The Collected Novels of José Saramago

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We have already mentioned the fact that many anthropogenic myths made use of clay in the creation of man, and anyone moderately interested in the subject can find out more in know-it-all almanacs and know-it-almost-all encyclopedias. Generally speaking, this is not the case with the followers of different religions, since it is through the organs of the church to which they belong that they receive this and other information of equal or similar importance. There is, however, one case, at least one, in which the clay had to be fired in the kiln for the work to be considered finished. And then only after various attempts. This singular creator, whose name we forget, probably did not know about or else did not have sufficient confidence in the thaumaturgic efficacy of blowing air into the nostrils as another creator did before or would do later, indeed, as Cipriano Algor did in our own time, although with the very modest intention of cleaning the ashes from the face of the nurse. To return to the creator who had to fire his man in the kiln, we give below a description of events, and there you will see that the failed attempts referred to above were a result of the said creator's lack of knowledge as regards the correct firing temperatures. He started out by making a human figure out of clay, whether male or female is of no importance, placed it in the kiln and lit the fire. After what seemed to him the right length of time, he took the figure out and, oh dear, his heart sank. The figure had come out pitch black, nothing like his idea of how a man should look. However, perhaps because he was only in the early stages of this venture, he could not face destroying the failed product of his own ineptitude. He gave him life, apparently by flicking him on the head, and sent him away. He made another figure, placed it in the kiln, and this time took great care to keep the fire low. He succeeded in this, but the temperature was too low this time, for the figure turned out whiter than the very whitest of white things. It still wasn't what he wanted. Despite this new failure, though, he did not lose patience, he must have thought kindly, Poor thing, it's not his fault, and so he gave him life too and sent him off. So there was already a black man and a white man in the world, but the left-handed creator had still not achieved the creature he had hoped for. He set to work again, and another human figure took up his place in the kiln, the problem, even without a pyrometer, should be easier to solve now, that is, the secret was to heat the kiln not too much and not too little, neither too hot nor too cold, and by that rule of thumb, things should finally work out. They did not. The new figure was not black, but neither was it white, it was, oh heavens, yellow. Anyone else would perhaps have given up, would have hurriedly despatched a flood to finish off the black man and the white man, and broken the yellow man's neck, indeed, one might even think this the logical conclusion of the thought that went through the creator's mind in the form of a question, If I myself don't know how to make a proper man, how will I ever be able to call him to account for his mistakes. For a few days, our amateur potter could not get up the courage to go back into the pottery, but then, as they say, the creative bug bit him again and, after a few hours, the fourth figure was ready to go into the kiln. Assuming that there was at the time another creator above this creator, it is very likely that the lesser sent up to the greater a prayer, an entreaty, a supplication, or some such thing, Please, don't let me make a mess of it. Finally, with anxious hands, he placed the clay figure in the kiln, then he carefully chose and weighed what seemed to him the correct amount of firewood, eliminated any that was too green or too dry, removed one piece that was burning badly and clumsily, added another that produced a cheerful flame, calculated approximately the time and intensity of the heat, and, repeating that plea, Please, don't let me make a mess of it, he put a match to the fuel. We modern-day human beings, who have experienced so many moments of anxiety, taking a difficult exam, being stood up by a lover, waiting for a child to come home, not getting a job, can imagine what this creator must have gone through as he waited for the result of his fourth attempt, the sweat which, but for the proximity of the kiln, would doubtless have been ice-cold, the fingernails bitten down to the quick, every minute that passed taking with it ten years of life, for the first time in the history of various creations of the universe, the creator himself felt the torments that await us in eternal life, because it is eternal, not because it is life. But it was worth it. When our creator opened the door of the kiln and saw what was inside, he fell to his knees, amazed. This time the man was not black or white or yellow, he was red, yes, as red as the red of sunrises and sunsets, as red as the molten lava from volcanoes, as red as the fire that had made him red, as red as the blood that was already flowing in his veins, for with this human figure, because he was the one the creator had wanted to create, there was no need to give him a flick on the head, he merely had to say, Come, and the figure stepped out of the kiln of its own accord. Anyone who does not know what happened in later ages will say that, despite all the errors and anxieties or, given the instructive, educational nature of the experiment, precisely because of them, the story had a happy ending. As with all things in this world, and doubtless in all other worlds too, that judgment will depend on the point of view of the observer. Those whom the creator rejected, those whom, albeit with praiseworthy benevolence, he sent away, that is, those with black, white, and yellow skins, grew in number and multiplied, they cover, so to speak, the whole globe, while those with red skins, those who cost the creator so much effort and for whom he suffered such pain and anxiety, they are now the impotent proof of how a triumph can, in time, be come the disappointing prelude to a defeat. The fourth and last attempt by the first creator of men to place his creatures in a kiln, the one that apparently brought him a definitive victory, turned out to be a rout. Cipriano Algor, an assiduous reader of know-it-all or know-it-almost-all almanacs and encyclopedias, had read this story when he was a boy and, though he had forgotten many things in his life, for some reason he had not forgotten this. It was a legend that came from the American Indians, the so-called redskins, to be exact, by which the distant creators of the myth must have set out to prove the superiority of their race over all others, including those of whose actual existence they knew nothing at the time. This last point is bound to provoke the objection, the vain and futile argument that, since they had no knowledge of other races, they could not possibly have imagined them white or black or yellow or, even, iridescent. A great mistake. Anyone putting forward such an argument would only be demonstrating their ignorance of the fact that we are dealing here with a people who are potters, as well as hunters, who, in the difficult work of transforming clay into a dish or an idol, would have learned that all kinds of things can happen inside a kiln, the disastrous and the glorious, the perfect and the botched, the sublime and the grotesque. How often, over and over, generation after generation, they must have removed from the kiln pieces that were distorted, cracked, scorched, unbaked, or half-baked, all of them useless. Indeed, there is not much difference between what happens inside a kiln and what happens inside a bread oven. Bread dough is just a different sort of clay, made from flour, yeast, and water, and just like clay, it can emerge from the oven undercooked or burned. There may not be much difference inside, Cipriano Algor admitted, but once out of the oven, I can tell you that I would give anything to be a baker.

The days and nights passed, as did the afternoons and the mornings. According to books and to life, the labors of men have always taken longer and been more backbreaking than those of the gods, the creator of the redskins is a case in point, for he, after all, made only four human images, and yet that minuscule result, which had little success among its intended public, merited an entry in the history set down in almanacs, while Cipriano Algor, for whom there will be no reward in the form of a printed note on his life and works, will have to wrest from the clay, in this first phase alone, one hundred and fifty times more than that, six hundred figurines with different origins, characteristics, and social backgrounds, three of them, the jester, the clown, and the nurse, are more easily definable by the jobs they do, which is not the case with the mandarin and with the bearded Assyrian, about whom, despite the reasonable amount of information drawn from the encyclopedia, it was not possible to discover exactly what they did in life. As for the Eskimo, one assumes that he will continue to hunt and fish. The truth is that Cipriano Algor does not much care any more. When he starts removing the figurines from the molds, identical in size, the differences in clothing attenuated by their uniform color, he will have to make a real effort not to confuse them and mix them up. He will be so immersed in the work, that he will sometimes forget that the molds have a limited life, that they can only be used about forty times, after which the shapes begin to blur, to lose vigor and clarity, as if the figurine were gradually growing weary of existence, as if it were being drawn back to an original state of nakedness, not just its human nakedness, but to the absolute nakedness of clay before it had begun to be clothed in the first physical expression of an idea. At first, in order not to waste time, he had simply thrown the rejected figurines into a corner, but then, out of a strange and inexplicable feeling of pity and guilt, he had gathered them up, most of them misshapen and confused by the fall and by the shock, and placed them carefully on a shelf in the pottery. He could have reused them in order to give them a second chance of life, he could have pitilessly flattened them as he had those two figures of a man and a woman that he had made at the beginning, the clay is still there, dry, cracked, shapeless, and yet instead he rescued the malformed creatures from the rubbish, protected them, sheltered them, as if he loved his successes less than he did these mistakes that he had not proved skillful enough to avoid. He will not fire these figurines, it would be a waste of firewood, but he will leave them there until the clay cracks and crumbles, until fragments break off and fall away, and, if there is time, until the dust from them is transformed back into resurrected clay. Marta will ask him, What are those rejects doing there, to which he will simply reply, I like them, but he will not, like Marta, call them rejects, for to do so would be to drive them from the world for which they had been born, to deny them as his own work and thus condemn them to a final, definitive orphanhood. The dozens of finished figurines that are transferred every day to the drying shelves, outside, in the shade of the mulberry tree, are also his work, and very tiring work they are, but these are so many and so difficult to tell apart that the only care and attention they require is to ensure that they do not suffer any last-minute injuries. He and Marta had no option but to tie Found up to stop him jumping onto the shelves, where he would doubtless commit the worst depredations ever seen in pottery's turbulent history, which, as we know, is prodigal in shards and undesirable amalgamations. Remember that when the first six figurines, the others, the prototypes, were placed here to dry, and Found wanted to find out, by direct contact, what they were, Cipriano Algor's instantaneous shout and slap had been enough for Found's hunting instinct, further aroused by the objects' insolent immobility, to withdraw without causing any damage, but it would, of course, be unreasonable to expect such an animal to resist, unmoved, the provoking sight of a horde of clowns and mandarins, of jesters and nurses, of Eskimos and bearded Assyrians, all thinly disguised as redskins. He was deprived of liberty for only an hour. Impressed by the hurt, almost wounded look on Found's face as he submitted to his punishment, Marta suggested to her father that education must have some uses, even when it comes to dogs, It's just a matter of adapting the methods, she declared, And how are you going to do that, The first thing we'll have to do is to untie him, And then, If he tries to get onto the shelves, then we tie him up again, And then, We untie him and tie him up again as many times as it takes for him to learn, It might work, but don't go deluding yourself that he really has learned the lesson, because obviously he won't dare go near the shelves with you there, but, when he's alone, with no one watching him, I fear that none of your educational methods will be enough to discipline the instincts of the jackal grandfather inside Found's head, Surely Found's jackal grandfather wouldn't even give the figurines a sniff, he would just walk straight past and go off in search of something he could actually eat, All right, I just want you to be aware what would happen if the dog did get onto the shelves, imagine the amount of work we'd lose, It might be a lot, it might be a little, we'll see, but if it does happen, I undertake to remake any figurines that get damaged, that's probably the only way I'll be able to convince you to let me help you, Let's not get into that, you just carry on with your pedagogical experiments. Marta left the pottery and, without a word, she removed the lead from the dog's collar. She took a few steps toward the house, then stopped as if she had just thought of something. The dog looked at her and lay down. Marta advanced a few more steps, stopped again, and then went straight into the kitchen, leaving the door open. The dog did not move. Marta closed the door. The dog waited for a moment, then got up and slowly went over to the shelves. Marta did not open the door. The dog looked back at the house, hesitated, looked again, then placed his paws on the shelf where the bearded Assyrians were drying. Marta opened the door and came out. The dog quickly removed his paws and stood there waiting. He had no reason to run away, his conscience told him that he had done nothing wrong. Marta grabbed his collar and, again without saying a word, tethered him with the lead. Then she went back into the kitchen and shut the door. She reckoned that the dog would think about what had happened, well, think or do whatever he would normally do in such a situation. After two minutes, she released him again, it was best not to give the animal time to forget, the relationship between cause and effect had to be fixed in his memory. This time the dog waited longer before putting his paws on the shelf, but he did so nonetheless, though perhaps with slightly less conviction than before. Shortly afterward he was again tethered. After the fourth time, he began to show signs of understanding what was expected of him, but he kept putting his paws on the shelf, as if to make absolutely certain that this was precisely what he should not do. During all this tying and untying, Marta did not say a word, she went in and out of the kitchen, closed and opened the door, and to every movement by the dog, which was always the same, she responded with her own movement, which was also always the same, in a chain of successive and reciprocal actions that would end only when one of them, by making a different movement, broke the sequence. The eighth time that Marta closed the kitchen door behind her, Found again went over to the shelves, but once there, he did not raise his paws as if he wanted to touch the bearded Assyrians, he stood there looking at the house, waiting, as if he were daring his mistress to be bolder than he was, as if he were asking her, What answer have you got to this brilliant move of mine, which will give me victory and which will defeat you. Pleased with herself, Marta murmured, I've won, I knew I would. She went out to the dog, stroked his head and said gently, Good dog, nice dog, her father had come to the door of the pottery to witness the happy result, Fine, now we just have to find out if it sticks, Bet you anything you like that he never again tries to get up on the shelves, said Marta. Very few human words ever enter a dog's own vocabulary of snarls and barks, and, for that reason alone, because he did not understand them, Found did not protest at his owners' irresponsible display of smug satisfaction, because anyone with any knowledge of these matters and able to make an impartial eval uation of what had happened would say that the winner of this battle was not Marta, the owner, however convinced she might be of that, but the dog, although it must be said that people who judge only by appearances would say exactly the opposite. Let everyone, then, boast about the victory they imagine to be theirs, even the bearded Assyrian and his colleagues, now safe from attack. As for Found, we cannot resign ourselves to leaving him with an unwarranted reputation as a loser. The ultimate proof that victory was his is the fact that, from that day forth, he became the most vigilant of guards ever to watch over clay figurines. You should have heard him barking to alert his owners when an unexpected gust of wind blew over half a dozen nurses.

The first kiln-load contained three hundred figurines, or, rather, three hundred and fifty, allowing for likely breakages. They were all that would fit. This happened to coincide with Marçal's day of rest, and so for Marçal it proved instead to be a day of hard work. Patient and willing, he helped his father-in-law to arrange the dolls on the shelves inside and he took charge of feeding the fire, which is a job only for the robust, as much because of the physical effort of carrying the wood to the furnace and stoking the fire as because of the long hours involved, for an old kiln like this, rudimentary in the light of the latest technology, takes a considerable time to reach the optimum temperature for firing, and once it does, that temperature has to be kept as stable as possible. Marçal will work into the night, until his father-in-law, once he has completed a task in the pottery that he had insisted on finishing, can take over from him. Marta took her father's supper out to him and then brought Marçal his and, sitting on the bench that had served as the bench of meditations, she ate her supper with him. Neither of them had much appetite, though for different reasons. You're not eating, you must be exhausted, she said, Yes, I am a little, I'm not very fit, so it takes more out of me, he said, It was my idea to make these figurines, Yes, I know, It was my idea, but for the last few days I've been tormented by a kind of remorse, I keep asking myself if it was worth our while to start making them, if it isn't all just pathetically futile, At the moment, the most important thing for your father is the work that he's doing, regardless of whether or not it's of any use, if you took away the work from him, whatever that work was, then in a way you'd be taking away his reason for living, and if you said to him that what he's doing is pointless, even if the evidence was staring him in the face, he probably wouldn't believe you, because he simply couldn't, The Center stopped buying our crockery and he managed to withstand the shock, Only because you immediately came up with the idea of making these dolls, Yes, but I have a feeling that the bad days are just about to begin, even worse than these, My promotion to resident guard, which shouldn't be long in coming now, will be a bad day for your father, He said he'd come and live with us at the Center, He did, but he said it in the same way that we all say that one day we're going to die, there's a part of our mind that refuses to accept what it knows is the fate of all living creatures and pretends that it has nothing to do with it, that's how it is with your father, he says he'll come and live with us, but, deep down, he doesn't really believe it, As if he were waiting for some last-minute diversion that will take him off along another road, He should know by now that as far as the Center's concerned there's only one road, the one that goes from the Center to the Center, I work there and I know what I'm talking about, A lot of people say that life at the Center is one nonstop miracle. Marçal did not reply at once. He gave a piece of meat to the dog, who had been waiting patiently for a few leftovers to come his way, and only then did he reply, Yes, much as, at this hour of the night, that piece of meat I gave to Found must have seemed like a miracle to him. He stroked the animal's back, twice, three times, the first out of simple, normal affection, the other two times with anxious insistence, as if there were some urgent need to comfort him, when he was the one who needed calming down in order to drive away the idea that had just resurfaced from its hiding place in his memory, The Center doesn't allow dogs. It's true, they don't allow dogs in the Center, or cats, only caged birds and aquarium fish, and even those are becoming rare, ever since they invented virtual aquariums, without fish that smell of fish or water that you have to change. Fifty examples of ten different species swim gracefully about inside, and, in order for them not to die, they have to be cared for and fed as if they were living creatures, the water quality has to be checked, and, so that it's not all hard work, not only can one decorate the bottom of the aquarium with various types of rocks and plants, but the happy owner of this marvel will have at his disposal a range of sounds that will allow him, while he watches these gutless, boneless fish, to surround himself with such diverse ambient sounds as a Caribbean beach, a tropical jungle, or a storm at sea. They don't want dogs at the Center, Marçal thought again, and he noticed that his worry was gradually driving out the other worry, Should I talk to her about this or shouldn't I, he began to think that he should, then he thought it would be better to leave it until later, when he would have to talk about it, when there would be no other option. He decided to say nothing, but, true to the inconstant fluctuations of the will inside the virtual aquarium of the mind, less than a minute later he was saying to Marta, It's just occurred to me that we're not going to be able to take Found with us to the Center, they don't allow dogs, it's going to be a real problem, poor thing, having to abandon him like that, Perhaps there's a solution, said Marta, You've obviously already thought about it, said Marçal, surprised, Yes, I have, a long time ago, So what's your solution, It occurred to me that Isaura wouldn't mind looking after Found, in fact, I think she'd really like that, and besides they already know each other, Isaura, Yes, you remember, Isaura of the water jug, the one who brought us the cake, the one who came here to talk to me the last time we went to have lunch with your parents, Seems like a good idea to me, Yes, I think it would be best for Found, But will your father agree, Half of him will protest and say, certainly not, a single woman isn't good company for a dog, I should imagine he's quite capable of inventing some such theory of disaffinities, and that there must be other people who wouldn't mind taking him in, but we also know that the other half of him will hope against hope that the first half doesn't win, How are the lovebirds, asked Marçal, Poor Isaura, poor Pa, Why do you say poor Isaura, poor Pa, Because it's obvious that she loves him, but she can't get over the barrier he's built around himself, And what about him, Oh, with him it's that old story about the two halves again, one half probably thinks of nothing else, And the other, The other half is sixty-four years old, the other half is afraid, People are so complicated, That's true, but if we were simple we wouldn't be people. Found was no longer there, he had suddenly realized that there was no one to keep the older master company, alone in the pottery and laboring over the second batch of three hundred figurines for the first delivery of six hundred, a dog sees these things and they create an enormous feeling of confusion in him, he sees them but cannot understand them, all that work, all that effort, all that sweat, and I am not referring now to the amount of money that will be earned, it will not be much, it will only be so-so, it certainly won't be a lot, as Marta said a while ago, isn't all of this just pathetically futile. As has been seen before, and has been confirmed now, thanks to the long, deep conversation between Marta and Marçal, the stone bench fully merits the grave and ponderous name we gave to it, that of the bench of meditations, but needs must, and it is time once more to attend to the kiln, to feed more firewood into the mouth of the furnace, carefully though, Marçal, don't forget that tiredness slows down one's defensive reflexes, increases the time they take to respond, we don't want a repeat of what happened on that other ill-fated day, when the snake of howling fire leaped out at you and marked your left hand forever. That is also, more or less, what Marta said, I'm going to wash the dishes and then go to bed, take care, Marçal.

The following morning, very early as usual, Cipriano Algor drove Marçal back to the Center in the van. He had said to Marçal as they left the house, I don't know how to thank you for all your help, and Marçal had replied, I did my best, I just hope it all continues to go smoothly, Oh, I'm sure that the next lot of figurines will prove less problematic, I've worked out a few shortcuts to simplify the work, that's the great thing about gaining more experience, I reckon the next three hundred figurines could be on the drying shelves in a week, Well, you can certainly count on my help again if they're ready to go into the kiln in ten days' time when I have my next leave, Thanks, do you know something, if it wasn't for this wretched crisis over the pottery, you and I could have made a good team, you could stop being a guard at the Center and devote yourself to the pottery, Possibly, but it's a bit late for that, besides, if we had done that, we would both be without a job, But I've still got a job, Yes, of course you have. Later on, once they were on the road into the city, and after a long silence, Cipriano Algor said, I've had an idea and I'd like to know what you think of it, What is it, Well, I'm thinking of taking those first three hundred figurines to the Center as soon as they've been painted, that way the Center would see that we were serious about the work and they could put them on sale earlier than expected, which would be good for them and even better for us, we wouldn't have to wait so long for the results, and if everything goes as we hope it does, we could take the next stage a bit more easily and not have to do things in quite such a rush, what do you think, Seems like a good idea to me, said Marçal, and it occurred to him that he had said the same thing about Marta's idea of leaving the dog to be looked after by the woman with the water jug, After I drop you off, I'm going to have a word with the head of the buying department, I'm sure he'll agree, said Cipriano Algor, Let's hope so, said Marçal, and again he was aware of repeating words he had used only a short time before, this happens all the time with words, we repeat them constantly, but, quite why we don't know, we seem more aware of it some times than others. When they were entering the city, Marçal asked, Who's going to paint the dolls, Well, Marta insists that she wants to paint them, she says I can't be saying mass and ringing the bell at the same time, she didn't put it quite like that, but that's what she meant, But, Pa, paints contain poisons, Yes, I know, And in Marta's condition it doesn't seem right, I'll do the undercoat and I'll use a spray gun, I know it sprays the paint into the air, but it's much quicker, And then, Then we have to apply the paint with a brush, which is quite safe, You should at least have bought a mask, It was too expensive, muttered Cipriano Algor, as if ashamed of his own words, If we could get enough money together to hire the truck to transport the rest of the pottery from the Center, surely we could afford a mask, We didn't think of that, said Cipriano Algor, then contritely corrected himself, Or, rather, I didn't think of that. They were on the avenue now that led in a straight line to the Center, and although it was still a long way off, they could already make out the words on the giant hoarding, YOU'RE OUR BEST CUSTOMER, BUT, PLEASE, DON'T TELL YOUR NEIGHBOR. Cipriano Algor made no comment, but Marçal echoed his thoughts, They're having fun at our expense. When the van drew up opposite the door of the security department, Marçal said, Drop by here again when you've spoken to the head of the buying department, I'm going to see if I can get hold of a mask, Like I said, I don't really need it for me, and Marta will only be painting with brushes, You know her as well as I do, you'll get distracted for a while in the pottery and, by then, it'll be too late, Look, I don't know how long I'll be at the buying department, shall I ask for you here, or should I come and find you, No, don't do that, it's not worth it, I'll leave the mask with my colleague at the door, All right, See you in ten days' time, then, Fine, Take care of Marta for me, Pa, Don't worry, I will, you don't love her any more than I do, you know, I don't know if you love her more or less than I do, I just love her differently, Marçal, What, Give me a hug. When Marçal got out of the van, his eyes were wet with tears. This time, Cipriano Algor did not thump his head with the palm of his hand, he just said to himself with a sad half-smile, See what a man's reduced to, asking for a hug like a love-starved child. He started the van, drove around the block, which was bigger now because of the new extension to the Center, Soon no one will even remember what used to be here, he thought. Fifteen minutes later, he was driving down the ramp into the basement, feeling as strange as if he were returning to the place after a long absence, even though he could see no changes that could objectively justify that feeling of strangeness. After telling the guard that he had come to get some information and not in order to unload, he parked the van at the side. There was already a long line of trucks waiting, and some of the trucks were enormous. It would be another two hours before the reception desk for merchandise opened. Cipriano Algor settled back in his seat and tried to sleep. His last glance through the kiln peephole, before driving into town, had shown that the firing process had finished, now they just had to leave the kiln to cool down, unhurriedly, slowly, like someone walking at their own pace. In order to go to sleep, he started counting dolls as if he were counting sheep, he began with the jesters and counted all of them, then he moved on to the clowns and managed to count every one of them too, fifty of those, fifty of these, he wasn't interested in the spares, the ones that were there just in case any of the others were damaged, then he tried to move on to the Eskimos, but for some reason the nurses got in the way, and during the battle he had to wage to drive them off, he fell asleep. It was not the first time that he had completed his morning sleep in the basement of the Center, it was not the first time that he had been wakened by the sound of engines roaring into life, amplified and multiplied by the echo. He got down from his van and went over to the reception desk, explained who he was and that he had come to sort something out, to talk, if possible, to the boss, It's an important matter, he added. The clerk he spoke to looked at him doubtfully, it was perfectly obvious that neither the matter nor the person standing before him could possibly be important, emerging as they had from a wretched little van with the word Pottery on the side, which is why he said that the boss was busy, He's in a meet ing, he said, he would be busy all morning, what exactly did he want. The potter explained what he had to explain, and, in order to impress the clerk, he made sure to mention the telephone conversation he had had with the head of the buying department, and, in the end, the other man said, I'll just go and ask the assistant head of department. Cipriano Algor feared that this would be the wretch who had given him such a hard time before, but the assistant head of department who came out to see him was polite and attentive, and he agreed that it was an excellent idea, Yes, a very good idea indeed, it's good for you and even better for us, while you're producing the next batch of three hundred figurines and preparing for the production of the next six hundred, whether you do it in two stages, as now, or in one, we will be able to observe how the buying public responds, their reactions to the new product, their explicit and implicit responses, it will even give us time to have some questionnaires drawn up to look at two main aspects, first, the situation prior to purchase, that is, customer interest or appetite, whether there is a spontaneous, genuine desire for the product, second, the situation after use, that is the degree of pleasure obtained, the object's perceived usefulness, the sense of pride in ownership, both from the personal point of view and from the group point of view, be it family, professional or whatever, the really important thing for us is to ascertain if the use value, a fluctuating, unstable, highly subjective element, is too far below or too far above the exchange value, And when that happens, what do you do, asked Cipriano Algor simply in order to say something, and the assistant head of department replied in patronizing tones, My dear sir, surely you're not expecting me to reveal to you, here and now, the secret of the bee, But I've always understood that the secret of the bee doesn't actually exist, that it's a mystification, a false mystery, an unfinished fable, a tale that might have been but wasn't, Yes, you're quite right, the secret of the bee doesn't exist, but we know what it is. Cipriano Algor recoiled as if he had been the victim of an unexpected attack. The assistant head of department smiled and insisted politely that it was a good idea, a really excellent idea, that he would await the first delivery and then they would get back in touch. Feeling intimidated and filled with a sense of foreboding, Cipriano Algor got into his van and left the basement. The man's last words kept going around and around in his head, The secret of the bee doesn't exist, but we know what it is, we know what it is, we know what it is. He had seen the mask fall and realized that behind it lay another identical mask, and he knew that the masks beneath would also be identical to those that had fallen, it's true that the secret of the bee does not exist, but they know what it is. He could not speak of his disquiet to Marta and Marçal because they would not understand, and they would not understand because they had not been there with him, on that side of the counter, listening to the assistant head of department explaining the difference between exchange value and use value, perhaps the secret of the bee consists precisely in provoking in the customer sufficient stimuli and desires so that the use value gradually rises in their estimation, a stage followed shortly afterward by a rise in the exchange value, imposed on the buyer by the wily producer who gradually and subtly undermines the buyer's inner defenses, which are the result of his awareness of his own personality, the same defenses that once, if an unsullied once ever really existed, gave him, however precariously, at least some chance of resistance and self-control. Cipriano Algor is entirely to blame for this laborious and confused explanation, because, despite being what he is, a simple potter with no diploma in sociology and no studies in economics, he nevertheless dared, inside his rustic head, to pursue an idea, only to be forced to recognize, due to the lack of a suitable vocabulary and to a grave and evident lack of precision in the terms he had to use, that he was unable to transpose that idea into a sufficiently scientific language that would perhaps allow us, finally, to understand what he had tried to say in his own language. Cipriano Algor will always remember this moment of bafflement with life and his blundering at tempt to understand it, when, having gone one day to the buying department at the Center to ask the simplest of questions, he returned with the most complex and obscure of replies, so dark and obscure that nothing could be more natural than that he should lose himself in the labyrinth of his own brain. At least he tried. To his credit, Cipriano Algor will always be able to say that he did everything that a potter could do to try to untangle the hidden meaning behind the sibylline words spoken by the smiling assistant head of department, and although it was clear to him that he had failed, at least he had made it absolutely clear to anyone following behind that the particular road he had taken led nowhere. These are matters for people who know, thought Cipriano Algor, unable to silence his inner disquiet. And, or so say we, other people have done far less and made much more fuss about it.

The package Marçal had left with the guard at the door contained two masks, not one. Just in case the air-purifying system in one of them goes wrong, said the note. And again that plea, Please look after Marta for me. It was almost lunchtime. A wasted morning, thought Cipriano Algor, remembering the molds, the clay waiting for him, the cooling kiln, the rows of dolls inside. Then, halfway down the avenue, with his back to the Center where the phrase You're our best customer, but don't tell your neighbor set out with ironic impudence the relational diagram that defined the city's unconscious complicity with the conscious deception that was manipulating and absorbing it, it occurred to Cipriano Algor that not only had the morning been wasted, but the assistant head of department's obscene phrase had done away with what remained of the reality of the world in which he had learned how to live and in which he had grown used to living, from now on everything would be little more than appearance, illusion, absence of meaning, questions with no answers. I might as well just drive the van into a wall, he thought. He wondered why he didn't do so and why he probably never would, then he listed his reasons. Although inappropriate in the context of his analysis, after all, being alive is, at least in principle, the main reason why people kill themselves, the first of Cipriano Algor's strong reasons for not doing so was the fact of being alive, this was immediately followed by his daughter Marta, and close behind, so intimately bound up with her father's life that it was as if he had thought of both simultaneously, came the pottery, the kiln and, of course, his son-in-law Marçal, who is such a good lad and really does love Marta, and Found, although it may strike many people as scandalous to say so, and, objectively speaking, it is inexplicable that even a dog can bind someone to life, and then, and then, then what, Cipriano Algor could find no other reasons, and yet he had a feeling that there was another reason, what could it be, then suddenly, with no warning, memory threw in his face the name and features of his late wife, the name and features of Justa Isasca, because, if Cipriano Algor was looking for reasons not to crash the van into a wall and if he had already found enough of them in number and substance, namely, himself, Marta, the pottery, the kiln, Marçal, the dog Found, and even the mulberry tree, which we forgot to mention earlier, it was absurd that the last of those reasons, that unexpected reason, whose existence he had queasily glimpsed like a shadow or a mirage, should be someone who was no longer of this world, it's true that she isn't just anyone, she is, after all, the woman he married and worked with, the mother of his daughter, but, even so, however much dialectical talent you add to the pot, it will be hard to sustain that the memory of a dead person can be reason enough for a living person to want to go on living. A lover of proverbs, adages, maxims, and other popular sayings, one of those rare eccentrics who imagines he knows more than he was taught, would say that there's something so fishy going on here, you can even see the fish's tail. With apologies for the inappropriate and disrespectful nature of the comparison, we would say that, in the case in question, the fish's tail is the late Justa Isasca, and that in order to find the rest of the fish, all one has to do is to grab the tail. Cipriano Algor will not do so. However, when he reaches the village, he will leave the van at the cemetery gate, for the first time since that other day, and walk over to his wife's grave. He will spend a few minutes there thinking, perhaps to say thank you, perhaps to ask, Why did you suddenly reappear, perhaps to hear someone else ask him, Why did you suddenly reappear, then he will glance up as if looking for someone. In this heat, at lunchtime, that's highly unlikely.