The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  The same could not be said of Senhor José, he still had to take the final step, to seek out and find in the unknown woman's apartment a letter, a diary, a simple piece of paper on which she might have set down her feelings, the scream, the I-can't-go-on that every suicide is under strict obligation to leave behind before departing through that door, so that those left on this side can soothe the fears of their own consciences saying, Poor thing, she had her reasons. The human spirit, though, how often do we need to say it, is the favourite home of contradictions, indeed they do not seem to prosper or even find viable living conditions outside it, and that must be why Senhor José wanders the city, from one side to the other, up and down, as if lost without a map or a guide, for he knows perfectly well what he has to do on this last day, he knows that tomorrow will be a different time, or that he will be the one who will be different in a time exactly like this one, and the proof that he knows this to be so is the fact that he thought, Who will I be tomorrow when this is all over, what kind of clerk is the Central Registry going to have. Twice he passed by the unknown woman's apartment building, twice he did not stop, he was afraid, don't ask why, this is the most common of contradictions, Senhor José both wants and doesn't want, he both de sires and fears what he desires, that is what his whole life has been like. Now, to gain time, to postpone what he knows to be inevitable, he has decided that first, he will have to have lunch, in a cheap restaurant, as his modest pocket dictates, but above all somewhere far from here, he doesn't want some curious neighbour to suspect the intentions of a man who has already passed by twice. Although there's nothing about his appearance to distinguish him from other supposedly honest people, the truth is that there are never any solid guarantees about what you see, appearances are very deceptive, that's why they're called appearances, although in the case in point, taking into account his age and fragüe physical constitution, no one would think, for example, that Senhor José made his living breaking into houses at night. He took as long as he could over the frugal lunch, got up from the table long after three o'clock and, unhurriedly, as if he were dragging his feet, he went back to the street where the unknown woman had lived. Before turning the last corner, he stopped and took a deep breath, I'm not a coward, he thought to give himself courage, but as so often happens with so many brave people, he was valiant about some things, cowardly about others, the fact that he spent a night in the cemetery won't stop his legs shaking now. He put his hand into his jacket pocket, felt the keys, one, small and narrow, was for the postbox, and so was naturally excluded, the remaining two were almost the same, but one was the street door, the other the door to the apartment, he hoped he got it right the first time, if the building has a concierge and she's the sort who pokes her nose out at the slightest noise, what explanation would he give, he could say he was there with the authorisation of the parents of the woman who committed suicide, that he's come to make an inventory of her possessions, I work for the Central Registry, madam, here's my card, and as you see, they've given me the keys to the apartment. Senhor José chose the right key on the first try, the guardian of the door, if the building had one, did not appear and ask him, Excuse me, where are you going, there's a lot of truth in the saying that fear of the guard is the best guard against theft, so he tells himself to begin by conquering his fear, then see if the guard appears. It's an old building but it has a lift, which is just as well, because Senhor José's legs are so heavy now that he would never have made it to the sixth floor, where the mathematics teacher lived. The door creaked as it opened, startling the visitor, who suddenly doubted the efficacy of the excuse he had thought he would give to the concierge should she intervene. He slipped quickly into the apartment, very carefully closed the door, and found himself in the midst of a dense, almost pitch-black darkness. He felt the wall next to the door frame, found a switch, but prudently didn't turn it on, it might be dangerous to put on the lights. Gradually, Senhor José's eyes became used to the shadows, you might say that in a similar situation the same would happen with anyone, but it is not generally known that, after a certain time, the clerks in the Central Registry, given their obligatory regular visits to the archive of the dead, acquire a remarkable talent for optical adaptation. They would all have cat's eyes if they didn't reach retirement age first.

  Although the floor was carpeted, Senhor José thought it best to take off his shoes to avoid any shock or vibration that might betray his presence to the tenants on the floor below. With enormous care he slid back the bolts on the inner shutters of one of the windows that opened onto the street, but only enough to let in a little light. He was in a bedroom. There was a dressing table, a wardrobe, a bedside table. A narrow bed, a single, as they are called. The furniture had light, simple lines, the opposite of the dull, heavy furniture in her parents' house. Senhor José walked through the other rooms in the apartment, which comprised a living room furnished with the usual sofas and a bookshelf that took up the whole of one wall, a much smaller room that served as a study, a tiny kitchen and a rnini mal bathroom. Here lived a woman who committed suicide for unknown reasons, who had been married and got divorced, who could have gone to live with her parents after the divorce, but had preferred to live alone, a woman who, like aU women, was once a child and a girl, but who even then, in a certain indefinable way, was already the woman she was going to be, a mathematics teacher whose name while she was alive was in the Central Registry, along with the names of aU the people alive in this city, a woman whose dead name returned to the living world because Senhor José went to rescue her from the dead world, just her name, not her, a clerk can only do so much. With the inner doors all open, there is enough light from outside to be able to see the whole apartment, but Senhor José will have to get his search under way quickly if he doesn't want to have to leave it half done. He opened a drawer in a desk, glanced at its contents, they seemed to be math problems for school, calculations, equations, nothing that could explain the reasons for the life and death of the woman who used to sit in this chair, who used to switch on this lamp, who used to hold this pencil and write with it. Senhor José slowly closed the drawer, he even started to open another but did not complete the movement, he stopped to think for a long minute, or perhaps it was only a few seconds that seemed like hours, then he firmly pushed the drawer shut, left the study and went and sat on one of the smaU sofas in the living room, where he remained. He looked at his old darned socks, the trousers that had lost their crease and had ridden up a little, his bony white shins with a few sparse hairs on them. He felt his body sinking into the soft concavity left by another body in the upholstery and the springs, She'll never sit here again, he murmured. The silence, which had seemed to him absolute, was interrupted now by noises from the street, especially, from time to time, by the passing of a car, but in the air too there was a slow breathing, a slow pulse, perhaps it was the way houses breathe when they are left alone, this one has probably not even realised yet that there is someone here now. Senhor José tells himself that there are still drawers to go through, the ones in the dresser, where people usually keep their more intimate garments, the ones in the bedside table, where intimate things of a different nature are generally stored, the wardrobe, he thinks that if he went to open the wardrobe he would be unable to resist the desire to run his fingers over the clothes hanging there, like that, as if he were stroking the keys of a silent piano, he thinks that he would lift up the skirt of one of those dresses to breathe in the aroma, the perfume, the smell. And then there are the drawers in the desk that he hasn't even looked in yet, and the small cupboards in the bookcase, what he is looking for, the letter, the diary, the word of farewell, the trace of the last tear, must be hidden somewhere. Why, he asked, supposing such a piece of paper does exist, supposing I find it, read it, just because I read it doesn't mean that her dresses will cease to be empty, from now on all those math problems will remain unsolved, no one will discover the value of the unknown factors in the equations, the bedspread won't be pulled back, th
e sheet won't be pulled up snugly to the chest, the bedside lamp will not light the page of a book, what is over is over. Senhor José bent forward, rested his head in his hands, as if he wanted to go on thinking, but that wasn't the case, he had run out of thoughts. The light dimmed for a moment, some cloud passing over the sun. At that moment, the telephone rang. He hadn't noticed it before, but there it was, on a small table in a corner, like a rarely used object. The answering machine came on, a female voice said the telephone number, then added, I'm not at home right now, but please leave a message after the tone. Whoever had called had hung up, some people hate talking to a machine, or in this case perhaps it was a wrong number, well, if you don't recognise the voice on the answering machine, there's no point leaving a message. This would have to be explained to Senhor José, who had never in his life seen one of these machines close up, but he would probably not have paid any attention to the explanations, he is so troubled by the few words he heard, I'm not at home right now, but please leave a message after the tone, no, she's not at home, she'll never be at home again, only her voice remained, grave, veiled, as if distracted, as if she had been thinking of something else when she made the recording. Senhor José said, They might ring again, and nurturing that hope, he did not move from the sofa for another hour, the darkness in the house grew gradually thicker and the telephone did not ring again. Then Senhor José got up, I must go, he murmured, but before leaving, he took another turn about the house, he went into the bedroom, where there was more light, he sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, again and again he ran his hands slowly over the embroidered top fold of the sheet, then he opened the wardrobe, there were the dresses of the woman who had spoken the definitive words, I'm not at home. He bent towards them until he touched them with his face, the smell they gave off could be described as a smell of absence, or perhaps it was that mingled perfume of rose and chrysanthemum that sometimes wafts through the Central Registry.

  The concierge hadn't come and asked him where he had sprung from, the building is silent, it seems uninhabited. It was this silence that provoked an idea, the most daring he had ever had, What if I were to stay here tonight, what if I were to sleep in her bed, no one would ever know. Tell Senhor José that nothing could be easier, he just has to go up in the lift again, go into the apartment, take off his shoes, maybe another wrong number will ring, if they do, then you'll have the pleasure of hearing again the grave, veiled voice of the mathematics teacher, I'm not at home, she'll say, and if, during the night, lying in her bed, some pleasant dream excites your old body, as you know, the remedy is to hand, but you'll have to be careful not to mess up the sheets. These are sarcasms and vulgarities that Senhor José does not deserve, his daring idea, rather more romantic than daring, goes just as it came, and he is no longer inside the building, but outside, what helped him to leave, apparendy, was the painful memory of his old, darned socks and his bony, white shins with their sparse hairs. Nothing in the world makes any sense, murmured Senhor José, and set off for the road where the lady in the ground-floor apartment lives. The afternoon is at an end, the Central Registry will already have closed, the clerk does not have many hours in which to invent an excuse to justify having missed a whole day's work Everyone knows he has no family that would require him to rush to them in an emergency, and even if he did, there can be no excuse in his case, living as he does right next to the Central Registry, all he had to do was go in and stand at the door and say, I'll be back tomorrow, one of my cousins is dying. Senhor José decides he's ready for anything, that they can dismiss him if they want, expel him from the civil service, perhaps the shepherd needs an assistant to help him change the numbers on the graves, especially if he's considering widening his field of activity, there's really no reason why he should limit himself to the suicides, the dead are all equal, what you can do to some you can do to all, jumble them up, confuse them, it doesn't matter, the world doesn't make sense anyway.

  When Senhor José knocked at the door of the lady in the ground-floor apartment he was thinking only of the cup of tea he would have. He rang once, twice, but no one answered. Perplexed, worried, he rang the doorbell of the apartment opposite. A woman appeared who asked him sharply, What do you want, No one's answering across the way, So what, Has anything happened to her, do you know, What do you mean, An accident, an illness, for example, It's possible, an ambulance came to get her, And when was that, Three days ago, And you've heard nothing since, do you happen to know where she is, No, I don't, now if you'll excuse me. The woman slammed the door, leaving Senhor José in the dark. Tomorrow I'll have to go to all the hospitals, he thought. He felt exhausted, he had spent all day walking from one place to another, bombarded by emotions all day, and now this shock on top of everything else. He left the building and stood on the sidewalk wondering if he should do something more, go and ask one of the other tenants, they couldn't all be as unpleasant as the woman opposite, Senhor José went back into the building, went up the stairs to the second floor and rang at the door of the mother with the child and the jealous husband, who by now would be back from work, not that it matters, Senhor José is only going to ask if they know anything about the lady in the ground-floor apartment. The stair light is on. The door opens, the woman isn't carrying her baby and doesn't recognise Senhor José, Can I help you, she asks, I'm sorry to trouble you, I came to visit the lady in the ground-floor apartment, but she's not there and the woman opposite told me that an ambulance took her away three days ago, Yes, that's right, You don't happen to know where she is, do you, in which hospital, or if she's with some member of her family. Before the woman had time to reply, a male voice asked from inside, What is it, she turned her head, It's someone asking about the lady in the ground-floor apartment, then she looked at Senhor José and said, No, we don't know anything. Senhor José lowered his voice and asked, Don't you recognise me, she hesitated, Oh, yes, I do now, she said in a whisper and slowly closed the door.