Seeing

It will not have gone unnoticed, by particularly exacting readers and listeners, that the narrator of this fable has paid scant, not to say non-existent, attention to the place in which the action described, albeit in rather leisurely fashion, is taking place. Apart from the first chapter, in which there were a few careful brush-strokes applied to the area of the polling station, although, even then, these were applied only to doors, windows and tables, and with the exception of the polygraph, that machine for catching liars, everything else, which is quite a lot, has passed as if the characters in the story inhabited an entirely insubstantial world, were indifferent to the comfort or discomfort of the places in which they found themselves, and did nothing but talk. In the room in which the government of the country has, more than once, and occasionally with the presence and participation of the president, gathered to debate the situation and take the necessary measures to pacify minds and restore peace to the streets, there would doubtless be a large table around which the ministers would sit on comfortable, upholstered chairs, and on which there were bound to be bottles of mineral water and glasses to match, pencils and pens in different colors, markers, reports, books on legislation, notebooks, microphones, telephones, and all the usual paraphernalia one finds in places of this calibre. There would be ceiling lights and wall lights, there would be padded doors and curtained windows, there would be rugs on the floor, there would be paintings on the walls and perhaps an antique or modern tapestry, there would, inevitably, be a portrait of the president, a bust representing the republic and the national flag. None of this has been mentioned, nor will it be mentioned in future. Even here, in the more modest, but nonetheless spacious office of the leader of the city council, with a balcony overlooking the square and a large aerial photograph of the city hanging on the main wall, there would be ample opportunity to fill a page or two with detailed descriptions, and to make the most of that generous pause in order to take a deep breath before confronting the disasters to come. It seems to us far more important to observe the anxious lines furrowing the brow of the council leader, perhaps he is thinking that he said too much, that he gave the interior minister the impression, if not the stark certainty, that he had joined the ranks of the enemy, and that, by his imprudence, he would, perhaps irremediably, have compromised his political career inside and outside the party. The other possibility, as remote as it is unimaginable, would be that his reasoning might have given the interior minister a push in the right direction and caused him to rethink entirely the strategies and tactics with which the government hopes to put an end to the sedition. We see him shake his head, a sure sign that, having swiftly examined the possibility, he has discarded it as being foolishly ingenuous and dangerously unrealistic. He got up from the chair where he had remained seated throughout his conversation with the minister and went over to the window. He did not open it, he merely drew back the curtain a little and gazed out. The square looked as it always did, various passers-by, three people sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree, the cafe terraces and their customers, the flower-sellers, a woman and a dog, the newspaper kiosks, buses, cars, the usual scene. I need to go out, he thought. He went back to his desk and phoned his chief administrative officer, I'm going out for a while, he said, tell any councillors who are in the building, but only if they ask for me, as for the rest, I leave you in charge, Certainly, sir, I'll tell your driver to bring the car round to the front door, Yes, if you would, but tell him that I won't be needing him, I'll drive myself, Will you be coming back to the town hall today, Yes, I hope so, but I'll let you know if I decide otherwise, Very well, How are things in the city, Oh, nothing very grave to report, the news we've received has been no more serious than usual, a few traffic accidents, the occasional bottleneck, a minor fire in which no one was hurt, a failed bank robbery, How did they manage, now that there are no police, The robber was an amateur, and the gun, although it was a real one, wasn't loaded, Where have they taken him, The people who disarmed him took him to a fire station, Whatever for, they haven't any facilities for detaining prisoners, Well, they had to put him somewhere, So what happened next, Apparently, the firemen spent an hour giving him a good talking-to and then let him go, There wasn't much else they could do, I suppose, No, sir, there wasn't, Tell my secretary to let me know when the car arrives, Yes, sir. The council leader leaned back in his chair, waiting, and his brow was again deeply furrowed. Contrary to the predictions of the gloom-mongers, there had been no more robberies, rapes or murders than before. It seemed that the police were, after all, not essential for the city's security, that the population itself, spontaneously and in a more or less organized manner, had taken over their work as vigilantes. The robbery at the bank was a case in point. No, the robbery at the bank, he thought, was irrelevant, the man had obviously been very nervous and unsure of himself, a mere novice, and the bank employees had seen that they were in no danger, but tomorrow it might be different, what am I saying, tomorrow, today, right now, over the last few days crimes will have been committed in the city that will obviously go unpunished, if we have no police, if the criminals aren't arrested, if there's no investigation and no trial, if the judges go home and the courts don't work, criminality will inevitably increase, it's as if everyone were expecting the council to take over the policing of the city, they're asking for it, demanding it, protesting that without some form of security, there can be no peace of mind, and I keep wondering how, by issuing a call for volunteers, for example, by creating urban militias, surely we're not going to go out into the street dressed like gendarmes straight out of a comic opera, with uniforms rented from the theater's costume department, and what about guns, where are we going to get those, and what about using them, not just knowing how to use them, but being capable of using them, taking out a gun and firing it, can anyone imagine me, the councillors, the town hall civil servants, engaged in a rooftop pursuit of the midnight murderer, the Tuesday rapist or the white-gloved cat burglar of high-society salons. The phone rang, it was his secretary, Sir, your car is here, Thank you, he said, I'm going out now and I'm not sure yet whether I'll be back today or not, but if there are any problems, just call me on my mobile, Take care, sir, Why do you say that, Given the way things are, sir, that's the least we can wish each other, May I ask you a question, Of course, as long as I have an answer for it, If you don't want to, don't answer, What's the question, Who did you vote for, No one, sir, Do you mean you abstained, No, I mean that I cast a blank vote, Blank, Yes, sir, blank, And you're telling me just like that, You asked me the question just like that, And that gave you the confidence to reply, Just about, sir, but only just, If I understand you rightly, you also thought it could be a risk, Well, I hoped that it wouldn't be, As you see, your confidence was rewarded, Does that mean that I won't be asked to hand in my notice, No, you can sleep easy on that score, It would be far better if we didn't need to sleep in order to feel at ease, sir, Well put, Anyone could have said the same, sir, it certainly wouldn't win any literary prizes, You will have to be satisfied with my applause, then, That's reward enough, sir, So let's leave it that if you need me, you can call me on my mobile, Yes, sir, Right, then, I'll see you tomorrow, if not later on today, Yes, see you later, or tomorrow, replied the secretary. The council leader quickly tidied up the papers scattered about his desk, most of them might have been written about another country and another century, not about this capital now, under a state of siege, abandoned by its own government, surrounded by its own army. If he tore them up, if he burned them, if he threw them in the wastepaper basket, no one would come to him demanding an explanation for what he had done, people had far more important things to think about now, the city, after all, is no longer part of the known world, it's a pot full of putrefying food and maggots, an island set adrift in a sea not its own, a dangerous source of infection, a place which, as a precautionary measure, has been quarantined until the plague becomes less virulent or until it runs out of people to kill and ends up devouring itself. He asked his secretary to bring him his raincoat, picked up his briefcase containing papers to be studied at home and went downstairs. The driver, who was waiting for him, opened the car door, They said you won't be needing me, sir, No, I won't, you can go home, See you tomorrow, then, sir, See you tomorrow. It's odd how we spend every day of our life saying goodbye, saying and hearing others say see you tomorrow when, inevitably, on one of those days, which will be someone's last, either the person we said it to will no longer be here, or we who said it will not. We will see if on today's tomorrow, what we normally refer to as the following day, when the council leader and his chauffeur meet again, they will be capable of grasping what an extraordinary, near-miraculous thing it is to have said see you tomorrow and to find that what had been no more than a problematic possibility has come to pass as if it had been a certainty. The council leader got into his car. He was going for a drive around the city, to have a look at the people on the way, not in any hurry, but stopping now and then to get out and walk for a while, listening to what was being said, in short, taking the pulse of the city, assessing the strength of the incubating fever. From his childhood reading he remembered a king in some far eastern country, he wasn't sure now whether he had been a king or an emperor, he was, more than likely, the caliph of the time, who was in the habit of disguising himself and leaving his palace to go and mingle with the ordinary people, the lower orders, and to eavesdrop on what was said about him during frank exchanges in the squares and streets. The truth is that such exchanges would not have been as frank as all that, because in those days, as ever, there would have been no shortage of spies to take note of opinions, complaints and criticisms and of any embryonic conspiracies. It is an unvarying rule for those in power that, when it comes to heads, it is best to cut them off before they start to think, afterward, it might be too late. The council leader is not the king of this besieged city, and as for the vizier of the interior, he has exiled himself to the other side of the frontier and he will, at this moment, doubtless be in some meeting with his collaborators, we will find out who and why in a while. For this reason the council leader does not need to disguise himself with a false beard and moustache, the face he is wearing is the one he usually wears, except that it looks a little more preoccupied than normal, as we have noticed before from the lines on his forehead. A few people recognize him, but few say hello. Do not assume, however, that the indifferent or the hostile are to be found only amongst those who originally cast blank votes, and who would, therefore, see him as an adversary, quite a few voters from his own party and from the party in the middle also look at him with ill-disguised suspicion, not to say with clear antipathy, What's he doing around here, they will think, what's he doing mixing with this rabble of blankers, he should be at work earning his salary, perhaps now that the majority has changed hands, he's come looking for votes, well, if he has, he hasn't got a hope in hell, there won't be any elections round here for a while, if I was the government, I know what I would do, I'd get rid of this whole council and instead appoint a decent administrative committee, who could be trusted politically. Before continuing this story, it would be as well to explain that the use of the word blanker a few lines earlier was neither accidental nor fortuitous, nor was it a slip of the fingers on the computer keyboard, and it certainly isn't a neologism that the narrator has hastily invented in order to fill a gap. The term exists, it really does, you can find it in any up-to-date dictionary, the problem, if it is a problem, lies in the fact that people are convinced that they know the meaning of the word blank and of all its derivatives, and therefore won't waste their time going back to the source to check, or else they suffer from chronic intellectual lazyitis and stay right where they are, refusing to take even one step toward making a possibly beautiful discovery. No one knows who in the city first came up with it, which inquisitive researcher or chance discoverer, but one thing is certain, the word spread rapidly and immediately took on the pejorative meaning that its very appearance seems to provoke. Although we may not previously have mentioned the fact, which is in every way deplorable, even the media, especially the state television channels, are already using the word as if it were one of the very worst of obscenities. When you see it written down, you don't notice it so much, but as soon as you hear it spoken with that angry curl of the lips and in that snide tone of voice, you would have to have the moral armor of a knight of the round table not to put a noose around your neck, don a penitent's tunic and walk along beating your chest and renouncing all your old principles and precepts, A blanker I was, a blanker no more, forgive me, my country, forgive me, my lord. The council leader, who will have nothing to forgive, since he is no one's lord and never will be, who will not even be a candidate at the next elections, has stopped watching the passers-by, he is looking now for signs of shabbiness, neglect, decline, and, at least at a first glance, he can find none. The shops and department stores are all open, although they don't appear to be doing much business, the traffic is flowing, impeded only by the occasional minor jam, there are no queues of anxious customers at the doors of the banks, the kind of queue that always forms in time of crisis, everything seems to be normal, there are no violent muggings, no shoot-outs or knife-fights, there is nothing but this luminous afternoon, neither too cold nor too hot, an afternoon that seems to have come into the world to satisfy all desires and to calm all anxieties. But not the council leader's unease or, to be more literary, his inner disquiet. What he feels, and he may be the only person amongst those passing by to feel this, is a kind of menace floating in the air, the kind that sensitive temperaments feel when the thick clouds covering the sky grow tense with waiting for the thunderbolt to fall, or as we might feel when a door creaked open in the darkness and a current of icy air brushed our cheek, when an awful feeling of foreboding opened the gates of despair to us, when a diabolical laugh sundered the delicate veil of the soul. Nothing concrete, nothing we could describe with any authority or objectivity, but the fact is that the council leader has to make a real effort not to stop the first person who passes and say to him, Be careful, don't ask me why or about what, just be careful, I've got a feeling that something bad is going to happen, If you, the council leader, with all your responsibilities, don't know, how do you expect me to, they would ask him, It doesn't matter, what matters is that you should be very careful, Is it some epidemic, No, I don't think so, An earthquake, This isn't an area prone to earthquakes, there's never been one here, A flood, then, a deluge, It's been years since the river broke its banks, What then, Look, I don't know, Forgive me for asking, You're forgiven before you've even asked, No offence, sir, but have you perhaps had one drink too many, you know what they say, the last one is always the worst, No, I only drink at mealtimes, and then only in moderation, I'm certainly not an alcoholic, Well, in that case, I don't understand, When it's happened, you will, When what has happened, The thing that is going to happen. Bewildered, his interlocutor glanced around him, If you're looking for a policeman to arrest me, said the council leader, don't bother, they've all gone, No, I wasn't looking for a policeman, lied the other man, I'd arranged to meet a friend here, oh, there he is, see you again, then, sir, and take care, you know, to be perfectly frank, if I were you, I'd go straight home to bed, when you sleep you forget everything, But I never go to sleep at this hour, As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping, May I ask you a question too, Of course, sir, feel free, Did you cast a blank vote, Are you doing a survey, No, I'm just curious, but if you'd rather not answer, don't. The man hesitated for a second, then, very gravely, he replied, Yes, I did, it's not, as far as I know, forbidden to do so, No, it's not forbidden, but look at the result. The man seemed to have forgotten about his imaginary friend, Look, sir, I have nothing against you personally, I'm even prepared to acknowledge that you've done a good job on the city council, but I'm not to blame for what you call the result, I voted as I wanted to vote, within the law, now it's up to you, the council, to respond, if the potato's too hot, blow on it, Don't get upset, I just wanted to warn you, You still haven't told me about what, Even if I wanted to, I couldn't, Then I've been wasting my time here, Forgive me, your friend's waiting for you, There isn't any friend waiting, I was just using that as an excuse to get away, Then thank you for having stayed a little longer, Sir, Please don't stand on ceremony, From what I know about what goes on in people's minds, I would say that it's your conscience that's troubling you, For something I didn't do, Some people say that's the worst kind of remorse, for something you allowed to happen, Maybe you're right, I'll think about that, but, anyway, be careful, I will, sir, and thank you for the warning, Even though you still don't know what I'm warning you against, Some people deserve our trust, You're the second person who's said that to me today, Then you can safely say that you've had a very good day indeed, Thank you, See you again, sir, Yes, see you again.

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

Two hours later, the fire was declared to be under control, the intense heat from the charred ruins took another two hours to abate, but it was still impossible to know how many people had died. About thirty or forty people were taken to hospital, suffering from injuries of varying degrees of severity, having escaped the worst of the blast because they had been in a part of the ticket hall farthest from the place where the bomb had exploded. The council leader remained there until the fire had died down completely, and he only left when the fire chief told him, Go and rest, sir, leave us to deal with things, and do something about that cut on your face, I can't understand why no one here noticed it, It's all right, they had more serious things on their minds. Then he asked, And now, Now we have to locate and remove the bodies, some will have been blown to pieces, most will have been burned, Yes, I don't know if I could bear that, In your present state, I don't think you could either, I'm a coward, It's not cowardice, sir, even I passed out the first time, Thank you, do what you can, All I can do is put out the last burning ember, which is nothing, At least you'll be here. Covered in soot, his cheek black with dried blood, he started walking grimly back home. His whole body ached, from running, from nervous tension, from being on his feet for hours. There was no point trying to phone his wife, the person who answered would doubtless tell him, I'm sorry, sir, your wife is in the operating theater, she can't come to the phone. On either side of the road, people were looking out of their windows, but no one recognized him. A real council leader travels in his official car, has a secretary with him to carry his briefcase, three bodyguards to clear a path for him, but the man walking along the street is a filthy, stinking tramp, a sad man on the verge of tears, a ghost to whom no one would even lend a bucket of water in which to wash his sheet. The mirror in the lift revealed to him the blackened face he would have had now if he had been in the ticket hall when the bomb exploded, Horror, horror, he murmured. He opened the door with tremulous hands and went straight to the bathroom. He took the first-aid box out of the cabinet, the packet of cotton wool, the hydrogen peroxide, some liquid disinfectant containing iodine, some large sticking plasters. He said to himself, It probably needs a few stitches. His shirt was stained with blood all the way down to the waistband of his trousers, I bled more than I thought. He took off his jacket, painfully undid the sticky knot of his tie and took off his shirt. His vest was stained with blood too, I should have a wash, get in the shower, no, don't be ridiculous, that would just wash away the dried blood covering the wound and start it bleeding again, he said softly, I should, yes, I should, I should what. The word was like a dead body he had stumbled upon, he had to find out what the word wanted, he had to remove the body. The firemen and the civil defense people are going into the station. They are carrying stretchers and wearing protective gloves, most of them have never before touched a burned body, now they will know what it is like. I should. He went out of the bathroom and into his study, where he sat down at his desk. He picked up the phone and dialed a confidential number. It is almost three o'clock in the morning. A voice answers, The interior minister's office, who's calling, It's the leader of the city council in the capital, I'd like to speak to the minister, it's extremely urgent, if he's in, can you please put me straight through to him, One moment, please. The moment lasted two minutes, Hello, A few hours ago, minister, a bomb exploded in the overground train station in the eastern sector of the city, we don't yet know how many people have died, but everything indicates that the death toll will be high, there are already about forty or fifty wounded, Yes, I know, The reason I'm phoning you now is that I've been at the scene of the explosion all this time, Very commendable. The council leader took a deep breath, then asked, Haven't you anything to say to me, minister, What do you mean, About who could have planted the bomb, Well, it seems fairly obvious, your friends who cast the blank votes have clearly decided to go in for a bit of direct action, Sorry, but I don't believe that, Whether you believe it or not, that is the truth, Is or will be, You can make up your own mind about that, What happened here, minister, was a heinous crime, Yes, I suppose you're right, that's what people usually call it, Who planted the bomb, minister, You seem upset, why don't you get some rest and call me when it gets light, but not before ten o'clock, Who planted the bomb, minister, What are you trying to insinuate, A question is not an insinuation, it would be an insinuation if I were to tell you what we are both thinking at this moment, There's no reason on earth why my thoughts should coincide with those of the leader of a municipal council. Well, they do this time, Careful now, you're going too far, Oh, I'm not just going too far, I've arrived, What do you mean, That I am speaking to the person directly responsible for the blast, You're mad, If only I was, How dare you cast aspersions on a member of the government, it's unheard of, From now on, minister, I am no longer the council leader of this besieged city, We'll talk tomorrow, but bear in mind that I have no intention of accepting your resignation, You'll have to accept it, just pretend that I died, In that case, I warn you, in the name of the government, that you will bitterly regret doing so, in fact, you won't even have time to regret it if you don't keep quiet about this whole affair, but that shouldn't prove too difficult, given that you say you're dead, Yes, I never imagined anyone could be so dead. The communication was cut at the other end. The man who had been the council leader got up and went into the bathroom. He took off his clothes and stood under the shower. The hot water quickly washed away the dried blood that had formed over the wound and the blood began to flow again. The firemen have just found the first charred body.

TWENTY-THREE DEATHS SO FAR, AND WE'VE NO IDEA HOW MANY MORE they'll find under the rubble, that's at least twenty-three deaths, interior minister, said the prime minister, bringing the flat of his hand down on the newspapers that lay open on his desk, The media are almost unanimous in attributing the attack to some terrorist group with links to the insurrection by the blankers, sir, Firstly, purely as a matter of good taste, please do me the great favor of not using the word blanker in my presence, secondly, please explain what you mean by the expression almost unanimous, It means that there are only two exceptions, two newspapers who do not accept the version that is doing the rounds and who are demanding a proper investigation, Interesting, Read what this one says, sir. The prime minister read out loud, We Demand To Know Who Gave The Order, And this one, sir, less direct, but along the same lines, We Want The Truth Whoever It May Hurt. The interior minister went on, It's nothing to get alarmed about, I don't think we need worry, in fact, it's rather a good thing that there should be a few doubts, that way people can't say they're all speaking with their master's voice, Do you mean that twenty-three or more deaths don't worry you, It was a calculated risk, sir, In the light of what happened, a very badly calculated one, Yes, I suppose you could see it like that, We assumed it would be a less powerful bomb, just something to give people a bit of a fright, There was clearly an unfortunate failure in the chain of command, If only I could be sure that was the only reason, The order was, I can assure you, correctly given, you have my word, sir, Your word, interior minister, For what it's worth, sir, Yes, for what it's worth, In either case, we knew there would be deaths, But not twenty-three, Even if there had been only three, they would have been no less dead than these twenty-three, it isn't a question of numbers, No, but it is also a question of numbers, May I remind you that he who wills the ends, wills the means, Oh, I've heard that refrain many times before, And this won't be the last time, even if, next time, you hear it from someone else's lips, Appoint a commission of inquiry at once, minister, To reach what conclusions, prime minister, Just set it to work, we'll sort that out later, Very good, sir, Give all necessary help to the families of the victims, both those who died and those who are currently in hospital, tell the council to take charge of the funerals, In the midst of all this confusion, I forgot to inform you that the council leader has resigned, Resigned, why, Well, to be more precise, he walked out, At this precise moment, I don't really care whether he resigned or walked out, my question is why, He arrived at the station immediately after the explosion took place and his nerve went, he couldn't cope with what he saw, No one could, I know I couldn't, indeed, I imagine even you couldn't, minister, so there must be some other reason for his abrupt departure, He thinks the government is responsible, and he didn't just hint at his suspicions either, he was quite explicit about it, Do you think he was the one who passed the idea on to those two newspapers, Frankly, prime minister, I don't, and, believe you me, I would love to be able to lay the blame at his door, What will the man do now, His wife is a doctor, Yes, I know her, They'll have to get by until he finds a new job, And meanwhile, Meanwhile, prime minister, I will keep him under the strictest possible surveillance, if that's what you mean, Whatever was the man thinking of, he seemed so trustworthy, a loyal party member, with an excellent political career, a future, The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live, some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they're just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skilfully, to justify their cowardice, You're obviously something of an expert on the subject, did you glean all this from your own experiences, If I had, would I be in the post of interior minister, No, I suppose not, but everything is possible in this world, no doubt our finest torture specialists kiss their children when they get home, and some may even cry at the cinema, And I sir, am no exception, in fact, I'm just an old sentimentalist really, Glad to hear it. The prime minister leafed slowly through the newspapers, he looked at the photographs one by one with a mixture of repugnance and apprehension, and said, You probably want to know why I don't sack you, Yes, sir, I'm curious to know your reasons, Because if I did, people would think one of two things, either that, independent of the nature and degree of guilt, I considered you directly responsible for what had happened, or that I was quite simply punishing you for your supposed incompetence for not having foreseen the possibility of such an act of violence in abandoning the capital to its fate, Yes, knowing as I do the rules of the game, I thought those would be your reasons, Obviously, there's a third reason, possible, as all things are, but improbable, and therefore out of the question, What's that, That you might make public the truth behind the attack, You know better than anyone that no interior minister, in any age or in any country in the world, has ever opened his mouth to speak of the mean, dishonorable, treacherous, criminal deeds committed in the course of his work, so you can rest easy on that score because I will prove no exception, If it becomes known that we ordered the bomb to be planted, we will give the people who cast the blank votes the final reason they needed, If you'll forgive me, prime minister, that way of thinking offends against logic, Why, And, if you'll allow me to say so, it does an injustice to the usual rigor of your thinking, Get to the point, Whether they find out or not, if they are then shown to be right, it's because they were right already. The prime minister pushed the newspapers away and said, This whole business reminds me of the story of the sorcerer's apprentice, the one who couldn't control the magical forces he had unleashed, Who, in your view, prime minister, is the sorcerer's apprentice in this case, them or us, Well, I very much fear that both of us are, they set off down a dead-end road with no thought for the consequences, And we followed them, Exactly, and now it's just a matter of waiting to see what the next step will be, As far as the government is concerned, we simply have to keep up the pressure, although after what has just happened, we obviously don't want to take any further action right now, And what about them, If the information I received before coming here is true, then they are preparing to hold a demonstration, What on earth do they hope to achieve by that, demonstrations never achieve anything, if they did, we wouldn't allow them, Presumably they want to protest against the attack, and as for getting authorization from the ministry of the interior, on this occasion, they won't even have to waste their time asking for it, Will we ever get out of this mess, That is not a matter for sorcerers, prime minister, the fully qualified or the apprentices, but, in the end, as always, the strongest side will win, The one who is strongest at the last moment will win, and we haven't yet reached that moment, the strength we have now may not be sufficient by then, Oh, I have every confidence, prime minister, an organized state cannot possibly lose a battle like this, it would be the end of the world, Or the beginning of another, Now I'm not quite sure what I should make of those words, prime minister, Well, don't go spreading it around that the prime minister is entertaining defeatist ideas, Such a thought would never even enter my head, Just as well, You were clearly speaking hypothetically, Of course, If you don't need me for anything else, I'll get back to work, The president tells me he's had a brilliant idea, What's that, He didn't want to go into detail, he is awaiting events, To some purpose one hopes, He is the president, That's what I meant, Keep me informed, Yes, prime minister, Goodbye, Goodbye, prime minister.

The information received by the ministry of the interior was correct, the city was preparing for a demonstration. The final death toll had risen to thirty-four. No one knows where or how the idea came about, but it was immediately taken up by everyone, the bodies were not to be buried in cemeteries like the ordinary dead, their graves were to remain per omnia saecula saeculorum in the landscaped area opposite the station. However, a few families known for their right-wing allegiances and who were utterly convinced that the attack had been the work of a terrorist group with, as all the media affirmed, direct links to the conspiracy against the present government, refused to hand over their innocent dead to the community. Yes, they clamored, they truly were innocent of all guilt, because they had all their lives respected their own rights and those of others, because they had voted as their parents and their grandparents had, because they were orderly people and had now become the victims and martyrs of this murderous act of violence. They also alleged, in another tone entirely, perhaps so as not to scandalize anyone with such a lack of civic solidarity, that they had their own historical family vaults and it was a deep-rooted family tradition that those who had always been united in life should remain so after death, again per omnia saecula saeculorum. The collective burial would not, therefore, be of thirty-four bodies, but twenty-seven. This was still a large number of people. Sent by who knows who, but certainly not by the council, which, as we know, will be without a leader until the interior minister approves the necessary appointment of a replacement, anyway, as we were saying, sent by who knows who, there appeared in the garden a vast machine with many arms, one of those so-called multipurpose machines, like a gigantic quick-change artist, which can uproot a tree in the time it takes to utter a sigh and which would have been capable of digging twenty-seven graves in less time that it takes to say amen, if the gravediggers from the cemeteries, who were equally attached to tradition, had not turned up to carry out the work by hand, that is, using spade and shovel. What the machine had, in fact, come to do was to uproot half a dozen trees that were in the way, so that the area, once trodden down and leveled, looked as if it had been born to be a cemetery and a place of eternal rest, and then it, the machine that is, went off and planted the trees and the shade that they cast elsewhere.

Three days after the attack, in the early morning, people started to flood out into the streets. They were silent and grave-faced, many carried white flags, and all wore a white armband on their left arm, and don't let any experts in the etiquette of funeral rites go telling you that white cannot be a sign of mourning, when we are reliably informed that it used to be so in this very country, and we know that it has always been so for the Chinese, not to mention the Japanese, who, if it was left up to them, would all be wearing blue. By eleven o'clock, the square was already full, but all that could be heard was the great breathing of the crowd, the dull whisper of air entering and leaving lungs, in and out, feeding with oxygen the blood of these living beings, in, out, in, out, until suddenly, we will not finish the phrase, that moment, for those who have come here, the survivors, has not yet come. There were innumerable white flowers, quantities of chrysanthemums, roses, lilies, especially arum lilies, the occasional translucent white cactus flower, and thousands of marguerites which were forgiven their black hearts. Lined up twenty paces apart, the coffins were lifted onto the shoulders of the relatives and friends of the deceased, those who had them, and carried in procession to the graves, where, under the skilled guidance of the professional gravediggers, they were slowly lowered down on ropes until, with a hollow thud, they touched bottom. The ruins of the station still seemed to give off a smell of burned flesh. It will seem incomprehensible to some that such a moving ceremony, such a poignant display of collective grief, was not graced by the consolatory influence that would doubtless have come from the ritual practices of the country's sundry religious institutions, thus depriving the souls of the dead of their most certain viaticum and depriving the community of the living of a practical demonstration of ecumenicalism that might have contributed to leading the straying population back to the fold. The reason for this deplorable absence can only be explained by the various churches' fear that they might become the focus of suspicions, possibly tactical, or at worst strategic, of conniving with the blank-voting insurgency. This absence might also have to do with a number of phone calls, with minimal variations on the same theme, made by the prime minister himself, The nation's government would find it deeply regrettable if the chance presence of your church at the funeral service, while, of course, spiritually justified, should come to be considered, and subsequently exploited, as evidence of your political, and even ideological, support for the stubborn and systematic disrespect with which a large part of the capital's population continues to treat the legitimate and constitutional democratic authority. The burials were, therefore, purely secular, which is not to say that, here and there, a few private, silent prayers did not rise up to the various heavens to be welcomed there with benevolent sympathy. The graves were still open, when someone, doubtless with the best of intentions, stepped forward to give a speech, but this was immediately repudiated by the other people present, No speeches, we each have our own grief and we all feel the same sorrow. And the person who came up with this clear formulation of feelings was quite right. Besides, if that were the intention of the frustrated orator, it would be impossible to make a funeral oration for twenty-seven people, both male and female, not to mention some small child with no history at all. Unknown soldiers do not need the names that they used in life in order to be showered with the right and proper honors, and that's fine, if that's what we agree to do, but if these dead, most of them unrecognizable, and two or three of them still unidentified, want anything, it is to be left in peace. To those punctilious readers, showing a praiseworthy concern for the good ordering of the story, who want to know why the usual, indispensable DNA tests were not carried out, the only honest answer we can give is our own total ignorance, allow us, however, to imagine that the famous and much-abused expression, Our dead, so commonplace, so much part of the routine patter of patriotic harangues, were to be taken literally in these circumstances, that is, if these dead, all of them, belong to us, we should not consider any of them exclusively ours, which would mean that any DNA analysis which took into account all the factors, including, in particular, the non-biological ones, and however hard it rummaged around inside the double helix, would only succeed in confirming a collective ownership which required no proof anyway. That man, or perhaps woman, had more than enough reason to say, as we noted above, Here, we each have our own grief and we all feel the same sorrow. Meanwhile, the earth was shoveled back into the graves, the flowers were shared out equally, those who had reasons to weep were embraced and consoled by the others, if such a thing is possible with such a recent grief. The loved one of each person, of each family, is here, although one does not know quite where, perhaps in this grave, perhaps in that, it would be best if we wept over all of them, as a shepherd once so rightly said, although heaven knows where he learned it, One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.

The trouble with these narrative digressions, taken up as we have been with bothersome detours, is that one can find, too late, of course, almost without noticing, that events have moved on, have gone on ahead, and instead of us announcing what is about to happen, which is, after all, the elementary duty of any teller of tales worth his salt, all we can do is to confess contritely that it already has. Contrary to what we had supposed, the crowd has not dispersed, the demonstration continues and is now advancing en masse, filling the streets, in the direction, as the shouts are telling us, of the presidential palace. And on the way lies neither more nor less than the prime minister's official residence. The journalists from press, radio and television, who are at the head of the demonstration, take nervous notes, describe the events over the phone to the offices where they work, and excitedly unburden themselves of their professional and citizenly disquiets, No one seems to know quite what is going to happen, but we have reason to fear that the crowd is preparing to storm the presidential palace, which does not exclude, indeed we would say it remains highly likely, the possibility that they will also sack the prime minister's official residence and any ministerial buildings they pass on the way, this is not some apocalyptic vision, the mere fruit of our own fears, you have only to see the people's distraught faces, it would be no exaggeration to say that each of those faces is calling for blood and destruction, and thus, although it pains us to have to say this out loud and to the whole country, we reach the dreadful conclusion that the government, which has shown itself to be so efficient in other ways and was, for that very reason, applauded by all honest citizens, acted with a reprehensible lack of caution when it decided to abandon the city to the instincts of the angry mob, without the fatherly, dissuasive presence of the police on the streets, with no riot squads, with no tear-gas, no water-cannon, no dogs, in a word, unchecked. This speech warning of certain disaster reached a peak of media hysteria when they came in sight of the prime minister's residence, a bourgeois mansion, late-eighteenth-century in style, where the journalists' shouts became screams, Now, now, anything could happen, may the holy virgin protect us all, may the glorious and revered spirits of our nation, up there in the empyrean into which they ascended, quell the wrathful hearts of these people. Anything could have happened, it's true, but, in the end, nothing did, apart from the demonstration, the small section of it that we can see, coming to a halt at the crossroads where the mansion, with its small surrounding park, occupies one corner, the rest of the crowd spilled over onto the pavements, into the adjoining squares and streets, if the police arithmeticians were here, they would say that, all in all, there were only about fifty thousand people, when the exact number, the real number, because we counted them all, one by one, was ten times higher.

It was here, where the demonstration had come to a halt and was standing in absolute silence, that a sharp-eyed television reporter discovered amidst that sea of heads a man whose face, despite half of it being covered by a dressing, he nonetheless recognized, especially since he had been lucky enough to catch a fleeting glimpse of his normal, healthy face, which, as is perfectly understandable, both confirms and is confirmed by the wounded half. Dragging his cameraman along behind him, the reporter began pushing his way through the crowd, saying to the people on either side of him, Excuse me, excuse me, may I come through, out of the way, please, this is very important, and then, when he was getting close, Sir, sir, excuse me, although what he was thinking was less polite, What the hell is this guy doing here. Reporters usually have good memories and this particular reporter had not forgotten the public attack delivered by the council leader on the night of the bomb blast and of which the news networks had been the entirely undeserving targets. Now the council leader would find out just how wounded they had been. The reporter stuck the microphone in his face and made a kind of secret sign to the cameraman which could as easily have meant Start recording as Beat him to a pulp, and which, in the present situation, probably meant both, Sir, may I say how astonished I am to see you here, Astonished, why, For the reason I've just given, to see you taking part in this demonstration, Well, I'm a citizen like any other, I can demonstrate when and how I want to, especially now that there's no need to ask for authorization, But you're not just any citizen, you're the council leader, No, I'm not, I stopped being council leader three days ago, I'd have thought that was common knowledge by now, It's the first I've heard of it, we haven't received any official statement about it as yet, from the council or from the government, You're surely not expecting me to call a press conference, You resigned, No, I walked out, Why, The only answer I have is a closed mouth, mine, The city's population will want to know why their council leader, As I said, I'm no longer council leader, Why their council leader has joined an anti-government demonstration, This is not an anti-government demonstration, it's a demonstration of grief, the people here came to bury their dead, The dead have been buried and yet the demonstration is continuing, how do you explain that, Ask these other people, At the moment, it's your opinion I'm interested in, Well, I'm just going where they're going, Do you sympathize with the electors who cast blank votes, with the blankers, They voted as they wanted to vote, and whether I sympathize or not is irrelevant, And what about your party, what will they say when they find out you joined the demonstration, Ask them, You're not afraid they'll impose sanctions on you, No, What makes you so sure, For the simple reason that I no longer belong to the party, Did they expel you, No, I left, just as I left the post of council leader, What was the interior minister's reaction, Ask him, Who has taken over from you or will take over, Find out for yourself, Will we see you on more demonstrations, Turn up and you'll find out, So you've left the party on the right, in which you've spent your entire political career, and have gone over to the left, One day, I hope to understand just where it is I have gone, Sir, Don't call me that, Sorry, force of habit, and I have to confess to feeling confused, Careful, now, moral confusion, because I'm assuming your confusion is moral, is the first step along the path to disquiet and after that, as you yourselves are so fond of saying, anything can happen, No, I really am baffled, sir, I don't know what to think, Turn off the recording equipment, your bosses might not like what you just said, and, please, don't call me sir, The camera is already off, Just as well, that way you won't get yourself into any trouble, They say that the demonstration is heading for the presidential palace, Ask the organizers, Where are they, who are they, Everyone and no one, I suppose, There must be a leader, movements like this don't organize themselves, spontaneous generation doesn't exist, still less in the case of mass actions on this scale, Not until now, no, Do you mean that you don't believe the blank vote movement was spontaneous, It's outrageous of you to make such an inference, My impression is that you know much more about this business than you're letting on, The time always comes when we discover that we knew much more than we thought we did, now, leave me alone and get on with your job, find someone else to question, look, the sea of heads has started to move, What amazes me is that there isn't a single shout, a single long live or down with, not a single slogan saying what it is the people want, just this threatening silence that sends shivers down your spine, Forget the horror movie language, perhaps people are just tired of words, If people get tired of words, then I'll be out of a job, You won't say a truer word all day, Goodbye, sir, Once and for all, I'm not sir any more. The leading front quarter of the demonstration had turned back on itself, now it was going up a steep slope toward a long, broad avenue at the end of which it would turn to the right and receive on its face the cool caress of the breeze from the river. The presidential palace was about two kilometers away, on the flat. The reporters had received orders to leave the demonstration and to run on to take up positions outside the palace, but the general idea, amongst both the professionals working on the ground and those back at the editorial desks, was that, from the point of view of news interest, the coverage had been a pure waste of time and money, or to put it more crudely, a real kick in the balls for the media, or, in more delicate and refined terms, an undeserved slight. These guys aren't even any good at demonstrations, they said, they might at least throw the odd stone, burn the president in effigy, break a few windows, sing one of the old revolutionary songs, anything to show the world that they're not as dead as the people they've just buried. The demonstration did not live up to their expectations. The people arrived and filled the square, they stood for half an hour staring in silence at the closed-up palace, then they dispersed, and, some walking, others in buses, still others cadging lifts from supportive strangers, they all went home.

This peaceful demonstration did what the bomb had failed to do. Troubled and frightened, the loyal voters of the party on the right and the party in the middle, or the p.o.t.r. and the p.i.t.m., gathered together in their respective family councils and decided, each according to their own lights, but unanimous as regards their final decision, to leave the city. They felt that the current situation, another bomb that might tomorrow be aimed at them, the rabble taking over the streets with absolute impunity, should convince the government of the need to revise the rigorous parameters they had established when imposing the state of siege, especially the scandalous injustice of having the same harsh punishment fall, without distinction, on the steadfast defenders of peace and on the declared fomenters of disorder. So as not to embark on this venture blindly, some of them, with friends in high places, set about sounding out by telephone the government's likely position on giving authorization, explicitly or tacitly, that would allow those who, quite rightly, were already beginning to describe themselves as prisoners in their own country, to enter free territory. The answers received, generally vague and in some cases contradictory, while not allowing them to draw hard and fast conclusions regarding the government's thinking on the matter, were, nevertheless, sufficient for them to admit as a valid hypothesis that, if certain conditions were observed and certain material compensations stipulated, the success of the escape, even though it was relative, even though not all their requests could be met, was, at least, conceivable, which meant that they could at least hold out some hope. For a week, in absolute secrecy, the committee responsible for organizing future convoys of cars, made up in equal numbers of militants of different categories from both parties and with the presence of consultants drawn from the capital's various moral and religious institutions, debated and finally approved an audacious plan of action which, in memory of the famous retreat of the ten thousand, received, on the suggestion of a learned hellenist from the party in the middle, the name of xenophon. The families who were candidates for emigration were given three days and no more to decide, with pencil in hand and a tear in the eye, what they could take with them and what they would have to leave behind. Human nature being what we know it to be, there were, inevitably, examples of selfish fancies, feigned distractions, treacherous appeals to an all-too-easy sentimentality, deceptively seductive maneuverings, but there were also cases of admirable selflessness, of the kind that still allow us to believe that if we persevere in these and other such gestures of worthy abnegation, we will, in the end, more than fulfil our small part in the monumental project of creation. The withdrawal was set for the early hours of the fourth day, which would, as it turned out, be a night of wild rain, but that would not be a problem, on the contrary, it would give this collective migration a touch of heroism to be remembered and inscribed in the family annals as a clear demonstration that not all the virtues of the race had been lost. Now, having to transport one person in a car quietly and with the weather in repose is not the same as having to keep the windscreen wipers flailing back and forth like mad things just to keep at bay the sheets of water falling from the sky. One grave problem, which would be minutely debated by the committee, was the question placed on the table as to how the casters of blank votes, commonly known as blankers, would react to this mass flight. It is important to bear in mind that many of these anxious families live in buildings that are also inhabited by tenants who come from the other political shore and who might take a deplorably vengeful attitude and, to put it mildly, obstruct their departure or, more brutally, stop it altogether. They'll puncture our tyres, said one, They'll erect barricades on the landings, said another, They'll jam the lifts, offered a third, They'll put silicon in the locks of the cars, added the first, They'll smash the wind-screens, suggested the second, They'll attack us as soon as we step out of the front door, They'll hold grandpa hostage, sighed another in such a way that made one think that this was, unconsciously, precisely what he wanted. The discussion went on, becoming more and more impassioned, until someone reminded them that the behavior of all those thousands of people during the demonstration had, however you looked at it, been impeccable, I'd even say exemplary, and consequently there seemed little reason to fear that things would now be any different, In fact, I think they'll be relieved to be rid of us, That's all very well, intervened a sceptic, they may be lovely people, wonderfully gentle and responsible, but there is something we have, alas, forgotten, What's that, The bomb. As we said on a previous page, this committee, of public salvation, as it occurred to someone to call it, a name that was immediately rejected for more than justified ideological reasons, was broadly representative, which means that on this occasion there were over two dozen people sitting round the table. You should have seen the reaction. Everyone else present bowed their head, then an admonitory look reduced to silence, for the rest of the meeting, the rash person who appeared to be ignorant of a basic tenet of social behavior which teaches that in the house of the hanged man, one should never mention the word rope. The embarrassing incident had one virtue, it brought everyone together in agreement on the optimistic thesis they had formulated. What happened next would prove them right. At precisely three o'clock on the morning of the appointed day, just as the government had done, the families started leaving home with their suitcases large and small, their bags and their bundles, their cats and their dogs, the occasional tortoise roused from its sleep, the occasional Japanese fish in a bowl, the occasional cage of parakeets, the occasional macaw on a perch. But the doors of the other tenants did not open, no one came out onto the landing to make fun of the spectacle, no one made jokes, no one insulted them, and it was not just because it was raining that no one went and leaned out of the windows to watch the convoys driving off in their different directions. Naturally, with all the noise, just imagine, going down the stairs dragging all that junk, the lifts buzzing up and down, the suggestions, the sudden alarms, Careful with the piano, careful with the tea service, careful with the silver platter, careful with the painting, careful with grandpa, naturally, we were saying, the tenants in the other apartments woke up, but none of them got out of bed to go and peer through the spyhole in the front door, they merely said to each other as they snuggled down beneath the blankets, They're leaving.

THEY ALMOST ALL CAME BACK. TO ECHO THE WORDS USED BY THE interior minister some days before when obliged by the prime minister to explain the discrepancy between the size of the bomb he had been ordered to plant and the bomb that had actually exploded, there was, in the case of this exodus, another grave failure in the chain of command. As experience has never tired of showing us, after long examination of many cases and their respective circumstances, victims not infrequently bear some responsibility for the misfortunes that befall them. Preoccupied as they were with political negotiations, none of which, as will soon become apparent, had been carried out at a high enough level to ensure the perfect execution of operation xenophon, the busy leaders of the committee had forgotten, or perhaps such a thing had simply never entered their heads, to check that the military would also be informed of their escape and, equally important, of the agreements they had reached. Some families, a half dozen at most, did manage to cross the line at one of the frontier posts, but this was because the young officer in charge had allowed himself to be convinced not just by the fugitives' repeated protestations of ideological purity and loyalty to the regime, but by their insistent declarations that the government knew about their retreat and had approved it. Meanwhile, in order to free himself from the doubts that soon assailed him, he phoned two other posts nearby, and his colleagues there were kind enough to remind him that their orders, since the beginning of the blockade, had been not to let through a living soul, not even someone on their way to save their father from the gallows or to give birth to a new baby in their house in the country. Terrified that he had made the wrong decision, which would doubtless be perceived as flagrant and possibly premeditated disobedience of orders received, with the consequent court-martial and more than likely loss of rank, the officer gave orders for the barrier to be lowered at once, thus blocking the kilometer-long caravan of cars and vans, all packed to the gills, that stretched back along the road. The rain continued to fall. Needless to say, brought face to face with their responsibilities, the committee members did not stand by waiting for the red sea to part. Mobile phone in hand, they started waking up all the influential people whom they felt they could safely be wrenched from sleep without provoking too angry a reaction, and it is quite possible that the whole complicated affair could have been resolved in the best possible way for the anxious fugitives had it not been for the fierce intransigence of the minister of defense, who decided to dig his heels in, No one gets through without my say-so, he said. As you will no doubt have guessed, the committee had forgotten to consult him. You might say that a minister of defense is not that important, that above a minister of defense there is a prime minister to whom the former owes obedience and respect, that higher still, is a president who is owed the same, if not greater, obedience and respect, although, if truth be told, as far as this particular president is concerned, this is mostly a matter of show. And indeed, after a hard dialectical battle between the prime minister and the minister of defense, in which the reasons put up by both sides flashed and flickered like an exchange of tracer bullets, the minister finally surrendered. He was greatly put out, it's true, and in the blackest of moods, but he nevertheless gave in. You will naturally want to know what decisive, unanswerable argument the prime minister used to force his recalcitrant interlocutor into submission. It was simple and direct, My dear minister, he said, put that brain of yours to work and imagine the consequences tomorrow were we to shut the doors today on the very people who voted for us, As I recall, the order from the cabinet was to let no one pass, May I congratulate you on your excellent memory, but when it comes to orders, one has, from time to time, to be prepared to bend them, especially when it suits one to do so, which is precisely the case now, Sorry, I don't understand, Allow me to explain, tomorrow, once this problem has been resolved, with subversion crushed and spirits calmed, we will call new elections, isn't that right, It is, Do you think we could expect those we had turned away to vote for us again, No, they probably wouldn't, And we need those votes, remember, the party in the middle is hot on our heels, Yes, I understand, In that case, please give the order to allow the people to pass, Yes, sir. The prime minister put down the phone, looked at his watch and said to his wife, At this rate, I might be able to get another hour and a half or two hours' sleep, and added, I have a feeling that fellow will be sent packing at the next cabinet reshuffle, You shouldn't let people be so rude to you, said his other half, No one is ever rude to me, my love, they merely take advantage of my good nature, that's all, It comes to the same thing, she retorted, turning out the light. Before five minutes had passed, the telephone rang once more. It was the minister of defense again, Forgive me, prime minister, I'm sorry to interrupt your well-deserved rest, but unfortunately I have no option, What is it now, A detail we failed to notice, What detail, asked the prime minister, not bothering to disguise the touch of irritation he felt at the other man's use of we, It's quite simple, but very important, Get on with it and don't waste my time, Well, I was just wondering how we can be sure that all the people trying to leave the capital belong to our party, should we just take their word for it that they voted in the elections, couldn't some of the hundreds of vehicles queuing up along the roads be carrying subversive agents ready to infect with the blank plague the parts of the country that are as yet uncontaminated. The prime minister felt his heart contract when he realized he had been caught out, It's certainly a possibility to bear in mind, he murmured, That's precisely why I phoned you again, said the minister of defense, giving the screw another turn. The silence that followed these words demonstrated once more that time has nothing to do with the time told by clocks, those small machines made of wheels that do not think and springs that do not feel, devoid of a spirit that would allow them to imagine that five insignificant seconds counted off, one, two, three, four, five, could be an agonizing torment for the person at one end of the phone and a pool of sublime pleasure for the other. The prime minister drew one striped pajama sleeve across his forehead, which was now beaded with sweat, then, choosing his words carefully, he said, The matter clearly requires a different approach, a careful evaluation that looks at the problem in the round, cutting corners is always a mistake, My view precisely, How is the situation at the moment, asked the prime minister, Very tense on both sides, at some posts, they've even had to fire shots in the air, Do you have any suggestion to make as minister of defense, In more maneuverable conditions, I would order them to charge, but with all those cars blocking the roads, it's impossible, What do you mean charge, Well, I would get the tanks out, And when the snouts of the tanks came into contact with the first car, and I know tanks don't have snouts, it's just a manner of speaking, what, in your opinion, would happen then, People normally take fright when they see a tank advancing on them, But, as I have just heard from your own lips, the roads are blocked, Yes, sir, So it wouldn't be easy for the car at the front to turn round, No, sir, it would be very difficult indeed, but then, one way or another, if we don't let them in, they're going to have to do that, But not in the state of panic that would inevitably be provoked by the sight of a phalanx of tanks with their guns pointing straight at them, No, sir, In short, you have no idea how to resolve the problem, said the prime minister, ramming the point home, sure now that he had taken back both control and the initiative, I'm afraid not, prime minister, Nevertheless, I am grateful to you for having drawn my attention to an aspect of the matter that had escaped me, It could have happened to anyone, Yes, to anyone, but it shouldn't have happened to me, You have so many things to think about, And now I have another, solving a problem for which the minister of defense has failed to find a solution, If that is how you feel, then I offer my resignation, Now I don't think I heard that and I don't think I want to, Yes, prime minister. There was another silence, shorter this time, barely three seconds, during which it was clear that the sublime pleasure and the agonizing torment had changed places. Another phone rang in the room. His wife answered it, she asked who was calling, then whispered to her husband, at the same time covering the mouthpiece of the phone, It's the interior minister. The prime minister gestured to her to wait, then issued his orders to the minister of defense, I want no more shots fired in the air and I want the situation stabilized until we can take the necessary measures, make it known to the people in the first few cars that the government is currently studying the situation and hopes to come up with proposals and directives shortly, and emphasize that everything will be resolved for the good of the country and of national security, May I remind you, prime minister, that there are hundreds of cars, So, We can't get the message to all of them, Don't worry, as long as the first cars at each post know, they'll make sure the information passes, like a powder trail, to the back of the queue, Yes, sir, Keep me informed, Yes, sir. The following conversation, with the interior minister, would be different, Don't waste any time telling me what's happened, I know already, They may not have told you that shots have been fired, It won't happen again, Ah, Now what we need to do is to get those people to turn round and go back, But if the army hasn't managed to do so, They haven't and they couldn't, you surely don't want the minister of defense to send in the tanks, Of course not, prime minister, From now on, the responsibility is yours, The police are no use in these situations and I have no authority over the army, Ah, but I wasn't thinking of the police, neither was I considering appointing you army chief of staff, Forgive me, prime minister, but I don't understand, Get your best speechwriter out of bed and put him straight to work, and meanwhile tell the media that the interior minister will speak on the radio at six o'clock, the television and the press can wait, it's the radio that matters now, It's almost five o'clock, prime minister, You don't have to tell me that, I have a watch, Sorry, I merely wanted to point out that there isn't much time, If your speechwriter can't come up with thirty lines in fifteen minutes, with or without syntax, then you'd better put him out in the street, And what should he write, Oh, any old line of argument that will convince these people to go home, that will inflame their patriotic feelings, tell them they're committing the crime of lèse-patrie by abandoning the capital to the subversive hordes, tell them that all those who voted for the parties who built the current political system, including, inevitably, the party in the middle, our direct competitor, constitute the first line of defense of all democratic institutions, tell them that the homes they have left behind them unprotected will be burgled and looted by insurrectionist gangs, but don't tell them that we will, if necessary, burgle them ourselves, We could add that any citizen who decides to return home, regardless of age or social class, will be considered by the government to be a loyal promoter of legality, Promoter doesn't seem to me quite the right word, it's too vulgar, too commercial, besides, legality is getting more than enough promotion, we spend all our time talking about it, All right, then, defenders, heralds or legionnaires, Legionnaires is better, it sounds strong, martial, defenders is a term that lacks pride, it would give a negative impression of passivity, and heralds has a whiff of the middle ages about it, whereas the word legionnaire immediately suggests combative action, an aggressive mindset, and is also, as we know, a word with solid traditions, Let's just hope that the people on the road hear the message, It would seem, my dear fellow, that waking up too early clouds your perceptive faculties, I would bet my post as prime minister that at this very moment every one of those car radios is turned on, what matters is that news of the broadcast to the nation is announced at once and the announcement repeated every minute, What I fear, prime minister, is that these people may not be in a frame of mind to be convinced, if we tell them there's going to be a statement from the government, they will more than likely think that we're going to authorize them to cross the frontier, and their subsequent disappointment could have very grave consequences, It's very simple, your speechwriter is going to have to justify both the bread that he eats and his salary, he's got the lexical and rhetorical skills, let him sort it out, If I may just give voice to an idea that has only this minute occurred to me, Feel free to give voice to anything you like, but may I just point out that we are wasting time, it's already five past five, The statement would carry much more force if you, as prime minister, were to make it, Oh, I don't doubt it for a moment, In that case, why don't you, Because I am reserving myself for another occasion, one more suited to my station, Ah, I think I understand, It is, after all, merely a matter of common sense or, shall we say, hierarchical gradation, just as it would offend against the dignity of the nation's supreme court for the president to go on the radio to ask a few drivers to get off the roads, so must this prime minister be protected from everything that might trivialize his status as leader of the government, Hm, I see the idea, Good, it's a sign that you've finally managed to wake up, Yes, prime minister, And now to work, by eight o'clock at the latest, I want those roads cleared, and make sure the television companies get out there with all the terrestrial and aerial means at their disposal, I want the whole country to see the reports, Yes, sir, I'll do what I can, You won't do what you can, you will do what is necessary to obtain the results I have just demanded of you. The interior minister did not have time to respond, the prime minister had put the phone down. That's how I like to hear you talk, said his wife, Well, when someone gets my dander up, And what will he do if he can't solve the problem, He'll be given his marching orders and sent packing, Like the minister of defense, Exactly, You can't just dismiss ministers as if they were servants, They are servants, Yes, but you'll only have to find new ones, That is a subject that requires calm consideration, What do you mean, consideration, Look, I'd rather not talk about it at the moment, But I'm your wife, no one can hear us, your secrets are my secrets, All I mean is that, bearing in mind the gravity of the situation, it would come as no surprise to anyone if I myself were to take on the portfolios of defense and the interior, that way the state of national emergency would be reflected in the structures and workings of the government, that is, total co-ordination and total centralization, that could be our watchword, It would be a huge risk, you could win everything or lose everything, Yes, but if I could triumph over a subversive action unparalleled anywhere, at any time, an action that attacked the system's most sensitive organ, that of parliamentary representation, then I would be assured of a lasting place in history, a unique place, as the savior of democracy, And I would be the proudest of wives, whispered his wife, slithering closer to him, as if touched by the magic wand of a rare brand of lust, a mixture of carnal desire and political enthusiasm, but her husband, conscious of the gravity of the hour and making his the harsh words of the poet, Why do you grovel before my rough boots? / Why do you loosen your perfumed hair / and treacherously open your soft arms? /1 am nothing but a man with coarse hands / and a cold heart / and if, in order to pass, /1 had to trample you underfoot / then, as you well know, I would trample you underfoot, abruptly threw off the bedclothes and said, I'm going to my study to keep an eye on developments, you go back to sleep, rest. The thought flashed through his wife's mind that, in a critical situation like this, when moral support would be worth its weight in gold, always supposing moral support had a weight, the widely accepted code of basic marital obligations, in the chapter on mutual help, determined that she should, without summoning the maid, immediately get up and prepare with her own hands a comforting cup of tea with the appropriate alimentary accompaniment of a few plain biscuits, instead, annoyed, frustrated, with her nascent lust quite evaporated, she turned over in bed and firmly closed her eyes, in the faint hope that sleep might still be able to make use of the remnants of that lust to put on a brief, private, erotic fantasy for her. Oblivious to the disappointments he had left behind him, and wearing over his striped pajamas one of those silk dressinggowns adorned with exotic motifs, with Chinese pavilions and golden elephants, the prime minister went into his study, turned on all the lights, and switched on first the radio and then the television. The television screen still showed only the test card, it was too early for broadcasting to begin, but all the radio stations were already talking animatedly about the monstrous traffic jams on the roads, and opinions were bandied about on what was clearly an attempt at a mass escape from the unhappy prison into which the capital, through its own stupid fault, had been transformed, although there were also comments to the effect that such an unusually large circulatory blockage would mean that the vast trucks that brought food into the city every day would be unable to get through. These commentators did not yet know that these same trucks were being held, on strict orders from the army, three kilometers from the frontier. Radio reporters, traveling on motorbikes, questioned people all along the lines of cars and vans and were able to confirm that this was, indeed, a properly organized collective action, bringing together whole families, in order to escape the tyranny and the suffocating atmosphere which the forces of subversion had imposed on the city. Some household heads complained about the delay, We've been here for nearly three hours and the queue hasn't moved a millimeter, while others protested that they had been betrayed, They promised us we'd be able to get through with no problem, and here you have the brilliant result, the government bolted, went on holiday and threw us to the lions, and now, when we had our chance to get out too, they have the nerve to slam the door in our face. There were hysterical outbursts, children crying, old people white-faced with fatigue, angry men who had run out of cigarettes, exhausted women trying to impose some order on the desperate family chaos. The occupants of one car tried to turn round and drive back into the city, but were forced to give up under the hail of insults and abuse that fell on them, Cowards, black sheep, blankers, bastards, spies, traitors, sons-of-bitches, now we know why you came, to demoralize us decent folk, but if you think we're going to let you go, you've got another think coming, if necessary, we'll let your tyres down and see if that teaches you some respect for other people's sufferings. The phone rang in the prime minister's study, it could be the minister of defense, or the interior minister, or the president. It was the president, What's going on, why wasn't I informed immediately about the general pandemonium along all the routes out of the capital, he asked, Sir, the government has the situation under control, the problem will soon be resolved, Yes, but I should have been informed, you owe me that courtesy at least, Well, I felt, and I take personal responsibility for the decision, that there was no reason to interrupt your sleep, but I was going to phone you in about twenty minutes or half an hour, but, as I say, I take full responsibility, president, Good, good, that was kind of you, but if my wife were not in the healthy habit of getting up early, I, the president, would still be sleeping while the country burns, It's not burning, president, all the appropriate measures have been taken, Don't tell me you're going to bomb the lines of vehicles, As you should know by now, president, that is not my style, It was, of course, just a manner of speaking, obviously I never thought you would commit such a barbaric act, The radio should soon announce that the interior minister will address the nation at six o'clock, there it is, they're giving the first announcement now, and there will, of course, be others, it's all organized, president, Well, at least, that's something, It's the beginning of success, president, I have complete confidence that we will be able to persuade these people to return to their homes in peace and good order, And if they don't, If they don't, the government will resign, Oh, don't play that old trick on me, you know as well as I do that, in the situation in which the country finds itself, I couldn't accept your resignation even if I wanted to, Yes, I know, but I had to say it, Fine, anyway, now that I'm awake, be sure to keep me up to date on what's happening. The radios kept insisting, We interrupt the programme once again to inform our listeners that the interior minister will, at six o'clock, be making a statement to the nation, we repeat, at six o'clock the interior minister will make a statement to the nation, we repeat, a statement will be made to the nation by the interior minister at six o'clock, we repeat, at six o'clock the nation will be made a statement by the interior minister, the ambiguity of this last reformulation did not go unnoticed by the prime minister, who remained for a few seconds smiling at his own thoughts, amusing himself by wondering how the devil an interior minister could make the nation into a statement. He might have reached some conclusion that could have proved of future use had the test card on the television screen not vanished to give way to the usual image of the flag flapping lazily on the flagpole, as if it, too, had just woken up, while the national anthem blasted out with its trombones and drums, with the odd clarinet trill in the middle and a few persuasive belches from the bass tuba. The presenter who then appeared had the knot in his tie all awry and a sour look on his face, as if he had just been the victim of some insult that he would not readily forgive or forget, Considering the gravity of the political and social situation, he said, and in accordance with the population's sacred right to have access to a free and diverse news media, we are starting our broadcast early today. Like many of those listening, we have just learned that the interior minister will be speaking on the radio at six o'clock, presumably to express the government's attitude to the attempted exodus from the city by many of its inhabitants. This television company does not believe that it has been the object of any deliberate and intentional discrimination, but, rather, that through some inexplicable misunderstanding, unexpected in highly experienced politicians such as those who form the present national government, this particular company was somehow forgotten. At least, apparently. There will be those who will point out the relatively early hour at which the statement is to be made, but the employees of this network, throughout its long history, have given more than sufficient proof of their self-sacrifice, their dedication to the public cause and their unalloyed patriotism, not to be relegated now to the humiliating condition of bearers of second-hand news. We are confident that, before the hour fixed for the promised statement, it may still be possible to reach a basis for agreement which, without wishing to take away what has been given to our colleagues in public radio, will restore to us that which, by merit, belongs to us, that is, our position and our responsibility as the country's prime news medium. While we await this agreement, and we hope to receive news of it at any moment, we wish to report that a television helicopter is lifting off even as I speak, in order to offer our viewers the first images of the vast queues of vehicles, whose planned withdrawal was, we have learned, given the evocative and historic name of xenophon, and which now stand immobilized all along the city's exit routes. Fortunately, the rain that has been beating down on the selfless convoys all night stopped over an hour ago. The sun will soon rise above the horizon and break through the dark clouds. Let us hope that its appearance will also remove the barriers which, for reasons we fail to understand, still prevent these our courageous compatriots from reaching freedom. May they, for the good of the nation, prove successful. The following images showed the helicopter in the air, then, looking down, the tiny heliport from which it had taken off, and, afterward, the first view of the nearby roofs and streets. The prime minister put his right hand on the phone. He did not have to wait long, Prime minister, began the interior minister, Yes, I know, no need to say anything, we made a mistake, We made a mistake, you say, Yes, we did, because if one of us was wrong and the other failed to correct him, then the mistake belongs to both, But I don't have your authority or your responsibility, prime minister, Ah, but you had my trust, So what do you want me to do then, You will speak live on television and there will be a simultaneous radio broadcast, problem solved, And we don't bother to reply to the impertinent terms and tone in which the gentlemen of the television station chose to refer to the government, In time, we will, but not now, I'll deal with them later, Good, You've got the statement with you, Yes, of course, do you want me to read it to you, No, don't bother, I'll wait to hear it live, It's nearly time, I must go, Are they expecting you, then, asked the prime minister, puzzled, Yes, I told my secretary of state to negotiate with them, Without my knowledge, You know as well as I do that we had no alternative, Without my approval, insisted the prime minister, Let me remind you that I had your trust, those are your words, besides, if one makes a mistake and the other corrects it, then both are right, If this whole business isn't sorted out by eight o'clock, I'll expect your immediate resignation, Yes, prime minister. The helicopter was flying low over one of the lines of cars, people were waving at it from the road, they must have been saying to each other, It's the television people, it's the television people, and the fact that the great gyratory bird had, indeed, been sent by the television people seemed to everyone a clear guarantee that the impasse was about to be resolved. If the television cameras are here, they said, that's a good sign. It wasn't. At six o'clock prompt, when the horizon was already becoming tinged with pink, the interior minister's voice boomed out from all the car radios, Dear fellow countrymen and women, in the last few weeks, our nation has been through what is, without doubt, the most serious crisis recorded in the history of our people since the very dawn of nationhood, never before has there been a more urgent need to defend national cohesion to the hilt, the behavior of certain people, a tiny, ill-advised minority of the country's population as a whole, under the influence of ideas entirely at odds with the correct functioning of our current democratic institutions and with the respect that is due to them, has made them the mortal enemies of that cohesion, which is why, today, a terrible threat hovers over our normally peaceable society, the threat of a civil conflict with unforeseeable consequences for the future of the nation, the government was, needless to say, the first to understand the thirst for freedom that lay behind the attempted exodus from the capital carried out by those whom we have always known to be patriots of the first water, people who, in the most adverse of circumstances, have shown themselves, either by voting or by the simple example of their day-to-day lives, to be genuinely incorruptible defenders of legality, restoring and renewing the very best of the old legionnaire spirit and honoring its traditions by placing themselves at the service of the public good, the government was also the first to see that, by firmly turning their backs on the capital, the sodom and gomorrah of our day, these patriots were demonstrating a most praiseworthy combative spirit which the government does, of course, recognize, however, taking into consideration the national interest as a whole, it is the government's belief, and, to this end, we appeal to the minds of those men and women who have spent so many anxious hours waiting for a clear message from those responsible for the country's fate, it is, I repeat, the government's belief, that the most appropriate militant action to be taken in the present circumstances is for those thousands of people to reintegrate themselves back into the life of the capital city, to return to their homes, those bastions of legality, those centers of resistance, those bulwarks where the unsullied memory of their ancestors watches over the works of their descendants, it is, I say again, the government's belief that these sincere and objective reasons, brought to you heart in hands, should be weighed by those people in their cars listening to this official statement, and although the material aspects of the situation should, of course, count for little in a calculation in which spiritual values are paramount, the government would like to take this opportunity to reveal that it has received information concerning the existence of a plan to burgle and plunder your abandoned homes, a plan which, according to our latest information, has already been set in motion, as I must conclude from the note I have just been handed, for, according to our sources, a total of seventeen apartments have so far been burgled and plundered, as you see, dear countrymen and women, your enemies are wasting no time, only a few hours have passed since your departure, and yet already the vandals are breaking down the doors of your homes, already the barbarians and savages are stealing your possessions, it lies, therefore, in your hands to avoid a still greater disaster, consult your consciences, know that the nation's government is on your side, it is up to you now to decide whether you are for us or against us. Before disappearing from the screen, the interior minister just had time to shoot a look at the camera, and in his face there was self-confidence, but also something that looked very like a challenge, although you would have to be privy to the secrets of the gods to interpret that rapid glance with total accuracy, the prime minister, however, was not fooled, for him it was just as if the interior minister had thrown in his face the words, You who pride yourself on your tactics and your strategies, could not have done better. And he had to agree that he could not, although they would have to wait and see just what the results would be. The helicopter reappeared, and there, once again, was the city, there again were the endless lines of cars. For a good ten minutes, nothing moved. The reporter was struggling to fill in time, he imagined the family councils that would be taking place inside the cars, he praised the minister's statement, he railed against the burglars, demanded that they be treated with all the rigor of the law, but it was obvious that unease was gradually seeping into him, it was plain as plain that the government's words had fallen on stony ground, not that he, still waiting for some last-minute miracle, dared to say so, but any viewer with a reasonable degree of experience in deciphering audiovisuals would have noticed the poor journalist's distress. Then the much-desired, much-longed-for marvel occurred, just when the helicopter was flying over the tail-end of one of the queues, the last car in the line turned round, followed by the car ahead, and then by another and another and another. The reporter gave an excited yelp, We are, dear viewers, witnessing a truly historic moment, for, responding with exemplary discipline to the government's appeal, in a display of civic duty that will be inscribed in letters of gold in the annals of the capital, the people are beginning their return home, thus bringing to a peaceful close what could have been a catastrophe with, as the interior minister so rightly said, unforeseeable consequences for the future of our nation. From this point on, for some minutes more, the report took on a decidedly epic tone, transforming the retreat of these ten thousand defeated people into a victorious ride of the valkyries, replacing xenophon with wagner, transmuting into odoriferous sacrifices wafting up to the gods of olympus and valhalla the foul-smelling fumes belching forth from the car exhausts. There were now brigades of reporters on the streets, from the radio and the press, and all were trying to hold the cars back for a moment so as to glean from the passengers, live and from the source itself, some description of the emotions filling them as they set off on their forced return home. As was to be expected, they encountered all sorts, frustration, disappointment, anger, a desire for revenge, we may not have got out this time, but we will the next, edifying affirmations of patriotism, exalted declarations of party loyalty, long live the party of the center, long live the party in the middle, unpleasant odors, annoyance at not having slept a wink all night, take that camera away, will you, we don't want any photographs, agreement or disagreement as to the reasons given by the government, some scepticism about what would happen tomorrow, fear of reprisals, criticism of the authorities' shameful apathy, But there are no authorities, the reporter remarked, That's precisely the problem, there are no authorities, but mainly there was a great concern for the fate of the possessions left behind in the homes to which the occupants of the cars had only expected to return once the revolt of the blankers had been finally crushed, the number of burgled houses will doubtless now be more than seventeen, who knows how many will have been stripped of even their last rug, their last vase. The helicopter was now showing an aerial shot of how the lines of cars and vans, in which those who had been last were now first, branched off as they entered the areas near the center and how, from a certain point onward, it was no longer possible to distinguish amongst the confusion of traffic those who were returning from those who were already there. The prime minister phoned the president, a very brief conversation, an exchange of congratulations, These people must have lukewarm water running in their veins, the president said scornfully, if it had been me in one of those cars, I promise you I would have driven through however many barriers they put in front of me, It's lucky you're the president then, it's lucky you weren't there, said the prime minister, smiling, Yes, but if things start to get difficult again, that will be the moment to implement my idea, About which I still know nothing, One of these days, I'll tell you about it, And you will have my undivided attention, by the way, I'm calling a cabinet meeting for today in order to discuss the situation, it would be very useful if you could be there too, if, that is, you have no more pressing duties to perform, Don't worry, it's just a matter of re-arranging things, all I have to do today is go and cut a ribbon somewhere or other, Very good, sir, I will inform the cabinet. The prime minister decided that it was high time he said a kind word to the interior minister and congratulated him on the effectiveness of his statement, why not, after all, just because he didn't like the man didn't mean he couldn't recognize that this time he had coped very well with the problem to be resolved. His hand was just reaching for the phone when a sudden change in the voice of the television reporter made him look at the screen. The helicopter was flying so low now that it was almost touching the rooftops, you could see quite clearly various people coming out of the buildings, men and women standing on the pavement, as if they were waiting for someone, We have just been informed, said the reporter in great alarm, that the images our viewers are seeing of people leaving the buildings and waiting on the pavement are being repeated at this moment all over the city, we don't want to think the worst, but everything indicates that the inhabitants of these buildings, who are clearly insurrectionists, are preparing to prevent the people, who yesterday were their neighbors and whose homes they have doubtless just plundered, from entering the building, if that is so, then, much as it pains us to say so, the government who ordered the withdrawal of the police force from the capital must be brought to book, it is with a heavy heart that we ask ourselves how, or indeed if, the bloody physical confrontation which is clearly about to take place can possibly be avoided, president, prime minister, where are the police who should be defending innocent people from the barbarous treatment these others are preparing to mete out to them, oh, dear god, dear god, whatever is going to happen next, said the reporter, almost sobbing now. The helicopter hung motionless in the air, and there was a clear view of everything that was happening in the street. Two cars stopped outside the building. The doors opened and the occupants got out. Then the people on the pavement went over to them, This is it, this is it, we must prepare ourselves for the worst, screamed the reporter, hoarse with excitement, then the people exchanged a few inaudible words and, without more ado, began unloading the cars and carrying into the buildings in broad daylight what had been carried out under cover of a dark and rainy night. Shit, exclaimed the prime minister, and thumped the table.

THIS BRIEF SCATOLOGICAL INTERJECTION, WITH THE EXPRESSIVE POTENTIAL of an entire speech on the state of the nation, summed up and distilled the depth of disappointment that had gradually been gnawing away at the government's mental energies, in particular the energies of those ministers who, given the nature of their respective posts, had been most closely linked to the different phases of the political and repressive processes brought into play against the forces of sedition, in short, the ministers responsible for defense and the interior, who, from one moment to the next, each in his own field, had lost all the prestige gained from the good services they had rendered to the country during the crisis. Throughout the day, until it was time for the cabinet meeting to start, and, indeed, during it too, that grubby word was frequently muttered in the silence of thought, and, if there were no witnesses close by, even uttered out loud or murmured like some irrepressible unburdening of the soul, shit, shit, shit. It had occurred to neither of those ministers, of defense or the interior, or, which is truly unforgivable, to the prime minister either, to ponder briefly, even in a strict, disinterested academic sense, what might happen to the frustrated fugitives when they returned to their homes, however, if they had bothered to do so, they would probably have got no further than the horrific prophecy of the reporter in the helicopter which we failed to record earlier, Poor things, he was saying, almost in tears, they're going to be massacred, I'm sure of it. In the end, and it was not in that street alone that the marvel occurred, rivaling the most noble historical examples, both religious and profane, of love for one's neighbor, the slandered and insulted blankers went to the aid of the vanquished members of the opposing faction, and each person made this decision entirely on his or her own and in consultation with his or her own conscience, there was no evidence of any order issued from above or of a password to be learned by heart, the fact is that they all came to offer whatever help their strength permitted, and then they were the ones to say, careful with the piano, careful with the tea service, careful with the silver platter, careful with grandpa. It is understandable, therefore, that there should be so many frowning faces around the great cabinet table, so many beetling brows, so many eyes red with anger or from lack of sleep, probably nearly all of these men would have preferred some blood to have been spilt, they would not have wanted the massacre announced by the television reporter, but some incident that would have shocked the sensibilities of the population outside the capital, something that would set the whole country talking for the next few weeks, an argument, a pretext, another reason to demonize these wretched rebels. Which is why one can also understand why the minister of defense has just whispered, out of the corner of his mouth, to his colleague the interior minister, What the hell are we going to do now. If anyone else overheard the question, they were intelligent enough to pretend otherwise, because that was precisely why they were gathered there, to find out what the hell they were going to do now, and they would doubtless not leave the room empty-handed.

The first person to speak was the president of the republic, Gentlemen, he said, in my opinion, and as I think we would all agree, we are living through the most difficult and complex moment since the first election revealed the existence of a vast subversive movement hitherto undetected by the security services, not that we were the ones to make the discovery, for it chose, instead, to reveal itself, the interior minister, whose actions have otherwise always had my personal and institutional support, will, I am sure, agree with me when I say that the worst thing is that we have not, up until now, taken a single effective step toward solving the problem, and, perhaps graver still, we have been forced to watch, powerless, the rebels' brilliant tactic of helping our voters to move all their useless junk back into their apartments, that, gentlemen, could only be the brainchild of some machiavellian mastermind, someone who remains hidden behind the curtain and makes the puppets do exactly as he wants, we all know that we sent those people back out of sheer painful necessity, but now we must prepare ourselves for a more than likely chain reaction that will lead to new escape attempts, not this time of whole families, nor of spectacular convoys of cars, but of isolated individuals or small groups, and not by road, but across country, the minister of defense will assure me that these areas are regularly patrolled, that there are electronic sensors installed all along the frontier, and I could not bring myself to doubt the efficacy of such measures, however, in my view, complete containment can only be achieved by the construction of a wall around the capital, an impassable wall made out of concrete slabs, and, I would say, about eight meters high, using, of course, the system of electronic sensors already in existence and backed up by as many barbed-wire fences as are judged to be necessary, I am firmly convinced that no one would manage to get past that, not even, I would say, a fly, if you'll allow me my little joke, but not so much because flies couldn't get through it, as because, as far as one can judge from their normal behavior, they have no reason to fly that high. The president of the republic paused to clear his throat and ended by saying, The prime minister already knows about this proposal of mine and, shortly, he will doubtless submit it for discussion by the government, who will then, as is their duty, decide upon the appropriateness and practicability of carrying it out, as for me, I am content in the knowledge that you will bring all your experience to bear on the matter. A diplomatic murmur went round the table, which the president of the republic interpreted as one of tacit approval, an idea he would have had to correct had he heard the minister of finance's muttered remark, And where would we find the money for a crazy scheme like that.

Having shuffled the documents in front of him from one side to the other, as was his custom, the prime minister was the next to speak, The president of the republic, with the brilliance and rigor we have come to expect, has just given us a clear picture of the difficult and complex situation in which we find ourselves, and there is, therefore, no point in my adding to his exposition any details of my own, which would, after all, serve only to lend further shading to his original sketch, however, having said that, and in view of recent events, I believe that what we need is a radical change of strategy, which would pay special attention, along with all the other factors, to the possibility of the birth and growth in the capital of an atmosphere of social harmony purely as a consequence of this gesture of unequivocal solidarity, doubtless machiavellian, doubtless politically motivated, to which the whole country has borne witness in the last few hours, you have only to read the unanimously complimentary comments in the special editions brought out by the newspapers, consequently, we have no option but to recognize that all our attempts to make the rebels listen to reason have, each and every one, been a resounding failure, and that the cause of that failure, at least in my opinion, could well have been the severity of the repressive measures we chose to use, and secondly, if we continue with the strategy we have followed up until now, if we continue with the escalation of coercive methods, and if the response of the rebels also continues to be what it has been up until now, which is to say no response at all, we will be forced to resort to drastic measures of a dictatorial nature, such as the indefinite withdrawal of civil rights from the city's population, which, to avoid ideological favoritism, would have to include our own voters too, or, with the aim of preventing the spread of the epidemic, the passing of an emergency electoral law that would apply to the whole country and would make blank votes void, and so on. The prime minister paused to take a sip of water, then went on, I spoke of the need for a change of strategy, however, I did not say that I had such a strategy drawn up and prepared for immediate implementation, we need to bide our time, to allow the fruit to ripen and for brave resolutions to rot, I must confess that I myself would actually prefer a period of slight relaxation during which we could work to gain as much advantage as possible from the few signs of concord that seem to be emerging. He paused again and seemed to be about to continue speaking, but then said only, Now let me hear your opinions.

The interior minister raised his hand, I notice that you are confident of the persuasive influence our voters may have on the minds of those to whom I must confess I was somewhat astonished to hear you refer merely as rebels, but you did not, I believe, speak of the contrary possibility, that the subversives might use their harmful theories to confuse those citizens who are still respecters of the law, You're quite right, I don't think I did mention that possibility, said the prime minister in response, because I imagined that were that to happen, it would not bring about any fundamental change, the worst possible consequence would be that the current eighty percent of people who cast blank votes would become one hundred percent, and the quantitative change introduced into the problem would have no qualitative impact, apart, obviously, from creating unanimity. What shall we do then, asked the minister of defense, That is precisely why we are here, to analyze, consider and decide, Including, I assume, the proposal made by the president of the republic, which, of course, has my wholehearted support, The president's proposal, given the scale of the work involved and its many implications, requires an in-depth study to be undertaken by an ad hoc commission that will have to be set up for that purpose, on the other hand, it is, I think, fairly obvious that the building of a wall of partition would not immediately resolve any of our difficulties and would inevitably create others, the president knows my views on the subject, and the personal and institutional loyalty I owe him would not allow me to remain silent about it here at this cabinet meeting, but this does not, I repeat, mean that the commission's work should not begin as early as possible, as soon as it has been appointed, within the next few days. The president of the republic was visibly put out, I am the president, of course, and not the pope, and I do not, therefore, presume to any kind of infallibility, but I would like my proposal to be discussed with some urgency, As I said before, sir, came the prime minister's prompt reply, I give you my word that you will receive news of the commission's findings sooner than you might imagine, Meanwhile, I suppose we'll just have to continue groping our way blindly forward, said the president. The silence that fell was thick enough to blunt the blade of even the sharpest of knives. Yes, blindly, he repeated, unaware of the general embarrassment. From the back of the room came the minister of culture's calm voice, Just as we did four years ago. The minister of defense rose, red-faced, to his feet, as if he had been the object of a brutal, unforgivable obscenity, and, pointing an accusing finger, he said, You have just shamefully broken a national pact of silence to which we all agreed, As far as I know, there was no pact, far less a national one, I was a grown man four years ago, and I have no recollection of the population being summoned to sign a piece of parchment promising never to utter one word about the fact that for several weeks we were all of us blind, You're right, there was no formal pact, said the prime minister, intervening, but we all thought, without any need for any agreement on paper, that the dreadful test we had been through would, for the sake of our mental health, be best thought of as a terrible nightmare, something that existed as a dream rather than as a reality, In public maybe, but you are surely not telling me that you have never spoken about what happened in the privacy of your own home, Whether we have or not is of no importance, a lot of things happen in the privacy of one's home that never go beyond its four walls, and, if I may say so, your allusion to the as yet unexplained tragedy that occurred amongst us four years ago shows a degree of bad taste that I would not have expected in a minister of culture, The study of bad taste, prime minister, must be one of the longest and juiciest chapters in the history of culture, Oh, I didn't mean that kind of bad taste, but the other sort, otherwise known as a lack of tact, It would seem, prime minister, that you share the belief that death exists only because it has a name, that things have no real existence if we have no name to give them, There are endless things for which I don't know the name, animals, vegetables, tools and machines of every shape and size and for all conceivable purposes, But you know that they have names, and that puts your mind at rest, We're getting off the subject, Yes, prime minister, we are getting off the subject, all I said was that four years ago we were blind and what I'm saying now is that we probably still are. The indignation was general, or almost so, cries of protest leapt up and jostled for position, everyone wanted to speak, even the transport minister, who, being possessed of a strident voice, usually spoke very little, but was now setting his vocal cords to work, May I speak, may I speak. The prime minister looked at the president of the republic as if asking his advice, but this was pure theater, the president's diffident attempt at a gesture, whatever it was intended to mean, was quashed by the raised hand of his prime minister, Bearing in mind the emotive and passionate tone of the interpolations, it is clear that a debate would get us nowhere, which is why I will let none of you speak, especially since, possibly without realizing it, the minister of culture was spot on when he compared the plague currently afflicting us to a new form of blindness, That is not a comparison of my making, prime minister, I merely remarked that we were blind and that we very probably continue to be blind, any extrapolation not logically contained in my initial proposition is not allowable, Changing the position of words often changes their meaning, but they, the words, when weighed one by one, continue physically, if I may put it like that, to be exactly what they were and, therefore, In that case, allow me to interrupt you, prime minister, I want to make it quite clear that responsibility for any changes in the position or meaning of my words lies entirely with you and that I had nothing whatsoever to do with it, Let's say that you provided the nothing and I contributed the whatsoever and that the nothing and the whatsoever together authorize me to state that the blank vote is as destructive a form of blindness as the first one, Either that or a form of clear-sightedness, said the minister of justice, What, asked the interior minister, who thought he must have misheard, I said that the blank vote could be seen as a sign of clear-sightedness on the part of those who used it, How dare you, in the middle of a cabinet meeting, utter such antidemocratic garbage, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, no one would think you were the minister of justice, cried the minister of defense, Actually, I wonder if I've ever been more of a minister of justice or for justice than I am at this moment, Soon you'll have me believing that you, too, cast a blank vote, said the interior minister drily, No, I didn't cast a blank vote, but I'll certainly consider doing so next time. When the scandalized clamor of voices resulting from this last statement had begun to die away, a question from the prime minister brought it to a complete halt, Do you realize what you have just said, Yes, so much so that I place in your hands the post with which you entrusted me, I am tendering my resignation, replied he man who was now no longer either minister for or minister of justice. The president of the republic turned pale, he looked like an old rag that someone had distractedly left behind on the back of the chair, I never thought I would live to see the face of treachery, he said, and felt that history was sure to record the phrase, and should there be any risk of history forgetting, he would make a point of reminding it. The man who had up until now been the minister of justice got to his feet, bowed in the direction of the president and the prime minister and left the room. The silence was interrupted by the sudden scraping of a chair, the minister of culture had got up and, from the bottom of the table, in a strong, clear voice, was announcing, I wish to resign too, Oh, come on, don't tell me that, as your friend promised us just now in a moment of commendable frankness, you're considering casting a blank vote next time as well, the prime minister said, trying to be ironic, I doubt that will be necessary, I did so last time, Meaning, Exactly what you heard, nothing more, Kindly leave the room, Yes, prime minister, I was about to, the only reason I turned back was to say goodbye. The door opened, then closed, leaving two empty chairs at the table. Well, exclaimed the president of the republic, we hardly had time to get over the first shock when we got another slap in the face, That was no slap in the face, president, ministers come and ministers go, it's the most common thing in the world, said the prime minister, anyway, the government entered this room with a full complement of ministers and will leave with a full complement, I'll take over the post of justice minister and the minister for public works will take care of cultural affairs, But I don't have the necessary qualifications, remarked the latter, Yes, you do, culture, as certain people in the know are always telling me, is also a public work, it will, therefore, be perfectly safe in your hands. He rang the bell and ordered the clerk who appeared at the door, Take those chairs away, then, addressing the meeting, Let's have a short break of fifteen or twenty minutes, the president and I will be in the next room.

Half an hour later, the ministers resumed their places round the table. The absences went unnoticed. The president of the republic came in looking utterly perplexed, as if he had just been given a piece of news whose meaning was completely beyond his comprehension. The prime minister, on the other hand, seemed very pleased with himself. The reason would soon become clear. When, earlier on, I brought to your attention the urgent need for a change of strategy, given the failure of all the actions drawn up and executed since the beginning of this crisis, he began, I never for one moment expected that an idea capable of carrying us forward to victory would come precisely from a minister who is no longer with us, I refer, as you will doubtless have surmised, to the ex-minister of culture, who has shown once again how important it is to examine the ideas of your adversary in order to discover which aspects of those ideas can be used to your advantage. The ministers of defense and of the interior exchanged indignant glances, that was all they needed, to hear the intelligence of a despised traitor being praised to the skies. The interior minister scribbled a few rapid words on a piece of paper and passed it to his colleague, My instinct was right, I distrusted those guys right from the start, to which the minister of defense replied by the same means and with the same emotion, There we were trying to infiltrate them, and it turns out they had infiltrated us. The prime minister was continuing to discuss the conclusions he had reached based on the ex-minister of culture's sibylline statement about how we had all been blind yesterday and continued to be blind today, Our mistake, our great mistake, for which we are paying right now, lay in that attempt at obliteration, not of our memories, since we would all of us be capable of recalling what happened four years ago, but of the word, the name, as if, as our ex-colleague remarked, in order for death to cease to exist, we would simply have to stop saying the word we use to describe it, Aren't we getting away from the main problem, asked the president of the republic, we need concrete proposals, objectives, the cabinet is going to have to take some important decisions, On the contrary, president, this is the main problem, and if I'm right, this is the idea that will give us, on a plate, the possibility of resolving once and for all a problem which we have, at most, managed only to patch up here and there, but those patches quickly come unstitched and leave everything exactly as it was, What are you getting at, explain yourself, please, President, gentlemen, let us dare to take a step forward, let us replace silence with words, let us put an end to this stupid, pointless pretence that nothing happened four years ago, let us talk openly about what life, if it can be called a life, was like during the time that we were blind, let the newspapers report it, let writers write about it, let the television show us images of the city taken immediately after we recovered our sight, let's encourage people to talk about the many and various evils we had to endure, let them talk about the dead, the disappeared, the ruins, the fires, the rubbish, the putrefaction, and then, when we have torn off the rags of false normality with which we have tried to bind up the wound, we will say that the blindness of those days has returned in a new guise, we will draw people's attention to the parallel between the blankness of that blindness of four years ago and the blind casting of blank ballot papers now, the comparison is crude and fallacious, as I would be the first to recognize, and there will be those who will reject it at once as an offence to intelligence, to logic and to common sense, but it is just possible that many people, and I hope they will soon become the overwhelming majority, will be convinced, will stand before the mirror and ask themselves if they are, again, blind, if this blindness, more shameful than the other blindness, is not leading them from the straight and narrow, propelling them toward the ultimate disaster which would be the possibly definitive collapse of a political system which, without our even noticing the threat, carried within it, right from the start, in its vital nucleus, in the voting process itself, the seeds of its own destruction or, a no less disquieting hypothesis, of a transition to something entirely new and unknown, so different that we would probably have no place in it, raised as we were in the shelter of an electoral routine which, for generations and generations, managed to conceal what we now realize was one of its great trump cards. I firmly believe, the prime minister continued, that the strategic change we needed is in sight, yes, the restoration of the system to the status quo ante is within our grasp, however, I am the prime minister of this country and not some vulgar snake-oil salesman promising miracles, but I will say that, while we may not get results in twenty-four hours, I am sure we will begin to see them within twenty-four days, the struggle, though, will be long and hard, because sapping the energy of this new blank plague will take time and much effort, not forgetting, ah, not forgetting the dreaded head of the tapeworm, which can hide itself away anywhere, for until we can locate it in the foul innards of the conspiracy, until we can drag it out into the light of day to be given the punishment it deserves, that fatal parasite will continue to produce its rings and to undermine the strength of the nation, but we will win the final battle, my word and your word, now and until the final victory, will be the guarantee of that promise. Pushing back their chairs, the ministers rose as one man and stood applauding enthusiastically. Purged of its troublesome members, the cabinet was, at last, a cohesive whole, one leader, one will, one plan, one path. Seated in his armchair, as befitted the dignity of his office, the president of the republic was clapping too, but only with the tips of his fingers, thus letting it be known, as well as by the stern look on his face, how piqued he was not to have been the object of some reference, however minimal, in the prime minister's speech. He should have known better who he was dealing with. When the clamorous crackle of applause was beginning to subside, the prime minister raised his right hand to call for silence and said, Every voyage needs a captain, and during the dangerous voyage on which the country is now embarked, that captain is and must be your prime minister, but woe betide the ship that does not carry a compass to guide it over the vast ocean and through the storms, well, gentlemen, the compass that guides me and the ship, the compass, in short, that guides us all, is here, by our side, always keeping us on course with his vast experience, always encouraging us with his wise advice, always instructing us with his peerless example, a thousand rounds of applause, then, and a thousand thanks to his excellency the president of the republic. The ovation was even warmer than the first and seemed as if it would never end, nor would it end as long as the prime minister continued to clap his hands or until the clock in his head said, Enough, stop there, he's won. Just two minutes more to confirm that victory and, at the end of those two minutes, the president of the republic, with tears in his eyes, was embracing the prime minister. Perfect, nay, even sublime moments can occur in the life of a politician, he said afterward, his voice choked with emotion, but whatever tomorrow may hold for me, I assure you that this moment will never be erased from my memory, it will be my crowning glory in happy times, my consolation in sad ones, I thank you with all my heart, with all my heart, I embrace you. More applause.

Perfect moments, especially when they verge on the sublime, have the grave disadvantage of being very short-lived, which fact, being obvious, we would not need to mention were it not that they have a still greater disadvantage, which is that we do not know what to do once they are over. This awkward pause, however, reduces down to almost nothing when there is an interior minister present. As soon as the cabinet had resumed their usual places, with the minister of public works and culture still wiping away a furtive tear, the interior minister raised his hand to ask permission to speak, Carry on, said the prime minister, As the president of the republic so touchingly pointed out, there are perfect, truly sublime moments in life, and we have had the great privilege of experiencing two such moments here, with the president's speech of thanks and the prime minister's new strategy, which has, of course, received our unanimous approval and to which I will refer in this intervention, not in order to withdraw my applause, nothing could be further from my mind, but, if I may be so immodest, to amplify and facilitate the effects of that strategy, I am referring to what the prime minister said about not being able to guarantee results in twenty-four hours, but being sure of getting them before twenty-four days were up, now, with respect, I do not believe that we can afford to wait twenty-four days, or twenty or fifteen or even ten, cracks are beginning to appear in the social edifice, the walls are shaking, the foundations are trembling, it could all come crashing down at any moment, Do you have you any real proposal to make, asked the prime minister, apart from describing the imminent collapse of a building, Oh, yes, replied the interior minister, unperturbed, as if he had not noticed the prime minister's sarcastic tone, Be so kind as to enlighten us, then, First of all, prime minister, I must make it clear that my proposal is merely intended to complement the proposal you presented to us and which we approved, it does not seek to amend, correct or perfect, it is simply another suggestion which is, I hope, deserving of everyone's attention, Oh, get on with it and stop beating about the bush, get to the point, What I propose, prime minister, is a rapid action, a shock offensive, with helicopters, You're surely not thinking of bombarding the city, Yes, sir, I am, but with paper, With paper, Exactly, prime minister, with paper, first, in order of importance, we would have a proclamation signed by the president of the republic and addressed to the population of the capital, second, a series of brief, punchy messages intended to pave the way and prepare people's minds for the doubtless slower actions advocated by the prime minister, that is, newspaper articles, television programmes, memories of the time when we were blind, stories by writers, etc., by the way, I would just mention that my ministry has its own team of writers, people highly trained in the art of persuasion, which, as I understand it, writers normally achieve only briefly and after much effort, It seems an excellent idea to me, said the president of the republic, but obviously the text would have to be submitted to me for my approval so that I could make any changes I deem appropriate, but, on the whole, I like it, it's a splendid idea, which, above all, has the enormous political advantage of placing the figure of the president of the republic in the front line of battle, oh, yes, a fine idea. The murmur of approval in the room indicated to the prime minister that this last move had been won by the interior minister, So be it, then, take all the necessary steps, he said, and on the appropriate page in the government's school progress report he mentally added another black mark against the minister's name.

THE REASSURING IDEA THAT, LATER OR SOONER, AND, MORE LIKELY, sooner than later, fate will always strike down pride, was roundly confirmed by the humiliating opprobrium suffered by the interior minister, who, believing that he had, in extremis, won the latest round in the pugilistic battle in which he and the prime minister had been engaged, saw his plans fizzle out after an unexpected intervention from the skies, which, at the last moment, decided to change sides and join the enemy. However, in the final analysis and, indeed, in the first, the blame for this, in the view of the most attentive and competent of observers, lay entirely with the president of the republic for having delayed his approval of the manifesto which, bearing his signature and intended for the moral edification of the city's inhabitants, should have been distributed by the helicopters. During the three days that followed the cabinet meeting the celestial vault revealed itself to the world in its magnificent suit of seamless blue, perfect weather, smooth and faultless, and above all with no wind, ideal for hurling papers out into the air and watching them float down, dancing the dance of the elves, to be picked up by anyone who happened to be passing or who had come out into the street curious to learn what news or orders were drifting down from above. During those three days, the much-thumbed text traipsed back and forth between the presidential palace and the ministry of the interior, sometimes more profuse in arguments, sometimes more concise in ideas, with words crossed out and replaced by others that would immediately suffer the same fate, with phrases which, shorn of what went before, no longer fitted what came after, so much wasted ink, so much torn-up paper, this, we will have you know, is what is meant by the torment of writing, the torture of creation. On the fourth day, the sky, grown tired of waiting, and seeing that things down below still kept chopping and changing, decided to start off the morning covered by a layer of low, dark clouds, of the sort that usually bring the rain they promise. By late morning, a few sparse droplets had begun to fall, stopping now and then and starting up again, an irritating drizzle which, despite threatening more, seemed unlikely to get much worse. This on-off state of affairs continued until mid-afternoon, and then, suddenly, without warning, like someone who has grown weary of hiding his true feelings, the heavens opened to give way to a continuous, steady, monotonous rain, intense but not violent, the kind of rain that can continue falling for a whole week and for which farmers are generally grateful. Not so the ministry of the interior. Even assuming that the air force's supreme command would authorize the helicopters to take off, which, would, in itself, be highly problematic, hurling papers down from above in weather like this would be utterly ridiculous, and not just because there would be hardly any people in the streets, and the main concern of the few who were would be to remain as dry as possible, even worse was the thought that the presidential manifesto might land in the mud, be swallowed up by the devouring drains, might crumble and dissolve in the puddles that the wheels of cars splash rudely through, throwing up fountains of grubby water as they go, in truth, in truth I say to you, only a fanatical believer in legality and the respect one owes to one's superiors would bother to stoop down and rescue from the ignominious slime an explanation about the relationship between the general blindness of four years ago and this majority blindness now. To the interior minister's vexation, he had to stand by and watch, powerless, as, on the pretext of the on-going and unpostponable national emergency, the prime minister, with, more-over, the reluctant agreement of the president of the republic, set in motion the media machinery, encompassing press, radio, television and all the other written, aural and visual submedia available, both current and concurrent, whose task it would be to persuade the capital's population that it was, alas, once more blind. When, days later, the rain stopped and the upper air had once more clothed itself in azure, only the stubborn and ultimately angry insistence of the president of the republic managed to get the postponed first part of the plan put into action, My dear prime minister, said the president, do not think for a moment that I have reneged on or am even considering reneging on the decision taken by the cabinet, I continue to believe that it is my duty to address the nation personally, But, sir, it really isn't worth it, the clarification process is already underway and I'm sure we'll soon be getting results, Those results could be about to appear around the corner the day after tomorrow, but I want my manifesto to be launched first, The day after tomorrow is, of course, just a manner of speaking, All the better, get that manifesto distributed now, Believe me, sir, A word of warning, if you don't do it, I'll blame you for the inevitable loss of personal and political trust between us, Allow me to remind you, sir, that I still have an absolute majority in parliament, any threatened loss of trust would be merely personal in nature and would have no political repercussions, It would if I made a statement to parliament declaring that the word of the president of the republic had been hijacked by the prime minister, Please, sir, that isn't true, It's true enough for me to say so, in parliament or out of it, Distributing the manifesto now, The manifesto and the other papers, Distributing the manifesto now would be pointless, That's your opinion, not mine, But president, The fact that you call me president means that you recognize me as such, so do as I say, Well, if you put it like that, Oh, I do, and another thing, I'm tired of watching your battles with the interior minister, if you think he's no good, then sack him, but if you don't want to sack him or can't, then put up with it, if you yourself had come up with the idea of a manifesto signed by the president, you would probably have issued orders for it to be delivered door to door, Now that's unfair, sir, Maybe it is, I don't deny it, but people get upset and lose their temper and end up saying things they didn't intend to or hadn't even thought, Let's consider the matter closed, All right, the matter is closed, but tomorrow morning I want those helicopters in the air, Yes, president.

If this acerbic exchange had not taken place, if the presidential manifesto and the other leaflets had, because unnecessary, ended their brief life in the rubbish, the story we are telling would have developed quite differently from this point on. We can't imagine exactly how or in what way, we just know it would have been different. Obviously, any reader who has been paying close attention to the meanderings of the plot, one of those analytical readers who expects a proper explanation for everything, would be sure to ask whether the conversation between the prime minister and the president of the republic was simply added at the last moment to justify such a change of direction, or if it simply had to happen because that was its destiny, from which would spring soon-to-be-revealed consequences, forcing the narrator to set aside the story he was intending to write and to follow the new course that had suddenly appeared on his navigation chart. It is difficult to give such an either-or question an answer likely to satisfy such a reader totally. Unless, of course, the narrator were to be unusually frank and confess that he had never been quite sure how to bring to a successful conclusion this extraordinary tale of a city which, en masse, decided to return blank ballot papers, in which case this violent exchange of words between the prime minister and the president of the republic, which ended so happily, would have been as welcome to him as flowers in May. What other explanation is there for his abrupt abandonment of the complex narrative thread he had been developing merely in order to set off on gratuitous digressions not about what-did-not-happen-but-might-have, but about what-did-happen-but-might-not-have. We are referring, to put it plainly, to the letter which the president of the republic received three days after the helicopters had showered the capital's streets, squares, parks and avenues with the colored leaflets in which the ministry of the interior's writers set out their conclusions about the likely connection between the tragic collective blindness of four years ago and the present-day electoral madness. The signatory was fortunate in that his letter fell into the hands of a particularly scrupulous clerk, the sort who looks at the small print before he starts reading the large, the sort who is capable of discerning amongst the untidy scrawl of words the tiny seed that requires immediate watering, if only to find out what it might grow into. This is what the letter said, Your excellency, Having read, with due and deserved attention, the manifesto addressed by you to the people and, in particular, to the inhabitants of the capital, and being keenly aware both of my duty as a citizen of this country and of the need, during the crisis into which the nation is currently plunged, for every one of us to maintain a close, constant, zealous watch for anything strange that we might see now or might have seen in the past, I wish to bring to the attention of your excellency's renowned powers of judgement a few unknown facts which may help toward a better understanding of the nature of the plague that befell us. I say this because, although I am just an ordinary man, I believe, as you do, that there must be some link between the recent blindness of casting blank ballot papers and that other blindness which, for weeks that none of us will ever forget, made us all outcasts from the world. What I am suggesting, your excellency, is that the first blindness might perhaps help to explain this blindness now, and that both might be explained by the existence, and possibly by the actions, of one person. Before going on, however, impelled as I am by a sense of civic duty upon which I would challenge anyone to cast doubt, I wish to make it clear that I am not an informer or a sneak or a grass, I am simply trying to be of service to my country in the distressing situation in which it currently finds itself, without so much as a lantern with which to illumine the path to salvation. I do not know, how could I, if the letter I am writing will be enough to light that lantern, but I repeat, duty is duty, and at this moment, I see myself as a soldier taking a step forward and presenting myself as a volunteer for a mission, and this mission, your excellency, consists in revealing, and I use the word reveal because this is the first time I have spoken of this matter to anyone, that four years ago, together with my wife, I fell in with a group of people who, like so many others, were struggling desperately to survive. It will seem that I am not telling you anything that you, through your own experiences, do not know already, but what no one knows is that one of the people in our group, the wife of an ophthalmologist, did not go blind, her husband went blind like the rest of us, but she did not. At the time, we made a solemn vow never to speak about the matter, she said that she did not want to be seen afterward as a rare phenomenon, to be subjected to questions and submitted to examinations once we had all recovered our sight, that it would be best just to forget and pretend it had never happened. I have respected that vow until today, but can no longer remain silent. Your excellency, allow me to say that I would feel deeply offended if this letter were seen as a denunciation, although, on the other hand, perhaps it should be seen as such, because, and this is something else you do not know, during that time, a murder was committed by the person I am telling you about, but that is a matter for the courts, I content myself with the thought that I have done my duty as a patriot by drawing your lofty attention to a fact which has, until now, remained a secret and which, once examined, might perhaps produce an explanation for the merciless attack of which the present political system has been the target, this new blindness which, if I may humbly reproduce your excellency's own words, strikes at the very foundations of democracy in a way in which no totalitarian system ever succeeded in doing. Needless to say, sir, I am at your disposal, or at the disposal of whichever institution is charged with carrying out what is clearly a necessary investigation, to amplify, develop and elaborate on the information contained in this letter. I assure you that I feel no animosity toward the person in question, however, what counts above all else is this our nation, which has found in you the most worthy of representatives, that is my one law, the only one I hold to with the serenity of a man who has done his duty. Yours faithfully. There followed the signature and below that, on the left, the signatory's full name, address and telephone number, as well as his identity card number and e-mail address.

The president of the republic slowly placed the piece of paper on his desk and, after a brief silence, asked his cabinet secretary, How many people know about this, No one apart from the clerk who opened it and recorded the letter in the register, Can he be trusted, Yes, I suppose so, president, he's a party member, but it might be a good idea to let him know that the slightest hint of disloyalty on his part could cost him very dear, and, if I may make a suggestion, that warning should be delivered directly, By me, No, sir, by the police, it's more effective that way, the man is summoned to the main police station where the toughest policeman they have takes him into an interrogation room and puts the fear of god into him, Oh, I don't doubt the results would be excellent, but I see one grave difficulty, What's that, sir, It will be a few days before the case reaches the police and, meanwhile, the fellow's tongue will start to wag, he'll tell his wife, his friends, he might even talk to a journalist, in short, he'll drop us in the soup, You're quite right, sir, the solution would be to have an urgent word with the chief of police, if you like, sir, I'll happily do that myself, Short-circuit the hierarchical chain of government, go over the prime minister's head, is that your idea, Obviously I wouldn't dare to do so if the case were not so serious, sir, My friend, in this world, and, as far as we know, there is no other, everything gets out in the end, now while I believe you when you say that the clerk is to be trusted, I couldn't say the same of the chief of police, what if, as is more than likely, he's in cahoots with the interior minister, imagine the fuss there would be, the interior minister demanding an explanation from the prime minister because he can't demand one from me, the prime minister wanting to know if I'm trying to by-pass his authority and his responsibilities, in a matter of hours, the thing we are trying so hard to keep secret will be out in the open, Once again, sir, you are right, Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say, as a certain fellow politician once did, that I'm always right and rarely have any doubts, but I'm not far off, So what shall we do, sir, Send the man in, The clerk, Yes, the one who read the letter, Now, In another hour it might be too late. The cabinet secretary used the internal phone to summon the clerk, Come to the president's office immediately and be quick about it. Walking down the various corridors and through the various rooms usually took at least five minutes, but the clerk appeared at the door after only three. He was breathing hard and his legs were shaking. There was no need to run, said the president, smiling kindly, The cabinet secretary said I should be quick, sir, said the clerk, panting, Good, now the reason I wanted to see you was this letter, Yes, sir, You read it, of course, Yes, sir, Do you remember what was in it, More or less, sir, Don't use such expressions with me, answer my question, Yes, sir, I remember it as if I had read it this minute, Do you think you could try to forget its contents, Yes, sir, Think carefully now, you know, of course, that trying to forget and actually forgetting are not the same thing, No, sir, they're not, So mere effort won't be enough, you'll need to do something more, You have my word of honor, sir, You know, I was almost tempted to tell you again not to use such expressions, but I'd prefer you to explain precisely what you so romantically call your word of honor means to you in the present situation, It means, sir, a solemn declaration that, whatever happens, I will in no way divulge the contents of the letter, Are you married, Yes, sir, Right, I'm going to ask you a question, And I will answer it, sir, Supposing you were to reveal the nature of the letter to your wife and only to your wife, do you think you would, in the strict sense of the term, be divulging anything, I refer, of course, to the letter, not to your wife, No, sir, because divulge, strictly speaking, means to broadcast, to make public, Correct, I am pleased to see that you know your etymologies, But I wouldn't even tell my wife, Do you mean that you will tell her nothing, Nor anyone else, sir, Give me your word of honor, Forgive me, sir, but I already have, Imagine that, I had forgotten already, if the fact escapes me again, the cabinet secretary here will remind me, Yes, sir, said the two voices in unison. The president fell silent for a few seconds, then asked, What if I were to look in the letter register and see what you had written, can you save me the bother of getting out of my chair and tell me what I would find there, Just one word, sir, You must have a remarkable capacity for synthesis if you can sum up such a long letter in one word, Petition, sir, What, Petition, that's the word in the register, Nothing more, Nothing more, But that way no one will know what the letter is about, That was exactly my thinking, sir, that it would be best if no one knew, the word petition covers everything. The president leaned contentedly back and gave the prudent clerk a broad, toothy smile, then he said, Well, if you had said that in the first place you wouldn't have had to give away something as serious as your word of honor, One precaution guarantees the other, sir, Not bad, not bad at all, but have a look at the register from time to time, just in case someone should think to add something else to the word petition, I've already blocked the line, sir, so that nothing can be added, You can go now, As you wish, sir. When the door had closed, the cabinet secretary said, I must confess I hadn't thought him capable of showing such initiative, I believe we have just satisfactorily proved to ourselves that he deserves our trust, He might deserve yours, said the president, but not mine, But I thought, You thought rightly, my friend, but, at the same time, wrongly, the safest way of categorizing people is not by dividing them up into the stupid and the clever, but into the clever and the too clever, with the stupid, we can do what we like, with the clever, the trick is to get them on our side, whereas the too clever, even when they're on our side, are still intrinsically dangerous, they can't help it, the oddest thing is that in everything they do, they are constantly warning us to be wary of them, but, generally speaking, we pay no attention to the warnings and then have to face the consequences, Do you mean to say, sir, Yes, I mean that our prudent clerk, that prestidigitator of the letter register, capable of transforming a troubling letter like that into a mere petition, will soon be getting a call from the police so that they can give him the fright that you and I, between ourselves, had promised him, he himself said as much, though without quite realizing it, one precaution guarantees the other, You're right as usual, sir, you're always so far-sighted, Yes, but the biggest mistake I made in my political life was letting them sit me down in this chair, I didn't realize at the time that the arms of this chair had handcuffs on them, That's because it's not a presidentialist regime, Exactly, and that's why all they allow me to do is cut ribbons and kiss babies, Now, though, you're holding a trump card, As soon as I hand it to the prime minister, it will be his trump card, and I will simply have acted as postman, And the moment he hands it to the interior minister, it will belong to the police, since the police are at the end of the assembly line, You've learned a lot, I'm at a good school, sir, Do you know something, I'm all ears, sir, Let's leave the poor devil alone, who knows, tonight, when I get home, or later on, in bed, I might tell my own wife what the letter said, and you, my dear cabinet secretary, will probably do the same, your wife will look at you as if you were a hero, her own sweet husband privy to all the secrets and webs that the state weaves, who's in the know, who inhales, without benefit of a mask, the putrid stench of the gutters of power, Please, sir, Oh, take no notice, I don't think I'm as bad as the worst, but sometimes I'm suddenly very conscious that that isn't enough, and my soul aches more than I can say, Sir, my mouth is and will remain closed, As will mine, as will mine, but there are times when I imagine what the world would be like if we all opened our mouths and didn't stop talking until, Until what, sir, Oh, nothing, nothing, leave me alone now.

Less than an hour had passed when the prime minister, summoned urgently to the palace, entered the office. The president gestured to him to sit down and, as he handed him the letter, said, Read this and tell me what you think. The prime minister sat down in the chair and started to read. He must have been about halfway through the letter when he looked up with an interrogative expression on his face, like someone who has not quite grasped what someone has just said to him, then he went on and, without further interruptions or other gestural manifestations, read to the end. A patriot full of good intentions, he said, and, at the same time, a complete swine, Why a swine, asked the president, If what he says here is true, if this woman, always assuming she did exist, really didn't go blind and helped these six other people to survive that terrible time, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the writer of this letter owes her the good fortune of being alive today, my parents might be alive too if they had had the good fortune to meet her, He says that she murdered someone, No one knows for certain how many people were killed during that period, president, it was decided that all the bodies found had died accidentally or from natural causes and the matter was laid to rest, Even things laid to rest can be woken, That's true, president, but, in this case, I don't feel it would be for the best, it's highly unlikely there were any witnesses to the crime and, even if there were, they were just the blind amongst the blind, it would be absurd, a complete nonsense, to bring that woman to trial for a murder no one saw her commit and where the corpus delicti does not exist, The writer of the letter states that she killed someone, Yes, but he doesn't say that he was a witness to the murder, besides, sir, as I said before, the person who wrote this letter is a complete swine, Moral judgements are beside the point, As I well know, sir, but it does one good sometimes to say what one feels. The president took the letter back, looked at it as if it wasn't there and asked, What do you think you'll do, Me, nothing, replied the prime minister, there isn't a thread of evidence to go on, You noticed, of course, that the writer of the letter suggests the possibility of a link between the fact that this woman didn't go blind and the massive casting of blank votes that got us into this mess in the first place, Sir, we haven't always agreed with each other, That's only natural, Yes it is, as natural as it is for me not to have the slightest doubt that your intelligence and your common sense, which I greatly respect, will reject out of hand the idea that a woman, simply because she did not go blind four years ago, should today be deemed responsible for the fact that a few hundred thousand people, who had never even heard of her, chose to cast blank ballot papers when summoned to vote in an election, Well, put like that, There is no other way to put it, sir, my advice is to file the letter under correspondence from crazies and let the matter drop, while we continue the search for a solution to our problems, real solutions, not the fantasies or grudges of an imbecile, You're quite right, I was taking a lot of inconsequential twaddle far too seriously and I've wasted your time by asking you to come over here to see me, Oh, that doesn't matter, sir, my wasted time, if you want to call it that, has been more than made up for by our having reached agreement, Thank you, I'm glad you see it like that, Right, then, I'll leave you to get on with your work and I'll return to mine. The president of the republic was about to hold out his hand to say goodbye when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver and heard his secretary say, The interior minister would like to speak to you, sir, Put him through. The conversation was a long one, the president listened and, as the seconds passed, the expression on his face altered, sometimes he murmured Yes, on one occasion he said It's certainly worth looking into, and he ended with the words Speak to the prime minister about it. He put the receiver down, That was the interior minister, And what did that delightful man want, He's received a letter along the same lines and he's decided to begin an investigation, Bad news, But I told him to talk to you first, So I heard, but it's still bad news, Why, If I know the interior minister, and I'm sure few can know him as well as I do, he will have already spoken to the chief of police by now, Stop him, Oh, I'll try, but I'm afraid it might be useless, Use your authority, What, and be accused of blocking an investigation into facts that affect the nation's security, at a moment when everyone knows that the nation is in grave danger, asked the prime minister, adding, You would be the first to withdraw your support from me, the agreement we've just reached would be a mere illusion, it already is, since it serves no purpose.

The president nodded, then said, A little while ago, in connection with this letter, my cabinet secretary came out with a very illuminating phrase, What was that, He said that the police were at the end of the assembly line, Let me congratulate you, sir, on having such an excellent cabinet secretary, meanwhile, you had better warn him that there are some truths that should not be spoken out loud, This room is soundproof, That doesn't mean there aren't a few microphones hidden about the place, Perhaps I'd better have the room searched, Please believe me when I say that, if you do find any microphones, I was not the one who ordered them to be placed here, Very funny, Very sad, May I say how sorry I am, my friend, that circumstances have left you in this blind alley, Oh, there'll be some way out, although, I confess, I can't see one at the moment, and going back is impossible. The president accompanied the prime minister to the door, It's odd, he said, that the man who wrote the letter didn't write to you as well, He probably did, but your secretariat and that of the interior minister are clearly more diligent than mine, Very funny, No, sir, very sad.

THE LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE PRIME MINISTER, BECAUSE THERE WAS A letter, took two days to reach his hands. He realized at once that the clerk in charge of recording the letter had been less discreet than the president's clerk, how else explain the rumors that had been flying around for the last two days, rumors which, in turn, were either the result of a leak by mid-level civil servants eager to demonstrate that they were au courant or in the know, or else had been deliberately started by the ministry of the interior as a way of stopping in its tracks any attempt by the prime minister to oppose the police investigation or, however symbolically, obstruct it. There remained the possibility, which we will describe as the conspiracy theory, that the supposedly secret conversation between the prime minister and his interior minister that took place after the former had been summoned to the presidential palace, had been far less private than one might have thought, given the padded walls, which, who knows, may have concealed a few latest-generation microphones, of the kind that only an electronic gun-dog with the finest pedigree could sniff out and find. Whatever the truth of the matter, there was nothing to be done about it, it is a sad moment for state secrets, which have no one to defend them. The prime minister is so conscious of this deplorable certainty, so convinced of the pointlessness of secrets, especially when they have ceased to be so, that, with the look of someone observing the world from a very high vantage point, as if he were saying Don't say a word, I know everything, he slowly folded the letter up and put it in one of his inside jacket pockets, It came straight from the blindness of four years ago, I'll keep it with me, he said. The air of shocked surprise on his cabinet secretary's face made him smile, Don't worry, my friend, there are at least two other letters identical to this, not to mention the many photocopies that are doubtless already doing the rounds. His cabinet secretary's face suddenly assumed a look of feigned innocence or abstraction, as if he had not quite understood what he had heard, or as if his conscience had suddenly leapt out at him along the road, accusing him of some ancient, or else very recent, misdeed. You can go now, I'll call you if I need you, said the prime minister, getting up from his chair and going over to one of the windows. The noise he made in opening it concealed the sound of the door closing. From there, he could see little more than a succession of low roofs. He felt a nostalgia for the capital city, for the happy times when votes did as they were told, for the monotonous passing of the hours and days spent either at his petit-bourgeois official residence or at the national parliament, for the agitated and not infrequently jolly and amusing political crises, which were like sudden eruptions of foreseeable duration and controlled intensity, almost always put on, and through which one learned not only not to tell the truth, but, when necessary, to make it correspond, point by point, with the lie, just as the wrong side and the right side of things are, quite naturally, always found together. He wondered if the investigation would already have begun, he paused to speculate upon whether the agents taking part in the police action would be those who had fruitlessly remained behind in the capital charged with obtaining information and submitting reports, or if the interior minister would have preferred, for this new mission, people whom he knew and trusted, who were to hand and within easy reach, and, who knows, were seduced by the glamorous movie adventure element of a clandestine breaking of the blockade, crawling, with a knife tucked in their belt, underneath barbed-wire fences, outwitting the dreaded electronic sensors with magnetic desensitizers, and emerging on the other side in enemy territory, heading for their objective, like moles endowed with the agility of a cat and with night-vision glasses. Knowing the interior minister as he did, only slightly less bloodthirsty than dracula, and even more theatrical than rambo, this was sure to be the mode of action he would order them to adopt. He was absolutely right. Hidden in the small area of forest that almost borders the perimeter of the besieged city, three men are waiting for night to become early dawn. However, not everything that the prime minister imagined from his office window corresponds to the reality we see before us. For example, these men are dressed in plain clothes, there are no knives tucked into belts, and the weapon they have in their holster is the gun which is always so reassuringly described as regulation. As for the dreaded magnetic desensitizers, there is, amongst the various bits of apparatus the men are carrying, nothing that looks as if it fulfilled that function, which, when one thinks about it, could mean merely that magnetic desensitizers are quite simply and deliberately made not to look like magnetic desensitizers. We will soon learn, however, that, at a pre-arranged time, the electronic sensors in this section of the border will be turned off for five minutes, which was considered more than enough time for three men, one by one, without undue haste or hurry, to cross the barbed-wire barrier, part of which was cut today precisely for the purpose of avoiding torn trousers and lacerated skin. The army's sappers will be back to repair it before the rosy fingers of dawn return to reveal the threatening barbs rendered harmless only very briefly, as well as the enormous rolls of wire stretching out along both sides of the frontier. The three men are already through, in front goes the leader, who is the tallest, and they cross, in indian file, a field whose wet grass oozes and squeaks beneath their shoes. On a minor road on the outskirts of the city, about five hundred meters from there, a car is waiting to carry them through the silence of the night to their destination in the capital, a bogus insurance and reinsurance company which a complete dearth of clients, whether local or foreign, had not as yet managed to bankrupt. The orders that these men received directly from the lips of the interior minister are clear and categorical, Bring me results and I won't ask by what means you obtained them. They have no written instructions with them, no safe-conduct pass to cover them or which they could show as a defense or as a justification if things should turn out worse than they expect, and there is, of course, always the possibility that the ministry would simply abandon them to their fate if they committed some action that might prejudice the state's reputation and the immaculate purity of its objectives and processes. These three men are like a commando group entering enemy territory, there seems no reason to think that they will risk their lives there, but they are all aware of the delicate nature of a mission that demands a talent for interrogation, flexibility in drawing up strategy and swiftness in carrying it out. All to the maximum degree. I don't think you'll need to kill anyone, the interior minister had said, but if, in an extreme situation, you consider that there's no other option, then don't hesitate, I'll sort things out with the minister for justice, Whose post has just been taken over by the prime minister, remarked the leader of the group. The interior minister pretended not to hear, he merely glared at the importunate speaker, who had no alternative but to look away. The car drove into the city, stopped in a square so that they could change drivers, and finally, after going round various blocks thirty or so times in order to throw off any unlikely pursuer, deposited them at the door of the building where the insurance and reinsurance office has its base. The porter did not come out to see who was arriving at what was a most unusual hour for an office building, one assumes he had received a visit from someone the previous afternoon who had persuaded him gently to go to bed early and advised him not to slip out from between the sheets, even if insomnia kept him from closing his eyes. The three men took the lift up to the fourteenth floor, went down a corridor to the left, another to the right, a third to the left, and finally reached the office of providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, as anyone can read on the notice on the door, in black letters on a tarnished, rectangular brass plate, affixed with nails that have brass heads in the shape of truncated pyramids. They went in, one of the subordinates turned on the light, the other closed the door and put the security chain on. Meanwhile the leader of the group walked through the various rooms, checked phone lines, plugged in machines, went into the kitchen, into the bedrooms and bathrooms, opened the door to what was intended to be the filing room and had a quick look at the various armaments stored in there, at the same time breathing in the familiar smell of metal and lubricant, he will inspect it all properly tomorrow, piece by piece, weapon by weapon. He summoned his assistants, sat down and told them to sit down too, Later this morning, at seven o'clock, he said, we will begin the work of following the suspect, notice that I call him the suspect, even though, as far as we know he has committed no crime, I do so not only to simplify communication between ourselves, but also because, for security reasons, it is best that his name is not mentioned, at least not during these first few days, I would add that with this operation, which I hope will last no longer than a week, our first objective is to get an idea of the suspect's movements around the city, where he works, where he goes, who he meets, the usual routine for a basic investigation, reconnoitering the terrain before making a direct approach, Should he be aware that he's being followed, asked the first assistant, Not for the first four days, but after that, yes, I want him to feel worried, uneasy, Having written that letter, he must surely be expecting someone to come looking for him, We'll do that when the moment comes, what I want, and it's up to you to achieve this effect, is to frighten him into thinking that he's being followed by the people he denounced, By the doctor's wife, No, not by her, but by her accomplices, the people who cast the blank votes, Aren't we taking things a bit fast, asked the second assistant, we haven't even started work yet, and here we are talking about accomplices, All we're doing is making a preliminary sketch, a simple sketch, that's all, I want to put myself in the shoes of the guy who wrote that letter and, from there, try to see what he sees, Well, a week spent tailing the guy seems far too long to me, said the first assistant, it should take us three days at most to bring him to boiling point. The leader frowned, he was going to say, Look, I said one week and it will be one week, but then he remembered the interior minister, he didn't recall him having expressly asked for rapid results, but since that is the demand most often heard from the lips of those in charge, and since there was no reason to think that the present case would be any exception, quite the contrary, he showed no more reluctance in agreeing to the period of three days than that considered normal between a superior and a subordinate, on the rare occasions when the person issuing the orders is forced to give in to the reasoning of the person receiving them. We have photographs of all the adults who live in the building, I mean, of course, those of the male sex, said the leader, adding unnecessarily, One of them is that of the man we are looking for, We can't start following him until we've identified him, said the first assistant, True, replied the leader, but nevertheless, at seven o'clock, I want you to be strategically positioned in the street where he lives and to follow the two men you think most closely resemble the kind of person who would have written that letter, that's where we'll start, intuition and a good police nose must have their uses, Can I say something, asked the second assistant, Of course, To judge by the tone of the letter, the guy must be a total bastard, Does that mean, asked the first assistant, that we should only follow the ones who look like bastards, then he added, Although in my experience, the worst bastards are precisely the ones who don't look like they're bastards, It would have made much more sense to have gone straight to the identity card people and asked for a copy of the guy's photograph, it would have saved time and work. Their leader decided to cut this discussion short, I presume you're not intending to teach the priest to say the our father or the mother superior the hail mary, if they didn't tell us to do that it must be because they didn't want to arouse any curiosity that could have caused the operation to be aborted, With respect, sir, I disagree, said the first assistant, everything indicates that the guy is dying to spill the beans, in fact, I think if he knew we were here, he'd be banging on our door right now, You may be right, said the group leader, struggling to control the irritation he felt at what had every appearance of being a devastating critique of his plan of action, but we want to know as much as we can about him before we make direct contact, How's this for an idea, piped up the second assistant, Not another one, said his chief sourly, This is a good one, I guarantee it, one of us disguises himself as an encyclopedia salesman, that way we'll be able to see who opens the door, That encyclopedia salesman trick went out with the ark, said the first assistant, besides, it's usually the wives who come to open the door, I mean, it would be a great idea if our man lived on his own, but, as I recall from what he says in the letter, he's married, Oh, rats, exclaimed the second assistant. They sat in silence, looking at each other, the two assistants knowing that the best thing now would be to wait for their superior to have an idea of his own. They would, in principle, be prepared to applaud it even if it was as leaky as an old boat. The leader of the group was weighing up everything that had been said, trying to fit the various suggestions together in the hope that two pieces of the puzzle might just slot into place and that something would emerge, something so holmesian, so poirotesque, that it would make these two men under orders from him open their mouths wide in amazement. And suddenly, as if the scales had fallen from his eyes, he saw the way forward, Most people, he said, unless, of course, they're physically incapacitated, don't spend all their time stuck at home, they go out to work, go shopping or for a walk, so my idea is that we should wait until there's no one in the apartment and then break in, the guy's address is on the letter, we've got plenty of skeleton keys, and there are bound to be photos around, it wouldn't be hard to identify him from the various photographs and that way we'd have no problem following him, and if we want to find out when the place is empty, we'll use the phone, we'll get his number tomorrow from directory inquiries, or we could look it up in the telephone book, one or the other, it doesn't really matter. As he uttered this rather lame conclusion, he realized that the pieces of the puzzle really didn't fit. Although, as explained before, the two assistants' attitude toward the results of their leader's cogitations was one of total benevolence, the first assistant, trying to find a tone of voice that would not wound his chief's susceptibilities, felt obliged to observe, Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be best, since we know the guy's address, just to go and knock on his door and ask whoever answers Does So-and-so live here, if it's him, he'll say Yes, that's me, if it's his wife, she'll probably say I'll just go and call my husband, that way we would have the bird in our hand without having to beat about the bush. The leader raised his clenched fist like someone about to give the desk an almighty thump, but, at the last moment, he checked the violence of that gesture, slowly lowered his arm and said in a voice that seemed to fade with every syllable, We'll examine that possibility tomorrow, I'm going to bed now, good night. He was just going over to the door of the bedroom he would occupy during the time the investigation lasted when he heard the second assistant ask, So do we still start the operation at seven o'clock as planned. Without turning round, the group leader replied, That plan of action is suspended until further orders, you will receive your instructions tomorrow, once I have read through any messages from the ministry, and, if necessary, so as to speed up the work, I will make any changes I see fit. He said good night again, Good night, sir, replied his two subordinates, and then he went into his room. As soon as the door had closed, the second assistant prepared to continue the conversation, but the other man quickly put a forefinger to his lips and shook his head, indicating to him not to speak. He was the first one to push back his chair and say, Right, I'm off to bed, if you're staying up, be careful not to wake me when you come in. Unlike their leader, these two men, as the subordinates they are, do not have the right to a room of their own, they are both going to sleep in a large room with three beds, a kind of small dormitory which is rarely fully occupied. The bed in the middle is always the one least used. When, as in this case, there were two agents, they invariably used the beds on either side, and if only one policeman was sleeping there, he was also sure to prefer to sleep in one of those, never in the middle bed, perhaps because sleeping there would make him feel as if he were under siege or a prisoner under arrest. Even the hardest, most thick-skinned of policemen, and these two have not yet had the opportunity to prove that they are, need to feel protected by the proximity of a wall. The second assistant, who had understood the message, got to his feet and said, No, no, I'm not sitting up, I'm going to bed too. According to rank, first one, then the other, made use of the bathroom which was, as it should be, equipped with everything necessary for their ablutions, for we have not at any point in this report mentioned that the three policemen each brought with them only a small suitcase or a simple rucksack with a change of clothing, a toothbrush and a razor. It would be surprising if an enterprise christened with the fortunate name of providential did not take care to provide those to whom it gave temporary shelter with the various articles and products essential for their comfort and for the successful fulfilment of the mission with which they had been charged. Half an hour later, the two assistants were in their respective beds, wearing their official pajamas, with the police emblem over their heart. So the plan from the ministry of the interior's planning department was useless, said the second assistant, It's always the same when they don't take the elementary precaution of consulting the people who've got the experience, replied the first assistant, Our leader's got plenty of experience, said the second assistant, if he hadn't, he wouldn't be where he is today, Sometimes, being too close to the centers of decision-making brings on myopia, makes you short-sighted, replied the first assistant sagely, Do you mean to say that if we ever get to a position of real power, like the chief, the same thing will happen to us, asked the second assistant, There's no reason why, in this particular case, the future should be any different from the present, replied the first assistant wisely. Fifteen minutes later, both were asleep. One was snoring, the other wasn't.

It was not yet eight o'clock in the morning, when the group leader, already washed, shaved and dressed, came into the room where the ministry's plan of action, or, to be more precise, the interior minister's plan of action that had been so rudely loaded onto the patient shoulders of the police authorities, had been torn to shreds by his two assistants, albeit with praiseworthy discretion and considerable respect, and even a slight touch of dialectical elegance. He had no problem in acknowledging this and bore them no rancor, on the contrary, he was clearly very relieved. With the same energetic strength of will with which he had overcome the incipient insomnia that had caused him to toss and turn for a while in bed, he took total control of operations, generously rendering unto caesar what could not be denied to caesar, but making it quite clear that, in the end, all benefits will sooner or later revert to god and to authority, god's other name. It was, therefore, a serene, confident man whom the two sleepy assistants found when, minutes later, they, in turn, shuffled into the living-room, still in their dressing-gowns, which were also adorned with the police emblem, and in their pajamas and bedroom slippers. Their chief had calculated as much, he had foreseen that the first point of the day would go to him, and he had already noted it on the blackboard. Good morning, boys, he said in a cordial tone, I hope you slept well. Yes, sir, said one. Yes, sir, said the other, Let's have breakfast, then get yourselves washed and dressed, who knows, we might catch him still in his bed, that would be fun, by the way, what day is it today, Saturday, today is Saturday, no one gets up early on Saturday, you wait, he'll open the door looking just the way you do now, in dressing-gown and pajamas, shuffling down the corridor in his slippers, and consequently with his defenses down, psychologically at a low ebb, come on, come on, who's the brave man who's going to volunteer to make breakfast, Me, said the second assistant, knowing full well that there was no third assistant to do the job. In a different situation, that is, if, instead of being thrown out, the ministry's plan had been accepted without further discussion, the first assistant would have stayed behind with his chief to agree and fine-tune, however unnecessarily, some detail of the investigation they were about to embark upon, but, in the circumstances, especially now that he, too, had been reduced to the inferiority of bedroom slippers, he decided to make a great gesture of camaraderie and say, I'll help you. Their leader agreed, it seemed a good idea, and he sat down to go over some notes he had made before going to sleep. Barely fifteen minutes had passed when the two assistants reappeared carrying a tray each, bearing the coffee pot, the milk jug, a packet of plain biscuits, orange juice, yoghurt and jam, no doubt about it, the catering corps of the political police had once again done honor to their hard-won reputation. Resigned to drinking their coffee with cold milk or having to reheat it, the assistants said that they were going to get washed and dressed and would be back in a moment, We'll be as quick as we can. In fact, it seemed to them a grave lack of respect, with their superior there in suit and tie, to join him in their disheveled state, unshaven, eyes blinking, and emanating the thick, nocturnal smell of unwashed bodies. There was no need for them to explain, what was left unspoken was, for once, more than eloquent. Naturally, given this new atmosphere of peace, and with his assistants put firmly back in their places, it cost their chief nothing to urge them to sit down and share bread and salt with him, We're colleagues, we're in the same boat, a fine boss I'd be if I had to keep flaunting my stripes in order to get people to obey me, anyone who knows me knows I'm not like that, sit down, sit down. Slightly embarrassed, the assistants sat down, conscious that, whatever anyone said, there was something improper about the situation, two down-and-outs having breakfast with a person who, in comparison, looked like a dandy, they were the ones who should have got their asses out of bed early, more than that, they should have had the table set and ready for when their chief came out of his room, in dressing-gown and pajamas if he so wished, but us, no, we should have been properly dressed and with our hair combed, it is these small cracks in the varnish of behavior, rather than noisy revolutions, which, slowly, through repetition and persistence, finally bring down the most solid of social edifices. It is a wise dictum that says, If you want to be respected, don't encourage familiarity, let us hope, for the good of the job, that this particular chief does not have reason to regret this moment. In the meantime, he seems confident of his authority, we have only to hear him, This operation has two objectives, a main one and a secondary one, the secondary objective, which I'll deal with now so as not to waste time, is to find out as much as possible, but without, in theory, too much outlay of energy, about the supposed murder committed by the woman who led the group of six blind people mentioned in the letter, the main objective, to which we will apply all our efforts and abilities and for which we will use all reasonable means, whatever they may be, is to establish whether or not there is any connection between this woman, who is said to have retained her sight while the rest of us were all staggering around blind, and this new epidemic of blank ballot papers, It won't be easy to find her, said the first assistant, That's why we're here, all attempts to unearth the roots of the boycott have failed up until now and it might well be that this guy's letter won't get us very far either, but it at least opens a new line of inquiry, It seems pretty unbelievable to me that this woman could be behind a movement that involves some hundreds of thousands of people and that, tomorrow, if we don't stamp the whole business out now, she might gather together millions and millions more, said the second assistant, Both things are equally impossible, but if one of them happened, so could the other one, replied the chief, and concluded, with the look of someone who knows more than he is authorized to say, never imagining how true his words will prove to be, Impossibilities never come singly. With this happy concluding phrase, the perfect close to a sonnet, breakfast also came to an end. The assistants cleared the table and carried the crockery and what remained of the food into the kitchen, We'll go and get washed and dressed now, we won't be a moment, they said, Wait, said the chief, then, addressing himself to the first assistant, You'd better use my bathroom, otherwise we'll never get out of here. The lucky assistant blushed with contentment, his career had just taken a great leap forward, he was going to pee in his chief's toilet.

In the underground garage a car was waiting for them, the keys of which had been deposited the day before on the chief's bedside table, along with a brief explanatory note indicating its make, color, registration number and the parking place where the vehicle had been left. Avoiding the foyer, they took the lift straight down to the garage and had no difficulty in finding the car. It was nearly ten o'clock. The chief said to the second assistant as the latter was opening the back door for him, You drive. The first assistant sat in the front, next to the driver. It was a pleasant, very sunny morning, which shows yet again that the punishments of which the sky was such a prodigal source in the past, have, with the passing of the centuries, lost their force, those were good and just times, when any failure to obey the divine diktat was enough for several biblical cities to be annihilated and razed to the ground with all their inhabitants inside. Yet here is a city that cast blank votes against the lord and not a single bolt of lightning has fallen upon it, reducing it to ashes, as happened, in response to far less exemplary vices, to Sodom and gomorrah, as well as to admah and to zeboyim, burned down to their very foundations, although the last two cities are mentioned less often than the first, whose names, perhaps because of their irresistible musicality, have remained forever in people's ears. Nowadays, having abandoned their blind obedience to the lord's orders, lightning bolts fall only where they want to, and, as has become manifest, one can clearly not count on them to lead this sinful city and caster of blank votes back to the path of righteousness. In their place, the ministry of the interior has sent three of its archangels, these three policemen, chief and subalterns, who, from now on, we will designate by their corresponding ranks, which are, following the hierarchical scale, superintendent, inspector and sergeant. The first two sit watching the people walking along, none of them innocent, all of them guilty of something, and they wonder if that venerable-looking old gentleman, for example, is not perhaps the grand master of outer darkness, if that girl with her arms about her boyfriend is not the incarnation of the undying serpent of evil, if that man walking along, head down, is not going to some unknown cave where the potions that poisoned the spirit of the city are distilled. The sergeant, whose lowly condition means that he is under no obligation to think elevated thoughts or to harbor suspicions about what lies beneath the surface of things, has rather homelier concerns, like this one with which he is about to dare to interrupt his superiors' meditations, With weather like this, the man might have gone to spend the day in the country, What country, asked the inspector in an ironic tone, What do you mean what country, The real country is on the other side of the frontier, on this side, it's all city. It was true. The sergeant had missed a golden opportunity to remain silent, but he had learned a lesson, asking such questions would get him nowhere. He concentrated on his driving and swore to himself that he would only open his mouth if asked to. That was when the superintendent spoke, We will be hard and implacable, we won't resort to any of the classic tricks, like that old, outmoded hard cop, soft cop routine, we are a commando of operatives, feelings don't count here, we will imagine that we are machines made to perform a specific task and we will simply carry out that task without so much as a backward glance, Yes, sir, said the inspector, Yes, sir, said the sergeant, breaking his own oath. The car turned into the street where the man who wrote the letter lives, over in that building, on the third floor. They parked the car a little further on, the sergeant opened the door for the superintendent, the inspector got out the other side, the commando is complete, on the firing line, fists clenched, action.

Now we see them on the landing. The superintendent gestures to the sergeant, who rings the doorbell. Total silence inside. The sergeant thinks, You see, I was right, he has gone to spend the day in the country. Another gesture, another ring on the doorbell. A few seconds later, they hear someone, a man, ask from behind the door, Who is it. The superintendent looks at his immediate subordinate, who says in a loud voice, Police, One moment, please, said the man, I have to get dressed. Four minutes passed. The superintendent made the same gesture, the sergeant again rang the doorbell, this time keeping his finger pressed down. One moment, one moment, please, I'm coming, I've only just got up, these last words were spoken with the door open by a man wearing shirt and trousers and still in his slippers, Today is the day of the slipper, thought the sergeant. The man did not seem alarmed, he wore the look of someone finally seeing the arrival of the visitors he has been waiting for, any hint of surprise was probably due only to the fact that there were so many of them. The inspector asked him his name and he told them, adding, Do come in, and I apologize for the state the place is in, I never imagined you would come so early, besides, I thought you would call me in to make a statement, but you've come to me instead, it's about the letter, I assume, Yes, it's about the letter, said the inspector bluntly, Come in, come in. The sergeant went in first, sometimes the hierarchy works in reverse, followed by the inspector, with the superintendent bringing up the rear. The man shuffled down the corridor, Follow me, this way, he opened a door that gave onto a small sitting-room and said, Sit down, please, and if you don't mind, I'll just go and put some shoes on, this is no way to receive visitors, We're not exactly what you would call visitors, remarked the inspector, No, of course not, it was just a manner of speaking, Go and put some shoes on, then, and be quick about it, we're in a hurry, No, we're not, we're not in any hurry at all, said the superintendent, who had not until then said a word. The man looked at him, and this time he did so with an air of slight alarm, as if the tone in which the superintendent had spoken was not what had been agreed, and all he could think of to say was, You can, I assure you, count on my entire cooperation, sir, Superintendent, said the sergeant, Superintendent, repeated the man, and you, sir, Don't worry, I'm just a sergeant. The man turned to the third member of the group, replacing his question with an interrogative lift of the eyebrows, but the answer came from the superintendent, This gentleman is an inspector and my chief officer, then he added, Now go and put some shoes on, we'll wait for you. The man left the room. I can't hear anyone else in the apartment, it looks as if he lives alone, whispered the sergeant, His wife's probably gone to spend the day in the country, said the inspector with a smile. The superintendent signaled to them to be quiet, I'll ask the first questions, he said, lowering his voice. The man came back in and, as he sat down, said May I, as if he were not in his own house, and then, Here I am, now how can I help you. The superintendent nodded kindly, then began, Your letter, or, rather, your three letters, because there were three of them, Yes, I thought it was safer that way, because you never know, one of them might have got lost, the man began, Don't interrupt, just answer any questions I ask you, Yes, superintendent, Your letters, I repeat, were read with great interest by their recipients, especially as regards what you say about a certain unidentified woman who committed a murder four years ago. There was no question in these words, it was a simple reiteration of facts, and so the man said nothing. There was an expression of confusion and perplexity on his face, he could not understand why the superintendent did not get straight to the heart of the matter instead of wasting time on an episode which he had only mentioned in order to cast a still darker light on an already disquieting portrait. The superintendent pretended not to notice, Tell us what you know about that murder, he asked. The man suppressed an urge to remind the superintendent that this had not been the most important part of the letter, that, compared with the country's current situation, the murder was the least of it, but no, he wouldn't do that, prudence told him to follow the music they were asking him to dance to, later on, they were sure to change the record, I know that she killed a man, Did you see her do it, were you there, asked the superintendent, No, superintendent, but she herself confessed, To you, To me and to other people, You do know, I assume, the technical meaning of the word confession, More or less, superintendent, More or less isn't enough, either you do or you don't, In the sense that you mean, no, I don't, Confession means a declaration of one's own mistakes or faults, it can also mean an acknowledgement of guilt or of the truth of an accusation by the accused to someone in authority or in a court of law, now, can these definitions be applied rigorously to this case, No, not rigorously, superintendent, Fine, continue, My wife was there, my wife witnessed the man's death, What do you mean by there, There, in the old insane asylum where we were quarantined, Your wife, I assume, was also blind, As I said the only person who didn't go blind was her, Who's her, The woman who committed the murder, Ah, We were in a dormitory, And the murder was committed there, No, superintendent, in another dormitory, So none of the people from your dormitory were present when the murder was committed, Only the women, Why only the women, It's difficult to explain, superintendent, Don't worry, we've got plenty of time, There were some blind men who took over and started terrorizing us, Terrorizing, Yes, superintendent, terrorizing, How, They got hold of all the food and if we wanted to eat, we had to pay, And they demanded women as payment, Yes, superintendent, And that woman killed a man, Yes, superintendent, Killed him how, With a pair of scissors, Who was this man, The one who was in charge of the other blind men, She's obviously a brave woman, Yes, superintendent, Now tell us why you reported her, But I didn't, I only mentioned it because it seemed relevant, Sorry, I don't understand, What I meant to say in the letter was that someone who was capable of doing that was capable of doing the other thing. The superintendent did not ask what other thing this was, he merely looked at the person whom he had, using navy language, called his chief officer, inviting him to continue the interrogation. The inspector paused for a few seconds, Would you mind asking your wife to join us, he asked, we'd like to talk to her, My wife isn't here, When will she be back, She won't, we're divorced, When did that happen, Three years ago, Would you object to telling us why you got divorced, For personal reasons, Naturally they would be personal, For private reasons then, As with all divorces. The man looked at the inscrutable faces before him and realized that they would not leave him in peace until he had told them what they wanted to know. He cleared his throat, crossed and uncrossed his legs, I'm a man of principle, he began, Oh, we know that, said the sergeant, unable to contain himself, I mean, I know that, I had the privilege of reading your letter. The superintendent and the inspector smiled, it was a justifiable blow. The man looked at the sergeant, bewildered, as if he had not expected an attack from that quarter, and, lowering his eyes, he went on, It was to do with those blind men, I couldn't bear the fact that my wife had done it with those vile men, for a whole year I put up with the shame of it, but, in the end, it became unbearable, and so I left her, got a divorce, How odd, I thought you said that these other blind men gave you food in exchange for your women, said the inspector, That's right, And your principles, I assume, did not allow you to touch the food that your wife brought to you after she had, to use your expression, done it with those vile men. The man hung his head and did not reply. I understand your discretion, said the inspector, it really is too private a matter to be bandied about amongst strangers, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to wound your sensibilities. The man looked at the superintendent as if pleading for help, or at least asking him to replace the pincers with a spell on the rack. The superintendent obliged and applied the garrotte, In your letter, you referred to a group of seven people, Yes, superintendent, Who were they, Apart from the woman and her husband, Which woman, The one who didn't go blind, The one who acted as your guide, Yes, superintendent, The one who, in order to avenge her fellow women, stabbed the leader of the bandits with a pair of scissors, Yes, superintendent, Go on, Her husband was an ophthalmologist, We know that, There was a prostitute too, Did she tell you she was a prostitute, Not that I remember, no, superintendent, So how did you know she was a prostitute, By her manner, it was clear from her manner, And, of course, manners never deceive, go on, And there was an old man who was blind in one eye and wore a black eye-patch, and he and she lived together afterward, Who's she, The prostitute, Were they happy, I've no idea, You must have some idea, During the year that we still saw each other, yes, they seemed happy. The superintendent counted on his fingers, There's still one missing, he said, Yes, there was a boy with a squint who had lost his parents in all the confusion, Do you mean that you all met in the dormitory, No, superintendent, we had all met before, Where, At the ophthalmologist's where my then wife took me when I went blind, in fact, I think I was the first person to go blind, And you infected the others, the whole city, including your visitors today, It wasn't my fault, superintendent, Do you know the names of these people, Yes, superintendent, Of all of them, Apart from the boy, if I knew his name then, I've forgotten it now, But you remember the others, Yes, superintendent, And their addresses, Yes, unless they've moved in the last three years, Of course, unless they've moved in the last three years. The superintendent glanced round the small room, and his gaze lingered on the television as if he were hoping for some inspiration from it, then he said, Sergeant, pass your notebook to this gentleman and lend him your pen so that he can write down the names and the addresses of the people of whom he has spoken so warmly, apart from the boy with the squint, who wouldn't be of any use to us anyway. The man's hands trembled when he took the pen and the notebook, they continued to tremble as he wrote, he was telling himself that there was no reason to feel afraid, that the police were there because he had, in some way, summoned them himself, what he didn't understand was why they didn't talk about the blank ballot papers, the insurrection, the conspiracy against the state, about the only real reason he had written his letter. His hands were trembling so much that his writing was almost illegible, May I use another sheet, he asked, Use as many as you like, replied the sergeant. His writing began to grow steadier, it was no longer a motive for embarrassment. While the sergeant retrieved the pen and handed the notebook to the superintendent, the man was wondering what gesture, what word could win him, even if only belatedly, the sympathy of these policemen, their benevolence, their complicity. Suddenly, he remembered, I've got a photograph, he exclaimed, yes, I think I've still got it, What photograph, asked the inspector, Of the group, it was taken shortly after we had recovered our sight, my wife didn't want it, she said she'd get a copy, she said I should keep it so that I wouldn't forget, Were those her words, asked the inspector, but the man did not reply, he had stood up and was about to leave the room, when the superintendent ordered, Sergeant, go with this gentleman, if he has any trouble finding the photograph, help him, don't come back without it. They were absent for only a few minutes. Here it is, said the man. The superintendent went over to the window to be able to see better. In a line, side by side, the six adults stood in pairs, couple by couple. On the right, alongside his wife, stood the man himself, plainly recognizable, to the left there stood, without a shadow of a doubt, the old man with the black eye-patch and the prostitute, and in the middle, by a process of elimination, two people who could only be the doctor's wife and her husband. In front, kneeling down like a football player, was the boy with the squint. Next to the doctor's wife was a large dog looking straight at the camera. The superintendent beckoned to the man to join him, Is that her, he asked, pointing, Yes, superintendent, that's her, And the dog, If you like, I can tell you the story, superintendent, No, don't bother, she'll tell me. The superintendent left first, followed by the inspector and then the sergeant. The man who had written the letter watched them go down the stairs. The building has no lift and there is little hope that it ever will.