The Witch of Portobello Page 0,77

on a humanitarian mission. Their intentions were good apart from selling arms, of course.

I was in despair. What kind of world was this? One night, I set off into the icy forest, cursing God, who was unfair to everything and everyone. I was sitting beneath an oak tree when my protector approached me. He said I could die of cold, and I replied that I was a doctor and knew the body's limits, and that as soon as I felt I was getting near those limits, I would go back to the camp. I asked him what he was doing there.

'I'm speaking to a woman who can hear me, in a world in which all the men have gone deaf.'

I thought he meant me, but the woman he was referring to was the forest itself. When I saw this man wandering about amongst the trees, making gestures and saying things I couldn't understand, a kind of peace settled on my heart. I was not, after all, the only person in the world left talking to myself. When I got up to return to the camp, he came over to me again.

'I know who you are,' he said. 'People in the village say that you're a very decent person, always good-humoured and prepared to help others, but I see something else: rage and frustration.'

He might have been a government spy, but I decided to tell him everything I was feeling, even though I ran the risk of being arrested. We walked together to the field hospital where I was working; I took him to the dormitory, which was empty at the time (my colleagues were all having fun at the annual festival being held in the town), and I asked if he'd like a drink. He produced a bottle from his pocket.

'Palinka,' he said, meaning the traditional drink of Romania, with an incredibly high alcohol content. 'On me.'

We drank together, and I didn't even notice that I was getting steadily drunk. I only realised the state I was in when I tried to go to the toilet, tripped over something and fell flat.

'Don't move,' said the man. 'Look at what is there before your eyes.'

A line of ants.

'They all think they're very wise. They have memory, intelligence, organisational powers, a spirit of sacrifice. They look for food in summer, store it away for the winter, and now they are setting forth again, in this icy spring, to work. If the world were destroyed by an atomic bomb tomorrow, the ants would survive.'

'How do you know all this?'

'I studied biology.'

'Why the hell don't you work to improve the living conditions of your own people? What are you doing in the middle of the forest, talking to the trees?'

'In the first place, I wasn't alone; apart from the trees, you were listening to me too. But to answer your question, I left biology to work as a blacksmith.'

I struggled to my feet. My head was still spinning, but I was thinking clearly enough to understand the poor man's situation. Despite a university education, he had been unable to find work. I told him that the same thing happened in my country too.

'No, that's not what I meant. I left biology because I wanted to work as a blacksmith. Even as a child, I was fascinated by those men hammering steel, making a strange kind of music, sending out sparks all around, plunging the red-hot metal into water and creating clouds of steam. I was unhappy as a biologist, because my dream was to make rigid metal take on soft shapes. Then, one day, a protector appeared.'

'A protector?'

'Let's say that, on seeing those ants doing exactly what they're programmed to do, you were to exclaim: How fantastic! The guards are genetically prepared to sacrifice themselves for the queen, the workers carry leaves ten times their own weight, the engineers make tunnels that can resist storms and floods. They enter into mortal combat with their enemies, they suffer for the community, and they never ask: Why are we doing this? People try to imitate the perfect society of the ants, and, as a biologist, I was playing my part, until someone came along with this question: Are you happy doing what you're doing? Of course I am, I said. I'm being useful to my own people. And that's enough?

'I didn't know whether it was enough or not, but I said that he seemed to me to be both arrogant and egotistical. He replied: Possibly. But