The Stone Raft (Harvest Book)

by José Saramago

  They passed through Seville without stopping, but the starlings lingered for a few minutes to admire the Giralda, which they had never seen before. Had there been only half a dozen of them they could have formed a diadem of black angels for the Statue of Faith, but because there were thousands of them, in their avalanche-like descent they covered the statue, transforming it into an indefinable figure, one that could just as easily have been taken for the symbol of Doubt as for the Statue of Faith. The metamorphosis was short-lived, José Anaiço is already speeding through this labyrinth of streets, let's follow him, winged species. Along the way, Deux Chevaux drank wherever possible, some gas stations had notices saying Sold Out, but the pump attendants said Mariana, they're an optimistic bunch, or perhaps they have simply learned how to make life tolerable. But the starlings had no lack of water, thank God, for Our Lord is much more concerned about birds than about humans, nearby are the tributaries of the Guadalquivir, the lagoons, the reservoirs, more water than those tiny beaks could drink in a million years. It's already mid-afternoon when they arrive in Granada, Deux Chevaux is panting, shuddering after all that effort, while Joaquim Sassa and José Anaiço go off to investigate, as if they were carrying sealed orders and the moment had come to open them, now we shall know where our destiny awaits us.

  At the tourist office, an employee asked them if they were Portuguese archaeologists or anthropologists, that they were Portuguese could be seen at once, but why anthropologists and archaeologists, Because Orce is generally visited only by the latter, some years ago a discovery was made in nearby Venta Micena, the oldest human remains to be found in Europe, A whole skeleton, asked José Anaiço, Only a skull, but ancient, going back somewhere between one million three hundred thousand and one million four hundred thousand years, And do we know for certain they are human remains, Joaquim Sassa cautiously inquired, whereupon Maria Dolores replied with a knowing smile, Whenever human remains from ancient times are discovered, they always belong to some man, Cro-Magnon Man, Neanderthal Man, Swanscombe Man, Peking Man, Heidelberg Man, Java Man, at that time there were no women, Eve still hadn't been created, she was only created later, You're being ironic, No, I'm an anthropologist by training and a militant feminist by inclination, Well, we're journalists and we want to interview a certain Pedro Orce, the one who felt the earth shaking. How does such news make it to Portugal, Everything comes in Portugal and we go everywhere, this part of the dialogue was conducted solely by José Anaiço, who always has an answer ready, undoubtedly because he's used to coping with schoolchildren. Joaquim Sassa had moved away to examine some illustrated posters of the Courtyard of the Lions, the Gardens of Generalife, the entombed effigies of the Catholic Kings, studying them he had to ask himself if there would be any point in visiting these places after having seen the photographs. Absorbed in these thoughts about perceptions of reality, he lost the drift of the conversation, what could José Anaiço have said to make Maria Dolores laugh so heartily, if every Dolores had not changed her name to Lola, each of those guffaws would have been a scandal. But she no longer showed the slightest hint of feminist aggression, perhaps because this Ribatejo Man was something more than just a mandible, a molar, and a patch of skull, and because there is plenty of evidence, in this age in which we live, that women do exist. Maria Dolores, who works in tourism because she cannot find employment as an anthropologist, draws the missing road on the map for José Anaiço, indicates with a black dot the village of Orce, and that of Venta Micena right beside it, now the travelers may proceed, the sorceress at the crossroads has shown them the way, It's a desert, a lunar landscape, but one can see in her eyes that she regrets not being able to accompany them, to practice her skills in the company of Portuguese journalists, especially that rather more discreet one who moved away to look at the posters, how often life has taught us not to judge by appearances, as Joaquim Sassa himself is now doing, his mistake, modest man that he is, If we were to stay here you would be getting it on with the lady anthropologist, let us forgive him this vulgar expression, when men are together that's how they talk, and José Anaiço, presumptuous, but also fooled, replied, Who knows.

  This world, we shall never tire of repeating, is a comedy of errors. Another proof of this maxim is that the name Orce Man should have been given to some old bones found not in Orce but in Venta Micena, which would make a nice palaeontological label, were it not for that name Venta, which translates as Sale, the sign and symbol of inferior merchandise. The fate of words is truly strange. Unless Micenae was a woman's name, before it became that of a man, like that celebrated Galician woman who gave her name to the town of Golegâ in Portugal, perhaps some Greeks from Mycenae, in flight from the demented Atridae, arrived in these remote parts, and anxious to reestablish the name of their native region, they happened to choose this place, much farther away than Cerbère, at the heart of hell, and never so remote as now, as we go sailing off. However difficult you may find it to believe.

  The devil had his first abode in these parts, his were the hooves that scorched the ground and trampled the ashes, amid mountains that shivered with fear then and continue to do so to this day, the ultimate desert where even Christ would have allowed Himself to be tempted by that same devil, had He not already experienced the wiles of Satan, as one reads in the Bible. Joaquim Sassa and José Anaiço contemplate, what do they contemplate, the landscape, but this delightful word belongs to other worlds, to other languages, you cannot refer to what one sees here as a landscape, we have called it an infernal abode, but we are not altogether sure, for in places of damnation we're almost certain to find men and women with the animals that keep them company, until the moment comes to slaughter them in order to live, amid disasters and misfortunes, this is the place of exile where the poet who never visited Granada must have written his verses. These are the lands of Orce, which must have soaked up so much Moorish and Christian blood, to speak once more of the Dark Ages, but why speak of those who died so many years ago, if it is the land that is dead, buried within itself.

  At Orce, the travelers found Pedro Orce, a pharmacist by profession, older than they would have imagined him, had they given the matter any thought. Pedro Orce did not appear on television, therefore we could not have known that he is a man in his sixties, thin in features and body, his hair almost entirely white, and were it not for his sober taste, which shuns any artifice, he could make up dark and fair hair dyes at will in the secrecy of his laboratory, for he is skilled in these chemical concoctions. When Joaquim Sassa and José Anaiço enter the pharmacy, he is filling capsules with quinine powder, an old-fashioned medicament that avoids the powerful concentrations characteristic of modern prescriptions, while astutely preserving the psychological effect of awkward deglutination, followed as if by magic by immediate results. In Orce, which one must inevitably pass through to reach Venta Micena, travelers are rare now that the commotion of excavations and discoveries has passed, we do not even know where the skull of the town's oldest ancestor is kept, there in some museum awaiting a glass case with a label, normally any customers passing through buy aspirin, pills to help their digestion or to cure diarrhea, as for the local inhabitants, they probably die from their first illness, so the pharmacist will most likely never get rich. Pedro Orce has finished sealing the capsules, just like a conjuring trick, after moistening the parts that will serve to seal the capsule, the two brass plates are pressed together, then opened, and the prescription is ready, one last capsule of quinine makes a dozen, and this done he asks them, What can I do for you gentlemen, We are Portuguese, a pointless statement, one need only hear them speak to know at once where they come from, but, after all, it is only natural to declare who we are before saying why we have come, especially in situations of such importance, to travel hundreds of kilometers just to ask, although not necessarily with these dramatic words, Pedro Orce, do you swear on your honor and on the excavated bones that you felt the earth shake when all the seismographs of Seville and Granada, their needles steady, traced th
e straightest line you ever saw, and Pedro Orce raised his hand and said, with the simplicity of a just and honest man, I do, We would like to have a word in private, Joaquim Sassa added after they had revealed their nationality, and there and then, since there were no other clients in the pharmacy, they told him about their personal and joint experiences, about the stone, the starlings, crossing the frontier, they could not show him the stone, but as for the birds, you need only stick your head outside the door and look, there, in this square or in the adjacent one, the inevitable flock of birds, all the inhabitants staring up at the sky amazed at this unusual spectacle, now the birds have disappeared, they have descended upon the Castle of the Seven Towers, Arabic in origin. Better not to speak here, Pedro Orce said, get into the car and drive out of town, In which direction, Drive straight ahead, in the direction of Maria, keep going for three kilometers beyond the last houses, there is a tiny bridge, nearby an olive tree, wait for me there, I'll join you shortly, Joaquim Sassa had the impression that he was about to relive a scene from his own life, that morning two days ago, when he had waited for José Anaiço, beyond the last houses in town.

  They are seated on the ground, under a Cordoban olive tree, the kind that, according to the popular quatrain, makes the oil yellow, as if olive oil weren't yellow, or only occasionally slightly greenish, and the first words from José Anaiço, he could not suppress them, were, This place is enough to put the fear of God into you, and Pedro Orce replied, It's much worse in Venta Micena, where I was born, an ambiguous formality that means what it appears to be saying as well as the exact opposite, depending more on the reader than on the reading, although the latter is entirely dependent on the former, which explains why we find it so difficult to know who is reading what has been read, or the effect of what has been read on the person who reads it, let us hope that, in this case, Pedro Orce will not think that the curse on the place is the result of his having been born there. Then as their discussion got under way, they gradually started to compare their experiences as discus-thrower, bird-catcher, and seismologist, and they came to the conclusion that all the events that had taken place had been, and continued to be, somehow connected, especially since Pedro Orce insists that the ground has not stopped shaking, I can feel it even at this very moment, and he stretched out his hand to show them what he meant. Drawn by curiosity, José Anaiço and Joaquim Sassa touched the hand he kept outstretched, and they could feel, oh yes, beyond the shadow of a doubt they could feel the tremor, the vibration, the drone, and although some skeptic might suggest that it is natural for people to start trembling at a certain age, Pedro Orce is not all that old, and trembling and tremor are not the same thing, whatever the dictionaries might tell us.

  Anyone watching from afar would think that the three men had just pledged themselves to some commitment or other, what is certain is that they quickly shook hands, and nothing more. All around, the stones have intensified the heat, the white earth is dazzling, the sky is an open furnace blowing hot air, even in the shade beneath this Cordoban olive tree. So far no olives have appeared, the men are safe for the moment from the voracious starlings, once December comes you will see such plundering, but since there is only one olive tree, the starlings are not likely to frequent these parts. Joaquim Sassa switched on his radio, for suddenly none of the three had anything more to say, scarcely surprising, after all, they have not known each other for very long, the announcer's voice can be heard, grown nasal from all that broadcasting and because the batteries are low, Judging from the latest measurements, the speed of the peninsula's dislocation has stabilized at around seven hundred and fifty meters per hour, the three men started listening to the news, According to the latest reports to reach the newsroom, an enormous crack has appeared between La Linea and Gibraltar, the voice droned on and on, We shall be back with more news, unless anything unforeseen should happen, in an hour's time, at this very moment the starlings passed in a flurry, vruuuuuuuuu, and Joaquim Sassa asked, Are they yours, and José Anaiço didn't even have to look up before replying, They're mine, he has no difficulty in recognizing them, he knows them, Sherlock Holmes would be bound to say, Elementary, my dear Watson, there isn't another flock like it in these parts, and he is right, for there are few birds in hell, only the nocturnal ones, a matter of tradition.

  Pedro Orce follows the flock's flight, initially out of mild curiosity, then his eyes light up with blue sky and white clouds, and, unable to hold back the words, he suddenly proposes, Why don't we go to the coast and see the rock as it passes. This may sound absurd, nonsensical, but it is not, even when we travel by train, we think we see trees passing when they are firmly rooted in the soil, at this moment we are not traveling by train, we are traveling more slowly, on a stone raft that is sailing the sea, unfettered, the only difference being that which exists between solid and liquid. So often we need a whole lifetime in order to change our life, we think a great deal, weigh things up and vacillate, then we go back to the beginning, we think and think, we displace ourselves on the tracks of time with a circular movement, like those clouds of dust, dead leaves, debris, that have no strength for anything more, better by far that we should live in a land of hurricanes. At other times one word is all that is needed, Let's go and see the rock as it passes, and they get to their feet, eager for adventure, they don't even feel the scorching heat, they run laughing down the slope, like children given their freedom, Deux Chevaux is like a burning cauldron, within seconds the three men are bathed in sweat, but they scarcely notice their discomfort, for from these same southern parts men set out to discover the New World, rugged and fierce, sweating like pigs in their armor, steel helmets on their heads, they advanced sword in hand to fight the naked Indians, clad only in feathers and war paint, an idyllic image.

  They did not go back through the village, for anyone seeing Pedro Orce and the two strangers traveling in the same car would suspect either that he was being abducted or that the three of them were involved in some conspiracy, better call the police, but some old man, one of the veterans of Orce, would say, We don't want the Civil Guard here. They went by other routes, along roads not marked on the average map, the person we need right now is the sphinx of tourism, to trace out the itinerary of these new discoveries, for she had turned out to be a sphinx, after all, rather than a sibyl, for no sibyl has ever been seen at a crossroads, even if both species are native to the peninsula. Pedro Orce said, First I must show you Venta Micena, the place where I was born, the phrase came out as if he were mocking himself or deliberately touching a sore point. They passed through a village in ruins called Fuente Nueva, if there ever was a fountain here it has dried up and vanished, and at a wide bend in the road ahead, he called out, There it is.

  They take a good look and see so little that they start searching for what must be missing and can no longer be found. There, asked José Anaiço, he has cause for doubt, because there are only a few scattered houses, they merge with the color of the earth, a church tower down below, here at the edge of the road what is unmistakably a cemetery, with a cross and white walls. Under the volcanic sun, the countryside rolls like a petrified sea covered with dust, if things were already like this one million, four hundred thousand years ago, you do not have to be a paleontologist to testify that Orce Man died of thirst, the world was young once, the stream that flows over there would then have been a wide and generous river, great trees would have towered, and grasses taller than man, in the days before hell was located here. At the right season, when there is rain, some greenery will sprout on these ashen fields, nowadays the low verges are cultivated with great effort, the plants dry up and die, then revive and flourish, it's man who still has not learned how cycles repeat themselves, with him it is once and nevermore. Pedro Orce makes a gesture that embraces the blighted village. The house where I was born no longer exists, and then, pointing to the left, in the direction of some flat-topped hills, That's the Cueva de los Rosales, where the bones of Orce Man were discovered. Joaquim Sassa and José Anai
ço looked at the livid landscape, one million, four hundred thousand years ago this place was inhabited by men and women who engendered men and women who engendered men and women, destiny, disaster, right up to the present day, one million, four hundred thousand years hence someone will come to carry out excavations in this poor cemetery, and since there is already an Orce Man, perhaps the skull that has just been found will now be returned to its rightful owner and be called Venta Micena Man. No one passes, no dog can be heard barking, the starlings have disappeared, Joaquim Sassa feels a shiver run all the way up his spine, as he tries in vain to suppress his uneasiness, and José Anaiço asks, What's the name of that mountain down there, That's the Sierra de Sagra, And this one here, on our right, That's the Sierra de Maria, When Orce Man died, that must have been the last thing he saw, What would he have called it when he talked with other men from Orce, the ones who left no skulls behind, Joaquim Sassa asked, At that time there were no names, José Anaiço said, How can you look at something without giving it a name, You have to wait for the name to be born. The three men stood there gazing, with nothing more to say, it was time to leave the past to its restless peace.