The Cave Read Free

shorter. When he comes to pick up his son-in-law in ten days' time, there will be no trace left of these buildings, the dust of destruction now hovering in the air will have settled, they may even have excavated the great pit in which they will dig the trenches for the foundations of the new building. Then they will erect the three walls, one of which will run parallel with the street along which Cipriano Algor will shortly have to drive, the other two will seal off on either side the land gained at the cost of the street running through it and of the demolished buildings, obliterating the facade of the building he can see now, the door for the security personnel will have to be moved, and, after a matter of days, not even the most keen-eyed observer, viewing it from the outside, still less from the inside, will be able to distinguish between new and old. The potter looked at his watch, it was still early, on the days when he drove in with his son-in-law he always had a two-hour wait before they opened the reception area he was heading for, plus all the time he would have to wait
before it was his turn, But at least I have the advantage of getting a good place in the line, I might even be first, he thought. Not that he ever had been, there were always people who got up earlier than he did, some of them had probably spent part of the night in the cabins of their trucks. They would go up onto the street when it was growing light and have a cup of coffee, a sandwich, even, on cold, damp mornings, a drop of brandy, then they would stand around talking, until about ten minutes before the doors opened, when the younger drivers, as nervous as apprentices, would rush down the ramp to take up their positions, while the older ones, especially if they were parked toward the rear of the line, would saunter back, chatting quietly, taking one last drag of their cigarette, because underground, if any engines were running, smoking was forbidden. It wasn't quite the end of the world, they judged, so there was no point in rushing.
    Cipriano Algor started up the van. He had got distracted by the buildings under demolition and now wanted to make up for lost time, a ridiculous expression if ever there was one, an absurd idiom with which we hope to disguise the harsh fact that no time once lost can ever be made up or recovered, as if we believed, contrary to this evident truth, that the time we thought forever lost might, after all, have decided to hang back and wait, with the patience of one who has all the time in the world, for us to notice its absence. Stimulated by the sense of urgency born of these thoughts about who would arrive first and who would arrive later, the potter quickly drove around the block and straight down the street that ran parallel with the other façade of the building. As invariably happened, there were already people waiting outside for the doors to be opened to the public. He pulled over into the left-hand lane, into the access road for the ramp that led down to the basement, he showed the guard his supplier's identity card and joined the line of vehicles, behind a truck loaded with boxes which, to judge by the labels on the packages, contained objects made of glass. He got out of the van to see
how many other suppliers were ahead of him and thus calculate, more or less accurately, how long he would have to wait. He was number thirteen. He counted again, no, there was no doubt about it. Although he was not a superstitious person, he knew about that number's bad reputation, in any conversation about chance, fate, or destiny, someone always chips in with some real-life experience of the negative, even fatal influence of the number thirteen. He tried to remember if he had ever been in this place in the line before, but the long and the short of it was that either it had never happened or else he had simply forgotten. He got annoyed with himself, it was nonsense, utterly absurd to worry about something that has no real