world, to composers, in the first place, but also to the interpreters, to musicians, who are the ones who have to know how to make the sounds. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso began by apologizing, then gave his name and asked if he could speak to, Just a minute, I'll call him, the woman cut in, and shortly afterward there was his colleague saying, Good morning, and him responding, Good morning, he apologized again, said that he had only just heard his friend's message, I could have waited to talk to you at school but felt I should clear the air as quickly as possible so as not to leave room for any further misunderstandings, these things can so easily get out of hand, As far as I'm concerned, there is no misunderstanding, said the mathematics teacher, my conscience is as clear as a baby's, Yes, I know, I know, said Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, it's all my fault, the fault of this apathy, this depression that puts my nerves on edge, I get oversensitive, mistrustful, I imagine things, What things, asked his colleague, Oh, I don't know, just things, for example, that I'm not being treated with the consideration I think I deserve, sometimes I even have the feeling I don't really know what I am, that is, I know who I am, but not what I am, does that make sense, More or less, but it still doesn't explain the reason for your, what should I call it, reaction, yes, your reaction, To be perfectly honest, I don't understand it either, it was just a fleeting impression, as if you had treated me, how can I put it, in a paternalistic way, And when did I treat you in this paternalistic way, to use your terms, When we were standing in the corridor, about to go off to our respective classes, you placed your hand on my shoulder, it was obviously a friendly gesture, but I just took it the wrong way, it was as if you had hit me, Yes, I remember now, How could you not remember, if I'd had an electricity generator in my stomach you would have been struck down there and then, You mean your rejection of my gesture was that strong, Rejection may not be the right word, the snail doesn't reject the finger that touches it, it simply withdraws, That's the snail's way of rejecting it, Yes, But you haven't got much of the snail about you, Sometimes I think we're very similar, Who, you and me, No, me and the snail, Look, just shake off that depression and it will put a whole new complexion on things, That's odd, What is, That you should use those words, What words, About putting a whole new complexion on things, The meaning's fairly obvious, isn't it, Oh, yes, I understood what you meant, but what you've just said chimes in exactly with certain recent anxieties of mine, If I'm to continue following you, you're going to have to be more explicit, It's too soon for that now, but perhaps one day, Good, I'll look forward to it. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso thought, You can look forward to it all you like, and then, Coming back to what really matters, my friend, I just wanted to ask you to forgive me, You're forgiven, man, you're forgiven, although it's really not that important, you'd just created inside your head what people usually call a tempest in a teacup, fortunately, these shipwrecks nearly always happen within sight of the beach and no one drowns, Thanks for taking it all so well, That's all right, I'm glad to, If my common sense weren't so distracted with fantasies and phantoms and unwanted advice, I would have seen at once that the way I responded to your generous impulse wasn't just over the top, it was positively mad, Don't be deceived, common sense is much too common to really be sense, it's just a chapter from a statistics book, the one everyone always trots out, How interesting, I'd never thought of old, much-applauded common sense as being like a chapter from a statistics book, but when I think about it, that's exactly what it is, exactly, It could equally well be a chapter from a history book, in fact, now that we're on the subject, there's a book that should have been written, but which doesn't, as far as I know, exist, What book's that, A history of common sense, You're amazing, don't tell me you always produce ideas of this caliber first thing in the morning, said Tertuliano Maximo Afonso somewhat archly, If I get the right kind of stimulus, yes, but only after breakfast, replied the mathematics teacher, laughing, Well, I'll have to start phoning you every morning, then, Careful, remember what happened with the goose that laid the golden eggs, See you later, Yes, see you later, and I promise I won't go all paternalistic on you again, Even though you are almost old enough to be my father, All the more reason. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso replaced the receiver, he felt pleased, relieved, besides, the conversation had been both interesting and intelligent, it's not every day that someone turns up and tells us that common sense is nothing but a chapter from a statistics book and that what every library in the world lacks is a history of common sense from the time Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise. A glance at the clock told him that Maria da Paz would have already left for her job at the bank and that the matter could be more or less sorted out, however temporarily, with a nice message left on her answering machine, Then I'll see. Out of prudence, just in case fate was conspiring against him, he decided to wait half an hour. Maria da Paz lives with her mother and they always leave the house together in the morning, one to go to work, the other to go to Mass and do the day's shopping. Maria da Paz's mother has been a great churchgoer ever since she was widowed. Deprived of the majesty of matrimony, in whose shadow, which she had always seen as a refuge, she had been shriveling up for years and years, she had gone in search of another gentleman to serve, a gentleman for life and for death too, a gentleman, moreover, whose one inestimable advantage was that he would never leave her a widow again. Once the half hour of waiting was over, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso was still unclear about the terms in which he should respond to the message, he had begun by thinking that a simple reply would be best, affectionate and natural, but, as we all know, the subtle shades of meaning between affectionate and cool and between natural and artificial are little less than infinite, normally, we come out with the right tone of voice for each circumstance spontaneously, but when there's an element of mistrust, as there is in this case, everything that strikes one at first as perfectly adequate and fitting will, the next moment, seem either abrupt or excessive. The eloquent silence, long favored by a particularly lazy kind of literature, does not exist, eloquent silences are just words that have got stuck in the throat, choked words that have been unable to escape the embrace of the glottis. After much racking of his brain, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso decided that, to be absolutely safe, the most prudent course of action would be to write the message down and then read it over the phone. This is what he came up with after several torn-up sheets of paper, Hi, Maria da Paz, I got your mes sages, and I'd just like to say that I think we should act with great caution and only make decisions that are right for both of us, bearing in mind that the only thing that lasts a whole lifetime is life itself, everything else is inevitably precarious, unstable, transient, time has taught me that one great truth, but I do know that we're friends and that we'll go on being friends, what we need is to have a good, long conversation and sort things out between us, I'll be in touch again soon. He hesitated for a second, what he was about to say was not on the piece of paper, then he ended the call with, Lots of love. When he had put the phone down, he reread what he had written and noticed the importunate presence of a few subtle shades of meaning to which he had not paid sufficient attention, some were less subtle than others, for example, that awful old chestnut, we're friends now and we'll always be friends, that's the worst thing anyone can say if they're trying to end a romantic relationship, it's as if we had closed the door only to find that we were still stuck fast in it, and then, quite apart from that pathetic Lots of love he had added at the end, there was the crass error of saying that they needed to have a long conversation, he should know by now, from personal experience and from the continual lessons learned from A History of Private Lives through the Ages, that long conversations, in situations such as this, are terribly dangerous, how often has someone begun such a conversation feeling positively murderous toward the other person only to end up in their arms. What else could I do, he groaned, I obviously couldn't tell her that everything between us would continue as before, eternal love and all that, but neither could I, over the phone and when she's not there to pick it up, deliver the final blow, just like that, sorry, sweetheart, it's all over, that would be utter cowardice and I very much hope I never sink quite that low. With this conciliatory thought, along the lines of you win some, you lose some, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso decided to rest on his laurels, knowing, however, poor man, that the most difficult part was yet to come. At least I did my best, he concluded.
Up until now we have not needed to know on which day of the week these intriguing events are taking place, but Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's next actions, if they are to be understood, demand the information that today is a Friday, from which one will easily draw the conclusion that yesterday was Thursday and the day before that was Wednesday. Many readers will judge the complementary information we have given them about yesterday and the day before yesterday to be unnecessary, obvious, useless, absurd, even downright stupid, but, in anticipation of such a remark, we would counter by saying that any criticism along these lines reveals only bad faith and ignorance, given that, as is widely known, there are languages in the world that call Wednesday, for example,
