Read Online Seeing by José Saramago - Free Book Online Page A

the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and to cease to believe in the universal assertion, the old, old story, which, since the beginning of time, has been drummed into us, that the will can do anything, for you need look no further than the following example, which denies it outright, because that wonderful will of yours, however much you may trust it, however tenacious it may have been up until now, cannot control twitching muscles, cannot staunch unwanted sweat or stop eyelids blinking or regulate breathing. In the end, they'll say you lied, you'll deny it, you'll swear you told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that might be true, you didn't lie, you just happen to be a very nervous person, with a strong will, it's true, but you are nevertheless a tremulous reed that shivers in the slightest breeze, so they'll connect you up to the machine again and it will be even worse, they'll ask if you're alive and you'll say, of course I am, but your body will protest, will contradict you, the tremor in your chin will say no, you're dead, and it might be right, perhaps your body knows before you do that they are going to kill you. It would be unlikely that this could happen in the cellars of the ministry of the interior, the only crime these people have committed is to cast a blank vote, and that would have been of no importance if they had merely been the usual suspects, but there were a lot of them, too many, almost everyone, who cares if it's your inalienable right when they tell you it's to be used only in homeopathic doses, drop by drop, you can't come here with a pitcher filled to overflowing with blank votes, that's why the handle dropped off, we always thought there was something suspicious about that handle, if something that could always carry a lot was satisfied with carrying little, that shows a most praiseworthy modesty, what got you into trouble was ambition, you thought you could fly up to the sun and, instead, you fell headfirst into the dardanelles, you will recall that we said the same about the interior minister, but he belongs to a different race of men, the macho, the virile, the bristly-chinned, those who will not bow their head, let's see now how you escape the hunter of lies, let's see what revealing lines your large and small transgressions will leave on that strip of paper impregnated with potassium iodide and starch, and you thought you were something special, this is what the much-vaunted supreme dignity of the human being can be reduced to, a piece of damp paper.
    Now the polygraph is not a machine equipped with a disc that goes backward and forward and tells us, depending on the case, He lied, He didn't lie, if that were the case, being a judge with the ability to condemn and absolve would be the easiest thing in the world, police stations would be replaced by departments of applied mechanical psychology, lawyers, for lack of clientele, would pull down the shutters, the courts would be abandoned to the flies until some other use had been found for them. A polygraph, as we were saying, cannot go anywhere without help, it needs to have by its side a trained technician who can interpret the lines on the paper, but this doesn't mean that the technician must be a connoisseur of the truth, all he has to know is what is there before his eyes, that the question asked of the patient under observation has produced what we might innovatively call an allergographic reaction, or in more literary but no less imaginative terms, the outline of a lie. Something, nevertheless, would have been gained. At least it would be possible to proceed to an initial selection, wheat on the one side,
tareson the other, and restore to liberty and family life, thereby freeing up the detention centers, those people, finally vindicated, who, without being contradicted by the machine, responded No to the question Did you cast a blank vote. As for the rest, those who had the guilt of electoral transgressions