The Collected Novels of José Saramago (270 page)

Working with determination, sometimes long into the night until dawn, with the foreseeable negative consequences on the level of productivity he was obliged to reach in his normal work as a clerk, it took Senhor José less than two weeks to collect and transcribe the original data into the individual files of the one hundred most famous people in his collection. He experienced moments of indescribable panic each time he had to perch on the topmost rung of the ladder in order to reach the upper shelves, where, as if his suffering from vertigo were not enough, it seemed that every spider in the Central Registry had decided to go and weave the densest, dustiest, most entangling webs that ever brushed a human face. Repugnance, or, put more crudely, fear, made him wave his arms about wildly to free himself from that repellent touch, it was just as well that he was tied firmly to the rungs with his belt, but there were occasions when both he and the ladder came close to tumbling down, dragging with them a cloud of ancient dust and a triumphal rain of papers. In one such moment of affliction he even went so far as to consider detaching the belt and accepting the risk of an unbroken fall, this happened when he imagined the shame that would forever stain his name and memory if his boss should come in one morning and discover Senhor José caught between two shelves, dead, his head cracked open and his brains spilling out, ridiculously bound to the ladder by a belt. Then it occurred to him that untying the belt would save him from ridicule, but not from death, and that it was not, therefore, worth it. Struggling against the fearful nature with which he came into the world, and despite the fact that he had to carry out the work in near-darkness, towards the end of the task he managed to create and perfect a technique of locating and manipulating the files which allowed him to extract the documents he needed in a matter of seconds. The first time that he had the courage not to use the belt it was as if an immortal victory had been inscribed in his very modest curriculum vitae as clerk. He felt exhausted, in need of sleep, he had butterflies in the pit of his stomach, but he was happier than he had ever been in his entire life when the celebrity classified as number one hundred, now fully identified in accordance with all the rules of the Central Registry, took his place in the corresponding box, Senhor José thought then that, after such a great effort, he needed a bit of rest, and since the weekend began the following day, he decided to postpone until Monday the next phase of work, which involved giving full civil status to the forty or so famous people still waiting in the rearguard. He never dreamed that something more serious than simply falling from a ladder was about to happen to him. As a result of a fall he might have lost his life, which would doubtless have a certain importance from a statistical and personal point of view, but what, we ask, if that life were instead to remain biologically the same, that is, the same being, the same cells, the same features, the same stature, the same apparent way of looking, seeing and noticing, and, without the change even being registered statistically, what if that life became another life, and that person a different person.

He found it very hard to bear the abnormal slowness with which those two days dragged past, Saturday and Sunday seemed to him to last forever. He passed the time making clippings from newspapers and magazines, occasionally he opened the communicating door to contemplate the Central Registry in all its silent majesty. He felt that he was enjoying his work more than ever, for it allowed him to penetrate into the private lives
of all those famous people, to know, for example, things that some went to great lengths to hide, for example, being the daughter of an unknown father or mother, or of unknown parentage, which was the case in one instance, or saying that they were from the capital of a district or province when in fact they had been born in some godforsaken village at a crossroads with a barbarous-sounding name, or even in a place that simply stank of manure and cowpens and barely deserved a name at all. With such thoughts, and others of a similarly sceptical cast, Senhor José arrived at Monday having just about recovered from the tremendous efforts he had made, and, despite the inevitable nervous tension caused by a permanent conflict between desire and fear, still determined to make further nocturnal excursions and further bold ascents. The day, however, began on a sour note. The deputy who was in charge of stores told the Registrar that, during the last two weeks, he had noticed that the number of record cards and file covers being used had risen considerably, and even taking into consideration the average number of administrative errors committed while filling them in, that number bore no relation to the number of new births registered. The Registrar wanted to know what measures the deputy had taken to discover the reasons for this strange increase in consumption and what other measures he intended taking to prevent its happening again. The deputy explained discreetly that he had taken no measures as yet, that he had not even allowed himself to have an idea, still less begin an initiative, without first explaining the matter to his superior for his consideration, as he was doing at that very moment. The Registrar replied in his usual brusque way, Now that you’ve explained, you can act, and I want to hear no more of the matter. The deputy returned to his desk in order to think and, after an hour he returned to his boss with the draft of an internal memorandum, according to which the cabinet containing the forms would remain under lock and key, the key to remain permanently in his possession, as the person in charge of stores. The Registrar signed it and the deputy made a great show of locking the cabinet so that everyone would notice the change, and Senhor José, after his initial fright, breathed a sigh of relief because he had at least managed to complete the work on the most important part of his collection. He tried to remember how many record cards he had in reserve at home, twelve, perhaps fifteen. It wasn’t that disastrous. When they ran out, he would copy onto ordinary paper the thirty that remained, the loss would only be an aesthetic one, You can’t have everything, he thought to console himself.

As a possible pilferer of those forms, there was no reason why he should be considered any more suspicious than his other colleagues of the same rank, since only the clerks filled in the cards and the file covers, but all day Senhor José’s fragüe nerves made him fearful that the tremors of his guilty conscience might be seen and noticed from the outside. Despite this, he acquitted himself very well in the interrogation to which he was submitted. Adjusting his face and voice to suit the situation, he stated that he was always most scrupulous in his use of the forms, in the first place, because that was the way he was by nature, but above all, because he was conscious, at every moment, that the paper used in the Central Registry was paid for by public taxes, paid for over and over with the hard-earned money of taxpayers, and that he, as a responsible civil servant, had a strict duty to respect that and to make their money last. His declaration was well received by his superiors both for its form and for its content, so much so that the colleagues who were subsequently called for questioning repeated it with only minimal modifications of style, but it was thanks to the universal, tacit belief, inculcated in the staff over time by their chief’s own peculiar personality, that, whatever happened, nothing in the Central Registry could be allowed to go against the interests of work, that no one even noticed that Senhor José had never uttered so many words consecutively since he had first started work there many years before. Had the deputy been versed in the investigatory methods of applied psychology, before you could say boo, Senhor José’s deceitful speech would have collapsed around him, like a house of cards in which the king of spades had lost his footing, or like a vertigo sufferer on a ladder when that ladder is shaken. Fearful that, on reflection, the deputy in charge of the inquiry might suspect there was something fishy going on, Senhor José decided that to avoid further trouble he would stay home that night. He would not move from his corner, he would not go into the Central Registry, not even if someone were to promise him the extraordinary good fortune of discovering the document everyone has been looking for since the world began, nothing more nor less than the birth certificate of God. The wise man is only wise insofar as he is prudent, they say, and it must be acknowledged that Senhor José, despite recent irregularities in his conduct, did possess a kind of involuntary wisdom, albeit sadly lacking in precision and definition, the kind of wisdom that appears to have entered the body via the respiratory tract or from too much sun on the head, which is why it is not considered worthy of any particular applause. If prudence now counselled him to withdraw, he, wisely, would listen to the voice of prudence. A one- or two-week stoppage in his investigations would help erase from his face any vestige of fear or anxiety it might otherwise have borne.

After a meagre supper, as was his custom and as dictated by necessity, Senhor José found himself with a whole evening before him and with nothing to do. He managed to pass half an hour leafing through some of the more famous lives in his collection, even adding a few recent clippings, but his thoughts were elsewhere. They were wandering through the darkness of the Central Registry, like a black dog on the trail of the ultimate secret. He began to think that there would be no harm in simply
using up the forms he had in reserve, even if there were only three or four of them, just to occupy some of the night and to be able to sleep peacefully afterwards. Prudence tried to hold him back, to grip him by the sleeve, but, as everyone knows, or should know, prudence is only of any use when it is trying to conserve something in which we are no longer interested, for what harm could it do to open the door, quickly search out three or four record cards, all right, five, a nice round number, but he would leave the files for another occasion and that way he wouldn’t have to use the ladder. That was the idea that finally decided him. With the flashlight held in his trembling hand to light his path, he entered the vast cavern of the Central Registry and went over to the card index. He was more nervous than he had thought and kept turning his head this way and that as if afraid he was being observed by thousands of eyes hidden in the darkness of the aisles between the shelves. He had still not got over that morning’s shock. As quickly as his anxious fingers would allow, he started opening and closing drawers, looking under the different letters of the alphabet for the cards he needed, making mistake after mistake, until he finally managed to gather together the five most famous people in the second category. Feeling really frightened now, he scurried back home, his heart pounding, like a child who has gone to steal a cake from the pantry and who leaves it pursued by all the monsters of the dark. He slammed the door in their faces and turned the key twice, he didn’t even want to think about the fact that he would have to return that same night in order to replace those wretched cards. In an attempt to calm himself down, he took a sip of the brandy he kept for special occasions, both good and bad. In his haste and because he was unused to drinking given that even good and bad had until then, been rare occurrences in his insignificant life, the brandy went down the wrong way, he coughed coughed again almost choked, a poor clerk clutching five record cards, at least he thought there were five, he coughed so hard that he dropped them, and there weren’t five, but six, scattered on the floor, as anyone could see and count, one, two, three, four, five, six, one sip of brandy didn’t usually have that effect.

When he finally managed to catch his breath, he bent down to pick up the cards, one, two, three, four, five, there was no doubt about it, six, and as he picked them up he read the names on them, all of them famous, apart from one. In his haste and nervous agitation the intrusive card had got stuck to the one in front, the cards were so thin you barely noticed the difference in thickness. Now however much care and trouble you take over your handwriting, copying out five brief summaries of birth and life is not a long job. After half an hour, Senhor José could bring the evening to a close and again open the door. Reluctantly, he gathered together the six cards and got up from his chair. He did not feel at all like going back into the Central Registry, but there was no alternative, the following morning, the card index had to be complete and in its proper order. If anyone had to consult one of those cards and it was not in its place, the situation could become serious. Suspicion would lead to suspicion, investigation to investigation, and someone would inevitably remark that Senhor José lived right next door to the Central Registry, which, as we all know, does not even enjoy the elementary protection of a night watchman, someone might think to ask what had happened to the key that had never been handed in. What must be, will be, and there’s nothing you can do about it, thought Senhor José rather unoriginally, and went over to the door. Halfway there, he suddenly stopped, It’s odd, but I can’t remember if the extra card belonged to a man or a woman. He turned back, he sat down again, he would thus delay a little longer before obeying the force of what must be. The card belongs to a woman of thirty-six, born in that very city, and there are two entries, one for marriage, the other for divorce. There must be hundreds, if not thousands
of such cards in the index system, so it’s hard to understand why Senhor José should be looking at it so strangely, in a way which, at first sight, seems intent, but which is also vague and troubled, perhaps this is the look of someone who, without making any conscious choice, is gradually losing his grip on something and has yet to find another handhold. Doubtless some will point out supposed, inadmissible contradictions in terms such as “troubled,” “vague” and “intent,” but they are people who take life as it comes, people who have never been brought face-to-face with destiny. Senhor José looks and looks again at what is written on the card, the handwriting, needless to say, is not his, it’s in an old-fashioned hand, thirty-six years ago another clerk wrote the words you can read here, the name of the baby girl, the names of her parents and godparents, the date and hour of her birth, the street and the number of the apartment where she first saw the light of day and first felt pain, the same beginning as everyone else, the differences, great and small, come later, some of those who are born become entries in encyclopedias, in history books, in biographies, in catalogues, in manuals, in collections of newspaper clippings, the others, roughly speaking, are like a cloud that passes without leaving behind it any trace of its passing, and if rain fell from that cloud it did not even wet the earth. Like me, thought Senhor José. He had a cupboard full of men and women about whom the newspapers wrote almost every day, on the table was the birth certificate of an unknown person, and. it was as if he had placed them both in the pans of a scale, a hundred this side one the other and was surprised to discover that all of them together weighed no more than this one that one hundred equalled one, that one was worth as much as hundred. If someone had gone into his house at that moment and out of the blue asked him My dear sir do you really believe that the one that you are is’ also worth the same as a hundred, that the hundred people in your cupboard to be precise are worth the same as you, he would have replied without hesitation, My dear sir, I’m just a clerk, just an ordinary fifty-year-old clerk, who has never even been promoted to senior clerk, if I thought that I was worth the same as even one of the people in there, or worth the same as any one of the five less famous people, I would never have started my collection, Then why is it that you keep staring at the card of that unknown woman, as if she were suddenly more important than all the others, Precisely, my dear sir, because she is unknown, Oh, come on, the card index in the Central Registry is full of unknown people, But they’re in the card index, they’re not here, What do you mean, I don’t quite know, In that case, forget all these metaphysical thoughts for which your brain doesn’t seem particularly well suited, go and put the card back in its place and get a good night’s sleep, That’s what I hope to do, as I do every night, the tone of his reply was conciliatory, but Senhor José had one more thing to add, As for the metaphysical thoughts, my dear sir, allow me to say that any brain is capable of producing them, it’s just that we cannot always find the words.