Jose Saramago - Seeing

This was the firm view of the government and, in particular, of the ministry of the interior. The process of selecting the agents, some from the secret service, others from public bodies, who would surreptitiously infiltrate the bosom of the masses, had been swift and efficient. Having revealed, under oath, as evidence of their exemplary character as citizens, the name of the party for whom they had voted and the nature of that vote, having signed, again under oath, a document in which they expressed their active rejection of the moral plague that had infected a large part of the population, the first action of all agents, of both sexes, it must be said, so that it cannot be alleged, as it so often is, that all evil things are the work of man, who were organized into groups of forty as if in a class and led by teachers trained in the discrimination, recognition and interpretation of electronic recordings of both sound and image, their first action, as we were saying, consisted in sifting through the enormous quantity of material gathered by spies during the second ballot, the material collected by those who had stood in the queues listening and by those who, wielding video cameras and microphones, had driven slowly past them in cars. By starting off with this operation of rummaging around in the informational intestines, the agents were given, before they launched themselves with enthusiasm and the keen nose of a gun dog into action and work in the field, an immediate taste of a behind-closed-doors investigation the tone of which we had occasion to provide a brief but elucidatory example some pages back. Simple, ordinary expressions, such as, I don't generally bother to vote, but here I am, Do you think it'll turn out to have been worth all the bother, The pitcher goes so often to the well that, in the end, it leaves its handle there, I voted last week too, but that day I could only leave home at four, This is just like the lottery, I almost always draw a blank, Still, you've got to keep trying, Hope is like salt, there's no nourishment in it, but it gives the bread its savor, for hours and hours, these and a thousand other equally innocuous, equally neutral, equally innocent phrases were picked apart syllable by syllable, reduced to mere crumbs, turned upside down, crushed in the mortar by the pestle of the question, Explain to me again that business about the pitcher, Why did the handle come off at the well and not on the way there or back, If you don't normally vote, why did you vote this time, If hope is like salt, what do you think should be done to make salt like hope, How would you resolve the difference in color between hope, which is green, and salt, which is white, Do you really think that a ballot paper is the same as a lottery ticket, What did you mean when you used the word blank, and then, What pitcher, Did you go to the well because you were thirsty or in order to meet someone, What does the handle of the pitcher symbolize, When you sprinkle salt on your food, are you thinking that you're actually sprinkling hope, Why are you wearing a white shirt, Tell me, was the pitcher a real pitcher or a metaphorical one, And what color was it, black, red, Was it plain or did it have a design on it, Was it inlaid with quartz, Do you know what quartz is, Have you ever won a prize in the lottery, Why is it that, during the first election, you only left home at four, when it had stopped raining two hours before, Who is that woman beside you in this photo, What are the two of you laughing about, Don't you think that an important act like voting requires all responsible voters to wear a grave, serious, earnest expression or do you consider democracy to be a laughing matter, Or perhaps you think it is a crying matter, Which do you think, a laughing matter or a crying matter, Tell me about that pitcher again, why didn't you consider gluing the handle back on, there are glues made specially for the purpose, Does that pause mean that you, too, are lacking a handle, Which one, Do you like the age in which you happen to live, or would you prefer to have lived in another, Let's go back to salt and hope again, how much would you have to add before the thing you were hoping for became inedible, Do you feel tired, Would you like to go home, I'm in no hurry, haste is a bad counselor, if a person doesn't think through the answers he or she is going to give, the consequences can be disastrous, No, you're not lost, the very idea, you obviously haven't yet quite grasped that, here, people don't lose themselves, they find themselves, Don't worry, we're not threatening you, we just don't want you to rush, that's all. At this point, with the prey cornered and exhausted, they would ask the fateful question, Now I want you to tell me how you voted, that is, which party you gave your vote to. Since five hundred suspects picked from the queues of voters had been summoned to be interrogated, a situation in which anyone could have found himself given the patent insubstantiality of an accusation based on the kind of phrases, of which we have just given a convincing example, captured by all those directional microphones and tape-recorders, the logical thing, bearing in mind the relative breadth of the statistical universe questioned, would be that the replies would be distributed, albeit with a small and natural margin of error, in the same proportion as the votes cast, that is, forty people declaring proudly that they had voted for the party on the right, the party in government, an equal number seasoning their reply with just a pinch of defiance by affirming that they had voted for the only opposition party worthy of the name, that is, the party in the middle, and five, no more than five, pinned down, backs to the wall, I voted for the party on the left, they would say firmly, but in the tone of someone apologizing for a stubborn streak which they are helpless to correct. The remainder, that enormous remainder of four hundred and fifteen replies should have said, in accordance with the modal logic of surveys, I cast a blank vote. That clear response, shorn of the ambiguities of presumption or prudence, would be the one given by a computer or a calculator and would be the only one that their inflexible, honest natures, that of the computer and the machine, would have allowed themselves, but we are dealing here with human beings, and human beings are known universally as the only animals capable of lying, and while it is true that they sometimes lie out of fear and sometimes out of self-interest, they also occasionally lie because they realize, just in time, that this is the only means available to them of defending the truth. To judge by appearances, therefore, the ministry of the interior's plan had failed, indeed, during those first few moments, the confusion amongst the advisors was both shameful and complete, there seemed no possible way round the unexpected obstacle, unless orders were given for all those people to be tortured, which, as everyone knows, is unacceptable in democratic but right-wing states skilful enough to achieve the same ends without resorting to such rudimentary, medieval methods. It was whilst embroiled in this complicated situation that the interior minister showed both political nous and a rare tactical and strategic flexibility, possibly, who knows, an indication of greater things to come. He took two decisions, both of them important. The first, which would later be denounced as perversely machiavellian, took the form of an official note from the ministry distributed to the mass media via the unofficial state agency and which, in the name of the whole government, offered heartfelt thanks to the five hundred exemplary citizens who, in recent days, had come forward of their own volition and presented themselves to the authorities, offering their loyal support and any help they could give that would advance the ongoing investigations into abnormal factors uncovered in the last two elections. As well as this elementary expression of gratitude, the ministry, anticipating questions, warned families that they should not be surprised or worried by the lack of news from their absent loved ones, because in that very silence lay the key that could guarantee their personal safety, given the maximum degree of secrecy, red/red, that had been accorded to this delicate operation. The second decision, for internal eyes and use only, was a complete inversion of the plan drawn up earlier, which, as you will recall, predicted that the mass infiltration of investigators into the bosom of the masses would be the means, par excellence, that would lead to the deciphering of the mystery, the enigma, the charade, the puzzle, or whatever you care to call it, of those blank ballot papers. From now on, the agents would work in two numerically unequal groups, the smaller group would work in the field, from which, if truth be told, they no longer expected great results, the larger group would continue with the interrogation of the five hundred people retained, not detained you notice, increasing, as and when, the physical and psychological pressure to which they were already being subjected. As the old saying has been telling us now for centuries, Five hundred birds in the hand are worth five hundred and one in the bush. Confirmation of this was not long in coming. When, after the application of great diplomatic skill, after many digressions and much testing of the water, the agent in the field, that is, in the city, managed to ask the first question, Would you mind telling me who you voted for, the reply he was given, like a message learned by heart, was, word for word, the one given in law, No one can, under any pretext, be forced to reveal his or her vote or be questioned about this by any authority. And when, in the nonchalant tone of someone who did not consider the subject to be of much importance, he asked the second question, Forgive my curiosity, but did you by any chance cast a blank vote, the reply he was given skilfully reduced the scope of the question to a simple academic matter, No, sir, I didn't, but if I had I would be just as much within the law as if I had voted for one of the parties listed or had made my vote void by drawing a caricature of the prime minister, casting a blank vote, mister questioner, is an unrestricted right, which the law had no option but to allow the electorate, it is clearly stated that no one can be persecuted for having cast a blank vote, but just to set your mind at rest, I repeat that I was not one of those who did so, I was just talking for talking's sake, it was merely an academic hypothesis, that's all. Normally speaking, hearing such a response twice or three times would be of no particular significance, all it would show was that there are a few people in the world who know the law of the land and make a point of telling you, but being forced to listen to it, unruffled, without so much as raising an eyebrow, a hundred times, a thousand times, like a litany learned by heart, was more than patience could bear for someone who, having been painstakingly prepared for this delicate task, found himself unable to carry it out. It is not, therefore, surprising that the electorate's systematically obstructive behavior caused some of the agents to lose control and to resort to insult and aggression, encounters from which, indeed, they did not always emerge unscathed, given that they were acting alone in order not to frighten off their prey and that it was not unusual, especially in so-called dodgy areas, for other voters to pitch in and help the aggrieved party, with easily imagined consequences. The reports that the agents sent back to the center of operations were discouragingly thin on content, not a single person, not one, had admitted to having cast a blank vote, some pretended not to understand, others said they'd talk another day when they had more time, but they had to rush off now, before the shops shut, but the worst of all were the old, devil take 'em, for it seemed that an epidemic of deafness had sealed them all inside a soundproof capsule, and when the agent, with disconcerting ingenuity, wrote the question down on a piece of paper, the cheeky so-and-sos would either say that their glasses were broken or that they couldn't make out the writing or, quite simply, that they didn't know how to read at all. There were other, wilier agents, however, who, taking the idea of infiltration seriously, in its literal sense, frequented bars, bought people drinks, lent money to penniless poker players, went to sports events, especially football and basketball, where people mingle more in the stands, and got chatting to their fellow spectators, and, in the case of football, if there was a goal-less draw, they would, with sublime cunning, refer to it knowingly as a blank result, just to see what happened. Pretty much nothing happened. Sooner or later, the moment would come to ask the questions, Would you mind telling me which party you voted for, Forgive my curiosity, but did you by any chance cast a blank vote, and then the familiar answers would be repeated, either solo or in chorus, Me, the very idea, Us, don't be silly, and they would immediately adduce the legal reasons, with all their articles and clauses, and so fluently that it was as if all the city's inhabitants of voting age had been through an intensive course in electoral law, both domestic and foreign.