José Saramago - The Stone Raft

Maria Guavaira and Joaquim Sassa set off, the animal trotting in front, sniffing out the winds and investigating the shadows. The expedition is faintly absurd, chasing off in search of a horse. A mule would do just as well, Maria Guavaira had said, without knowing if such an animal existed within five leagues, perhaps it would be easier to find an ox, but you don't hitch an ox and a horse to a wagon together, or a donkey, with such a heavy load it would be like trying to make something strong from combined weakness, something that happens only in parables, like the one about the rushes we quoted earlier. They walked and walked, left the road whenever they glimpsed any dwellings or farmhouses amid the fields, if there were any horses around that is where they would find them, for what we need are beasts of burden rather than horses bred for show or for bullfighting. The moment they approached dogs started barking, but they were soon quiet again, we will never know what secret powers the Dog possessed to make even the loudest and most excitable watchdog suddenly fall silent, and not because some wild beast from the underworld had savaged it, in that case there would have been signs of a struggle, cries of pain, the silence is not sepulchral simply because no one is dying.

By the early hours of morning, Maria Guavaira and Joaquim Sassa could scarcely lift their feet, they were so tired, he had said, We must go on searching, and they searched so hard that they found rather than discovered what they were looking for, and it came about in the simplest way imaginable. Dawn was already breaking, the night sky to the east had turned a deep blue, when they heard a muffled neigh coming from a hollow by the road, a sweet miracle, I'm here, they went to look and found a tethered horse, it was not the Good Lord who had put it there to enhance His catalog of miracles, but the beast's rightful owner, whom the blacksmith had instructed, Put this ointment on the sore and leave the horse out to catch the morning dew, do this for three consecutive nights starting on a Friday, and if the horse isn't cured, I'll give you back your money and stake my reputation. A fettered horse, unless one has a sharp knife to cut the rope, cannot be carried off on one's shoulders, but Maria Guavaira knows how to deal with animals, and despite the beast's nervousness at being handled by a stranger, she succeeded in coaxing it into the shadows of the trees, where at the risk of being trampled or receiving a mighty kick, she managed to untie the awkward knot. Usually in such cases one makes a simple knot, one easily undone, but perhaps that's a skill people do not practice in these parts. Fortunately, the horse also realized that they were trying to free it, and freedom is always welcome, even when we're facing the unknown.

They returned by roads well off the beaten track, trusting more than ever in the dog's ability to foresee anything suspicious coming in their direction, and in its effectiveness in dealing with any inopportune visitors. When day broke, already remote from the scene of the crime, they began meeting people in the fields and along the roads, but no one appeared to recognize the horse, and even if they did, perhaps they would not have given it another thought, for they made such a lovely and innocent picture, the damsel sidesaddle on the palfrey, to put it in medieval terms, and the knight-errant walking ahead, laboriously leading the horse by the reins they had fortunately remembered to bring. The mastiff completed this heavenly vision, which some mistook for a dream, others as a sign of the change of life, the former and latter both unaware that all they are seeing go past are two wicked horse thieves, how true that appearances can deceive, what is generally overlooked is that they can deceive twice, perhaps a reason for trusting first impressions and inquiring no further. That's why some will be claiming before the day is out, Why, this morning I saw Amadís and Oriana, she on horseback, he on foot, and they had a dog with them, It can't have been Amadís and Oriana, for they were never seen with a dog, Well, I saw it, and that's a fact, one witness is as good as a hundred, But in the lives, loves, and adventures of those two, no dog is ever mentioned, Then let their stories be rewritten, and as often as may prove necessary until nothing has been left out. Nothing, Well, almost nothing.

They reached the encampment early that evening and were received with much hugging and laughter. The gray horse looked askance at the sorrel, which was gasping for breath. It has a sore on its back that is almost dry, they've obviously rubbed on some ointment and left it outdoors for three nights, starting on a Friday, an infallible remedy.

As people return to their homes and life gradually returns, as one is wont to say, to normal, the arguments rage on among the scientists about possible causes for the peninsula's deviation at the very last minute, just when it appeared that nothing could avert the catastrophe. The theories vary, nearly all of them irreconcilable, thus contributing mathematically to the irreducibility of experts locked in controversy.

A first theory considers the peninsula's new course to be entirely random, forming as it does a perfect right angle with the previous one, and thus rules out any explanation that might assume, shall we say, an act of volition. Besides, to whom could such an act be attributed, since no one is likely to suggest that the incessant swarming, on an enormous mass of stone and earth, of tens of millions of people could somehow be added or multiplied to engender an intelligence or power capable of acting with a precision one can only describe as diabolical.

Another theory maintains that the peninsula's advance or, to put it more accurately, its progression, and we shall soon see why this is the better word, will result time and time again in another right angle, which ipso facto allows for the amazing possibility that the peninsula will return to its point of departure after a succession or, we repeat, progression of displacements, which after a certain point could be less than a millimeter in length, until it finally settles in precisely the right place.

The third theory advances the existence on the peninsula of a magnetic field, or some other force, capable on approaching an alien body of sufficient volume of unleashing an aversive process of a rather special nature, since as we have seen the aversive motion does not reverse the direction of the original movement, but is instead essentially a skid, to borrow a mundane example from the familiar realm of the automobile, but what determines whether this should be to the north or to the south is something the experts forgot to consider.

Finally, a fourth and more heterodox theory has recourse to what it terms metapsychic powers, affirming that the peninsula was diverted from collision by a vector formed in less than a tenth of a second from the concentration of the stricken population's sheer terror and the desire for salvation. This explanation gained wide popularity mainly because its author, in his efforts to make the theory accessible to simple minds, borrowed an example from physics and demonstrated how the incidence of solar rays on a biconvex lens causes those rays to converge on a focal point, resulting, as one would expect, in heat, combustion, and fire, the intensifying effect of the lens having an obvious parallel in the power of the collective mind, through which so many chaotic individual thoughts are stimulated, concentrated, and worked up in a moment of crisis to a state of paroxysm. The incongruity of this explanation troubled no one, on the contrary, many people began proposing that all problems concerning man's psyche, spirit, soul, will, and creation should henceforth be explained in physical terms, even if only by simple analogy or dubious inference. The theory is even now being studied and developed with a view to applying its fundamental principles to daily life, in particular to the functioning of political parties and competitive sports, to cite two familiar examples.