Now that the situation is out in the open, the prophet tells a newspaper (the only daily, a sensationalist rag, that will listen) what has happened, his record of prophecies and the precedent of his father, and warns that, if the company persists in ignoring him, the 5397 flight from Barcelona to Birmingham is going to have an accident. The daily, it’s short on space, publishes the news (bottom half of the left-hand page) and calls the prophet a half-mad lunatic. When the plane crashes three days later, the disaster brings him public recognition. Opinion champions him and turns against the air company. How could they have scorned a prediction that was so clear, that would have made the accident so easy to avoid? The newspapers that hadn’t showed the slightest interest in his story before the crash now want to interview him. In every single interview, the final question is about whether he has new predictions to make. A journalist on the country’s second most important daily makes fun of the fact that people keep talking about prophecies when it is obvious they are simply visions. A prophecy is much more elevated and transcendent. The prophet emphasizes that the importance of what is being revealed to him doesn’t warrant any divisive pigeonholing. It is no less crucial if it is of worldwide or simply individual interest: it is a revelation of a future event, and this is all that matters. Indeed, perhaps his father never remembered his revelations because he persisted in trying to discern something that was universally valuable, an element of redemption.
The prophet is now so famous that when he has his next revelation (that a particular cruiser on a Christmas cruise around the islands of the Aegean is going to sink), the authorities decide to believe him. They don’t cancel the cruise, but they don’t allow any passengers on board. And when the vessel shipwrecks, it does so in the glare of television cameras that are broadcasting every moment of the ship sinking and the rescue of the crew by helicopters that were accompanying the ship expressly for that purpose. Immediately afterwards, he prophesies a new war between two countries in South America, but not even the big powers can do anything to prevent that, and war breaks out. He predicts a tsunami that will bring destruction to Chile, Hawaii, and Japan. He predicts trains will collide near Bologna and the imminent death of the king of Norway. When he foresees the eruption of a volcano near the island of Mexcala, in Lake Chapala, the authorities quickly evacuate the area and the loss of human life is nil, although nearby villages are devastated by the lava. He’s now being asked to predict everything: if such a day would be good for elections, if such a place is ideal for building a new airport, what the future holds for such and such a prime minister. He feels he is being treated like an oracle. People stop him in the street and ask him what the weather’s going to be like on the weekend or the number that’s going to win the next lottery. Time and again he has to make it clear that he knows nothing about most things, that he can only prophesy what has been revealed to him. The journalists who imagine him making predictions à la carte find this most disappointing.
When a bomb explodes in the train station for the Berlin zoo (seventy-nine fatalities), the news is on every front page and all eyes are turned on him. Why didn’t he foresee it? Once again, he has to remind people that he has no power over which events will be revealed to him and which won’t, and no way of intuiting beyond what he is shown in the revelation. Nevertheless, however often he tells people, from then on, some individuals (including the journalist who believes he is more a visionary than a prophet) reproach him for every event he doesn’t predict, particularly if it’s a catastrophe. “Perhaps we shall never know what his hidden reasons for not predicting this event were,” one article on the bombing of the Berlin station concluded, almost accusing him of conniving with the terrorists. The headline was: “A prophet when it suits.”
The prophet goes on predicting: peace between the two countries warring in South America, the murder of the Dutch prime minister, the fall of such and such an African dictatorship, the imminent creation of a definitive vaccination against the new lethal strain of hepatitis that appeared three years ago. The same trumpets are blasting, but the revelations are completely random. One day in September it’s even revealed to him which team will win La Liga. Criticisms rain down on him for being trivial and frivolous and “abusing his prestige as a prophet.” The frequency of his revelations increases. Until he can’t avoid predicting almost everything and knowing what will happen at any moment. He meets a girl, and before he’s spoken to her, he knows it is going to end badly for one reason or another. With one it’s because he can’t stand being jealous (it’s especially gruesome, because the girl’s repeated infidelities are revealed to him in all their gory detail). With another, it’s because she’s soon sick to death of so many visions. The gift of prophecy prevents him from leading a normal life. When he meets Marta he knows (the next Saturday, in an early morning revelation, with Marta by his side) that he’ll marry her, that they will have son and will separate a few months after he is born. He also knows that, before that, time will move on, they will buy a green Rover, license plate 4436 BKR, six months later their neighbor will have an accident at home, three years later they will eat Christmas dinner in Can Nofre, his sister-in-law will unexpectedly drop by the day after, and he will be bored to tears for the rest of his life.
His son is a month old. He gives him his bottle, puts him in his cot, gets into bed, and, before falling asleep, suddenly hears, like almost every morning, the sound of trumpets. They have become so routine they no longer excite him. He opens his left eye. He is so sleepy; the last thing he feels like right now is another revelation—he’d give anything to be able to ignore it and get some shut-eye. Nobody gets a decent night’s sleep when it’s bottle-time every three hours. But he can’t do anything: the bright lights are flashing before his eyes, and slowly and solemnly, a totally unexpected revelation appears: he will never have another revelation.
It leaves him cold. Better that way, he thinks. At last he will be able to relax, at last he will be the same as other people, at last he is going lead a normal life, like the rest of humanity. He falls asleep hugging his pillow but wakes up before dawn, panic-stricken. What will he do with his life from now on? Not having any more revelations is all well and good, sleeping in the early morning, or relaxing in a bar, without having a visitation from trumpet blasts or dazzling lights. He now has to face the fact that, without noticing, he has been constructing his life around this special talent of his. Without the gift of prophecy, how will he confront a world that expects him to make new prophecies every day? What will he do, if he ceases to be a prophet?