Which, do you think, are the narrator’s thoughts, and which are João Mau-Tempo’s, both are right, and if there are any mistakes, they are shared mistakes. This bureaucracy of registers, index cards and papers is there from the day we’re born, we take no notice of it, unless one day we’re allowed to come here and find out in detail what actually went on, from the dotted line on which his name is written, João Mau-Tempo, forty-four years old, married, native and inhabitant of Monte Lavre, where’s that, in the district of Montemor-o-Novo, well, you must be a good sort. They take João Mau-Tempo into a room along with other prisoners, sleep if you can, and if you’re hungry, tough, because suppertime is long gone. The door closes, the world vanishes. Monte Lavre is a dream, and Faustina is deaf, poor thing, however, let us not say, out of some foolish superstition, that this is the hour of bats and owls, poor creatures, it’s not their fault they’re ugly, you perhaps are convinced that you’re handsome, now who’s a fool.
João Mau-Tempo will be here for twenty-four hours. He won’t have much opportunity to talk, although the following day, a prisoner will come up to him and say, Listen, friend, we don’t know why you’re here, but for your own sake, take my advice.
THIRTY DAYS IN SOLITARY confinement is a month that doesn’t fit in any normal calendar. However carefully you make your calculations, there are always too many days, it’s an arithmetic invented by mad people, you start counting, one, two, three, twenty-seven, ninety-four, then find you’ve made a mistake, only six days have passed. No one interrogates him, they brought him from Caxias, this time during the day, so he at least knew where he was, although trying to see the world through those cracks was like trying to see it through the eye of a needle, and then he was ordered to undress, the nation does things like that, it happened to me once before, the doctors did it when I was called up, to decide whether or not I was good enough, well, I’m obviously good enough for these people, they’re not going to send me away, they empty my pockets, they rummage and search and ransack, they even remove the insoles in my shoes, these clever folk know where we stash our secrets, but they find nothing, of the two handkerchiefs I brought with me, they take one, of the two packs of cigarettes, they take one, farewell, knife, these police aren’t always so thorough, only now do they take my knife off me, what if I’d tried to kill myself. They read me the rubric, While in solitary confinement, you will not be allowed any visitors nor can you write to your family, and so on and so forth, otherwise, you will be punished. But one day, much later, he was given permission to write a letter, and back came some clean clothes, washed and ironed by Faustina herself and sprinkled with a few tears, for they’re a sentimental people whose fountains of tears have not as yet dried up.
On the twenty-fifth day, at three o’clock in the morning, João Mau-Tempo was, as usual, sleeping badly, and so he woke at once when the cell door opened and the guard said, Get dressed, Mau-Tempo, you’re leaving. What, you’re going to let me go, the imaginations of the wretched know no bounds, they always think the best or the worst, depending on their mood, that’s the attraction of extremes, let’s hope he’s not disappointed. He’s taken down to the ground floor, where there are people waiting, plus a fierce-looking hound, Here’s that good-for-nothing you’re taking for a walk, jokes the guard, they’re clearly obsessed with this idea of walks and trips and rides, we know exactly what they mean, they’re not fooling anyone, but they keep saying it, with a few minor variations, as if they didn’t know what else to say. The hound goes on ahead, To show you the way to brigade headquarters, that’s what the dog barks at João Mau-Tempo, and the guard from Aljube prison is such a card, just fancy, at this time of the morning and in these painful circumstances he can still manage to say, Have a good journey. Words were not presented to mankind as a gift, far from it, each word was hard won and occasionally abused, and there are some words that should only be sold at a high price, bearing in mind who is saying them and to what end, as in this case, Have a good journey, he says, when he knows full well that the journey will be far from good, animals are kinder to each other, for at least they don’t speak. But here is this hound leading me through the deserted streets, at least it’s a lovely night, although all I can see of it is this corridor of sky between the buildings, and to the left the cathedral and to the right another, smaller church, Santo António, and farther on the Madalena,
