Free The Stone Raft (Harvest Book) by José Saramago

wished him to make a statement. Three other guests were eating dinner, an elderly
couple, and at another table the usual man, sitting by himself, of whom one always says, He must be a commercial traveler.
    The conversation ceased when they heard the first news from the Pyrenees, the pig went on grunting but no one paid any attention, and, all this in an instant, the landlord got up on a chair to turn up the volume, the girl who waited on the tables stood wide-eyed, the guests carefully rested their silverware on the edge of their plates, and little wonder, on the screen they were showing a helicopter that was being filmed from another helicopter, both were entering the fearsome channel, and then they showed the towering walls, so tall that the sky was scarcely visible overhead, the merest thread of blue, Good heavens, it's enough to make you dizzy, the girl said, and the landlord snapped, Be quiet, now extremely powerful floodlights were showing the gaping hole, this is what the Greeks' notion of the entrance to hell must have looked like, but where Cerberus would have barked, a pig is grunting, mythologies aren't what they used to be. These dramatic pictures, the announcer reeled off, were taken under hazardous conditions, human lives were at risk, the voice became husky, muffled, the two helicopters transformed themselves into four, the phantoms of phantoms, Damned aerial, the landlord muttered.
    By the time sound and picture were once more stable and intelligible, the helicopters had disappeared and the announcer was reading the same old appeal, now addressed to the public at large, Anyone who may know of any strange events or inexplicable phenomena, of anything that seems suspicious, is requested to inform the nearest authorities at once. Prompted by these words addressed directly to her, the girl remembered how people had gossiped locally when a kid had been born with five legs, four black and one white, but the landlord shot back, That was months ago, you fool, kids with five legs and chicks with two heads are nothing out of the ordinary, now what's really odd is this business of the teacher's starlings, What starlings, what teacher, Joaquim Sassa asked, The local teacher, his name is José Anaiço, for some days now, wherever he goes, he is followed by a flock of starlings, as many as two hundred of them, Or more, the commercial traveler corrected him, only this morning I saw them as
I was arriving, they were circling above the school, and the racket they were making, flapping their wings and screeching, was unbelievable. At this point the elderly man interrupted, Unless I'm mistaken, we should inform the mayor about the starlings, He already knows, the landlord observed, He knows all right, but he doesn't connect the one thing with the other, he can't tell his ass from his elbow, if you'll forgive the expression, Then what should we do, Let's go and talk to him tomorrow morning, besides it would be good publicity for the region if the story were on television, it would be good for our economy, But let's keep it a secret among ourselves, not tell anyone, And that teacher, where does he live, Joaquim Sassa asked as if he were not really very interested in the answer, so the distracted landlord was not in time to prevent the girl from blurting out, He lives in the teacher's house right next to the school, there's always a lighted window even late at night, there seemed to be a note of sadness in her voice. Furious, the landlord scolded the poor girl, Shut your mouth, imbecile, you'd better go and see if the pig needs feeding, hard to imagine a more foolish command, for pigs do not eat at this hour, they are usually asleep, perhaps the landlord's angry outburst was caused by worry, for here, too, in the stables and paddocks around the countryside, the mares neigh and shake their heads, nervous, restless, and in their impatience they paw the loose gravel on the ground, tear at the straw. It must be the moon, in the