The Collected Novels of José Saramago (421 page)

I
T ISN’T TRUE THAT
heaven and the heavens are indifferent to our preoccupations and desires. They’re constantly sending us signs and warnings, and the only reason we don’t add good advice to that list is that experience, heaven’s and ours, has shown that memory, which isn’t anyone’s strong point, is best not overburdened with too much detail. Signs and warnings are easy to interpret if we remain alert, as the commanding officer discovered when, at one point along the route, the convoy was caught in a heavy drenching shower. For the men engaged in the hard work of pushing the ox-cart, that rain was a blessing, an act of charity for the suffering to which the lower classes have always been subject. Solomon and his mahout subhro also enjoyed that sudden cooling rain, although this did not prevent subhro from thinking that, in future, he really could do with an umbrella in such situations, perched up high and unprotected from the water falling from the clouds, especially on the road to vienna. The only ones not to appreciate this atmospheric precipitation were the cavalry men,
proudly got up as usual in their colorful uniforms, now stained and sodden, as if they had just returned, defeated, from a battle. As for their commanding officer, he, with his already proven agility of mind, had understood at once that they were facing a very grave problem. Once again, it just showed that the strategy for this mission had been drawn up by incompetents incapable of foreseeing the most ordinary of eventualities, such as rain in august, when popular wisdom has been warning since time immemorial that winter always begins in august. Unless that shower was a chance occurrence and the good weather returned for a lengthy period, those nights spent out under the moon or the starry arc of the milky way were over. And that was not all. Having to spend the night in villages meant finding in them a covered area large enough to shelter the horses and the elephant, the four oxen, and several dozen men, and that, as you can imagine, was not easy to find in sixteenth-century portugal, where they had not yet learned to build industrial warehouses or inns for tourists. And what if we get caught in the rain while on the road, not in a shower like this, but in a continuous downpour of the sort that doesn’t stop for hours and hours, wondered the commanding officer, concluding, We’ll have no option but to get soaked. He looked skyward, scrutinized the heavens and said, It seems to have cleared up for the moment, let’s hope it was just a passing threat. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Before they reached safe harbor, if such a description can be applied to a couple of dozen hovels built some distance from each other, and a headless church, that is, one with only half a tower, with not an industrial warehouse to be seen, they met with two more downpours, which the commanding officer, by now an expert in this system
of communications, immediately interpreted as two more warnings from the heavens, which had doubtless grown impatient because the necessary preventative measures had not yet been taken to save the rain-drenched convoy from falling victim to colds, chills, flu and doubtless pneumonia. That is the great mistake made by heaven, for whom nothing is impossible, imagining, as it does, that mankind, created, it is said, in the image and likeness of heaven’s powerful occupant, enjoys the same privileges. We would like to see what heaven would do in the commanding officer’s place, having to go from house to house with the same old story, I’m the officer in charge of a cavalry unit at the service of his highness the king of portugal, our mission being to accompany an elephant to the spanish city of valladolid, and meeting with only distrustful faces, hardly surprising really, given that the people in that part of the world had never even heard of the elephantine species and hadn’t the slightest idea what an elephant was. We would like to see heaven asking if there was a large empty barn available or, if not, an industrial warehouse, where both animals and people could shelter for the night, which shouldn’t be impossible when one recalls that the famous jesus of galilee, in his prime, boasted of being able to tear down a temple and rebuild it in only three days. We cannot know if the only reason he failed to do so was a lack of manpower or cement, or if he simply reached the sensible conclusion that it wasn’t worth the trouble, considering that if he was going to destroy something merely in order to build it up again, it would be better to leave it be. On the other hand, that business with the loaves and fishes really was impressive, and we mention it here only because, by order of the commanding officer and thanks to the efforts
of the quartermaster, today there will be hot food for everyone in the convoy, which is no small miracle if one bears in mind the general lack of facilities and the uncertain weather. Luckily, it stopped raining. The men took off their heavier clothes and placed them on poles to dry by the heat of the fires they had lit. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the big pot of stew to arrive and of enjoying the consoling pang in the stomach when they smelled it, knowing that their hunger was finally going to be satisfied, and of feeling just as much a man as those who are brought a plate of food and a slice of bread at regular hours, as if such things were ordained by some beneficent fate. This commanding officer is not like other officers, in that he is as concerned about his men, soldiers and non-soldiers alike, as if they were his children. More than that, he is little concerned with hierarchy, at least in the current circumstances, so much so that he has not gone elsewhere to eat, but is here, taking his place around the fire, and if he hasn’t yet participated very much in the conversation, this is only in order to put the men at their ease. One of the cavalrymen has just asked the question that has been preoccupying them all, And what are you going to do with the elephant in vienna, mahout, Probably the same as in lisbon, nothing very much, replied subhro, there’ll be a lot of applause, a lot of people crowding the streets, and then they’ll forget all about him, that’s the law of life, triumph and oblivion, Not always, For elephants and men it is, although I shouldn’t really speak of men in general, I’m just an indian in a foreign land, but, as far as I know, only one elephant has ever escaped that law, What elephant was that, asked one of the laborers, An elephant who was dying and whose head was cut off once he was dead, That would be the
end of him, then, No, the head was placed on the neck of a god called ganesh, who was also dead, Tell us about this ganesh, said the commanding officer, Sir, the hindu religion is so very complicated that only an indian can really understand it, and even then not always, Now I seem to recall you telling me that you were a christian, And I recall answering, more or less, sir, more or less, What does that mean, though, are you or are you not a christian, Well, I was baptized in india when I was a child, And then, Then, nothing, replied the mahout with a shrug, So you never practiced your faith, Sir, I was not called, they must have forgotten about me, You didn’t miss anything, said an unknown voice that no one could quite locate, but which, incredible though it may seem, appeared to have come from the embers of the fire. A great silence fell, interrupted only by the crackling of the burning wood. According to your religion, who was it who created the world, asked the commanding officer, Brahma, sir, In other words, god, Yes, but he’s not the only god, What do you mean, It’s not enough just to have created the world, there has to be someone to preserve it, and that’s the job of another god, called vishnu, Are there more gods apart from them, mahout, We’ve got thousands of them, but the third most important god is shiva, the destroyer, Do you mean that what vishnu preserves shiva destroys, No, sir, with shiva, death is understood as the main creator of life, So, if I understand you correctly, those three gods form part of a trinity, indeed, they are a trinity, just like in christianity, In christianity there are four, sir, if you’ll forgive my boldness, Four, exclaimed the commanding officer, astonished, and who’s the fourth member, The virgin, sir, The virgin doesn’t count, we have the father, the son and the holy ghost, And the virgin,
If you don’t explain yourself, I’ll cut off your head like they did to that elephant, Well, I’ve never heard anyone ask anything of god or jesus or the holy spirit, but the virgin can barely cope with the torrent of requests and prayers and supplications that arrive at her door at all hours of the day and night, Careful now, the inquisition’s out there somewhere, so for your own good, don’t go straying into dangerous waters, If I get to vienna, I won’t be coming back, Won’t you go home to india, asked the commanding officer, No, I’m not an indian anymore, And yet you obviously know a lot about hinduism, More or less, sir, more or less, Why do you say that, Because it’s all words and only words, and beyond the words there’s nothing, Is ganesh a word, asked the commanding officer, Yes, a word, which, like all the others, can only be explained by more words, but since the words we use to explain things, successfully or not, will, in turn, have to be explained, our conversation will lead nowhere, the mistaken and the true will alternate, like some kind of curse, and we’ll never know what’s right and what’s wrong, Tell me about ganesh, Ganesh is the son of shiva and parvati, who is also known as durga or kali, the goddess of a hundred arms, If she’d had a hundred legs we could have called her centipede, said one of the men with an embarrassed laugh, as if regretting his words as soon as they were out of his mouth. The mahout ignored him and went on, It has to be said that, exactly as happened with your virgin, ganesh was engendered by his mother, parvati, alone, without the intervention of her husband, shiva, who, being eternal, felt no need to have children. One day, when parvati had decided to take a bath, it happened that there were no guards around to protect her should anyone chance to come into the room. And so she created
an idol in the form of a little boy, made out of a paste, a kind of soap I suppose, that she herself had prepared. The goddess breathed life into the doll and that was ganesh’s first birth. Parvati told ganesh that he must let no one in and he followed his mother’s orders to the letter. A short time afterwards, shiva returned from the forest and tried to get into the house, but ganesh wouldn’t let him, and that, naturally, made shiva very angry. The following dialogue took place, I’m parvati’s husband, therefore her house is my house, Only the people whom my mother wants to come in can enter here, and she did not tell me to let you in. Shiva finally lost patience and launched into a fierce battle with ganesh, which ended with the god cutting off his opponent’s head with his trident. When parvati came out and saw the lifeless body of her son, her cries of grief soon became howls of fury. She ordered shiva to bring ganesh back to life at once, but unfortunately, the blow that had decapitated ganesh had been so powerful that his head had been thrown far away and was never seen again. Then, as a last re-sort, shiva asked for help from brahma, who suggested that he replace ganesh’s head with that of the first living being he met on the road, as long as the creature was facing north. Shiva then dispatched his celestial army to go in search of just such a creature. They came across a dying elephant lying with its head to the north and, once it had died, they cut off its head. They returned to shiva and parvati and gave them the elephant’s head, which was placed on ganesh’s body, thus restoring him to life. And that is how ganesh was born again after having lived and died. Fairy tales, muttered a soldier, Like the one about the man who, having died, rose on the third day, retorted subhro, Careful, mahout, you’re going too far, warned the
commanding officer, Look, I don’t believe in the story about a boy made out of soap who turned into a god with the body of a paunchy man and the head of an elephant, but you asked me to explain who ganesh was, and I did as asked, Yes, but you made some rather rude comments about jesus christ and the virgin that didn’t go down at all well with some of the men here, Well, I apologize to anyone who may have felt offended, it was quite unintentional, replied the mahout. There was a conciliatory murmur, and the truth is that those men, both soldiers and civilians, cared little for religious disputes, what troubled them was that such arcane matters should be discussed beneath the celestial vault itself. They say that walls have ears, well, imagine the size of the stars’ ears. Anyway, it was time to go to bed, even though the sheets and blankets were the clothes they had worn during the day, the main thing was that they wouldn’t get rained on, and the commanding officer had achieved precisely this by going from house to house asking the residents if they would be prepared to provide shelter that night for a few of his men, who thus ended up sleeping in kitchens, stables and haylofts, but this time with a full belly, which made up for these and other inconveniences. With them went a few villagers, too, most of them men, who had walked over to the camp, attracted by the novelty of seeing an elephant, although, out of fear, they dared not approach nearer than twenty paces. Coiling his trunk around a bundle of forage that would have been enough to take the edge off the appetite of a squadron of cows, solomon, despite his poor sight, shot them a stern glance, making it clear that he was not some fairground animal, but an honest worker who had been deprived of his job by unfortunate circumstances too compli cated
to go into, and had, so to speak, been forced to accept public charity. At first, one of the village men, out of bravado, went a few steps beyond the invisible line that would soon become a closed frontier, but solomon shooed him away with a warning kick, which, even though it didn’t hit its target, gave rise to an interesting debate among the men about animal families and clans. John mules and molly mules, jacks and jennies, stallions and mares, are all quadrupeds who, as everyone knows, some by painful experience, can deliver a kick, and that’s perfectly understandable, since they have no other weapons, either offensive or defensive, but an elephant, with that trunk and those tusks, with those huge great legs that look like steam-hammers, can also, as if this weren’t enough, kick with the best of them. He may appear to be mildness incarnate, but, when necessary, he can turn into a wild beast. It’s odd, though, that, belonging as he does to the aforementioned family of animals, namely, the family that kicks, he doesn’t wear horseshoes. One of the villagers said, There’s not much to an elephant really. The others agreed, When you’ve walked round him once, you’ve seen all there is to see. They could have returned to their homes then, but one of them said he was going to stay a little longer, that he wanted to hear what was being talked about around the fire. His companions went with him. At first, they couldn’t understand what the topic of conversation was, they couldn’t catch the names, which had strange pronunciations, then all became clear when they reached the conclusion that these men were talking about the elephant and that the elephant was god. They were walking back to their houses now, to the comfort of their own hearth, each one taking with him two or three guests, both soldiers and laborers. Two