The Collected Novels of José Saramago (344 page)

there would be a final piece of written work, This will be a decisive piece of work when it comes to calculating your final mark, he said, as I have decided not to hold oral exams in the remaining last two weeks of term, moreover, this class and the next two classes will be devoted exclusively to revising what we’ve learned so far, so that you can bring some fresh ideas to your work. This preamble was well received by the most impartial section of the class, for it was clear, thank God, that Tertuliano did not intend spilling any more blood than he could possibly help. From then on, all the students’ attention will be focused on the emphasis given by the teacher to each subject covered in the course, for, if the logic of weights and measures is essentially a human thing and good luck one of its variable factors, such changes in communicative intensity might foreshadow, without the teacher noticing the unconscious revelation, the choice of questions for the test. Although it is a well-known fact that no human being, including those who have reached what we term senescence, can live solely on hope, that strange psychic disorder indispensable to normal life, what can we say about these boys and girls who, having lost the hope that there would be no class today, are now engaged in feeding another far more problematic hope, that Thursday’s test will be for each of them, and therefore for all of them, the golden bridge over which they will triumphantly cross into the next year. The class was just finishing when a clerk knocked on the door and came in to tell Tertuliano Máximo Afonso that the headmaster had asked if he would be so kind as to go to his office as soon as the lesson ended. The exposition being developed about some treaty or other was dispatched in less than two minutes, so cursorily, in fact, that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso felt bound to say, Don’t worry too much about that, it won’t be on the test. The students exchanged knowing looks, from which one gleaned that their ideas about evaluating emphases had finally been confirmed in a case in which the meaning of the words meant less than the dismissive tone in which they had been spoken. Rarely has a class finished in such an atmosphere of concord.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso put his papers back in his briefcase and left. The corridors were rapidly filling up with students who came bursting out of every door, discussing subjects that had nothing whatsoever to do with what had been taught to them one minute before, here and there, teachers were trying to pass unnoticed amid the choppy sea of heads that surrounded them on every side, dodging as best they could the reefs that rose up before them as they slunk toward their natural harbor, the staff room. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso took a shortcut up to the part of the building where the headmaster had his office, he stopped to speak to the literature teacher whose path crossed his, What we need is a good dictionary of colloquial expressions, she said, tugging at the sleeve of his jacket, Surely most general dictionaries already include most of them, he replied, Yes, but not in any systematic or analytical way, not with the aim of being really exhaustive, for example, recording that expression about tethering the donkey and explaining what it means wouldn’t be enough, it would need to range much more widely, to identify in each expression’s component parts the analogies, direct and indirect, with the state of mind they are intended to represent, You’re quite right, said the history teacher, more in order to seem pleasant than because the subject really interested him, but now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go, the headmaster asked to see me, Oh, you’d better go then, keeping God waiting is the very worst of sins. Three minutes later, Tertuliano
Máximo Afonso was knocking on the office door, he entered when the green light came on, said good morning, received a good morning in return, and, at a gesture from the headmaster, sat down and waited. He felt no intrusive presence there, either astral or otherwise. The headmaster set aside the papers on his desk and said, smiling, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to our last conversation, the one about the teaching of history, and I’ve come to a conclusion, What’s that, sir, To ask you to do some work during the school holidays, Work, sir, You could say to me that holidays were made for resting and that it’s simply not acceptable to ask a teacher, once the classes are over, to continue to concern himself with school matters, You know perfectly well, sir, that I would never put it in those words, You might say it in other words that meant exactly the same thing, Yes, but I have yet to pronounce any words at all, either the former or the latter, so please tell me what your idea is, Well, I thought we might try to persuade the ministry not to turn the teaching program upside down exactly, that would be expecting too much, and the minister has never been one for revolutions, but to study, organize, and put into practice a little experiment, a pilot study, limited, to begin with, to one school and to a small number of students, preferably volunteers, in which the historical material was studied from the present to the past, rather than from the past to the present, in short, the very thesis that you have for so long defended and of whose excellence you have, I’m pleased to say, finally persuaded me, And this work you want me to do, what form would it take exactly, asked Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, To draw up a solid, well-thought-out proposal to send to the ministry, Me, sir, Now I’m not saying this to flatter you, but the truth is that I can’t think of anyone else in the school better qualified for the job, you’ve already
shown that you’ve given the matter a great deal of thought, you obviously have very clear ideas about it, and, I say this in all sincerity, it would give me real pleasure if you would take on the task, and the work would, of course, be remunerated, I’m sure we can find room in our budget for such a commission, But I very much doubt that my ideas, as regards either quality or quantity, because, as you know, quantity also counts, would be enough to persuade the ministry, you know them better than I do, Alas, all too well, So, So allow me to insist, because I genuinely think that this would be a good moment to make clear to them that we are a school capable of producing innovative ideas, Even if they tell us to get lost, They might well do that, they might simply relegate the proposal to their files, but there it will be, and someone, someday, will remember it, And we’ll just have to wait around until they do, No, meanwhile, we could ask other schools to participate in the project, organize debates, conferences, get the media involved, Until the director-general writes a letter telling us to be quiet, It seems my suggestion doesn’t enthuse you, There are few things in this world that do, sir, but that isn’t the problem, it’s just that I don’t know what the coming holidays might hold for me, Sorry, I don’t understand, Well, I’m going to have to deal with a number of important problems that have come up recently in my life, and I’m afraid I won’t have either the time or the necessary peace of mind to devote myself to a task that would demand all my concentration, In that case, let’s just forget about it, Let me think about it a little longer, sir, give me a few days, I promise I’ll give you an answer by the end of the week, And am I to hope that it will be a positive one, Possibly, sir, but I can’t say for sure, You’re obviously very preoccupied about something, I do hope you find a solution to your problems, So do I, How was the class, Oh, it went really well, the class is working hard, Excellent, We’re having a written test on Thursday, And on Friday you’ll give me your answer, Yes, Give the matter some thought, Yes, I will, There’s no need to tell you whom I have in mind to lead the pilot study, Thank you, sir. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso went down to the staff room, intending to read the newspapers until it was time for lunch. However, as the hour approached, he began to realize that he couldn’t bear to be with other people, that he couldn’t stand another conversation like the one this morning, even if it didn’t involve him directly, even if, from beginning to end, it was all about such innocent colloquial expressions as to tether the donkey, to have a face as long as Monday, or has the cat got your tongue. Before the bell went, he left and had lunch in a restaurant. He returned to school for his second class, spoke to no one, and was back home before evening. He lay down on the sofa, closed his eyes, tried to empty his mind of thoughts, to sleep if he could, to be like a stone that simply lies where it’s left, but not even the enormous mental effort he made afterward to concentrate on the headmaster’s request could erase the shadow under which he would have to live until he received an answer to the letter he had written in Maria da Paz’s name.

He waited for nearly two weeks. In the meantime, he taught, telephoned his mother twice, prepared the written test for Thursday and sketched out another that he would give to the students of his other class, on Friday he told the headmaster that he would accept his kind offer, on the weekend he did not leave his apartment, he spoke on the phone to Maria da Paz to find out how she was and if she had had a reply, he answered a call from his colleague the mathematics teacher who wanted to know if there was anything wrong, he finished reading the chapter on the Amorites and moved on to
the Assyrians, he watched a documentary on the Ice Age in Europe and another about man’s remote ancestors, he thought that this period of his life could be made into a novel, then thought it would be a complete waste of time because no one would believe such a story, he phoned Maria da Paz again, but in such a lackluster voice that she became worried and asked if she could help at all, he told her to come and she came, they went to bed and then went out to supper, and the following day it was her turn to phone him to say that the letter from the production company had arrived, I’m phoning from the bank if you want to drop in, otherwise I can bring it over on my way home. Trembling inside, shaken by excitement, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso only just managed to suppress the question that he should not, on any account, have asked, Did you open it, and this led him to delay for a couple of seconds the categorical answer that would do away with any doubts that might exist over whether he was prepared to share with her the contents of the letter, I’ll come to the bank. If Maria da Paz had imagined a tender domestic scene in which she saw herself listening to him read the letter out loud while she sipped the tea she had prepared in the kitchen of the man she loved, she could forget it. We can see her now, sitting at her small desk in the bank, her hand still resting on the receiver she has just replaced, the oblongshaped envelope before her and in it the letter that honesty will not allow her to read because it is not hers, even though it is addressed to her. Less than an hour had passed when Tertuliano Máximo Afonso hurried into the bank and asked to speak to Maria da Paz. No one knew him there, no one would suspect that affairs of the heart and dark secrets existed between him and the young woman walking over to the counter. She had seen him from the back of the large room where
she has her post as a worker with numbers, which is why she has the letter already in her hand, Here you are, she says, they did not greet each other, they did not wish each other good afternoon, they did not say, Hi, how are you, nothing of the sort, there was the letter to hand over and it has been handed over, he says, See you later, I’ll give you a ring, and she, having fulfilled the role that had fallen to her in the urban postal distribution service, returns to her seat, oblivious of the suspicious glances of an older male colleague who, some time before, had come sniffing around her without success and who, from then on, out of pique, has always kept a beady eye on her. Outside in the street, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is walking quickly, almost running, he left the car in an underground garage three blocks away, he is carrying the letter not in his briefcase but in an inside pocket in his jacket, for fear it might be snatched from him by some small urchin, as boys brought up in the freedom of the streets were once called, then angels with dirty faces, then rebels without a cause, now delinquents who are denied the benefits of either euphemism or metaphor. He is telling himself that he will not open the letter until he gets home, that he is too old to be behaving like an anxious adolescent, but, at the same time, he knows that these adult notions will evaporate once he is inside the car, in the gloom of the garage, with the door closed to defend himself from the morbid curiosity of the world. It took him a while to find where he had left the car, which only aggravated his state of nervous anxiety, the poor man resembled, if you’ll forgive the comparison, a dog abandoned in the middle of the desert, looking forlornly this way and that, with not one familiar smell to guide him home, It was on this level, I’m sure of it, but the fact is he wasn’t sure. He did in the end find the car, he had been only a few steps from
it on three occasions but had failed to see it. He got in quickly, as if he were being pursued, closed the door, locked it, and turned on the interior light. He has the envelope in his hands, the moment has finally come to know what lies inside, just as the commander of a ship, having reached the point where the coordinates cross, opens the sealed instructions that will tell him where he is to go next. Out of the envelope come a photograph and a sheet of paper. The photograph is of Tertuliano Máximo Afonso but bears the signature of Daniel Santa-Clara beneath the words, Yours truly. As for the sheet of paper, it not only informs him that Daniel Santa-Clara is the stage name of António Claro but, additionally and exceptionally, gives him his private address, Given the special consideration we felt your letter merited, it says. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso remembers the terms in which he wrote the letter and congratulates himself on the brilliant idea of suggesting to the production company that a study should be made of the importance of supporting actors, I threw the mud at the wall and it stuck, he murmured, and at the same time, he realized, without surprise, that his mind has recovered its former calm, that his body is relaxed, no sign of nervousness, no sign of anxiety, the tributary simply flowed into the river and the volume of the river increased, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso knows now which direction to take. He removed a map of the city from the pocket in the driver’s door and looked for the street where Daniel Santa-Clara lives. It is in a part of the city he does not know, at least he has no memory of ever having been there, moreover it is far from the center, as he has just discovered from the map, which he has unfolded and which is now resting against the steering wheel. It doesn’t matter, he has time, he has all the time in the world. He got out to pay the parking fee, went back to the car, turned
out the interior light, and started the engine. His destination, as one can easily guess, is the street where the actor lives. He wants to see the building, to gaze up at the actor’s apartment, at the windows, to see what the neighbors are like, what the atmosphere is like, what clothes people wear, how they behave. The traffic is very heavy, the cars move with exasperating slowness, but Tertuliano Máximo Afonso does not get impatient, there is no danger that the road he is driving toward will move, it is the prisoner of the city road network that surrounds it on all sides, as the map only confirms. It was while Tertuliano Máximo Afonso was waiting at a red light, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time to a wordless song, that common sense got into the car. Good afternoon, it said, Who invited you, was the driver’s response, Frankly, I can’t remember a single occasion when you’ve invited me anywhere, Well, I might if I didn’t know beforehand what you would say, Like today, Yes, you’re going to tell me to think carefully, not to get involved, that it’s imprudent in the extreme, that there’s no guarantee the devil isn’t lurking behind the door, the usual spiel, Well, this time you’re wrong, what you’re about to do isn’t just imprudent, it’s stupid, Stupid, Yes, sir, stupid, utterly stupid, Well, I don’t see why, Of course you don’t, one of the secondary forms of mental blindness is stupidity, Explain yourself, Well, I don’t need you to tell me that you’re driving to the street where your Daniel Santa-Clara lives, it’s odd, the cat’s tail was dangling out of the bag and you didn’t even notice, What cat, what tail, stop talking in riddles and get to the point, It’s very simple, out of his surname Claro he created the pseudonym Santa-Clara, It’s not a pseudonym, it’s his stage name, Oh, yes, there was that other fellow who disliked the plebeian vulgarity of pseudonyms so much that he called them heteronyms, And what use would
it have been if I had spotted the cat’s tail, Not much I agree, you would still have had to find him, but by looking under the name of Claro in the telephone directory, you would have found him in the end, Look, I’ve got what I need, And now you’re going to the street where he lives, you’re going to see the building, to gaze up at the apartment where he lives, at the windows, to see what the neighbors are like, what the atmosphere is like, what clothes people wear, how they behave, those, if I’m not mistaken, were your words, They were, Just imagine if, while you’re gazing up at the windows, the actor’s old lady, or, to put it more respectfully, Antonio Claro’s wife, appears at one of them and asks why you don’t come up, or, worse still, asks you to go to the pharmacy to buy some aspirin or some cough syrup, Nonsense, If you think that’s nonsense, imagine someone walking past and greeting you, not as the Tertuliano Máximo Afonso that you are, but as the António Claro you will never be, More nonsense, All right, if that hypothesis is nonsense, imagine that when you’re strolling around, gazing up at the windows or studying the way the locals dress, Daniel Santa-Clara appears before you in the flesh, and the two of you stand there staring at each other just like two china dogs, each one a reflection of the other, except that this reflection, unlike the one in the mirror, will show the left side where the left side is and the right side where the right is, how would you react if that happened. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso did not respond at once, he remained silent for two or three minutes, then he said, The solution would be to stay in the car, Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure even then, objected common sense, you might have to stop at a red light, there might be a traffic jam, a truck unloading, an ambulance loading up, and there you would be, on show, like a fish in an aquarium, at the mercy of the inquisitive, adolescent
movie buff who lives on the first floor of your building and asks you what your next film will be, So what should I do, That I don’t know, that’s not part of my job, the role of common sense in the history of your species has never gone beyond advising caution and chicken soup, especially in those cases where stupidity has already taken the floor and looks set to take the reins too, Then I’ll just have to disguise myself, As what, Well, I don’t know, I’ll have to think, It seems to me that, being who you are, your only option is to look like someone else, Yes, I really need to have a think, About time too, And I suppose I might as well go home, If it isn’t too much bother, could you just drop me at the door, then I can make my own way after that, Don’t you want to come up, You’ve never asked me up before, Well, I’m asking you now, Thank you, but I shouldn’t really accept, Why not, Because it’s not healthy for the mind to live cheek by jowl with common sense, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed, taking it along to work, and asking its approval or permission before making a move, you’ve got to take a few risks of your own, Who do you mean, All of you, the human race, But I took a risk getting this letter, and, at the time, you told me off, The way you got that letter is certainly nothing to be proud of, using another person’s honesty the way you did is a form of blackmail at its most repellent, Are you referring to Maria da Paz, Yes, I’m referring to Maria da Paz, in her place, I would have opened the letter, read it, and then rubbed it in your face until you begged forgiveness on your knees, That’s how common sense behaves, is it, That’s how it should behave, Right, then, see you again sometime, I have to consider my disguise now, The more you disguise yourself, the more you’ll look like you. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso found a parking space almost immediately outside the door of the building where he lived, he parked the car, picked up the street map, and got out. On the pavement on the other side of the street, a man was standing, face lifted, gazing at the upper stories of the building opposite. The man did not resemble him facially or physically, his presence there was pure coincidence, but Tertuliano Máximo Afonso felt a shiver run down his spine as the thought went through his mind, he couldn’t help it, his unhealthy imagination was stronger than he was, that Daniel Santa-Clara might be looking for him, me looking for you, you looking for me. He shrugged off the discomfiting fantasy, I’m seeing ghosts, the guy doesn’t even know I exist, yet his legs were still trembling when he went into his apartment and fell exhausted onto the sofa. For a few moments he lay plunged in a kind of torpor, absent from himself, like a marathon runner whose strength has suddenly drained away as he crossed the finishing line. Of the calm energy that had filled him as he left the garage and, afterward, when he was driving to a destination he did not, in the end, reach, all that remained was a very vague memory, like the memory of something not really experienced, or that had been experienced only by a part of him that was now absent. He got up with some difficulty, his legs felt odd, as if they belonged to someone else, and he went into the kitchen to make some coffee. He drank it in slow sips, conscious of the comforting warmth that went down his throat into his stomach, then he washed the cup and saucer and went back into the living room. All his gestures had become slow and deliberate, as if he were busy handling dangerous substances in a chemical laboratory, and yet all he had to do was open the telephone directory at
C
and confirm the information given in the letter. And then what will I do, he wondered, leafing through the pages until he found it. There were a lot of Claros, but only half a dozen Antónios. Here it was, at last, the thing that had cost him so much effort, so easy that anyone could have done it, a name, an address, a telephone number. He copied the details onto a piece of paper and repeated the question, Now what shall I do. In a reflex reaction, his right hand reached for the phone, he let it rest there while he read and reread what he had written down, then he withdrew his hand, got up, and paced about the apartment, arguing with himself over whether it wouldn’t be more sensible to leave the next stage until after the exams were over, at least in that way he would have one less thing to worry about, unfortunately, he had told the headmaster he would write a proposal for that project on the teaching of history, and that was one obligation he couldn’t get out of, Sooner or later I’ll have to sit down and write a proposal that no one is going to take any notice of, it was madness to take on the project in the first place, but there was no point trying to deceive himself, pretending that he could ever accept the idea of putting off until after his schoolwork the first step on the road that will lead him to António Claro, since Daniel Santa-Clara does not, strictly speaking, exist, he’s a shadow, a puppet, a shifting shape that moves and talks inside a videocassette and returns to silence and immobility once the role he has been taught ends, while the other man, António Claro, is real, concrete, as solid as Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, the history teacher who lives in this apartment and whose name can be found under