The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  A taxi carried him to the house of the unknown woman's parents. He rang the bell, it was answered by a woman who looked about sixty or so, younger than the woman in the ground-floor apartment, with whom her husband had deceived her thirty years before, I'm the person who phoned from the Central Registry, said Senhor José, Come in, we were expecting you, I'm sorry I couldn't come at once, but I had to handle another very urgent matter, That's all right, come this way. The house had a sombre air, there were curtains covering the windows and the doors, the furniture was heavy, the walls were hung with ominous paintings of landscapes that had probably never existed. The lady of the house ushered Senhor José into what appeared to be a study, where a man, quite a bit older than she, was waiting, It's the gentleman from the Central Registry, said the woman, Sit down, said the man, pointing to a chair. Senhor José took the letter from his pocket, holding it in his hand as he said, I'm terribly sorry to bother you at this sad time, but that's what my job demands, this document will tell you the exact nature of my mission. He handed the piece of paper to the man, who read it, holding it very close to his eyes, saying when he had done so, Your mission must be extremely important to justify a document written in these terms, It's the usual Central Registry style, even when it's a simple thing like this, an investigation into the causes of a suicide, That's hardly unimportant, No, don't misunderstand me, what I meant was that whatever mission they charge us with and for which a letter of authority is deemed necessary, it's always written in the same style, The rhetoric of authority, You could call it that. The woman intervened to ask, And what does the Central Registry want to know, First, the immediate cause of the suicide, And second, asked the man, The antecedents, the circumstances, the signs, anything that can help us towards a better understanding of what happened, Isn't it enough for the Central Registry to know that my daughter killed herself, When I said I needed to talk to you about a statistical question, I was simplifying matters, Now's your chance to explain, It's no longer enough for us to be content with numbers, what we're trying to do now is to find out as much as possible about the psychological background against which the suicidal process takes place, Why, asked the woman, that won't bring my daughter back to life, The idea is to set up parameters for intervention, I don't understand, said the man, Senhor José was sweating, it was proving far more complicated than he had thought, It's terribly hot, isn't it, he said, Would you like a glass of water, asked the woman, If it's not too much trouble, Of course not, the woman got up and went out, in a minute she was back. While he was drinking the water, Senhor José decided to change tactics. He placed the glass on the tray the woman was holding and said, Imagine that your daughter had not yet committed suicide, imagine that the investigation which the Central Registry is currently undertaking had managed to draw up certain guidelines and recommendations, capable eventually, if applied in time, of halting what I earlier referred to as the suicidal process, That was what you meant by parameters for intervention, asked the man, Exactly, said Senhor José, and without leaving room for any further remarks, he delivered the first thrust, We may not have been able to stop your daughter from committing suicide, but perhaps we can, with your collaboration and with that of other people in the same situation, avoid a great deal of grief and many tears. The woman was crying, murmuring, My dear daughter, while the man was roughly wiping away his tears with the back of bis hand. Senhor José hoped he would not be forced to resort to his final expedient, which would, he thought, be a reading of the letter of authority in a loud, severe voice, word by word, like doors being closed one after the other, until they left only one possible way out for the person listening, to do as they were asked and to speak. If this failed, he would have no option but to come up with some excuse to withdraw as gracefully as possible. And just pray that it would not occur to the unknown woman's stubborn father to phone the Central Registry demanding an explanation for that visit by a member of their staff called Senhor José something or other, I can't remember the rest of his name. It wasn't necessary. The man folded up the letter and gave it back. Then he said, What can we do for you. Senhor José gave a sigh of relief, the way was now open for him to get down to business, Did your daughter leave a letter, No letter, no word, Do you mean she committed suicide just like that, It wouldn't have happened just like that, she obviously had her reasons, but we don't know what they were, My daughter was unhappy, said the woman, No one happy commits suicide, said her impatient husband, And why was she unhappy, asked Senhor José, I don't know, she was sad even as a little girl, I used to ask her what was wrong and she would always say the same thing, I'm fine, Mom, So the cause of the suicide wasn't her divorce, On the contrary, the only time I saw my daughter happy was when she separated from her husband, They didn't get on well, then, They didn't get on well or badly really, it was just a rather average marriage, Who asked for the divorce, She did, Was there some concrete reason, Not that we know of, no, it was as if they'd both reached the end of the road, What's he like, Fairly ordinary, a decent man, he never gave us any reason for complaint, And he loved her, Yes, I think so, And what about her, did she love him, Yes, she did, I believe, And despite that they weren't happy, They never were, How strange, Life is strange, said the man. There was a silence, the woman got up and went out. Senhor José stopped, he didn't know whether it would be better to wait for her to return or to continue the conversation. He was afraid that the interruption might have set the interrogation on the wrong track, you could almost feel the tension in the room. Senhor José wondered if the man's words, Life is strange, were not an echo of his former relationship with the lady in the ground-floor apartment and if his wife's sudden exit were not the reply of someone who, at that moment, could give no other. Senhor José picked up the glass, drank a little water to gain time, then asked a random question, Did your daughter work, Yes, she taught mathematics, Where, In the same school where she studied before going to university. Senhor José again picked up the glass, almost dropping it in his haste, he stammered ridiculously, S-s-sorry, and suddenly his voice failed him, while Senhor José drank, the man was looking at him with an expression of scornful curiosity, it seemed to him that the Central Registry was pretty ill served by its staff, at least judging by this example, there was no point turning up armed with a letter of authority like that and then behaving like an imbecile. The woman came in at the point where her husband was asking ironically, Would you like me to give you the name of the school, it might be of some use to you for the success of your mission, That would be most kind of you. The man bent over the desk, wrote down the name and address of the school on a piece of paper and handed it brusquely to Senhor José, but the man who was sitting before him now was not the same man of a few moments ago, Senhor José had regained sufficent control of himself to remember that he knew a secret about this family, an old secret that neither of them could possibly imagine he knew. This thought lay behind his next question, Do you know if your daughter kept a diary, I don't think so, at least we didn't find anything like that, said the mother, But there must be papers, notes, jottings, there always are, if you could perhaps give me permission to glance over them, I might find something of interest, We haven't removed anything from her apartment yet, said the father, and I've no idea when we'll get around to it, Your daughter's apartment was rented, No, she owned it, I see. There was a pause, Senhor José slowly unfolded the letter of authority, he looked at it from top to bottom as if he were checking to see if there were any powers he had left undeployed, then he said, Would you allow me to go to the apartment, in your presence, of course, No, the reply was sharp, cutting, My letter of authority, began Senhor José, Your letter of authority will have to make do for now with the information you've got, said the man, adding, We can, if you like, continue our conversation tomorrow at the Central Registry, now, if you'll forgive me, I have other matters to resolve, There's no need to go to the Central Registry, what you've told me about the situation before the suicide seems quite adequate, said Senhor José, b
ut I still have three questions to ask, Go on, How did your daughter die, She took an overdose of sleeping tablets, Was she alone in the house, Yes, And have you already arranged for a gravestone, We're dealing with that now, why do you ask, Oh nothing, just simple curiosity. Senhor José stood up. I'll show you out, said the woman. When they reached the corridor, she raised a finger to her lips and indicated to him to wait. She noiselessly removed a small bunch of keys from the drawer of a small table placed against the wall. Then, as she was opening the door, she pressed them into Senhor José's hand. They're hers, she whispered, one of these days I'll stop by the Central Registry to pick them up, and coming closer still, almost in a whisper, she told him the address.

  Senhor José slept like a log. After returning from his dangerous but successful visit to the unknown woman's parents, he wanted to set down the weekend's extraordinary events in his notebook, but he was so tired that he didn't get any further than his conversation with the clerk at the General Cemetery. He went to bed without any supper, fell asleep in less than two minutes and when he opened his eyes, at the first light of dawn, he discovered that, without knowing how or when, he had made the decision not to go in to work. It was Monday, the very worst day to miss work, especially if you were a clerk Whatever the alleged reason, and however convincing it might have been on any other occasion, it was always suspected of being merely an excuse, a way of justifying prolonging the indolence of Sunday into a day that was legally and customarily devoted to work. After the repeated and increasingly serious irregularities in his behaviour since he had started looking for the unknown woman, Senhor José is aware that not going to work could be the last straw as far as his boss's patience was concerned. This frightening prospect, however, was not enough to shake the firmness of his decision. There are two important reasons why Senhor José cannot postpone what he has to do until he has an afternoon off. The first of these is that, one day, the mother of the unknown woman will come to the Central Registry in order to recover the keys, the second is that the school, as Senhor José knows all too well, from harsh experience, is closed on the weekend.

  Despite his decision not to go to work, Senhor José got up very early. He wanted to be as far away as possible before the Central Registry opened, he didn't want his immediate superior to come knocking at the door to find out if he was ill again. While he was shaving, he wondered whether it would be best to begin by going to the unknown woman's apartment, or to the school, but he opted for the school, he is one of the many who always leave the most important till last. He also wondered if he should take the letter of authority with him, or if, on the contrary, it would be dangerous to show it, bearing in mind that a headmaster, given his job, was likely to be a knowledgable, well-read, educated person, what if the terms in which the document was written struck him as unusual, extravagant, hyperbolic, he might demand to know why there was no official stamp, prudence tells Senhor José to leave both letters of authority behind with the innocent clippings about the bishop, My identity card proving that I work for the Central Registry should be more than enough, concluded Senhor José, after all, I'm only going to confirm something concrete, objective, factual, that a woman who committed suicide was a teacher of mathematics at the school. It was still very early when he left the house, the shops were closed, with no lights on and the shutters down, there were scarcely any cars, probably even the earliest risers among the Central Registry staff would only just be getting out of bed. In order not to be seen in the vicinity, Senhor José went and hid in a park two blocks away from the main avenue, along which the bus had taken him to visit the lady in the ground-floor apartment, late one afternoon when he saw his boss going into the Central Registry. Unless you actually knew he was there, he was invisible among the bushes and the low branches of the trees. The benches were all wet with the night dew, so Senhor José did not sit down, instead, he passed the time walking along the garden paths, enjoying himself looking at the flowers and wondering what their names were, it's not surprising that he knows so little about botanical matters, since he's spent his whole life between four walls, breathing the pungent smell of old papers, still more pungent when the air is filled by that smell of chrysanthemums and roses mentioned on the very first page of this story. When the clock marked the opening time for the Central Registry to the public, Senhor José, now safe from any possible unfortunate encounters, set off for the school. He was in no hurry, today was his, which is why he decided to go on foot. As he left the garden, he was doubtful which direction to take, if he had bought a map of the city, as he had intended, he would not now have to be asking a policeman the way, but the fact is that the situation, the law giving advice to the criminal, gave him a certain subversive pleasure. The affair of the unknown woman had reached its end, all that was needed now was the inquiry at the school, then the inspection of the apartment, and, if he had time, he would drop in on the lady in the ground-floor apartment to tell her about the latest developments, and then nothing. He wondered how he would live his life from then on, if he would go back to his collections of famous people, for a few brief seconds he imagined himself sitting at the table in the evening, with a pile of newspapers and magazines beside him, cutting out articles and photographs and trying to guess whether a celebrity was on the rise or, alternatively, on the wane, occasionally in the past he had foreseen the fate of certain people who later became important, occasionally he had been the first to suspect that the laurels of this man or that woman were beginning to fade, to wrinkle, to crumble into dust, It all ends up in the rubbish bin, said Senhor José, without quite knowing, at that precise moment, if he meant lost reputations or his clippings collection.

  With the sun beating down on the facade, the trees in the playground looking green and leafy and the flower beds blooming, there was nothing about the appearance of the school that recalled the gloomy edifice into which Senhor José had entered one rainy night, by scaling its walls and breaking in. Now he was going in through the main door, he was saying to a member of the staff, I need to talk to the headmaster, no, I'm not a parent and I'm not a supplier of school materials, I work for the Central Registry, it's an official matter. The woman rang an internal number, she told someone about the visitor's arrival, then she said, Please go up, the headmaster's in the secretary's office on the second floor, Thank you, said Senhor José, and began going calmly up the stairs, he already knew that the secretary's office was on the second floor. The headmaster was talking to a woman who presumably was in charge, he was saying to her, I need that chart tomorrow without fail, and she was saying, I'll make sure you get it, Senhor José had stopped in the doorway, waiting for them to notice him. The headmaster finished his conversation and looked at him, only then did Senhor José say, Good morning, headmaster, then, with his identity card in his hand, he took three steps forward, As you can see, I work for the Central Registry, I've come on an official matter. The headmaster made as if to brush aside the identity card, then asked, What's it about, It's about one of your teachers, And what has the Central Registry got to do with the teachers at this school, Not as teachers, but as the people they are or were, Could you explain what you mean, We're carrying out an investigation into the phenomenon of suicide, both its psychological aspects and its sociological implications, and I've been put in charge of the case of a lady who taught mathematics at this school and who recently committed suicide. The headmaster put on a sorrowful face, Poor woman, he said, it's a very sad story that I don't think any of us has as yet really understood My first action said Senhor José using the most official language he could, would be to compare the identifying data that we have in the archives in the Central Registry with the lady's professional registration, I suppose you mean the staff list, I do, sir. The headmaster turned to the woman in charge of the secretary's office, Find me her record card, will you, We still haven't taken it out of the drawer, the woman said in an apologetic tone, at the same time running her fingers across the cards in a drawer, Here it is, she said. Senhor José f
elt a sharp contraction in the pit of his stomach, a feeling of dizziness swept through his brain, but, fortunately, it came to nothing more, this man's nervous system really is in a terrible state, not that we can blame him in the circumstances, we have only to remember that the card being shown to him now was within his grasp that night, it would have been just a matter of opening that drawer, the one with the label that says Teachers, but how could he have imagined that the young girl he was looking for would be teaching mathematics in the very school she had studied at. Disguising his agitation, but not the tremor in his hands, Senhor José pretended to compare the card from the school with the copy of the card from the Central Registry, then he said, It's the same person. The headmaster looked at him with interest, Don't you feel well, he asked, and he replied simply, It's just that I'm not as young as I used to be, Right, I imagine you'll want to ask me a few questions, I will, Come with me then, we'll go to my study. Senhor José smiled to himself as he followed the headmaster, I didn't know that her card was right there in that drawer, and you don't know that I spent the night on your sofa. They went into the study, the headmaster said, I haven't got much time, but I'll do all I can to help you, do sit down, and he indicated the sofa that had served as a bed to the visitor, I'd like to know, said Senhor José, if anyone noticed any change in her normal state of mind in the days before the suicide, None, she was always a very private person, very quiet, Was she a good teacher, One of the best the school has had, Was she friends with any particular colleague, Friends in what sense, Just friends, She was friendly, polite to everyone, but I don't think anyone here could say that they were friends with her, And did her students respect her, Very much, Was she in good health, As far as I can judge, yes, Its strange, What's strange, I've already spoken to her parents, and everything they said and everything I'm hearing now seems to point to there being no explanation for this suicide, I wonder, said the headmaster, if suicide can be explained, Do you mean this particular suicide, I mean suicide in general, Sometimes people leave letters, That's true, but I'm not sure you could describe the contents of those letters as an explanation, there's no shortage of things to explain in life, That's true, For example, what explanation could there be for what happened here a few days before the suicide, What was that, The school was burgled, Yes, How do you know, I'm sorry, my yes was intended to be interrogative, perhaps I didn't give it the right intonation, but, anyway, burglaries are usually fairly easy to explain, Except when the burglar climbs up onto the roof, breaks a window and then climbs in, wanders all over the place, sleeps on my sofa, eats what there is in the fridge, uses the first-aid box and then leaves without taking anything, What makes you think he slept on your sofa, Because on the floor was the blanket I usually cover my knees with so as not to get cold, as you said of yourself, I'm not as young as I used to be, Did you report it to the police, What for, since nothing had been stolen, it didn't seem worth it, the police would tell me that they were there in order to investigate crimes, not to explain mysteries, It's certainly strange, there's no doubt about it, We checked everywhere, all the equipment was there, the safe was intact, everything was in its proper place, Except the blanket, Yes, except the blanket, now what explanation can you find for that, You'd have to ask the burglar, he must know, having said those words, Senhor José got up, I won't rob you of any more of your time, I'm very grateful for your help in the unfortunate matter that brought me here, I don't know that I've been of much help, You were probably right when you said that perhaps no suicide can be explained, Rationally explained, you understand, It was as if she had just opened a door and gone out, Or gone in, Yes, or gone in, depending on your point of view, Well, there you have an excellent explanation, It was a metaphor, Metaphors have always been the best way of explaining things, Goodbye, sir, and my heartfelt thanks, Goodbye, it was a pleasure talking to you, I don't mean the sad matter in hand, of course, I mean you yourself, Naturally, it was just a manner of speaking, I'll go with you to the stairs. When Senhor José was going down the second flight of stairs, the headmaster suddenly remembered that he hadn't asked him his name, No matter, he thought, that particular story's over.