The Stone Raft (Harvest Book) Read Online Free PDF Page A

few days, back in his native Portugal, he will become a hero, be interviewed on radio and television, make statements to the press. You were the first to see it happen, Senhor Sousa, give us your impression of that terrible moment. He will repeat his story countless times, and he will always finish off his embroidered version of events with an anxious, rhetorical question, calculated to make the listener shudder as he himself shudders with delicious ecstasy. Just think, if the hole had been bigger, as they say it now is, we would have fallen in, God knows how far down, and the Galician must have been thinking more or less the same when he asked, as you may recall, Where does that water go.
    How far, that is the crucial question. The first practical step would be to examine the damage, to check the depth, and then to study, define, and put into operation the appropriate measures in order to fill in the breach, no word could be more apt, it is universal, after all, and one is tempted to believe that someone thought of it one day, or invented it, so that it could be fittingly invoked whenever the earth should crack open. The investigation, once completed, registered a depth of little more than twenty meters, of no real significance, given the resources of modern engineering in carrying out public works. From Spain and from France, from near and from afar, concrete mixers were brought in, those interesting machines that with their simultaneous movements remind one of the earth in space, of rotation, of
removal, and upon reaching the spot they poured out the concrete, torrential, measured to achieve the right effect with great quantities of rough stones and fast-setting cement. The filling-up operation was well under way when one imaginative expert suggested that they should attach some clamps, a method once used to heal human wounds, large clamps made of steel, which would secure the edges, assisting, as it were, and speeding up the process of closing the breach. The idea was approved by the bilateral commission coping with the emergency, the Spanish and French metallurgists immediately began carrying out the necessary tests, checking the alloy, the thickness and the section of the material, the relationship between the size of the spike that would be driven into the ground and the space covered, in short, technical details intended for the specialist and here mentioned somewhat superficially. The crack swallowed up the torrent of stones and gray sludge as if it were the River Irati pouring into the depths of the land, deep echoes could be heard coming from the earth, it was even speculated that there might be some gigantic hollow down below, a cavern, some kind of insatiable gorge, And if this is the case, there is no point in carrying on, you simply build a bridge over the gap, probably the easiest and most economical solution of all, and bring in the Italians, who have a great deal of experience when it comes to building viaducts. But, after God knows how many tons and cubic meters had been poured in, the sounding line registered a depth of seventeen meters, then fifteen, then twelve, the level of the concrete went on rising, the battle was won. The technicians, laborers, and policemen embraced each other, flags were waved, the television announcers, excited, read the latest bulletins and gave their own opinions, praising this titanic struggle, this collective victory, international solidarity in action, even from Portugal, that tiny country, a convoy of ten concrete mixers set out, they have a long journey ahead, more than one thousand five hundred kilometers, an extraordinary achievement, the cement they are carrying won't be necessary, but history will remember their symbolic gesture.
    When the gap had finally been filled in, the general excitement exploded into wild euphoria, as if this were another New Year's Eve,
with fireworks and the bullfight of Sâo Silvestre. The air vibrated with the horns of the motorists who had