Jose Saramago - Seeing

The council leader walked back to where he had parked his car, he was pleased, at least he had managed to warn one person, if the man passed the word on, then in a matter of hours, the whole city would be on the alert, ready for whatever might happen, I'm clearly not in my right mind, he thought, the man won't say anything to anyone, he's not a fool like me, well, it's not foolishness exactly, the fact that I felt a threat I'm incapable of defining is my problem, not his, I should just take his advice and go home, any day during which we've been offered a piece of good advice can never be considered to have been wasted. He got into his car and phoned his office to say that he wouldn't be going back to the town hall. He lived in a street in the center, not far from the overground metro station that served a large part of the eastern sector of the city. His wife, who is a surgeon, will not be at home, she's on night duty at the hospital, and as for their two children, the boy is in the army, he might even be one of the men defending the frontier with a heavy machine-gun at the ready and a gas mask hanging round his neck, and the girl works abroad as a secretary-cum-interpreter for an international organization, of the sort that always build their vast, luxurious headquarters in the most important cities, important politically speaking, of course. She, at least, will have benefited from having a father well placed in the official system of favors received and paid back, made and returned. Since even the very best advice is, at best, only ever half-obeyed, the council leader did not go to bed. He looked through the papers he'd brought home with him, made decisions about some of them and put others aside for further examination. When supper time approached, he went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, but found nothing that he fancied eating. His wife had prepared something for him, she wouldn't let him go hungry, but the effort of setting the table, heating up the food and then washing the dishes seemed to him tonight a superhuman one. He left the house and went to a restaurant. When he had sat down at a table and while he was waiting for his food to come, he phoned his wife. How's work, he asked her, Oh, not too bad, how about you, Oh, I'm fine, just a bit anxious, Well, in the current situation, I hardly need ask you why, No, it's more than that, a kind of inner shudder, a shadow, a bad omen, Hm, I had no idea you were superstitious, There's a time for everything, Where are you, I can hear voices, In a restaurant, I'll go home afterward, or perhaps I'll drop in and see you first, being council leader opens many doors, But I might be in the operating theater and I'm not sure how long I'll be, All right, I'll think about it, lots of love, And to you too, Loads, Tons. The waiter brought him his first course, Here you are, sir, enjoy your meal. He was just raising his fork to his mouth when an explosion shook the whole building, the glass in the windows inside and out shattered, tables and chairs were overturned, people were screaming and groaning, some were injured, others were stunned by the blast, others were trembling with fright. The council leader was bleeding from a cut to his face caused by a piece of glass. The restaurant had obviously been hit by the shock wave from an explosion. It must have been in the metro station, sobbed a woman struggling to get to her feet. Pressing a napkin to his wound, the council leader ran out into the street. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet, up ahead rose a thick column of black smoke, he thought he could even see the glow of flames, It happened, it's at the station, he thought. He had discarded the napkin when he realized that holding his hand to his head was slowing him down, now the blood was running freely down his face and neck and soaking into his shirt collar. Wondering if the service would still be working, he stopped for a moment to dial the emergency number on his mobile phone, but the nervous-sounding voice that answered told him that the incident had already been reported, It's the council leader here, a bomb has exploded in the main overground station in the eastern part of the city, send all the help you can, firemen, civil defense people, scouts, if there are any, nurses, ambulances, first-aid equipment, whatever you have to hand, oh, and another thing, if there is some way of finding out where any retired police officers live, call them too and ask them to come and help, The firemen are already on their way, sir, we're doing everything we can do. He rang off and started running again. Other people were running alongside him, some overtook him, his legs felt like lead and it was as if his lungs were refusing to breathe the thick, malodorous air, and a pain, a pain that rapidly fixed itself in his trachea, kept getting worse and worse. The station was about fifty meters away now, the gray, grubby smoke, illuminated by the fire, rose up in furious tangled skeins. How many dead will there be inside, who planted the bomb, the council leader was asking himself. The sirens of the fire engines could be heard getting closer now, the mournful wailing, more like someone asking for help than bringing it, grew shriller and shriller, at any moment now they will come hurtling round one of these corners. The first vehicle appeared as the council leader was pushing his way through the crowd of people who had rushed to see the disaster, I'm the council leader, he said, I'm the leader of the city council, let me through, please, and he felt painfully foolish having to repeat this over and over, aware that the fact of being council leader would not open all doors to him, indeed, inside, there were people for whom the doors of life had closed once and for all. Within minutes, great jets of water were being projected through openings that had once been doorways and windows, or were aimed up into the air to soak the upper part of the buildings in order to reduce the risk of the fire spreading. The council leader went over to the chief fire officer, What do you make of it, he asked, It's the worst fire I've ever seen, in fact, it has a distinct whiff of arson about it, Don't say that, it's not possible, It may just be an impression, let's hope I'm wrong. At that moment, a television recording van arrived, followed by others from the press and the radio, now, surrounded by lights and microphones, the council leader is answering questions, How many lives do you think will have been lost, What information do you have so far, How many people have been injured, How many people have suffered burns, When do you think the station will be back to normal, Have you any idea who might have been behind the attack, Was any warning received before the explosion, If so, who received it and what measures were taken to evacuate the station in time, Do you think it was a terrorist attack carried out by a group with links to the subversive movement active in the city, Do you think there will be more such attacks, As council leader and sole authority left in the city, what means do you have to carry out the necessary investigations. When the rain of questions had stopped, the council leader gave the only possible reply in the circumstances, Some of these questions are outside my competence, and so I can't really answer them, I assume, however, that the government will be making an official statement soon, as for the other questions, all I can say is that we are doing everything humanly possible to help the victims, let's just hope we get there in time, at least for some of them, But how many dead are there, insisted a journalist, We'll only know that when we go into that inferno, so, until then, please, spare me any more stupid questions. The journalists protested that this was no way to treat the media, who were, after all, only fulfilling their duty to inform and therefore deserved to be treated with respect, but the council leader cut short this corporate speech, One of the newspapers today went so far as to call for a bloodbath, that didn't happen this time, the burned don't bleed, they just get fried to a crisp, now, please, let me through, I have nothing more to add, we'll let you know when we have any concrete information. There was a general murmur of disapproval, and further back a sneering voice said, Who does he think he is, but the council leader made no attempt to find out who the dissenter was, during the last few hours, he, too, had done nothing but ask, Who do I think I am.