The Collected Novels of José Saramago (293 page)

A taxi carried him to the house of the unknown woman’s parents. He rang the bell, it was answered by a woman who looked about sixty or so, younger than the woman in the ground-floor apartment, with whom her husband had deceived her thirty years before, I’m the person who phoned from the Central Registry, said Senhor José, Come in, we were expecting you, I’m sorry I couldn’t come at once, but I had to handle another very urgent matter, That’s all right, come this way. The house had a sombre air, there were curtains covering the windows and the doors, the furniture was heavy, the walls were hung with ominous paintings of landscapes that had probably never existed. The lady of the house ushered Senhor José into what appeared to be a study, where a man, quite a bit older than she, was waiting, It’s the gentleman from the Central Registry, said the woman, Sit down, said the man, pointing to a chair. Senhor José took the letter from his pocket, holding it in his hand as he said, I’m terribly sorry to bother you at this sad time, but that’s what my job demands, this document will tell you the exact nature of my mission. He handed the piece of paper to the man, who read it, holding it very close to his eyes, saying when he had done so, Your mission must be extremely important to justify a document written in these terms, It’s the usual
Central Registry style, even when it’s a simple thing like this, an investigation into the causes of a suicide, That’s hardly unimportant, No, don’t misunderstand me, what I meant was that whatever mission they charge us with and for which a letter of authority is deemed necessary, it’s always written in the same style, The rhetoric of authority, You could call it that. The woman intervened to ask, And what does the Central Registry want to know, First, the immediate cause of the suicide, And second, asked the man, The antecedents, the circumstances, the signs, anything that can help us towards a better understanding of what happened, Isn’t it enough for the Central Registry to know that my daughter killed herself, When I said I needed to talk to you about a statistical question, I was simplifying matters, Now’s your chance to explain, It’s no longer enough for us to be content with numbers, what we’re trying to do now is to find out as much as possible about the psychological background against which the suicidal process takes place, Why, asked the woman, that won’t bring my daughter back to life, The idea is to set up parameters for intervention, I don’t understand, said the man, Senhor José was sweating, it was proving far more complicated than he had thought, It’s terribly hot, isn’t it, he said, Would you like a glass of water, asked the woman, If it’s not too much trouble, Of course not, the woman got up and went out, in a minute she was back. While he was drinking the water, Senhor José decided to change tactics. He placed the glass on the tray the woman was holding and said, Imagine that your daughter had not yet committed suicide, imagine that the investigation which the Central Registry is currently undertaking had managed to draw up certain guidelines and recommendations, capable eventually, if applied in time, of halting what I earlier referred to as the suicidal process, That was what you meant by parameters for intervention, asked the man, Exactly, said Senhor José, and without leaving room for any further remarks, he delivered the first thrust, We may
not have been able to stop your daughter from committing suicide, but perhaps we can, with your collaboration and with that of other people in the same situation, avoid a great deal of grief and many tears. The woman was crying, murmuring, My dear daughter, while the man was roughly wiping away his tears with the back of bis hand. Senhor José hoped he would not be forced to resort to his final expedient, which would, he thought, be a reading of the letter of authority in a loud, severe voice, word by word, like doors being closed one after the other, until they left only one possible way out for the person listening, to do as they were asked and to speak. If this failed, he would have no option but to come up with some excuse to withdraw as gracefully as possible. And just pray that it would not occur to the unknown woman’s stubborn father to phone the Central Registry demanding an explanation for that visit by a member of their staff called Senhor José something or other, I can’t remember the rest of his name. It wasn’t necessary. The man folded up the letter and gave it back. Then he said, What can we do for you. Senhor José gave a sigh of relief, the way was now open for him to get down to business, Did your daughter leave a letter, No letter, no word, Do you mean she committed suicide just like that, It wouldn’t have happened just like that, she obviously had her reasons, but we don’t know what they were, My daughter was unhappy, said the woman, No one happy commits suicide, said her impatient husband, And why was she unhappy, asked Senhor José, I don’t know, she was sad even as a little girl, I used to ask her what was wrong and she would always say the same thing, I’m fine, Mom, So the cause of the suicide wasn’t her divorce, On the contrary, the only time I saw my daughter happy was when she separated from her husband, They didn’t get on well, then, They didn’t get on well or badly really, it was just a rather average marriage, Who asked for the divorce, She did, Was there some concrete reason, Not that we know of, no, it was as if they’d both
reached the end of the road, What’s he like, Fairly ordinary, a decent man, he never gave us any reason for complaint, And he loved her, Yes, I think so, And what about her, did she love him, Yes, she did, I believe, And despite that they weren’t happy, They never were, How strange, Life is strange, said the man. There was a silence, the woman got up and went out. Senhor José stopped, he didn’t know whether it would be better to wait for her to return or to continue the conversation. He was afraid that the interruption might have set the interrogation on the wrong track, you could almost feel the tension in the room. Senhor José wondered if the man’s words, Life is strange, were not an echo of his former relationship with the lady in the ground-floor apartment and if his wife’s sudden exit were not the reply of someone who, at that moment, could give no other. Senhor José picked up the glass, drank a little water to gain time, then asked a random question, Did your daughter work, Yes, she taught mathematics, Where, In the same school where she studied before going to university. Senhor José again picked up the glass, almost dropping it in his haste, he stammered ridiculously, S-s-sorry, and suddenly his voice failed him, while Senhor José drank, the man was looking at him with an expression of scornful curiosity, it seemed to him that the Central Registry was pretty ill served by its staff, at least judging by this example, there was no point turning up armed with a letter of authority like that and then behaving like an imbecile. The woman came in at the point where her husband was asking ironically, Would you like me to give you the name of the school, it might be of some use to you for the success of your mission, That would be most kind of you. The man bent over the desk, wrote down the name and address of the school on a piece of paper and handed it brusquely to Senhor José, but the man who was sitting before him now was not the same man of a few moments ago, Senhor José had regained sufficent control of himself to remember that he knew a secret about this family, an old secret that neither of them could possibly imagine he knew. This thought lay behind his next question, Do you know if your daughter kept a diary, I don’t think so, at least we didn’t find anything like that, said the mother, But there must be papers, notes, jottings, there always are, if you could perhaps give me permission to glance over them, I might find something of interest, We haven’t removed anything from her apartment yet, said the father, and I’ve no idea when we’ll get around to it, Your daughter’s apartment was rented, No, she owned it, I see. There was a pause, Senhor José slowly unfolded the letter of authority, he looked at it from top to bottom as if he were checking to see if there were any powers he had left undeployed, then he said, Would you allow me to go to the apartment, in your presence, of course, No, the reply was sharp, cutting, My letter of authority, began Senhor José, Your letter of authority will have to make do for now with the information you’ve got, said the man, adding, We can, if you like, continue our conversation tomorrow at the Central Registry, now, if you’ll forgive me, I have other matters to resolve, There’s no need to go to the Central Registry, what you’ve told me about the situation before the suicide seems quite adequate, said Senhor José, but I still have three questions to ask, Go on, How did your daughter die, She took an overdose of sleeping tablets, Was she alone in the house, Yes, And have you already arranged for a gravestone, We’re dealing with that now, why do you ask, Oh nothing, just simple curiosity. Senhor José stood up. I’ll show you out, said the woman. When they reached the corridor, she raised a finger to her lips and indicated to him to wait. She noiselessly removed a small bunch of keys from the drawer of a small table placed against the wall. Then, as she was opening the door, she pressed them into Senhor José’s hand. They’re hers, she whispered, one of these days I’ll stop by the Central Registry to pick them up, and coming closer still, almost in a whisper, she told him the address.

Senhor José slept like a log. After returning from his dangerous but successful visit to the unknown woman’s parents, he wanted to set down the weekend’s extraordinary events in his notebook, but he was so tired that he didn’t get any further than his conversation with the clerk at the General Cemetery. He went to bed without any supper, fell asleep in less than two minutes and when he opened his eyes, at the first light of dawn, he discovered that, without knowing how or when, he had made the decision not to go in to work. It was Monday, the very worst day to miss work, especially if you were a clerk Whatever the alleged reason, and however convincing it might have been on any other occasion, it was always suspected of being merely an excuse, a way of justifying prolonging the indolence of Sunday into a day that was legally and customarily devoted to work. After the repeated and increasingly serious irregularities in his behaviour since he had started looking for the unknown woman, Senhor José is aware that not going to work could be the last straw as far as his boss’s patience was concerned. This frightening prospect, however, was not enough to shake the firmness of his decision. There are two important reasons why Senhor José cannot postpone what he has to do until he has an afternoon off. The first of these is that, one day, the mother of the unknown woman will come to the Central Registry in order to recover the keys, the second is that the school, as Senhor José knows all too well, from harsh experience, is closed on the weekend.

Despite his decision not to go to work, Senhor José got up very early. He wanted to be as far away as possible before the Central Registry opened, he didn’t want his immediate superior to come knocking at the door to find out if he was ill again. While he was shaving, he wondered whether it would be best to begin by going to the unknown woman’s apartment, or to the school, but he opted for the school, he is one of the many who always leave the most important till last. He also wondered if he should take the letter of authority with him, or if, on the contrary, it would be dangerous to show it, bearing in mind that a headmaster, given his job, was likely to be a knowledgable, well-read, educated person, what if the terms in which the document was written struck him as unusual, extravagant, hyperbolic, he might demand to know why there was no official stamp, prudence tells Senhor José to leave both letters of authority behind with the innocent clippings about the bishop, My identity card proving that I work for the Central Registry should be more than enough, concluded Senhor José, after all, I’m only going to confirm something concrete, objective, factual, that a woman who committed suicide was a teacher of mathematics at the school. It was still very early when he left the house, the shops were closed, with no lights on and the shutters down, there were scarcely any cars, probably even the earliest risers among the Central Registry staff would only just be getting out of bed. In order not to be seen in the vicinity, Senhor José went and hid in a park two blocks away from the main avenue, along which the bus had taken him to visit the lady in the ground-floor apartment, late one afternoon when he saw his boss going into the Central Registry. Unless you actually knew he was there, he was invisible among the bushes and the low branches of the trees. The benches were all wet with the night dew, so Senhor José did not sit down, instead, he passed the time walking along the garden paths, enjoying himself looking at the flowers and wondering what their names were, it’s not surprising that he knows so little about botanical matters, since he’s spent his whole life between four walls, breathing the pungent smell of old papers, still more pungent when the air is filled by that smell of chrysanthemums and roses mentioned on the very first page of this story. When the clock marked the opening time for the Central Registry to the public, Senhor José, now safe from any possible unfortunate encounters, set off for the school. He was in no hurry, today was his, which is why he decided to go on foot. As he left the garden, he was doubtful which direction to take, if he had bought a map of the city, as he had intended, he would not now have to be asking a policeman the way, but the fact is that the situation, the law giving advice to the criminal, gave him a certain subversive pleasure. The affair of the unknown woman had reached its end, all that was needed now was the inquiry at the school, then the inspection of the apartment, and, if he had time, he would drop in on the lady in the ground-floor apartment to tell her about the latest developments, and then nothing. He wondered how he would live his life from then on, if he would go back to his collections of famous people, for a few brief seconds he imagined himself sitting at the table in the evening, with a pile of newspapers and magazines beside him, cutting out articles and photographs and trying to guess whether a celebrity was on the rise or, alternatively, on the wane, occasionally in the past he had foreseen the fate of certain people who later became important, occasionally he had been the first to suspect that the laurels of this man or that woman were beginning to fade, to wrinkle, to crumble into dust, It all ends up in the rubbish bin, said Senhor José, without quite knowing, at that precise moment, if he meant lost reputations or his clippings collection.