did not go in, I phoned, she said, they'll pass the message on, Let's see if they do, replied her father, and without another word, he began laying into the largest block of clay in front of him with the mallet. Marta withdrew because she knew that she should not go into a place deliberately chosen by her father in order to be alone, but also because she too had work to do, a few dozen jugs, large and small, waiting to have handles attached to them. She entered by the side door.
...
Marcal Gacho phoned back later that afternoon, after finishing his shift. He replied to his wife's comments with a few disconnected phrases, with no show of sadness, concern, or anger at the commercial lack of courtesy of which his father-in-law had been the victim. He spoke in an absent voice, a voice that seemed to be thinking about something else, he said, Yes, hm, yes, I understand, maybe, I suppose that's to be expected, I'll go as soon as I can, not always, absolutely, yes, I understand, no need to repeat it, and he finished the conversation with his only complete sentence, which bore no relation to what they had been talking about, Don't worry, I won't forget the shopping. Marta realized that her husband must have been speaking in front of witnesses, work colleagues, possibly a superior come to inspect the dormitory, which was why he had to put on an act, in order to avoid arousing any awkward or even dangerous curiosity. The organization of the Center had been conceived and set up according to a model of strict compartmentalization of its various activities and functions, which, although they were not and could not be entirely separate, were only able to communicate with each other via particular channels that were often hard to disentangle and identify. Obviously a mere second-rank security guard, both by virtue of the specific nature of his job as well as by virtue of his infinitesimal importance in the ranks of minor personnel, one being an unavoidable consequence of the other, is not, generally speaking, equipped with the necessary discernment and perspicacity to notice such subtleties and nuances, which are, in deed, almost volatile in their nature, but marcal Gacho, despite not being among the most astute of his colleagues, has in his favor a certain ferment of ambition, with, as its known goal, promotion to resident guard and, eventually, of course, to first-rank security guard, and we do not know where that ambition might lead him in the near future, still less, in the distant future, if he has one. By keeping his eyes and ears open since the day he began working at the Center he soon learned when and how it was best to speak, or not speak, or simply to dissemble. After two years of marriage, Marta thought she had a pretty thorough knowledge of the husband she had ended up with in the game of give and take which is what married life almost always comes down to, she bestows all her wifely affection on him, and were it in the interests of the story to delve more deeply into their private life, she would be quite prepared to declare vehemently that she loves him, but she is not given to selfdeception, and, were we to insist, it is even likely that she would ultimately admit that he sometimes seemed to her too prudent, not to say calculating, always assuming that we wanted to take our investigations into such negative areas of the personality. She was sure that her husband would have been annoyed by their conversation, that he would already have started worrying about the prospect of meeting the head of the buying department, and not out of an inferior's timidity or modesty, the fact is that marcal Gacho has always prided himself on his declared dislike of drawing attention to himself except in the line of duty, especially, as someone who thinks he knows him well might add, when such attention will not be to his advantage. In the end, Marta's good idea had only seemed good because, at that particular moment, as her father had said, it was the only idea available. Cipriano Algor was in the kitchen, he could not possibly have heard the isolated, disconnected fragments of conversation spoken by his son-in-law, but it was as if he had read them all, and filled in the gaps, in his daughter's weary face, when one long minute later, she emerged from the bedroom. And since it wasn't worth putting his tongue to work over such a small matter, he did not waste any time and asked simply, So, and she was the one who was forced to state the obvious, He'll talk to the head of department, although Marta needn't have bothered to say that either, a shared glance would have been enough. Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it. Supper passed in silence, as did the two hours spent in front of the indifferent television, and at some point, as has often happened in the last few months, Cipriano Algor fell asleep. He was frowning angrily, as if he were admonishing himself even as he drifted off for having given in so easily to sleep, when, in all fairness and justice, his feelings of annoyance and upset should have kept him awake day and night, the former so that he could absorb the full impact of the offense, the latter so as to make his suffering bearable. Exposed like that, disarmed, his head lolling back, his mouth half open, lost to himself, he presented a poignant image of hopeless abandon, like a bag that has broken and spilled its contents all over the road. Marta was staring fervently at her father, with passionate intensity, and she was thinking, This is my old father, the forgivable overstatement of someone still in the early dawn of adulthood, one should not refer to a man of sixty-four, albeit rather low in spirits like the man in question, as old, that might have been the custom in the days when teeth began to fall out at thirty and the first wrinkles to appear at twenty-five, but nowadays, it is only from eighty years onward that old age, authentic and unambiguous and from which there can be no return, nor even any pretense at a return, begins, de facto and unapologetically, to deserve the name by which we designate our last days. What will become of us if the Center stops buying our products, who will we make crockery for if it is the Center's tastes that determine everyone else's tastes, Marta was wondering, it wasn't the de partment head who decided to buy only half our goods, the order came down to him from above, from his superiors, from someone who cares not a jot if there is one potter more or less in the world, what happened might well be just the first step, the second step will be to stop buying altogether, we'll have to be prepared for that disaster, yes, prepared, although I'd like to know quite how one prepares oneself to be hit over the head with a hammer, and when marcal gets promoted to resident guard, what will I do with my father, I can't possibly leave him here all alone in this house with no work to do, I just couldn't do that, cruel child, the neighbors would say, or worse, I would say the same myself, things would be different if Mama was still alive, because contrary to what people say, two weaknesses don't make for a still greater weakness, but for renewed strength, well, that's probably not true and never has been, but there are occasions when it would be nice if it was, no, Pa, no, Cipriano Algor, when I leave here, you will come with me, even if I have to use force, I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him. As if someone had shaken him brusquely by the arm, or as if he sensed he was being talked about, Cipriano Algor suddenly opened his eyes and sat up properly in his chair. He rubbed his face with his hands and, with the slightly confused look of a child caught in flagrante, he muttered, I must have dropped off. Whenever he woke up from one of his brief naps in front of the television, he always said the same thing, I must have dropped off. But tonight is not like every other night, which is why he added in a murmur, It would have been far better if I hadn't woken up at all, at least while I was asleep, I was a potter with work to do, With one major difference, that any work you do while you're dreaming doesn't produce any real results, said Marta, So it's exactly the same as when you're awake, then, you work and work and work, and one day, you emerge from that dream or that nightmare only to be told that what you did was worthless, But it wasn't worthless, Pa, It feels as if it was, Today was a bad day, tomorrow we'll be able to think more calmly, and we'll see if we can find a way out of this problem they've created for us, Yes, we'll see, and yes, we'll think about it. Marta went over to her father and kissed him fondly, Go to bed, go on, and sleep well and rest that head of yours. At the door of his room, Cipriano Algor stopped and turned around, he seemed to hesitate for a moment, then said, as if trying to convince himself, Perhaps marcal will phone tomorrow, perhaps he'll have some good news for us, Who knows, Pa, who knows, said Marta, he certainly seemed very keen to help.
marcal did not phone the next day. That day, which was Wednesday, passed, Thursday and Friday passed, Saturday and Sunday passed, and only on Monday, almost a week after the incident with the shipment of crockery, did the phone ring again in Cipriano Algor's house. Despite what he had said, the potter had not gone out and about looking for buyers. He occupied the slow hours with small tasks, some of them unnecessary, like meticulously inspecting and cleaning the kiln, from top to bottom, inside and out, joint by joint, tile by tile, as if he were preparing it for the biggest firing in its history. He kneaded a lump of clay for his daughter, but he did not give the task the scrupulous attention he had lavished on the kiln, in fact, he made such a botched job of it that Marta, behind his back, had to knead it again to get rid of the lumps. He chopped firewood, swept the courtyard, and on one afternoon, during a three-hour interlude of fine, monotonous rain of the sort people used to call mizzle, he spent the whole time sitting on a log in the woodshed, sometimes staring straight ahead with the fixity of a blind
