The Cave (21 page)

The days and nights passed, as did the afternoons and the mornings. According to books and to life, the labors of men have always taken longer and been more backbreaking than those of the gods,
the creator of the redskins is a case in point, for he, after all, made only four human images, and yet that minuscule result, which had little success among its intended public, merited an entry in the history set down in almanacs, while Cipriano Algor, for whom there will be no reward in the form of a printed note on his life and works, will have to wrest from the clay, in this first phase alone, one hundred and fifty times more than that, six hundred figurines with different origins, characteristics, and social backgrounds, three of them, the jester, the clown, and the nurse, are more easily definable by the jobs they do, which is not the case with the mandarin and with the bearded Assyrian, about whom, despite the reasonable amount of information drawn from the encyclopedia, it was not possible to discover exactly what they did in life. As for the Eskimo, one assumes that he will continue to hunt and fish. The truth is that Cipriano Algor does not much care any more. When he starts removing the figurines from the molds, identical in size, the differences in clothing attenuated by their uniform color, he will have to make a real effort not to confuse them and mix them up. He will be so immersed in the work, that he will sometimes forget that the molds have a limited life, that they can only be used about forty times, after which the shapes begin to blur, to lose vigor and clarity, as if the figurine were gradually growing weary of existence, as if it were being drawn back to an original state of nakedness, not just its human nakedness, but to the absolute nakedness of clay before it had begun to be clothed in the first physical expression of an idea. At first, in order not to waste time, he had simply thrown the rejected figurines into a corner, but then, out of a strange and inexplicable feeling of pity and guilt, he had gathered them up, most of them misshapen and confused by the fall and by the shock, and placed them carefully on a shelf in the pottery. He could have reused them in order to give them a second chance of life, he could have pitilessly flattened them as he had those two figures of a man and a woman that he had made at the beginning, the clay is still there, dry,
cracked, shapeless, and yet instead he rescued the malformed creatures from the rubbish, protected them, sheltered them, as if he loved his successes less than he did these mistakes that he had not proved skillful enough to avoid. He will not fire these figurines, it would be a waste of firewood, but he will leave them there until the clay cracks and crumbles, until fragments break off and fall away, and, if there is time, until the dust from them is transformed back into resurrected clay. Marta will ask him, What are those rejects doing there, to which he will simply reply, I like them, but he will not, like Marta, call them rejects, for to do so would be to drive them from the world for which they had been born, to deny them as his own work and thus condemn them to a final, definitive orphanhood. The dozens of finished figurines that are transferred every day to the drying shelves, outside, in the shade of the mulberry tree, are also his work, and very tiring work they are, but these are so many and so difficult to tell apart that the only care and attention they require is to ensure that they do not suffer any last-minute injuries. He and Marta had no option but to tie Found up to stop him jumping onto the shelves, where he would doubtless commit the worst depredations ever seen in pottery's turbulent history, which, as we know, is prodigal in shards and undesirable amalgamations. Remember that when the first six figurines, the others, the prototypes, were placed here to dry, and Found wanted to find out, by direct contact, what they were, Cipriano Algor's instantaneous shout and slap had been enough for Found's hunting instinct, further aroused by the objects' insolent immobility, to withdraw without causing any damage, but it would, of course, be unreasonable to expect such an animal to resist, unmoved, the provoking sight of a horde of clowns and mandarins, of jesters and nurses, of Eskimos and bearded Assyrians, all thinly disguised as redskins. He was deprived of liberty for only an hour. Impressed by the hurt, almost wounded look on Found's face as he submitted to his punishment, Marta suggested to her father that education must have some uses,
even when it comes to dogs, It's just a matter of adapting the methods, she declared, And how are you going to do that, The first thing we'll have to do is to untie him, And then, If he tries to get onto the shelves, then we tie him up again, And then, We untie him and tie him up again as many times as it takes for him to learn, It might work, but don't go deluding yourself that he really has learned the lesson, because obviously he won't dare go near the shelves with you there, but, when he's alone, with no one watching him, I fear that none of your educational methods will be enough to discipline the instincts of the jackal grandfather inside Found's head, Surely Found's jackal grandfather wouldn't even give the figurines a sniff, he would just walk straight past and go off in search of something he could actually eat, All right, I just want you to be aware what would happen if the dog did get onto the shelves, imagine the amount of work we'd lose, It might be a lot, it might be a little, we'll see, but if it does happen, I undertake to remake any figurines that get damaged, that's probably the only way I'll be able to convince you to let me help you, Let's not get into that, you just carry on with your pedagogical experiments. Marta left the pottery and, without a word, she removed the lead from the dog's collar. She took a few steps toward the house, then stopped as if she had just thought of something. The dog looked at her and lay down. Marta advanced a few more steps, stopped again, and then went straight into the kitchen, leaving the door open. The dog did not move. Marta closed the door. The dog waited for a moment, then got up and slowly went over to the shelves. Marta did not open the door. The dog looked back at the house, hesitated, looked again, then placed his paws on the shelf where the bearded Assyrians were drying. Marta opened the door and came out. The dog quickly removed his paws and stood there waiting. He had no reason to run away, his conscience told him that he had done nothing wrong. Marta grabbed his collar and, again without saying a word, tethered him with the lead. Then she went back into the kitchen and shut the door. She
reckoned that the dog would think about what had happened, well, think or do whatever he would normally do in such a situation. After two minutes, she released him again, it was best not to give the animal time to forget, the relationship between cause and effect had to be fixed in his memory. This time the dog waited longer before putting his paws on the shelf, but he did so nonetheless, though perhaps with slightly less conviction than before. Shortly afterward he was again tethered. After the fourth time, he began to show signs of understanding what was expected of him, but he kept putting his paws on the shelf, as if to make absolutely certain that this was precisely what he should not do. During all this tying and untying, Marta did not say a word, she went in and out of the kitchen, closed and opened the door, and to every movement by the dog, which was always the same, she responded with her own movement, which was also always the same, in a chain of successive and reciprocal actions that would end only when one of them, by making a different movement, broke the sequence. The eighth time that Marta closed the kitchen door behind her, Found again went over to the shelves, but once there, he did not raise his paws as if he wanted to touch the bearded Assyrians, he stood there looking at the house, waiting, as if he were daring his mistress to be bolder than he was, as if he were asking her, What answer have you got to this brilliant move of mine, which will give me victory and which will defeat you. Pleased with herself, Marta murmured, I've won, I knew I would. She went out to the dog, stroked his head and said gently, Good dog, nice dog, her father had come to the door of the pottery to witness the happy result, Fine, now we just have to find out if it sticks, Bet you anything you like that he never again tries to get up on the shelves, said Marta. Very few human words ever enter a dog's own vocabulary of snarls and barks, and, for that reason alone, because he did not understand them, Found did not protest at his owners' irresponsible display of smug satisfaction, because anyone with any knowledge of these matters and able to make an impartial evaluation of what had happened would say that the winner of this battle was not Marta, the owner, however convinced she might be of that, but the dog, although it must be said that people who judge only by appearances would say exactly the opposite. Let everyone, then, boast about the victory they imagine to be theirs, even the bearded Assyrian and his colleagues, now safe from attack. As for Found, we cannot resign ourselves to leaving him with an unwarranted reputation as a loser. The ultimate proof that victory was his is the fact that, from that day forth, he became the most vigilant of guards ever to watch over clay figurines. You should have heard him barking to alert his owners when an unexpected gust of wind blew over half a dozen nurses.

The first kiln-load contained three hundred figurines, or, rather, three hundred and fifty, allowing for likely breakages. They were all that would fit. This happened to coincide with Marçal's day of rest, and so for Marçal it proved instead to be a day of hard work. Patient and willing, he helped his father-in-law to arrange the dolls on the shelves inside and he took charge of feeding the fire, which is a job only for the robust, as much because of the physical effort of carrying the wood to the furnace and stoking the fire as because of the long hours involved, for an old kiln like this, rudimentary in the light of the latest technology, takes a considerable time to reach the optimum temperature for firing, and once it does, that temperature has to be kept as stable as possible. Marçal will work into the night, until his father-in-law, once he has completed a task in the pottery that he had insisted on finishing, can take over from him. Marta took her father's supper out to him and then brought Marçal his and, sitting on the bench that had served as the bench of meditations, she ate her supper with him. Neither of them had much appetite, though for different reasons. You're not eating, you must be exhausted, she said, Yes, I am a little, I'm not very fit, so it takes more out of me, he said, It was my idea to make these figurines, Yes, I know, It was my idea, but for the last few days I've been tormented
by a kind of remorse, I keep asking myself if it was worth our while to start making them, if it isn't all just pathetically futile, At the moment, the most important thing for your father is the work that he's doing, regardless of whether or not it's of any use, if you took away the work from him, whatever that work was, then in a way you'd be taking away his reason for living, and if you said to him that what he's doing is pointless, even if the evidence was staring him in the face, he probably wouldn't believe you, because he simply couldn't, The Center stopped buying our crockery and he managed to withstand the shock, Only because you immediately came up with the idea of making these dolls, Yes, but I have a feeling that the bad days are just about to begin, even worse than these, My promotion to resident guard, which shouldn't be long in coming now, will be a bad day for your father, He said he'd come and live with us at the Center, He did, but he said it in the same way that we all say that one day we're going to die, there's a part of our mind that refuses to accept what it knows is the fate of all living creatures and pretends that it has nothing to do with it, that's how it is with your father, he says he'll come and live with us, but, deep down, he doesn't really believe it, As if he were waiting for some last-minute diversion that will take him off along another road, He should know by now that as far as the Center's concerned there's only one road, the one that goes from the Center to the Center, I work there and I know what I'm talking about, A lot of people say that life at the Center is one nonstop miracle. Marçal did not reply at once. He gave a piece of meat to the dog, who had been waiting patiently for a few leftovers to come his way, and only then did he reply, Yes, much as, at this hour of the night, that piece of meat I gave to Found must have seemed like a miracle to him. He stroked the animal's back, twice, three times, the first out of simple, normal affection, the other two times with anxious insistence, as if there were some urgent need to comfort him, when he was the one who needed calming down in order to drive away the idea that had just resurfaced from its hiding
place in his memory, The Center doesn't allow dogs. It's true, they don't allow dogs in the Center, or cats, only caged birds and aquarium fish, and even those are becoming rare, ever since they invented virtual aquariums, without fish that smell of fish or water that you have to change. Fifty examples of ten different species swim gracefully about inside, and, in order for them not to die, they have to be cared for and fed as if they were living creatures, the water quality has to be checked, and, so that it's not all hard work, not only can one decorate the bottom of the aquarium with various types of rocks and plants, but the happy owner of this marvel will have at his disposal a range of sounds that will allow him, while he watches these gutless, boneless fish, to surround himself with such diverse ambient sounds as a Caribbean beach, a tropical jungle, or a storm at sea. They don't want dogs at the Center, Marçal thought again, and he noticed that his worry was gradually driving out the other worry, Should I talk to her about this or shouldn't I, he began to think that he should, then he thought it would be better to leave it until later, when he would have to talk about it, when there would be no other option. He decided to say nothing, but, true to the inconstant fluctuations of the will inside the virtual aquarium of the mind, less than a minute later he was saying to Marta, It's just occurred to me that we're not going to be able to take Found with us to the Center, they don't allow dogs, it's going to be a real problem, poor thing, having to abandon him like that, Perhaps there's a solution, said Marta, You've obviously already thought about it, said Marçal, surprised, Yes, I have, a long time ago, So what's your solution, It occurred to me that Isaura wouldn't mind looking after Found, in fact, I think she'd really like that, and besides they already know each other, Isaura, Yes, you remember, Isaura of the water jug, the one who brought us the cake, the one who came here to talk to me the last time we went to have lunch with your parents, Seems like a good idea to me, Yes, I think it would be best for Found, But will your father agree, Half of him will protest and say, certainly not, a single woman isn't good company for a dog, I should imagine he's
quite capable of inventing some such theory of disaffinities, and that there must be other people who wouldn't mind taking him in, but we also know that the other half of him will hope against hope that the first half doesn't win, How are the lovebirds, asked Marçal, Poor Isaura, poor Pa, Why do you say poor Isaura, poor Pa, Because it's obvious that she loves him, but she can't get over the barrier he's built around himself, And what about him, Oh, with him it's that old story about the two halves again, one half probably thinks of nothing else, And the other, The other half is sixty-four years old, the other half is afraid, People are so complicated, That's true, but if we were simple we wouldn't be people. Found was no longer there, he had suddenly realized that there was no one to keep the older master company, alone in the pottery and laboring over the second batch of three hundred figurines for the first delivery of six hundred, a dog sees these things and they create an enormous feeling of confusion in him, he sees them but cannot understand them, all that work, all that effort, all that sweat, and I am not referring now to the amount of money that will be earned, it will not be much, it will only be so-so, it certainly won't be a lot, as Marta said a while ago, isn't all of this just pathetically futile. As has been seen before, and has been confirmed now, thanks to the long, deep conversation between Marta and Marçal, the stone bench fully merits the grave and ponderous name we gave to it, that of the bench of meditations, but needs must, and it is time once more to attend to the kiln, to feed more firewood into the mouth of the furnace, carefully though, Marçal, don't forget that tiredness slows down one's defensive reflexes, increases the time they take to respond, we don't want a repeat of what happened on that other ill-fated day, when the snake of howling fire leaped out at you and marked your left hand forever. That is also, more or less, what Marta said, I'm going to wash the dishes and then go to bed, take care, Marçal.