Cipriano Algor drove swiftly through the Green Belt, not glancing even once at the fields, the monotonous sight of those vast expanses of plastic, dull by nature and made dingier by dirt, always had a depressing effect on him, so imagine how it would be today, in his current state of mind, if he were to turn his gaze on that desert. Like someone who had once lifted the blessed tunic of some altar saint in order to find out if it had legs like you and me or was supported by a pair of rough-hewn posts, it had been a long time since the potter had felt tempted to stop his van and go and see for himself if there were real plants growing beneath the coverings and panels, plants that bore fruits one could smell, touch, and bite into, with leaves, tubers, and shoots that one could cook, season, and put on a plate, or if the overwhelming melancholy of what lay outside had contaminated with incurable artificiality what was growing inside, whatever that might be. After the Green Belt, the potter turned off along a secondary road, where there were the few spindly remains of a wood, a few poorly cultivated fields, a large stream containing dark and fetid water and, around a corner, the ruins of three houses with no windows now or doors, their roofs half fallen in and the rooms inside almost devoured by the vegetation that always irrupts out of the rubble as if it had been there, just waiting for that moment, ever since the first trenches were dug for the foundations. The village began a few hundred meters beyond, it consisted of little more than the road that passed through it, the few streets that flowed into it and an irregularly shaped main square slightly to one side, where a disused well, with its water pump and its great iron wheel, stood in the shade of two tall plane trees. Cipriano Algor waved to some men who were standing there talking, but, contrary to his custom when he came back from delivering goods to the Center, he did not stop, he had no idea what he wanted to do at that moment, but he certainly didn't want to have a chat, even with people he knew. The pottery and the house where he lived with his daughter and his son-in-law were at the other end of the village, out in the country, some distance from the other buildings. When he drove into the village, Cipriano Algor had slowed down, but now he was driving even more slowly, his daughter would just be putting the finishing touches to lunch, it was about that time, What shall I do, shall I tell her now or after we've eaten, he was asking himself, Best to do it afterward, I'll leave the van by the woodshed, since I wasn't going to do any shopping today, it won't occur to her to go and see if I've brought anything back with me, that way we can eat in peace or, at least, she can eat in peace, I won't, and then I'll tell her what happened, or perhaps later on this afternoon, when we're working, it would be just as bad to find out before lunch as immediately after. The road curved around where the village ended, some way beyond the last building you could see a large mulberry tree, at least ten meters high, and that was where the pottery was. The wine has been poured and we must drink it, said Cipriano Algor with a weary smile, and thought how much better it would be if he could just vomit it up. He swung the van toward the left, up the slight slope that led to the house, and halfway up he sounded the horn three times to announce his arrival, he always did this, and his daughter would think it odd if he failed to do so today.
The house and the pottery had been built on this large plot of land, doubtless once a floor for threshing or treading, in the middle of which Cipriano Algor's potter grandfather, who bore the same name as he did, decided, on some distant day of which there remains neither record nor memory, to plant the mulberry tree. The kiln, set slightly apart from the house, had been an attempt at modernization by Cipriano Algor's father, who had also been given the same name, and had replaced another ancient, not to say archaic, kiln, which, seen from outside, looked like two cone-shaped logs placed one on top of the other, the smaller one on top, and of whose origins there was no memory either. The present-day kiln had been built on those antique foundations, the same kiln that fired the batch of crockery of which the Center took only half, and which, cold now, waits to be loaded up again. With exaggerated care Cipriano Algor parked the van beneath the wooden lean-to, between two piles of dry firewood, then he thought that he might just go and have a look at the kiln and thus gain a few minutes, but he couldn't really justify doing this, there was no real reason to do so, it was not like on other occasions when he came back from the city and the kiln was working, on those days he would go and peer inside the muffle and estimate the temperature by the color of the incandescent pots, to see if the dark red had changed to cherry red, or the cherry red to orange. He stood stock-still, as if the courage he needed had got left behind somewhere en route, but it was his daughter's voice that obliged him to move, Aren't you coming in, lunch is ready. Intrigued to know what was keeping him, Marta had appeared at the door, Come on, the food's getting cold. Cipriano Algor went in, gave his daughter a kiss and then locked himself in the bathroom, a domestic utility that had been installed when he was still an adolescent and which had long been in need of enlargement and improvement. He looked at himself in the mirror, but found no new line or wrinkle on his face, It's probably somewhere inside me, he thought, then he ran the tap, washed his hands and went out. They ate in the kitchen, sitting at a large table that had known happier days and more numerous gatherings. Now, since the death of the mother, Justa Isasca, of whom we will perhaps have little more to say in this story, but whose first name we give here, since we already know her surname, the two of them sit at one end of the table, the father at the head, Marta in the place vacated by her mother and, opposite her, Marçal, when he's home. How did your morning go, asked Marta, Oh, the usual, replied her father, bending over his plate, Marçal phoned, Oh, yes, and what did he want, He said that he'd been talking to you about us going to live at the Center when he's promoted to resident guard, Yes, we did talk about that, He was annoyed because you said yet again that you didn't think it was a good idea, Well, I've had a change of heart since then and I think it will be a good thing for both of you, And what brought about this sudden change of heart, You don't want to work in the pottery all your life, No, although I enjoy what I do, You should be with your husband, one of these days you'll have children, and three generations of clay-eaters is quite enough, And you're willing to go with us to the Center, to leave the pottery, asked Marta, Leave, no, never, that's out of the question, So you're going to do everything yourself, are you, dig the clay, knead it, work at the bench and the wheel, fire the kiln, load it, unload it, clean it, then put everything in the van and go off and sell it, may I remind you that things have been difficult enough even with the help Marçal gives us on the few days he's here, Oh, I'll find someone to help me, there are plenty of lads in the village, You know perfectly well that no one wants to be a potter any more, the ones who get fed up with the country go to the factories in the Industrial Belt, they don't leave the land in order to work with clay, Yet another reason for you to leave, You don't think I'm going to leave you alone here, do you, You can come and see me now and then, Oh, Pa, please, I'm being serious, So am I, love.