José Saramago - The Collected Novels of José Saramago

The woman in the shantytown, the one who needed new plates and mugs, asked her husband, So did you see that pottery van, and her husband replied, Yes, I made him stop, but then I let him go, Why, If you’d seen that driver’s face, you would have done the same.

The potter stopped the van, rolled down the windows on both sides and waited for someone to come and rob him. It is not uncommon for certain states of despair, certain of life’s blows, to force their victim into dramatic decisions like this, if not worse ones. There comes a point when the confused or abused person hears a voice saying in his head, Oh well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and, depending on the particular situation in which he finds himself and the place where the situation finds him, he either spends his last bit of money on a lottery ticket, or places on the gaming table the watch he inherited from his father and the silver cigarette case that was a gift from his mother, or bets everything he has on red even though he knows that red has come up five times in a row, or he climbs alone out of the trenches and runs with his bayonet fixed toward the enemy’s machine guns, or he stops this van, rolls down the windows, opens the doors, and waits for the people from the shantytown to attack with their customary clubs, their usual knives, and anything else they deem appropriate to the occasion, If the people at the Center don’t want them, then the robbers might as well have them, was Cipriano Algor’s last thought. Ten minutes passed without anyone approaching to commit the desired armed robbery, a quarter of an hour went by without even a stray dog wandering onto the road to pee against a tire or sniff the van’s contents, and a whole half hour had elapsed before a dirty, evillooking individual came over and asked the potter, Have you got a problem, do you want some help, I can give you a push if you like, it might be the battery. Now given that even the strongest spirits have moments of irresistible weakness, which is when the body fails to behave with the reserve and discretion which the spirit has spent long years teaching it, we should not be surprised that this offer of help, especially coming from a man with every appearance of being a common thief, should so have touched Cipriano Algor’s heart that it brought a tear to his eye, No, thanks very much, he said, but then, just as the helpful Cyrenian was moving off, he jumped out of the van, ran to open the rear door, at the same time shouting, Sir, sir, excuse me, come back. The man stopped, So you do want some help, he asked, No, no, it’s not that, What is it, then, Will you do me a favor. The man came over and Cipriano Algor said, Take these six plates and give them to your wife, it’s a present, and take these six soup plates too, But I didn’t do anything, said the man doubtfully, It doesn’t matter, it’s as if you had, and if you need a water jug, have this one, Well, I could actually do with a water jug at home, Then take it, take it. The potter piled up the plates, the flat ones, then the bowls, then put the latter on top of the former, placed them in the curve of the man’s left arm, and since he was already holding the water jug in his right hand, the beneficiary had no other way of showing his gratitude than proffering the commonplace words thank you, which are as often sincere as they are not, and the surprise of a little bow of the head not at all in keeping with the social class to which he belongs, which just goes to show that we would know far more about life’s complexities if we applied ourselves to the close study of its contradictions instead of wasting so much time on similarities and connections, which should, anyway, be selfexplanatory.

When the man who looked like a highwayman but turned out not to be, or had simply chosen not to be on this occasion, had vanished, somewhat perplexed, back into the shantytown, Cipriano Algor set off again in his van. Not even the sharpest eyes would have noticed any difference in the pressure exerted on the van’s suspension and tires, for, in matters of weight, twelve plates and one earthenware water jug mean about as much to a goods vehicle, even only a medium-sized one, as twelve white rose petals and one red rose petal would mean falling on the head of a happy bride. It was not by chance that the word happy emerged just now, indeed that is the least we can say about the expression on Cipriano Algor’s face, for looking at him, no one would think that the Center had bought only half of his delivery. Unfortunately, two kilometers later, when he entered the Industrial Belt, the memory of that cruel commercial setback returned. The ominous sight of those chimneys vomiting out columns of smoke made him wonder which one of those hideous factories would be producing those hideous plastic lies, cunningly fashioned to look like earthenware, It’s just not possible, he murmured, you can’t copy the sound of it or the weight, and then there’s the relationship between sight and touch which I read about somewhere or other, something about eyes being able to see through the fingers touching the clay, about fingers being able to feel what the eyes are seeing without the fingers actually touching it. And as if that were not torment enough, Cipriano Algor went on to ask himself, thinking of his old kiln at the pottery, how many plates, jars, mugs, and jugs could those wretched machines produce per minute, how many things could they make to replace pitchers and quart pots. The result of these and other questions that remain unrecorded was that the potter’s face once more grew sad and dark, and the whole of the rest of the journey was one long cogitation on the difficult future awaiting the Algor family if the Center were to persist in its new evaluation of products of which the pottery was perhaps only the first victim. All honor to him, though, for he richly deserves it, at no point did Cipriano Algor allow his spirit to be filled with remorse for having been generous to the man who, by rights, if all that has been said about the people in the shantytowns is true, should have robbed him. On the fringe of the Industrial Belt stood a few small, very low-tech factories, which had somehow survived the giant modern factories’ hunger for space and their multiplicity of products, but there they were, and seeing them as he passed by had always been a consolation to Cipriano Algor when, at certain anxious moments of his life, he had started to ponder the future of his profession. They won’t last long, he thought, and this time he meant the small factories, not the pottery profession, but that was only because he had not taken the trouble to reflect for long enough, as often happens, we confidently say that it’s not worth trying to reach any conclusions merely because we decide to stop halfway along the path that would lead us straight to them.

Cipriano Algor drove swiftly through the Green Belt, not glancing even once at the fields, the monotonous sight of those vast expanses of plastic, dull by nature and made dingier by dirt, always had a depressing effect on him, so imagine how it would be today, in his current state of mind, if he were to turn his gaze on that desert. Like someone who had once lifted the blessed tunic of some altar saint in order to find out if it had legs like you and me or was supported by a pair of rough-hewn posts, it had been a long time since the potter had felt tempted to stop his van and go and see for himself if there were real plants growing beneath the coverings and panels, plants that bore fruits one could smell, touch, and bite into, with leaves, tubers, and shoots that one could cook, season, and put on a plate, or if the overwhelming melancholy of what lay outside had contaminated with incurable artificiality what was growing inside, whatever that might be. After the Green Belt, the potter turned off along a secondary road, where there were the few spindly remains of a wood, a few poorly cultivated fields, a large stream containing dark and fetid water and, around a corner, the ruins of three houses with no windows now or doors, their roofs half fallen in and the rooms inside almost devoured by the vegetation that always irrupts out of the rubble as if it had been there, just waiting for that moment, ever since the first trenches were dug for the foundations. The village began a few hundred meters beyond, it consisted of little more than the road that passed through it, the few streets that flowed into it and an irregularly shaped main square slightly to one side, where a disused well, with its water pump and its great iron wheel, stood in the shade of two tall plane trees. Cipriano Algor waved to some men who were standing there talking, but, contrary to his custom when he came back from delivering goods to the Center, he did not stop, he had no idea what he wanted to do at that moment, but he certainly didn’t want to have a chat, even with people he knew. The pottery and the house where he lived with his daughter and his son-in-law were at the other end of the village, out in the country, some distance from the other buildings. When he drove into the village, Cipriano Algor had slowed down, but now he was driving even more slowly, his daughter would just be putting the finishing touches to lunch, it was about that time, What shall I do, shall I tell her now or after we’ve eaten, he was asking himself, Best to do it afterward, I’ll leave the van by the woodshed, since I wasn’t going to do any shopping today, it won’t occur to her to go and see if I’ve brought anything back with me, that way we can eat in peace or, at least, she can eat in peace, I won’t, and then I’ll tell her what happened, or perhaps later on this afternoon, when we’re working, it would be just as bad to find out before lunch as immediately after. The road curved around where the village ended, some way beyond the last building you could see a large mulberry tree, at least ten meters high, and that was where the pottery was. The wine has been poured and we must drink it, said Cipriano Algor with a weary smile, and thought how much better it would be if he could just vomit it up. He swung the van toward the left, up the slight slope that led to the house, and halfway up he sounded the horn three times to announce his arrival, he always did this, and his daughter would think it odd if he failed to do so today.