Authors: José Saramago
Thus invoked, God decided to help Senhor José out of his difficulty, which is not so very extraordinary when one considers the enormous number of burglars who, ever since the world began, have been fortunate enough to return from their burglaries, not only laden with goods, but also unharmed, that is, having suffered no divine punishment. Providence determined that the corrugated concrete sheets that formed the roof of the porch, as well as having a rough finish, also had on the lower edges a projecting edge whose attractive, ornamental qualities the factory designer had, imprudently, been unable to resist. Thanks to this, and despite the steepness of the porch roof, Senhor José, with a foot here, a hand there, moaning, sighing, catching his fingernails, scuffing the toes of his shoes, managed to drag himself up. Now all he had to do was get in. The moment has come to reveal that the methods used by Senhor José, as cat burglar and housebreaker, are completely outmoded, not to say antiquated, even archaic. A long time ago, not even he can remember in which book or newspaper, he had read that lard, a soft towel and a glass cutter were the essential tools for anyone trying to enter through a window with malicious intent, and, in blind faith, he had equipped himself with these unusual aids. He could, of course, in order to hasten the task, have simply smashed the glass, but he was afraid, when he was planning the break-in, that the unavoidable sound of splintering glass would alarm the neighbourhood, and although it was true that the bad weather, with its own natural noises, might diminish the risk, it would be best to keep strictly to the discipline of the method. So, resting his feet on that providential edge, his knees digging into the rough ridges of the roof, Senhor José started cutting the glass with the diamond blade, along the frame. Then, breathing hard from the effort and the awkwardness of his position, he wiped the glass as best he could with his handkerchief, to assist the desired adhesive qualities of the lard, or, rather, what remained of the lard, since his violent efforts in climbing the steep slope had left the package a shapeless, sticky mass with inevitable consequences for the cleanliness of the clothes he had on. Even so, he managed to spread an acceptably thick layer of lard all over the window, then over that, as carefully as possible, he laid the towel which, after endless contortions, he finally managed to extract from his raincoat pocket. Now he would have to calculate precisely the force of the blow required, not so weak as to require repetition, nor so strong that the glass would fail to cling to the towel. Holding the upper part of the towel against the window frame with his left hand so that it would not slip, Senhor José made a fist of his right hand, brought his arm back and dealt the glass a sharp blow that fortunately produced only the dull muted sound of a gun fitted with a silencer. He had got it right the first time, a notable achievement for a beginner. One or two small fragments of glass fell inside, nothing more, but that didn't matter, there was no one in there. For a few seconds, despite the rain, Senhor José lay stretched out on the porch roof, recovering his strength and savouring his triumph. Then, straightening up, he reached in, fumbled for and found the window catch, dear God, the risks burglars take, opened it wide and, grasping the windowsill, his feet frantically scrabbling for non-existent footholds, he managed to lift himself up, raise one leg, then the other, and finally drop through to the other side, as lightly as a leaf falling from a tree.
Respect for the facts, and a simple moral obligation not to offend the credulity of anyone prepared to accept as plausible and coherent the difficulties of such an extraordinary exploit, demand immediate clarification of that last statement: Senhor José did not drop as lightly from the windowsill as a leaf falling from a bough. On the contrary, he fell very heavily, the way an entire tree would fall, when he could perfectly easily have lowered himself gradually down from his temporary seat until his feet touched the ground. The fall, given the thud with which he hit the ground and the subsequent succession of painful collisions, revealed to him, before bis eyes could confirm the fact, that the place he had landed in was like a prolongation of the porch outside, since both places were used as a storage space for things no longer needed, although it had probably happened the other way around, this place came first and, only later, when there was no more room here, did they resort to the porch outside. Senhor José sat there for a few moments, waiting for his breathing to return to normal and for his arms and legs to stop shaking. Then he turned on the flashlight, being careful to shine it only on the floor in front of him, and he saw that, between the piled-up furniture on either side, there was a path that led to the door. It troubled him to think that the door might be locked, in which case he would have to break it down despite having none of the necessary imple ments and despite the ensuing noise. Outside it was still raining, everyone must be asleep, but we can't be sure, there are people who sleep so lightly that even the whine of a mosquito is enough to wake them, then they get up, go to the kitchen for a glass of water, look casually out of the window and see a black rectangular hole in the wall of the school, and perhaps think, They're awfully careless at that school, imagine leaving a window open in weather like this, or, If I remember rightly, that window was closed, it must have been blown open by the wind, no one is going to think there's a thief inside, besides, they'd be quite wrong, because Senhor José, may we remind you once again, has not come here to steal. It has just occurred to him that he should close the window so that no one outside will notice the break-in, but then he has doubts, he wonders if it wouldn't be better to leave it as it is, They'll think it was the wind or carelessness on the part of some employee, if I close it they'll immediately notice that there's no glass in it, especially since the glass is opaque, almost white. Convinced that the rest of the world follows the same deductive paths as he does, he decided to leave the window open and then began to crawl past the furniture to the door. It wasn't locked. He gave a sigh of relief, from then on, there should be no further obstacles. Now what he needed was a comfortable chair, or, even better, a sofa, to spend what remained of the night resting, if his nerves would let him sleep. As an experienced chess player, he had calculated the moves, indeed, when you're reasonably sure of the immediate objective causes, it's not that difficult to think through the range of probable and possible effects and their transformation into causes, all in turn generating effects causes effects and causes effects causes, and so on into infinity, but we know that Senhor José has no need to go quite that far. To prudent people it will seem foolish for the clerk to have walked straight into the lion's den, and then, as if that were not audacious enough, to remain there calmly for what remained of the night and all of tomorrow, with the risk of being caught in flagrante by someone with far greater deductive powers than his in the matter of open windows. It must be recognised, however, that it would have been even less sensible to have gone walking from room to room putting on lights. The combination of an open window and a light, when everyone knows that the legitimate users of a house or a school are absent, is a mental leap that anyone can make, however trusting they may be, they usually call the police.
Senhor José ached all over, he had skinned his knees, which were possibly bleeding, the discomfort caused by his trousers rubbing against them could mean nothing else, apart from that, he was soaked to the skin and dirty from head to foot. He removed his dripping raincoat and thought, If there was an inner room here, I could turn on the light, and a bathroom, a bathroom where I could have a wash, or at least wash my hands. Feeling his way, opening and shutting doors, he found what he was looking for, first, a small, windowless room lined with shelves containing stationery for school and office, pencils, notebooks, loose paper, pens, erasers, bottles of ink, rulers, set squares, bevel squares, protractors, drawing sets, tubes of glue, boxes of staples, and other things he couldn't see. With the light on he could at last examine the damage caused by his adventure. The wounds to his knees were not as bad as he had imagined, they were only superficial grazes, although still painful. In the morning, when he would no longer need to turn on lights, he would look for something that can be found in every school, the white first-aid cabinet, disinfectant, alcohol, peroxide, cotton wool, bandages, compresses, plasters, not all of which he would need. None of those remedies would be of any help to his raincoat, which is suffering from terminal grime, the lard having impregnated the fabric, Perhaps I could get the worst of it off with alcohol, thought Senhor José. Then he went in search of a bathroom, and he was lucky, he didn't have to walk very far before he found one which, to judge by its tidiness and cleanliness, must have been used by the teachers. The window, which also opened onto the back of the school, apart from having frosted glass, obviously more necessary here than in the storeroom through which he had entered, had internal wooden shutters, thanks to which Senhor José could at last turn on the light, have a wash and be able to see what he was doing. Then, more or less clean, his strength restored, he went in search of a place to sleep. Although, as a student, he had not been in a school like this, so luxurious and spacious, he knew that every school has a head teacher, and that every head teacher has a study, and that all such studies have a sofa, which was exactly what his body was crying out for. He continued to open and close doors, he looked inside rooms to which the diffuse light from outside gave a ghostly air, where the students' desks looked like lines of tombs, where the teacher's desk was like a sombre sacrificial altar, and the blackboard the place where everyone would be called to account. He saw, pinned to the walls, like the vague stains that time leaves behind on the skins of people and things, maps of the sky, of the world and of different countries, hydrographic and orographic maps of the human body, the channelling of the blood, the digestive tract, the ordering of the muscles, the communication network of the nervous system, the framework of the bones, the bellows of the lungs, the labyrinth of the brain, the section of the eye, the tangle of the genitals. The classrooms followed one after the other, along corridors that circled the school, everywhere there was the smell of chalk, almost as old as that of bodies, there are even those who believe that God, after shaping the clay from which he later made them, began by drawing a man and a woman with a stick of chalk on the surface of the first night, which is where we get the one certainty we have, that we were, are and will be dust, and that we will be lost in another night as dark as that first night. In some places the darkness was thick, absolute, as if swathed in black cloths, but in others, there hovered the vibrant shimmer of an aquarium, a phosphorescence, a blue-tinged luminosity that could not possibly come from the street lamps, or, if it did, it was transformed as it came in through the glass. Remembering the pale lamp eternally suspended above the Registrar's desk, and which the surrounding shadows always seemed about to devour, Senhor José murmured, The Central Registry is different, then he added, as if requiring a response to his own remark, Probably the greater the difference, the greater the similarity, and the greater the similarity, the greater the difference, at that moment he did not yet know how right he was.
There were only classrooms on that floor, the head teacher's study was doubtless upstairs, removed from voices, from irksome noises, from the hubbub of students entering and leaving their classes. There was a skylight above the staircase and, as he went up the stairs, he moved from darkness into light, which, in the circumstances, had no other meaning than the prosaic one of allowing us, at last, to be able to see where we are putting our feet. Chance ordained that during this new search, before he found the head teacher's study, Senhor José should first enter the school secretary's office, a room with three windows that looked out onto the street. The room contained the usual furniture found in offices of this type, there were a few desks and an equal number of chairs, as well as cupboards, fifing cabinets, card indexes, Senhor José's heart leapt to see them, that was what he had come looking for, files, index cards, records, statements, notes, the history of the unknown woman when she had been a girl and an adolescent, always assuming that there were no other schools in her life after this one. Senhor José opened a card-index drawer at random, but the light coming in from the street was not bright enough for him to see what kinds of records it contained. I've got plenty of time, thought Senhor José, what I need now is to sleep. He left the office, and two doors farther along, he finally found the head teachers study. Compared with the austerity of the Central Registry, it would be no exaggeration here to speak of luxury. The floor was carpeted, the window was hung with heavy curtains, which were drawn shut, there was a large, old-fashioned desk and a modern chair in black leather, all this Senhor José discovered because, when he opened the door and found himself in complete darkness, he did not hesitate to turn on first his flashlight, and then, the centre light. Since you could see no fight coming in from the outside, no one outside would be able to see light coming from inside. The head teacher's chair was comfortable, he could sleep there, but even better was the long, broad, three-seater sofa that seemed charitably to be opening its arms to him in order to welcome and comfort his weary body. Senhor José looked at his watch, it was a few minutes before three. Seeing how late it was, for he hadn't even noticed time passing, he felt suddenly very tired, I've had enough, he thought, and, unable to contain himself, out of pure nervous exhaustion, he began to sob, to weep uncontrollably, almost convulsively, standing there, as if he were once again the little first-year student, in another school, who had committed some mischief and been summoned by the head teacher to receive his just punishment. He threw his drenched raincoat down on the floor, took his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and raised it to his eyes, but the handkerchief was just as wet as everything else, for his entire being, from head to foot, he realised now, seemed to be oozing water, as if he were nothing but a wrung-out rag, his body was filthy, his spirit bruised, and both felt equally wretched, What am I doing here, he asked himself, but he preferred not to answer, he was afraid that, once laid bare, the reason that had brought him to this place would strike him as absurd, ridiculous, crazy. A sudden shiver ran through him. I've caught a cold already, he said out loud and immediately sneezed twice, and then, while he was blowing his nose, he found himself following the capricious paths of a thought which goes where it chooses without offering any explanation, and remembering those film actors who are constantly plunging into water fully clothed or getting drenched by torrential rain, and who never catch pneumonia, or even a simple cold, as happens every day in real life, at most, they wrap themselves up in a blanket over their wet clothes, which would seem a ludicrous thing to do if we did not know that filming is about to be interrupted so that the actor can withdraw to his dressing room, take a hot bath and don his monogrammed dressing gown. Senhor José began to take off his shoes, then he removed his jacket and shirt, pulled off his trousers and hung them on a tall hat stand that he found in one corner, now all he needed was to wrap himself up in that film's inevitable blanket, a difficult accessory to find in a head teacher's study, unless the head teacher was an elderly person, the sort whose knees get cold when he's been sitting down for any length of time. Senhor José's deductive powers led him once more to the correct conclusion, the blanket lay carefully folded on the seat of the chair. It wasn't a large blanket, it didn't cover him completely, but it would be better than lying naked all night. Senhor José turned off the centre light, used the flashlight to guide himself back to the sofa and, sighing, stretched out on it, but then immediately curled up tight in order to fit his whole body beneath the blanket. He was still shivering, he had kept on his underclothes and they were still damp, probably with sweat, from the physical effort, the rain couldn't possibly have penetrated that far. He sat up on the sofa, slipped off his vest and pants, removed his socks, then wrapped the blanket around him as if he were trying to make of it a second skin, and thus, rolled up like a wood louse, he let himself sink into the darkness of the study, waiting for a little merciful warmth that would transport him into the mercy of sleep. Both took a long time to come, driven away by a thought that would not leave him, What if someone walks in and finds me in this state, I mean, naked, they would call the police, they would handcuff him, they would ask him his name, his age and his profession, the head teacher would be the first to arrive, then the Registrar, and both would look at him with harsh, condemnatory eyes, What are you doing here, they would ask, and he would have no voice to reply with, he couldn't explain to them that he was looking for an unknown woman, they would probably all just burst out laughing, and then ask again, What are you doing here, and they would keep asking until he confessed everything, the proof of this was that they were still repeating it in his dreams when, as morning was returning to the world, Senhor José finally managed to abandon his exhausting vigil, or it abandoned him.