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Tanaka Chidora Literature Today
Today, I found myself torn between two novels – “Death at Intervals” (Jose Saramago, 2005) and “Famous All Over Town” (Danny Santiago, 1983). Both happen to be top favourites of mine. I then decided that I might just as well continue with the Portuguese connection of my Latin American sojourn and pay Danny Santiago a visit next week. For those who might not be in the know, last week’s reading came from the book of Mario Vargas Llosa.

The late Jose Saramago wrote “Death at Intervals” at the age of 85! He died at the age of 87 in 2010. One of his most popular statements is: “If I had died when I was 60, I would have written nothing.” Can I have an ‘Amen’ from motivational speakers?

Saramago combines indifference with unhurried narration and narrative precision that makes it believable that death can occur at intervals, or that death can send letters to her victims to warn them of their impending departure from this world, or that death can actually get annoyed by human misunderstandings and misinterpretations of her procedures, or that death can actually start to question her own existence which she has been taking for granted all along, or that death can actually fall in love and forget to wield her infamous implement (a scythe) of termination, an implement that gives her the characteristic of a methodical and sophisticated serial killer, or that death can go on strike because she is fed up with the stratagems of killing that she has hitherto been using, or that she can fall in love with a 50-year-old cellist who makes her realise that laws are there to be broken. Phew! This is a very long sentence. But when it comes to long sentences, I got nothing on Saramago. His sentences sometimes threaten to conquer a page or two, and even eat up a day’s events without seeming to do so.

Feminists will realise that I used the feminine pronoun to refer to death. That wasn’t my idea! If I had my own way, I would have used “it”. But then, Saramago prefers to refer to death in feminine terms because “death is a woman, and a very beautiful one” for that matter. Besides, for Saramago, the meanings of words are not permanent because “one cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do”. In fact, “words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas”.

Now that we have settled the debate concerning the gender of death, let me hasten to inform you that Saramago’s death is so beautiful and so human that when the cellist wraps his arms around her, and makes love to her, she sleeps for the first time in her timeless existence so that the following day, “no one dies”.

“Death at Intervals” is a story about a fictitious country in which the New Year brings with it a phenomenon that would force humans to revise their doctrines: the New Year comes with everything that, according to the accepted laws of nature, would make people die: accidents, sicknesses, suicides, etc. But in spite of the generous presence of all these causes of death, no one dies.

As readers, we find ourselves in this fictitious country, and as the inhabitants of this fictitious country celebrate the end of death, Saramago makes us celebrate with them. He makes us love not dying. However, slowly, one very long sentence at a time, Saramago makes us see that the consequences of not dying far outweigh the consequences of dying and this makes us love dying again.

The funeral business runs out of business; the old people’s homes run out of space; the pension institutions are on the verge of becoming bankrupt; those with terminally sick but undying relatives find themselves with a very big problem to deal with … and so the moral behind dying becomes clear to us: “If we don’t start dying again, we have no future.”

When death starts sending violet-coloured letters to her would-be victims (another experiment!), something unusual happens: one letter keeps coming back to her. This makes death come out from the underworld to investigate the matter. That is when she meets the cellist and falls in love. She falls in love because she is very lonely and lives a very cold life. Her amorous and sexual union with the cellist brings warmth to her life.

What is it that Saramago is driving at in this novel? Death is the cold librarian who files our short lives, and takes them away. The cellist is an unambitious and unassertive chap whose companion is a dog. Is he death’s equal? Is he that kind of fellow who just lives his life and doesn’t get in the way of anyone, and anything? Is it possible to live such a life? Or is the cellist a demonstration of the superiority of art?

And death, why is she stunned into what Peter Crawley calls “marvelling submission to the glory of art?” Is art really that powerful? Why does death sleep? When she sleeps, does she remain death? Maybe to die is to sleep after all.

“Death at Intervals” is a philosophical inquiry into life and death. It also a very serious political satire. For instance, the continuous degeneration of politics is nonchalantly captured thus: “You might think that after all the shameful capitulations made by the government during the ups and downs of their negotiations with the maphia . . . they could sink no lower.

Alas, when one advances blindly across the boggy ground of realpolitik, when pragmatism takes up the baton and conducts the orchestra, ignoring what is written in the score, you can be pretty sure that, as the imperative logic of dishonour will show, there are still, after all, a few more steps to descend.”

When all is said and done, “Death at Intervals” is teasing us, and asking us, if our lives and our beliefs are interrupted, what will we be left with?