The Collected Novels of José Saramago (423 page)

The convoy of men, horses, oxen and elephant has been swallowed up by the mist, so that you cannot even make out the vast general shape of them. We’ll have to run to catch up to them. Fortunately, considering the brief time we spent listen ing
to the village titans’ arguments, the convoy won’t have gone very far. In normal visibility or when the mist bore less of a resemblance to potato purée, we would only have to follow the tracks left in the soft soil by the thick wheels of the ox-cart and the quartermaster’s wagon, but, now, even with your nose pressed to the ground, you still wouldn’t be able to tell if anyone had passed. And not just people, but animals too, some of considerable size, like the oxen and the horses, and, in particular, the pachyderm known in the portuguese court as solomon, whose feet would leave in the earth enormous almost circular footprints, like those of the round-footed dinosaurs, if they ever existed. And speaking of animals, it seems impossible that no one in lisbon thought to bring a few dogs with them. A dog is a life insurance policy, a tracker of noises, a four-legged compass. You would just have to say to it, Fetch, and in less than five minutes, it would be back, tail wagging and eyes shining with happiness. There is no wind, although the mist seems to form slow whirlpools as if boreas himself were blowing it down from the far north, from the lands of eternal ice. However, to be honest, given the delicacy of the situation, this is hardly the moment for someone to be honing his prose in order to make some, frankly, not very original poetic point. By now, the people traveling with the caravan will have realized that someone is missing, indeed two of them will probably have volunteered to go and save the poor castaway, an action that would be most welcome if it weren’t for the reputation as a coward that will follow the castaway for the rest of his days, Honestly, the public voice will say, imagine him just sitting there, waiting for someone to rescue him, some people have no shame at all. It’s true that he had been sitting down, but now he’s standing up and
has courageously taken the first step, right foot first, to drive away the evil spells cast by fate and its powerful allies, chance and coincidence, however, his left foot has grown suddenly hesitant, and who can blame it, because the ground is invisible, as if a new tide of mist had just begun to roll in. With his third step, he can no longer see his own hands held out in front of him as if to keep his nose from bumping against some unexpected door. It was then that another idea occurred to him, what if the road curved this way and that, and the direction he had taken, in what he hoped would be a straight line, led him into desert places that would mean perdition for both soul and body, in the case of the latter with immediate effect. And, o unhappy fate, without even a dog to lick away his tears when the great moment arrived. He again considered turning back to ask for shelter in the village until the bank of mist lifted of its own accord, but now, completely disoriented, with as little idea of where the cardinal points might be as if he were in some entirely unfamiliar place, he decided that his best bet was to sit down on the ground again and wait for destiny, chance, fate, any or all of them together, to guide those selfless volunteers to the tiny patch of ground on which he was sitting, as on an island in the ocean sea, with no means of communication. Or, more appropriately, like a needle in a haystack. Within three minutes, he was fast asleep. What a strange creature man is, so prone to terrible insomnias over mere nothings and yet capable of sleeping like a log on the eve of a battle. And so it was. He fell into a deep sleep, and it’s quite likely that he would still be sleeping now if, somewhere in the mist, solomon had not unleashed a thunderous trumpeting whose echoes must have been heard on the distant shores of the gan ges.
Still groggy after his abrupt awakening, he could not make out precisely where it was coming from, that foghorn come to save him from an icy death or, worse, from being eaten by wolves, because this is a land of wolves, and a man, alone and unarmed, is helpless against a whole pack of them or, indeed, against one. Solomon’s second blast was even louder than the first and began with a kind of quiet gurgling in the depths of his throat, like a roll on the drums, immediately followed by the syncopated clamor that typifies the creature’s call. The man is now racing through the mist like a horseman charging, lance at the ready, thinking all the while, Again, solomon, again. And solomon granted his wish and let out another trumpet blast, quieter this time, as if merely confirming that he was there, because the castaway is no longer adrift, he’s on his way, there’s the wagon belonging to the cavalry quartermaster, not that he can make out details because things and people are nothing but blurs, it’s as if the mist, and this is a much more troubling idea, were of a kind that can corrode the skin, the skin of people, horses, even elephants, yes, even that vast, tiger-proof elephant, not all mists are the same, of course, one day, someone will cry Gas, and woe betide anyone not wearing a tight-fitting mask. The ex-castaway asks a soldier who happens to be passing, leading his horse by the reins, if the volunteers have returned from their rescue mission, and the soldier responds with a distrustful glance, as if he were speaking to some kind of provocateur, because, as a quick flick through the inquisition’s files will confirm, there were plenty of them around in the sixteenth century, and says coolly, Wherever did you get an idea like that, there was no call for volunteers here, the only sensible course of action in a situation like this is to do exactly as
we did and sit tight until the mist lifts, besides, asking for volunteers isn’t really the captain’s style, usually, he just points, you, you and you, quick march, and anyway, the captain says that when it comes to heroics, either all of us are going to be heroes or none. To make clearer still that he considered the conversation to be at an end, the soldier rapidly hoisted himself up onto his horse, said goodbye and galloped off into the mist. He was displeased with himself. He had given explanations that no one had asked him for, and made statements he was not authorized to make. However, he was consoled by the fact that the man, although he didn’t really have the physique, probably belonged, what other possibility was there, to the group of men hired to help push or pull the ox-carts whenever the going got rough, men of few words and even less imagination. Generally speaking, that is, because the man lost in the mist certainly didn’t appear to lack imagination, just look at the way he had plucked out of nothing, out of nowhere, the volunteers who should have come to his rescue. Fortunately for the man’s public credibility, the elephant is a different matter altogether. Large, enormous, big-bellied, with a voice guaranteed to terrify the timid and a trunk like that of no other animal in creation, the elephant could never be the product of anyone’s imagination, however bold and fertile. The elephant either existed or it didn’t. It is, therefore, time to visit him and thank him for the energetic way in which he used his god-given trumpet to such good purpose, for if this had been the valley of jehoshaphat, the dead would undoubtedly have risen again, but being what it is, an ordinary scrap of portuguese earth swathed in mist where someone very nearly died of cold and indifference, and so as not entirely to waste the rather la bored
comparison with which we chose to encumber ourselves, we might say that some resurrections are so deftly handled that they can happen even before the poor victim has passed away. It was as if the elephant had thought, That poor devil is going to die, and I’m going to save him. And here’s the same poor devil heaping thanks on him and swearing eternal gratitude, until finally the mahout asks, What did the elephant do to deserve such thanks, If it wasn’t for him, I would have died of cold or been devoured by wolves, And what exactly did he do, because he hasn’t left this spot since he woke up, He didn’t need to move, he just had to blow his trumpet, because I was lost in the mist and it was his voice that saved me, If anyone is qualified to speak of the works and deeds of solomon, I’m that man, which is why I’m his mahout, so don’t come to me with some story about hearing him trumpet, He didn’t just trumpet once, but three times, and these same ears that will one day be dust heard him trumpet. The mahout thought, The fellow’s stark staring mad, the mist must have seeped into his brain, that’s probably it, yes, I’ve heard of such cases, then, out loud he added, Let’s not argue about whether it was one, two or three blasts, you ask those men over there if they heard anything. The men, whose blurred outlines seemed to vibrate and tremble with every step, immediately gave rise to the question, Where are you off to in weather like this. We know, however, that this wasn’t the question asked by the man who insisted he’d heard the elephant speak and we know the answer they were giving him. What we don’t know is whether any of these things are related, which ones, or how. The fact is that the sun, like a vast broom of light, suddenly broke through the mist and swept it away. The landscape revealed itself as it had always been, stones, trees, ravines, and mountains. The three men are no longer there. The mahout opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. The man who insisted he’d heard the elephant speak began to lose consistency and substance, to shrink, then grow round and transparent as a soap bubble, if the poor-quality soaps of the time were capable of forming the crystalline marvels that someone had the genius to invent, then he suddenly disappeared from view. He went plof and vanished. Onomatopoeia can be so very handy. Imagine if we’d had to provide a detailed description of someone disappearing. It would have taken us at least ten pages. Plof.

B
Y CHANCE, PERHAPS
as the result of some change in the atmosphere, the commanding officer found himself thinking about his wife and children, she five months pregnant and they, a boy and a girl, six and four years old respectively. The primitive people of the time, barely emerged from primeval barbarism, pay so little attention to delicate feelings that they rarely make use of them. Certain emotions may already be fermenting away in the laborious process of creating a coherent and cohesive national identity, but that quintessentially portuguese feeling of yearning and nostalgia known as
saudade,
and all its by-products, had not yet been embraced by portugal as a habitual philosophy of life, and this has given rise to not a few communication difficulties in society in general and to some degree of perplexity on a personal level as well. For example, basic common sense tells us that it would be inadvisable to go over to the commanding officer now and ask, Tell me, sir, would you describe what you feel for your wife and your little children as
saudade.
The officer, although not entirely lack ing
in taste and sensibility, as we have had the opportunity to observe already at various points in this story, although always maintaining the utmost discretion so as not to offend against the character’s natural modesty, would stare at us, astonished by our patent lack of tact, and give us some vague and airy answer, neither here nor there, that would leave us, at the very least, with serious concerns about the couple’s private life. It’s true that the commanding officer has never sung a serenade nor, as far as we know, written a single sonnet, but that doesn’t mean that he is not, by nature shall we say, perfectly capable of appreciating the beautiful things created by his ingenious fellow creatures. One of these, for example, he could have brought with him in his knapsack, carefully swathed in cloth, as he had done on other more warlike expeditions, but this time he had chosen to leave it safely at home. Given how little money he earns, an amount, often paid in arrears, that was evidently not intended by the treasury to allow the troops to enjoy any luxuries, the commanding officer, in order to purchase his particular jewel, a good twelve or more years ago now, had to sell a baldric made of the finest materials, delicate in design and richly decorated, intended, it’s true, to be worn more in the drawing room than on the battlefield, a magnificent piece of military equipment that had been the property of his maternal grandfather and which, ever since, had been an object of desire for whoever laid eyes on it. In its place, but not intended for the same ends, is a large volume bearing the title amadis of gaul, whose author, as certain of our more patriotic scholars claim, was a certain vasco de lobeira, a portuguese writer of the fourteenth century, whose work was published in zaragoza, in fifteen hundred and eight, in a castilian transla tion by one garci rodriguez de montalvo, who besides adding a few extra chapters of love and adventure, also amended and corrected the original texts. The commanding officer suspects that his copy is of bastard stock, what we would call a pirate edition, which just goes to show how long certain illicit commercial practices have been going on. Solomon, and we are speaking here of the king of judah and not the elephant, was quite right when he wrote that there was nothing new under the sun. It’s hard for us to imagine that in those biblical times everything was much the same as it is now, for our stubborn innocence insists on imagining them as lyrical, bucolic, pastoral, perhaps because they are still so close to our own first fumbling attempts at creating our western civilization.