Authors: José Saramago
Contrary to what people might think when viewing these things from the outside, life is not necessarily easy in a government department, certainly not in this Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths, where, since time which cannot be described as immemorial simply because the Registry contains a record of everything and everyone, thanks to the persistent efforts of an unbroken Une of great Registrars, all that is most sublime and most trivial about public office has been brought together, the qualities that make of the civil servant a creature apart, both usufructuary and dependent of the physical and mental space defined by the reach of his pen nib. Put simply, and with a view in this preamble to a more exact understanding of the general facts considered in the abstract, Senhor José has a problem to solve. Knowing how difficult it had been to squeeze out of the rule-bound reluctance of the hierarchy one miserable half hour off, which meant that he was not caught in flagrante by the husband of the young woman in the second-floor apartment, we can imagine his current distress as, night and day, he racks his brain for some convincing excuse that would allow him to ask for not one hour, but two, not two, but three hours, which is probably the amount of time he will need if he is to carry out a useful search of the schools archives. The effects of this constant, obsessive disquiet soon revealed themselves in mistakes at work, in lack of attention, in sudden bouts of drowsiness during the day due to insomnia, in short, Senhor José, until then considered by his various superiors to be a competent, methodical and dedicated civil servant, began to be the object of severe warnings, reprimands and calls to order that only served to confuse him all the more, and, needless to say, the way he was carrying on, he could be absolutely sure of a negative response if, at some point, he could actually bring himself to ask for the longed-for time off. Things reached such a pitch that, after fruitless analysis by senior clerks and deputies in turn, they had no option but to bring the matter to the notice of the Registrar, who, at first, found the whole business so absurd that he could not understand what all the fuss was about. The fact that a civil servant should have so grievously neglected his duties made any benevolent tendency towards reaching an exculpatory decision impossible, it constituted a grave offence against the working traditions of the Central Registry, something that could only be justified by some grave illness. When the delinquent was brought into his presence, that was exactly what the Registrar asked Senhor José, Are you ill, I don't think so, sir, Well, if you're not ill, how do you explain your recent poor standard of work, I don't know, sir, perhaps it's because I haven't been sleeping well, In that case, you are ill, No, it's just that I'm not sleeping very well, If you're not sleeping well, it's because you're ill, a healthy person always sleeps well, unless he has something weighing on his conscience, some reprehensible mistake, the sort that your conscience cannot forgive, for conscience is most important, Yes, sir, If your errors at work are caused by insomnia and if your insomnia is being caused by a guilty conscience, then we have to discover what your mistake was, I haven't made any mistakes, sir, Impossible, the only person here who doesn't make mistakes is me but what's wrong, why are you staring at the telephone book, Sorry, sir, I got distracted, A bad sign, you know perfectly well that you must always look at me when I'm talking to you, it's in the disciplinary regulations, I'm the only one who has the right to look away, Yes, sir, Now what was your mistake, I don't know, sir, That only makes matters worse, forgotten mistakes are always the worst ones, I've fulfilled all my duties, The information I have regarding your conduct is satisfactory, but that only serves to show that your recent poor professional performance was not the consequence of some forgotten mistake, but of a recent mistake, one you have only just made, My conscience is clear, Consciences keep silent more often than they should, that's why laws were created, Yes, sir, Now I have to make a decision, Yes, sir, Indeed, I already have, Yes, sir, I'm giving you a day's suspension, Is that just a suspension of salary, sir, or is it also a suspension from work, asked Senhor José, seeing a glimmer of hope, Of salary, of course, we can't have work being any more disrupted than it already has been, only a while ago I gave you half an hour off, you surely weren't expecting your bad behaviour to be rewarded with a whole day's leave, No sir, For your sake, I hope this serves as a lesson, and that, in the interests of the Central Registry, you soon go back to being the punctilious worker you always have been up until now, Yes, sir, That's all, you may go back to your desk.
Desperate, close to tears, his nerves in tatters, Senhor José did as he was told. During the few minutes that the difficult conversation with his boss had lasted, the work had piled up on his desk, as if the other clerks, his colleagues, taking advantage of his precarious disciplinary situation, had chosen to punish him on their own account. There were also several people waiting their turn to be served. They were standing before him not by chance nor because they thought, when they came into the Central Registry, that the absent clerk would perhaps be a kinder, more welcoming sort than the others they could see behind the counter, but because the other clerks had told them to go there. Since staff regulations stated that attending to clients had absolute priority over any work you might have on your desk, Senhor José approached the counter, knowing that, behind him, papers would continue to rain down. He was lost. Now, after the Registrar's angry warning and subsequent punishment, even if he were to invent the impossible birth of a child or the dubious death of a relative, he could abandon any hopes he might have had that, in the near future, they would give him permission to leave early or to arrive late, even if it were only a matter of an hour, half an hour, even a minute. In this house of archives, memory is tenacious, slow to forget, so slow that it will never entirely forget anything. Ten years hence, should Senhor José suffer a lapse of concentration, however insignificant, you can be sure that someone will immediately remind him, in detail, of these unfortunate days. Probably that was what the Registrar meant when he said that the worst errors are those that are apparently forgotten. For Senhor José, frantic with work, tormented by thoughts, the rest of the day was utter torture. While one part of his conscious mind was giving clear explanations to members of the public, filling in and stamping documents, filing away record cards, the other part was monotonously cursing the chance or coincidence that had somehow transformed into morbid curiosity something that would not even cause a flicker in the imagination of a sensible, well-balanced person. The boss is right, thought Senhor José, the interests of the Central Registry should come before all else, if I led a proper, normal life, I certainly would not, at my age, have started collecting actors, ballerinas, bishops and football players, it's stupid, useless, ridiculous, a fine legacy I'll leave when I die, just as well I haven't got anyone to leave it to really, it probably all stems from living alone, now if I had a wife. When he reached this point, his thoughts stopped, then took another route, a narrow, uncertain path, at the start of which he could sec the picture of a little girl, at the end of which she would be, if she were there a real person, a grownup woman an adult, thirty-six and divorced, What do I want her for, what would I do with her if I met her. The thought broke off again and abruptly retraced its steps, And how exactly do you think you're going to find her, if they won't give you time off to go and look for her, it asked him, and he didn't reply, at that precise moment he was busy telling the last person in the queue that the death certificate he had asked for would be ready the following day.
Some questions, however, are very determined, they don't give up, and this one returned to the attack when, weary in body, exhausted in spirit, Senhor José finally went home. He had thrown himself down on the bed like a rag, he wanted to sleep, to forget his boss's face, the unfair punishment, but the question came and lay down next to him, insinuating in a whisper, You can't go looking for her, they won't let you, this time it was impossible to pretend he was busy talking to a member of the public, he still tried to ignore it, though, he said he'd have to find a way and that if he didn't, then he would just give up, but the question would not let go, You give in awfully easily, if that's the case, then it wasn't worth forging a letter of authority and making that nice, unhappy lady in the ground-floor apartment talk about her sinful past, it shows a lack of respect for other people visiting their homes like that and probing into their intimate fives. The allusion to the letter made him suddenly sit up on the edge of the bed, frightened. He had it in his jacket pocket, he had been walking around with it all these days, just imagine if for some reason or other he had dropped it, or, with the state his nerves were in, if he had fainted, become unconscious, and one of his colleagues, not with any ill intention, had, as he unbuttoned his jacket to let him breathe, seen the white envelope with the official Central Registry stamp on it, and said, What's this, and then a senior clerk and then a deputy and then the director. Senhor José didn't want to think about what would happen next, he leapt up, went over to his jacket, which was hanging on the back of a chair, took out the letter, and, looking anxiously about him, wondered where the devil he could possibly hide it. None of the furniture could be locked, all his sparse belongings were within easy reach of any interfering busybody who might enter. It was then that he noticed his collections lined up in the wardrobe, there lay the solution to this difficulty. He found the bishop's file and stuck the envelope inside, a bishop never excites much curiosity however pious his reputation, not like a cyclist or a Formula One racing driver. Relieved, he went back to bed, but the question was there waiting for him, You didn't resolve anything, the problem isn't the letter, it makes no difference whether you hide it or show it, that won't lead you to the woman, Look, I said I'll find a way, I doubt it, the boss has got you bound hand and foot, he won't let you take a step, Then I'll wait until things calm down, And then, I don't know, I'll think of something, You could resolve the matter right now, How, You could phone her parents, say that you're phoning on behalf of the Central Registry and ask them to give you her address, I can't do that, Tomorrow you go to the woman's house, what kind of conversation you'll have I can't imagine, but at least you'll get your peace of mind back, I probably won't want to talk to her when she's there in front of me, Well, in that case, why are you looking for her, why are you investigating her life, I collect articles about the bishop too, but I don't particularly want to talk to him either, That seems absurd to me, It is absurd, but it's about time I did something absurd in my life, Do you mean to tell me that if you do manage to find this woman, she won't even know you were looking for her, Probably, Why, I can't explain, Anyway, you're not even going to get to visit the girl's school, schools are like the Central Registry, they're closed on weekends, I can go into the Central Registry whenever I want, That's hardly a remarkable achievement given that the door of your house opens on to it, You've obviously never had to go in there yourself, I go wherever you go and see whatever you see, Do continue, I will, but you are not going to get into that school, We'll see. Senhor José got up, it was time for supper, if the extremely light meals he usually ate at night merited the name. While he was eating, he was thinking, then, still thinking, he washed the plate, the glass and the cutlery, gathered up the crumbs fallen on the tablecloth, and, as if that gesture had been the inevitable conclusion to his thoughts, he opened the door that led out into the street. Opposite him, on the other side of the pavement, was a telephone box, a stone's throw away if you like, just twenty paces and he would reach the end of a thread that would carry his voice to her, the same thread would bring him an answer, and there, in one way or another, his search would end, he could calmly go back home, win back his boss's trust, and then the world, spinning in its own invisible tracks, would resume its usual orbit, the deep peace of someone who simply awaits the hour when all things will be done, always supposing that those words, so often spoken and repeated, have any real significance. Senhor José did not cross the road, he put on his jacket and his raincoat and went out.
He had to change buses twice before he reached his destination. The school was a long, two-storey building with dormer windows, separated from the street by high railings. The intervening space, a strip of land with a sprinkling of rather small trees, was probably used as a playground by the pupils. There was no light anywhere. Senhor José looked about him, even though it wasn't that late, the street was deserted, that's the good thing about these out-of-the-way places, especially if it's not the weather to have your windows open, the locals huddle inside their houses, and besides, there's nothing to see outside. Senhor José walked to the end of the road, crossed to the other sidewalk and walked slowly back towards the school like someone out enjoying a stroll in the evening cool and who has no one at home waiting for him. Right by the main door, he bent down as if he had just noticed that his shoelace had come un tied, a tired old trick, no one's fooled by it, but it can still be used for want of something better when the imagination can't come up with any alternative. With his elbow, he nudged the gate, which moved a little, it wasn't locked. Methodically, Senhor José tied a second knot over the first, got up, stamped his foot on the ground to test the firmness of the knots, and continued on his way, more briskly now, as if he had suddenly remembered that he did, in fact, have someone waiting for him.
Senhor José lived through the days until the weekend as if he were watching his own dreams. In the Central Registry no one saw him make a single mistake, he was never distracted, he never once muddled one document up with another, he got through enormous quantities of work which, at any other time, would have made him protest, silently of course, against the inhuman treatment of which clerks have always been victims, and all this was carried out and borne without a word, without a murmur. The Registrar glanced at him a couple of times from a distance, we know that he was not in the habit of looking at subordinates, far less at subordinates of such lowly rank, but Senhor José's spiritual concentration reached such a degree of intensity that it was impossible not to notice it in the perennially paralysed atmosphere of the Central Registry. On Friday, when the office was closing, the Registrar, with no prior warning, broke all the rules, scorned all the traditions, leaving the staff in a state of shock, for, as he passed Senhor José on his way out, he asked him, Are you feeling better. Senhor José said that he was, that he was much better, that he had not suffered from insomnia again, and the Registrar said, That conversation of ours must have done you good, he looked as if he were going to add something more, some idea that had suddenly occurred to him, but he closed his mouth and left, he had said quite enough, to cancel the punishment that had been imposed would be to subvert discipline. The other clerks, the senior clerks and even the deputies looked at Senhor José as if seeing him for the first time, the director's few words had made him a different person, it was rather like what happens when a child is taken to be baptised, one child is taken there, quite another child is brought back. Senhor José finished tidying his desk, then awaited his turn to leave, the rule was that the first to leave was always the longest-serving deputy registrar, then the senior clerks, then the clerks, always in order of length of service, it was left to the other deputy to close the door. Unusually, Senhor José did not immediately walk around the Central Registry building in order to go into his house, he set off into the nearby streets, he went to three different shops and in each of them he made a purchase, half a kilo of lard in one, a soft towel in another, and a third small object, a mere trifle, that fitted in the palm of his hand, and this he put in his jacket pocket because there was no need for it to be wrapped. Only then did he go home. It was long past midnight when he went out again. At that hour, there were few buses around, only very infrequently would one appear, which is why, for the second time since he had encountered the unknown woman's card, Senhor José decided to take a taxi. He felt a kind of vibration in the pit of his stomach, like a hum, a frenzy, but his mind remained calm, or rather, he was incapable of thought. There was a moment when Senhor José, hunched in the back of the taxi as if afraid of being seen, still tried to imagine what might happen to him, the consequences it could have for his life, if the action he was about to undertake should go wrong, but the thought hid behind a wall, I'm not coming out, it said, then he understood, because he knew himself well, he knew that the thought wanted to protect him, not from fear, but from cowardice. When they neared his destination, he asked the taxi to stop, he would walk the remaining short distance. He had his hands in his pockets, holding beneath his buttoned-up raincoat the packages containing the lard and the towel. Just as he was turning the corner into the street where the school was, a few drops of rain fell on him, which, when he was almost at the gate, immediately became a great torrent raking noisily along the pavement. It has been said, from classical times onwards, that fortune favours the bold, in this case, the intermediary charged with that responsibility was the rain, or, in other words, heaven, anyone passing at that late hour would certainly be more concerned with trying to avoid a sudden drenching than watching the actions of a man in a raincoat who, given his apparent age, had escaped from the shower with quite unexpected speed, he was there a minute ago, now he's gone. Sheltering beneath one of the trees inside the railings, his heart beating wildly, Senhor José was breathing hard, amazed at the agility with which he had moved, he who, when it came to physical exercise, went no further than climbing to the top of the ladder in the Central Registry, and God knows he hated that. He was out of sight of the street, and he believed that, by moving cautiously from tree to tree, he could reach the school door without anyone outside seeing him. He had persuaded himself that there was no guard inside, in the first place, because of the absence of light, both the other day and now, and in the second place, because schools, except for certain very particular, exceptional reasons, are not places that are deemed to be worth burgling. His reasons were definitely exceptional and particular, which is why he had gone there armed with half a kilo of lard, a towel and a glass cutter, for that was the object that had not required wrapping. Meanwhile, he had to think carefully about what he was going to do. Gaining entry at the front would be imprudent, someone riving in one of the upper storeys on the opposite side of the street might be peering out at the rain that was still falling heavily and see a man breaking one of the school's windows, there are plenty of people who wouldn't lift a finger to prevent a violent act being carried out, on the contrary, they would let the curtain fall and return to bed, saying, That's their business, but there are other people who would save the world if only the world would let them, they would immediately call the police and rush out onto the verandah shouting, Stop thief, a harsh epithet which Senhor José does not deserve, at worst forger, but only we know about that. I'll go around to the rear of the building, it might be easier there, thought Senhor José, and perhaps he was right, so often the backs of buildings are badly cared for, with piles of old junk, boxes awaiting re-use, empty paint cans, broken bricks from building work, all that anyone wanting to improvise a ladder, reach a window and climb in could possibly desire. In fact, Senhor José did find some of these useful objects, but, as he could tell by touch, they were all very neatly arranged underneath the porch, against the wall, in the darkness, and it would take too much time and effort to select and carry away the things that would best suit the structural needs of the pyramid he would have to scale. If I could just get onto the roof, he muttered, and, in principle, the idea was an excellent one, since there was a window about two feet above where the porch joined the wall, Even so, it's not going to be easy, the roof is very steep and with this rain it's bound to be slippery, treacherous, he thought. Senhor José felt himself beginning to lose heart, that's what happens when someone has no experience in burgling, when someone has not had the benefit of lessons from master climbers, he hadn't even thought to come and inspect the place beforehand, he could have done so the other day when he noticed that the gate wasn't locked, he must have thought himself so fortunate on that occasion that he preferred not to push his luck. He had in his pocket the small flashlight that he had used in the Central Registry to be able to read the record cards, but he didn't want to turn it on here, a shape in the darkness that might pass more or less unseen is one thing, a moving circle of light betraying his presence is quite another, quite different, much worse, declaring Look, here I am. He took shelter under the porch, he could hear the rain drumming tirelessly on the roof, and he didn't know what to do. There were trees on this side too, taller and leafier than those in the front, if there were any other buildings hidden behind them, he couldn't see them from where he was standing, Therefore, they can't see me either, thought Senhor José, and after hesitating a moment longer, he turned on his flashlight and moved it rapidly from side to side. He had been absolutely right, the objects in the school junkyard were very carefully disposed and arranged, like neatly dovetailing bits of machinery. He turned on the flashlight again, this time pointing the beam upwards. Lying across the junk but apart from the other things, as if it were something that was occasionally put to use, was a stepladder. Either because of the unexpected nature of the discovery, or because of a sudden, random memory of the heights he had to scale in the Central Registry, Senhor José felt a rush, a popular and expressive phrase in current usage that removes the need for the word "vertigo" to be articulated by mouths not born for it, and thus aids communication. The stepladder wasn't long enough to reach the window, but it would do to climb onto the porch and, from then on, he was in God's hands.