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
