Jose Saramago - Seeing

And it really was a fine day. From early morning on, with the protecting sky in all its splendor and the golden sun blazing forth against a backdrop of crystalline blue, to use the inspired words of a television reporter, the voters started leaving their homes and heading for their respective polling stations not in a blind mass as had appeared to happen a week before, but with each person setting out alone, and so conscientiously and diligently that even before the doors were opened there were already long, long queues of citizens awaiting their turn to vote. Not everything, alas, was pure and honest at these gatherings. There was not a single queue, not one amongst the more than forty that formed at various points of the city, that did not have amongst them one or more spies whose mission was to listen and record the comments of the people present, the police authorities being convinced that, as happens, for example, in doctors' waiting rooms, a prolonged wait will always sooner or later loosen tongues, revealing, even if only by the merest slip, the secret intentions of the electorate. The great majority of the spies are professionals and belong to the secret service, but some are volunteers, patriotic amateurs of espionage who offered to help out of a desire to serve, without remuneration, as it said in the sworn declaration they signed, whilst others, quite a few, were attracted merely by the morbid pleasure of being able to denounce someone. The genetic code of what, somewhat unthinkingly, we have been content to call human nature, cannot be reduced to the organic helix of deoxyribonucleic acid, or dna, there is much more to be said about it and it has much more to tell us, but human nature is, figuratively speaking, the complementary spiral that we have not yet managed to prise out of kindergarten, despite the multitude of psychologists and analysts from the most diverse schools and with the most diverse abilities who have broken their nails trying to draw its bolts. These scientific considerations, whatever their value now or in the future, should not allow us to forget today's disquieting realities, like the one we have just seen, for not only are there spies in the queues, trying to look nonchalant as they listen and secretly record what people say, there are also cars that glide quietly past the queues, apparently looking for a place to park, but which carry inside them, invisible to our eyes, high-definition video cameras and state-of-the-art microphones capable of projecting onto a screen the emotions apparently hidden in the diverse murmurings of a group of people who believe, individually, that they are thinking of something else. The word has been recorded, as has the emotion behind it. No one is safe. Up until the moment when the doors of the polling stations were opened and the queues began to move, the recorders had captured only insignificant phrases, the most banal of comments on the beauty of the morning and the pleasant temperature or about the hurried breakfast they had eaten, brief exchanges on the important subject of what to do with the children while their mothers came to vote, Their father is looking after them at the moment, we're just going to have to take turns, first me, then him, I mean, obviously we'd rather have come to vote together, but it was just impossible, and, as the saying goes, what can't be cured must be endured, We've left our youngest with his older sister, she's not reached voting age yet, yes, this is my husband, Pleased to meet you, Nice to meet you too, It's a lovely morning, isn't it, It's almost as if it had been laid on deliberately, Well, I suppose it was bound to happen some time. Despite the auditory acuity of the microphones passing and repassing, white car, blue car, green car, red car, black car, with their aerials bobbing in the morning breeze, nothing overtly suspicious raised its head from beneath the skin of such innocent, ordinary expressions as these, or so, at least, it appeared. However, one did not need to have a doctorate in suspicion or a degree in distrust to notice something unusual about those last two phrases, about someone having laid on the lovely morning deliberately, and especially the second phrase, about how it was bound to happen some time, ambiguities which were perhaps unwitting, perhaps unconscious, but, for that very reason, potentially even more dangerous and therefore worth contrasting with a detailed analysis of the tone of voice in which those words had been uttered, but, above all, with the range of frequencies they generated, we are referring here to subtones, which, if recent theories are to be believed, must be taken into consideration, otherwise, the degree of comprehension of any oral discourse will inevitably be insufficient, incomplete and limited. The spy who happened to be there had been given very precise instructions on what to do in such cases, as had all his colleagues. He must not allow himself to become separated from the suspect, he must place himself in third or fourth position behind him in the queue of voters, he must, as a double guarantee, and regardless of the sensitivity of his concealed recording equipment, commit to memory the voter's name and number when the presiding officer said them out loud, he must then pretend to have forgotten something and withdraw discreetly from the queue, go out into the street and phone headquarters to tell them what had happened, and, having done that, return to the hunting ground and take up another place in, the queue. This activity cannot, strictly speaking, be compared to an exercise in target shooting, what they are hoping for here is that chance, destiny, luck, or whatever you want to call it, will place the target in front of the shot.

As the hours passed, information rained down upon the center of operations, but none of it revealed in a clear-cut and consequently irrefutable manner the intentions of the voter thus caught, all that appeared on the list were phrases of the kind described above, and even the phrase that seemed more suspicious than all the others, Well, I suppose it was bound to happen some time, would lose much of its apparent slipperiness once restored to its context, a conversation between two men about the recent divorce of one of them, not that they spoke of it explicitly, in order not to arouse the curiosity of the people nearby, but which had concluded thus, with a touch of rancor, a touch of resignation, and with a tremulous sigh that came forth from the divorced man's breast and that should have led any sensitive spy, assuming, of course, that sensitivity is a spy's best attribute, to come down clearly on the side of resignation. The fact that the spy may not have considered this worthy of note, and that the recording equipment may not have captured it, can be put down to mere human failure and to technological blips which any good judge, knowing what men are like, and not unaware either of the nature of machines, would have to take into account, even if, and, although at first sight this may appear shocking, it would, in fact, be magnificently just, even if in the documents bearing on the case there was not the slightest indication of the accused's non-culpability. Were this innocent man to be interrogated tomorrow, we tremble at the mere thought of what could happen to him, Do you admit that you said to the person you were with Well, I suppose it was bound to happen some time, Yes, I do, Now, think carefully before answering, what were you talking about when you said that, About my separation from my wife, Separation or divorce, Divorce, And what were or are your feelings about that divorce, Half-angry, half-resigned, More angry or more resigned, More resigned, I guess, Don't you think, in that case, that the natural thing would have been to utter a sigh, especially since you were talking to a friend, Well, I can't be sure I didn't sigh, I really don't remember, Well, we know that you didn't, How can you know that, you weren't there, Who told you we weren't there, Maybe my friend remembers hearing me sigh, you'd have to ask him, You obviously don't care much for your friend, What do you mean, Summoning your friend and getting him into all kinds of trouble, Oh, I wouldn't want that, Good, Can I go now, Certainly not, don't be in such a hurry, you still haven't answered the question we asked you, What question, What were you really thinking about when you said those words to your friend, But I've already told you, Give us another answer, that one won't do, It's the only answer I can give because it's the true one, That's what you think, Unless you want me to make one up, Yes, do, we don't mind at all if you come up with answers which, with time and patience, could be made to fit the proper application of certain techniques, that way, you'll end up saying what we want to hear, Tell me what the answer is then, and let's be done with it, Oh, no, that wouldn't be any fun at all, who do you think we are, sir, we have our scientific dignity to consider, our professional conscience to defend, it's very important to us that we should be able to demonstrate to our superiors that we deserve the money they pay us and the bread that we eat, Sorry, you've lost me, Don't be in such a hurry.