presence of mind to look across at the Registrar in order to thank him for his unexpected good wishes, but the Registrar had his head down, as if he were hard at work, which, knowing as we do the work habits of this particular Central Registry, is most unlikely. Slowly, Senhor Jose closed the door, and, trembling with excitement and fever, got back into bed.
He had been drenched not only by the rain that fell on him while he slithered about on the porch roof, struggling to get into the school. When night came and he finally left through the window and reached the street, he could not, poor thing, have imagined what awaited him. The extremely tortuous circumstances of his ascent, but, above all, the dust accumulated in the attic archive, had left him, from head to foot, in an indescribably grimy state, his hair and face were smeared with black, his hands were like charred stumps, not to mention his clothes, his raincoat was like an old rag impregnated with lard, his trousers looked as if he had been rubbing them with tar, his shirt as if it had been used to clean a chimney thick with centuries of soot, even a vagabond living in the most extreme poverty would have sallied forth onto the street with more dignity. When Senhor Jose was two blocks away from the school, by which time it had stopped raining, he hailed a taxi to take him home, and the inevitable happened, the driver, seeing that black figure emerge suddenly from the depths of the night, took fright and accelerated, and that was not the only time, Senhor Jose hailed three other taxis and they all disappeared round the corner as if pursued by the devil himself. Senhor Jose resigned himself to having to walk home, he certainly wasn't going to get onto a bus, oh well, it would be just one more weariness to add to the one that barely allowed him to drag his feet along, but the worst thing was that, shortly afterwards, the rain started again and didn't stop throughout the whole of that interminable walk, streets, sidewalks, squares, avenues, through a city that seemed deserted, apart from that lone man, dripping water, without even the partial protection of an umbrella, you can understand why, no one takes an umbrella along when they go burgling, no more than you would when going to war, he could have taken shelter in a doorway and waited for a break in the clouds, but it wasn't worth it, he couldn't get any wetter than he was. When Senhor Jose reached home, the only reasonably dry part of his clothing was a pocket in his jacket, the inside pocket on his left side, where he had placed the school record cards of the unknown girl, he had kept them covered with his right hand all the time, to protect them from the rain, anyone who saw him would have thought he had something wrong with his heart, especially given the pained look on his face. Shivering, he took all his clothes off, wondering confusedly how he would solve the problem of getting that pile of clothes on the floor washed, he didn't have so many suits, shoes, socks and shirts that he could afford to send it all off to the dry cleaners, as if he were a man of means, a complete suit, he was bound to need one of those items of clothing when he had to put his remaining clothes on tomorrow. He decided to worry about that later, now he just had to get the filth off his body, the worst thing was that the heater didn't work very well, the water sometimes came out boiling hot, sometimes ice cold, just the thought of it made him shudder, and then, like someone trying to convince himself, he murmured, Perhaps it would do my cold good, a blast of hot water followed by cold, or so I've heard. He went into the cubicle that served him as a bathroom, looked in the mirror and realised why the taxi drivers had been frightened. He would have felt exactly the same and fled from this hollow-eyed phantom with a kind of black drool running from the corners of his mouth. The heater didn't behave too badly this time, it unleashed only a couple of cold lashes at the beginning, and the rest of the time it was comfortingly warm, besides, a quick scalding blast from time to time even helped dissolve the dirt. When he got out of the shower, Senhor Jose felt reinvigorated, like new, but as soon as he got into bed, he started shivering again, it was then that he thought of opening the drawer in his bedside table, where he kept his thermometer, and shortly afterwards, was saying, One hundred, if I feel the way I do now tomorrow morning, I won't be able to go to work. Whether it was the effects of fever or exhaustion, or both, this thought did not trouble him, the abnormal idea of being absent from work did not seem strange to him, for at that moment, Senhor Jose did not seem like Senhor Jose, or, rather, there were two Senhor Joses lying in bed, with the blankets up to their nose, one Senhor Jose who had lost all sense of responsibility, another to whom this was all a matter of complete indifference. He dozed for a few moments with the light on and then woke with a start when he dreamed that he had left the record cards on the chair in the attic, that he had left them there deliberately, as if during this whole adventure his sole aim had been merely to seek them out and find them. He also dreamed that someone went into the attic after he had left, saw the pile of thirteen record cards and asked, What mystery is this. Half-dazed, he got up and went to look for them, he had put them on the table when he emptied out his jacket pockets, and then returned to bed. The record cards were smeared with black fingermarks, some even bore the clear impress of his fingerprints, he would have to wipe them off tomorrow to foil any attempt at identification, How stupid, he thought, we leave fingerprints on everything we touch, if I clean those off Til just leave others, the difference is that some are visible and others are not. He closed his eyes and shortly afterwards fell asleep again, the hand barely grasping the record cards fell limply onto the bedcover, some slipped to the floor, there were the pictures of a girl at different ages, from child to adolescent, wrongfully brought here, no one has the right to carry off photos that don't belong to them, unless they were a gift, carrying a photo of someone in your pocket is like carrying a little bit of their soul. Senhor Jose's dream, from which this time he did not awake, was a different one now he saw himself wiping away the fingerprints he had left at the school, they were everywhere, on the window through which he had entered, in the first-aid room, in the secretary's office, in the head teacher's study, in the refectory, in the kitchen, in the archive, he decided it wasn't worth worrying about the ones in the attic, no one was likely to go in there and ask, What mystery is this, the trouble was that the hands that wiped away the visible traces left behind them an invisible trace, if the head teacher at the school were to report the burglary to the police and there was a serious investigation, Senhor Jose would go to prison, as sure as two and two are four, imagine the dishonour and the shame that would forever stain the reputation of the Central Registry. In the middle of the night, Senhor Jose woke up burning with fever, apparendy delirious, saying, I didn't steal anything, I didn't steal anything, and it was true that, strictly speaking, he hadn't stolen anything, however much the head teacher might search and investigate, however many verifications, counts and comparisons he made, inventory in hand, ticking off one item after the other, his conclusion would be the same, There has been no theft, at least not what you could call theft, doubtless the person in charge of the kitchen would remind him that there was food missing from the fridge, but, supposing that this had been the only crime committed, stealing in order to eat, according to a fairly widely held view, is not theft, even the head teacher is in agreement there, the police, of course, are of a different opinion, on principle, they, however, would have no option but to go away, grumbling, There's some mystery there, no one burgles a school just to grab a spot of breakfast. In any event, since the head teacher's formal written statement, in which he said that nothing valuable or non-valuable was missing from the school, the police had decided not to take any fingerprints, as routine demanded, We've got more than enough work as it is, said the one in charge of the investigation squad. Despite these tranquillising words, Senhor Jose could not get back to sleep again all night, fearful that the dream would be repeated and that the police would return with their magnifying glasses and their special dust.
He has nothing in the house that might help reduce his fever and the doctor will only come later in the afternoon, he might not even come today, and he won't bring any medicine with him, he'll merely write out the usual prescription for cases of cold and flu. The dirty clothes are still in a heap in the middle of the room and Senhor Jose looks at the heap from the bed, with a perplexed air, as if it didn't belong to him, only a remnant of common sense stops him from asking, Who was it who came in here and took off all their clothes, and it was the same common sense that forced him to think, at last, about the complications, both personal and professional, that would result if a colleague came through the door to find out how he was, on instructions from the Registrar or on his own initiative, and came face-to-face with all that filth. When he stood up, he felt as if someone had suddenly planted him at the very top of a ladder, but the dizziness he felt this time was different, it was a result of fever, as well as physical weakness, because what he had eaten at the school, apparendy sufficient at the time, had served more as a comfort to his nerves than as nourishment to his body. Supporting himself against the wall, he managed, with some difficulty, to reach a chair and sit down. He waited for his head to return to normal before considering where he could hide his dirty clothes, not in the bathroom, doctors always have to wash their hands when they leave, and he certainly couldn't hide them under the bed, which was one of those old-fashioned, long-legged beds, anyone would be able to see the clothes, even without bending down, and they wouldn't fit in the cupboard where he kept his famous people, and besides it wouldn't be right, the sad truth is that, although his brain had now stopped spinning, it was still not working properly, the only place where the dirty clothes would be safe from prying eyes was the place where they usually hung when they were clean, that is, behind the curtain covering the niche that he used as a wardrobe, only the most impertinent of colleagues or doctors would go poking their nose in there. Pleased with himself for having reached a conclusion after such lengthy deliberation, a conclusion which, in other circumstances, would have been more than obvious, Senhor Jose started shunting the clothes towards the curtain
