The Collected Novels of José Saramago (398 page)

It was almost midnight when they set off for the frontier. The other villagers had taken longer than usual to retire to bed, as if they suspected that something strange was afoot. At last, silence reigned in the streets, and the lights in the houses gradually went out one by one. First, the mule was harnessed to the cart, then, with great difficulty even though he weighed so little, the grandfather was carried downstairs by his son-in-law and his two daughters, who reassured him when he asked faintly if they had the spade and the hoe with them, We do, don’t worry, and then the mother went upstairs, took the child in her arms and said, Goodbye, my child, I’ll never see you again, although this wasn’t true, because she, too, would go in the cart with her sister and her brother-in-law, because they would need at least three people for the task ahead. The maiden aunt chose not to say goodbye to the travelers who would never return and, instead, shut herself up in the bedroom with her nephews. Since the metal rims of the cartwheels would make a terrible noise on the uneven surface of the road, with the grave risk of bringing curious householders to their windows to find out where their neighbors were going at that hour, they made a diversion along dirt tracks that finally brought them out onto the road beyond the village. They weren’t very far from the frontier, but the trouble was that the road would not take them there, at a certain point they would have to leave it and continue along paths where the cart would barely fit, and the very last section would have to be made on foot, through the undergrowth, somehow or other carrying the grandfather. Fortunately, the son-in-law has a thorough knowledge of the area because, as well as having tramped these paths as a hunter, he had also made occasional use of them in his role as amateur smuggler. It took them almost two hours to reach the point where they would have to abandon the cart, and it was then that the son-in-law had the idea of putting the grandfather on the mule’s back, trusting to the animal’s sturdy legs. They unhitched the beast, removed any superfluous bits of harness, and then struggled to lift the old man up. The two women were crying, Oh, my poor father, Oh, my poor father, and their tears took from them what little strength they still had. The poor man was only semi-conscious, as if he were already crossing the first threshold of death. We can’t do it, exclaimed the son-in-law in despair, then, suddenly, it occurred to him that the solution would be for him to get on the mule first and then pull the old man up afterward onto the withers of the mule, I’ll have to ride with my arms around him, there’s no other way, you can help from down there. The child’s mother went over to the cart to make sure he was still covered by the blanket, she didn’t want the poor little thing to catch cold, and then she went back to help her sister, One, two, three, they said, but nothing happened, the body seemed to weigh like lead now, they could barely lift him off the ground. Then something extraordinary happened, a kind of miracle, a prodigy, a marvel. As if for a moment the law of gravity had been suspended or had begun to work in reverse, pushing up not down, the grandfather glided gently from his daughters’ hands and, of his own accord, levitated his way into his son-in-law’s open arms. The sky, which, since the onset of night, had been covered by heavy, threatening clouds, cleared suddenly to reveal the moon. We can go on now, said the son-in-law, speaking to his wife, you lead the mule. The mother of the child drew back the blanket a little to look at her son. His closed eyelids were like two small, pale smudges, his face a blur. Then she let out a scream that pierced the air all around and made the beasts in their lairs tremble, I won’t be the one to take my child to the other side, I didn’t bring him into this world in order to hand him over to death, you take papa, I’ll stay here. Her sister came over to her and asked, Would you rather watch him dying year by year, That’s easy enough for you to say, you have three healthy children, But I care for your son as if he were my own, In that case, you take him, because I can’t, And I shouldn’t, because that would be like killing him, What’s the difference, Taking someone to their death and killing them are two different things, you’re the child’s mother, not me, Would you be capable of taking one of your own children, or all of them, Yes, I think so, but I couldn’t swear to it, Then I’m in the right, If that’s what you want, then wait for us here, we’re going to take papa. The sister went over to the mule, grasped the bridle and said, Shall we go, and her husband answered, Yes, but very slowly, I don’t want him to slip off. The full moon was shining. Somewhere up ahead lay the frontier, that line which is visible only on maps. How will we know when we get there, asked the woman, Papa will know. She understood and asked no further questions. They continued on, another hundred yards, another ten steps, and suddenly the man said, We’ve arrived, Is it over, Yes. Behind them a voice repeated, It’s over. The child’s mother was for the last time clasping her dead son to her with her left arm, for resting on her right shoulder were the spade and hoe that the others had forgotten. Let’s go a little further, as far as that ash tree, said the brother-in-law. Far off, on a hill, they could make out the lights of a village. From the way the mule was placing its feet, they could tell that the earth there was soft and would be easy to dig. This looks like a good place, said the man, the tree will serve as a marker when we come here to bring them flowers. The child’s mother dropped the spade and hoe and tenderly laid her son on the ground. Then the two sisters, taking every care not to slip, received the body of their father and, without waiting for any help from the man who was now getting off the mule, they took the body and placed it beside that of his grandson. The child’s mother was sobbing and repeating over and over, My son, my father, and her sister came and embraced her, weeping and saying, It’s better like this, it’s better like this, the life these poor unfortunates were living was no life at all. They both knelt down on the ground to mourn the dead who had come there to deceive death. The man was already working with the hoe, then he shifted the loosened earth with the spade and started digging again. The earth underneath was harder, more compacted, rather stony, and it took half an hour of solid work before the grave was deep enough. There was no coffin and no shroud, the bodies would rest on the bare earth, just with the clothes they had on. The man and the two women joined forces, with him standing in the grave and them above, and they managed, by degrees, to lower the old man’s body into the hole, the women holding him by his outstretched arms, the man taking the weight until the body touched bottom. The women wept constantly, and although the man’s eyes were dry, he was trembling all over, as if in the grip of a fever. The worst was yet to come. Amid tears and sobs, the child was handed down and placed beside his grandfather, but he looked wrong there, a small, insignificant bundle, an unimportant life, left to one side as if he didn’t belong to the family. Then the man bent over, picked up the child, lay him face down on his grandfather’s chest, and arranged the grandfather’s arms so that they were holding the tiny body, now they’re comfortable, ready for their rest, we can start covering them with earth, careful now, just a little at a time, that way they can say their goodbyes to us, listen to what they’re saying, goodbye my daughters, goodbye my son-in-law, goodbye my aunts and uncles, goodbye my mother. When the grave was filled, the man trod the earth down and smoothed it to make sure that no chance passer-by would notice that anyone was buried there. He placed a stone at the head and a smaller stone at the foot, then with the hoe he scattered over the grave the weeds he removed earlier, other living plants would soon take the place of those withered, dry, dead weeds, which would gradually enter the food cycle of the same earth from which they had sprung. The man paced out the distance between tree and grave, twelve paces, then he put the spade and hoe on his shoulder and said, Let’s go. The moon had disappeared, the sky had once more clouded over. Just as they had finished hitching the mule to the cart, it started to rain.

THE PROTAGONISTS OF THESE DRAMATIC EVENTS, DESCRIBED
in unusually detailed fashion in a story which has, so far, preferred to offer the curious reader, if we may put it so, a panoramic view of the facts, were, when they unexpectedly entered the scene, given the social classification of poor country folk. This mistake, the result of an overhasty judgment on the part of the narrator, based on an assessment which was, at best, superficial, should, out of respect for the truth, be rectified at once. A family of poor country folk, if they were truly poor, would not be the owners of a cart nor would they have money enough to feed an animal with the large appetite of a mule. They were, in fact, a family of smallholders, reasonably well-off in the modest world they lived in, well-brought-up people with sufficient schooling to be able to hold conversations which were not only grammatically correct, but which also had what some, for lack of a better word, call content, others substance, and others, perhaps more vulgarly, meat. Were that not the case, the maiden aunt would never have been able to come out with the lovely sentence we commented on before, What will the neighbors say when they notice the absence of these two people who were at death’s door, but couldn’t die. Hurriedly filling in that gap, and with truth restored to its rightful place, let us now hear what the neighbors did say. Despite all the family’s precautions, someone had seen the cart and puzzled over why those three people would be going out at that late hour. This was precisely the question the vigilant neighbor asked himself, Where are those three off to at this hour, a question repeated the following morning, with only slight modification, to the old farmer’s son-in-law, Where were you three off to at that hour of the night. The son-in-law replied that they’d had some business to attend to, but the neighbor was not convinced, Business to attend to at midnight, with the cart, and your wife and your sister-in-law, that’s a bit odd, isn’t it, he said, It might be odd, but that’s how it was, And where were you coming from when the sky was just beginning to grow light, That’s hardly your affair, You’re right, I’m sorry, it really isn’t my affair, but I assume you won’t mind my asking after your father-in-law, Much the same, And your little nephew, He’s much the same too, Well, I hope they both get better, Thank you, Goodbye, Goodbye. The neighbor walked away, stopped and turned back, It seemed to me that you were carrying something in the cart, it seemed to me that your sister had a child in her arms, and if so, the figure lying down covered by a blanket was probably your father-in-law, what’s more, What’s more, what, What’s more, when you came back, the cart was empty and your sister had no child in her arms, You obviously don’t sleep much at night, No, I sleep very lightly and wake easily, You woke up when we left and when we came back, that’s what people call coincidence, That’s right, And you want me to tell you what happened, Only if you’d like to, Come with me. They went into the house, the neighbor greeted the three women, I don’t wish to intrude, he said, embarrassed, and waited. You’ll be the first person to know, said the son-in-law and you won’t have to keep it a secret because we won’t ask you to, Please, only tell me what you want to, My father-in-law and my nephew died last night, we took them over the border, where death is still active, You killed them, exclaimed the neighbor, In a way, yes, given that they couldn’t have gone there under their own steam, but in a way, no, because we did it at the request of my father-in-law, and as for the child, poor thing, he had no voice in the matter and no life worth living, they’re buried at the foot of an ash tree, in each other’s arms you might say. The neighbor clutched his head, And now, Now you’ll go and tell the whole village, we’ll be arrested and taken to the police, and probably tried and sentenced for what we didn’t do, But you did do it, A yard from the frontier they were still alive, a yard further on, they were dead, when exactly, according to you, did we kill them and how, If you hadn’t taken them there, Yes, they would be here, waiting for a death that wouldn’t come. Silent and serene, the three women were watching the neighbor. I’m off, he said, I thought something had happened, but I never imagined anything like this, Please, I have a favor to ask, said the son-in-law, What, Come with me to the police, that way you won’t have to go from door to door telling people about the horrible crimes we’ve committed, I mean, imagine, patricide and infanticide, good grief, what monsters live in this house, That isn’t how I would put it, Yes, I know, so come with me, When, Now, strike while the iron is hot, Let’s go then.

They were neither tried nor sentenced. Like a lit fuse, the news spread rapidly through the nation, the media inveighed against the loathsome creatures, the murderous sisters, the son-in-law accomplice, they shed tears over the old man and the innocent child as if they were the grandfather and grandson everyone would have liked to have had, for the thousandth time, those right-thinking newspapers that acted as barometers of public morality pointed the finger at the unstoppable decline in traditional family values, which was, in their opinion, the fount, cause and origin of all ills, and then, only forty-eight hours later, news started coming in of identical incidents happening throughout the border regions. Other carts and other mules transported other defenseless bodies, fake ambulances wound along deserted country lanes to reach the place where they could unload the bodies, usually kept in their seats for the duration by seat belts, although there was the occasional disgraceful instance of bodies being stowed in the boot and covered with a blanket, cars of all makes, models and prices journeyed toward this new guillotine, whose blade, if you’ll forgive the very free comparison, was the slender line of the frontier invisible to the naked eye, each vehicle carrying those poor unfortunates whom death, on this side of the line, had kept in a state of permanent dying. Not all the families who acted thus could allege in their defense the same motives, in some ways respectable, but nevertheless debatable, as our anguished farming family who, never imagining the consequences of their actions, had sparked this traffic. Some who made use of this expedient to get rid of their father or grandfather in a foreign land merely saw it as a clean, efficient way, although radical might be a better word, of freeing themselves from the genuine dead-weights that their dying relatives had become to them at home. The media who, earlier, had energetically denounced the daughters and son-in-law of the old man buried along with his grandson, including in their vituperations the maiden aunt, accusing her of complicity and connivance, now stigmatized the cruelty and lack of patriotism of apparently decent folk who, at this time of grave national crisis, had let slip the hypocritical mask that concealed their true natures. Under pressure from the governments of the three neighboring countries and from the opposition parties, the prime minister condemned these inhumane activities, citing the need to respect human life and announcing that the armed forces would immediately take up positions along the frontier to prevent any citizen in a state of terminal physical decline from crossing over, whether on their own initiative or due to some arbitrary decision taken by relatives. Deep down, of course, although the prime minister dared not say this out loud, the government was not entirely opposed to an exodus which would, in the final analysis, serve the interests of the country by helping to lower the demographic pressure that had been building continuously over the last three months, although it was still far from reaching truly worrying levels. The prime minister also neglected to say that he’d had a discreet meeting with the interior minister that very day, the aim of which was to set up a nationwide network of vigilantes, or spies, in cities, towns and villages, whose mission would be to inform the authorities of any suspicious moves made by people with close relatives in a state of suspended death. The decision to intervene or not would be made on a case-by-case basis, since it was not the government’s intention to put a complete stop to this new kind of migratory urge, but, rather, to satisfy, at least in part, the concerns of the governments of countries with whom they shared a border, enough, at least, to silence their complaints for a time. We’re not here just to do what they want us to do, said the prime minister firmly, The plan will still exclude small hamlets, large estates and isolated houses, remarked the interior minister, We’ll leave them to their own devices, they can do what they like, for as you know from experience, my friend, it’s impossible to have one policeman per person.