The Lives of Things Page 2

  It would be something of an exaggeration, however, to assert that man’s entire destiny is to be found inscribed in the oral chewing apparatus of the coleoptera. Were this so, we should all be living in houses made of glass and iron, and therefore be protected against Anobium, but not completely protected, because for some reason or other there is this mysterious illness which we potential victims of cancer refer to as glass cancer, and this all too common rust which, and solve who can these other mysteries, does not attack ironwood, yet literally destroys anything made simply of iron. Not only are we humans fragile, but we are even obliged to assist our own death. Perhaps it is a question of personal honour: not to be so helpless and submissive, to give something of ourselves, otherwise what is the point of being in this world? The blade of the guillotine cuts, but who offers his neck? The condemned man. The rifle-shot hits its target, but who bares his chest? The man who gets shot. Death has this strange beauty of being as lucid as a mathematical demonstration, as straightforward as drawing a line between two points, so long as it does not exceed the length of the ruler. Tom Mix fires his two pistols, but there has to be enough gunpowder pressed into the cartridges to ensure sufficient power for the bullet to cover the distance in its slightly curved trajectory (no need for a rule here), and once having met the requirements of ballistics, it has to pierce the man’s cloth collar at a good height, then his shirt, which might be made of flannel, then the woollen vest that keeps him warm in winter and absorbs his sweat in summer, and finally his soft, elastic skin which initially yields, supposing, if skin supposes rather than simply suppurates, that the force of the missile will stop there and the bullets fall to the ground, into the dust on the road, and let the criminal off the hook until the next time. However, things turned out otherwise. Buck Jones is already holding Mary in his arms and the word END is coming from his mouth and about to fill the screen. Time for the spectators to rise slowly from their seats and proceed up the aisle in the direction of the harsh light coming from the exit, for they have been to the matinée, struggling to return to this humdrum reality, feeling a little sad, a little courageous, and so indifferent to the life awaiting them in the shooting gallery, that some even remain seated for the second session: once upon a time.

  And now this old man is seated, having come out of one room and crossed another, then going along a passageway which could be the aisle of a cinema, but it is not, it is part of the house, not necessarily his, but simply the house in which he lives or is living, therefore not all of it is his, but in his care. The chair still has not fallen. It is condemned like a prostrate man who has not quite reached the limits of exhaustion: he can still bear his own weight. Looking at the chair from a distance, it does not appear to have been transformed by Anobium, cowboy and miner, in Arizona and Jales, in a labyrinthine network of galleries likely to make anyone lose their mind. The old man sees the chair from afar and as he gets closer, he sees, if in fact he can see the chair, that notwithstanding the thousands of times he has sat in it, he has never looked closely, and that is his mistake, now as before, never to pay attention to the chairs in which he sits because he assumes they are all capable of what only he is capable. St George would have seen the dragon there, but this old fellow is a false devotee in a skull-cap who made common cause with the cardinal patriarchs, and united, he and they, in hoc signo vinces. Even as he reaches the chair with a smile of innocent satisfaction, he fails to see it or notice how effectively Anobium is destroying the remaining fibres in the last gallery and is tightening the holster belt around his hips. The old man thinks he will perhaps rest for half an hour, that he might even doze a little in this pleasant autumnal weather, and that he most certainly will not have the patience to read the papers he is holding in his hand. No cause for surprise. This is not a horror film; splendid comic films have exploited and will continue to exploit similar falls, we all remember the slapstick scenes played by Chaplin or by Pat and Patachon, and there are sweets for those who can give me the titles. But let us not be hasty even though we know the chair is about to break: but not just yet, first the man has to sit down slowly, we old men are usually unsteady on our feet, we have to rest our hands or grip with force the arms or wings of the chair, to prevent our wrinkled buttocks and the seat of our pants from suddenly collapsing into the chair which has had to put up with everything, and we need not elaborate, for we are all human and know these things. We are talking about his intestines, let it be said, because this old man has many different reasons which have caused him to doubt his humanity for some considerable time. Meanwhile, he is seated like a man.

  So far he has not leaned back. His weight, give or take a gramme, is equally distributed on the seat of the chair. Unless he moves, he might well sit there safely until sunset when Anobium normally recovers his strength and starts gnawing again with renewed vigour. But he is about to move, he has moved, reclining for no more than a second against the weaker side of the chair. And it breaks. First there was a crack, then when the old man shifted his weight, the leg of the chair snapped and daylight suddenly penetrated Buck Jones’s gallery and lit up the target. Because of the difference between the speed of light and sounds, between the hare and the tortoise, the explosion is only heard later, dull and muffled, like the thud of a body dropping to the ground. Let us bide our time. There is no longer anyone in the parlour or bedroom, on the veranda or terrace; and while the sound of the fall goes unheard, we are the masters of this show, and we can even practise that degree of sadism, in however passive a form, which we are fortunate enough to share with the doctor or the madman, in the person who only sees and ignores or, from the outset, rejects any obligation even if only humanitarian to render any help. Certainly not to this old man.

  He is about to fall backwards. There he goes. Here, right in front of him, the chosen spot, we observe that he has a long face and an aquiline nose, sharp as a hook cum knife, and were it not for the fact that he has suddenly opened his mouth, we would be entitled, like any eye-witness who can say I saw him with my own eyes, to swear that he has no lips. But his mouth has opened, opens in surprise, alarm and bewilderment, making it possible to perceive, however indistinctly, two folds of flesh as colourless as larvae, which only because of the difference in dermal texture are not to be confused with the surrounding pallor. His double chin trembles over the larynx and other cartilages, and his whole body accompanies the chair backwards, while on the floor the broken leg has rolled over to one side, not far away, because we are there to look on. It has scattered a dense, yellow dust, not all that much, but enough for us to delight in the image of an hour-glass with sand that consists eschatologically of the excrement of coleoptera: which goes to show just how absurd it would be to put Buck Jones and his horse White-face here, that is assuming that Buck changed horses at the last hostelry and is now riding Fred’s horse. But let us forget this dust which is not even sulphur, and would greatly enhance the scene if it were, burning with a bluish flame and giving off the foul stench of sulphuric acid. Such a sonorous phrase! And what an excellent way of conjuring up hell in all its horror, as Beelzebub’s chair breaks and falls backwards, taking with it Satan, Asmodeus and his legion.

  The old man is no longer gripping the arms of the chair, his knees have suddenly stopped trembling and are now obeying the other law, and his feet which were always clad in boots to disguise the fact that they were cloven (no one read with sufficient haste or attention, it is all there, the goat’s cloven hoof), his feet are already in the air. We shall watch this impressive gymnastic feat, the back somersault, the latter much more spectacular, despite the absence of an audience, than those others seen in stadiums and arenas, from some lofty tribune, at a time when chairs were still solid and Anobium an improbable hypothesis of labour. And there is no one to fix this moment. My kingdom for a polaroid, shouted Richard III, and no one paid any heed, for his request was much too premature. The nothing we possess in exchange for this everything of showing a photograph of our children
, our membership card and a faithful image of the fall. Ah, those feet in the air, ever further from the ground, ah, that head ever closer, ah, Santa Comba, not the saint of the afflicted, but rather the patron saint of that which ever afflicted them. The daughters of Mondego do not as yet lament obscure death. This fall is not any old Chaplin stunt, it is impossible to repeat, it is unique and, therefore, as excellent as when Adam’s accomplishments were linked with the graces of Eve. And speaking of Eve, domestic and servile, and demanding whenever necessary, benefactress of the unemployed if they are frugal, honest and catholic, such martyrdom, soaring and souring power in the shadow of this Adam who falls without apple or serpent, where are you? You have spent far too much time in the kitchen, or on the telephone listening to the Daughters of Mary or the Handmaidens of the Sacred Heart, or the Children of St Zita, you are wasting far too much water on those potted begonias, much too easily distracted, a queen bee who never comes when summoned, and if you were to come to whom would you render assistance? It is late. The saints have turned away, they whistle, pretend not to notice, for they know very well that there are no miracles, there never have been, and that whenever something extraordinary happened in the world, it was their good fortune to be present and to take advantage. Not even St Joseph, who in his time was a carpenter, and a better carpenter than a saint, could have glued that wooden leg in time to avoid its collapse, before this latest Portuguese champion gymnast made a somersault, and domestic Eve who looks after the house is even now sorting out the bottles of pills and drops the old man must take, one at a time, before, during and after his next meal.

  The old man notices the ceiling. He merely notices it but has no time to look. He moves his arms and legs like an upturned turtle with its belly in the air, before looking more like a seminarian in boots masturbating at home during the holidays while his parents are out harvesting. Just this and nothing more. Simple earth, sweet and rough for one to tread and then say that it is nothing but stones, that we are born poor and fortunately we shall die poor, and that is why we are in God’s grace. Fall, old man, fall. See how your feet are higher than your head. Before making your somersault, Olympic medallist, you will reach the zenith that boy on the beach failed to reach for he tried and fell, with only one arm because he had left the other behind in Africa. Fall. But not too quickly: there is still plenty of sunshine in the sky. We spectators can actually go up to a window and look out at our leisure, and from there have a grand view of towns and villages, of rivers and plains, of hills and dales, and tell scheming Satan that this is the world we want, for there is no harm in wanting what is rightfully ours. With startled eyes we go back inside and it is as if you were not there: we have brought too much sunshine into the room and we must wait until it gets used to the place or goes back outside. You are now much closer to the ground. The good leg and damaged leg of the chair have already slid forward, all sense of balance gone. The real fall is clearly imminent, the surrounding atmosphere has become distorted, objects cower in terror, they are under attack, their whole body twisting and twitching, like a cat with rheumatism, therefore incapable of giving that last spin in the air that would bring salvation, its four paws on the ground and the quiet thud of an all too live animal. It is obvious just how badly this chair was placed, unaware of Anobium’s presence and the damage he was doing inside: worse, in fact, or just as bad as that edge, tip or corner of a piece of furniture extending its clenched fist to some point in space, for the time being still free, still unperturbed and innocent, where the curve of the circle formed by the old man’s head is about to be interrupted and stand out, change direction for a second and then fall once more, downwards, to the bottom, inexorably drawn by that sprite at the centre of the universe who has billions of tiny strings in his hand, which he pulls up and down, like a puppeteer here on earth, until one last tug removes us from the stage. That moment has still not come for the old man, but he is already falling in order to fall again for the last time. And now that there is space, what space remains between the corner of the piece of furniture, the clenched fist, the lance in Africa, and the more fragile side of the head, the predestined bone? If we measure it we will be shocked at the tiny amount of space there is to cover, look, not even enough space for a finger, much less a fingernail, a shaving-blade, a hair, a simple thread spun by a silkworm or spider. There is still some time left, but soon there will be no more space. The spider has just expelled its last filament, is putting the finishing touch to its cocoon, the fly already trapped.

  This sound is curious. Clear, somehow clear, so as not to leave those of us present in any doubt, yet muffled, dull, discreet, so that domesticated Eve and the Cains of this world do not arrive too soon, so that everything may take place between what is alone and solitary as befits such greatness. His head, as foreseen and in accordance with the laws of physics, hit the ground before bouncing a little, let me say about two centimetres up and to one side; now that we are at the scene and have taken other measurements. From now on the chair no longer matters. Not even the rest of the fall is of any further consequence for it is now irrelevant. Buck Jones’s plan included, as we have already mentioned, a trajectory, it had a goal in mind. There it is.

  Whatever may happen now is on the inside. First let it be said, however, that the body fell again, and the accompanying chair, of which no more will be said or only in passing. It is indifferent to the fact that the speed of sound should suddenly equal the speed of light. What had to be, happened. Eve might frantically rush to help, muttering prayers as one does on these occasions, or perhaps not on this occasion, if it is true that catastrophes leave their victims speechless, although they can still scream. Which explains why domesticated Eve, such martyrdom, kneels and asks questions now that the catastrophe is over and all that remains are the consequences. It will not be long before the Cains appear from everywhere if it is not unfair to call them by the name of the wretched fellow on whom the Lord turned his back, thereby taking human revenge on an obsequious and scheming brother. Nor shall we call them vultures, even though they move like this, or don’t, or do: much more accurate under the dual heading of morphology and characterology, to include them in the chapter of hyenas, and this is a great discovery. With the important exception that hyenas, just like vultures, are useful animals who clear dead flesh from the landscapes of the living, and for this we should be grateful to them, while they continue to be the hyena and its own dead flesh, and this, in the final analysis, is the great discovery we mentioned earlier. The perpetuum mobile, contrary to what amateur inventors and enlightened wonder-workers of carpentry ingenuously imagine, is not mechanical. Rather it is biological, it is this hyena feeding on its dead and putrefied body, thereby constantly reconstituting itself in death and putrefaction. To interrupt the cycle, not everything would suffice, yet the slightest thing would be ample. At times, were Buck Jones not away on the other side of the mountain in pursuit of some simple and honest cattle-rustlers, a chair would serve, both as a fulcrum to lever the earth, as Archimedes said to Heron of Syracuse, and to burst the blood vessels which the bones of the cranium judged they were protecting, and judged is used here literally, for it seemed unlikely that bones so near to the brain could be incapable of carrying out, by means of osmosis or symbiosis, a mental operation as simple as passing judgment. And even so, should this cycle be interrupted, we must pay attention to what might graft itself on at the moment of rupture, for it could turn out to be, not through grafting this time, another hyena emerging from that festering flank, like Mercury from Jupiter’s thigh, if I might be permitted this comparison with ancient mythology. But that is another story which has probably been told before.

  Domesticated Eve ran from this place, calling out and uttering words not worth repeating, so similar as to make little difference, although scarcely mediaeval, to those spoken by Leonor Teles when they murdered Andeiro, and, besides, she was a queen. This old man is not dead. He has simply fainted, and we can sit cross-legged on the f
loor at our ease, for a second is a century, and before the doctors and stretcher-bearers and hyenas in striped trousers arrive weeping their eyes out, an eternity will have passed. Let us take a closer look. Deathly pale, but not cold. His heart is beating, his pulse steady, the old man appears to be asleep, and I’ll be damned if this has not been one great blunder, a monstrous ruse to separate good from evil, wheat from the chaff, friends from foes, those in favour from those who are opposed, given the part played by that raffish and disreputable trouble-maker Buck Jones in this whole business about the chair.

  Now then, you Portuguese, calm down and listen patiently. As you know, the skull consists of the bones enclosing the brain, which in its turn, as we can see from this anatomical chart in natural colours, is nothing less than the upper part of the spinal cord. Compressed all the way down the back, it found a space there and opened out like a flower of intelligence. Note that the comparison is neither gratuitous nor disparaging. There is an enormous variety of flowers, and we need only remember, or let each of us remember the one we like best, and in the last resort, for example, the one we dislike most, a carnivorous flower, de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum, assuming we share this horror of anything that denatures itself, although in keeping with that basic rigour demanded of those who teach and learn, we ought to question the justice of this accusation, and although, once more so that nothing is overlooked, we should ask ourselves what right a plant has got to nourish itself twice, first on the soil and then on whatever is flying through the air in the multiple form of insects, or even birds. Let us note in passing how easy it is to suspend judgement, to receive information from all sides, accept them at face value, and remain neutral on the grounds that we are an undivided spirit, and offer daily sacrifice at the altar of prudence, our best fornication. We were not neutral, however, as we watched that fall in slow motion. And a degree of prudence has to be sacrificed if we are to accompany, with due attention, the movement of the pointer passing over this incision in the brain.