the flu, But not about the wounds on your knees, He knows about the damp stain on the floor too, But not about the shudder, If you've nothing further to do here, I'd be grateful if you'd leave, I'm tired, I need to sleep, You must eat first, don't forget, I hope your supper hasn't gone completely cold after all this talking You don't need much food when you're just lying in bed, But you. need some, Was it the Registrar who told you to bring me some food, Do you know anyone else who might have done it, Yes, if she knew where I lived, Who, An elderly lady who lives in a ground-floor apartment Wounds on the knees a sudden unexplained shudder an old lady in a ground-floor apartment, Yes ground floor right, This would be the most important report I've ever written in my life if I wrote it You're not going to write it though, Yes I am, but only to say that I gave you an injection, Thank you for cleaning my wounds, Of all the things I was taught, that's what I'm best at. After the nurse had left, Senhor Jose remained lying down for a few more minutes, not moving, recovering his calm and his strength. It had proved a difficult dialogue, with traps and false doors swinging open at every step, the slightest slip could have dragged him into a full and complete confession if his mind had not been attentive to the multiple meanings of the words he carefully pronounced, especially those that appeared to have only one meaning, those are the ones you have to be most careful with. Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide into branches and branchlets, until they disappear from view, the sense of every word is like a star hurling spring tides out into space, cosmic winds, magnetic perturbations, afflictions.
At last, Senhor Jose got out of bed, put his feet in his slippers and drew on the dressing gown that he also used as an extra blanket on cold nights. Although gripped by hunger, he opened the door and looked out into the Central Registry. He could feel within himself a strange boldness, a feeling of absence, as if many days had passed since the last time he had been there. Nothing had changed though, there was the long counter where they dealt with petitioners and supplicants, beneath them the drawers where they kept the index cards of the living, then the eight tables for the clerks, the four for the senior clerks, the two for the deputies, the large desk belonging to the Registrar with the light above it still on, the huge shelves reaching up as far as the ceiling, the petrified darkness on the side inhabited by the dead. Although there was no one in the Central Registry, Senhor Jose locked the door, there was no one in the Central Registry, but still he locked the door. Thanks to the new plasters that the nurse had put on his knees, he could walk more easily, the dressing no longer pulled on his wounds. He sat down at the table, undid the package, there were two pans, one on top of the other, first the soup and below it a dish of meat and potatoes, still warm. He ate the soup eagerly, then, unhurriedly, finished off the meat and potatoes. I'm lucky to have a boss like him, he murmured, remembering the nurse's words, if it weren't for him, I'd be stuck here dying of hunger and neglect, like a lost dog. Yes, I'm lucky, he repeated, as if he needed to convince himself of what he had just said. Feeling restored, he returned to bed, first visiting the cubicle that served as his bathroom. He was just about to fall asleep when he remembered the notebook in which he had set down the first stages of his search. I'll write it tomorrow, he said, but this new urgency was almost as pressing as that of eating, which was why he went to fetch the notebook. Then, sitting on the bed, wearing his dressing gown, his pyjama jacket buttoned up to the neck and bundled up in blankets, he picked up the story where he had left off. The Registrar said to me, If you're not ill, how do you explain the poor work you've been doing recently, I don't know, sir, perhaps it's because I haven't been sleeping well. Assisted by his fever, he continued writing long into the night.
...
It took not three days but a week for Senhor Jose's fever to subside and for his cough to get better. The nurse came every day to give him an injection and to bring him some food, the doctor came every other day, but this extraordinary assiduousness, on the doctor's part that is, should not lead us to any hasty conclusions about some imagined standard of efficiency among health officials and home visits, since it was quite simply the consequence of a clear-cut order from the head of the Central Registry, Doctor, treat that man as if you were treating me, he's important. The doctor did not understand the reasons behind this evidently favoured treatment that he was being asked to administer, still less the lack of objectivity of the value judgement expressed, he had occasionally visited the Registrar's own house for professional reasons, and he had seen his comfortable, civilised way of life, an inner world that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rough hovel of this permanently ill-shaven Senhor Jose who appeared not even to have a change of sheets. Senhor Jose did have sheets, he wasn't that poor, but, for reasons known only to him, he rejected out of hand the nurse's offer to air the mattress for him and replace the sheets, for they stank of sweat and fever, It'll only take me five minutes and the bed will be like new, No, I'm fine as I am, don't worry, It's all part of my job you know, Like I said, I'm fine as I am. Senhor Jose could not reveal to anyone's eyes that he was hiding between the mattress and the base of the bed the school records of an unknown woman and a notebook containing the story of his break-in at the school where she had studied as both a child and a young girl. To put them somewhere else, amid the files he used for his clippings about famous people, for example, would immediately resolve the difficulty, but the sense of defending a secret with his own body was too strong, too thrilling even, for Senhor Jose to give it up. In order not to have to discuss the matter again with the nurse, or with the doctor, who, although he made no comment, had already cast a critical glance over the crumpled sheets and visibly wrinkled his nose at the smell, Senhor Jose got up one night and, making a supreme effort, he himself changed the sheets. And so as not to give either the doctor or the nurse the slightest excuse to reopen the matter and, who knows, go and report the clerks incorrigible lack of hygiene to the Registrar, he went to the bathroom, shaved and washed as best he could, then took an old but clean pair of pyjamas from a drawer and went back to bed. He felt so pleased with himself and so restored that, like someone playing a game with himself, he decided to set down in his notebook an explicit, detailed account of all the hygienic preparations and treatments he had just put himself through. His health was returning, as the doctor was quick to tell the Registrar The man is cured in another two days he can go back to work without any danger of a relapse. The Registrar said only Good but with distracted air as if he 'were thinking about something else.
Senhor Jose was cured, but he had lost a lot of weight, despite the bread and victuals brought regularly by the nurse, albeit only once a day, but quite sufficient in quantity to maintain an adult body not subject to any exertions. One has to bear in mind, however, the debilitating effect of fever and prolonged sweating on the adipose tissues, especially when, as in this case, there wasn't much of them to start with. Personal remarks were frowned upon in the Central Registry, especially if in any way connected with people's state of health, which is why Senhor Jose's frail appearance and extreme thinness were not the object of any comment on the part of colleagues or superiors, that is, of any spoken comments, for the way they looked at him was fairly eloquent in their common expression of a kind of scornful commiseration, which other people, unfamiliar with the customs of the place, would have erroneously interpreted as a discreet and silent reserve. So that people would see how troubled he was to have been absent from work for so many days, Senhor Jose was first in Une at the door of the Central Registry in the morning, awaiting the arrival of the newest deputy, whose job it was to open the door and to close it at the end of the day. The original key, a real work of art by an old Baroque engraver, as well as a physical symbol of authority, of which the deputy's key was merely an austere, inferior copy, was in the possession of the Registrar, though he apparently never used it, either because of the weight and complexity of the design, which made it awkward to carry around, or because, according to some unwritten hierarchical protocol, in effect since the remotest of times, he always had to be the last to enter the building. One of the many mysteries of life in the Central Registry, which really would be worth investigating if the matter of Senhor Jose and the unknown woman had not absorbed aU our attention, was how the staff, despite the traffic jams afflicting the city, always managed to arrive at work in the same order, first the clerks, regardless of length of service, then the deputy who opened the door, then the senior clerks, in order of precedence, then the oldest deputy and, finally, the Registrar, who arrives when he has to arrive and does not have to answer to anyone. Anyway, the fact stands recorded.
The feeling of scornful commiseration which, as we have said, greeted Senhor Jose's return to work, lasted until the arrival of the Registrar, half an hour after the office had opened, and was instantly replaced by a feeling of envy, understandable in the circumstances, but, fortunately, not manifested in words or deeds. What else could one expect, the human soul being what we know it to be, though we cannot claim to know everything. A rumour had been going around the Central Registry, slipping in through the back door, so to speak, and whispered in corners, that the Registrar had been unusually concerned about Senhor Jose's bout of flu, even going so far as to have the
