minister's strategy works, What strategy, Leave them to simmer, he said, but I'm afraid even that could rebound against us, Why, Because they are the ones doing the cooking, So we do nothing, Let's be serious, minister, would the government be prepared to put an end to this farcical state of siege by ordering the army and the air force in to attack the city, to wound and kill ten or twenty thousand people just to set an example, and then put three or four thousand more in prison, accused of no one quite knows what because no real crime has been committed, This isn't a civil war, all we want is to make people see reason, to show them the error into which they have fallen or were made to fall, that's what we need to do, to make them realize that the unfettered use of the blank ballot paper would make the democratic system unworkable, The results so far haven't, it would seem, been exactly brilliant, It will take time, but people will, in the end, see the light, Why, minister, I had no idea you had mystical tendencies, My dear fellow, when situations become as complicated and as desperate as this, we tend to grab hold of anything, I'm even convinced that some of my colleagues in government, if they thought it would do any good, wouldn't be averse to going on a pilgrimage to a shrine, candle in hand, to make a vow, While we're on the subject, I would appreciate you and your candle visiting a few shrines here of a rather different nature, Meaning, Can you please tell the newspapers and the television and radio people not to pour more petrol on the bonfire, if we don't act sensibly and intelligently, this whole thing could explode, you must have heard that the editor of the government newspaper was stupid enough to admit the possibility that this could all end in a bloodbath, It's not a government newspaper, If you'll allow me to say so, minister, I would have preferred to hear some other comment from you, The little man went too far, he overstepped the mark, it's what always happens when someone tries to do more than he was asked to do, Minister, Yes, What shall I do about the council refuse collectors, Let them work, that way the city council will look good in the eyes of the populace and that could prove useful to us in the future, besides, the strike was, of course, only one element in the strategy, and certainly not the most important, It wouldn't be good for the city, now or in the future, if the city council were to be used as a weapon of war against its citizens, In a situation like this, the council can't afford to remain on the sidelines, the council is, after all, part of this country and no other, But I'm not asking you to let us remain on the sidelines, all I ask is that the government doesn't put any obstacles in my way when it comes to exercising my responsibilities, that it should, at no point, give the public the impression that the city council is merely a tool, if you'll forgive the expression, of its repressive policies, firstly, because it isn't true, and secondly, because it never will be, Um, I'm afraid I don't quite understand or perhaps I understand all too well, One day, minister, although when I don't know, this city will once again be the country's capital, That's possible, but by no means certain, it depends how far they want to take their rebellion, Be that as it may, it is vital that this council, whether with me as leader or with someone else, should never be seen, however indirectly, to be an accomplice in or a co-author of a bloody repression, the government that orders such a repression will have no alternative but to take the consequences, but the council, this council, belongs to the city, the city does not belong to the council, I hope I have made myself clear, minister, You've made yourself so clear that I'm going to ask you a question, Feel free, minister, Did you cast a blank vote, Could you repeat the question, please, I didn't quite hear, I asked if you cast a blank vote, I asked if the ballot paper you put in the box was blank, Who can say, minister, who can say, When all this is over, I hope we can meet and have a long conversation, As you wish, minister, Goodbye, Goodbye, What I'd really like to do is come over there and give you a clip round the ear, Alas, I'm too old for that, minister, If you ever become interior minister, you will learn that clips round the ear and other such correctives have no age limit, Don't let the devil hear you, minister, The devil has such good hearing he doesn't need things to be spoken out loud, Well, god help us then, There's no point asking him for help either, he was born stone-deaf.
Thus ended this illuminating and prickly conversation between the interior minister and the council leader, with each having bandied about points of view, arguments and opinions which will, in all probability, have disoriented the reader, who must now doubt that the two interlocutors do in fact belong, as he or she thought, to the party on the right, the very party which, as the administrative power, is carrying out a vile policy of repression, both on a collective level, with the capital city submitted to the humiliation of a state of siege ordered by the country's own government, and on an individual level, with harsh interrogations, lie detectors, threats and, who knows, the very worst kinds of torture, although the truth impels us to say that if any such tortures were carried out, we could not bear witness to them, we were not there, not, however, that this means very much, for we were not present either at the parting of the red sea, and yet everyone swears that it happened. As for the interior minister, you must already have noticed that in the armor of the indomitable fighter, which he tries so hard to appear to be when locked in combat with the defense minister, there is a subtle fault, or to put it more colloquially, a crack big enough to poke your finger through. Were that not so, we would not have been witness to the successive failures of his plans, and the speed and facility with which the blade of his sword grows blunt, as this dialogue has just confirmed, for while he came in like lion, he went out like a lamb, if not something worse, one has only to look, for example, at the lack of respect evident in his categorical statement that god was born stone- deaf. As regards the council leader, we are, to use the words of the interior minister, pleased to note that he has seen the light, not the one the minister would like the capital's voters to see, but the light that those casters of blank votes hope that someone will begin to see. The most common occurrence in this world of ours, in these days of stumbling blindly forward, is to come across men and women mature in years and ripe in prosperity, who, at eighteen, were not just beaming beacons of style, but also, and perhaps above all, bold revolutionaries determined to bring down the system supported by their parents and to replace it, at last, with a fraternal paradise, but who are now equally firmly attached to convictions and practices which, having warmed up and flexed their muscles on any of the many available versions of moderate conservatism, become, in time, pure egotism of the most obscene and reactionary kind. Put less respectfully, these men and these women, standing before the mirror of their life, spit every day in the face of what they were with the sputum of what they are. The fact that a politician belonging to the party on the right, a man in his forties, who has spent his whole life under the parasol of a tradition cooled by the air-conditioning of the stock exchange and lulled by the steamy zephyr of the markets, should have been open to the revelation, or, indeed, manifest certainty, that there was some deeper meaning behind the gentle rebellion in the city he had been appointed to administer, is something that is both worthy of record and deserving of our gratitude, so unaccustomed have we become to such singular phenomena.
It will not have gone unnoticed, by particularly exacting readers and listeners, that the narrator of this fable has paid scant, not to say non-existent, attention to the place in which the action described, albeit in rather leisurely fashion, is taking place. Apart from the first chapter, in which there were a few careful brushstrokes applied to the area of the polling station, although, even then, these were applied only to doors, windows and tables, and with the exception of the polygraph, that machine for catching liars, everything else, which is quite a lot, has passed as if the characters in the story inhabited an entirely insubstantial world, were indifferent to the comfort or discomfort of the places in which they found themselves, and did nothing but talk. In the room in which the government of the country has, more than once, and occasionally with the presence and participation of the president, gathered to debate the situation and take the necessary measures to pacify minds and restore peace to the streets, there would doubtless be a large table around which the ministers would sit on comfortable, upholstered chairs, and on which there were bound to be bottles of mineral water and glasses to match, pencils and pens in different colors, markers, reports, books on legislation, notebooks, microphones, telephones, and all the usual paraphernalia one finds in places of this calibre. There would be ceiling lights and wall lights, there would be padded doors and curtained windows, there would be rugs on the floor, there would be paintings on the walls and perhaps an antique or modern tapestry, there would, inevitably, be a portrait of the president, a bust representing the republic and the national flag. None of this has been mentioned, nor will it be mentioned in future. Even here, in the more modest, but nonetheless spacious office of the leader of the city council, with a balcony overlooking the square and a large aerial photograph of the city hanging on the main wall, there would be ample opportunity to fill a page or two with detailed descriptions, and to make the most of that generous pause in order to take a deep breath before confronting the disasters to come. It seems to us far more important to observe the anxious lines furrowing the brow of the council leader, perhaps he is thinking that he said too much, that he gave the interior minister the impression, if not the stark certainty, that he had joined the ranks of the enemy, and that, by his imprudence, he would, perhaps irremediably, have compromised his political career inside and outside the party. The other possibility, as remote as it is unimaginable, would be that his reasoning might have given the interior minister a push in the right direction and caused him to rethink entirely the strategies and tactics with which the government hopes to put an end to the sedition. We see him shake his head, a sure sign that, having swiftly examined the possibility, he has discarded it as being foolishly ingenuous and dangerously unrealistic. He got up from the chair where he had remained seated throughout his conversation with the minister
