The frontier was the same at all the exit points from the city, a heavy, movable barrier, a pair of tanks, one on either side of the road, a few huts, and armed soldiers in battledress and with daubed faces. Powerful spotlights lit up the scene. The president got out of his car, returned the commanding officer's impeccable salute with a polite though slightly disdainful gesture, and asked, How are things here, Nothing to report, sir, absolute calm, Has anyone tried to leave, No, sir, You are, I assume, referring to motorized vehicles, to bicycles, to carts, to skateboards, To motorized vehicles, sir, And people on foot, Not a single one, You will, of course, already have considered the possibility that any fugitives might not come by road, We have, sir, but they still wouldn't manage to get through, as well as the conventional patrols guarding the area between us and the two closest exit points on either side, we also have electronic sensors that would pick up a mouse if we had them adjusted to detect anything that small, Excellent, you're familiar, I'm sure, with what is always said on these occasions, the nation is watching you, Yes, sir, we are aware of the importance of our mission, You will, I assume, have received orders on what to do if there is any attempt at a mass exodus, Yes, sir, What are they, First, tell them to stop, That much is obvious, Yes, sir, And if they don't, If they don't, then we fire into the air, And if, despite that, they continue to advance, Then the squad of riot police assigned to us would take action, And what would they do, Well, sir, that depends, they would either use tear-gas or attack with water cannon, the army doesn't do that kind of thing, Do I note a hint of criticism in your words, It's just that I don't think that is any way to carry on a war, sir, An interesting observation, and if the people do not withdraw, They must withdraw, sir, no one can withstand tear-gas attacks and water cannon, Just imagine that they do withstand it, what are your orders in that situation, To shoot at their legs, Why their legs, We don't want to kill our compatriots, But that could well happen, Yes, sir, it could, Do you have family in the city, Yes, sir, What if you saw your wife and children at the head of the advancing multitude, A soldier's family knows how to behave in all situations, Yes, I'm sure, but just try to imagine, Orders must be obeyed, sir, All orders, Up until today, it has been my honor to have obeyed all the orders given to me, And tomorrow, Tomorrow, I very much hope not to have to come and tell you, sir, So do I. The president took two steps in the direction of his car, then asked suddenly, Are you sure your wife did not cast a blank vote, Yes, sir, I would put my hand in the fire, sir, Really, It's a manner of speaking, sir, I just meant that I'm sure she would have fulfilled her duty as a voter, By voting, Yes, But that doesn't answer my question, No, sir, Then answer it, No, sir, I can't, Why not, Because the law does not allow me to, Ah. The president stood looking at the officer for a long time, then said, Goodbye, captain, it is captain, isn't it, Yes, sir, Good night, captain, perhaps we'll see each other again sometime, Good night, sir, Did you notice that I didn't ask if you had cast a blank vote, Yes, sir, I did. The car sped away. The captain put his hands to his face. His forehead was dripping with sweat.
THE LIGHTS STARTED TO GO OUT AS THE LAST ARMY TRUCK AND THE last police van left the city. One after the other, like someone saying goodbye, the twenty-seven arms of the star gradually disappeared, leaving the vague route map of deserted streets marked only by the dim street lamps that no one had thought to restore to their normal level of brightness. We will find out how alive the city is when the intense black of the sky begins to dissolve into the slow tide of deep blue which anyone with good eyesight would already be able to make out rising up from the horizon, then we will see if the men and women who inhabit the different floors of these buildings do, indeed, set off to work, if the first buses pick up the first passengers, if the metro trains race, thundering, through the tunnels, if the shops open their doors and remove the shutters, if newspapers are delivered to kiosks. At this early morning hour, while they wash, get dressed and drink their usual breakfast cup of coffee, people are listening to the radio which is announcing, in excited tones, that the president, the government and the parliament left the city in the early hours, that there are no police left in the city, and that the army has withdrawn too, then they turn on the television, which, in identical tones, gives them the same news, and both radio and television, with only the briefest of intervals, continue to report that, at seven o'clock precisely, an important message from the president will be broadcast to the whole country, and, in particular, of course, to the capital's obstinate inhabitants. Meanwhile, the kiosks have not yet opened, so there is no point in going out into the street to buy a newspaper, just as it is not worth searching the web, the worldwide web, although some more up-to-date citizens have already tried, for the president's predictable stream of invective. Official secrecy, while it may occasionally be plagued by leaks and disclosures, as demonstrated a few hours earlier by the synchronized switching on of lights in buildings, exercises extreme rigor when it comes to any higher authorities, who, as everyone knows, will, for the most frivolous of motives, not only demand swift and detailed explanations from those found wanting, they will, from time to time, also chop off their heads. It is ten minutes to seven, many of those people still lazing about should, by rights, be out in the street on their way to work, but not all days are alike, and it seems that public servants have been given permission to arrive late, and, as for private businesses, most of them will probably remain closed all day, just to see where all this leads. Caution and chicken soup never hurt anyone, in good health or bad. The world history of crowds shows us that, whether it's a specific breach of public order, or merely the threat of one, the best examples of prudence are generally given by those businesses and industries with premises on the streets, a nervous attitude which we have a duty to respect, given that they are the areas of professional activity who have most to lose, and who inevitably do lose, in terms of shattered shop windows, robberies, lootings and acts of sabotage. At two minutes to seven, with the lugubrious face and voice required by the circumstances, the television and radio presenters finally announce that the president is about to address the nation. The image that follows, as a way of setting the scene, shows the national flag flapping lazily, languidly, as if it were, at any moment, about to slip helplessly down the pole. There obviously wasn't much wind on the day they took its picture, remarked one inhabitant. The symbolic insignia seemed to revive with the opening chords of the national anthem, the gentle breeze had suddenly given way to a brisk wind that must have blown in from the vast ocean or from some triumphant scene of battle, if it blows any harder, even just a little bit harder, we're sure to see valkyries on horseback with heroes riding pillion. Then, as it faded into the distance, the anthem took the flag with it, or the flag took the anthem with it, the order doesn't matter, and then the president appeared to the people, seated behind a desk, his stern eyes fixed on the teleprompter. To his right, standing to attention, the flag, not the one just mentioned, but an indoor flag, arranged in discreet folds. The president interlaced his fingers, perhaps to disguise some involuntary tic, He's nervous, said the man who had remarked upon the lack of wind, I want to see his expression when he explains the low trick they've just played on us. The people awaiting the president's imminent oratorical display could not, for one moment, imagine the efforts expended on preparing the speech by the president of the republic's literary advisors, not so much as regards any actual statements made, which would merely involve plucking a few strings on the stylistic lute, but the form of address with which, according to the norm, the speech should begin, the standard words that usually introduce tirades of this type. Indeed, given the delicate nature of his message, it would be little short of insulting to say My dear compatriots, or Esteemed fellow citizens, or even, were it the moment for playing, with just the right amount of vibrato, the bass string of patriotism, that simplest and noblest mode of address, Men and women of Portugal, that last word, we hasten to add, only appears due to the entirely gratuitous supposition, with no foundation in obje
ctive fact, that the scene of the dire events it has fallen to us to describe in such meticulous detail, could be, or perhaps could have been, the land of the aforesaid Portuguese men and women. It was merely an illustrative example, nothing more, for which, despite all our good intentions, we apologize in advance, especially given that they are a people with a reputation around the world for having always exercised their electoral duties with praiseworthy civic discipline and religious devotion.
Now, returning to the home that we have made into our observation post, we should say that, contrary to one's natural expectations, not a single listener or viewer noticed that none of these usual forms of address issued from the president's mouth, neither this, that or the other, perhaps because the plangent drama of the first words tossed into the ether, I speak to you with my heart in my hands, had made the president's literary advisors realize that the introduction of any of the aforementioned refrains would have been superfluous and inopportune. It would, indeed, have been quite incongruous to begin by saying affectionately, Esteemed fellow citizens or My dear compatriots, as if he were about to announce that tomorrow the price of petrol will go down by fifty percent, only to proceed to present to the eyes of a horror-struck audience a bleeding, slippery, still pulsating internal organ. What the president was about to say, goodbye, goodbye, see you another day, was common knowledge, but, understandably enough, people were curious to see just how he was going to extricate himself. Here then is the whole speech, without, of course, given the impossibility of transcribing them into words, the tremor in the voice, the grief-stricken face, the occasional glimmer of a barely repressed tear, I speak to you with my heart in my hands, I speak to you as one torn asunder by the pain of an incomprehensible rift, like a father abandoned by his beloved children, all of us equally confused and perplexed by the extraordinary chain of events that has destroyed our sublime family harmony. And do not say that it was us, that it was me, that it was the government of the nation, along with its elected deputies, who were the ones to break away from the people. It is true that this morning we withdrew to another city which, from henceforth, will be the country's capital, it is true that we imposed on the city that was but no longer is the capital a rigorous state of siege, which will, inevitably, seriously hamper the smooth functioning of an urban area of such importance and of such large physical and social dimensions, it is true that you are currently besieged, surrounded, confined inside the perimeter of the city, that you cannot leave it, and that if you try, you will suffer the consequences of an immediate armed response, but what you will never be able to say is that it is the fault of those to whom the popular will, freely expressed in successive, peaceful, honest, democratic contests, entrusted the fate of the nation so that we could defend it from all dangers, internal and external. You are to blame, yes, you are the ones who have ignominiously rejected national concord in favor of the tortuous road of subversion and indiscipline and in favor of the most perverse and diabolical challenge to the legitimate power of the state ever known in the history of nations. Do not find fault with us, find fault rather with yourselves, not with those who spoke in my name, I am referring, of course, to the government, who again and again asked you, nay, begged and implored you to abandon your wicked obstinacy, whose ultimate meaning, despite the enormous investigatory efforts set in train by the state authorities, remains to this day impenetrable. For centuries and centuries, you were the head of the country and the pride of the nation, for centuries and centuries, in times of national crisis and collective anxiety, our people were accustomed to turn their eyes to this city, to these hills, knowing that thence would come the remedy, the consoling word, the correct path to the future. You have betrayed the memory of your ancestors, that is the harsh truth that will for ever torment your consciences, yes, stone upon stone, they built the altar of the nation, and, shame on you, you chose to tear it down. With all my soul, I want to believe that your madness will prove a transitory one, that it will not last, I want to think that tomorrow, a tomorrow which I pray to heaven will not be long in coming, that tomorrow remorse will seep gently into your hearts and you will become reconciled with legality and with that root of roots, the national community, returning, like the prodigal son, to the paternal home. You are now a lawless city. You will not have a government to tell you what you should and should not do, how you should and should not behave, the streets will be yours, they belong to you, use them as you wish, there will be no authority to stop you in your tracks and offer you sound advice, but equally, and listen carefully to my words, there will be no authority to protect you from thieves, rapists and murderers, that will be your freedom, and may you enjoy it. You may mistakenly imagine that, guided by your free will and by your every whim, you will be able to organize and defend your lives better than we did using the old methods and the old laws. A very grave mistake on your part. Sooner or later, you will be obliged to find leaders to govern you, if they do not irrupt like beasts out of the inevitable chaos into which you will fall and impose their own laws upon you. Then you will realize the tragic nature of your self-deception. Perhaps you will rebel as you did in the days of authoritarian rule, as you did in the grim days of dictatorship, but do not delude yourselves, you will be put down with equal violence, and you will not be called upon to vote because there will be no elections, or if there are, they will not be free, open and honest like the elections you scorned, and so it will be until the day when the armed forces who, along with myself and the national government, today decided to abandon you to your chosen fate, are obliged to return to liberate you from the monsters you yourselves have engendered. All your suffering will have been futile, all your stubbornness in vain, and then you will understand, too late, that rights only exist fully in the words in which they are expressed and on the piece of paper on which they are recorded, whether in the form of a constitution, a law or a regulation, you will understand and, one hopes, be convinced, that their wrong or unthinking application will convulse the most firmly established society, you will understand, at last, that simple common sense tells us to take them as a mere symbol of what could be, but never as a possible, concrete reality. Casting a blank vote is your irrevocable right, and no one will ever deny you that right, but, just as we tell children not to play with matches, so we warn whole peoples of the dangers of playing with dynamite. I will close now. Take the severity of my warnings not as a threat, but as a cautery for the foul political suppuration that you have generated in your own breast and in which you are steeped. You will only see and hear from me again when you deserve the forgiveness which, despite all, we still wish to bestow on you, I, your president, the government which, in happier times, you elected, and those of our people who remain healthy and pure and of whom you are not at present worthy. Until that day, goodbye, and may the lord protect you. The grave, sad face of the president disappeared and in his place stood the raised flag. The wind shook it furiously about as if it were shaking a lunatic, while the anthem repeated the bellicose chords and the martial accents that had been composed in times of unstoppable patriotic pride, but which now sounded somewhat cracked. The man certainly talks well, said the oldest member of the family, and of course he's quite right when he says children shouldn't play with matches, because, as everyone knows, they'll only pee their beds afterward.
The streets, which, up until then, had been almost deserted, with most of the shops and businesses closed, filled up with people within a matter of minutes. Those who had stayed at home leaned out of the windows to watch the concourse, which is not to say that everyone was heading in the same direction, they resembled, rather, two rivers, one flowing up and one flowing down, and they waved to each other from river to river, as if the city were celebrating, as if it were a local holiday, and, contrary to the fugitive president's ill-intentioned prognostications, there were no thieves or rapists or murderers. Here and there, on some floors of some buildings, the windows remained closed, and, where there were blinds, these were kept grimly drawn, as
if the families who lived there were the victims of a painful bereavement. On those floors, no bright lights had been lit in the early hours, at most, the inhabitants would have peered out from behind their curtains, hearts tight with fear, for the people who lived there had very firm political views, they were the people who had voted, both in the first election and the second, for the parties they had always voted for, the party on the right and the party in the middle, they had no reason now to celebrate, on the contrary, they feared attack by the ignorant masses who were singing and shouting in the streets, feared that the sacrosanct doors of their homes would be kicked in, their family memories besmirched, their silver stolen, Let them sing, they'll be crying soon enough, they said to each other to give themselves courage. As for those who voted for the party on the left, the only reason they are not standing at their windows applauding is because they have already joined the crowds, as evidenced in this very street by the occasional flag which, now and then, as if testing the waters, rises above the fast-flowing river of heads. No one went to work. The newspapers in the kiosks sold out, all of them carried the president's speech on the front page, along with a photograph taken while he was giving it, probably, to judge by the pained expression on his face, at the moment when he said he was speaking with his heart in his hands. Very few wasted time reading about something they knew already, most people were more interested in the views of the newspaper editors, the editorialists, the commentators, or some last-minute interview. The main headlines drew the attention of the curious, they were huge, enormous, others, on the inside pages, were normal size, but they all seemed to have sprung from the brain of the same genius of headline synthesis, allowing one blithely to dispense with reading the news item that followed. The headlines were by turns sentimental, Capital City Orphaned Overnight, ironic, Electoral Bombshell Blows Up In Voters' Faces or Blank Voters Blanked By Government, pedagogical, State Teaches Lesson To Insurrectionist Capital, vengeful, Time For A Settling Of Accounts, prophetic, Everything Will Be Different From Now On or Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again, alarmist, Anarchy Just Around The Corner or Suspicious Maneuvers On Frontier, rhetorical, An Historic Speech For An Historic Moment, fawning, Dignified President Defies Irresponsible Capital, war-like, Army Surrounds City, objective, Withdrawal Of Government Agencies Takes Place Without Incident, radical, City Council Should Assume Total Control, and tactical, Solution Lies In Municipalist Tradition. There were only a few references to the marvellous star, the one with the twenty-seven arms of light, and these were stuck in willy-nilly amongst all the other news, not even graced with a headline, not even an ironic one, not even a sarcastic one, along the lines of And They Complain About The Price Of Electricity. Some of the editorials, while approving of the government's attitude, All Power To Them, urged one of them, dared to express certain doubts about the alleged fairness of the prohibition on leaving the city that had been imposed on the inhabitants, Once again, as always, the just are going to have to pay for the sinners, the honest for the criminals, the worthy men and women of this city who, having scrupulously fulfilled their duty as voters by voting for one of the legally constituted parties that make up the framework of political and ideological options recognized and endorsed by society, now find their freedom of movement restricted because of a freak majority of troublemakers whose one characteristic, some say, is that they don't know what they want, but who, in fact, as we understand it, know perfectly well what they want and are now preparing for a final assault on power. Other editorials went further, calling for the abolition, pure and simple, of the secret ballot and proposing that in future, when the situation returned to normal, as, somehow or other, it was bound to do, every voter should have a record card on which the presiding officer, having first ascertained before the ballot paper was put in the box how the person had voted, would note down, for all legal intents and purposes, both official and personal, that the bearer had voted for this or that party, And which I, the undersigned, hereby declare and confirm to be true. Had such a record card existed, had a legislator, aware of the possibility of the dissolute use of the vote, dared to take that step, bringing together form and content of a totally transparent democratic system, all the people who had voted for the party on the right or the party in the middle would now be packing their bags in order to emigrate to their true homeland, the one that always has its arms wide open to receive those it can most easily clasp to its bosom. Convoys of cars and buses, of minibuses and removal vans, bearing the flags of the different parties and honking rhythmically, p.o.t.r., p.i.t.m., would soon be following the government's example and heading toward the military posts on the frontier, with girls and boys sticking their bottoms out of the windows or yelling at the foot soldiers of the insurrection, You'd better watch your backs, you miserable traitors, You'll get the beating of your life when we come back, you frigging bandits, You rotten sons-of-bitches, or yelling the worst possible insult in the vocabulary of democratic jargon, Illegals, illegals, illegals, which would not, of course, be true, because the people they were abusing would have at home or in their pocket their very own voter's record card, where, ignominiously, as if branded with irons, would be written or stamped I cast a blank vote. Only desperate remedies can cure desperate diseases, concluded the editorialist seraphically.
The Collected Novels of José Saramago Page 315
