He decides to pretend. For a time, he says nothing to anyone. He predicts nothing. He forecasts nothing. Months fly by and people begin to complain that he is no longer making prophecies. He first uses his child as the excuse: young kids are lots of work and you can’t do anything else. Then he tries to pass off obviously inevitable events as prophecies events. On such a day in such a place the sun is going to vanish. But the ruse doesn’t work: because everyone knows that on such a day in such a place there will be an eclipse.
One morning he opens the picture windows of his house (there’s always a group of journalists below, armed with cameras and cassette recorders, ready to record his every word), and in a grandiloquent tone he says he has just had a revelation: the world will come to an end—he has seen a vision of a barren, lifeless, devastated planet. The revelation doesn’t stir even the most ardent believers in the apocalypse. “We know the world will end one day or another. Pompous assertions like this are no use to us,” writes a journalist, who had previously reproached him for his simplicity and the downbeat nature of his revelations. People gradually start to make fun of him and come out with pithy put-downs. “He’s lost it.” This happens at a time when Marta tells him he’s never been a good husband and has always been obsessed by his visions, by his petty, egocentric world as a prophet, a world that’s now evidently coming to an end. She tells him she’s reached a decision: she’s leaving him and taking their son with her. This is the last prophecy to be fulfilled. The prophet had foreseen it, but regrettably never said anything to anyone, not even Marta. If he did so now, he would still retain a minimal, threadbare credibility.
After seeing how soon people forget, oblivion takes him by surprise. He’d never have imagined, when the moment came, that he would miss people’s (should he say the public’s) warmth so much. He opens his window, and there aren’t any journalists waiting, cameras and cassette-recorders at the ready. He had wanted to lead a normal, anonymous life, but now he misses the limelight and wants to defer the dreadful moment, in whatever way possible. If only he could tell them the truth . . . That he’s had a revelation: he will never again have another revelation. It’s not a bad idea. But it’s too late now. If he’d told people when it came to him, it would have made the front pages, and he could have beat a dignified retreat. Just imagine the headlines: “His last prophecy before bidding a definitive farewell is that he will never have another revelation.” But it’s too late. To reveal that now would be an admission of failure. And to avoid admitting that he is a complete failure, to deny that he’d been one for years, he takes the plane to Berlin one day, checks in at a hotel (the Berlin Steigenberger, near the zoo), and immediately goes out for a stroll. The next day he will let it be known he has another prediction to reveal. He’s greeted with skepticism. “Wonder whether it’s going to be ‘in two years time June 23rd will fall on a Wednesday’ kind.”
Like in the old days, the prophet is back in a press conference. He says hello to a journalist who interviewed him years ago, when there were seventy-nine fatalities. He declares he’s had a revelation. The train station for the Berlin zoo is going to be blown up. Some people protest: That’s no prophecy; it happened years ago when, in fact, he didn’t foresee it. The prophet says this is a completely new revelation. They ask him when it’s going to happen and how. He replies it will happen that afternoon. The authorities react immediately. Like in the old days, they don’t doubt the veracity of what he’s said for a second and take the necessary security measures. Shortly before two o’clock, at the head of a crowd of police and journalists, the prophet enters the train station to show them where the most frightening devastation and flames occurred in his revelation. That very instant the bombs explode, one after another.
During the War
War broke out mid-morning. At half past eleven the situation was confused, and by midday the sense of uncertainty was (depending where and how one was situated) absolute; the lack of clear demarcations between the factions (and the various, often ideologically opposed groups that were behind each of these factions that were sometimes at loggerheads, thus creating new splinter groups) contributed to the confusion, as did the fact that a certain percentage of the population that had cottoned on (the war, so often anticipated sotto voce, was now a reality) didn’t know exactly what attitude to adopt. There was another percentage (overwhelmingly the majority) that acted as if nothing had happened and everything was completely normal, though their motives weren’t entirely clear; the nature of the conflict encouraged their stance: equivocal and oracular poses that meant they didn’t express themselves as exuberantly as usual. There were no troops on the streets or barricades in the avenues. No parades or harangues. Military garrisons maintained a (ostensibly ostensible) calm, concealing, it wasn’t difficult to intuit, a state of high agitation. The nervousness of military command was clear in their hastily given orders, which were imbued with an excessively heightened sense of conviction, and the wave of orders and counter-orders that was so complex it revealed their underlying insecurity. All that calm (if one could use that word), all that suspicious normality simply indicated the hostility in the air.
At midday, though summoned by nobody, simply moved by their civic instincts and anxiety, those citizens who were conscious of the situation started to head towards the square, wanting to find out what was really going on. According to some, the trigger had been a revolt (it was unclear whether it was military or civilian) in a distant province (it was unspecified and varied from mouth to mouth: it was this or that depending on the speaker), a revolt that had been seething for months. Its distance from the centers of power was one of the reasons why no untoward developments were in evidence in the capital (said those returning from there). According to others, in principle it involved a confrontation between two factions (that weren’t openly antagonistic) within the army, an army that in the past had won victories and accomplished feats that had become legendary and that, until very recently, had enjoyed a generous budget, though a degree of unease had been generated in the higher ranks that resulted from the economic restrictions they now faced, inactivity, and restrictions encouraged by the absence of bellicose conflicts of any significance, whether inside or outside the country. However, according to others, there had been a coup d’état in the capital (led by whom?), kept under wraps as much by its instigators (convinced that the most effective coup d’état was the least noticed) as by its victims, who considered that their best option, given that the coup leaders weren’t intending to glory in it, was to maintain a prudent silence, thus sparing themselves from having to admit defeat. So they acted as if nothing had happened, which meant they ensured that most of the population and diplomatic missions continued to be in the dark (or at least acted as if they were), to such an extent that if anyone decided to publicly insinuate that something was wrong, they would point to the calm on the streets to support their case. The coup’s leaders and the deposed leaders were then theoretically, and paradoxically, in accord. The fact that the pact of silence was supported equally on both sides meant that other people, who were even more devious, imagined that the coup’s leaders and the deposed leaders had planned everything down to the smallest detail, so the coup would go completely unnoticed. Given the silence, that seemed to have no apparent fissures, how could the engaged citizens properly evaluate the facts? The radio wasn’t broadcasting only classical music, as was usual in such circumstances, and the television continued with its planned schedule. At that very moment a film was coming to an end—part of the Elvis Presley cycle that had begun three weeks ago: Elvis Presley dives into the water, people applaud, Elvis swims to the cliff, climbs up, dries himself on a towel, and gets dressed. A crowd of men carries him on their shoulders back to the hotel. Everybody congratulates him; Ursula Andress says: “Bravo,” they kiss, are surrounded by a mariachi band, and Elvis breaks into song. Following the Elvis film, the program schedule continued as planned (this was particularly significant) and no reference was made to any conflict. Consequently, the engaged citizens found themselves deprived of the data that was necessary to evaluate the real situation; a lack of orientation that only increased their doubts and caused misgivings and rumors to spread like wildfire. Such a tenuous basis in fact precipitated a moment when people quickly flitted from one supposition to another, leading to a third that opened the way to a fourth, each as impossible to prove as any of the preceding ones yet accepted as readily as any accomplished fact. And had there been lots of casualties, as someone claimed? Was the situation changing drastically, as another reported? And, besides, was changing drastically in relation to which previous situation? The tensions between the engaged citizens heightened, fanned by their different perspectives and inability to prove a thing, which prevented them from reaching any decision, specific or not. In demonstrations in front of the military government building, the tension caused by this dearth of data would often seethe to a metaphorical boiling point, and the most incensed citizens had to be pulled apart from the most phlegmatic of the citizenry. There were those who even questioned whether it was necessary to take a decision. Why should they? Wasn’t it better to carry on as they were? (Obviously, with their ears to the ground. They could all agree on that.) The arguments became so acrimonious that at 2:00 p.m. it was finally decided to defer any decision till after lunch, so they could debate more calmly. Everyone went home, except for three citizens who always went out for lunch; they headed to a nearby restaurant. The situation was no less tense inside: whispering around every table, averted gazes, and dissimulation.