José Saramago - The Stone Raft

Let us spare ourselves the details, these will one day be divulged for the enlightenment of all those interested in submarine life, for the time being shrouded in the utmost secrecy they are to be found in ships' logs, confidential reports, and various records, some in code. All we shall say is that detailed examination of the continental platform yielded no results, no new crack was found, no abnormal friction was picked up by the microphones. This initial hypothesis having failed, examination of the depths was the next step, and the cranes lowered instruments built to withstand high pressures, to scan and search the depths of the silent waters, but these found nothing. The research submarine Archimedes, a jewel of technology French-manned and French-owned, descended to the maximum peripheral depths, from the euphatic to the pelagic zone, and from there to the bathypelagic zone, deployed lamps, pincers, bathometers, sounding lines of various kinds, scanned the subaquatic horizon with its panoramic sonar, to no avail. The vast versants, the steep escarpments, the vertical precipices were exposed in their somber majesty, in their unspoilt beauty, the instruments registered continuously, with much clicking and switching on and off of lights, the ascending and descending currents, they photographed the fish, the shoals of sardines, the colonies of hake, the brigades of tuna and bonito, the flotillas of mackerel, the armadas of swordfish, and if the Archimedes had been carrying in its belly a laboratory equipped with the necessary reagents, solvents, and other chemical paraphernalia, it would have been able to identify the elements dissolved in the waters of the ocean, namely, in diminishing order in terms of quantity, and for the cultural benefit of the masses who have not the faintest idea how much exists in the sea where they swim, chlorine, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, potassium, bromine, carbon, strontium, boron, silicon, fluorine, argon, nitrogen, phosphorus, iodine, barium, iron, zinc, aluminum, lead, tin, arsenic, copper, uranium, nickel, manganese, titanium, silver, tungsten, gold, such riches, dear God, and with all the things we lack on terra firma, the only thing we cannot trace is the crack that would explain the phenomenon, which does exist, after all, and is plain for all to see. In desperation, a North American expert, and one of the most distinguished, went so far as to proclaim before the winds and the horizon, standing on the deck of the hydrographic ship, I hereby declare that the peninsula cannot possibly be moving, whereupon an Italian expert, much less knowledgeable but armed with a historic and scientific precedent, muttered, but not so quietly that he could not be heard by that providential Being who hears all things, Eppur si muove. Their researchers empty-handed and chapped by all that salt, humiliated and frustrated, the governments simply announced that under the auspices of the United Nations they had carried out an investigation of possible changes in the habitat of the ichthyic species brought about by the peninsula's dislocation. It was not the mountain that had conceived a mouse, but rather the ocean that had given birth to a tiny sardine.

The travelers heard this news as they were leaving Lisbon but did not consider it important, just one more report among others pertaining to the separation of the peninsula, which itself seemed to be of no great importance. A person can get used to anything, as can nations with even greater ease and speed, when all is said and done it is as if we were now traveling in an immense ship, so big that it would even be possible to live aboard for the rest of one's life without ever seeing the prow or the stern, the peninsula was not a ship when it was still attached to Europe and there were still plenty of people who knew no country other than that of their birth, so tell me, if you please, what's the difference. Now that Joaquim Sassa and Pedro Orce appear to have escaped at last from the obsessive prying of the scientists and there is nothing more to fear from the authorities, they can return to their respective homes, and José Anaiço too, for the starlings have unexpectedly lost interest in him, but the apparition, so to speak, of this woman has sent everything back to square one, this being fairly characteristic of women, although not always in so radical a manner. It was after a meeting in that same park where Joana Carda and José Anaiço had been the day before that the four of them decided, after reexamining the facts, to make the journey together that will take them to the spot marked with a line on the ground, one of those lines we have all had to make in life, but one with singular features, to judge from the agent and witness, coincidently one and the same person. Joana Carda had still not revealed the name of the place or even that of the nearest city, but merely indicated the general direction, We'll take the highway north, then I'll show you how to get there. Pedro Orce had taken José Anaiço discreetly aside to ask him if he thought it was a good idea to set out like this, blindly falling in with the whims of an eccentric woman with a stick in her hand, suppose this were a snare, a plot to kidnap them, a cunning ruse, On whose part, José Anaiço wanted to know, That 1 can't tell you, perhaps they want to take us to the laboratory of some mad scientist, as you see in films, some Frankenstein or other, Pedro Orce replied smiling, No wonder people are always talking about the Andalusian imagination, it doesn't take much water to start boiling, José Anaiço commented, It's not because there isn't much water, it's because there's so much fire, Pedro Orce replied, Forget it, José Anaiço concluded, what must be, will be, and they rejoined the others, who had started a discussion more or less in this vein, I don't know how it happened, the stick was lying on the ground, 1 picked it up and drew a line, Did it ever occur to you that it might be a magic wand, It seemed rather big for a magic wand, and I've always heard it said that they are made of shimmering gold and crystal, with a star on top, Did you know it was an elm branch, I know very little about trees but in this case I'm sure a matchstick would have produced the same effect, Why do you say that, What has to be, has to be, and that's something you can't fight, Do you believe in fate, I believe in what must be, Then you're just like José Anaiço, said Pedro Orce, he also believes in fate. The morning, with a light wind that blew like a playful mouthful of air, gave little promise of a warm day, Shall we go, José Anaiço asked, Let's go, they all replied, including Joana Carda who had come to look for them.

Life is full of little episodes that seem unimportant, while others at a certain moment absorb all our attention, when we reappraise them later, in the light of their consequences, we find that our memory of the latter has faded while the former have come to seem decisive or, at least, a link in a chain of successive and meaningful events, to give the example one expects, there will not be any frenetic loading and unloading, apparently so much to be expected when the luggage of four passengers is packed into a car as small as Deux Chevaux. This tricky operation engages everyone's attention, each of them makes some suggestion or proposal, tries to lend a hand, but the main question latent in all this, which may well determine the final constellation of the four people in the car, is at whose side Joana Carda will travel. That Joaquim Sassa should drive Deux Chevaux seems right, on the first leg of a journey a car should always be driven by its owner, this is an undisputed fact that bespeaks prestige, prerogative, a sense of possession. The alternative driver, when the right moment comes, will be José Anaiço, since Pedro Orce, not so much because of his age but because he lives in a terrain disturbed by excavations and his job keeps him behind a counter, has never ventured into the complex mechanics of a steering wheel or gearshift, and it is rather soon to be asking Joana Carda if she knows how to drive. In the light of these details, it seems inevitable that these two should travel in the back seat, with the pilot and copilot logically seated in front. But Pedro Orce is Spanish, Joana Carda is Portuguese, neither of them speaks the other's language, and besides they've only just met, later on, when they've had time to become acquainted, things will be different. The seat beside the driver, although considered by the superstitious and proved by the statistics to be the dead man's seat, is generally regarded as a place of honor and should therefore be offered to Joana Carda, putting her on Joaquim Sassa's right, with the other two men behind, and they should not have much difficulty understanding each other after sharing so many experiences. But the elm branch is much too big to go in front, and Joana Carda has made it clear that nothing will induce her to part with it. So, there being no alternative, Pedro Orce will sit in front for two explicable reasons, each more excellent than the other, first, as we have already said, because it is a place of honor, second, because Pedro Orce is the oldest person here, the one closest to death, on account of what we term, with black humor, the nature of life. But what really counts, more than this twofold reasoning, is that Joana Carda and José Anaiço want to ride together in the back seat, and by means of gestures, pauses, and feigned distractions they've managed it. Let us be seated, then, and get on our way.