José Saramago - The Stone Raft

They are sitting on the ground, in their midst can be heard the nasal twang of a radio that must have weak batteries, and the announcer is making the following statement, According to the latest measurements, the velocity of the peninsula's displacement has stabilized at around seven hundred and fifty meters per hour, more or less eighteen kilometers per day, that may not seem a lot, but if we work it out carefully, that means each minute we move away twelve and a half meters from Europe, and while we should avoid giving way to panic and despair, the situation is truly worrying. And it would be even more worrying if you were to say that we are talking about just over two centimeters and a bit per second, remarked José Anaiço, who was quick at making mental calculations, but incapable of carrying the computations out to tenths and hundredths, Joaquim Sassa asked him to be quiet, he wanted to listen to the announcer, and it was worth his while, According to the latest reports we have received, a great crack has appeared between La Línea and Gibraltar, therefore it is feared, bearing in mind the irreversible outcome of the fractures so far, that El Peñón may end up isolated in the middle of the sea, if this should happen there is no point in blaming the British, we are to blame, yes, Spain is to blame for not having known how to recover in good time this sacred piece of the fatherland, now it is too late, El Peñón itself is abandoning us. This man is an artist with words, said Pedro Orce, but the announcer had already changed his tone, had overcome his emotion. In Great Britain, the Prime Minister's office has issued a statement whereby the government of Her Majesty the Queen reaffirms what is referred to as British rights over Gibraltar, which have now been confirmed, we are quoting, by the incontrovertible fact that El Peñón or The Rock has detached itself from Spain, and all the negotiations that were proceeding toward an eventual, if somewhat problematic, transfer of sovereignty are thus unilaterally and definitively suspended, There are still no signs of the British Empire's imminent end, quipped José Anaiço. In a statement read in the House of Commons, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition demanded that the north side of the island be fortified without delay, so as to transform the steep rock all around its perimeter into the wall of an unassailable fortress, proudly isolated in the middle of the now widened Atlantic, as a symbol of the enduring power of Albion. They're mad, Pedro Orce muttered, contemplating the heights of the Sierra de Sagra rising before him. For its part, the government, attempting to reduce the political impact of any claim, replied that Gibraltar, in its new geostrategic conditions would continue to be one of the jewels in the crown of Her Britannic Majesty, a formula that like the Magna Carta has the magnificent virtue of satisfying everyone, this ironic conclusion was provided by the announcer, who took his leave by saying, We'll be back with more news in an hour's time, barring any unforeseen circumstances. A flock of starlings flew past like a hurricane passing over a bare mountain, vruuuuuuuuuu, Are they yours, asked Joaquim Sassa, and, without even turning around, José Anaiço replied, They're mine, he ought to know, for ever since that first day, amid the green fields of Ribatejo, they have scarcely ever been apart, only to eat and sleep, a man does not nourish himself on worms and scattered grains and a bird sleeps in the trees without any bedclothes. The flock flew around in a wide circle, fluttering, wings trembling, beaks drinking in the air and sunlight, the few clouds, white and piled high, navigated through space like galleons, the men, these like all others, looked at the different things, and, as usual, did not really understand them.

It certainly was not to listen to a transistor radio in one another's company that Pedro Orce, Joaquim Sassa, and José Anaiço gathered here, having traveled from such different places. For the last three minutes we have known that Pedro Orce lives in the village that lies hidden behind these hills, we have known from the outset that Joaquim Sassa came from the shores of northern Portugal, and José Anaiço, we now know for certain, was strolling through the fields of Ribatejo when he came across the starlings, and we would have guessed as much had we paid sufficient attention to the details of the landscape. What remains to be known is how the three men met one another and why they are hidden away here under an olive tree, unique in this spot, among rare and unruly dwarf trees that cling to the white soil, the sun is reflected on all around the plains, the air shimmers, this is the heat of Andalusia, and although we are surrounded by mountains, we suddenly become conscious of these material things, we have entered the real world, or it has forced its way in.

If one thinks about it, there is no beginning for things and persons, everything that began one day had begun before, the history of this sheet of paper, for example, just to take an item at hand, in order to be true and complete, would have to date back to the origins of the world, the plural has been used here deliberately instead of the singular, yet even so, we could ask whether those first origins were not simply points of transition, sliding ramps, this poor head of ours, subject to such exertions, an admirable head, nevertheless, which for all sorts of reasons is capable of going mad, except for this one.

There is, then, no beginning, but there was a moment when Joaquim Sassa left the spot where he found himself, on a beach in northern Portugal, perhaps Afife, that beach with the enigmatic stones, or better still A-Ver-o-Mar, which means Seaview, to arrive at the most perfect name imaginable for a beach, poets and novelists could not have invented anything better. From there Joaquim Sassa came, having heard that a certain Pedro Orce from Spain could feel the ground shaking beneath his feet when there were no tremors, this is the natural curiosity of someone who threw a heavy stone into the sea with a strength he didn't possess, all the more so since the peninsula wrenched itself away from Europe without any shock or pain, like a hair quietly falling, simply because it was willed by God, as the saying goes. He set out in his old Citroën Deux Chevaux, he did not say good-bye to his family, alas, for he has no family, nor did he give any explanation to the manager of the office where he works. This is vacation time, you can come and go as you please, now they don't even ask to see your passport at the frontier, you simply show your identity card and the peninsula is yours. On the seat, beside him, he carries a transistor radio, distracts himself by listening to music, the prattling of the announcers, sweet and soothing like an acoustic cradle, suddenly irritating, that was in normal times, now the ether is rippling with febrile words, the news coming in from the Pyrenees, the exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea, Napoleon's retreat. Here on the roads of the interior, there is little traffic, nothing in comparison to the Algarve, all that bustle and turmoil, or with Lisbon, and the highways going north and south, Pórtela airport looks now like a besieged stronghold, an invasion of ants, iron filings attracted by a magnet. Joaquim Sassa rolls peacefully through the shady lanes of La Beira, heading for a village called Orce, in the Province of Granada, on Spanish soil, where the aforesaid man lives who spoke on television. I'm going there to see if there is any connection between what happened to me and this business of someone who can feel the ground shaking under his feet, once you start imagining things, you start putting two and two together, more often than not you were mistaken, sometimes you hit the nail on the head, a stone thrown into the sea, the earth shaking, a cordillera that has split open. Joaquim Sassa is also traveling amid mountains, even if they can't be compared with those Titans, but suddenly he feels uneasy. Suppose the same thing were to happen here, suppose A Estrela were to crack, the Mondego to sink into the bowels of the earth leaving the autumn poplars without a mirror in which to reflect themselves, his thoughts have become poetic, the danger has passed.