Seeing

TERRIBLE VOTING WEATHER, REMARKED THE PRESIDING OFFICER OF polling station fourteen as he snapped shut his soaked umbrella and took off the raincoat that had proved of little use to him during the breathless forty-meter dash from the place where he had parked his car to the door through which, heart pounding, he had just appeared. I hope I'm not the last, he said to the secretary, who was standing slightly away from the door, safe from the sheets of rain which, caught by the wind, were drenching the floor. Your deputy hasn't arrived yet, but we've still got plenty of time, said the secretary soothingly, With rain like this, it'll be a feat in itself if we all manage to get here, said the presiding officer as they went into the room where the voting would take place. He greeted, first, the poll clerks who would act as scrutineers and then the party representatives and their deputies. He was careful to address exactly the same words to all of them, not allowing his face or tone of voice to betray any political and ideological leanings of his own. A presiding officer, even of an ordinary polling station like this, should, in all circumstances, be guided by the strictest sense of independence, he should, in short, always observe decorum.

As well as the general dampness, which made an already oppressive atmosphere still muggier, for the room had only two narrow windows that looked out onto a courtyard which was gloomy even on sunny days, there was a sense of unease which, to use the vernacular expression, you could have cut with a knife. They should have postponed the elections, said the representative of the party in the middle, or the p.i.t.m., I mean, it's been raining non-stop since yesterday, there are landslips and floods everywhere, the abstention rate this time around will go sky-high. The representative from the party on the right, or the p.o.tx, nodded in agreement, but felt that his contribution to the conversation should be couched in the form of a cautious comment, Obviously, I wouldn't want to underestimate the risk of that, but I do feel that our fellow citizens' high sense of civic duty, which they have demonstrated before on so many occasions, is deserving of our every confidence, they are aware, indeed, acutely so, of the vital importance of these municipal elections for the future of the capital. Having each said their piece, the representative of the p.i.t.m. and the representative of the p.o.tx turned, with a half-sceptical, half-ironic air, to the representative of the party on the left, the p.o.t.l., curious to know what opinion he would come up with. At that precise moment, however, the presiding officer's deputy burst into the room, dripping water everywhere, and, as one might expect, now that the cast of polling station officers was complete, the welcome he received was more than just cordial, it was positively enthusiastic. We therefore never heard the viewpoint of the representative of the p.o.t.l., although, on the basis of a few known antecedents, one can assume that he would, without fail, have taken a line of bright historical optimism, something like, The people who vote for my party are not the sort to let themselves be put off by a minor obstacle like this, they're not the kind to stay at home just because of a few miserable drops of rain falling from the skies. It was not, however, a matter of a few miserable drops of rain, there were bucketfuls, jugfuls, whole niles, iguaçus and yangtses of the stuff, but faith, may it be eternally blessed, as well as removing mountains from the path of those who benefit from its influence, is capable of plunging into the most torrential of waters and emerging from them bone-dry. With the table now complete, with each officer in his or her allotted place, the presiding officer signed the official edict and asked the secretary to affix it, as required by law, outside the building, but the secretary, demonstrating a degree of basic common sense, pointed out that the piece of paper would not last even one minute on the wall outside, in two ticks the ink would have run and in three the wind would have carried it off. Put it inside, then, out of the rain, the law doesn't say what to do in these circumstances, the main thing is that the edict should be pinned up where it can be seen. He asked his colleagues if they were in agreement, and they all said they were, with the proviso on the part of the representative of the p.o.t.r. that this decision should be recorded in the minutes in case they were ever challenged on the matter. When the secretary returned from his damp mission, the presiding officer asked him what it was like out there, and he replied with a wry shrug, Just the same, rain, rain, rain, Any voters out there, Not a sign. The presiding officer stood up and invited the poll clerks and the three party representatives to follow him into the voting chamber, which was found to be free of anything that might sully the purity of the political choices to be made there during the day. This formality completed, they returned to their places to examine the electoral roll, which they found to be equally free of irregularities, lacunae or anything else of a suspicious nature. The solemn moment had arrived when the presiding officer uncovers and displays the ballot box to the voters so that they can certify that it is empty, and tomorrow, if necessary, bear witness to the fact that no criminal act has introduced into it, at dead of night, the false votes that would corrupt the free and sovereign political will of the people, and so that there would be no electoral shenanigans, as they're so picturesquely known, and which, let us not forget, can be committed before, during or after the act, depending on the efficiency of the perpetrators and their accomplices and the opportunities available to them. The ballot box was empty, pure, immaculate, but there was not a single voter in the room to who it could be shown. Perhaps one of them is lost out there, battling with the torrents, enduring the whipping winds, clutching to his bosom the document that proves he is a fully enfranchised citizen, but, judging by the look of the sky right now, he'll be a long time coming, if, that is, he doesn't end up simply going home and leaving the fate of the city to those with a black car to drop them off at the door and pick them up again once the person in the back seat has fulfilled his or her civic duty.

After the various materials have been inspected, the law of this country states that the presiding officer should immediately cast his vote, as should the poll clerks, the party representatives and their respective deputies, as long, of course, as they are registered at that particular polling station, as was the case here. Even by stretching things out, four minutes was more than enough time for the ballot box to receive its first eleven votes. And then, there was nothing else for it, the waiting began. Barely half an hour had passed when the presiding officer, who was getting anxious, suggested that one of the poll clerks should go and see if anyone was coming, voters might have turned up to find the door blown shut by the wind and gone off in a huff, grumbling that the government might at least have had the decency to inform people that the elections had been postponed, that, after all, was what the radio and television were for, to broadcast such information. The secretary said, But everyone knows that when a door blows shut it makes the devil of a noise, and we haven't heard a thing in here. The poll clerk hesitated, will I, won't I, but the presiding officer insisted. Go on, please, and be careful, don't get wet. The door was open, the wedge securely in place. The clerk stuck his head out, a moment was all it took to glance from one side to the other and then draw back, dripping, as if he had put his head under a shower. He wanted to proceed like a good poll clerk, to please the presiding officer, and, since it was the first time he had been called upon to perform this function, he also wanted to be appreciated for the speed and efficiency with which he had carried out his duties, who knows, with time and experience, he might one day be the person presiding over a polling station, higher flights of ambition than this have traversed the sky of providence and no one has so much as batted an eye. When he went back into the room, the presiding officer, half-rueful, half-amused, exclaimed, There was no need to get yourself soaked, man, Oh, it doesn't matter, sir, said the clerk, drying his cheek on the sleeve of his jacket, Did you spot anyone, As far as I could see, no one, it's like a desert of water out there. The presiding officer got up, took a few uncertain steps around the table, went into the voting chamber, looked inside and came back. The representative of the p.i.t.m. spoke up to remind the others of his prediction that the abstention rate would go sky-high, the representative of the p.o.t.r. once more played the role of pacifier, the voters had all day to vote, they were probably just waiting for the rain to let up. This time the representative of the p.o.t.l. chose to remain silent, thinking what a pathetic figure he would be cutting now if he had actually said what he was going to say when the presiding officer's deputy had come into the room, It would take more than a few miserable drops of rain to put off my party's voters. The secretary, on whom all eyes were expectantly turned, opted for a practical suggestion, You know, it might not be a bad idea to phone the ministry and ask how the elections are going elsewhere in the city and in the rest of the country too, that way we would find out if this civic power cut was a general thing or if we're the only ones whom the voters have declined to illumine with their votes. The representative of the p.o.t.r. sprang indignantly to his feet, I demand that it be set down in the minutes that, as representative of the p.o.tr., I strongly object to the disrespectful manner and the unacceptably mocking tone in which the secretary has just referred to the voters, who are the supreme defenders of democracy, and without whom tyranny, any of the many tyrannies that exist in the world, would long ago have over whelmed the nation that bore us. The secretary shrugged and asked Shall I make a note of the representative of the p.o.tr.'s comments sir, No, I don't think that will be necessary, it's just that we're all a bit tense and perplexed and puzzled, and, as we all know, in that state of mind, it's very easy to say things we don't really believe, and I'm sure the secretary didn't mean to offend anyone, why, he himself is a voter conscious of his responsibilities, the proof being that he, as did all of us, braved the elements to answer the call of duty, nevertheless, my feelings of gratitude, however sincere, do not prevent me asking the secretary to keep rigorously to the task assigned to him and to abstain from any comments that might shock the personal or political sensibilities of the other people here. The representative of the p.o.tr. made a brusque gesture which the presiding officer chose to interpret as one of agreement, and the argument went no further, thanks, in large measure, to the representative of the p.i.t.m., who took up the secretary's proposal, It's true, he said, we're like shipwreck victims in the middle of the ocean, with no sails and no compass, no mast and no oars, and with no diesel in the tank either, Yes, you're quite right, said the presiding officer, I'll phone the ministry now. There was a telephone on another table and he walked over to it, carrying the instruction leaflet he had been given days before and on which were printed, amongst other useful things, the telephone numbers of the ministry of the interior.

The call was a brief one, It's the presiding officer of polling station number fourteen here, I'm very worried, there's something distinctly odd going on, so far, not a single voter has turned up to vote, we've been open for more than an hour, and not a soul, yes, sir, I know there's no way of stopping the storm, yes, sir, I know, rain, wind, floods, yes, sir, we'll be patient, we'll stick to our guns, after all, that's why we're here. From that point on the presiding officer contributed nothing to the dialogue apart from a few affirmative nods of the head, the occasional muted interjection and three or four phrases which he began but did not finish. When he replaced the receiver, he looked over at his colleagues, but without, in fact, seeing them, it was as if he had before him a landscape composed entirely of empty voting chambers, immaculate electoral rolls, with presiding officers and secretaries waiting, party representatives exchanging distrustful glances as they tried to work out who might gain and who might lose from this situation, and, in the distance, the occasional rain-soaked poll-clerk returning from the door to announce that no one was coming. What did the people at the ministry say, asked the representative of the p.i.t.m., They don't know what to make of it either, after all, it's only natural that the bad weather would keep a lot of people at home, but apparently pretty much the same thing is happening all over the city, that's why they can't explain it, What do you mean pretty much, asked the representative of the p.o.t.r., Well, a few voters have turned up at some polling stations, but hardly any really, no one's ever known anything like it, And what about the rest of the country, asked the representative of the p.o.t.l., after all, it's not only raining in the capital, That's what's so odd, there are places where it's raining just as heavily as it is here and yet, despite that, people are still turning out to vote, I mean, obviously there are more voters in areas where the weather is good, speaking of which, the forecasters are saying that the weather should start to improve later on this morning, It might go from bad to worse, you know what they say, rain at midday either gets much worse or clears away, warned the second clerk, who had not, until then, opened his mouth. There was a silence. Then the secretary put his hand into one of his jacket pockets, produced a mobile phone and keyed in a number. While he was waiting for someone to answer, he said, It's a bit like the mountain and Mahomet, since we can't ask the voters, whom we don't know, why they haven't come in to vote, let's ask our own families, whom we do know, hi, it's me, yes, how come you're still there, why haven't you been to vote, I know it's raining, my trouser legs are still sopping wet, oh, right, sorry, I forgot you'd told me you'd be over after lunch, sure, I only phoned because things are a bit awkward here, oh, you've no idea, if I told you that not a single voter has yet come in to vote, you probably wouldn't believe me right, fine, I'll see you later then, take care. He turned off the phone and remarked ironically, Well, at least one vote is guaranteed, my wife will be coming this afternoon. The presiding officer and the clerks looked at each other, they were obviously supposed to follow the secretary's example, but not one of them wanted to be the first to do so, that would be tantamount to admitting that when it came to quick thinking and self-confidence the secretary won hands down. It did not take long for the clerk who had gone over to the door to see if it was raining to conclude that he would have to eat a lot of bread and salt before he could compete with the secretary we have here, capable of casually pulling a vote out of a mobile phone like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Seeing that the presiding officer, in one corner, was now calling home on his mobile, and that the others, using their own phones, were discreetly, in whispers, doing likewise, this same clerk privately applauded the honesty of his colleagues who, by not using the phone provided in principle for official use only, were nobly saving the state money. The only person who, for lack of a mobile phone, had to resign himself to waiting for news from the others was the representative of the p.o.t.l., of whom it should be said that, living as he did alone in the city, with his family in the provinces, the poor man had no one to call. The conversations gradually came to an end, one after the other, the longest being that of the presiding officer, who appears to be demanding that the person he is talking to come immediately to the polling station, we'll see if he has any luck with that, but the fact is he's the one who should have spoken first, but, then, if the secretary decided to get in ahead of him, too bad, he is, as we've already seen, a bit of a smart aleck, if he had as much respect for hierarchy as we do, he would have merely suggested the idea to his superior. The presiding officer let out the sigh that had long been trapped within his breast, put the phone away in his pocket and asked, So, what did you find out. The question, as well as being superfluous, was, how can we put it, just the teensiest bit dishonest, firstly, because, when it comes down to it, everyone would have found out something, however irrelevant, secondly, because it was obvious that the person asking the question was taking advantage of the authority inherent in his position to shirk his duty, since it was up to him, in voice and person, to initiate any exchange of information. If we bear in mind the sigh he uttered and the rather querulous tone we thought we detected at one point in the phone conversation, it would be logical to suppose that the dialogue, presumably with a member of his family, had not proved to be as placid and instructive as his perfectly justifiable interest as a citizen and as a presiding officer deserved, and that he does not feel sufficiently calm to launch into some hastily concocted extemporaneous comment, and is now sidestepping the difficulty by inviting his subordinates to have their say first, which, as we also know, is another, more modern way of being the boss. What the clerks and party representatives said, aside from the representative of the p.o.t.l, who, having no information of his own, is there in a purely listening capacity, was that their family members either didn't fancy getting a soaking and were waiting for the heavens to clear once and for all, or, like the secretary's wife, were intending to come and vote in the afternoon. Only the clerk who had gone over to the door earlier on seemed pleased with himself, his face bore the complacent expression of one who has reason to be proud of his own merits, which, translated into words, came down to this, No one answered at my house, which can only mean that they're on their way here now. The presiding officer resumed his seat and the waiting began again.

Nearly an hour later, the first voter arrived. Contrary to the general expectation, and much to the dismay of the clerk who had gone over to the door earlier on, it was a stranger. He left his dripping umbrella at the entrance to the room and, still wearing his plastic cape glistening with water and his plastic boots, went over to the table. The presiding officer looked up at him with a smile on his lips, for this voter, a man of advanced years, but still robust, signaled a return to normality, to the usual line of dutiful citizens moving slowly and patiently along, conscious, as the representative of the p.o.t.r. had put it, of the vital importance of these municipal elections. The man handed his identity card and voter's card to the presiding officer, the latter then announced in a sonorous, almost joyful voice the number on the card and its owner's name, the clerks in charge of the electoral roll leafed through it and, when they found both name and number, repeated them out loud and drew a straight line against the entry to indicate that the man had voted, then, the man, still dripping, went into a voting booth clutching his ballot paper, returned shortly afterward with the piece of paper folded into four, handed it to the presiding officer, who slipped it solemnly into the ballot box, retrieved his documents and left, taking his umbrella with him. The second voter took another ten minutes to appear, but from then on, albeit unenthusiastically, one by one, like autumn leaves slowly detaching themselves from the boughs of a tree, the ballot papers dropped into the ballot box. However long the presiding officer and his colleagues took to scrutinize documents, a queue never formed, there were, at most, at any one time, three or four people waiting, and three or four people, try as they might, can never make a queue worthy of the name. I was quite right, commented the representative of the p.i.t.m., the abstention rate will be enormous, massive, there'll be no possible agreement on the result after this, the only solution will be to hold the elections again, The storm might pass, said the presiding officer and, looking at his watch, he murmured as if he were praying, It's nearly midday. Resolutely, the man to whom we have been referring as the clerk who had gone over to the door earlier on got up and said to the presiding officer, With your permission, sir, since there are no voters here at present, I'll just pop out and see what the weather's doing. It took only an instant, he was there and back in a twinkling, this time with a smile on his face and bearing good news, It's raining much less now, hardly at all really, and the clouds are beginning to break up too. The poll clerks and the party representatives very nearly embraced, but their happiness was not longlived. The monotonous drip-drip of voters did not change, one came, then another, the wife, mother and aunt of the officer who had gone over to the door came, the elder brother of the representative of the p.o.t.r. came, so did the presiding officer's mother-in-law, who, showing a complete lack of respect for the electoral process, informed her crestfallen son-in-law that her daughter would only be coming later in the afternoon and added cruelly, She said she might go to the cinema, the deputy presiding officer's parents came, as well as other people who were members of none of their families, they entered looking bored and left looking bored, the atmosphere only brightened somewhat when two politicians from the p.o.t.r. arrived and, minutes later, one from the p.i.tm., and, as if by magic, a television camera appeared out of nowhere, filmed a few images and returned into nowhere, a journalist asked if he could put a question, How's the voting going, and the presiding officer replied, It could be better, but now that the weather seems to be changing, we're sure the flow of voters will increase, The impression we've been getting from other polling stations in the city is that the abstention rate is going to be very high this time, remarked the journalist, Well, I prefer to take a more optimistic line, a more positive view of the influence of meteorology on the way the electoral mechanisms work, and as long as it doesn't rain this afternoon, we'll soon make up for what this morning's storm tried to steal from us. The journalist left feeling contented, it was a nice turn of phrase, he could even use it as a subtitle to his article. And because the time had come to satisfy their stomachs, the electoral officers and the party representatives organized themselves so that, with one eye on the electoral roll and the other on their sand wiches, they could take turns to eat right there.

It had stopped raining, but nothing seemed to indicate that th civic hopes of the presiding officer would be satisfactorily fulfille by a ballot box in which, so far, the votes barely covered the bottom All those present were thinking the same thing, the election so far had been a terrible political failure. Time was passing. The clock on the tower had struck half past three when the secretary's wife came in to vote. Husband and wife exchanged discreet smiles, but there was also just a hint of an indefinable complicity, which provoked in the presiding officer an uncomfortable inner spasm, perhaps the pain of envy, knowing that he would never exchange such a smile with anyone. It was still hurting him in some fold of his flesh when, thirty minutes later, he glanced at the clock and wondered to himself if his wife had, in the end, gone to the cinema. She'll turn up, if she ever does, at the last possible moment, he thought. The ways of warding off fate are many and almost all are useless, and this one, forcing oneself to think the worst in the hope that the best will happen, is one of the most commonplace, and might even be worthy of further consideration, although not in this case, because we have it from an unimpeachable source that the presiding officer's wife really has gone to the cinema and, at least up until now, is still undecided as to whether to cast her vote or not. Fortunately, the oft-invoked need for balance which has kept the universe on track and the planets on course means that whenever something is taken from one side, it is replaced by something else on the other, something that more or less corresponds, something of the same quality and, if possible, the same proportions, so that there are not too many complaints about unfair treatment. How else can one explain why it was that, at four o'clock in the afternoon, an hour which is neither late nor early, neither fish nor fowl, those voters who had, until then, remained in the quiet of their homes, apparently blithely ignoring the election altogether, started to come out onto the streets, most of them under their own steam, but others thanks only to the worthy assistance of firemen and volunteers because the places where they lived were still flooded and impassable, and all of them, absolutely all of them, the healthy and the infirm, the former on foot, the latter in wheelchairs, on stretchers, in ambulances, headed straight for their respective polling stations like rivers which know no other course than that which flows to the sea. It will probably seem to the sceptical or the merely suspicious, the kind who are only prepared to believe in miracles from which they hope to gain some advantage, that the present circumstance has shown the above-mentioned need for balance to be utterly wrong, that the trumped-up question about whether the presiding officer's wife will or will not vote is, anyway, far too insignificant from the cosmic point of view to require compensation in one of Earth's many cities in the form of the unexpected mobilization of thousands and thousands of people of all ages and social conditions who, without having come to any prior agreement as to their political and ideological differences, have decided, at last, to leave their homes in order to go and vote. Those who argue thus are forgetting that not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, from the words by which we clumsily name them, but everything seems to indicate that it uses these laws for aims and objectives that transcend and always will transcend our understanding, and if, at this particular point, the scandalous disproportion between something which might, but for now only might, have seen the ballot box deprived of, in this case, the vote cast by the presiding officer's supposedly unpleasant wife and the tide of men and women now on the move, if we find this difficult to accept in the light of the most elementary distributive justice, prudence warns us to suspend for the moment any definitive judgement and to watch with unquestioning attention how events, which have only just begun to unfold, develop. Which is precisely what the newspaper, radio and television journalists, carried away by professional enthusiasm and by an unquenchable thirst for news, are doing now, racing up and down, thrusting tape-recorders and microphones into people's faces, asking What was it made you leave your house at four o'clock to go and vote, doesn't it seem extraordinary to you that everyone should have come out onto the street at the same time, and receiving in return such abrupt or aggressive replies as, It just happened to be the time I'd decided to go and vote, As free citizens, we can come and go as we please, we don't owe anyone an explanation, How much do they pay you to ask these stupid questions, Who cares what time I leave or don't leave my house, Is there some law that obliges me to answer that question, Sorry, I'm only prepared to speak with my lawyer present. There were polite people too, who replied without the reproachful acrimony of the examples given above, but they were equally unable to satisfy the journalists' devouring curiosity, merely shrugging and saying, Look, I have the greatest respect for the work you do and I'd love to help you publish a bit of good news, but, alas, all I can tell you is that I looked at my watch, saw it was four o'clock and said to the family Right, let's go, it's now or never, Why now or never, That's the funny thing, you see, that's just how it came out, Try to think, rack your brains, No, it's not worth it, ask someone else, perhaps they'll know, But I've asked fifty people already, And, No one could give me an answer, Exactly, But doesn't it strike you as a strange coincidence that thousands of people should all have left their houses at the same time to go and vote, It's certainly a coincidence, but perhaps not that strange, Why not, Ah, that I don't know. The commentators, who were following the electoral process on the various television programmes and, for lack of any firm facts on which to base their analyses, were busily making educated guesses, inferring the will of the gods from the flight and the song of birds, regretting that animal sacrifice was no longer legal and that they were thus prevented from poring over some creature's still twitching viscera to decipher the secrets of chronos and of fate, these commentators woke suddenly from the torpor into which they had been plunged by the gloomy prospects of the count and, doubtless because it seemed unworthy of their educational mission to waste time discussing coincidences, hurled themselves like wolves upon the fine example of good citizenship that the population of the capital were, at that moment, setting the rest of the country by turning up en masse at polling stations just when the specter of an abstention on a scale unparalleled in the history of our democracy had seemed to be posing a grave threat to the stability not just of the regime but, even more seriously, of the system itself. The statement emanating from the ministry of the interior did not go quite that far, but the government's relief was evident in every line. As for the three parties involved in the election, the parties on the right, in the middle and on the left, they, having first made rapid calculations as to the losses and gains that would result from this unexpected influx of voters, issued congratulatory statements in which, along with other stylistic niceties, they affirmed that democracy had every reason to celebrate. With the national flag draped on the wall behind them, the president in his palace and the prime minister in his mansion both expressed themselves in similar terms, give or take a comma. At the polling stations, the lines of voters, standing three deep, went right round the block and as far as the eye could see.

Like all the other presiding officers in the city, the one at polling station number fourteen was all too aware that he was living through a unique moment in history. When, late that night, after the ministry of the interior had extended the deadline for voting by two hours, a period that had to be extended by a further half an hour so that the voters crammed inside the building could exercise their right to vote, when, at last, the poll clerks and the party representatives, exhausted and hungry, stood before the mountain of ballot paper that had been emptied out of the two ballot boxes, the second on had been an emergency requisition from the ministry, the immensity of the task that lay before them made them tremble with an emotion we would not hesitate to describe as epic or heroic, as if the nation's honored ghosts, brought back to life, had magically rematerialized in those ballot papers. One of the ballot papers belonged to the presiding officer's wife. She had been propelled out of the cinema by some strange impulse, she had then spent hours in a queue that advanced at a snail's pace, and when she finally found herself face to face with her husband, when she heard him speak her name, she felt in her heart something that was perhaps the shadow of a former happiness, only the shadow, but even so, she felt it had been worth going there just for that. It was gone midnight when the counting finished. The number of valid votes did not quite reach twenty-five percent, with the party on the right winning thirteen percent, the party in the middle nine percent and the party on the left two and a half percent. There were very few spoiled ballots and very few abstentions. All the others, more than seventy percent of the total votes cast, were blank.

FEELINGS OF CONFUSION AND STUPEFACTION, BUT ALSO OF MOCKERY AND scorn swept the country from north to south. The provincial town councils, where the elections had taken place without incident or upset, apart from the occasional delay caused by the bad weather, and which had obtained results that differed little from the norm, the usual number of straightforward voters, the usual number of inveterate abstainers, and no very significant number of spoiled or blank votes, these councils, who had felt humiliated by the display of centralist triumphalism that had been paraded before the rest of the country as an example of the purest electoral public spirit, could now return that slap in the face and laugh at the foolish presumption of those ladies and gentlemen who thought they were the cat's meow simply because they happened to live in the country's capital. The words Those ladies and gentlemen, pronounced with a curl of the lips that oozed disdain with every syllable, if not with every letter, were directed not at the people who had remained at home until four in the afternoon and then suddenly rushed out to vote as if they had received some irresistible order, but at the government who had hung out the flags too soon, at the political parties who had pounced on the blank votes as if they were a vineyard to be harvested and they were the harvesters, at the newspapers and the other media for the ease with which they moved from applause on the capitoline hill to having people hurled from the tarpeian rock, as if they themselves did not play an active part in the genesis of such disasters.

The provincial scoffers were right to some extent, but not as right as they thought there were. Beneath the political agitation that is racing through the capital like a gunpowder trail in search of a bomb one can sense a disquiet that avoids being spoken out loud, unless in a discussion amongst peers, or between individuals and their closest friends, members of a political party and the party machinery, or the government and itself. What will happen when the election is held again, that is the question everyone is asking in a quiet, controlled whisper, so as not to wake the sleeping dragon. There are those who feel that the best plan would be to resist sticking the spear between the creature's ribs and leave things as they are, with the p.o.t.r. in government and the p.o.t.r. on the city council, to pretend that nothing has happened, to imagine, for example, that the government has declared a state of emergency in the capital and that, consequently, all constitutional guarantees are suspended, and then, after a time, when the dust has settled and the whole tragic incident has entered the list of long-forgotten past events, to prepare for new elections, starting with a carefully planned electoral campaign, full of solemn oaths and promises, at the same time trying to prevent, at all costs, without worrying too much about any minor or major illegalities, the possibility of the repetition of a phenomenon which a celebrated expert on such matters has already rather harshly dubbed socio-political teratology. There are also those who take an entirely different view, they protest that the laws are sacred, that what is written is there to be obeyed, regardless of who gets hurt in the process, and that if we follow the path of subterfuges and take the short-cut of under-the-table deals we will be heading straight for chaos and an end to conscience, in short, if the law stipulates that in the event of a natural disaster, the elections should be repeated eight days later, then they must be repeated eight days later, that is, on the following Sunday, and may god's will be done, since that is what he's there for. It should be noted, however, that when expressing their opinions, the political parties prefer not to take too many risks, in the spirit of trying to please everyone all the time, they say yes, but then again no. The leaders of the party on the right, which is in government and runs the city council, start by assuming that this undoubted trump card will hand them victory on a silver platter, and so they have adopted a tactic of serenity tinged with diplomacy, trusting to the judgement of the government upon whom it is incumbent to see that the law is respected, As is only logical and natural in a long-standing democracy like ours, they conclude. The leaders of the party in the middle also want the law to be obeyed, but are asking the government for something which they know to be totally impossible, that is, the establishment and application of rigorous measures to ensure that the next election takes place absolutely normally and, presumably, produces absolutely normal results, In order, they allege, that there will be no repetition in this city of the shameful spectacle it has just presented to the country and to the world. As for the party on the left, they have gathered together all their top people and, after a long debate, drawn up and published a statement in which they express their firm and genuine hope that the approaching election will bring into being the necessary political conditions for the advent of a new era of development and social progress. They don't actually say that they're hoping to win the next election and take over the city council, but the implication is there. That night, the prime minister went on television to announce to the people that, in accordance with the current legislation, the municipal elections would be held again on the following Sunday, and a new period of electoral campaigning, of four days only, would begin at midnight and end at midnight on Friday. Putting on a grave face and speaking with great emphasis, he added that the government was sure that the capital's population, when called upon to vote again, would exercise their civic duty with the dignity and decorum they had always shown in the past, thus declaring null and void the regrettable event during which, for reasons that have yet to be clarified, but into which investigations are already fairly well advanced, the usual clear judgement of the city's electorate had become unexpectedly confused and distorted. The message from the president will be kept back until the close of the campaign on Friday night, but its concluding phrase has already been chosen, Sunday, my dear compatriots, will be a fine day.

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.

The impressive serenity of the voters in the streets and in the polling stations was not mirrored by an identical state of mind in ministerial offices and at party headquarters. The question that most worries them all is what the abstention rate will be this time, as if therein lay the way to salvation out of the tricky social and political situation in which the country has been plunged for over a week now. A reasonably high abstention rate, or even above the maximum recorded in the previous elections, as long as it wasn't too high, would signify a return to normality, to the known routine of those voters who had never seen the point of voting and are noticeable by virtue of their persistent absence, or those others who preferred to make the most of the good weather and go and spend the day at the beach or in the country with their family, or those who, for no other reason than invincible idleness, stayed at home. If the crowds outside the polling stations, which were as large as they had been for the previous election, showed, without any room for doubt, that the percentage of abstentions was going to be extremely low, possibly non-existent, what most confused the authorities, and was nearly driving them crazy, was the fact that the voters, with very few exceptions, responded with impenetrable silence to the questions asked by the people running exit polls on how they had voted, It's just for statistical purposes, you don't have to identify yourself, you don't have to give your name, they insisted, but even that did not convince the distrustful voters. A week earlier, journalists had at least managed to get answers out of them, although it's true that these had been given in impatient or ironic or scornful tones and were really another way of saying nothing at all, but at least there had been an exchange of words, one side had asked the question and the other had pretended to give an answer, but it was nothing like this dense wall of silence, as if it were built around a mystery shared by everyone and which everyone had sworn to defend. To many people it will seem astonishing, not to say impossible, this coincidence of behavior amongst so many thousands of people who do not know each other, who do not think the same, who belong to different social classes or strata, who, in short, despite being politically to the right or in the middle or to the left, or, indeed, nowhere at all, resolved individually to keep their mouth shut until the votes were counted, thus leaving the unveiling of the secret until later. This, with great hopes of being right, was what the interior minister wanted to tell the prime minister, this was what the prime minister hastened to pass on to the president, who, being older, more experienced and more case-hardened, who had, in brief, seen more of life, merely replied sardonically, If they're not prepared to talk now, give me one good reason why they should talk later. The only reason this bucket of cold water from the nation's supreme arbiter did not cause the prime minister or the interior minister to lose all hope and to fall into the grip of despair was because they had nothing else to cling to, even if only for a short time. The interior minister had preferred not to mention that, fearing possible irregularities in the electoral process, a concern which the facts themselves, meanwhile, proved to be entirely unfounded, he had ordered the posting at all polling stations of two plain-clothes policemen, each from a different police department, both being authorized to oversee the count, and each of whom was charged also with keeping an eye on his or her colleague, just in case there should be any kind of complicity between them, be it honorably political in nature or a deal struck at the market of petty treacheries. In this way, what with spies and vigilantes, recording devices and video cameras, they appeared to have everything under control, safe from any malign interference that might sully the purity of the electoral process, and now that the game was over, all that remained for them to do was to wait, arms folded, for the final verdict of the ballot boxes. When the presiding officer of polling station number fourteen, to whose workings we had the great pleasure of devoting, in homage to those dedicated citizens, an entire chapter, even down to the personal problems of certain of its members, and when the presiding officers of all the other 4 polling stations, from number one to number thirteen, from number fifteen to number forty-four, at last emptied out the votes onto the long rows of benches that had served them as tables, the impetuous rumble of an avalanche was heard all over the city. It was a foreshadowing of the political earthquake that would soon follow. In homes, in cafes, in pubs and in bars, in all the public places where there was a television or a radio, the capital's inhabitants, some more calmly than others, awaited the final result of the count. No one confided in their nearest and dearest as to how they had voted, the closest of friends kept silent on the matter, and even the most talkative people seemed to have forgotten their words. Finally, at ten o'clock that night, the prime minister appeared on television. His face looked drawn, he had dark circles under his eyes, the result of a whole week of sleepless nights, and beneath the healthy glow of make-up he was pale. He was holding a piece of paper in his hand, but he didn't really read from it, he just glanced at it from time to time so as not to lose the thread of his speech, Dear fellow citizens, he said, the result of the elections carried out today in our country's capital was as follows, the party on the right, eight percent, the party in the middle, eight percent, the party on the left, one percent, abstentions, none, spoiled votes, none, blank votes, eighty-three percent. He paused to take a sip from the glass of water beside him, then went on, While we realize that today's vote is both a confirmation and an exacerbation of the trend established last Sunday and while we are in unanimous agreement as to the need for a serious investigation into the first and last causes of these troubling results, the government considers, after due consultation with his excellency the president, that its legitimacy in office was not called into question, not only because the election just held was merely a local election, but also because it declares and believes that its pressing and urgent duty is to carry out an in-depth investigation into the anomalous events of the last seven days, events in which we have all been both astonished witnesses and bold participants, and it is with profound sorrow that I say this, for those blank votes which have struck a brutal blow against the democratic normality of our personal and collective lives did not fall from the skies or rise up from the bowels of the earth, they were in the pockets of eighty-three out of every one hundred voters in this city, who placed them in the ballot boxes with their own unpatriotic hands. Another sip of water, this time more necessary, for his mouth had suddenly gone dry, There is still time to rectify this mistake, not by means of another election, which, given the current state of affairs, might prove not only useless but counter-productive, but through a rigorous examination of conscience, which, from this public platform, I urge on all the inhabitants of the capital, some so that they may better protect themselves from the terrible threat hanging over their heads, others, be they guilty or innocent in their intentions, so that they can either turn from the evil into which they have been dragged by who knows who or else risk becoming the direct target of the sanctions foreseen under the state of emergency whose declaration the government will be seeking from his excellency the president, after, of course, initial consultation with parliament, which has been convened tomorrow in extraordinary session, and from whom we expect to obtain unanimous approval. A change of tone, arms slightly spread, hands raised to shoulder height, The nation's government feels sure that in coming here, like a loving father, to remind that section of the capital's population who strayed from the straight and narrow of the sublime lesson to be learned from the parable of the prodigal son and by saying to them that there is no fault that cannot be forgiven a heart that is truly contrite and wholly repentant, the goverment is merely giving expression to the fraternal will of the rest of the country, of all those citizens who, with praiseworthy civic feeling, properly fulfilled their electoral duties. The prime minister's final flourish, Honor your country, for the eyes of the country are upon you, complete with drumrolls and bugle blasts, unearthed from the attics of the mustiest of nationalistic rhetoric, was ruined by a Good night that rang entirely false, but then that is the great thing about ordinary words, they are incapable of deceit.

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.

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.

As the days passed, it became noticeable, in a way that was, at first, imperceptible, that the word blank, as if it had suddenly become obscene or rude, was falling into disuse, that people would employ all kinds of evasions and periphrases to replace it. A blank piece of paper, for example, would be described instead as virgin, a blank on a form that had all its life been a blank became the space provided, blank looks all became vacant instead, students stopped saying that their minds had gone blank, and owned up to the fact that they simply knew nothing about the subject, but the most interesting case of all was the sudden disappearance of the riddle with which, for generations and generations, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors had sought to stimulate the intelligence and deductive powers of children, You can fill me in, draw me and fire me, what am I, and people, reluctant to elicit the word blank from innocent children, justified this by saying that the riddle was far too difficult for those with limited experience of the world. It seemed, therefore, that the high political office promised to the interior minister had been cut short at birth, that he was fated, after having come so close to touching the sun, to be drowned ignominiously in the hellespont, but another idea, as sudden as a lightning flash illuminating the night, made him rise again. All was not lost. He ordered back to base the agents confined to fieldwork, blithely dismissed those on short-term contracts, gave the secret police a thorough dressing-down and set to work.

It was clear that the city was a termites' nest of liars and that the five hundred he had in his power were also lying through all the teeth they had in their head, but there was one difference between these two groups, the former were free to enter and leave their homes, and, elusive and slippery as eels, could appear as easily as they could disappear, only to reappear later on and again vanish, whereas dealing with the latter was the easiest thing in the world, it was enough just to go down into the ministry cellars, all five hundred were not there, of course, there wasn't room, most were distributed around other investigatory units, but the fifty or so kept under permanent observation should be more than enough for an initial attempt. The reliability of the machine may have been called into question by certain sceptical experts and some courts may even have refused to admit as evidence the results obtained from the tests, but the interior minister was nonetheless hopeful that the use of the machine might at least give off a small spark that would help him find his way out of the dark tunnel into which the investigation had stuck its head. His plan, as you will no doubt have guessed, was to bring back into the fray the famous polygraph, also known as the lie detector, or, in more scientific terms, a machine that is used to record, simultaneously, various psychological and physiological functions, or, in more descriptive detail, an instrument for registering physiological phenomena of which an electrical recording is made on a sheet of damp paper impregnated with potassium iodide and starch. Connected to the machine by a tangle of wires, armbands and suction pads, the patient does not suffer, he simply has to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and to cease to believe in the universal assertion, the old, old story, which, since the beginning of time, has been drummed into us, that the will can do anything, for you need look no further than the following example, which denies it outright, because that wonderful will of yours, however much you may trust it, however tenacious it may have been up until now, cannot control twitching muscles, cannot staunch unwanted sweat or stop eyelids blinking or regulate breathing. In the end, they'll say you lied, you'll deny it, you'll swear you told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that might be true, you didn't lie, you just happen to be a very nervous person, with a strong will, it's true, but you are nevertheless a tremulous reed that shivers in the slightest breeze, so they'll connect you up to the machine again and it will be even worse, they'll ask if you're alive and you'll say, of course I am, but your body will protest, will contradict you, the tremor in your chin will say no, you're dead, and it might be right, perhaps your body knows before you do that they are going to kill you. It would be unlikely that this could happen in the cellars of the ministry of the interior, the only crime these people have committed is to cast a blank vote, and that would have been of no importance if they had merely been the usual suspects, but there were a lot of them, too many, almost everyone, who cares if it's your inalienable right when they tell you it's to be used only in homeopathic doses, drop by drop, you can't come here with a pitcher filled to overflowing with blank votes, that's why the handle dropped off, we always thought there was something suspicious about that handle, if something that could always carry a lot was satisfied with carrying little, that shows a most praiseworthy modesty, what got you into trouble was ambition, you thought you could fly up to the sun and, instead, you fell headfirst into the dardanelles, you will recall that we said the same about the interior minister, but he belongs to a different race of men, the macho, the virile, the bristly-chinned, those who will not bow their head, let's see now how you escape the hunter of lies, let's see what revealing lines your large and small transgressions will leave on that strip of paper impregnated with potassium iodide and starch, and you thought you were something special, this is what the much-vaunted supreme dignity of the human being can be reduced to, a piece of damp paper.

Now the polygraph is not a machine equipped with a disc that goes backward and forward and tells us, depending on the case, He lied, He didn't lie, if that were the case, being a judge with the ability to condemn and absolve would be the easiest thing in the world, police stations would be replaced by departments of applied mechanical psychology, lawyers, for lack of clientele, would pull down the shutters, the courts would be abandoned to the flies until some other use had been found for them. A polygraph, as we were saying, cannot go anywhere without help, it needs to have by its side a trained technician who can interpret the lines on the paper, but this doesn't mean that the technician must be a connoisseur of the truth, all he has to know is what is there before his eyes, that the question asked of the patient under observation has produced what we might innovatively call an allergographic reaction, or in more literary but no less imaginative terms, the outline of a lie. Something, nevertheless, would have been gained. At least it would be possible to proceed to an initial selection, wheat on the one side, tares on the other, and restore to liberty and family life, thereby freeing up the detention centers, those people, finally vindicated, who, without being contradicted by the machine, responded No to the question Did you cast a blank vote. As for the rest, those who had the guilt of electoral transgressions weighing on their conscience, any mental reserves of the Jesuitical kind or spiritual introspection of the zen variety would prove useless to them, for the polygraph, implacable, unfeeling, would immediately sniff out a falsehood, whether they denied casting a blank vote or claimed to have voted for such and such a party. One can, if the circumstances are favorable, survive one lie, but not two. Just in case, the interior minister had given orders that whatever the result of the tests, for now, no one would be released, Leave them be, one never knows how far human malice will go, he said. And he was right, the wretched man. After many dozens of meters of squiggled-on, scribbled-on paper, on which had been recorded the tremors of the souls of everyone observed, after questions and answers repeated hundreds of times, always the same, always identical, one secret service agent, still a young lad, with little experience of temptation, fell with the innocence of a newborn lamb for the challenge thrown out to him by a pretty young woman who had just been submitted to the polygraph test and been declared to be deceitful and false. This mata-hari said, That machine is useless, Useless, why, asked the agent, forgetting that dialogue did not form part of the task with which he had been entrusted, Because in a situation like this, when everyone is under suspicion, all you would have to do is to say the word Blank, nothing more, without even bothering to find out if the person had voted, to provoke negative reactions, turmoil, anxiety, even if the person being examined was the purest, most perfect personification of innocence, Oh, come off it, I don't believe that, retorted the agent confidently, anyone at peace with his conscience would simply tell the truth and pass the polygraph test easily, We're not robots or talking stones, mister agent, said the woman, and within every human truth there is always an element of anxiety or conflict, we are, and I am not referring simply to the fragility of life, we are a small, tremulous flame which threatens at any moment to go out, and we are afraid, above all, we are afraid, You're wrong there, I'm not afraid, I've been trained to overcome fear in all circumstances and, besides, I am not by nature a scaredy-cat, I wasn't even as a child, responded the agent, In that case, why don't we try a little experiment, suggested the woman, you let yourself be connected up to the machine and I'll ask the questions, You're mad, I'm the one with the authority here and, besides, you're the suspect, not me, So you are afraid, No, I'm not, Then connect yourself up to that machine and show me what it means to be a truthful man. The agent looked at the woman, who was smiling, he looked at the technician, who was struggling to conceal a smile, and said, All right, then, once won't hurt, I agree to submit to the experiment. The technician attached the wires, tightened the armbands, adjusted the suction pads, I'm ready when you are. The woman took a deep breath, held the breath in her lungs for three seconds and then, in a rush, uttered one word, Blank. It wasn't a question, more of an exclamation, but the needles moved, leaving a mark on the paper. In the pause that followed, the needles did not stop completely, they continued moving, making tiny traces, like the ripples made by a stone thrown into the water. The woman was looking at the needles, not at the bound man, but when she did turn and look him in the eye, she asked in a gentle, almost tender voice, Tell me, please, did you cast a blank vote, No, I didn't, I never did and never will cast a blank vote, replied the man vehemently. The needles moved rapidly, precipitately, violently. Another pause. Well, asked the agent. The technician took a while to respond, the agent repeated, Well, what does the machine say. The machine says that you lied, sir, said the embarrassed technician, That's impossible, cried the agent, I told the truth, I didn't cast a blank vote, I'm a professional secret service agent, a patriot trying to defend the interests of the nation, there must be something wrong with the machine, Don't waste your energy, don't try to justify yourself, said the woman, I believe you told the truth, that you didn't cast a blank vote and never will, but that, I must remind you, is not the point, I was just trying to demonstrate to you, successfully as it turns out, that we cannot entirely trust our bodies, It's all your fault, you made me nervous, Of course it was my fault, it was the temptress eve's fault, but no one came to ask us if we were feeling nervous when they hooked us up to that contraption, It's guilt that makes you feel nervous, Possibly, but go and ask your boss why it is that you, who are innocent of all our evils, behaved like a guilty man, There's nothing more to be said, replied the agent, it's as if what happened just now never happened at all. Then, addressing the technician, Give me that strip of paper, and remember, say nothing, if you do, you'll regret you were ever born, Yes, sir, don't worry, I'll keep my mouth shut, So will I, said the woman, but at least tell the minister that no amount of cunning will do any good, we will all continue to lie when we tell the truth, and to tell the truth when we lie, just like him, just like you, now just imagine if I had asked if you wanted to go to bed with me, what would you have said then, what would the machine have said.

THE DEFENSE MINISTER'S FAVORITE EXPRESSION, A DEPTH CHARGE launched against the system, partially inspired by the unforgettable experience of an historic trip he had made aboard a submarine, a trip that had lasted all of half an hour and had taken place in flat calm seas, began to gain in strength and to attract attention when the interior minister's plans, despite one or two minor successes of no appreciable significance to the situation as a whole, revealed themselves to be impotent when it came to achieving the main aim, namely, persuading the inhabitants of the city, or, more precisely, the degenerates, delinquents and subversives who had cast the blank votes, to acknowledge the error of their ways and to beg for the mercy and the penance of a new election to which, at the chosen moment, they would rush en masse to purge themselves of the sins of a folly which they would swear never to repeat. It had become clear to the whole government, with the exception of the ministers of justice and culture, who both had their doubts, that there was an urgent need to tighten the screw still further, especially given that the declaration of a state of emergency, for which they had both had such high hopes, had produced no perceptible shift in the desired direction, for, since the citizens of this country were not in the healthy habit of demanding the proper enforcement of the rights bestowed on them by the constitution, it was only logical, even natural, that they had failed even to notice that those rights had been suspended. As a consequence, a state of siege proper was declared, one not purely for show, but complete with a curfew, the closure of theaters and cinemas, constant army street patrols, a prohibition on gatherings of more than five people, and an absolute ban on anyone entering or leaving the city, along with a simultaneous lifting of the restrictive, although far less rigorous, measures still in force in the rest of the country, a clear difference in treatment that would make the humiliation of the capital all the more explicit and damning. What we are trying to tell them, said the minister of defense, and let's hope they finally get the message, is that, having shown themselves to be unworthy of trust, they will be treated accordingly. The interior minister, forced somehow to disguise the failure of his secret agents, thoroughly approved of the immediate declaration of a state of siege, and, to show that he still had a few cards in his hand and had not withdrawn from the game entirely, he informed the council of ministers that, after an exhaustive investigation, and in close collaboration with interpol, he had reached the conclusion that the international anarchist movement, If it exists to do anything more than to write a few jokes on walls, and he paused briefly for the knowing laughter of his colleagues, then, feeling equally pleased himself and with them, completed the sentence, Had absolutely nothing to do with the election boycott of which we have been the victims, and that this is, therefore, merely an internal matter, Forgive me saying so, said the minister of foreign affairs, merely does not seem to me the most appropriate of adverbs, and I must remind this council that a number of other states have expressed their concern to me that what is happening here could cross the border and spread like a modern-day black death, You mean blank death, don't you, said the prime minister with a placatory smile, In that case, the minister of foreign affairs went on unperturbed, we can, quite correctly, speak of depth charges launched against the stability of the democratic system, not simply, not merely, of one country, this country, but of the entire planet. The interior minister sensed that the role of major national figure to which recent events had elevated him was slipping from his grasp, and in order not entirely to lose his grip, having first thanked the minister of foreign affairs and, with great magnanimity, acknowledged the truth of what had been said, he was now keen to show that he, too, was capable of the most subtle of semiological interpretations, It is interesting to observe, he said, how the meanings of words change without our noticing, how we often use them to mean precisely the opposite of what they used to mean and which, in a way, like a fading echo, they still continue to mean, That's just a normal consequence of the semantic process, muttered the minister of culture, And what has that got to do with blank ballot papers, asked the minister for foreign affairs, Oh, it has nothing to do with blank ballot papers, but it has everything to do with the state of siege, declared the interior minister triumphantly, You've lost me, said the minister of defense, It's quite simple, It may be simple for you, but I don't understand, For example, what does the word siege mean, it's all right, that's a purely rhetorical question, I don't expect an answer, we all know that siege means blockade or encirclement, isn't that right, As sure as two and two are four, Therefore, declaring a state of siege is tantamount to saying that the country's capital is besieged, blockaded or encircled by an enemy, when the truth is that the enemy, if I may call it that, is not outside but inside. The other ministers looked at each other, the prime minister pretended not to be listening and started shuffling through some papers. But the minister of defense was about to triumph in this semiological battle, There's another way of looking at it too, What's that, That in unleashing this rebellion, and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I call what is happening a rebellion, the capital's inhabitants were, and quite right too, besieged or blockaded or encircled, the choice of term is, to be frank, a matter of complete indifference to me, May I remind our dear colleague and the council as a whole, said the minister for justice, that, when they decided to cast their blank votes, the citizens were only doing what the law explicitly allows them to do, therefore, to speak of rebellion in such a case is, as well as being, I imagine, a grave semantic error, and you will forgive me, I hope, for venturing into an area of which I know nothing, is also, from the legal point of view, a complete nonsense, Rights are not abstractions, retorted the minister of defense, people either deserve rights or they don't, and these people certainly don't, anything else is just so much empty talk, You're quite right, said the minister of culture, rights aren't abstractions, they continue to exist even when they're not respected, Now you're getting philosophical, Has the minister of defense got anything against philosophy, The only philosophy I'm interested in is military philosophy, and then only if it leads us to victory, I am, gentlemen, a barrack-room pragmatist, and my approach, whether you like it or not, is to call a spade a spade, but now, just so that you don't start looking down on me as someone of inferior intelligence, I would appreciate it if you could explain to me, as long as it's not a question of demonstrating that a circle can be transformed into a square of an equal area, how a right, if it isn't respected, can still continue to exist, Very simple, that right exists potentially in the duty of others to respect and comply with it, No offence, but civic sermons and demagoguery will get us nowhere, slap a state of siege on them and see how they like it, Unless it backfires on us, of course, said the minister of justice, How exactly, That I don't know yet, we'll just have to wait, no one had even dared to imagine that what is happening in our country could ever happen anywhere, but there it is, like a tight knot we can't undo, here we are gathered round this table to make decisions which, despite all the proposals put forward as sure solutions to the crisis, have, until now, achieved nothing, let's just wait, we'll find out soon enough how people will react to the state of siege, Sorry, but I can't just let that comment pass unchallenged, spluttered the interior minister, the measures we took were unanimously approved by this council and, as far as I recall, no one present at that meeting brought to the debate any different or better proposals, the burden of the catastrophe, yes, I'll call it a catastrophe and I'll call it a burden, even though some of my fellow ministers may think I'm exaggerating, as that smug, ironic air of theirs so clearly demonstrates, the burden of the catastrophe, I say again, has fallen, firstly, as is only right, on his excellency the president and on the prime minister, and secondly, given the responsibilities inherent in the posts we occupy, on the minister of defense and on myself, as for the others, and I refer in particular to the minister of justice and the minister of culture, who have been so kind as to shine the light of their intellects upon us, I have yet to hear a single idea that was worth considering for longer than it took us to listen to it, The light with which, according to you, I was kind enough to illuminate this council, was not my own, but the light of the law and nothing but the law, replied the minister of justice, And as regards my own humble person and my part in this whole-sale ticking-off, said the minister of culture, given the miserable budget I'm allotted, you can hardly expect more, Ah, now I understand those anarchist leanings of yours, said the interior minister tartly, sooner or later, you always come out with the same old gibes. The prime minister had run out of papers to shuffle. He tapped his pen lightly on his glass of water, calling for attention and silence, I hate to interrupt this interesting debate of yours, from which, although I may well have seemed somewhat distracted, I feel I have learned a great deal, because, as experience should teach us, there is nothing like a good argument to release accumulated tension, especially in a situation like this, which is constantly reminding us that we have to do something, although quite what we don't know. He paused very deliberately, pretended to consult some notes, then went on, So, now that we are all calm and relaxed, with our spirits less inflamed, we can, at last, approve the proposal put forward by the minister of defense, namely, the declaration of a state of siege for an indeterminate period and with immediate effect from the moment it is made public. There was a more or less general murmur of assent, albeit with variations of tone whose origins were impossible to identify, despite the minister of defense taking his eyes on a rapid panoramic excursion to catch any note of disagreement or muted enthusiasm. The prime minister went on, Experience, alas, has also taught us that when the time comes for them to be acted upon even the most perfect and polished of ideas can fail, whether because of some last-minute hiccup, or because of a gap between expectation and reality, or because, at some critical point, the situation got out of control, or because of a thousand other possible reasons that it is not worth our while going into right now and for which we would not have time, it is therefore vital always to have at the ready a replacement or complementary idea, which would prevent, as might well happen in this case, the emergence of a power vacuum, or to use another more alarming expression, of street power, either of which would have disastrous consequences. Accustomed to the prime minister's rhetoric, which took the form of three steps forward and two steps back, or, put another way, sitting firmly on the fence, his ministers were patiently awaiting his final, concluding, definitive word, the one that would explain everything. It did not come. The prime minister took a sip of water, dabbed at his lips with a white handkerchief which he took from his inside jacket pocket, made as if to consult his notes, but instead, at the last moment, pushed them to one side and said, If the results of the state of siege fall below expectations, that is, if they prove incapable of restoring the citizens to democratic normality, to the balanced, sensible use of an electoral law which, due to an imprudent lack of attention by the legislators, left the door open to something which, without fear of paradox, it would be reasonable to classify as a legal abuse, then I would like to inform this council now that I, as prime minister, foresee the application of another measure which, as well as providing psychological reinforcement of the measure we have just taken, I am referring, of course, to the declaration of a state of siege, could, I feel sure, by itself reset the troubled needle of our country's political scales and put an end once and for all to the nightmare situation into which we have been plunged. Another pause, another sip of water, another dab with the handkerchief, then he went on, You might well ask why, in that case, we do not simply implement that measure now instead of wasting our time setting up a state of siege which, as we well know, will make every aspect of life very difficult for the capital's population, both the guilty and the innocent, and that question is not without relevance, there are, however, important factors that cannot be ignored, some purely logistical in nature, others not, the main one being the effect, which it would be no exaggeration to describe as traumatic, of the sudden introduction of this extreme measure, which is why I feel we should opt for a gradual sequence of actions, of which the state of siege will be the first. The prime minister again shuffled his papers, but did not, this time, touch his glass of water, I understand your curiosity on the subject, he said, but I will say nothing further about the matter now, except to inform you that I was received in audience this morning by his excellency the president of the republic, to whom I presented my idea, which received his entire and unconditional support. You will learn more later, now, before closing this productive meeting, I ask all of you, in particular the ministers of defense and of the interior, who will, together, shoulder responsibility for the complex actions required to impose and carry out the declaration of the state of siege, to work diligently and energetically toward the same desired end. The armed forces and the police, whether acting within the ambit of their specific areas of competence or in joint operations, always observing the most rigorous mutual respect and avoiding any arguments over precedence that would prove prejudicial to our aims, are charged with the patriotic task of leading the lost sheep back to the fold, if you will allow me to use an expression so beloved of our forefathers and so deeply rooted in our pastoral traditions. And remember, you must do everything possible to ensure that those who are, for the moment, only our opponents do not instead become the enemies of the nation. May god go with you and guide you on your sacred mission so that the sun of concord may once more light the consciences of our fellow citizens and so that peace may restore to their daily lives the harmony that has been lost.

While the prime minister was appearing on television to announce the establishment of a state of siege, invoking reasons of national security resulting from the current political and social instability, a consequence, in turn, of the action taken by organized subversive groups who had repeatedly obstructed the people's right to vote, units of infantry and military police, supported by tanks and other combat vehicles, were, at the same time, occupying train stations and setting up posts at all the roads leading out of the capital. The main airport, about twenty-five kilometers to the north of the city, was outside the army's specific area of control and would, therefore, continue to function without any restrictions other than those foreseen at times of amber alert, which meant that planes carrying tourists would still be able to land and take off, although journeys made by those native to the country, while not, strictly speaking, prohibited, would be strongly discouraged, except in special circumstances to be examined on a case-by-case basis. Images of these military operations invaded the houses of the capital's bewildered inhabitants with, as the reporter put it, the unstoppable force of a straight punch. Images of officers giving orders, of sergeants yelling at their men to carry out these orders, of sappers erecting barriers, of ambulances and transmitters, of spotlights lighting up the highway as far as the first bend, of waves of soldiers, armed to the teeth, jumping out of trucks and taking up positions, as well equipped for an immediate hard-fought battle as for a long war of attrition. Families whose members worked or studied in the capital merely shook their heads at this war-like display and murmured, They must be mad, but others, who, every morning, despatched a father or a son to a factory on one of the industrial estates that surround the city and who waited every evening to welcome them back, now asked themselves how and on what they were going to live if they were not allowed to leave or enter the city. Perhaps they'll issue safe-conduct passes to those with jobs outside, said an old man, who had retired so many years ago that he still used terminology from the days of the franco-prussian wars or other ancient conflicts. Yet the wise old man was not so very wrong, the proof being that, the following day, business associations were quick to bring their well-founded anxieties to the government's notice, While we unreservedly and with an unwavering sense of patriotism support the energetic measures taken by the government, they said, as being a necessary campaign of national salvation to oppose the harmful effects of thinly disguised subversive acts, allow us, nonetheless, and with the greatest respect, to ask the competent authorities for the urgent issue of passes to our employees and workers, at the risk, if such a provision is not made at once, of causing grave and irreversible damage to our industrial and commercial activities, with the subsequent, inevitable harm this would cause to the national economy as a whole. On the afternoon of that same day, a joint communique from the ministries of defense, the interior and finance, expressed the national government's understanding and sympathy for the employers' legitimate concerns, but explained that any such distribution of passes could never be carried out on the scale desired by businesses, moreover, such liberality on the part of the government would inevitably imperil the security and efficacy of the military units charged with guarding the new frontier around the capital. However, as a demonstration of their openness and readiness to avoid the very worst problems, the government was prepared to give such documents to any managers and technical teams who were judged to be vital to the regular running of the companies, who would then have to take full responsibility for the actions, criminal or otherwise, inside and outside the city, of the people chosen to benefit from this privilege. Assuming the plan was approved, these people would have to gather each workday morning at designated places in order to be transported in buses under police escort to the city's various exit points, where more buses would take them to the factories or other premises where they worked and whence they would have to return at the end of the day. The cost of these operations, from the hiring of buses to the remuneration paid to the police for providing the escorts, would have to be covered by the companies themselves, an outlay that might well be made tax-deductible, although a firm decision on this could only be taken after a feasibility study had been carried out by the ministry of finance. As you can imagine, the complaints did not stop there. It is a basic fact of life that people cannot live without food and drink, now, bearing in mind that the meat came from outside, that the fish came from outside, that the vegetables came from outside, that, everything, in short, came from outside, and that what this city could, on its own, produce or store away would not provide enough even for one week, it would be necessary to lay on supply systems very like those that would provide businesses with technicians and managers, only far more complex, given the perishable nature of certain products. Not to mention the hospitals and the pharmacies, the kilometers of ligatures, the mountains of cotton wool, the tons of pills, the hectoliters of injectable fluids, the many gross of condoms. And then there's the petrol and the diesel to think about, how to transport them to the service stations, unless someone in the government has had the machiavellian idea of punishing the inhabitants of the capital twice over by making them walk. It took only a few days for the government to realize that there is more to a state of siege than meets the eye, especially if there is no real intention of starving the besieged population to death as was the usual practice in the distant past, that a state of siege is not something that can be cobbled together in a moment, that you need to know exactly what your objectives are and how to achieve them, to weigh the consequences, to evaluate reactions, ponder the problems, calculate the gains and the losses, if only to avoid the vast mountain of work that suddenly faces the ministries, overwhelmed by an unstoppable flood of protests, complaints and requests for clarification, for almost none of which they can provide answers, because the instructions from on high had looked only at the general principles of the state of siege and had shown a complete disregard for the bureaucratic minutiae of its implementation, which is where chaos invariably finds a way in. One interesting aspect of the situation, which the satirical vein and sardonic eye of the capital's wits could not help but notice, was the fact that the government, the de facto and de jure besieger, was, at the same time, one of the besieged, not just because its chambers and ante-chambers, its offices and corridors, its departments and archives, its filing cabinets and stamps, were all in the very heart of the city, and, indeed, formed an organic part of it, but also because some of its members, at least three ministers, a few secretaries of state and under-secretaries, as well as a couple of directors-general, lived on the outskirts, not to mention the civil servants who, morning and evening, in one way or another, had to use the train, metro or bus if they did not have their own transport or did not want to submit themselves to the complexities of urban traffic. The stories that were told, not always sotto voce, explored the well-known theme of the hunter hunted or the biter bit, but did not restrict themselves to such childishly innocent comments, to the humor of a belle époque kindergarten, there was a whole kaleidoscope of variations, some of them utterly obscene and, from the point of view of the most elementary good taste, reprehensibly scatological. Unfortunately, and here we have further proof of the limited range and structural weakness of all sarcastic remarks, lampoons, burlesques, parodies, satires and other such jokes with which people hope to wound a government, the state of siege was not lifted and the problems of supply remained unresolved.

The days passed, and the difficulties continued to increase, they grew worse and multiplied, they sprang up underfoot like mushrooms after rain, but the moral strength of the population did not seem inclined to humble itself or to renounce what it had considered to be a just stance and to which it had given expression through the ballot box, the simple right not to follow any consensually established opinion. Some observers, usually foreign correspondents hurriedly despatched to cover the events, as they say in the jargon of the profession, and therefore unfamiliar with local idiosyncrasies, commented with bemusement on the complete lack of conflict amongst the city's inhabitants, even though they had observed what later proved to be agents provocateurs at work, trying to create the kind of unstable situations which might justify, in the eyes of the so-called international community, the leap that had not yet been taken, that is, the move from a state of siege to a state of war. One of these commentators, in his desire to be original, went so far as to describe this as a unique, never-before-seen example of ideological unanimity, which, if it were true, would make the capital's population a fascinating case, a political phenomenon worthy of study. Whichever way you looked at it, the idea was complete nonsense, and had nothing to do with the reality of the situation, for here, as anywhere else on the planet, people differ, they think differently, they are not all poor or all rich, and, even amongst the reasonably well-off, some are more so and some are less. The one subject on which they were all in agreement, with no need for any prior discussion, is one with which we are already familiar, and so there is no point going over old ground. Nevertheless, it is only natural that one would want to know, and the question was often asked, both by foreign journalists and by local ones, what singular reason lay behind the fact that there had, until now, been no incidents, no fights, no shouting matches or fisticuffs or worse amongst those who had cast blank votes and those who had not. The question amply demonstrates how important a knowledge of the elements of arithmetic is for the proper exercise of the profession of journalist, for they need only have recalled that the people casting blank votes represented eighty-three percent of the capital's population and that the remainder, all told, accounted for no more than seventeen percent, and one must not forget the debatable thesis put forward by the party on the left, according to which a blank vote and a vote for them were, metaphorically speaking, one bone and one flesh, and that if the supporters of the party on the left, and this is our own conclusion, did not all cast blank votes, although it is clear that many did in the second poll, it was simply because they had not been ordered to do so. No one would believe us if we were to say that seventeen people had decided to take on eighty-three, the days when battles were won with the help of god are long since gone. Natural curiosity would also lead one to ask two questions, what happened to the five hundred people plucked from the queues of voters by the ministry of the interior's spies and who subsequently underwent the torment of interrogation and the agony of seeing their most intimate secrets revealed by the lie detector and, the second question, what exactly are those specialist secret service agents and their less qualified assistants up to. On the first point, we have only doubts and no way of resolving them. There are those who say that the five hundred prisoners are, in accordance with that popular police euphemism, still helping the authorities with their inquiries in the hope of clarifying the facts, others say that they are gradually being freed, although only a few at a time so as not to attract too much attention, however, the more sceptical observers believe a third version, that they have all been removed from the city and are now in some unknown location and that, despite the dearth of results obtained hitherto, the interrogations continue. Who knows who is right. As for the second point, about what the secret service agents are up to, that we do know. Like all honest, worthy workers, they leave home every morning, tramp the city from end to end, and when they think the fish is about to bite, they try a new tactic, which consists of dropping all the circumlocutions and saying point-blank to the person they're with, Let's talk frankly now, like friends, I cast a blank vote, did you. At first, those questioned merely gave the answers described above, that no one was obliged to reveal how they voted, that no one can be questioned about it by any authority, and if one of them had the excellent idea of demanding that the impertinent questioner should identify himself and declare there and then on whose power and authority he was asking the question, then we would be treated to the pleasurable spectacle of seeing a secret service agent all in a fluster and scampering off with his tail between his legs, because, of course, it wouldn't occur to anyone that he would actually open his wallet and show them the card that would prove who he was, complete with photograph, official stamp and edged with the national colors. But, as we said, that was at the beginning. After a while, the general consensus deemed that, in such situations, the best attitude to take was to ignore the person asking the question and simply turn your back on them, or, if they proved extremely insistent, to say loudly and clearly Leave me alone, or, if preferred, and with more chance of success, to tell them, even more simply, to go to hell. Naturally, the reports sent by the secret service agents to their superiors camouflaged these rebuffs and disguised these setbacks, instead restating the stubborn and systematic absence of any collaborative spirit amongst the suspect sector of the population. You might think that things had reached a point very like that of two wrestlers endowed with equal strength, one pushing this way, the other pushing that, and while it was true that they had not moved from the spot where they had started, neither had they managed to advance even an inch, and, consequently, only the final exhaustion of one of them would give victory to the other. In the opinion of the person in charge of the secret services, this stale-mate would be rapidly resolved if one of the wrestlers were to receive help from another wrestler, which, in this particular situation, would mean abandoning, as futile, the persuasive techniques employed up until then and adopting, without reserve, dissuasive methods that did not exclude the use of brute force. If the capital, for its own many faults, finds itself under a state of siege, if it is up to the armed forces to impose discipline and proceed accordingly in the case of any grave disruption of the social order, if the high command take responsibility, on their word of honor, not to hesitate when it comes to making decisions, then the secret services will take it upon themselves to create suitable focal points of unrest that would justify a priori the harsh crackdown which the government, very generously, has tried, by all peaceful and, let us repeat the word, persuasive means, to avoid. The insurrectionists would not be able to come to them later with complaints, assuming they wanted to and assuming they had any. When the interior minister took this idea to the inner council, or emergency council, which had been formed meanwhile, the prime minister reminded him that he still had one weapon as yet undeployed in the resolution of the conflict and only in the unlikely event of that weapon failing would he consider this new plan or any others that happened to arise. Whilst the interior minister expressed his disagreement laconically, in four words, We are wasting time, the defense minister needed far more to guarantee that the armed forces would do their duty, As they always have throughout our long history, giving no thought to the sacrifice entailed. And that was how the delicate matter was left, the fruit, it seemed, was not yet ripe. Then it was that the other wrestler, grown tired of waiting, decided to risk taking a step. One morning, the streets of the capital were filled by people wearing stickers on their chest bearing the words, in red letters on a black background, I cast a blank vote, huge placards hung from windows declaring, in black letters on a red background, We cast blank votes, but the most astonishing sight, waving above the heads of the advancing demonstrators, was the endless stream of blank, white flags, which would lead one unthinking correspondent to run to the telephone and inform his newspaper that the city had surrendered. The police loud-speakers bellowed and screamed that gatherings of more than five people were not allowed, but there were fifty, five hundred, five thousand, fifty thousand, and who, in such a situation, is going to bother counting in fives. The police commissioner wanted to know if he could use tear-gas and water-cannon, the general in charge of the northern division if he was authorized to order the tanks to advance, the general of the southern airborne division if the conditions were right to send in paratroopers, or if, on the contrary, the risk of them landing on rooftops made this inadvisable. War was, however, about to break out.

Then it was that the prime minister revealed his plan to the government, who had been brought together in plenary session and with the president in the chair, The time has come to break the back of the resistance, he said, let's call a halt to all the psychological game-playing, to the espionage, the lie detectors and the other technological contraptions, since, despite the interior minister's worthy efforts, these methods have all proved incapable of solving the problem, I must add, by the way, that I also consider inappropriate any direct intervention by the armed forces, given the more than likely inconvenience of a mass slaughter which it is our duty to avoid at all costs, what I have to offer you instead is neither more nor less than a proposed multiple withdrawal, a series of actions which some may perhaps feel to be absurd, but which I am sure will lead us to total victory and a return to democratic normality, these actions are, namely, the immediate removal of the government to another city, which will become the country's new capital, the withdrawal of all the armed forces still in place, and the withdrawal of all police forces, this radical action will mean that the rebel city will be left entirely to its own devices and will have all the time it needs to understand the price of being cut off from the sacrosanct unity of the nation, and when it can no longer stand the isolation, the indignity, the contempt, when life within the city becomes a chaos, then its guilty inhabitants will come to us hanging their heads and begging our forgiveness. The prime minister looked about him, That is my plan, he said, I submit it to you for your examination and discussion, but, needless to say, I am counting on your unanimous approval, desperate diseases must have desperate remedies, and if the remedy I am prescribing is painful to you, the disease afflicting us is, quite simply, fatal.

IN WORDS THAT CAN BE GRASPED BY THE INTELLIGENCE OF THOSE CLASSES, who, though less educated, are nonetheless not entirely ignorant of the gravity and diversity of the many and various ailments that threaten the already precarious survival of the human race, what the prime minister had proposed was neither more nor less than a flight from the virus that had attacked the majority of the capital's inhabitants and which, given that the worst is always waiting just behind the door, might well end up infecting all the remaining inhabitants and even, who knows, the whole country. Not that he and his government were themselves afraid of being contaminated by the bite of this subversive insect, for apart from a few clashes between certain individuals and a few very minor differences of opinion, which were, anyway, more to do with means than ends, we have had ample proof of the unshakeable institutional cohesion of the politicians responsible for the running of a country which, without a word of warning, had been plunged into a disaster never before seen in the long and always troubled history of the known world. Contrary to what certain ill-intentioned people doubtless thought or suggested, this was not the coward's way out, but rather a strategic move of the first order, unparalleled in its audacity, one whose future results can almost be touched with the hand, like ripe fruit on a tree. Now all that was needed for the task to be crowned with success was that the energy put into carrying out the plan should be up to the resolve of its aims. First, they will have to decide who will leave the city and who will stay. Obviously, his excellency the president and the whole of the government down to under-secretary level will leave, along with their closest advisors, the members of the national parliament will also leave so that the legislative process suffers no interruption, the army and the police will leave, including the traffic police, but all the members of the municipal council will remain, along with their leader, the fire fighters' organizations will stay too, so that the city does not burn down because of some act of carelessness or sabotage, just as the staff of the city cleansing department will stay in case of epidemic and, needless to say, the authorities will ensure continued supplies of water and electricity, those utilities so essential to life. As for food, a group of dieticians, or nutritionists, have already been charged with drawing up a list of basic dishes which, while not bringing the population to the brink of starvation, would make them aware that a state of siege taken to its ultimate consequences would certainly be no holiday. Not that the government believed things would go that far. It would not be many days before the usual delegations appeared at a military post on one of the roads out of the city, bearing the white flag, the flag of unconditional surrender not the flag of insurgency, the fact that both are the same color is a remarkable coincidence upon which we will not now pause to reflect, but there will be plenty of reasons to return to the matter later on.

After the plenary meeting of the government, to which we assume sufficient reference was made on the last page of the previous chapter, the inner ministerial cabinet or emergency council discussed and took a handful of decisions which will, in the fullness of time, be revealed, always assuming, as we believe we have warned on a previous occasion, that events do not develop in a way that renders those decisions null and void or requires them to be replaced by others, for, as it is always wise to remember, while it is true that man proposes, it is god who disposes, and there have been very few occasions, almost all of them tragic, when both man and god were in agreement and did all the disposing together. One of the most hotly disputed matters was the government's withdrawal from the city, when and how it should be done, with or without discretion, with or without television coverage, with or without military bands, with or without garlands on the cars, with or without the national flag draped over the bonnet, and an endless series of details which required repeated discussions about state protocol which had never, not since the founding of the nation itself, known such difficulties. The final plan for the withdrawal was a masterpiece of tactics, consisting basically of a meticulous distribution of different itineraries so as to make things as hard as possible for any large concentrations of demonstrators who might gather together to express the city's possible feelings of displeasure, discontent or indignation at being abandoned to its fate. There was one itinerary for the president, one for the prime minister and one for each member of the council of ministers, a total of twenty-seven different routes, all under the protection of the army and the police, with assault vehicles stationed at crossroads and with ambulances following behind the corteges, ready for all eventualities. The map of the city, an enormous illuminated panel over which, with the help of military commanders and expert police trackers, they had labored for forty-eight hours, showed a red star with twenty-seven arms, fourteen turned toward the northern hemisphere, thirteen toward the southern hemisphere, with an equator dividing the capital into two halves. Along these arms would file the black automobiles of the public institutions, surrounded by bodyguards and walkie-talkies, antiquated contraptions still used in this country, but for which there was now an approved budget for modernization. All the people involved in the various phases of the operation, whatever the degree of their participation, had to be sworn to absolute secrecy, first with their right hand placed on the gospels, then on a copy of the constitution bound in blue morocco leather, and finally, completing this double commitment, by uttering a truly binding oath, drawn from popular tradition, If I break this oath may the punishment fall upon my head and upon that of my descendants unto the fourth generation. With secrecy thus sealed for any leaks, the date was set for two days hence. The hour of departure, which would be simultaneous, that is, the same for everyone, was three o'clock in the morning, a time when only the seriously insomniac are still tossing and turning in their beds and saying prayers to the god hypnos, the son of night and twin brother of thanatos, to help them in their affliction by dropping on their poor, bruised eyelids the sweet balm of the poppy. During the remaining hours, the spies, who had returned en masse to the field of operations, did nothing but pound, in more than one sense, the city's squares, avenues, streets and sidestreets, surreptitiously taking the population's pulse, probing ill-concealed intentions, connecting up words heard here and there, in order to find out if there had been any leak of the decisions taken by the council of ministers, in particular the government's imminent withdrawal, because any spy worthy of the name must take it as a sacred principle, a golden rule, the letter of the law, that oaths are never to be trusted, whoever made them, even an oath sworn by the very mother who gave them life, still less when instead of one oath there were two, and less still when instead of two there were three. In this case, however, they had no alternative but to recognize, with a certain degree of professional frustration, that the official secret had been well kept, an empirical truth that tallied with the ministry of the interior's central system of computation, which, after much squeezing, sieving and mixing, shuffling and reshuffling of the millions of fragments of recorded conversations, found not a single equivocal sign, not a single suspicious clue, not even the tiniest end of a thread which, if pulled, might have at its other end a nasty surprise. The messages despatched by the secret service to the ministry of the interior were wonderfully reassuring, as were the messages sent to the defense ministry's colonels of information and psychology by the highly efficient military intelligence, who, without the knowledge of their civilian competitors, were carrying out their own investigation, indeed, both camps could have used that expression which literature has made into a classic, All quiet on the western front, although not, of course, for the soldier who has just died. Everyone, from the president to the very least of government advisors, gave a sigh of relief. The withdrawal, thank god, would take place quietly, without any undue trauma to a population who had perhaps already, in part, repented their entirely inexplicable seditious behavior, but who, despite this, in a praiseworthy display of civic-mindedness, which augured well for the future, seemed to have no intention of harming, either in word or deed, their legitimate leaders and representatives at this moment of painful, but necessary, separation. This was the conclusion drawn from all the reports, and so it was.

At half past two in the morning everyone was ready to cut the ropes still attaching them to the president's palace, to the prime minister's mansion and to the various ministerial buildings. The gleaming black automobiles were lined up waiting, the trucks containing all the files were surrounded by security guards armed to the teeth and who were, incredible though it may seem, capable of spitting poisoned darts, the police outriders were in position, the ambulances were ready, and inside, in the offices, the fugitive leaders, or deserters, whom we should, in more elevated language, describe as tergiversators, were still opening and closing the last cupboards and drawers, sadly gathering up a final few mementos, a group photograph, another bearing a dedication, a ring made out of human hair, a statuette of the goddess of happiness, a pencil sharpener from schooldays, a returned cheque, an anonymous letter, an embroidered handkerchief, a mysterious key, a redundant pen with a name engraved on it, a compromising piece of paper, another compromising piece of paper, but the latter is only compromising for a colleague in the next department. A few people were almost in tears, men and women barely able to control their emotions, wondering if they would ever return to the beloved places that witnessed their rise up the hierarchical ladder, others, to whom the fates had proved less helpful, were dreaming, despite previous disappointments and injustices, of different worlds and new opportunities that would place them, at last, where they deserved to be. At a quarter to three, when the army and the police were already strategically stationed along all twenty-seven routes, not forgetting the assault vehicles guarding all the major crossroads, the order was given to dim the street lights as a way of covering the retreat, however harshly that last word may grate on the ear. In the streets along which the cars and trucks would have to pass, there was not a soul, not one, not even in plain clothes. As for the continual flow of information from the rest of the city, this remained unchanged, no groups were gathering, there was no suspicious activity, and any nightbirds returning to their homes or leaving them did not seem a cause for concern, they were not carrying flags over their shoulders or concealing bottles of petrol with bits of rag protruding from the neck, they weren't whirling clubs or bicycle chains above their heads, and if the occasional one appeared to stray from the straight and narrow, there was no reason to attribute this to deviations of a political nature, but to perfectly forgivable alcoholic excesses. At three minutes to three, the engines of the cars in the convoys were started up. At three o'clock on the dot, precisely as planned, the retreat began.

Then, O surprise, O astonishment, O never-before-seen prodigy, first confusion and perplexity, then disquiet, then fear, dug their nails into the throats of the president and the prime minister, of the ministers, secretaries of state and under-secretaries, of the deputies, security men and police outriders, and even, although to a lesser degree, of the ambulance staff, who were, by their profession, accustomed to the worst. As the cars advanced along the streets, the façades of the buildings were lit up, one by one, from top to bottom, by lanterns, lamps, spotlights, torches, candelabra when available, even perhaps by old brass oil lamps, every window was wide open and aglow, letting out a great river of light like a flood, a multiplication of crystals made of white fire, marking the road, picking out the deserters' escape route so that they would not get lost, so that they would not wander off down any short-cuts. The first reaction of those in charge of convoy security was to throw caution to the wind and say put your foot down and drive like crazy, and that is what began to happen, to the irrepressible joy of the official drivers, who, as everyone knows, hate pootling along at a snail's pace when they've got two hundred horsepower in their engine. The burst of speed did not last long. That brusque, precipitate decision, like all decisions born of fear, meant that, on nearly every route, further ahead or further back, minor collisions took place, usually it was the vehicle behind bumping into the one in front, fortunately without any very grave consequences for the passengers, a bit of a fright and that was all, a bruise on the forehead, a scratch on the face, a ricked neck, nothing which, tomorrow, would justify the awarding of a medal for injuries sustained, a croix de guerre, a purple heart or some other such monstrosity. The ambulances raced ahead, the medical and nursing staff eager to help the wounded, there was terrible confusion, deplorable in every way, the convoys ground to a halt, telephone calls were made to find out what was happening on the other routes, someone was demanding loudly to be told exactly what the situation was, and then, on top of that, there were those lines of buildings lit up like Christmas trees, all that was missing were the fireworks and the merry-go-rounds, it was just as well that no one appeared at the windows to enjoy the free entertainment down in the street, to laugh, to mock, to point a finger at the colliding cars. Short-sighted subalterns, the sort who are only interested in the present moment, which is nearly all of them, would certainly think like that, as perhaps would a few under-secretaries and advisors with little future, but never a prime minister, certainly not one as far-sighted as this one has shown himself to be. While a doctor was dabbing at the prime minister's chin with some antiseptic and wondering to himself if it would be going too far to give the injured man an anti-tetanus injection, the prime minister kept thinking about the tremor of unease that had shaken his spirit as soon as the first lights in the buildings came on. It was, without a doubt, enough to upset even the most phlegmatic of politicians, it was, without a doubt, troubling, unsettling, but worse, much worse, was the fact that there was no one at those windows, as if the official convoys were foolishly fleeing from nothing, as if the army and the police, along with the assault vehicles and the water cannon, had been spurned by the enemy and been left with no one to fight. Still somewhat stunned by the collision, but with a plaster on his chin, and having refused with stoical impatience the anti-tetanus injection, the prime minister suddenly remembered that his first duty should have been to phone the president and ask him how he was, to inquire after the well-being of the presidential person, and that he should do this now, without more ado, lest the president, out of sheer mischief and political astuteness, should get in first, And catch me with my pants down, he muttered, not thinking about the literal meaning of the phrase. He asked his secretary to make the call, another secretary responded, the secretary at this end said that the prime minister wished to speak to the president, the secretary at the other end said one moment, please, the secretary at this end passed the phone to the prime minister and, he, as was only fitting, waited, How are things over there, asked the president, A few dents, but nothing serious, replied the prime minister, We've had no problems at all, Not even any collisions, Just a few bumps, Nothing grave, I hope, No, this armor-plating is pretty much bomb-proof, Alas, sir, no armor-plated vehicle is bomb-proof, You don't need to tell me that, for every breastplate there's a spear and for every armor-plated vehicle a bomb, Are you hurt, Not a scratch. The face of a police officer appeared at the car window, indicating that they could drive on, We're on the move again, the prime minister told the president, Oh, we've barely had to stop at all, replied the president, May I say something, sir, Of course, Well, I must confess to feeling worried, much more so than on the day of the first election, Why, These lights that came on just as we were leaving and which will, in all probability, continue to light our way along the whole route, until we're out of the city, the complete absence of people, I mean, there isn't a soul to be seen at any of the windows or in the streets, it's odd, very odd, I'm beginning to think that I may have to consider something which, up until now, I have always rejected, that there is some purpose behind all this, an idea, a planned objective, because things are happening as if the population really were obeying some plan, as if there were some central co-ordination, Oh, I don't think so, prime minister, you know better than I do that the anarchist conspiracy theory doesn't hold water at all, and that the other theory positing an evil foreign state bent on destabilizing our country is equally invalid, We thought we had everything completely under control, that we were masters of the situation, and then they spring a surprise on us that no one could possibly have imagined, a real coup de theatre, What do you think you'll do, For the moment, continue with our plan, if future circumstances require us to introduce any alterations, we will only do so after an exhaustive examination of the new data, whatever they may be, as for the fundamentals, though, I don't feel we need to make any changes, And in your opinion, the fundamentals are what, We discussed this and reached an agreement, sir, our aim is to isolate the population and then leave them to simmer, sooner or later there are bound to be fights, conflicts of interest, life will become increasingly difficult, the streets will fill up with rubbish, imagine, sir, what the place will be like when the rains come, and, as sure as I'm prime minister, there are bound to be serious problems with the supply and distribution of foodstuffs, problems which, if necessary, we will take care to create, So you don't think the city will be able to hold out for very long, No, I don't, besides, there's another important factor, possibly the most important of all, What's that, However hard people have tried and continue to try, it's impossible to get everyone to think the same way, It seems to have worked this time, It's too perfect to be real, sir, And what if there really is, as you have just admitted as a hypothesis, some secret organization, a mafia, a camorra, a cosa nostra, a cia or a kgb, The cia isn't a secret organization, sir, and the kgb no longer exists, Well, I shouldn't think that will make much difference, but let's just imagine something similar or, if that were possible, even worse, something more machiavellian, invented to create this near-unanimity around, well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know quite what, Around the blank ballot papers, sir, the blank ballot papers, That, prime minister, is a conclusion I could have reached on my own, what interests me is what I don't know, Of course, sir, But you were saying, Even if I were forced to accept, in theory and only in theory, the possible existence of a clandestine organization out to destroy state security and opposed to the legitimacy of the democratic system, these things can't be done without contacts, without meetings, without secret cells, without incentives, without documents, yes, without documents, you yourself know that it is impossible to do anything in this world without documents, and we, as well as having not a scrap of information about any of the activities I have just mentioned, have also failed to find even a page from a diary saying Onward, comrades, le jour de gloire est arrive, Why would it be in French, Because of their revolutionary tradition, sir, What an extraordinary country we live in, a place where things happen that have never happened on any other part of the planet, But this is not the first time, as I'm sure I need not remind you, sir, That is precisely what I meant, prime minister, There is not the faintest possibility of a link between the two incidents, Of course not, one was a plague of white blindness and the other a plague of blank ballot papers, We still haven't found an explanation for the first plague, Or for this one either, We will, sir, we will, If we don't come up against a brick wall first, Let us remain confident, sir, confidence is fundamental, Confident in what, in whom, In the democratic institutions, My dear fellow, you can reserve that speech for the television, only our secretaries can hear us now, so we can speak plainly. The prime minister changed the subject, We're leaving the city now, sir, Yes, we are too over here, Would you mind just looking back for a moment, sir, Why, The lights, What about them, They're still on, no one has turned them off, And what conclusions do you think I should draw from these illuminations, Well, I don't rightly know, sir, the natural thing would be for them to go out as we progressed, but, no, there they are, why, I imagine that, seen from the air, they must look like a huge star with twenty-seven arms, It would seem I have a poet for prime minister, Oh, I'm no poet, but a star is a star is a star, and no one can deny it, sir, So what next, The government isn't just going to sit around doing nothing, we haven't run out of munitions yet, we've still got some arrows in our quiver, Let's hope your aim is true, All I need is to have the enemy in my sights, But that is precisely the problem, we don't know where the enemy is, we don't even know who they are, They'll turn up, sir, it's just a matter of time, they can't stay hidden for ever, As long as we don't run out of time, We'll find a solution, We're nearly at the frontier, we'll continue our conversation in my office, see you there later, at about six o'clock, Of course, sir, I'll be there.

The frontier was the same at all the exit points from the city, a heavy, movable barrier, a pair of tanks, one on either side of the road, a few huts, and armed soldiers in battledress and with daubed faces. Powerful spotlights lit up the scene. The president got out of his car, returned the commanding officer's impeccable salute with a polite though slightly disdainful gesture, and asked, How are things here, Nothing to report, sir, absolute calm, Has anyone tried to leave, No, sir, You are, I assume, referring to motorized vehicles, to bicycles, to carts, to skateboards, To motorized vehicles, sir, And people on foot, Not a single one, You will, of course, already have considered the possibility that any fugitives might not come by road, We have, sir, but they still wouldn't manage to get through, as well as the conventional patrols guarding the area between us and the two closest exit points on either side, we also have electronic sensors that would pick up a mouse if we had them adjusted to detect anything that small, Excellent, you're familiar, I'm sure, with what is always said on these occasions, the nation is watching you, Yes, sir, we are aware of the importance of our mission, You will, I assume, have received orders on what to do if there is any attempt at a mass exodus, Yes, sir, What are they, First, tell them to stop, That much is obvious, Yes, sir, And if they don't, If they don't, then we fire into the air, And if, despite that, they continue to advance, Then the squad of riot police assigned to us would take action, And what would they do, Well, sir, that depends, they would either use tear-gas or attack with water cannon, the army doesn't do that kind of thing, Do I note a hint of criticism in your words, It's just that I don't think that is any way to carry on a war, sir, An interesting observation, and if the people do not withdraw, They must withdraw, sir, no one can withstand tear-gas attacks and water cannon, Just imagine that they do withstand it, what are your orders in that situation, To shoot at their legs, Why their legs, We don't want to kill our compatriots, But that could well happen, Yes, sir, it could, Do you have family in the city, Yes, sir, What if you saw your wife and children at the head of the advancing multitude, A soldier's family knows how to behave in all situations, Yes, I'm sure, but just try to imagine, Orders must be obeyed, sir, All orders, Up until today, it has been my honor to have obeyed all the orders given to me, And tomorrow, Tomorrow, I very much hope not to have to come and tell you, sir, So do I. The president took two steps in the direction of his car, then asked suddenly, Are you sure your wife did not cast a blank vote, Yes, sir, I would put my hand in the fire, sir, Really, It's a manner of speaking, sir, I just meant that I'm sure she would have fulfilled her duty as a voter, By voting, Yes, But that doesn't answer my question, No, sir, Then answer it, No, sir, I can't, Why not, Because the law does not allow me to, Ah. The president stood looking at the officer for a long time, then said, Goodbye, captain, it is captain, isn't it, Yes, sir, Good night, captain, perhaps we'll see each other again sometime, Good night, sir, Did you notice that I didn't ask if you had cast a blank vote, Yes, sir, I did. The car sped away. The captain put his hands to his face. His forehead was dripping with sweat.

THE LIGHTS STARTED TO GO OUT AS THE LAST ARMY TRUCK AND THE last police van left the city. One after the other, like someone saying goodbye, the twenty-seven arms of the star gradually disappeared, leaving the vague route map of deserted streets marked only by the dim street lamps that no one had thought to restore to their normal level of brightness. We will find out how alive the city is when the intense black of the sky begins to dissolve into the slow tide of deep blue which anyone with good eyesight would already be able to make out rising up from the horizon, then we will see if the men and women who inhabit the different floors of these buildings do, indeed, set off to work, if the first buses pick up the first passengers, if the metro trains race, thundering, through the tunnels, if the shops open their doors and remove the shutters, if newspapers are delivered to kiosks. At this early morning hour, while they wash, get dressed and drink their usual breakfast cup of coffee, people are listening to the radio which is announcing, in excited tones, that the president, the government and the parliament left the city in the early hours, that there are no police left in the city, and that the army has withdrawn too, then they turn on the television, which, in identical tones, gives them the same news, and both radio and television, with only the briefest of intervals, continue to report that, at seven o'clock precisely, an important message from the president will be broadcast to the whole country, and, in particular, of course, to the capital's obstinate inhabitants. Meanwhile, the kiosks have not yet opened, so there is no point in going out into the street to buy a newspaper, just as it is not worth searching the web, the worldwide web, although some more up-to-date citizens have already tried, for the president's predictable stream of invective. Official secrecy, while it may occasionally be plagued by leaks and disclosures, as demonstrated a few hours earlier by the synchronized switching on of lights in buildings, exercises extreme rigor when it comes to any higher authorities, who, as everyone knows, will, for the most frivolous of motives, not only demand swift and detailed explanations from those found wanting, they will, from time to time, also chop off their heads. It is ten minutes to seven, many of those people still lazing about should, by rights, be out in the street on their way to work, but not all days are alike, and it seems that public servants have been given permission to arrive late, and, as for private businesses, most of them will probably remain closed all day, just to see where all this leads. Caution and chicken soup never hurt anyone, in good health or bad. The world history of crowds shows us that, whether it's a specific breach of public order, or merely the threat of one, the best examples of prudence are generally given by those businesses and industries with premises on the streets, a nervous attitude which we have a duty to respect, given that they are the areas of professional activity who have most to lose, and who inevitably do lose, in terms of shattered shop windows, robberies, lootings and acts of sabotage. At two minutes to seven, with the lugubrious face and voice required by the circumstances, the television and radio presenters finally announce that the president is about to address the nation. The image that follows, as a way of setting the scene, shows the national flag flapping lazily, languidly, as if it were, at any moment, about to slip helplessly down the pole. There obviously wasn't much wind on the day they took its picture, remarked one inhabitant. The symbolic insignia seemed to revive with the opening chords of the national anthem, the gentle breeze had suddenly given way to a brisk wind that must have blown in from the vast ocean or from some triumphant scene of battle, if it blows any harder, even just a little bit harder, we're sure to see valkyries on horseback with heroes riding pillion. Then, as it faded into the distance, the anthem took the flag with it, or the flag took the anthem with it, the order doesn't matter, and then the president appeared to the people, seated behind a desk, his stern eyes fixed on the teleprompter. To his right, standing to attention, the flag, not the one just mentioned, but an indoor flag, arranged in discreet folds. The president interlaced his fingers, perhaps to disguise some involuntary tic, He's nervous, said the man who had remarked upon the lack of wind, I want to see his expression when he explains the low trick they've just played on us. The people awaiting the president's imminent oratorical display could not, for one moment, imagine the efforts expended on preparing the speech by the president of the republic's literary advisors, not so much as regards any actual statements made, which would merely involve plucking a few strings on the stylistic lute, but the form of address with which, according to the norm, the speech should begin, the standard words that usually introduce tirades of this type. Indeed, given the delicate nature of his message, it would be little short of insulting to say My dear compatriots, or Esteemed fellow citizens, or even, were it the moment for playing, with just the right amount of vibrato, the bass string of patriotism, that simplest and noblest mode of address, Men and women of Portugal, that last word, we hasten to add, only appears due to the entirely gratuitous supposition, with no foundation in objective fact, that the scene of the dire events it has fallen to us to describe in such meticulous detail, could be, or perhaps could have been, the land of the aforesaid Portuguese men and women. It was merely an illustrative example, nothing more, for which, despite all our good intentions, we apologize in advance, especially given that they are a people with a reputation around the world for having always exercised their electoral duties with praiseworthy civic discipline and religious devotion.

Now, returning to the home that we have made into our observation post, we should say that, contrary to one's natural expectations, not a single listener or viewer noticed that none of these usual forms of address issued from the president's mouth, neither this, that or the other, perhaps because the plangent drama of the first words tossed into the ether, I speak to you with my heart in my hands, had made the president's literary advisors realize that the introduction of any of the aforementioned refrains would have been superfluous and inopportune. It would, indeed, have been quite incongruous to begin by saying affectionately, Esteemed fellow citizens or My dear compatriots, as if he were about to announce that tomorrow the price of petrol will go down by fifty percent, only to proceed to present to the eyes of a horror-struck audience a bleeding, slippery, still pulsating internal organ. What the president was about to say, goodbye, goodbye, see you another day, was common knowledge, but, understandably enough, people were curious to see just how he was going to extricate himself. Here then is the whole speech, without, of course, given the impossibility of transcribing them into words, the tremor in the voice, the grief-stricken face, the occasional glimmer of a barely repressed tear, I speak to you with my heart in my hands, I speak to you as one torn asunder by the pain of an incomprehensible rift, like a father abandoned by his beloved children, all of us equally confused and perplexed by the extraordinary chain of events that has destroyed our sublime family harmony. And do not say that it was us, that it was me, that it was the government of the nation, along with its elected deputies, who were the ones to break away from the people. It is true that this morning we withdrew to another city which, from henceforth, will be the country's capital, it is true that we imposed on the city that was but no longer is the capital a rigorous state of siege, which will, inevitably, seriously hamper the smooth functioning of an urban area of such importance and of such large physical and social dimensions, it is true that you are currently besieged, surrounded, confined inside the perimeter of the city, that you cannot leave it, and that if you try, you will suffer the consequences of an immediate armed response, but what you will never be able to say is that it is the fault of those to whom the popular will, freely expressed in successive, peaceful, honest, democratic contests, entrusted the fate of the nation so that we could defend it from all dangers, internal and external. You are to blame, yes, you are the ones who have ignominiously rejected national concord in favor of the tortuous road of subversion and indiscipline and in favor of the most perverse and diabolical challenge to the legitimate power of the state ever known in the history of nations. Do not find fault with us, find fault rather with yourselves, not with those who spoke in my name, I am referring, of course, to the government, who again and again asked you, nay, begged and implored you to abandon your wicked obstinacy, whose ultimate meaning, despite the enormous investigatory efforts set in train by the state authorities, remains to this day impenetrable. For centuries and centuries, you were the head of the country and the pride of the nation, for centuries and centuries, in times of national crisis and collective anxiety, our people were accustomed to turn their eyes to this city, to these hills, knowing that thence would come the remedy, the consoling word, the correct path to the future. You have betrayed the memory of your ancestors, that is the harsh truth that will for ever torment your consciences, yes, stone upon stone, they built the altar of the nation, and, shame on you, you chose to tear it down. With all my soul, I want to believe that your madness will prove a transitory one, that it will not last, I want to think that tomorrow, a tomorrow which I pray to heaven will not be long in coming, that tomorrow remorse will seep gently into your hearts and you will become reconciled with legality and with that root of roots, the national community, returning, like the prodigal son, to the paternal home. You are now a lawless city. You will not have a government to tell you what you should and should not do, how you should and should not behave, the streets will be yours, they belong to you, use them as you wish, there will be no authority to stop you in your tracks and offer you sound advice, but equally, and listen carefully to my words, there will be no authority to protect you from thieves, rapists and murderers, that will be your freedom, and may you enjoy it. You may mistakenly imagine that, guided by your free will and by your every whim, you will be able to organize and defend your lives better than we did using the old methods and the old laws. A very grave mistake on your part. Sooner or later, you will be obliged to find leaders to govern you, if they do not irrupt like beasts out of the inevitable chaos into which you will fall and impose their own laws upon you. Then you will realize the tragic nature of your self-deception. Perhaps you will rebel as you did in the days of authoritarian rule, as you did in the grim days of dictatorship, but do not delude yourselves, you will be put down with equal violence, and you will not be called upon to vote because there will be no elections, or if there are, they will not be free, open and honest like the elections you scorned, and so it will be until the day when the armed forces who, along with myself and the national government, today decided to abandon you to your chosen fate, are obliged to return to liberate you from the monsters you yourselves have engendered. All your suffering will have been futile, all your stubbornness in vain, and then you will understand, too late, that rights only exist fully in the words in which they are expressed and on the piece of paper on which they are recorded, whether in the form of a constitution, a law or a regulation, you will understand and, one hopes, be convinced, that their wrong or unthinking application will convulse the most firmly established society, you will understand, at last, that simple common sense tells us to take them as a mere symbol of what could be, but never as a possible, concrete reality. Casting a blank vote is your irrevocable right, and no one will ever deny you that right, but, just as we tell children not to play with matches, so we warn whole peoples of the dangers of playing with dynamite. I will close now. Take the severity of my warnings not as a threat, but as a cautery for the foul political suppuration that you have generated in your own breast and in which you are steeped. You will only see and hear from me again when you deserve the forgiveness which, despite all, we still wish to bestow on you, I, your president, the government which, in happier times, you elected, and those of our people who remain healthy and pure and of whom you are not at present worthy. Until that day, goodbye, and may the lord protect you. The grave, sad face of the president disappeared and in his place stood the raised flag. The wind shook it furiously about as if it were shaking a lunatic, while the anthem repeated the bellicose chords and the martial accents that had been composed in times of unstoppable patriotic pride, but which now sounded somewhat cracked. The man certainly talks well, said the oldest member of the family, and of course he's quite right when he says children shouldn't play with matches, because, as everyone knows, they'll only pee their beds afterward.

The streets, which, up until then, had been almost deserted, with most of the shops and businesses closed, filled up with people within a matter of minutes. Those who had stayed at home leaned out of the windows to watch the concourse, which is not to say that everyone was heading in the same direction, they resembled, rather, two rivers, one flowing up and one flowing down, and they waved to each other from river to river, as if the city were celebrating, as if it were a local holiday, and, contrary to the fugitive president's ill-intentioned prognostications, there were no thieves or rapists or murderers. Here and there, on some floors of some buildings, the windows remained closed, and, where there were blinds, these were kept grimly drawn, as if the families who lived there were the victims of a painful bereavement. On those floors, no bright lights had been lit in the early hours, at most, the inhabitants would have peered out from behind their curtains, hearts tight with fear, for the people who lived there had very firm political views, they were the people who had voted, both in the first election and the second, for the parties they had always voted for, the party on the right and the party in the middle, they had no reason now to celebrate, on the contrary, they feared attack by the ignorant masses who were singing and shouting in the streets, feared that the sacrosanct doors of their homes would be kicked in, their family memories besmirched, their silver stolen, Let them sing, they'll be crying soon enough, they said to each other to give themselves courage. As for those who voted for the party on the left, the only reason they are not standing at their windows applauding is because they have already joined the crowds, as evidenced in this very street by the occasional flag which, now and then, as if testing the waters, rises above the fast-flowing river of heads. No one went to work. The newspapers in the kiosks sold out, all of them carried the president's speech on the front page, along with a photograph taken while he was giving it, probably, to judge by the pained expression on his face, at the moment when he said he was speaking with his heart in his hands. Very few wasted time reading about something they knew already, most people were more interested in the views of the newspaper editors, the editorialists, the commentators, or some last-minute interview. The main headlines drew the attention of the curious, they were huge, enormous, others, on the inside pages, were normal size, but they all seemed to have sprung from the brain of the same genius of headline synthesis, allowing one blithely to dispense with reading the news item that followed. The headlines were by turns sentimental, Capital City Orphaned Overnight, ironic, Electoral Bombshell Blows Up In Voters' Faces or Blank Voters Blanked By Government, pedagogical, State Teaches Lesson To Insurrectionist Capital, vengeful, Time For A Settling Of Accounts, prophetic, Everything Will Be Different From Now On or Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again, alarmist, Anarchy Just Around The Corner or Suspicious Maneuvers On Frontier, rhetorical, An Historic Speech For An Historic Moment, fawning, Dignified President Defies Irresponsible Capital, war-like, Army Surrounds City, objective, Withdrawal Of Government Agencies Takes Place Without Incident, radical, City Council Should Assume Total Control, and tactical, Solution Lies In Municipalist Tradition. There were only a few references to the marvellous star, the one with the twenty-seven arms of light, and these were stuck in willy-nilly amongst all the other news, not even graced with a headline, not even an ironic one, not even a sarcastic one, along the lines of And They Complain About The Price Of Electricity. Some of the editorials, while approving of the government's attitude, All Power To Them, urged one of them, dared to express certain doubts about the alleged fairness of the prohibition on leaving the city that had been imposed on the inhabitants, Once again, as always, the just are going to have to pay for the sinners, the honest for the criminals, the worthy men and women of this city who, having scrupulously fulfilled their duty as voters by voting for one of the legally constituted parties that make up the framework of political and ideological options recognized and endorsed by society, now find their freedom of movement restricted because of a freak majority of troublemakers whose one characteristic, some say, is that they don't know what they want, but who, in fact, as we understand it, know perfectly well what they want and are now preparing for a final assault on power. Other editorials went further, calling for the abolition, pure and simple, of the secret ballot and proposing that in future, when the situation returned to normal, as, somehow or other, it was bound to do, every voter should have a record card on which the presiding officer, having first ascertained before the ballot paper was put in the box how the person had voted, would note down, for all legal intents and purposes, both official and personal, that the bearer had voted for this or that party, And which I, the undersigned, hereby declare and confirm to be true. Had such a record card existed, had a legislator, aware of the possibility of the dissolute use of the vote, dared to take that step, bringing together form and content of a totally transparent democratic system, all the people who had voted for the party on the right or the party in the middle would now be packing their bags in order to emigrate to their true homeland, the one that always has its arms wide open to receive those it can most easily clasp to its bosom. Convoys of cars and buses, of minibuses and removal vans, bearing the flags of the different parties and honking rhythmically, p.o.t.r., p.i.t.m., would soon be following the government's example and heading toward the military posts on the frontier, with girls and boys sticking their bottoms out of the windows or yelling at the foot soldiers of the insurrection, You'd better watch your backs, you miserable traitors, You'll get the beating of your life when we come back, you frigging bandits, You rotten sons-of-bitches, or yelling the worst possible insult in the vocabulary of democratic jargon, Illegals, illegals, illegals, which would not, of course, be true, because the people they were abusing would have at home or in their pocket their very own voter's record card, where, ignominiously, as if branded with irons, would be written or stamped I cast a blank vote. Only desperate remedies can cure desperate diseases, concluded the editorialist seraphically.

The celebrations did not last long. It's true that no one actually got around to going to work, but an awareness of the gravity of the situation soon muted the demonstrations of joy, someone even asked, What have we got to be happy about, when they've just put us in isolation as if we were plague victims in quarantine, with an army out there with their rifles cocked, ready to fire at anyone who tries to leave the city, what possible reason have we got to be happy. And others said, We must organize ourselves, but they didn't know how or with whom or why. Some suggested that a group should go and talk to the leader of the city council to offer him their loyal support, to explain that the people who cast the blank votes had not done so in order to bring down the system and to take power, they wouldn't know what to do with it anyway, that they had voted the way they voted because they were disillusioned and could find no other way of making it clear just how disillusioned they were, that they could have staged a revolution, but then many people would undoubtedly have died, something they would never have wanted, that all their lives they had patiently placed their vote in the ballot box, and the results were there for all to see, This isn't democracy, sir, far from it. Others were of the opinion that they should consider the facts more carefully, that it would be best to let the council have the first word, if we go to them with all these explanations and ideas, they'll think there's some political organization behind it, pulling the strings, and we're the only ones who know that isn't true, they're in a tricky situation too, mind, the government has left them holding a real hot potato, and we don't want to make it any hotter, one newspaper proposed that the council should assume full authority, but what authority, and how, the police have left, there isn't even anyone to direct the traffic, we certainly can't expect the councillors to go out into the streets and do the work of the very people they used to give orders to, there's already talk of the refuse collectors going on strike, if that's true, and we shouldn't be surprised if it is, it can only be seen as a provocation, either on the part of the council itself or, more likely, under orders from the government, they're going to do everything possible to make our lives more difficult, we have to be prepared for anything, including or, perhaps, especially, those things that now seem impossible to us, after all, they're holding the whole deck of cards, not to mention the cards up their sleeves. Others, of a pessimistic and fearful bent, felt that there was no way out of the situation, that they were doomed to failure, it'll all pan out the way it always does, with every man for himself and to hell with the others, the moral imperfection of the human race, as we have often said before, is hardly a novelty, it's historical fact, as old as the hills, it might seem now that we're all very supportive of each other, but tomorrow the bickering will start, and the next stage will be open war, discord, confrontation, while they sit back and enjoy it from their ringside seats, laying bets on how long we'll hold out, it'll be fine while it lasts, my friend, but defeat is certain and guaranteed, I mean, let's be reasonable, who could possibly have thought that something like this would get us what we wanted, people en masse casting blank votes and completely unprompted, it's madness, the government hasn't quite got over its surprise yet and is still trying to catch its breath, but the first victory has gone to them, they've turned their backs on us and told us we're nothing but a pile of shit, which, in their opinion, is what we are, and then there's the pressure from abroad to consider too, I bet you anything you like that right now governments and political parties all around the world are thinking of nothing else, they're not stupid, they can see how easily this could become a fuse, light it here and wait for the explosion over there, but then, if all we are to them is a pile of shit, then let's be shit all the way, shoulder to shoulder, because they're bound to get splattered with some of the shit that we supposedly are.

The next day, the rumor was confirmed, the refuse trucks did not go out onto the streets, the refuse collectors had announced an all-out strike and had made public a demand for more pay which a council spokesperson had immediately pronounced completely unacceptable, still less at a time like this, he said, when our city is grappling with an entirely unprecedented crisis from which it is difficult to see a way out. In the same alarmist vein, a newspaper which, from its inception, had specialized in acting as an amplifier of all governmental strategies and tactics, regardless of the government's party colors, whether from the middle, the right or any shade in between, published an editorial signed by the editor himself in which he stated that it was highly likely that the rebellion by the capital's inhabitants would end in a bloodbath if, as everything seemed to indicate, they refused to abandon their stubborn stance. No one, he said, could deny that the government's patience had been stretched to unthinkable limits, no one could expect them to do more, if they did, we would lose, possibly for ever, that harmonious binomial authority-obedience in whose light the happiest of human societies had always bloomed and without which, as history has amply shown, none of them would have been feasible. The editorial was read, extracts were broadcast on the radio, the editor was interviewed on television, and then, at midday exactly, while all this was going on, from every house in the city there emerged women armed with brooms, buckets and dustpans, and, without a word, they started sweeping their own patch of pavement and street, from the front door as far as the middle of the road, where they encountered other women who had emerged from the houses opposite with exactly the same objective and armed with the same weapons. Now, the dictionaries state that someone's patch is an area under their jurisdiction or control, in this case, the area outside somebody's house, and this is quite true, but they also say, or at least some of them do, that to sweep your own patch means to look after your own interests. A great mistake on your part, O absentminded philologists and lexicographers, to sweep your own patch started out meaning precisely what these women in the capital are doing now, just as their mothers and grandmothers before them used to do in their villages, and they, like these women, were not just looking after their own interests, but after the interests of the community as well. It was possibly for this same reason that, on the third day, the refuse collectors also came out onto the street. They were not in uniform, they were wearing their own clothes. It was the uniforms that were on strike, they said, not them.

THE INTERIOR MINISTER, WHOSE IDEA THE STRIKE HAD BEEN, WAS NOT at all pleased to learn of the refuse collectors' spontaneous return to work, a stance which, in his ministerial understanding of the matter, was not a demonstration of solidarity with the admirable women who had made cleaning their streets a question of honor, a fact unhesitatingly recognized by any impartial observer, but bordered, rather, on criminal complicity. As soon as he received the bad news, he phoned the leader of the city council and commanded him to bring to book those responsible for disregarding orders and to force them to obey, which, in plain language, meant going back on strike, under penalty, if their insubordination continued, of all the punitive consequences foreseen by the laws and regulations, from suspension without pay to outright dismissal. The council leader replied that problems always seem much easier to resolve when seen from a distance, but the person on the ground, the person who actually has to deal with the workers, must listen to them closely before making any decisions, For example, minister, just imagine that I was to give that order to the men, I'm not going to imagine anything, I'm telling you to do it, Yes, minister, of course, but at least allow me to imagine it, for example, I can imagine giving them the order to go back on strike and them telling me to go and take a running jump, what would you do in that case, if you were in my position, how would you force them to do their duty, In the first place, no one would tell me to take a running jump, in the second place, I am not and never will be in your position, I am a minister, not a council leader, and while I'm on the subject, I would just like to say that I would expect from a council leader not only the official and institutional collaboration to which he is, by law, committed and which is my natural due, but also an esprit de corps which, it seems to me, is currently conspicuous by its absence, You can always count on my official and institutional collaboration, minister, I know my obligations, but as for esprit de corps, perhaps we'd better not talk about that just now, let's see how much of it is left when this crisis is over, You're running away from the problem, council leader, No, I'm not, minister, I simply need you to tell me how I am supposed to force the workers to go back on strike, That's your problem, not mine, Now it's my esteemed party colleague who is trying to run away from the problem, Never in my entire political career have I run away from a problem, Well, you're running away from this one, you're trying to run away from the obvious fact that I have no means at my disposal by which to carry out your order, unless you want me to call in the police, but, in that case, I would remind you that the police are not here, they left the city along with the army, both of them carried off by the government, besides, I'm sure we would agree that it would be a gross abnormality to use the police to persuade workers to go on strike, when, in the past, they have always been deployed to break strikes up, by infiltration or other less subtle means, Well, I'm astonished to hear a member of the party on the right talking like that, Minister, in a few hours' time it will be dark, and I will have to say that it is night, I would have to be either stupid or blind to say then that it is day, What has that got to do with the strike, Whether you like it or not, minister, it is night now, pitch-black night, we know that something is happening that goes far beyond our understanding, that exceeds our meagre experience, but we are behaving as if it were the same old bread, made with the usual flour and cooked in the usual oven, but it's simply not true, You know, I will seriously have to consider asking you to tender your resignation, If you do, it will be a weight off my shoulders, and you can count on my profound gratitude. The interior minister did not reply at once, he allowed a few seconds to pass in order to recover his composure, then he asked, So what do you think we should do, Nothing, My dear fellow, in a situation like this, you cannot ask a government to do nothing, Allow me to say that in a situation like this, a government doesn't govern, it just looks as if it were governing, There I must disagree, we've managed to do a few things since this whole thing began, Yes, we're like a fish on a hook, we thrash about, we shake the line, we tug at it, but we cannot understand how a little piece of bent wire could be capable of catching us and keeping us trapped, we might yet escape, I'm not saying we won't, but we risk ending up with the hook stuck in our gut, Frankly, I'm confused, There is only one thing to do, What's that, didn't you just say there was no point in our doing anything, Just pray that the prime minister's strategy works, What strategy, Leave them to simmer, he said, but I'm afraid even that could rebound against us, Why, Because they are the ones doing the cooking, So we do nothing, Let's be serious, minister, would the government be prepared to put an end to this farcical state of siege by ordering the army and the air force in to attack the city, to wound and kill ten or twenty thousand people just to set an example, and then put three or four thousand more in prison, accused of no one quite knows what because no real crime has been committed, This isn't a civil war, all we want is to make people see reason, to show them the error into which they have fallen or were made to fall, that's what we need to do, to make them realize that the unfettered use of the blank ballot paper would make the democratic system unworkable, The results so far haven't, it would seem, been exactly brilliant, It will take time, but people will, in the end, see the light, Why, minister, I had no idea you had mystical tendencies, My dear fellow, when situations become as complicated and as desperate as this, we tend to grab hold of anything, I'm even convinced that some of my colleagues in government, if they thought it would do any good, wouldn't be averse to going on a pilgrimage to a shrine, candle in hand, to make a vow, While we're on the subject, I would appreciate you and your candle visiting a few shrines here of a rather different nature, Meaning, Can you please tell the newspapers and the television and radio people not to pour more petrol on the bonfire, if we don't act sensibly and intelligently, this whole thing could explode, you must have heard that the editor of the government newspaper was stupid enough to admit the possibility that this could all end in a bloodbath, It's not a government newspaper, If you'll allow me to say so, minister, I would have preferred to hear some other comment from you, The little man went too far, he overstepped the mark, it's what always happens when someone tries to do more than he was asked to do, Minister, Yes, What shall I do about the council refuse collectors, Let them work, that way the city council will look good in the eyes of the populace and that could prove useful to us in the future, besides, the strike was, of course, only one element in the strategy, and certainly not the most important, It wouldn't be good for the city, now or in the future, if the city council were to be used as a weapon of war against its citizens, In a situation like this, the council can't afford to remain on the sidelines, the council is, after all, part of this country and no other, But I'm not asking you to let us remain on the sidelines, all I ask is that the government doesn't put any obstacles in my way when it comes to exercising my responsibilities, that it should, at no point, give the public the impression that the city council is merely a tool, if you'll forgive the expression, of its repressive policies, firstly, because it isn't true, and secondly, because it never will be, Um, I'm afraid I don't quite understand or perhaps I understand all too well, One day, minister, although when I don't know, this city will once again be the country's capital, That's possible, but by no means certain, it depends how far they want to take their rebellion, Be that as it may, it is vital that this council, whether with me as leader or with someone else, should never be seen, however indirectly, to be an accomplice in or a co-author of a bloody repression, the government that orders such a repression will have no alternative but to take the consequences, but the council, this council, belongs to the city, the city does not belong to the council, I hope I have made myself clear, minister, You've made yourself so clear that I'm going to ask you a question, Feel free, minister, Did you cast a blank vote, Could you repeat the question, please, I didn't quite hear, I asked if you cast a blank vote, I asked if the ballot paper you put in the box was blank, Who can say, minister, who can say, When all this is over, I hope we can meet and have a long conversation, As you wish, minister, Goodbye, Goodbye, What I'd really like to do is come over there and give you a clip round the ear, Alas, I'm too old for that, minister, If you ever become interior minister, you will learn that clips round the ear and other such correctives have no age limit, Don't let the devil hear you, minister, The devil has such good hearing he doesn't need things to be spoken out loud, Well, god help us then, There's no point asking him for help either, he was born stone-deaf.

Thus ended this illuminating and prickly conversation between the interior minister and the council leader, with each having bandied about points of view, arguments and opinions which will, in all probability, have disoriented the reader, who must now doubt that the two interlocutors do in fact belong, as he or she thought, to the party on the right, the very party which, as the administrative power, is carrying out a vile policy of repression, both on a collective level, with the capital city submitted to the humiliation of a state of siege ordered by the country's own government, and on an individual level, with harsh interrogations, lie detectors, threats and, who knows, the very worst kinds of torture, although the truth impels us to say that if any such tortures were carried out, we could not bear witness to them, we were not there, not, however, that this means very much, for we were not present either at the parting of the red sea, and yet everyone swears that it happened. As for the interior minister, you must already have noticed that in the armor of the indomitable fighter, which he tries so hard to appear to be when locked in combat with the defense minister, there is a subtle fault, or to put it more colloquially, a crack big enough to poke your finger through. Were that not so, we would not have been witness to the successive failures of his plans, and the speed and facility with which the blade of his sword grows blunt, as this dialogue has just confirmed, for while he came in like lion, he went out like a lamb, if not something worse, one has only to look, for example, at the lack of respect evident in his categorical statement that god was born stone-deaf. As regards the council leader, we are, to use the words of the interior minister, pleased to note that he has seen the light, not the one the minister would like the capital's voters to see, but the light that those casters of blank votes hope that someone will begin to see. The most common occurrence in this world of ours, in these days of stumbling blindly forward, is to come across men and women mature in years and ripe in prosperity, who, at eighteen, were not just beaming beacons of style, but also, and perhaps above all, bold revolutionaries determined to bring down the system supported by their parents and to replace it, at last, with a fraternal paradise, but who are now equally firmly attached to convictions and practices which, having warmed up and flexed their muscles on any of the many available versions of moderate conservatism, become, in time, pure egotism of the most obscene and reactionary kind. Put less respectfully, these men and these women, standing before the mirror of their life, spit every day in the face of what they were with the sputum of what they are. The fact that a politician belonging to the party on the right, a man in his forties, who has spent his whole life under the parasol of a tradition cooled by the air-conditioning of the stock exchange and lulled by the steamy zephyr of the markets, should have been open to the revelation, or, indeed, manifest certainty, that there was some deeper meaning behind the gentle rebellion in the city he had been appointed to administer, is something that is both worthy of record and deserving of our gratitude, so unaccustomed have we become to such singular phenomena.