ime of year, but that is how it’s set down in history, as an incontrovertible, documented fact, supported by historians and confirmed by the novelist, who must be forgiven for taking certain liberties with names, not only because it is his right to invent, but also because he had to fill in certain gaps so that the sacred coherence of the story was not lost. It must be said that history is always selective, and discriminatory too, selecting from life only what society deems to be historical and scorning the rest, which is precisely where we might find the true explanation of facts, of things, of wretched reality itself. In truth, I say to you, it is better to be a novelist, a fiction writer, a liar. Or a mahout, despite the harebrained fantasies to which, either by birth or profession, they seem to be prone. Although fritz has no option but to be carried along by suleiman, we have to acknowledge that the edifying story we have been telling would not be the same with another mahout in charge. So far, fritz has been a vital character at every turn, be it dramatic or comic, even at the risk of cutting a ridiculous figure whenever a pinch of the ludicrous was felt to be necessary or merely tactically advisable for the narrative, putting up with humiliations without a word of protest or a flicker of emotion, careful not to let it be known that, without him, there would be no one to deliver the goods, or in this case, to take the elephant to vienna. These remarks may seem unnecessary to readers more interested in the dynamic of the text than in general expressions of supposed solidarity, but it was clear that fritz, after recent disastrous events, needed someone to place a friendly hand on his shoulder, and that is all we did, place a hand on his shoulder. When the mind wanders, when it carries us off on the wings of daydreams, we do not even notice the distances traveled, especially when the feet carrying us are not our own. Apart from the odd stray flake that has lost its way, it has pretty much stopped snowing now. The narrow path ahead of us is the famous isarco pass. Rising almost vertically on either side, the walls of the ravine seem about to crash down onto the path. Fritz’s heart contracted with fear, his bones were filled with a cold quite different from anything he had ever known before. He was alone in the midst of that terrible all-pervading threat, for the archduke’s imperative orders that the convoy should remain united and cohesive as their sole guarantee of safety, just as mountaineers rope themselves together, had been quite simply ignored. A proverb, if it can be called such, and which is as portuguese as it is indian and universal, sums up such situations elegantly and eloquently, do as I tell you, not as I do. That is precisely how the archduke had behaved, he had given an order, Stay together, but when it came to it, instead of waiting, as he should have done, for the elephant and his mahout who were following behind, especially given that he was the owner of one and the master of the other, he had, figuratively speaking, dug his spurs into his horse and legged it, straight for the far end of the dangerous pass before it was too late and darkness fell. But just imagine if the vanguard of cuirassiers had ridden into the pass and waited there for those behind them to catch up, the archduke and his archduchess, the elephant suleiman and the mahout fritz, the cart carrying the forage, and finally their fellow cuirassiers bringing up the rear, as well as all the wagons in between, laden with coffers and chests and trunks, and the multitude of servants, all fraternally gathered, waiting for the mountain to fall on them or for such an avalanche as had never before been seen to shroud them all in snow, blocking the pass until springtime. Egotism, generally held to be one of the most negative and repudiated of human characteristics, can, in certain circumstances, have its good side. Having saved our own precious skin, by fleeing the deadly mousetrap that the isarco pass had become, we also saved the skins of our traveling companions, who, when they arrived, could continue on their way unobstructed by untimely bottlenecks of traffic, the conclusion, therefore, is easy to draw, every man for himself so that all can be saved. Who would have thought it, not only is a moral act not always what it appears to be, but the more it contradicts itself the more effective it is. Faced by such crystal-clear proofs and roused by the sudden thud, a hundred yards behind them, of a mass of snow, which, while not aspiring to the name of avalanche, was more than enough to give them a real fright, fritz signaled to suleiman to get walking, now. This order seemed to suleiman rather on the conservative side. Such a perilous situation called not for a walk, but a trot or, better still, a rapid gallop that would save him from the dangers of the isarco pass. Rapid it was, as rapid as saint anthony when he used the fourth dimension to travel to lisbon and save his father from the gallows. Unfortunately, suleiman overestimated his own strength. A few meters after he had left the pass behind him, his front legs crumpled under him and he knelt down, lungs bursting. The mahout, however, was lucky. Such a fall would normally have sent him flying over the head of his unfortunate mount, with god alone knows what tragic consequences, but in suleiman’s celebrated elephantine memory there surfaced the recollection of what had happened with the village priest who tried to exorcise him, when, at the last second, at the very last moment, he, suleiman, had softened the blow he had unleashed and that would otherwise have proved fatal. The difference now was that suleiman somehow managed to use what little reserves of energy he had left to reduce the impetus of his own fall, so that his huge knees touched the ground as lightly as a snowflake. How he did this, we have no idea, and we’re not going to ask him either. Like magicians, elephants have their secrets. When forced to choose between speaking and remaining silent, an elephant always chooses silence, that is why his trunk grew so long, so that, apart from being capable of transporting tree trunks and serving as an elevator for his mahout, it has the added advantage of being a serious obstacle to any bouts of uncontrolled loquacity. Fritz carefully intimated to suleiman that it was time to make a small effort and get to his feet. He didn’t order him, he didn’t resort to any of his varied repertoire of flicks and pokes with the stick, some more aggressive than others, he merely intimated his wishes to him, which shows yet again that respect for other people’s feelings is the best way to ensure a prosperous and happy life as regards one’s relationships and affections. It’s the difference between a categorical Get up and a tentative What about trying to get up. There are even those who maintain that jesus actually used the latter phrase and not the former, which provides absolute proof that the resurrection was, ultimately, dependent on lazarus’s free will and not on the nazarene’s miraculous powers, however sublime they may have been. If lazarus came back to life it was because he was spoken to kindly, as simple as that. And it was clear that the method continues to produce good results, for suleiman, straightening first his right leg and then his left, restored fritz to the relative safety of a rather uncertain verticality, since, up until then, fritz had been entirely dependent on a few stiff hairs on the back of the elephant’s neck if he was not to be precipitated down suleiman’s trunk. Suleiman is now back on his four feet, suddenly cheered by the arrival of the forage cart which, having battled through the aforementioned mound of snow, thanks to valiant work from the two yoke of oxen, was moving at a sprightly pace toward the end of the pass and the elephant’s voracious appetite. Suleiman’s almost failing soul now received its reward for the remarkable feat of having restored life to its own prostrate body, which, in the middle of that cruel, white landscape, had looked as if it would never rise again. The table was set right there and then, and while fritz and the ox-driver were celebrating their salvation with a few swigs of brandy provided by the latter, suleiman was devouring bundle after bundle of forage with touching enthusiasm. All that was lacking was for flowers to bloom in the snow and for the little birds of spring to return to the tyrol and sing their sweet songs. But you can’t have everything. It’s quite enough that fritz and the ox-driver, putting their two intelligences together, should have found a solution to a worrying tendency among the various components of the convoy to drift apart as if they had nothing to do with each other. It was, shall we say, a bipartite solution, but doubtless a precursor to a different way of approaching problems, that is, even if the aim of the scheme is to serve one’s own interests, it’s always a good idea to know that one can count on the other party. An integrated solution, in other words. From now on, the oxen and the elephant will, at all times, travel together, the forage cart in front and the elephant behind, with the smell of the hay in his nostrils, so to speak. However logical and rational the topographical distribution of this small group may appear, and as no one would dare to deny, nothing of what has been achieved here, thanks to a genuine desire for unanimity, will apply, well, how could it, to the archduke and archduchess, whose coach has gone on ahead, indeed, it may even have reached bressanone already. If that is so, we are authorized to reveal that suleiman will enjoy a richly deserved two weeks of rest in this well-known tourist spot, in an inn called am hohen feld, which means, appropriately enough, steep land. It’s only natural that it will strike some as strange that an inn located in italian territory should have a german name, but this is easily explained when we remember that most of the guests who come here are austrians and germans who like to feel at home. For similar reasons, in the algarve, as someone will later take the trouble to point out, a praia will no longer be called a praia but a beach, a pescador a fisherman, whether he likes it or not, and, as for tourist complexes, they will no longer be called aldeias, but holiday villages, villages de vacances or ferienorte. Things will reach such a pitch that there will no longer be any lojas de modas, because these will be called, in a kind of portuguese by adoption, a boutique and, in english, inevitably, fashion shop, less inevitably, modes in french, and quite bluntly modegeschäft in german. A sapataria will become a shoe shop, and that will be that. And if a traveler were to start collecting the names of bars and nightclubs, like someone hunting for lice, by the time he had gone all around the coast to sines, he would still know hardly a word of portuguese. So despised is that language there that one could say of the algarve, in an age when the civilized are descending into barbarism, that it is the land of portuguese as she is not spoke. And bressanone is the same.