Jose Saramago: Seeing

In towns, houses, bars, pubs, cafes, restaurants, associations or party headquarters where voters from the party on the right, the party in the middle and even the party on the left were gathered together, the prime minister's message was much discussed, although, as is only natural, in different ways and from diverse points of view. Those most satisfied with his performance, and that barbaric term is theirs not the narrator's, were those of the p.o.t.r., who, with knowing looks and winks, congratulated themselves on their leader's excellent technique, an approach that is often rather curiously described as carrot-and-stick, and which, in olden times, was mainly applied to asses and mules, but which modernity, with notable success, has turned to human use. Some, however, the blustering, braggadocio types, felt that the prime minister should have finished his speech at the point where he announced the imminent declaration of a state of emergency, that everything he said afterward was entirely unnecessary, that the only thing the rabble understands is the big stick, start with half-measures and you'll get nowhere, never give your enemy so much as the time of day, and other outspoken expressions in the same vein. Their colleagues argued that it really wasn't like that, that their leader must have his reasons, but these pacifists, always so ingenuous, were unaware that the intemperate reaction of their intransigent colleagues was, in fact, a tactical maneuver, the aim of which was to keep alive the combative mood of the party members. Be prepared for everything, had been the slogan. Those in the p.i.t.m., as members of the principal opposition party, were in agreement with the main thrust of the speech, that is, the urgent need to find out who was responsible and to punish the culprits or conspirators, but they felt that the declaration of a state of emergency was entirely disproportionate, especially as they had no idea how long it would last, and besides, it was arrant nonsense to take away the rights of someone whose only crime had been to exercise one of those rights. What will happen, they wondered, if a citizen takes it into his head to go to the constitutional court, The truly intelligent and patriotic thing to do, they added, would be to form a government of national salvation consisting of representatives from all the parties, because, if this really is a collective emergency, declaring a state of siege isn't going to resolve it, the p.o.t.r. have just gone off at the deep end and will very likely drown. The members of the p.o.t.l. ridiculed any idea that they could possibly form part of a coalition government, what they were really concerned about was coming up with an interpretation of the election result that would disguise the disastrous drop in the party's percentage of the poll, for, having polled five percent in the last election and two and a half in the first round of this one, they now found themselves with a miserable one percent and a very bleak future. The results of their analysis culminated in the preparation of a statement which would suggest that, since there was no objective reason to think that the blank votes had constituted an attempt on the security of the state or on the stability of the system, the desire for change thus expressed could correctly be read as coinciding, quite by chance, with the progressive proposals contained in the p.o.t.l.'s manifesto. Nothing more and nothing less.

There were also people who just turned off the television as soon as the prime minister had finished speaking and, before going to bed, sat around talking about their lives, and there were others who spent the rest of the evening tearing up and burning papers. They weren't conspirators, they were simply afraid.

TO THE MINISTER OF DEFENSE, A CIVILIAN WHO HAD NEVER EVEN DONE his military service, the declaration of a state of emergency seemed pretty small beer, he had wanted a proper, full-blooded state of siege, a state of siege in the literal sense of the word, hard, implacable, like a moving wall capable of isolating the source of the sedition and then crushing it in one devastating counter-attack, Before the pestilence and the gangrene spread to the part of the country that's still healthy, he warned. The prime minister acknowledged the extreme seriousness of the situation, and that the country had been the victim of a vile assault on the very foundations of representative democracy, the minister of defense, however, begged to differ, I would compare it, rather, to a depth charge launched against the system, Quite so, but I think, and the president agrees with me on this, that, without losing sight of the dangers of the immediate situation, and in order to be able to vary the means and objectives of any action taken as and when it proves necessary, it would be preferable to begin by using methods which, while more discreet and less ostentatious, are possibly more effective than sending the army out onto the streets, closing the airport and setting up road blocks at all routes out of the city, And what methods would those be exactly, asked the minister of defense, making not the slightest attempt to disguise his annoyance, Nothing that you don't know about already, after all, the armed forces have their own espionage system, We call ours counter-espionage, Which comes to the same thing, Ah, I see what you're getting at, Good, I knew you'd understand, said the prime minister, at the same time gesturing to the interior minister, who spoke next, Without going into actual operational detail, which, as I'm sure you'll understand, is confidential, not to say top secret, the plan drawn up by my ministry is based, in general terms, on a broad and systematic infiltration of the population by specially trained agents, which may help us to uncover the reasons behind what has happened and equip us to take the necessary measures to destroy the evil ab ovo, Ab ovo, you say, as far as I can see, it's already hatched, remarked the justice minister, It was just a manner of speaking, replied the interior minister, sounding slightly irritated, then he went on, The time has come to inform this council of ministers, in complete and utter confidence, if you'll forgive the redundancy, that the espionage services under my orders, or rather, who answer to the ministry for which I am responsible, do not exclude the possibility that what happened may have its real roots abroad, and that what we are seeing may be only the tip of the iceberg of a gigantic, global destabilization plot, doubtless anarchist in inspiration, and which, for reasons we still do not comprehend, has chosen our country as its first guinea pig, Sounds a bit odd to me, said the minister of culture, to my knowledge, anarchists have never, even in the realm of theory, proposed committing acts of this nature and of this magnitude, That, said the minister of defense sarcastically, may be because my dear colleague's knowledge dates back to the idyllic world of his grandparents, and, strange though it may seem, things have changed quite a lot since then, there was a time when nihilism took a rather lyrical and not too bloody form, but what we are facing today is terrorism, pure and unadulterated, it may wear different faces and expressions, but it is, essentially, the same thing, You should be careful about making such wild claims and such facile extrapolations, commented the justice minister, it seems risky to me, not to say, outrageous, to label as terrorism, especially pure and unadulterated terrorism, the appearance in the ballot boxes of a few blank votes, A few votes, a few votes, spluttered the minister of defense, rendered almost speechless, how, I'd like to know, can you possibly call eighty-three out of every hundred votes a few votes, what we have to grasp, what we have to take on board, is that each one of those votes was like a torpedo striking below the water line, My knowledge of anarchism may be out of date, I don't deny it, said the minister of culture, but, as far as I'm aware, although I certainly don't consider myself an expert on naval battles either, torpedoes always strike below the water line, they don't have much option, that is what they were made to do. The interior minister suddenly sprang to his feet, perhaps to defend his colleague, the defense minister, from this sneering comment, perhaps to condemn the lack of political empathy evident at the meeting, but the prime minister brought his hand down hard on the table, demanding silence, The ministers of culture and of defense can continue elsewhere the academic debate in which they appear to be so hotly engaged, but I would just like to remind you that the reason we are gathered together in this room, which, even more than parliament, represents the heart of democratic power and authority, is in order to take decisions that will save the country from the gravest crisis it has faced in centuries, that is the challenge we face, I believe, therefore, that, confronted by this enormous task, we should call a halt to any further verbal poppycock or, indeed, to squabbles over interpretation, as being unworthy of our responsibilities. There was a pause, which no one dared to interrupt, then he continued, Meanwhile, I would like to make it perfectly clear to the minister of defense that the fact that, during this first stage of dealing with the crisis, the president has favored the application of the plan drawn up by the relevant staff at the ministry of the interior does not mean and never could mean that the possibility of declaring a state of siege has been entirely rejected, everything will depend on what direction events take, on the reactions of the population in the capital, on the response of the rest of the country, and on the not always predictable behavior of the opposition, especially, in this case, the p.o.t.l., who now have so little to lose that they won't mind betting the little that remains to them on some high-risk move, Oh, I don't think we need worry ourselves too much about a party that could only manage one percent of the votes, remarked the interior minister, with a scornful shrug, Did you read their statement, asked the prime minister, Of course I did, reading political statements is part of my job, one of my duties, it's true that there are those who pay assistants to chew their food for them first, but I belong to the old school, and I only trust my own head, even if I'm wrong, You're forgetting that ministers are, in the final analysis, the prime minister's advisors, And it's an honor to be one, sir, the difference, the vast difference, is that we bring you your food ready digested, That's all very fine, but let's leave gastronomy and the chemistry of the digestive processes for now and go back to the p.o.t.l.'s statement, give me your opinion, what did you think of it, It's a crude, naive version of the old saying that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, And when applied to the present case, Applied to the present case, sir, it's a case of if they're not your votes, then try to make it look as if they are, Even so, it's as well to remain on the alert, their little trick just might work on the more left-leaning segment of the population, Although we have no idea at the moment which segment that is, said the justice minister, it seems to me that what we are refusing to face up to, frankly and openly, is that the vast majority of that eighty-three percent are our own voters or the p.i.t.m.'s voters, and that we should be asking ourselves why it is that they cast those blank votes, that's the crux of the matter, not whatever wise or naive arguments the p.o.t.1. might come up with, Yes, when you think about it, replied the prime minister, our tactic is not so very different from the one the p.o.t.1. is using, that is, if most of the votes aren't yours, then pretend they don't belong to your opponents either, In other words, piped up the minister of transport and communications from the corner of the table, we're all up to the same tricks, A somewhat flippant way of summing up the situation in which we find ourselves, and note that I am speaking here from a purely political viewpoint, but one not entirely lacking in sense, said the prime minister and drew the discussion to a close. The rapid implementation of the state of emergency, like a kind of solomonic sentence dictated by providence, swiftly cut the gordian knot that the media, especially the newspapers, had, with more or less skill and with more or less delicacy, been trying to undo ever since the unhappy results of the first elections and, even more dramatically, of the second, although they always took great care not to draw too much attention to their efforts. On the one hand, it was their duty, as obvious as it was elementary, to condemn, with an energy tinged with civic indignation, in editorials and in specially commissioned opinion pieces, the unexpected and irresponsible behavior of an electorate who, apparently rendered blind to the superior interests of the nation as a whole by some strange and dangerous perversion, had complicated public life to an unprecedented degree, corralling it into a dark alleyway from which not even the brightest spark was able to see a way out. On the other hand, they had to weigh and measure every word they wrote, to ponder susceptibilities, to take, as it were, two steps forward and one step back, lest their readers should turn against a newspaper that had started calling them traitors and lunatics after years and years of perfect harmony and assiduous readership. The declaration of the state of emergency, by allowing the government to assume the relevant powers and to suspend at the stroke of a pen all constitutional guarantees, removed that uncomfortable weight, that threatening shadow hanging over the heads of editors and administrators. With freedom of expression and communication strictly regulated, with censorship always peering over the editor's shoulder, they had the very best of excuses and the most complete of justifications. We would really love, they would say, to provide our esteemed readers with the opportunity, which is also their right, to have access to news and opinions untrammeled by unreasonable interference and intolerable restrictions, especially during the extremely delicate times we are living through, but that is the way things are, and only someone who has worked in the honorable profession of journalism can know how painful it is having to work under virtual twenty-four-hour surveillance, but then, between you and me, the people who bear the greatest responsibility for what is happening are the voters in the capital, not the voters in the provinces, but, alas, to make matters worse, and despite all our pleading, the government will not allow us to produce a censored version for the capital and an uncensored one for the rest of the country, why, only yesterday, a high-up ministry official was telling us that censorship proper is like the sun, which, when it rises, rises for everyone, this is hardly news to us, we know the way the world works, and it is always the just who have to pay for the sinners. Despite all these precautions as regards both form and content, it soon became clear that the public's interest in reading newspapers had greatly declined. Driven by an understandable urge to try and please everyone, some newspapers thought they could combat the absence of readers by plastering their pages with naked bodies, whether male or female, together or alone, singly or in pairs, at rest or in action, disporting themselves in modern gardens of delight, but the readers, grown impatient with images whose minimal and not particularly arousing variations in color and configuration had, even in remote antiquity, been considered banal commonplaces of man's exploration of the libido, continued, out of apathy, indifference and even nausea, to cause print-runs and sales to plummet. Likewise, the search for and the exhibition of rather grubby intimacies, of all kinds of scandals and outrages, the old game of public virtues masking private vices, the jolly carousel of private vices elevated to the status of public virtues, which, until recently, had never lacked for spectators or for candidates willing to strut their stuff, failed to have a favorable impact on the day-to-day balance sheet of debit and credit, which was at an irremediably low ebb. It really seemed as if the majority of the city's inhabitants were determined to change their lives, their tastes and their style. Their great mistake, as they would soon begin to see, had been casting those blank votes. They wanted a clean-up and they would get one.