for the extraordinary fact that the idea came from the dog, who is of the opinion that a musician, a cellist, an artist who struggles to be able to give a decent rendition of suite number six opus one thousand and twelve in d major by bach did not come into this world in order to pick up the still-steaming poop of his dog or anyone else's. It simply isn't right. As he said one day during a conversation with his master, bach never had to do that. The musician replied that times had changed a lot since then, but had to admit that bach would certainly never have had to do that. Although the musician is clearly a lover of literature in general, a look at an average shelf in his library will show that he has a special liking for books on astronomy, the natural sciences and nature, and today he has brought with him a handbook on entomology. He doesn't have any background knowledge, and so he doesn't expect to glean very much from it, but he enjoys learning that there are nearly a million species of insects on earth and that these are divided into two orders, the terygotes, which have wings, and the apterygotes, which do not, and that they are in turn classified as orthopterus, like the grasshopper, or blattodea, like the cockroach, mantodea, like the praying mantis, neuroptera, like the chrysopa, odonata, like the dragonfly, ephemeroptera, like the mayfly, trichoptera, like the cad
dis fly, isoptera, like the termite, aphaniptera, like the flea, anoplura, like the louse, mallophaga, like the bird louse, heteroptera, like the bedbug, homoptera, like the plant louse, diptera, like the fly, hymenoptera, like the wasp, lepidoptera, like the death's head moth, coleoptera, like the beetle, and finally, thysanura, like the silverfish. As you can see from the image in the book, the death's head moth, a nocturnal moth, whose Latin name is acherontia atropos, bears on the back of its thorax a pattern resembling a human skull, it reaches a wingspan of twelve centimeters and is dark in color, its lower wings being yellow and black. And we call it atropos, that is, death. The musician doesn't know it, nor could he ever even have imagined such a possibility, but death is gazing, fascinated, over his shoulder, at the color photograph of the moth. Fascinated, and confused too. Remember that another of the parcae, not this one, is in charge of the insects' passage from life to nonlife, that is to say, of killing them, and although in many cases the modus operandi may be the same for both, the exceptions are numerous too, suffice it to say that insects do not die from such common human diseases as, for example, pneumonia, tuberculosis, cancer, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, more commonly known as aids, from car crashes or cardiovascular diseases. This much anyone can understand. What is harder to grasp, and what is confusing death as she continues to peer over the cellist's shoulder, is that a human skull, drawn with such extraordinary precision, should have appeared, who knows in which period of creation, on the hairy back of a moth. Of course, little moths and butterflies have been known to appear on the human body too, but they have never been anything more than a primitive artifice, mere tattoos, they were not with the person from birth. There was probably a time, thinks death, when all living beings were one, but then, gradually, with increasing specialization, they found themselves divided up into five kingdoms, namely, monera, protista, fungi, plants and animals, within which, within those kingdoms that is, infinite macrospecializations and microspecializations occurred over the ages, although it is hardly surprising that, in the midst of all this confusion, this biological mêlée, the particularities of some would be repeated in others. This would explain, for example, the disquieting presence of a white skull on the back of this moth, acherontia atropos, whose name, curiously enough, contains not only another word for death, but also the name of one of the rivers that flows through hades, it would also explain the equally disquieting similarities between the mandrake root and the human body. It's hard to know what to think when confronted by all these marvels of nature, by such sublime surprises. However, the thoughts preoccupying death, who continues to stare over the cellist's shoulder, have already taken another route. Now she is feeling sad because she is comparing how it would have been had she used death's head moths as messengers rather than those stupid violet-colored letters, which, at the time, had seemed to her such a brilliant idea. It would never occur to one of those moths to turn back, it carries its duty emblazoned on its thorax, that was what it was born for. Besides, the effect as spectacle would be totally different, instead of a garden-variety postman handing us a letter, we would see twelve centimeters of moth hovering above our head, the angel of darkness showing off its black and yellow wings, and suddenly, after skimming the earth and tracing a circle around us from which we would never step free, it would rise vertically and place its skull in front of ours. We would, of course, be unstinting in our applause for their acrobatics. One can see that the death in charge of us human beings still has a lot to learn. As we well know, moths do not come under her jurisdiction. Neither they, nor any of the other, almost infinite animal species. She would have to reach an agreement with her colleague in the zoological department, the one with responsibility for these natural products, and ask to borrow a few acherontia atropos, although, regrettably, bearing in mind the vast difference in scope of their respective territories and of their corresponding populations, it is more than likely that the aforementioned colleague would reply with a proud, brusque and peremptory no, because lack of solidarity is no mere empty expression, even in the realm of death. Think only of the million species of insect cited in that basic entomology book, imagine, if you can, the number of individuals in each species, and do you not think that there must be more tiny creatures on this earth than there are stars in the sky, or in sidereal space, if you prefer to give a poetic name to the convulsive reality of the universe in which we are nothing but a tiny scrap of shit on the point of dissolving. The death in charge of the human race, who currently comprise a mere bagatelle of seven billion men and women rather unevenly distributed over the five continents, is a secondary, subaltern death, she herself is perfectly aware of her place in the hierarchy of thanatos, as she was honest enough to acknowledge in the letter she sent to the newspaper that had printed her name with a capital d. Meanwhile, given that the door of dreams is so easy to push open, and that dreams are so freely available to everyone that we don't even have to pay tax on them, death, who has now ceased peering over the cellist's shoulder, enjoys herself imagining what it would be like to have at her command a battalion of moths all lined up on the desk, with her doing the roll call and giving the orders, go there, find such-and-such a person, show them the death's head on your back and return. The musician would think that his acherontia atropos had flown up from the open page, that would be his last thought and the last image he would take with him fixed on his retina, not some fat woman dressed in black announcing his death, like the one seen, so they say, by marcel proust, or an ogre wrapped in a white sheet, as the more perspicacious claim to have seen from their deathbed. A moth, just a rustle of silk wings from a large, dark moth with, on its back, a white mark shaped like a skull.

  The cellist looked at the clock and saw that it was long past lunchtime. The dog, who had been thinking exactly this for some ten minutes, had sat down beside his owner and, with his head resting on his master's knee, was waiting patiently for him to return to the world. Nearby was a small restaurant providing sandwiches and other such culinary trifles. On the mornings that he visited the park, the cellist was a regular customer there, and he always ordered the same thing. Two tuna mayo sandwiches and a glass of wine for him, and a beef sandwich, rare, for the dog. If the weather was fine, as today, they sat on the grass, in the shade of a tree, and while they were eating, they talked. The dog always kept the best until last, he began by dispatching the slices of bread and only then did he give himself over to the pleasures of the meat, chewing unhurriedly, conscientiously, savoring the juices. The cellist ate distractedly, without giving any thought to what he was eating, he was pondering that suite in d major by bach, in particular the prelude and one fiendishly difficult passage that would sometimes make him pause, hesitate, doubt, which is the worst thing that can happen in the life of a musician. After they had eaten, they lay down side by side, the cellist dozed a little, and, a minute later, the dog was asleep. When they woke and went home, death went with them. While the dog ran into the garden to empty its bowels, the cellist placed the music for the bach suite on the stand, found the tricky bit, a truly diabolical pianissimo, and again experienced that implacable moment of hesitation. Death felt sorry for him, Poor thing, and the worst of it is that he's not going to have time to get it right, not, of course, that anyone ever does, even those who come close are always wide of the mark. Then, for the first time, death noticed that nowhere in the apartment was there a single photograph of a woman, apart from that of an elderly lady who was clearly the cellist's mother, accompanied by a man who must have been his father.