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 Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose'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 Jose on his way out, he asked him, Are you feeling better. Senhor Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose, 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 Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose, 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 Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose, 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 Jose 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.
Thus invoked, God decided to help Senhor Jose 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 Jose, 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 Jose, 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
