stairway, as if both of them had something to hide, 'conspiratorial' was the unexpected word that came into his head, What were we conspiring about, why 'conspiratorial,' he wondered, the fact is that she hadn't turned the light on again when it went out shortly after they had exchanged their first words. At last, he began to go back down the stairs, cautiously to begin with, then quickly, he paused only for a moment to listen outside the door of the ground-floor apartment, he could hear a sound inside that must be the radio, he decided not to ring the bell, he would leave that new investigation for the weekend, for Saturday or Sunday, but this time he would not be caught out, he would present himself with his credentials in his hand, invested with a formal authority that no one would dare to question. They would be false credentials, of course, but, they would bear the irresistible force of an official stamp and impress, and they would save him the task of having to dispel suspicions before getting down to business. As for the chief's signature, he felt absolutely no qualms, it was hardly likely that the old lady in the ground-floor apartment would ever have seen the Registrar's signature, whose curlicues, when he thought about it, precisely because of their fantastic, ornamental nature, would not prove particularly difficult to imitate. If all went well this time, as it was bound to, he would continue to make use of the document whenever he encountered or foresaw difficulties in future investigations, because he was sure that his search would not end in that ground-floor apartment. Even if the woman had been there when the unknown woman's family had lived in the building, they might not have known each other, in the old lady's weary memory, it might all come down to a few vague recollections, it would depend on how many years had passed since the family on the second floor had moved somewhere else in the city. Or somewhere else in the country or even the world, he thought anxiously, once he was out in the street again. Wherever the famous people in his collection went, they always had a newspaper or a magazine following in their tracks and sniffing around them for just one more photograph, one more question, but nobody wants to know about ordinary people, no one is really interested in them, no one cares what they're up to, what they think, what they feel, even when they try to make you believe otherwise, it's all pretence. If the unknown woman had gone to live abroad, she would be beyond his reach, she might as well be dead Full stop end of the story murmured Senhor Jose then he thought, that might not be the case, for when she departed! she would at least have left a life behind her, perhaps only a brief life four years five almost nothing or fifteen or twenty a meeting, an infatuation, a disappointment, a few smiles, a few tears, which seem, at first sight, the same for everyone but which are, in fact, different for us all. And different each time too. I'll go as far as I can, concluded Senhor Jose, with unaccustomed serenity. As if this were the logical conclusion to what he had thought, he went into a stationer's and bought a thick notebook with lined pages, like the ones students use to make notes on their school subjects, believing that they are actually learning them as they do so.
It didn't take him long to forge some credentials. Twenty-five years of daily calligraphic practice beneath the vigilance of zealous senior clerks and demanding deputies had left him with complete mastery of fingers, wrist and palm, absolute confidence in executing both curved lines and straight, an almost instinctive feel for thick and thin strokes, a consummate awareness of the degree of fluidity and viscosity of various inks, which, put to the test on this occasion, resulted in a document capable of resisting the scrutiny of the most powerful of magnifying lenses. The only incriminating features were his fingerprints and the invisible traces of sweat that clung to the paper, but the likelihood of either of these being examined was, of course, negligible. The most competent graphologist called to testify would swear that the document in question was written by the Registrar himself and was as authentic as if it had been written in the presence of appropriate witnesses. In support of his worthy colleague's opinion, a psychologist would add that the content of the letter, the style and the vocabulary offer ample proof that its author is an extremely authoritarian person, with a harsh, inflexible, secretive nature, convinced of the Tightness of his own views, scornful of other people's opinions, as even a child would conclude from reading the text, which says, In the name of the authority conferred on me and which, under oath, I uphold, apply and defend, I, as Registrar of the Central Registry, declare to all those, be they civil or military, private or public, who might see, read and examine this letter written and signed by my own hand, that Senhor so-and-so, a clerk in my service and in the service of the Central Registry which I direct, govern and administer, has received directly from me the order and commission to find out and investigate everything regarding the life, past, present and future, of so-and-so, born in this city on such and such a date, daughter of so-and-so and such and such, and it should be recognised, with no further proof being required, that, for the duration of the investigation, he is in possession of the absolute powers which I, in this document and to this end, delegate to him. This is the express wish of the Central Registry and of my own will. So be it. Trembling with fear, having barely managed to read to the end of this impressive bit of paper, the above- mentioned child took refuge on her mother's lap, wondering how a clerk like Senhor Jose, so timid by nature, so mild in his manners, could possibly have conceived of, imagined, invented this expression of, to say the very least, despotic power, with no previous model to use as a guide, since there is no norm nor was there any technical need for the Central Registry ever to have written such a letter of authority. The frightened child will have to eat a lot of bread and a lot of salt before she begins to learn from life, by then, she will no longer be surprised to discover that, when the occasion arises, even the good can become hard and tyrannical, even if only in order to write a letter of authority, forged or otherwise. They will say to excuse themselves, That wasn't me, I was just writing, acting in the name of someone else, and they are probably just trying to delude themselves, for, in truth, whether visible or not, that hardness and despotism, not to say cruelty, came from within them, not from someone else. Even so, judging what has happened up until now by its effects, it is unlikely that the world will be seriously damaged by Senhor Jose's intentions and future actions, therefore let us provisionally suspend judgement until other events, more enlightening, in both the good and the bad senses, draw us a definitive portrait.
On Saturday, wearing his best suit, with his shirt washed and ironed, his tie almost matching and more or less correct, the envelope bearing the official seal and containing the letter of authority safe in his inside jacket pocket, Senhor Jose took a taxi to the door of the house, not in order to gain time, the day was his, but because it looked like rain, and he didn't want to appear before the lady in the ground-floor apartment with rain dripping from his ears, and with the bottoms of his trousers all spattered with mud, running the risk that she would slam the door in his face before he even had a chance to explain why he was there. It filled him with excitement to imagine how the old lady would receive him, what the effect would be on the old girl, the pejorative term sprang unbidden to his mind, of reading a stern, solemn document like that, some people don't react at all as you would expect, he just hoped she wouldn't be one of them. Perhaps the expressions he had used were too hard and despotic, although verisimilitude demanded that it should be true to both the character and the calligraphy of the Registrar, besides, everyone knows that while it is true that you catch no flies with vinegar, it is no less true that some you can't even catch with honey. We'll see, he sighed. The first thing he saw shortly afterwards, having replied to the insistent questions from within, Who is it, What do you want, Who sent you, What's that got to do with me, was that the lady in the ground-floor apartment was not, after all, as ancient as he had imagined, those bright eyes, that straight nose, those firm, thin lips with no downward curve at the corners, did not belong to an old lady, her great age was noticeable only in the loose skin on her throat, he probably fixed on that because he had already started to notice in himself that unmistakable sign of physical decline, and he was only fifty The woman would not open the door completely, she said repeatedly that she was not interested in the affairs of her neighbours, a perfectly reasonable response given that Senhor Jose, taking a wrong tack, had begun by saying that he was looking for someone on the second floor. The confusion seemed to end when he finally mentioned the name of the unknown woman, then the door opened a little more, only to return to its former position, Do you know the lady, asked Senhor Jose, Yes, I did, said the woman, I'd like to ask you a few questions about her, But who are you, As I already told you, I'm an authorised official from the Central Registry, And how am I supposed to know if that's true or not, I have a signed letter of authority from the Registrar, Look, I'm in my own home and I don't want to be disturbed, I'm afraid you have to cooperate with the Central Registry in cases such as this, What cases, The resolution of certain outstanding matters at the Central Registry, Why don't you go and ask her, We don't have her present address, if you know it, perhaps you could tell me, and I won't need to trouble you any further, It must be about thirty years since I heard from her, She must have been a child then, Yes. With that one word, the woman appeared to consider the conversation at an end, but Senhor Jose did not give up, he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. He drew the envelope from his pocket, opened it and, with a slowness that must have seemed threatening, removed the letter, Read it, he ordered. The woman shook her head, No, I won't read it, it's nothing to do with me, If you don't read it, I will return accompanied by the police, and it will be all the worse for you. The woman resigned herself to taking the document he held out to her, she turned on the light in the corridor, put on the glasses she wore hanging round her neck and read it. Then she gave it back to him and standing to one side said You'd better come in they'll probably be listening to us from behind the door over there. Given the implicit alliance that the personal pronoun 'us' seemed to represent, Senhor Jose realised that he had won that round. In a certain
