I'm going to clean out the kiln, said Cipriano Algor when he got home. The dog Found's previous experiences made him think that his master was about to sit down again on the bench of meditations, the poor man's mind must still be clouded with conflicts, his life turned upside down, and it is on just such occasions that dogs are most needed, when they sit before us with the infallible question in their eyes, Do you need help, and although, at first glance, it might seem beyond the ken of an animal like that to offer a remedy for pain, anxiety and other human afflictions, perhaps it is only because we are incapable of perceiving what lies beyond our humanity, as if other afflictions in the world only have a tangible reality if they can be measured by our standards or, put more simply, as if only what is human existed. Cipriano Algor did not sit down on the stone bench, he walked straight past it, then, having drawn back, one after the other, the three great bronze bolts installed at different heights, at the top, in the middle and at the bottom, he opened the kiln door, which creaked gravely on its hinges. After the first few days of sensorial investigations, which had satisfied his immediate curiosity as a newcomer, the dog Found had shown no further interest in the kiln. It was a brick structure, old and crudely built, with a high, narrow door, it was a building with no known use and where no one lived, with three things on the top like chimneys, but which were obviously not chimneys, since the provoking smell of food had never once issued forth from them. And now the door had unexpectedly opened and his master had gone inside as nonchalantly as if he were entering his house, just like the other house over there. On principle and as a precautionary measure, a dog should always bark at any surprises life throws at him, because he has no way of knowing beforehand if the good surprises could turn bad or the bad cease to be what they were, therefore Found barked and barked, first out of concern when his master appeared to vanish into the shadowy depths of the kiln, then out of joy to see him emerge whole and with a changed look on his face, these are the small miracles of love, for caring about what you do also deserves that name. When Cipriano Algor went back into the kiln, this time wielding a broom, Found was not in the least concerned, for, when you think about it, a master is in some ways like the sun and the moon, we must be patient when he disappears and wait for time to pass, a dog, of course, will be unable to say whether a long time or a short time has passed, for he cannot distinguish between such periods as an hour and a week, between a month and a year, for such an animal there is only absence and presence. During the cleaning of the kiln, Found made no attempt to go in, he moved to one side to avoid the shower of small fragments of fired clay and shards from broken pots expelled by the broom, and lay down, his head between his paws. He seemed absorbed, half-asleep, but even a person inexperienced in canine ways would know, if only from the furtive manner in which the dog occasionally opened and closed his eyes, that the dog Found was simply waiting. Once the task of cleaning was done, Cipriano Algor left the kiln and went over to the pottery. As long as he remained in view, the dog did not move, then he slowly got up, advanced with outstretched neck toward the kiln door and looked in. It was a strange, empty house with a vaulted ceiling, utterly devoid of furniture or decoration and lined with off-white slabs, but what most impressed Found's nose was the extreme dryness of the air inside, as well as the pungency of the one perceptible smell, the final smell of an infinite process of calcination, and do not be surprised by that flagrant and conscious contradiction between final and infinite, for we are dealing here not with human sensations, but with what it was humanly practicable for us to imagine a dog might have felt on entering an empty kiln for the first time. Contrary to what one would naturally expect, Found did not mark the new place with urine. It is true that he began to do as instinct ordered him, it is true that he did threateningly raise one leg, but he controlled himself and stopped at the very last moment, perhaps terrified by the surrounding mineral silence, by the rough construction of the place, by the whitish, phantasmagorical color of walls and floor, perhaps, more simply, it was because he thought his master might react violently if the kingdom, throne and dossal of the fire, the crucible in which the ordinary clay dreams of being turned into a diamond, were found to be sullied by urine. With the hairs along his back bristling, with his tail between his legs, as if he had been spurned and driven far away, the dog Found left the kiln. He could not see either of his owners, the house and the countryside looked utterly empty, and the mulberry tree, though this was doubtless merely the effect of the sun's angle of incidence, seemed to cast a strange shadow that lay on the ground as if it had been cast by an entirely different tree. Contrary to the general view, dogs, however well cared for and however kindly treated, do not have an easy life, first, because they have not as yet reached a satisfactory understanding of the world into which they were born, and, second, because that difficulty is continually exacerbated by the contradictory and unstable behavior of the human beings with whom they share, if we may put it like that, house, food, and occasionally bed. His master has disappeared, his mistress is nowhere to be seen, so the dog Found vents his melancholy and his full bladder on the stone bench whose only use is as a place of meditation. It was then that Cipriano Algor and Marta emerged from the pottery. Found ran to meet them, it is at moments like this that he has the feeling that he is finally going to understand everything, that feeling did not last, however, it never does, his master bawled at him, Get out of here, his mistress, alarmed, shouted, Down, boy, there really is no fathoming these people, only afterward will the dog Found notice that each of his owners is carrying some clay figures balanced on small planks, three apiece and three on each plank, you can imagine how disastrous it would have been if they hadn't reined in his enthusiasm in time. The funambulists move toward the long drying shelves which, for weeks now, have been empty of plates, mugs, cups, saucers, bowls, jugs, jars, pitchers, pots, and other ornaments for house and garden. These six dolls, which are going to dry in the open air, protected by the shade of the mulberry tree, but touched occasionally by the sun that slips in and out between the leaves, are the advance guard of a new occupation, that of hundreds of identical figures whose serried ranks will fill the long shelves, one thousand two hundred figurines, six times two hundred according to their earlier calculations, but the calculations were wrong, the joy of victory is not always a good counselor, these potters, despite their three generations of experience, seem to have forgotten that, since even scissors can eat the cloth they cut, it is vital to allow some margin for losses, a piece can fall or break, can become distorted, can contract too much or too little, can crack under heat because it was poorly made, can emerge badly fired because of the faulty circulation of hot air, and to all of this, which is directly related to the physical contingencies of a craft that has much to do with alchemy, that, as we know, is not an exact science, to all of this, as we were saying, must be added the rigorous examination to which, as is only to be expected, the Center, not to mention that assistant head of department who seems to have it in for them, will subject each of the dolls. Cipriano Algor only thought of these two threats, one definite and one potential, when he was sweeping out the kiln, that's the good thing about the association of ideas, they draw each other out, one after the other, the skill lies in not losing the thread, in understanding that a shard of pottery on the ground is not only what it is at present, it is also what it was in the past when it was something else, as well as what it might become in the future.
It is said that a long time ago a god decided to make a man out of the clay from the earth that he had previously created, and then, in order that the man should have breath and life, he blew into his nostrils. The whisper put around by certain stubborn, negative spirits, when they do not dare to say so out loud, is that after this supreme act of creation, the god never again practiced the arts of pottery, a roundabout way of denouncing him for, quite simply, having downed tools. Given its evident importance, this is too serious a matter to be treated in simplistic terms, it requires thought, complete
impartiality and a great deal of objectivity. It is a historical fact that from that memorable day onward, the work of modeling clay ceased to be the exclusive attribute of the creator and passed to the incipient skills of his creatures, who, needless to say, are not equipped with sufficient life-giving puff. As a result, fire was given responsibility for all the subsidiary operations that can, through color, sheen or even sound, endow whatever emerges from the kilns with a reasonable semblance of life. However, this would be to judge by appearances. Fire can do a great deal, as no one can deny, but it cannot do everything, it has serious limitations and even some grave defects, for example, a form of insatiable bulimia which causes it to devour and reduce to ashes everything it finds in its path. Returning, however, to the matter in hand, to the pottery and its workings, we all know that if you put wet clay in a kiln it will have exploded in less time than it takes to say so. Fire lays down one irrevocable condition if we want it to do what we expect of it, the clay must be as dry as possible when it is placed in the kiln. And this is where we humbly return to that business about breathing into nostrils, and here we will have to recognize how very unjust and imprudent we were to take up and adopt as our own the heretical idea that the said god coldly turned his back on his own work. Yes, it is true, that no one ever saw him again, but he left us what was perhaps the best part of himself, the breath, the puff of air, the breeze, the soft wind, the zephyr, the very things that are now gently entering the nostrils of the six clay dolls that Cipriano Algor and his daughter have, with great care, just placed on one of the drying shelves. That god, a writer as well as a potter, knew how to write straight on crooked lines, for, not being here himself to do the blowing, he has sent someone to do the job for him, so that the still fragile life of these clay figures will not be extinguished tomorrow in the blind and brutal embrace of the fire. When we say tomorrow, that is, of course, just a manner of speaking, because if it is true that, in the beginning, one puff of air was enough for the clay of the man to gain breath and life, many more will be necessary before the jesters, clowns, bearded Assyrians, mandarins, Eskimos, and nurses, those who are here now and those who will later form serried ranks on these same shelves, gradually lose, by evaporation, the water without which they would never have become what they are, and can thus go safely into the kiln in order to be transformed into what they will be. The dog Found had got up on his hind legs and rested his paws on the edge of the shelf to get a closer view of the six idols lined up in front of him. He sniffed once, twice, and immediately lost interest, but not quickly enough to avoid the sharp, painful slap his master dealt him on the head nor the repetition of the harsh words he had heard before, Get out of here, how could he explain that he wasn't going to harm any of the figurines, he just wanted to have a closer look and to sniff them, it was unfair of you to hit me for such a minor offense, anyone would think you didn't know that dogs do not have only eyes with which to investigate the outside world, our nose is like an extra eye, it sees what it smells, at least this time, though, she didn't shout, Down, boy, fortunately, there's always someone capable of understanding the motives of others, even those who, dumb by nature or lacking vocabulary, do not know how or do not have words enough to explain themselves, You didn't have to hit him, Pa, he was just curious, said Marta. It is likely that Cipriano Algor himself had not wanted to hurt the dog, he just acted out of instinct, which, contrary to what most people think, we human beings have still not lost and are not about to lose either. It lives side by side with the intelligence, but is infinitely faster, which is why the poor thing is so often made fun of and frequently spurned, that was what happened in this case, the potter reacted out of the fear of seeing something over which he had labored destroyed, exactly as a lioness would react at seeing her cub in danger. Not all creators neglect their creations, be they cubs or clay figurines, not all of them go away and leave in their place an inconstant zephyr that only blows now and then, as if we had no need to grow and go into the kiln to find out who we are. Cipriano Algor called the dog, Come here, Found, come here, there really is no understanding either of these creatures, they lash out and immediately stroke the creature they hit, if you hit them, they immediately kiss the hand that did the hitting, maybe this is just a consequence of the problems we have been encountering since the very beginning of time in our attempts to understand each other, we dogs and we humans. Found has already forgotten the blow he was dealt, but his master has not, his master remembers, he will forget tomorrow or in an hour's time, but for the moment he cannot forget, in these cases memory is like the instantaneous touch of the sun on the retina that burns the surface, a tiny, unimportant thing, but bothersome while it lasts, the best thing would be to call the dog over and say, Found, come here, and Found will go, he always does, and he licks the hand that strokes him because that is the way dogs kiss, soon the burn will vanish, sight will return to normal, and it will be as if nothing had happened.
The Cave Page 17