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told you we weren't there, Maybe my friend remembers hearing me sigh, you'd have to ask him, You obviously don't care much for your friend, What do you mean, Summoning your friend and getting him into all kinds of trouble, Oh, I wouldn't want that, Good, Can I go now, Certainly not, don't be in such a hurry, you still haven't answered the question we asked you, What question, What were you really thinking about when you said those words to your friend, But I've already told you, Give us another answer, that one won't do, It's the only answer I can give because it's the true one, That's what you think, Unless you want me to make one up, Yes, do, we don't mind at all if you come up with answers which, with time and patience, could be made to fit the proper application of certain techniques, that way, you'll end up saying what we want to hear, Tell me what the answer is then, and let's be done with it, Oh, no, that wouldn't be any fun at all, who do you think we are, sir, we have our scientific dignity to consider, our professional conscience to defend, it's very important to us that we should be able to demonstrate to our superiors that we deserve the money they pay us and the bread that we eat, Sorry, you've lost me, Don't be in such a hurry.
    The impressive serenity of the voters in the streets and in the polling stations was not mirrored by an identical state of mind in ministerial offices and at party headquarters. The question that most worries them all is what the abstention rate will be this time, as if therein lay the way to salvation out of the tricky social and political situation in which the country has been plunged for over a week now. A reasonably high abstention rate, or even above the maximum recorded in the previous elections, as long as it wasn't too high, would signify a return to normality, to the known routine of those voters who had never seen the point of voting and are noticeableby virtue of their persistent absence, or those others who preferred to make the most of the good weather and go and spend the day at the beach or in the country with their family, or those who, for no other reason than invincible idleness, stayed at home. If the crowds outside the polling stations, which were as large as they had been for the previous election, showed, without any room for doubt, that the percentage of abstentions was going to be extremely low, possibly non-existent, what most confused the authorities, and was nearly driving them crazy, was the fact that the voters, with very few exceptions, responded with impenetrable silence to the questions asked by the people running exit polls on how they had voted, It's just for statistical purposes, you don't have to identify yourself, you don't have to give your name, they insisted, but even that did not convince the distrustful voters. A week earlier, journalists had at least managed to get answers out of them, although it's true that these had been given in impatient or ironic or scornful tones and were really another way of saying nothing at all, but at least there had been an exchange of words, one side had asked the question and the other had pretended to give an answer, but it was nothing like this dense wall of silence, as if it were built around a mystery shared by everyone and which everyone had sworn to defend. To many people it will seem astonishing, not to say impossible, this coincidence of behavior amongst so many thousands of people who do not know each other, who do not think the same, who belong to different social classes or strata, who, in short, despite being politically to the right or in the middle or to the left, or, indeed, nowhere at all, resolved individually to keep their mouth shut until the votes were counted, thus leaving the unveiling of the secret until later. This, with great hopes of being right, was what the interior minister wanted to tell the prime minister, this was what the prime minister hastened to pass on to the president, who,