suppose you mean the staff list, I do, sir. The headmaster turned to the woman in charge of the secretary's office, Find me her record card, will you, We still haven't taken it out of the drawer, the woman said in an apologetic tone, at the same time running her fingers across the cards in a drawer, Here it is, she said. Senhor Jose felt a sharp contraction in the pit of his stomach, a feeling of dizziness swept through his brain, but, fortunately, it came to nothing more, this man's nervous system really is in a terrible state, not that we can blame him in the circumstances, we have only to remember that the card being shown to him now was within his grasp that night, it would have been just a matter of opening that drawer, the one with the label that says Teachers, but how could he have imagined that the young girl he was looking for would be teaching mathematics in the very school she had studied at. Disguising his agitation, but not the tremor in his hands, Senhor Jose pretended to compare the card from the school with the copy of the card from the Central Registry, then he said, It's the same person. The headmaster looked at him with interest, Don't you feel well, he asked, and he replied simply, It's just that I'm not as young as I used to be, Right, I imagine you'll want to ask me a few questions, I will, Come with me then, we'll go to my study. Senhor Jose smiled to himself as he followed the headmaster, I didn't know that her card was right there in that drawer, and you don't know that I spent the night on your sofa. They went into the study, the headmaster said, I haven't got much time, but I'll do all I can to help you, do sit down, and he indicated the sofa that had served as a bed to the visitor, I'd like to know, said Senhor Jose, if anyone noticed any change in her normal state of mind in the days before the suicide, None, she was always a very private person, very quiet, Was she a good teacher, One of the best the school has had, Was she friends with any particular colleague, Friends in what sense, Just friends, She was friendly, polite to everyone, but I don't think anyone here could say that they were friends with her, And did her students respect her, Very much, Was she in good health, As far as I can judge, yes, Its strange, What's strange, I've already spoken to her parents, and everything they said and everything I'm hearing now seems to point to there being no explanation for this suicide, I wonder, said the headmaster, if suicide can be explained, Do you mean this particular suicide, I mean suicide in general, Sometimes people leave letters, That's true, but I'm not sure you could describe the contents of those letters as an explanation, there's no shortage of things to explain in life, That's true, For example, what explanation could there be for what happened here a few days before the suicide, What was that, The school was burgled, Yes, How do you know, I'm sorry, my yes was intended to be interrogative, perhaps I didn't give it the right intonation, but, anyway, burglaries are usually fairly easy to explain, Except when the burglar climbs up onto the roof, breaks a window and then climbs in, wanders all over the place, sleeps on my sofa, eats what there is in the fridge, uses the first-aid box and then leaves without taking anything, What makes you think he slept on your sofa, Because on the floor was the blanket I usually cover my knees with so as not to get cold, as you said of yourself, I'm not as young as I used to be, Did you report it to the police, What for, since nothing had been stolen, it didn't seem worth it, the police would tell me that they were there in order to investigate crimes, not to explain mysteries, It's certainly strange, there's no doubt about it, We checked everywhere, all the equipment was there, the safe was intact, everything was in its proper place, Except the blanket, Yes, except the blanket, now what explanation can you find for that, You'd have to ask the burglar, he must know, having said those words, Senhor Jose got up, I won't rob you of any more of your time, I'm very grateful for your help in the unfortunate matter that brought me here, I don't know that I've been of much help, You were probably right when you said that perhaps no suicide can be explained, Rationally explained, you understand, It was as if she had just opened a door and gone out, Or gone in, Yes, or gone in, depending on your point of view, Well, there you have an excellent explanation, It was a metaphor, Metaphors have always been the best way of explaining things, Goodbye, sir, and my heartfelt thanks, Goodbye, it was a pleasure talking to you, I don't mean the sad matter in hand, of course, I mean you yourself, Naturally, it was just a manner of speaking, I'll go with you to the stairs. When Senhor Jose was going down the second flight of stairs, the headmaster suddenly remembered that he hadn't asked him his name, No matter, he thought, that particular story's over.
The same could not be said of Senhor Jose, he still had to take the final step, to seek out and find in the unknown woman's apartment a letter, a diary, a simple piece of paper on which she might have set down her feelings, the scream, the I-can't-go-on that every suicide is under strict obligation to leave behind before departing through that door, so that those left on this side can soothe the fears of their own consciences saying, Poor thing, she had her reasons. The human spirit, though, how often do we need to say it, is the favourite home of contradictions, indeed they do not seem to prosper or even find viable living conditions outside it, and that must be why Senhor Jose wanders the city, from one side to the other, up and down, as if lost without a map or a guide, for he knows perfectly well what he has to do on this last day, he knows that tomorrow will be a different time, or that he will be the one who will be different in a time exactly like this one, and the proof that he knows this to be so is the fact that he thought, Who will I be tomorrow when this is all over, what kind of clerk is the Central Registry going to have. Twice he passed by the unknown woman's apartment building, twice he did not stop, he was afraid, don't ask why, this is the most common of contradictions, Senhor Jose both wants and doesn't want, he both de sires and fears what he desires, that is what his whole life has been like. Now, to gain time, to postpone what he knows to be inevitable, he has decided that first, he will have to have lunch, in a cheap restaurant, as his modest pocket dictates, but above all somewhere far from here, he doesn't want some curious neighbour to suspect the intentions of a man who has already passed by twice. Although there's nothing about his appearance to distinguish him from other supposedly honest people, the truth is that there are never any solid guarantees about what you see, appearances are very deceptive, that's why they're called appearances, although in the case in point, taking into account his age and frague physical constitution, no one would think, for example, that Senhor Jose made his living breaking into houses at night. He took as long as he could over the frugal lunch, got up from the table long after three o'clock and, unhurriedly, as if he were dragging his feet, he went back to the street where the unknown woman had lived. Before turning the last corner, he stopped and took a deep breath, I'm not a coward, he thought to give himself courage, but as so often happens with so many brave people, he was valiant about some things, cowardly about others, the fact that he spent a night in the cemetery won't stop his legs shaking now. He put his hand into his jacket pocket, felt the keys, one, small and narrow, was for the postbox, and so was naturally excluded, the remaining two were almost the same, but one was the street door, the other the door to the apartment, he hoped he got it right the first time, if the building has a concierge and she's the sort who pokes her nose out at the slightest noise, what explanation would he give, he could say he was there with the authorisation of the parents of the woman who committed suicide, that he's come to make an inventory of her possessions, I work for the Central Registry, madam, here's my card, and as you see, they've given me the keys to the apartment. Senhor Jose chose the right key on the first try, the guardian of the door, if the building had one, did not appear and ask him, Excuse me, where are you going, there's a lot of truth in the saying that fear of the guard is the best guard against theft, so he tells himself to begin by conquering his fear, then see if the guard appears. It's an old building but it has a lift, which is just as well, because Senhor Jose's legs are so heavy now that he would never have made it to the sixth floor, where the mathematics teacher lived. The door creaked as it opened, startling the visitor, who suddenly doubted the efficacy of the excuse he had thought he would give to the concierge should she intervene. He slipped quickly into the apartment, very carefully closed the door, and found himself in the midst of a dense, almost pitch-black darkness. He felt the wall next to the door frame, found a switch, but prudently didn't turn it on, it might be dangerous to put on the lights. Gradually, Senhor Jose's eyes became used to the shadows, you might say that in a similar situation the same would happen with anyone, but it is not generally known that, after a certain time, the clerks in the Central Registry, given their obligatory regular visits to the archive of the dead, acquire a remarkable talent for optical adaptation. They would all have cat's eyes if they didn't reach retirement age first.
Although the floor was carpeted, Senhor Jose thought it best to take off his shoes to avoid any shock or vibration that might betray his presence to the tenants on the floor below. With enormous care he slid back the bolts on the inner shutters of one of the windows that opened onto the street, but only enough to let in a little light. He was in a bedroom. There was a dressing table, a wardrobe, a bedside table. A narrow bed, a single, as they are called. The furniture had light, simple lines, the opposite of the dull, heavy furniture in her parents' house. Senhor Jose walked through the other rooms in the apartment, which comprised a living room furnished with the usual sofas and a bookshelf that took up the whole of one wall, a much smaller room that served as a study, a tiny kitchen and a rnini mal bathroom. Here lived a woman who committed suicide for unknown reasons, who had been married and got divorced, who could have gone to live with her parents after the divorce, but had preferred to live alone, a woman who, like aU women, was once a child and a girl, but who even then, in a certain indefinable way, was already the woman she was going to be, a mathematics teacher whose name while she was alive was in the Central Registry, along with the names of aU the people alive in this city, a woman whose dead name returned to
