and went over to the window. He did not open it, he merely drew back the curtain a little and gazed out. The square looked as it always did, various passers-by, three people sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree, the cafe terraces and their customers, the flower-sellers, a woman and a dog, the newspaper kiosks, buses, cars, the usual scene. I need to go out, he thought. He went back to his desk and phoned his chief administrative officer, I'm going out for a while, he said, tell any councillors who are in the building, but only if they ask for me, as for the rest, I leave you in charge, Certainly, sir, I'll tell your driver to bring the car round to the front door, Yes, if you would, but tell him that I won't be needing him, I'll drive myself, Will you be coming back to the town hall today, Yes, I hope so, but I'll let you know if I decide otherwise, Very well, How are things in the city, Oh, nothing very grave to report, the news we've received has been no more serious than usual, a few traffic accidents, the occasional bottleneck, a minor fire in which no one was hurt, a failed bank robbery, How did they manage, now that there are no police, The robber was an amateur, and the gun, although it was a real one, wasn't loaded, Where have they taken him, The people who disarmed him took him to a fire station, Whatever for, they haven't any facilities for detaining prisoners, Well, they had to put him somewhere, So what happened next, Apparently, the firemen spent an hour giving him a good talking-to and then let him go, There wasn't much else they could do, I suppose, No, sir, there wasn't, Tell my secretary to let me know when the car arrives, Yes, sir. The council leader leaned back in his chair, waiting, and his brow was again deeply furrowed. Contrary to the predictions of the gloom-mongers, there had been no more robberies, rapes or murders than before. It seemed that the police were, after all, not essential for the city's security, that the population itself, spontaneously and in a more or less organized manner, had taken over their work as vigilantes. The robbery at the bank was a case in point. No, the robbery at the bank, he thought, was irrelevant, the man had obviously been very nervous and unsure of himself, a mere novice, and the bank employees had seen that they were in no danger, but tomorrow it might be different, what am I saying, tomorrow, today, right now, over the last few days crimes will have been committed in the city that will obviously go unpunished, if we have no police, if the criminals aren't arrested, if there's no investigation and no trial, if the judges go home and the courts don't work, criminality will inevitably increase, it's as if everyone were expecting the council to take over the policing of the city, they're asking for it, demanding it, protesting that without some form of security, there can be no peace of mind, and I keep wondering how, by issuing a call for volunteers, for example, by creating urban militias, surely we're not going to go out into the street dressed like gendarmes straight out of a comic opera, with uniforms rented from the theater's costume department, and what about guns, where are we going to get those, and what about using them, not just knowing how to use them, but being capable of using them, taking out a gun and firing it, can anyone imagine me, the councillors, the town hall civil servants, engaged in a rooftop pursuit of the midnight murderer, the Tuesday rapist or the white-gloved cat burglar of high-society salons. The phone rang, it was his secretary, Sir, your car is here, Thank you, he said, I'm going out now and I'm not sure yet whether I'll be back today or not, but if there are any problems, just call me on my mobile, Take care, sir, Why do you say that, Given the way things are, sir, that's the least we can wish each other, May I ask you a question, Of course, as long as I have an answer for it, If you don't want to, don't answer, What's the question, Who did you vote for, No one, sir, Do you mean you abstained, No, I mean that I cast a blank vote, Blank, Yes, sir, blank, And you're telling me just like that, You asked me the question just like that, And that gave you the confidence to reply, Just about, sir, but only just, If I understand you rightly, you also thought it could be a risk, Well, I hoped that it wouldn't be, As you see, your confidence was rewarded, Does that mean that I won't be asked to hand in my notice, No, you can sleep easy on that score, It would be far better if we didn't need to sleep in order to feel at ease, sir, Well put, Anyone could have said the same, sir, it certainly wouldn't win any literary prizes, You will have to be satisfied with my applause, then, That's reward enough, sir, So let's leave it that if you need me, you can call me on my mobile, Yes, sir, Right, then, I'll see you tomorrow, if not later on today, Yes, see you later, or tomorrow, replied the secretary.
The council leader quickly tidied up the papers scattered about his desk, most of them might have been written about another country and another century, not about this capital now, under a state of siege, abandoned by its own government, surrounded by its own army. If he tore them up, if he burned them, if he threw them in the wastepaper basket, no one would come to him demanding an explanation for what he had done, people had far more important things to think about now, the city, after all, is no longer part of the known world, it's a pot full of putrefying food and maggots, an island set adrift in a sea not its own, a dangerous source of infection, a place which, as a precautionary measure, has been quarantined until the plague becomes less virulent or until it runs out of people to kill and ends up devouring itself. He asked his secretary to bring him his raincoat, picked up his briefcase containing papers to be studied at home and went downstairs. The driver, who was waiting for him, opened the car door, They said you won't be needing me, sir, No, I won't, you can go home, See you tomorrow, then, sir, See you tomorrow. It's odd how we spend every day of our life saying goodbye, saying and hearing others say see you tomorrow when, inevitably, on one of those days, which will be someone's last, either the person we said it to will no longer be here, or we who said it will not. We will see if on today's tomorrow, what we normally refer to as the following day, when the council leader and his chauffeur meet again, they will be capable of grasping what an extraordinary, near-miraculous thing it is to have said see you tomorrow and to find that what had been no more than a problematic possibility has come to pass as if it had been a certainty. The council leader got into his car. He was going for a drive around the city, to have a look at the people on the way, not in any hurry, but stopping now and then to get out and walk for a while, listening to what was being said, in short, taking the pulse of the city, assessing the strength of the incubating fever. From his childhood reading he remembered a king in some far eastern country, he wasn't sure now whether he had been a king or an emperor, he was, more than likely, the caliph of the time, who was in the habit of disguising himself and leaving his palace to go and mingle with the ordinary people, the lower orders, and to eavesdrop on what was said about him during frank exchanges in the squares and streets. The truth is that such exchanges would not have been as frank as all that, because in those days, as ever, there would have been no shortage of spies to take note of opinions, complaints and criticisms and of any embryonic conspiracies. It is an unvarying rule for those in power that, when it comes to heads, it is best to cut them off before they start to think, afterward, it might be too late. The council leader is not the king of this besieged city, and as for the vizier of the interior, he has exiled himself to the other side of the frontier and he will, at this moment, doubtless be in some meeting with his collaborators, we will find out who and why in a while. For this reason the council leader does not need to disguise himself with a false beard and moustache, the face he is wearing is the one he usually wears, except that it looks a little more preoccupied than normal, as we have noticed before from the lines on his forehead. A few people recognize him, but few say hello. Do not assume, however, that the indifferent or the hostile are to be found only amongst those who originally cast blank votes, and who would, therefore, see him as an adversary, quite a few voters from his own party and from the party in the middle also look at him with ill-disguised suspicion, not to say with clear antipathy, What's he doing around here, they will think, what's he doing mixing with this rabble of blankers, he should be at work earning his salary, perhaps now that the majority has changed hands, he's come looking for votes, well, if he has, he hasn't got a hope in hell, there won't be any elections round here for a while, if I was the government, I know what I would do, I'd get rid of this whole council and instead appoint a decent administrative committee, who could be trusted politically. Before continuing this story, it would be as well to explain that the use of the word blanker a few lines earlier was neither accidental nor fortuitous, nor was it a slip of the fingers on the computer keyboard, and it certainly isn't a neologism that the narrator has hastily invented in order to fill a gap. The term exists, it really does, you can find it in any up-to-date dictionary, the problem, if it is a problem, lies in the fact that people are convinced that they know the meaning of the word blank and of all its derivatives, and therefore won't waste their time going back to the source to check, or else they suffer from chronic intellectual lazyitis and stay right where they are, refusing to take even one step toward making a possibly beautiful discovery. No one knows who in the city first came up with it, which inquisitive researcher or chance discoverer, but one thing is certain, the word spread rapidly and immediately took on the pejorative meaning that its very appearance seems to provoke. Although we may not previously have mentioned the fact, which is in every way deplorable, even the media, especially the state television channels, are already using the word as if it were one of the very worst of obscenities. When you see it written down, you don't notice it so much, but as soon as you hear it spoken with that angry curl of the lips and in that snide tone of voice, you would have to have the moral armor of a knight of the round table not to put a noose around your neck, don a penitent's tunic and walk along beating your chest and renouncing all your old principles and precepts, A blanker I was, a blanker no more, forgive me, my country, forgive me, my lord. The council leader, who will have nothing to forgive, since he is no one's lord and never will be, who will not even be a candidate at the next elections, has stopped watching the passers-by, he is looking now
