José Saramago: The Stone Raft

In an unsigned editorial it was proposed that the two peninsular countries adopt a joint and complementary strategy that would make them the pointer on the scales of world politics, Portugal facing west, toward the United States, Spain turned to the east, toward Europe. A Spanish newspaper, anxious to come up with something equally original, advocated an administrative plan whereby Madrid would become the political center of this entire strategy, on the pretext that the Spanish capital is situated, as it were, at the geometric center of the peninsula, which is not even true if one looks at the map, but there are people who have no qualms about the means used to achieve their objective. The chorus of protests did not come only from Portugal, the autonomous Spanish regions also rebelled against the proposal, which they saw as further proof of Castilian centralism. On the Portuguese side, as one might have expected, there was a sudden revival of interest in the occult and in esoteric sciences, this did not go very far, simply because the situation changed radically, nevertheless it lasted long enough to sell out every copy of Padre António Vieira's History of the Future and The Prophesies of Bandana, as well as Fernando Pessoa's Mensagem, but that goes without saying.

From the standpoint of realpolitik, discussion of the problem in European and American foreign ministries centered on spheres of influence, that is to say on whether, ignoring the question of distance, the peninsula or island should preserve its natural ties with Europe, or whether, without entirely severing them, it should orient itself rather toward the ideals and destiny of the great American nation. With no hope of exerting any clear influence in the matter, the Russians pointed out time and time again that nothing should be decided without their participation in the discussions, and meantime reinforced the fleet that from the outset had been accompanying the errant peninsula under the watchful eye, needless to say, of the fleets of the other powers, the Americans, the British, and the French.

It was within the framework of these negotiations that the United States informed Portugal, in an audience, urgently requested by Ambassador Charles Dickens, with the President of the Republic, that the continuance of a government of national salvation made no sense whatsoever once the circumstances no longer prevailed that had been adduced, In the most dubious fashion, Mr. President, if you will allow me to express an opinion, to justify its constitution. This tactless remark became public indirectly, not because the relevant ministries of the Presidency had made any public announcement, or through any statements made by the Ambassador as he left the Palace of Belém, in fact he simply remarked that his discussions with the President had been very frank and constructive. But that was enough for the members of the governments representing the parties who would inevitably have to go, were the government to be reshuffled or a general election called, to launch an attack on the Ambassador's intolerable meddling. The internal problems of Portugal, they declared, must be solved by the Portuguese, adding with spiteful irony, Just because the Ambassador wrote David Copperfield doesn't entitle him to come and give orders in the land of Camoèns and The Lusiads. At this point, the peninsula, with no warning, started moving again.

Pedro Orce had been right when he said, there at the foot of the Pyrenees, It may have stopped, fine, but it's still trembling, and so as not to be the only one to say so, he had put his hand on Constant's back, the dog was also trembling, as the others were themselves able to confirm, repeating the unique experience of Joaquim Sassa and José Anaiço beneath the Cordovan olive tree, in the arid lands between Orce and Venta Micena. But now, and the shock was general and universal, the movement was neither westward nor eastward, neither to the south nor to the north. The peninsula was turning on itself, widdershins, counterclockwise, that is, which, once made public, immediately caused the Portuguese and the Spaniards to suffer from dizziness, although the speed of rotation was anything but vertiginous. In the face of this decidedly unusual phenomenon, which threatened to jeopardize all the laws of physics, especially the mechanical ones, by which the earth had governed itself, all political negotiations, alliances made behind closed doors or in corridors, and diplomatic maneuvers, whether direct or step by step, were broken off. And we must agree that it could not have been easy to keep calm, when one knew, for example, that the table at the council of ministers, along with the building, the street, the city, the country, and the entire peninsula, was whirling like a turntable going around and around as if in a dream. Those who were more sensitive swore they could feel a circular motion, while admitting that they could not feel the earth itself going around in space. To show what they meant, they stretched out their arms seeking something to hold onto, but they did not always succeed, sometimes they even fell down, ending up on their backs on the ground, where they watched the sky slowly turning, at night the stars and the moon, during the day, with a smoked lens, the sun. Some doctors were of the opinion that these were nothing but manifestations of hysteria.

Obviously, more radical skeptics were in good supply, go on, the peninsula turning around on itself, simply impossible, sliding would be one thing, everybody knows about landslides and what happens to an escarpment when there is a heavy rainfall could also happen to a peninsula even without rain, but all this talk about rotation would imply that the peninsula was wrenching itself from its own axis, not only is such a thing objectively impossible, but it would inevitably cause the central core to snap off, sooner or later, and then we would certainly be adrift with no moorings whatsoever, at the mercy of the whims of fate. These skeptics were forgetting that the rotation might instead resemble that of a plate revolving on top of another, note that this lamellar schist is composed, as the name implies, of thin layers of shale placed one over the other. If the adhesion between two of them should loosen, the one could revolve quite easily on top of the other, thus maintaining, theoretically speaking, a certain degree of union between them that would prevent total separation. That's precisely what's happening, asserted those who defended the theory. And for confirmation, they sent divers once more to the bottom of the sea, as far down as possible into the bowels of the ocean, and with them went the Archimedes, the Cyana, and a Japanese vessel with an unpronounceable name. As a result of all these efforts, the Italian investigator repeated those famous words, he emerged from the water, opened the hatch, and spoke into the microphones of television stations throughout the world, It cannot move and yet it moves. There was no central axis coiled like a rope, there were no layers of shale, yet the peninsula turned majestically in the middle of the Atlantic, and as it turned, it became less and less recognizable, Is this really where we've spent our lives, people asked themselves. The Portuguese coast veered to the southeast and what had formerly been the easternmost point of the Pyrenees was pointing in the direction of Ireland. Observing the peninsula had become an obligatory part of transatlantic commercial flights, although frankly to little advantage, for there the indispensable fixed point to which the movement might be related was missing. In fact, nothing could replace the image captured and transmitted by satellite, the photograph taken from a great altitude that really gave some idea of the magnitude of the phenomenon.

This movement continued for a month. Seen from the peninsula, the universe transformed itself little by little. Every day the sun emerged from a different point on the horizon, and one had to search for the moon and the stars in the sky, their own movement, proceeding around the center of the system of the Milky Way, was no longer enough, now that there was this other movement transforming space into a frenzy of flickering stars, as if the universe were being reorganized from one end to the other, perhaps following the discovery that it had not turned out right the first time around. Until one day the sun set precisely where in normal times it had risen, and then there was no point in saying that it was not true, that appearances were deceiving, that the sun was following its normal path and was incapable of any other. The man in the street simply retorted, Let me just tell you, mister, that the morning sun used to come through my front window and now it comes in at the back, so perhaps you could explain that in simple language. The expert explained it as best he could, he brought out photographs, made drawings, opened a map of the sky, but the pupil could not be persuaded and the lesson ended with him asking the good doctor to please arrange for the rising sun to go back to coming in through his front window. Seeing that he could not convince him with scientific arguments, the expert told him, Don't worry, if the peninsula turns all the way around you will see the sun as before, but the suspicious pupil rejoined, In other words, Mr. Know it-all, you think all this is happening so that things can go back to being the same as before. And in fact they did not.