The World Goes On

by László Krasznahorkai

  He would never become a canteiro, don’t even dream about it, the overseer at the mine told him. Be glad you get four-ten, put your shoulder to the wheel, like the others, and put on some weight, because skin-and-bones kids like you don’t have very bright prospects at the quarry.

  I’m going away, was what drummed inside his head.

  He knew that he would be back, because he knew that there was no place for him elsewhere in the world, but he would go away now, no matter what happened, he would set out and head south.

  He left the line and headed for the quarry’s exit.

  No one called out after him, perhaps no one had even noticed.

  The town lay to the left.

  He had to keep away from houses, because meeting anyone would instantly mess up the whole thing, and so he kept away from them, and taking quick steps past the lower edge of the town he soon found what he was looking for.

  He was looking for Highway 381.

  It ran from Estremoz through the forest to Redondo.

  But he was not trying to get to Redondo.

  He wanted to be on 381.

  It was an asphalt-covered highway, paved in ’61, and since then repaved several times in the eighties, so that you couldn’t find a single crack in the road, it was smooth as a mirror. As small kids they only dared to venture a little ways, as far as the river, and so Ribeira de Terra had somehow become the boundary, as if it were a road sign, thus far and no further under any circumstances.

  It was an asphalt-covered highway and now, after ten, it was practically steaming in the heat—even through the thick soles of his boots he could feel it was hot as hell.

  The dust and the din were the worst. Eight hours solid in the white stone dust, when already after the first half hour this white marble dust completely coated them—not even their eyes could be made out distinctly behind the protective goggles, only the grimy circles created by constant wiping, through which they could barely glimpse each other, and no one bothered anymore to crack the old joke, what’s up, millers, did you lose your way and end up in a quarry?

  No one had seen him, no one passed this way at this hour. He hurried past the intersection of Primeiro de Maio and N4. He was walking on 381 now. The sun blazed with horrific heat. He had ditched the protective helmet, gloves and kerchief back by the quarry’s gate, but the cap with earflaps remained on his head.

  What should he do with it now?

  The noise was just as bad as the dust, there was no escape from it. The caterpillar forklifts, shovel excavators, band saws, the enormous trucks, and giant cranes, those giant cranes! All of them, each and every one, with their horrible howl and clatter, roar and shriek, they came and went, hacking and lifting and lowering in order to lift and lower again, so that they, the ones with wheelbarrows, or as the canteiros and truck drivers called them, the “pedestrians,” never had a moment’s relief.

  The drone of the highway winding toward the Spanish border was audible in the distance, but the boy still wearing his cap and earflaps could not hear the noise. Anyway, his brain was still buzzing with the dreadful din of dump trucks, forklifts, band saws, bulldozers, and giant cranes, those giant cranes! His lungs were filled with the dust of the white marble, but he had long ago given up trying to hawk it up. When they hired him eight months earlier they made it clear to him that there was nothing to be done against the noise and the dust. When he stopped in the doorway on his way out at dawn on that first day and looked back at his mother, all she could say was that it couldn’t be helped, Pedro.

  And there is really nothing else to do, Pedro, you will work in the quarry until you grow old.

  He walked under the overpass, and detoured to the left into the fields so they wouldn’t see him from the quarry, then he returned to the highway to continue walking on 381. His way led past farmhouses, but there was no need to worry that people would see him. At this time of day not a soul stayed at home, everyone was working in the fields.

  He hid the cap under a large stone, not daring to just throw it away. If he came back he would find it there.

  If he came back.

  So far not a trace of a shadow could be seen anywhere, there was nothing to be done about that, but at least he could keep to the shoulder of the road where the heat didn’t burn the soles of his feet so much.

  From here on things began to be different. The farmhouses were left behind, and more and more trees appeared, standing pale under the scorching sun. The noise of the autostrada did not reach this far, but no birdsong could be heard either, obviously the birds must have been taking shelter in the thickets, lest they be toasted within minutes.

  The forest wasn’t far from here, he could see the first eucalyptus trees, and from there things would get better.

  He took a deep gulp of air and was seized by a violent fit of coughing.

  He arrived at the river.

  Practically no one ever used Route 381, hardly any of the locals did, since people from Redondo had no reason to be in Estremoz nor did those from Estremoz have any business in Redondo, whatever traffic there was consisted of a few tourists, mostly ones who had lost their way in Evora or on the way to Spain, other than these no one, ever; everybody knew that the road was in fact superfluous, they knew this in Estremoz and they knew it in Redondo, but of course no one had mentioned this in ’61 before it was built, when they could have said that it was not needed, they said that it was needed, how would it not be needed? and so it was built, the asphalt a perfect job, and ever since then hardly any cars ever drove on it, maybe one a day, and now, as Pedro looked up at the sun, you could be certain that not a single car would pass this way, no one went anywhere in this wretched heat, it had always been like this, you could count on it now, and so he did, no one approached from up ahead and no one came from behind, I am alone and will remain alone, now he could feel the road beginning to rise and head uphill, soon he would reach Serra de Ossa, at least the foothills; actually he hadn’t the slightest idea where Serra de Ossa began, he had never gone this far on 381, and of course he had never been to Redondo, but he had always known about the forest, sometimes when he woke in the middle of the night he would hear it in the distance, just as he did now, more and more distinctly, although the birds remained silent, the forest still had its own kind of silence that one could hear, a sustained mute sound from the direction of the south, of course not really a sound, nothing but an undercurrent, tidings, a sigh that never ends, coming from the south, where Serra de Ossa lay somewhere in that direction, where the world ended, and now he was heading that way.

  He wasn’t expecting anything to happen to him once he arrived up on Serra de Ossa, no, not at all, in fact Pedro was certain that nothing would ever happen to him, nor had he been longing to come here, he had simply known all along that he would come here once, that he would seek out this place, and go down the length of 381, and now the time for this has arrived, the precise moment had been when he lifted the slab of marble from the wheelbarrow and placed it on top of the stack, that was when he thought, well then, time to put this wheelbarrow down, put it down and set out on 381.

  So he had put down the wheelbarrow and here he was, winding his way uphill, he trudged on in the torrid heat, keeping off the asphalt to avoid burning the soles of his feet, staying on the narrow strip between the asphalt and the scrub that grew alongside the road.

  He didn’t hate the quarry, he did not hate anything. He had no expectations, he had no desire for anything, nor did he hope for anything. He accepted things as they were. He had to put up with the dust, had to put up with the noise, he had to pull on those coarse gloves, push that wheelbarrow, shuffle along in line, lift and then put down the slab of marble that at first had seemed unliftable, do all that and look on at the screaming progress of cutting blade in stone. All of that he endured without questioning and without revolt, and he considered all of it as the way things were, inevitable.
Nothing ever cheered him up, nor did he feel melancholy either, he saw things as tolerable and therefore all right. When he closed his eyes in bed at night, and tried to imagine the world, the world too appeared to be covered with dust: everything white, everything stiflingly white. Once, just before sleep overcame him, he imagined that the world was just like himself and the others at the quarry: it was only a ghost. He never had any dreams.

  Now the first sounds of birdsong reached his ears. He was walking at a high elevation, most likely he had been on Serra de Ossa for quite a while now. The parched eucalyptus trees standing on both sides of the road still had some leafage, so he abruptly left the road, found an older tree, and dropped to the ground. He propped his back against the peeling tree trunk. He was drenched in perspiration. The birds fell silent.

  Estremoz Crème is the world’s finest white marble. Although in his childhood he had heard canteiros say that this marble had to be appreciated on the first day, he had never understood what they meant. Then when they hired him, and his first day of work arrived, he was so intimidated by everything that he was supposed to learn all at once, and he had to muster so much of his strength in order not to collapse every hour from exhaustion, that it never occurred to him to pause in front of a slab for the sole purpose of seeing for himself what made it the most beautiful marble in the world. And anyway, each moment he felt himself watched by the supervisor, and wouldn’t have dared to take a single step without the man’s authorization. Estremoz Crème became for him another piece of stone, an anonymous chunk of stone he had to struggle with again and again, a hundred, a thousand times, day after day. The overseer’s eyes were always on him.

  A terrible thirst began to torment him.

  He scrambled to his feet and set out across the forest, to see if he could find one of the innumerable streams he had heard were on Serra de Ossa. He didn’t want to get very far away from the road, and seeing the rough ground parched and crisscrossed by many fissures, he soon realized the search was hopeless. He stopped, looked around, but saw nothing; it was obvious he would not find water among the eucalyptus trees. He walked back to the road. Sooner or later here in the woods alongside 381 he was bound to find a farmhouse, a shack, perhaps a hunting lodge, anything, where he would be able to drink his fill. He quickened his steps but fairly soon felt tired. After all he had been walking for hours in the blistering sun. He might as well sit down again. But thirst was more powerful than fatigue, that damned thirst, it must have been because he was so preoccupied with it. Yes, he needed to quench his thirst.

  How far could it be to Redondo?

  He passed another turn in the road, then another and another.

  Redondo was at least another two hours away.

  If not three.

  He stared hard at the next bend in the road and resolved that when he reached it he would look for a shaded spot and rest a while.

  But after he reached the bend he did not sit down, he merely slowed down his pace somewhat. He pivoted his head and stopped. He had heard something before he saw it.

  He hardly believed his eyes.

  A barely noticeable trickle of water gurgled among the rocks on the hillside, a thin little rill of water running down to the roadside where it almost instantly evaporated in the sun.

  It was a marvelous sensation, to be drinking at last.

  It would have been untrue to claim that he did not know what Estremoz Crème was like, but had someone asked him, he would have barely been able to stammer out a single word. Perhaps he would have said: it was white. However on rare occasions, when in the middle of summer he climbed up on the roof of the house and lay down, and, blinded by the sun, he closed his eyes, then, at those times, even though he didn’t know what he was seeing, nonetheless he could see it. It was like a soft blanket of snow, or as if colorless flaming clouds were billowing on its surface. But he knew that in reality it was nothing, a mirage.

  He could tell by the air that he was now quite high up on the mountain. A forest of cork oaks had replaced the eucalyptus. On the uphill side of the road was a wall of rock and on the other side, on a slope descending toward lesser valleys, cork oaks were everywhere, their bark stripped to the height of a man. Twisted, gnarly trunks with barely any foliage above. Should he keep walking? Which way? To the left he saw a path, and he took it, leaving the road.

  Or was it really a path? Evidently no one had used it recently, nor were there many signs of its ever seeing much traffic in the past. Perhaps, he thought, it was a path, because to the right, on the sharply rising mountainside, four or five old eucalyptus trees stood in a row, and they seemed to indicate a way and a direction. To the left prickly succulents grew out of the mountainside and hung down to the ground. The wall of rock cast a shadow.

  After another hundred steps he was forced to clamber on all fours. The path, if indeed it was a path, led to some kind of summit. He advanced with head down, extremely tired. Head lowered, in the cool of the wall of rock’s shade, he felt empty and exhausted. What could be waiting for him up ahead? Another springlet? The previous one was now far behind, he could use another drink of water.

  He sensed it before he actually raised his head.

  He sensed something waiting up ahead. The path turned sharply to the left, and the sharp bend concealed it. He knew that after rounding the bend he would see what it was. It happened very quickly.

  An enormous building loomed in front of him, up on the heights.

  One could not grasp its dimensions right away.

  It was too huge, way too huge, but completely blended into the landscape.

  It seemed as if it had sprung from the rock, burgeoned like the vegetation that had almost completely overgrown it.

  Or as if it had come into being simultaneously with the forest.

  Unable to move, he stood there and stared, he had never seen anything like this.

  The Pousada back home in Estremoz would have been dwarfed next to it.

  He had never heard about this.

  What should he do now?

  He started to dust off the work clothes he was wearing, but instantly created such a cloud of dust that he quickly stopped. He eyed the arch over the entrance, and the vacant niches of the bell tower up above, the narrow embrasures—he dared to view only the details, avoiding the whole. The whole thing was really too vast.

  Why had no one ever spoken about this?

  He vaguely recalled hearing about a monastery, a convento hidden deep in Serra de Ossa, but that should have been much farther away, below Redondo. And Redondo was still so far away. This could not be the convento. But then what could it be?

  He took one timid step forward.

  Nothing happened.

  Soon he realized that he had nothing to be afraid of: there was not a soul here.

  His courage returned.

  The heavy gate wasn’t locked, it was easy to get in.

  Why had they abandoned such a . . . such a beautiful palace?

  And who had abandoned it?

  Holding his breath he entered the first hall. This was no vestibule, but a great hall with a high vaulted ceiling, the flooring made of dark slabs of marble from the mine at Borba, with deeply recessed windows, and running along the entire length of the walls at a height of about a meter and a half were a series of wondrously beautiful painted tiles depicting saints and landscapes and scenes with inscriptions, none of which said anything to Pedro.

  He entered the next hall, and the next, and the next after that, a rapturous look frozen on his face. Everywhere he saw those saints and landscapes and scenes and inscriptions painted in cobalt blue on the walls and everywhere he saw the floors of dark marble from the Borba mine.

  Maybe he was dreaming for the first time in his life.

  But barely anything was left intact. Many of the tiles had fallen and lay broken on the floor. The walls and the once elaboratel
y painted ceilings were fusty with mildew. The door frames buckled, the doors had rotted and crumbled into fragments that lay scattered all over the floor. The windows’ external shutters hung in tatters. He felt drafts here and there, but the pervasive smell of moldering decay defied these occasional gusts of air. The devastation was universal.

  The palace lay in ruins.

  The palace?

  In fact it was an enormous heap of ruins.

  In a daze he wandered from one hall to another. He stepped out into an enclosed square courtyard completely overrun with weeds, then he reentered the building and went up a broad stairway to the floor above, and for a spell he was once again immobilized by stupefaction, for not only had he never seen, but he could never have imagined a corridor of such length. To top it all, this corridor at its center was intersected by another one. At the end of each corridor light poured in through a large window, but this brightness sufficed to light up only a few meters, all else lay in darkness or a dim half-light . . . Cells opened from the corridors—that is, some did, and quite a few others he found wouldn’t open when he tried to push the door, as if someone had nailed them shut from the inside.

  And everywhere, no matter where he roamed, upstairs or on the ground floor, he saw these fantastic azulejos, these wondrous walls of tiles! In one place he recognized Jesus Christ carrying the Cross, at another, he saw the Angel of Annunciation and the Virgin Mother, but in most cases he could not tell what was depicted along this seemingly endless succession, as one picture followed another with apparently no end in sight, an almost countless number had been painted on these tiles, as if in this vast palace they had intended to narrate everything that had ever happened in the history of humankind from the beginning until now, everything, and he could see it all, his eyes were already dazzled, overwhelmed by all those blue saints and scenes and landscapes and inscriptions, although it was quite clear to him that even though they were telling their stories, each tile its own story, narrating everything that has happened from the beginning until our day, they were not addressed to him, they were not speaking to him.