The Collected Novels of José Saramago

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I'm off to do men's work now, so this time you'll have to stay at home, Cipriano Algor told the dog, who had run after him when he saw him going over to the van. Obviously Found did not need to be told to get in, they just had to leave the van door open long enough for him to know that they would not immediately shoo him out again, but the real cause of his startled scamper toward the van, strange though this may seem, was that, in his doggy anxiety, he was afraid that they were about to leave him on his own. Marta, who had come out into the yard talking to her father and was walking with him to the van, was holding in her hand the envelope containing the drawings and the proposal, and although Found has no very clear idea what envelopes are or what purpose they serve, he knows from experience that people about to get into cars usually carry with them things which, generally speaking, they throw onto the back seat even before they themselves get in. In the light of these experiences, one can see why Found's memory might lead him to assume that Marta was going to accompany her father on this new trip in the van. Although Found has been here only a few days, he has no doubt that his owners' house is his house, but his incipient sense of property does not yet authorize him to look around him and say, All this is mine. Besides, a dog, whatever his size, breed, or character, would never dare to utter such grossly possessive words, he would say at most, All this is ours, and even then, reverting to the particular case of these potters and their property, movables and immovables, the dog Found, even in ten years' time, will be incapable of thinking of himself as the third owner. The most he might possibly achieve when he is a very old dog is a vague, obscure feeling of being part of something dangerously complex and, so to speak, full of slippery meanings, a whole made up of parts in which each individual is, simultaneously, both one of the parts and the whole of which he is a part. These challenging ideas, which the human brain is more or less capable of conceiving but not, without great difficulty, of explaining, are the daily bread of the various canine nations, both from the merely theoretical point of view and as regards their practical consequences. Don't go thinking, however, that the canine spirit is like a serene cloud floating by, a spring dawn full of gentle light, a lake in a garden with white swans swimming, were that the case, Found would not have suddenly started whimpering pitifully, What about me, he was saying, what about me. In response to the heartrending cries of this soul in torment, Cipriano Algor, weighed down as he was by the responsibility of the mission taking him to the Center, could find nothing better to say than, This time you'll have to stay at home, but what consoled the troubled creature was seeing Marta take two steps back once she had handed the envelope to her father, and thus Found realized that they were not, in fact, going to leave him all alone, for even though each part in itself constitutes the whole to which it belongs, as we hope we demonstrated above with a + b, two parts, when put together, make a very different total. Marta waved a weary good-bye to her father and went back into the house. The dog did not follow her at once, but waited until the van, having driven down the hill to the road, had disappeared behind the first house in the village. When, shortly afterward, he went into the kitchen, he saw his mistress sitting in the same chair where she had been working during the last few days. She kept wiping her eyes with her hands as if trying to rid them of some shadow or some pain. Doubtless because he was still green in years, Found had not yet had time to gain clear, definitive, formed opinions on the importance or meaning of tears in the human being, however, considering that these liquid humors are frequently manifest in the strange soup of sentiment, reason and cruelty of which the said human being is made, he thought it might not be such a very grave mistake to go over to his weeping mistress and gently place his head on her knees. An older dog and, always assuming that age carries with it a double load of guilt, a dog of an unnecessarily cynical turn of mind, would take a sardonic view of such an affectionate gesture, but this would only be because the emptiness of old age had caused him to forget that, in matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little. Touched, Marta slowly stroked his head and, since he did not move, but remained there staring up at her, she picked up a piece of charcoal and began sketching out on a piece of paper the first lines of a drawing. At first, her tears prevented her from seeing properly, but, gradually, as her hand grew more confident, her eyes grew clearer, and the dog's head, as if emerging from the depths of a murky pool, appeared to her in all its beauty and strength, all its mystery and probing curiosity. From this moment on, Marta will love the dog Found as much as we know Cipriano already loves him.

The potter had left behind him the village and the three isolated houses that no one now will ever raise from the rubble, he is skirting the stream choked with putrefaction and will cross the abandoned fields, past the neglected wood, he has made this journey so often that he scarcely notices the surrounding desolation, but today he has two things to worry about, both of which justify his air of absorption. One of them, of course, the commercial proposition that is taking him to the Center, requires no particular mention, but the other, and there is no way of knowing how long its effects will last, is the one that most troubles his mind, the impulse, utterly unexpected and inexplicable, to pass by the street where Isaura Estudiosa lives, to find out what has happened to the water jug, to find out if subsequent use has revealed some hidden defect, if it pours well, if it keeps the water cool. Cipriano has known the woman for some time now, indeed it is highly unlikely that there is anyone in the village whom he has not met in the course of his work, and although he had never been on what you might call friendly terms with the family, he and his daughter had gone to the cemetery to attend the funeral of the late Joaquim Estudioso, which is the family name by which Isaura, who, on marrying, had moved from a village far from there, came, as is the custom in villages, to be known. Cipriano Algor can remember giving her his condolences as he left the cemetery, in the same spot where months later they would meet again to exchange impressions and promises regarding a broken water jug. She was just another widow in the village, another woman who would wear deep mourning for six months, to be followed by another mandatory six months of half-mourning, and she was one of the fortunate ones, because there was a time when deep mourning and half-mourning, each in turn, weighed upon the female body and, who knows, upon the soul too, for a whole year of days and nights, not to mention those women who, given their age, the law of custom obliged to live swathed in black until the end of their days. Cipriano Algor was wondering if, in the long interval between those two meetings in the cemetery, he had ever spoken to Isaura Estudiosa, and the answer surprised him, I've never even seen her, and it was true, except that we should not really be so very surprised by the apparent singularity of that situation, for in matters ruled by fate, it makes no difference whether you live in a city of ten million or in a village of only a few hundred inhabitants, only what has to happen happens. At this point, Cipriano Algor's thoughts tried to divert to Marta, it seemed as if he was about to blame her again for the fantasies going round and round in his head, but what prevailed were his ever-vigilant impartiality and honesty of judgment, Don't try to hide from the facts, leave your daughter out of it, she said only the words you wanted to hear, now all that matters is finding out whether you have anything more to give Isaura Estudiosa than a water jug, and, of course, to find out if she is prepared to receive what you imagine you have to give her, always assuming that you do manage to imagine something. This soliloquy was brought up short by that, for the moment, insuperable obstacle, and this abrupt halt was immediately pounced upon by his second motive for concern, or, rather, three motives in one, the clay figurines, the Center, and the head of the buying department, What, I wonder, if anything, will come of all this, muttered the potter, a syntactically rather contorted sentence which, if looked at closely, could serve equally well to deck out, in the frivolous clothes of distracted, tacit complicity the more exciting topic of Isaura Estudiosa. Too late, we are already driving through the Agricultural Belt, or Green Belt, as it continues to be called by those who simply love to disguise harsh reality with words, this slush color that covers the ground, this endless sea of plastic where the greenhouses, all cut to the same size, look like petrified icebergs, like gigantic dominoes without the spots. Inside, there is no cold, on the contrary, the men who work there suffocate in the heat, they cook in their own sweat, they faint, they are like sodden rags wrung out by violent hands. There are many ways to describe it, but the suffering is the same. Today the van is empty, Cipriano Algor no longer belongs to the guild of sellers for the irrefutable reason that people are no longer interested in buying what he produces, now he has only half a dozen drawings on the seat beside him, which is where Marta left them, and not on the back seat as the dog Found imagined, and those drawings are this journey's sole, fragile compass, fortunately he had already left home when the person who made those drawings felt, for a few moments, that all was lost. They say that landscape is a state of mind, that we see the outer landscape with our inner eye, but is that because those extraordinary inner organs of vision are unable to see these factories and these hangars, this smoke devouring the sky, this toxic dust, this never-ending mud, these layers of soot, yesterday's rubbish swept on top of the rubbish of every other day, tomorrow's rubbish swept on top of today's rubbish, here even the most contented of souls would require only the eyes in his head to make him doubt the good fortune he imagined was his.

Beyond the Industrial Belt, on the road, on the bleak plots occupied by the shacks, lies a burned-out truck. There is no sign of the merchandise it was carrying, merely a few scattered, blackened boxes bearing no clue as to contents or origin. Either the cargo went up in flames along with the truck, or they managed to unload it before the fire took hold. The surrounding area is wet, which indicates that the fire brigade must have attended the accident, but since the truck has been completely destroyed, it would seem that they arrived too late. Parked in front are two cars belonging to the traffic police, on the other side of the street is a military personnel carrier. The potter slowed down in order to get a better look at what had happened, but the policemen, brusque, blank-faced, immediately ordered him to drive on, he just had time to ask if anyone had died, but they ignored him. Drive on, drive on, they shouted, frantically waving their arms. Just then Cipriano Algor glanced to the side and noticed soldiers moving around among the shacks. Because of the speed he was traveling at he could see no more, except that they seemed to be forcing the inhabitants out of their houses. It was clear that this time the attackers had not been satisfied with merely looting. For some unknown reason, for such a thing had never happened before, they had set fire to the truck, perhaps the driver had responded with equal violence to his attackers or perhaps the organized groups from the shantytowns had decided to change their tactics, although it is hard to see what possible advantage they could hope to gain from such violent actions, which, on the contrary, will only serve to justify the equally violent actions taken by the authorities, As far as I know, thought the potter, this is the first time that the army has gone into the shantytowns, up until now, the police have always dealt with any trouble, in fact, the shantytowns relied on them, the police would arrive, sometimes ask a few questions, sometimes not, arrest a few men, and life would go on, as if nothing had happened, and sooner or later the arrested men would reappear. The potter Cipriano Algor has forgotten all about Isaura Estudiosa, the woman to whom he had given the water jug, and about the head of the Center's buying department, the man whom he will have to convince of the aesthetic appeal of the dolls, his thoughts are focused entirely on the truck so badly damaged by the flames that not a trace of its load remains, if, that is, it was carrying one. If, if. He repeated the conjunction like someone who, having tripped over a stone, turns back in order to trip over it once more, as if by striking it again and again a spark might emerge from within, but the spark seems disinclined to appear, Cipriano Algor had already spent a good three kilometers on this thought and was on the point of giving up, Isaura Estudiosa was preparing to dispute the territory with the head of the buying department, when the spark suddenly leaped up, and illumination came, the truck had not been burned by the people in the shacks, but by the police themselves, it was just an excuse to bring in the army, I'll bet my boots that's what happened, muttered the potter, and then he felt very tired, not from the mental effort, but because he had suddenly seen what the world was like, how there are many lies and no truths, well, there must be some out there, but they are continually changing, and not only does a possible truth give us insufficient time to consider its merits, we also have to check first that this possible truth is not, in fact, a probable lie. Cipriano Algor glanced at his watch, but if he was hoping to find out what time it was, this gesture was of little help, because since it had been made as an immediate consequence of the debate between the probability of lies and the possibility of truths, it was as if he had been hoping to find the answer in the position of the hands, a right angle that would mean yes, an acute angle that would place before him a prudent perhaps, an obtuse angle telling him roundly no, a straight line saying that it would be best not to think about it any more. When he glanced back at the face of the watch moments later, the hands were indicating only hours, minutes, and seconds, they had reverted to being the real, functional, obedient hands of a watch, I'm on time, he said, and it was true, he was on time, after all, we are always on time, behind time, in time, but never out of time, however often we are told that we are. He had reached the city now and was heading along the avenue that would lead him to his destination, ahead of him, traveling faster than the van, ran his thoughts, head of the buying department, head of department, head of buying, Isaura Estudiosa, poor thing, had been left behind. At the end of the avenue, on the towering gray wall blocking the road he could see an enormous white, rectangular poster on which these words were written in letters of a brilliant intense blue, live in security, live at the center. Underneath, in the right-hand corner, there is another short line, just four words, in black, which Cipriano Algor's myopic eyes cannot manage to decipher at this distance, and yet they deserve no less consideration than the big message, we could, if we wished, describe them as complementary, but never as merely superfluous, ask for more information was their advice. The poster appears there from time to time, repeating the same words, only the colors vary, sometimes they show images of happy families, the thirty-five-year-old husband, the thirty-three-year-old wife, an eleven-year-old son, a nine-year-old daughter, and also, but not always, a grandfather or grandmother of indefinite age, with white hair and few wrinkles, all obliged to smile and reveal their respective sets of teeth, perfect, white, gleaming. Cipriano Algor took the invitation as a bad omen, he could already hear his son-in-law announcing, for the hundredth time, that they would all go and live at the Center as soon as he got his promotion to resident guard, We'll end up on a poster like that, he thought, we've already got Marta and her husband as the couple, I would be the grandfather if they managed to persuade me, there's no grandmother, she died three years ago, and for the moment there are no grandchildren, but in their place in the photo we could put Found, a dog always looks good in advertisements featuring happy families, strange though this may seem, dealing as we are with an irrational being, it confers on the people a subtle, although instantly recognizable, touch of superior humanity. Cipriano Algor turned right into a street that runs parallel with the Center, all the time thinking, no, that would be impossible, the Center doesn't take dogs or cats, at most they take caged birds, parakeets, canaries, goldfinches, waxbills, and, no doubt, aquarium fish, especially if they are of the tropical variety with too many fins, but no cats, far less dogs, that's all we need, to leave poor Found homeless again, once was enough, just then an image slips into Cipriano Algor's thoughts, the image of Isaura Estudiosa standing next to the cemetery wall, then the image of her clutching the water jug to her breast, then her waving to him from the door, but she vanished as quickly as she had appeared, for he has arrived at the entrance to the basement where one leaves one's merchandise and where the head of the buying department checks the delivery note and the invoices and decides what to take and what not to take.

Apart from the truck being unloaded, there were only two others awaiting their turn. The potter reckoned that, logically speaking, since he had not come to deliver any goods, he would not have to take his place in the line of trucks. The matter in hand was the sole responsibility of the head of the buying department and not to be dealt with by subordinate and, on principle, cautious clerks, therefore he would simply have to go up to the counter and say why he was there. He parked the van, picked up the papers, and, with what he intended to be a firm step, but in which any averagely attentive observer would have spotted the deleterious effect of unsteady legs on the body's equilibrium, he crossed the traffic lane spattered with old and more recent oil stains and approached the reception desk, where he greeted the man on duty with a polite good afternoon and asked to speak to the department head. The clerk carried off his verbal request and returned at once, He's just coming, he said. Ten minutes passed before one of the assistant heads of department appeared, not the head of department, as requested. Cipriano Algor did not like having to tell his story to someone who, generally speaking, serves no purpose other than to act as a screen for the person who is hierarchically his superior. Fortunately, from Cipriano Algor's explanation it quickly became clear to the assistant head of department that taking the matter further would only create work for him, and that, one way or another, the decision would have to be made by the person who had been appointed for that purpose and who, for that very reason, earned what he earned. The assistant head of department, as one can easily conclude from his behavior, is a social malcontent. He cut off the potter in mid-flow, snatched up the proposal and the drawings, and went away. A few minutes later, he reemerged from the door he had gone through, beckoned to Cipriano Algor to approach, we need hardly remind you that, in such situations, legs do tend to become even unsteadier, and having shown the potter in, the assistant head of department returned to his own duties. The head of the buying department was holding the proposal in his right hand, and the drawings were lined up on his desk in front of him, like cards in a game of patience. He gestured to Cipriano Algor to sit down, a stroke of good fortune that allowed the potter to stop thinking about his legs and to launch into an exposition of his subject, Good afternoon, sir, forgive me for coming and disrupting your work like this, but my daughter and I had this idea, well, to be honest, it was more her idea than mine. The head of department interrupted him, Before you go on, Senhor Algor, it is my duty to inform you that the Center has decided not to buy any more goods from your firm, I am referring to the goods you had been supplying us with until the recent suspension, which has now become definitive and irrevocable. Cipriano Algor bowed his head, he would have to watch his words, whatever happened he could not say or do anything that would put at risk a possible deal with the dolls, which is why he merely murmured, I was expecting as much, sir, but, if you'll allow me to say so, it's very hard, after all these years as a supplier, to hear such words from you, That's life, lots of things come to an end, And lots of things begin as well, Never the same ones though. The head of department paused, fiddled with the drawings as if distracted, then said, Your son-in-law came to see me, At my request, sir, at my request, just to help me out of the quandary I was in, not knowing whether to continue production, Well, now you know, Yes, sir, I do, You must also be aware that it has always been a rule at the Center, indeed a point of honor, not to tolerate pressure or interference from third parties in our commercial activities, still less from Center employees, It wasn't pressure, sir, But it was interference, In that case, I'm sorry. Another pause. How much more of this am I going to have to listen to, thought the potter in some distress. He wouldn't have to wait long to find out, the head of department was opening a register, then leafing through it, consulting one page and then another, he added up several items on a small calculator, and at last said, We have in our warehouse, with little likelihood of getting rid of them even at sale prices, even by offering them for less than cost price, a large number of articles from your pottery, articles of all kinds which are taking up valuable space, which is why I am obliged to ask you to remove them all within two weeks maximum, I was intending to have someone telephone you tomorrow and tell you, My van's only small, so heaven knows how many trips I'll have to make, Hiring a truck for the day should solve the problem, And who am I supposed to sell my crockery to now, asked the potter in despair, That is your problem, not mine, So I am at least authorized to do business with shops in the city, Our contract is canceled, so you can do business with whomever you like, If it's worth the bother, Yes, if it's worth the bother, there's a grave crisis going on out there, although, the head of department stopped speaking, gathered the drawings together, and then went through them one by one, studying them with what seemed like genuine interest, as if he were seeing them for the first time. Cipriano Algor could not ask, Although what, he had to wait, to disguise his anxiety, after all, or indeed before all, it was the head of the buying department who decided the rules of the game, and now he is playing a very unfair game, in which the cards have all been dealt to one player and in which, if necessary, the values of the cards will vary according to the whim of the person holding them, in which case the king will be worth more than the ace and less than the queen, or the jack will be worth as much as the two, and the two worth as much as the whole royal household, although it must be said, for what it's worth, that, since there are six dolls on the table, the potter has the numerical advantage, although only just. The head of the buying department again gathered up the drawings, put them absentmindedly to one side and, after another glance at the register, finished the phrase, Although, of course, leaving aside the catastrophic situation in which the traditional market finds itself, which is highly unfavorable to goods that have failed to stand the tests of time and changing tastes, the pottery will be forbidden to sell its goods elsewhere should the Center decide to commission these new proposed products, Do I understand you to mean that we will not be able to sell the dolls to other tradesmen in the city, You understand me correctly, though incompletely, Sorry, I don't quite know what you mean, Not only will you not be allowed to sell the dolls, you will not be allowed to sell any of your other products either, even if we admit the absurd hypothesis that anyone would commission them, So as soon as you accept me back as a supplier to the Center, I will be unable to supply anyone else, Exactly, though that can hardly come as a surprise, since this has always been the rule, On the other hand, sir, in the current situation, when certain products are no longer of any interest to the Center, it would seem fair to allow the supplier the freedom to find other buyers for them, We are in the world of hard commercial facts here, Senhor Algor, any theories that do not serve to consolidate those facts are irrelevant to the Center, which is not to say that we are incapable of coming up with theories of our own, and some we have even had to release, onto the market I mean, but only those that served to ratify and, if necessary, absolve those facts when they did not quite work out as planned. Cipriano Algor told himself not to rise to the bait. Falling into the temptation of having a ding-dong argument with the head of the buying department, I say one thing, you say another, I protest, you respond, was bound to end badly, you never can tell what disastrous consequences one wrongly interpreted word might have on even the most subtle and carefully honed dialectic of persuasion, as the wise old saying has it, don't quibble with the king over pears, let him eat the ripe ones and give you the green ones. The head of the buying department looked at him with a half smile and added, I don't honestly know why I'm telling you these things, To be frank, sir, I'm rather surprised too, I'm just a simple potter, the little I have to sell hardly justifies your wasting your patience on me and honoring me with your reflections, replied Cipriano Algor, and immediately bit his tongue, for he had just decided not to throw any more wood onto the fire of a conversation that was already manifestly tense, and there he was issuing another provocation, as direct as it was inopportune. Hoping to avoid the tart response he feared, he got up and said, Forgive me for taking up so much of your time, sir, I'll leave you to study the drawings further, unless, Unless what, Unless you have already come to a decision, What decision, I don't know, sir, I can't know what you're thinking, The decision not to commission the dolls, for example, asked the head of the buying department, Yes, sir, replied the potter, looking straight at him, although mentally he was accusing himself of being both stupid and imprudent, I haven't yet come to a decision, May I ask how long you will take, because, as you know, the situation we find ourselves in, I will be quick, said the head of the buying department, interrupting him, you might even hear as early as tomorrow, Tomorrow, Yes, tomorrow, I don't want you going around saying that the Center refused to give you one last chance, Might I conclude from what you are saying that the decision will be a positive one, It might be, that's all I can tell you at the moment, Thank you, sir, You have no reason to thank me as yet, No, but I'm thanking you for the hope I carry away with me now, that is already something, Never put your trust in hope, Oh, I agree, but what else can we do, we have to hold on to something in our hour of need, Good afternoon, Senhor Algor, Good afternoon, sir. The potter had his hand on the door handle, he was about to leave, but the head of the buying department had not yet finished, Sort out a plan of withdrawal for the crockery with the assistant head of department, the one who showed you in, and remember, you have only two weeks in which to remove everything, down to the last plate, Yes, sir. That expression, plan of withdrawal, does not sit well in the mouth of a civilian, it sounds more like a military operation than a routine return of goods, and if applied to the letter and to the relative positions of the Center and the pottery, either it could result in a providential tactical retreat in order to reunite scattered forces and then, at the propitious moment, that is, when approval for the dolls is given, to launch a renewed attack, or, on the contrary, it could result in the end of everything, outright defeat, a rout, a case of every man for himself. Cipriano Algor was listening to the assistant head of department telling him, without even pausing for breath or looking at him, Every day at four o'clock, and you'll have to do the work yourself or else bring help, the staff here can't be excused not even if you pay them extra, and he wondered if it was worth having to endure this humiliation, being treated like a fool, like a nobody, and having to accept that they are absolutely right, that for the Center a few rough, glazed earthenware plates or some ridiculous dolls pretending to be nurses, Eskimos, and bearded Assyrians have no importance whatsoever, none, zero, That is what we are for them, zero. He sat down at last in the van and looked at his watch, he would still have to wait nearly an hour before picking up his son-in-law, it occurred to him to go into the Center, it's been ages since he went in through the doors intended for the general public, either to look or buy, marçal always buys anything they need because of the discounts he gets as an employee, and going into the Center just to look around is not, if you'll forgive the apparent tautology, viewed with friendly eyes, anyone caught wandering around inside empty-handed will soon become the object of special attention from the security guards, the comical situation might even arise of his own son-in-law approaching him and saying, Pa, what are you doing here if you've no intention of buying anything, and he would reply, I'm just going to the pottery section to see if they've still got anything from the Algor Pottery on display, to find out how much they charge for that jug inlaid with little bits of marble, to say Goodness, that's a lovely jug, there aren't many craftsmen nowadays who can do really well-finished work like that, the man in charge of the section, impressed by the views of such a knowledgeable expert, might recommend the urgent purchase of another hundred such jugs, the ones inlaid with bits of marble, and then we wouldn't have to take unnecessary risks with clowns, jesters, and mandarins, when we have no idea how they'll be received. Cipriano Algor did not need to say to himself, No, I won't go, for weeks now he has been saying this to his daughter and to his son-in-law, once should be enough. He was absorbed in these pointless cogitations, his head resting on the steering wheel, when the guard who kept watch on the exit came over and said, If you've done what you came to do, please leave, this isn't a garage, you know. The potter said, I know, started the engine and left without another word. The guard noted down the number of the van on a piece of paper, he didn't need to, he's seen the van often enough since he first became a guard in the basement, but the reason he made a point of writing the number down was because he did not like that curt I know, especially when addressed to a guard, guards should be treated with respect and consideration, you don't just say I know, the old man should have said Of course, sir, nice, obedient words, suitable for all occasions, but the guard is, in fact, more disconcerted than annoyed, which is why he thought that perhaps he should not have said This isn't a garage, you know, especially not in that scornful tone, as if he were the king of the world, when he wasn't even the king of the grubby basement where he spends his days. He crossed out the number and returned to his post.

Cipriano Algor looked for a quiet street where he could pass the time until he could go and pick up his son-in-law at the entrance to the security section. He parked the van on a corner from which, three large blocks away, he could see a sliver of one of the vast Center façades, the inhabited part as it happens. With the exception of the doors that open onto the outside, there are no other openings to be seen, just impenetrable stretches of wall and it is not the vast hoardings promising security that are to blame for shutting out the light or stealing the air from those who live inside. In complete contrast to those smooth façades, this side of the building is peppered with windows, hundreds and hundreds of windows, thousands of windows, all of them closed because of the air-conditioning inside. Normally, when we do not know the exact height of a building, but want to give an approximate idea of its size, we say that it has a certain number of stories, which might be two, or five, or fifteen, or twenty, or thirty, or whatever, either fewer or more, from one to infinity. The Center building is neither that small nor that big, it makes do with the forty-eight stories visible above street level and the ten floors concealed below. And now that Cipriano Algor is parked here, let us ponder some of the numbers that will give an idea of the size of the Center, let us say that the width of the smaller façades is about one hundred and fifty meters, and the larger ones slightly more than three hundred and fifty, not taking into account, of course, the proposed extension to which we referred in detail at the beginning of this story. Proceeding a little further with our calculations and taking the average height of each story to be three meters, including the thickness of the floor separating each one, that would make, including the ten subterranean stories, a total height of one hundred and seventy-four meters. If we multiply that number by the one hundred and fifty meters in width and the three hundred and fifty meters in length, we will get, allowing, of course, for errors, omissions and sheer confusion, a volume of nine million one hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic meters, give or take a centimeter, give or take a comma or two. The Center, and there is no one who does not, with astonishment, recognize this, is really big. And that, muttered Cipriano Algor to himself, is where my dear son-in-law wants me to live, behind one of those windows that can't be opened, they say it's so as not to upset the thermal stability of the air-conditioning, but the truth is quite different, people are free to commit suicide if they choose to, but not by hurling themselves one hundred meters down into the street, such despair would attract too much attention and awaken the morbid curiosity of passersby, who would immediately want to know why. Cipriano Algor has already said, not once but many times, that he will never agree to go and live in the Center, that he will never give up the pottery that belonged to his father and to his grandfather, and even Marta herself, his only daughter, who, poor thing, will have no choice but to accompany her husband when he is promoted to resident guard, had acknowledged two or three days ago with gratifying frankness that only her father could make the final decision, without being submitted to pressure from third parties, even if they tried to justify that pressure with claims of filial love, or out of that tearful pity which old people, even when they themselves reject it, seem to arouse in the souls of well-brought-up people. I will not go, I'd rather die than go, muttered the potter, aware, however, that these words, precisely because they seem so categorical, so final, might be pretending a conviction which, deep down, he did not feel, might be disguising an inner weakness, like an as yet invisible crack in the thinnest wall of a water jug. That mention of a water jug was clearly the best possible reason for Isaura Estudiosa to return to Cipriano Algor's thoughts, and that was indeed what happened, but the route taken by that thought, or reasoning, assuming any reasoning took place and it was not just an instantaneous flash, drove him to a rather embarrassing conclusion, formulated in a dreamy murmur, That way I wouldn't have to come and live in the Center. The look of annoyance that appeared on Cipriano Algor's face as soon as he had uttered these words will not allow us to turn our backs on the fact that, despite the evident pleasure he takes in thinking about Isaura Estudiosa, he can nevertheless do nothing to prevent that apparently contradictory shift in mood. There would be little point in wasting time explaining why he likes thinking about her, there are things in life which define themselves, a particular man, a particular woman, a particular word, a particular moment, that is all we would have to say for everyone to understand what we meant, but there are other things, and it might even be the same man and the same woman, the same word and the same moment, which, viewed from a different angle, in a different light, come to signify doubts and perplexities, troubling signs, a strange presentiment, and that is why Cipriano Algor's pleasure in thinking about Isaura Estudiosa suddenly faltered, it was those words that were to blame, That way I wouldn't have to come and live in the Center, which is the same as saying, If I married her, I would have someone to look after me, a further demonstration of something that does not require demonstration, in short, the things a man finds hardest to recognize and confess are his own weaknesses. Especially when those weaknesses appear at the wrong time, like a fruit attached only tenuously to the bough because it was born too late in the season. Cipriano Algor sighed, then looked at his watch. It was time to go and pick up his son-in-law at the door of the security services department.