should get out more, go for a walk, What, like you, you mean, Yes, like me, Are you really interested in all that stuff out there, asked Marta, now think twice before you answer, Once is quite enough, no, it doesn't interest me in the least, I'm just pretending, To yourself, of course, You're old enough to know that there is no other way of pretending, although it might not seem like it, we are only ever pretending to ourselves, never to other people, Well, I'm pleased to hear you say that, Why, Because it confirms what I've been thinking about you with regard to Isaura Madruga, The situation has changed, Even better, If the occasion arises, I'll tell you, but, for the moment, I'm like Marcal, a closed mouth.
Cipriano Algor's auricular expedition achieved nothing, afterward, over lunch, by some kind of tacit accord, none of the three dared touch on the awkward subject of the excavations and what might have been uncovered. Father-in-law and son-in-law left at the same time, Marcal to resume his work of listening and spying, which would no doubt prove as fruitless as it had that morning for both of them, and Cipriano Algor to find out, for the first time, how to get from inside the Center to the buying department. He realized that his resident's badge, complete with photo and fingerprint, would allow him a certain ease of movement when the guard responded to his request for directions as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Keep straight on down this corridor and, when you reach the end, you just have to follow the signs, you can't miss it, he said. He was on the ground floor, at some point in the journey he would have to go down to the basement where, in happier times, although this is probably not a view shared by the nice assistant head of department, he used to go to unload his plates and his mugs. An arrow and an escalator told him where to go. I'm going down, he thought. I'm going down, I'm going down, he repeated, and then, How stupid, of course I'm going down, that's what stairs are for except when they're for going up, with stairs, those that don't go down, go up, and those that don't go up, go down. He seemed to have reached an unanswerable conclusion, of the sort for which there is no possible logical rebuttal, but suddenly, with the brilliance and instantaneity of a lightning flash, another thought crossed his mind, Go down, yes, down there. Yes, go down there. Cipriano Algor has just decided to try to join Marcal tonight when he is on guard duty, between two and six in the morning, if you remember. Good sense and prudence, which always have something to say in such situations, had already asked him how, without knowing the way, he thought he would reach such a recondite place, and he replied that while the combinations and compositions of chance are indeed many, they are not infinite, and that it is always better to take a risk and climb the fig tree in order to pick the fig than to lie down in the shade of the tree and wait for the fig to fall into your mouth. The Cipriano Algor who presented himself at the till of the buying department, having first gotten lost twice, despite the help of all those arrows and signs, was not the man we thought we knew. His hands were trembling badly, not because of the petty thrill of receiving for his work money he had not been expecting, but because the orders and directions sent by his brain, occupied now with matters of more transcendent importance, were arriving at their respective terminals in incoherent, confused, and contradictory form. When he returned to the commercial part of the Center, he seemed slightly calmer, all his agitation had disappeared inside him. Freed now from having to worry about hands, the brain was busily planning ruses, tricks, ploys, stratagems, dodges, and subterfuges, it even went so far as to consider the possibility of resorting to telekinesis to whisk the impatient body it was having such difficulty controlling from the thirty-fourth floor down to the mysterious excavations.
Although he still had long hours of waiting ahead of him, Cipriano Algor decided to go back to the apartment. He tried to give his daughter the money he had received, but she said, No, you keep it, I don't need it, and then she said, Would you like a cup of coffee, Yes, that's a good idea. The coffee was made, poured into a cup and drunk, everything indicates that, for now, there will be no further words between them, it seems, as Cipriano Algor has sometimes thought, although we failed to record these thoughts at the time, that the apartment in which they are now living has the malign gift of silencing its inhabitants. Meanwhile, Cipriano Algor's brain, now that it has had to abandon the idea of telekinesis, lacking as it does the necessary training, has a burning need for a particular bit of information without which his plan for a nighttime raid will, to put it bluntly, go down the tubes. That is why he throws out the question, while apparently distractedly stirring the little coffee that remains in the bottom of his cup, Do you happen to know how far down the excavation is, Why do you want to know, Just curious, that's all, Marcal never said. Cipriano Algor concealed his frustration as best he could and said he was going to have a nap. He spent all afternoon in his room and only came out when his daughter called him for supper, Marcal was already sitting at the table. As had happened at lunch, no one mentioned the excavation until after supper, and it was only when Marta said to her husband, You should try to rest until it's time for you to go down there, otherwise you won't get any sleep at all, and he said, It's too early, I'm not sleepy, that Cipriano Algor, grabbing this unexpected opportunity, repeated his question, How far down is the excavation, Why do you want to know, Just to get an idea, out of curiosity really. Marcal hesitated before replying, but it seemed to him that the information did not fall into the strictly confidential category, Access is from floor zero five, he said at last, Oh, I thought the diggers had been working deeper down than that, It's still fifteen or twenty meters below ground, said Marcal, Yes, you're right, that is pretty deep. They did not mention the subject again. Marcal did not appear annoyed by the brief conversation, on the contrary, one might almost say that he was somewhat relieved to have been able to speak a little about the matter that was clearly preoccupying him, but without touching on any dangerous or secret matters. Marcal is no more fearful than the average person, but he is not at all looking forward to the prospect of spending four hours down in a hole, in utter silence, knowing what lies behind him. We weren't trained for these situations, one of his colleagues had said to him, let's hope those specialists the captain talked about arrive soon, so that we don't have to do this any more, Were you afraid, asked Marcal, Well, no, I don't know that I was afraid, but I warn you now that you're going to feel all the time as if someone behind you was about to put their hand on your shoulder, Worse things could happen, That depends on the hand, to be honest, I spent the whole four hours fighting off a desperate urge to run away, to escape, to get out of there, Forewarned is forearmed, at least I know what to expect, No, you don't, you just think you do, and you're wrong, his colleague said. Now it is half past one in the morning, Marcal is saying good-bye to Marta with a kiss, she says, Don't hang around when you come off duty, No, I'll come straight back and I promise that tomorrow I'll tell you everything. Marta went with him to the door, they kissed again, then she came back in, tidied up a few things and returned to bed. She wasn't sleepy. She told herself that there was nothing to worry about, that other guards had already been on duty down there and survived, how often the most trifling of incidents have formed the bases for terrible mysteries, as if they were some hydra-headed monster, and yet, when looked at closely, they were just smoke, air, illusion, the desire to believe in the unbelievable. The minutes passed and sleep was still a long way off, Marta had just said to herself that she might as well turn on the light and read a book when she thought she heard her father's bedroom door opening. Since he was not in the habit of getting up during the night, she listened carefully, he probably needed to go to the bathroom, but the footsteps she heard shortly afterward, cautious but audible, were in the small entrance hall. Perhaps he's going to the kitchen to get a drink of water, she thought. At the unmistakable sound of the door latch, however, she sprang to her feet. She pulled on her dressing gown and left her room. Her father had his hand on the door handle. Where are you off to at this hour, Marta asked, Oh, just out, said Cipriano Algor, You can go where you like, I mean, you're old enough to do as you please, but you can't just go off without a word, as if there was no one else living here, Look, I can't hang around here wasting time, Why, are you afraid you might get there after six, asked Marta, If you already know where I'm going then you don't need any explanations, You should at least consider the problems you might be creating for your son-in-law, As you yourself said, I'm old enough to do as I please, and Marcal can't be held responsible for my actions, His bosses may think otherwise, No one will see me, and if someone does order me away, I'll just tell them that I walk in my sleep, This is no time for jokes, All right, I'll be serious, And I should think so, Something is going on down there that I need to know about, Whatever it is can't stay a secret forever, and Marcal said that he'd tell us all about it when he finishes his shift, That's fine, but a description isn't enough for me, I want to see it with my own eyes, In that case, just go then and don't torture me any more, said Marta, crying. Her father went over to her, put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug, Please, don't cry, he said, do you know what the worst thing is, the fact that we haven't been the same since we moved here. He gave her a kiss, then left, slowly clos ing the door behind him. Marta went to get a blanket and a book, sat down on one of the small sofas in the living room and covered her knees. She did not know how long she would have to wait.
Cipriano Algor's plan could not have been simpler. He would go down in a service elevator as far as floor zero five and then abandon himself to fate and to chance. Battles have been won with fewer weapons, he thought. Then, in order to be totally impartial, he added, and many more have been lost. He had noticed that the service elevators, probably because they were intended exclusively for transporting materials, were not fitted with closed-circuit cameras, at least none that he could see, and if there were any of those tiny camouflaged ones, the guards on duty would probably be concentrating their attention on the outer doors and on the floors containing the shops and the
