measure, a new phase of his life, back bent, elbows resting on his knees, and head in his hands, you would not imagine the hard work going on inside that brain, weighing up alternatives, pondering options, considering other variants, anticipating moves, like a chess master. Half an hour has gone by, and he hasn't moved. And another half an hour will have to pass before we suddenly see him get up and go over to the desk with the telephone directory open at the page containing the enigma. He has clearly taken a bold decision, let us admire the courage of this man who has finally put prudence behind him and decided to attack head on. He dialed the number of the first Santa- Clara and waited. No one picked up the phone and no answering machine came on. He dialed the second number and a woman's voice said, Hello, Good afternoon, madam, I'm sorry to bother you, but I'd like to speak to Senhor Daniel Santa-Clara, I understand he lives at this address, No, you're wrong, he doesn't live here and never has, But the surname, The surname is just a coincidence, like many others, Oh, I thought you might perhaps be related and be able to help me find him, Look, I don't even know you, Forgive me, I should have told you my name, No, don't, I don't want to know, It would seem I was badly informed, It would indeed, Many thanks for your time, That's all right, Good-bye, then, sorry to have troubled you, Goodbye. It would have been natural, after this inexplicably tense exchange of words, for Tertuliano Maximo Afonso to pause in order to regain his composure and his normal pulse rate, but this was not the case. There are times in our lives when we think that we might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and when all we want is to find out as quickly as possible the true dimensions of the disaster, and then, if possible, never to think about the matter again. Therefore, the third number was dialed without hesitation, a man's voice asked abruptly, Who is it. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso felt as if he had been caught out and so mumbled some name or other, What do you want, the voice asked in the same harsh tone, although curiously there was no hostility in it, some people are like that, their voice comes out in a way that makes it sound as if they were angry with everyone, and, in the end, you discover that they have a heart of gold. On this occasion, given the brevity of the conversation, we will never find out if the heart of this person really is made of that most noble of metals. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso expressed a desire to speak to Senhor Daniel Santa-Clara, and the man with the angry voice replied that no one of that name lived there, and the conversation seemed unlikely to progress any further, there was no point in revisiting the curious coincidence of surnames or the chance possibility of a family relationship that might lead the questioner to his destination, in such cases the questions and answers are always the same, Is so-and-so there, No, so-and-so doesn't live here, but this time something new happened, the man with the dissonant vocal cords mentioned that more or less a week before someone else had phoned with exactly the same question, It wasn't you, was it, no, the voice is different, I have a very good ear for voices, No, it wasn't me, said Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, feeling troubled, and was this person a man or a woman, A man, of course. Yes, of course, a man, stupid fool, it stands out a mile that however many differences there may exist between the voices of two men, there are far more between a female voice and a male voice, Although, the man added, now that I think about it, there was a moment when I thought he was trying to disguise his voice. Having duly thanked the man for all his help, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso replaced the receiver and sat looking at the three names in the directory. If the man who phoned had been asking for Daniel Santa-Clara, simple logic dictated that, as he himself had just done, he too must have phoned all three numbers. Obviously Tertuliano Maximo Afonso could not know if anyone would have answered at the first number, and everything indicated that the ill-disposed woman with whom he had spoken, and who really was rude despite her neutral tone of voice, had either forgotten or deemed it unnecessary to mention the fact, or, and this was a far likelier reason, she had not taken the previous call. Perhaps because I live alone, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso said to himself, I tend to assume that other people do as well. The deep disquiet caused by the news that an unknown man was also looking for Daniel Santa-Clara left him with a troubling sense of bewilderment as if he had been handed a quadratic equation to solve when he had already forgotten how to do simple ones. It was probably a creditor, he thought, yes, that's probably who it was, a creditor, artists and literary people tend to lead fairly disorganized lives, he probably owes money in one of those places where people gamble and now they want it back. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso had read some time ago that gambling debts are the most sacred of all debts, some people even call them debts of honor, and although he did not quite see why these debts should be any more honorable than others, he had accepted both code and prescription as something that had nothing to do with him, Ah, well, it's up to them, he had thought. Now, however, he would have preferred those debts to be less sacred, to be ordinary ones, of the kind that are forgiven and forgotten, as was not only prayed for but promised too in the old Lord's Prayer. To calm his mind, he went into the kitchen to make some coffee, and, while he drank it, he took stock of the situation, I've still got to make that call, now, two things could happen when I do, they will either tell me that they know neither the name nor the person, and that will be that, or they'll say, yes, he lives here, and then I'll hang up, at the moment, all I need to know is where he lives.
With his spirit fortified by the impeccable logic he had just produced and by his no less impeccable conclusion, he went back into the living room. The phone directory lay open on the desk, the three Santa-Claras had not moved. He dialed the first number and waited. He waited and continued to wait long after he was sure no one would answer. It's Saturday today, he thought, they're probably out. He hung up, he had done everything he could, no one could accuse him of irresolution or timidity. He looked at his watch, it was about time to go out to supper, but the gloomy memory of the tablecloths, white as shrouds, the miserable little vases of plastic flowers on the tables, and, above all, the permanent threat of monkfish, made him change his mind. In a city of five million inhabitants, there is, naturally, a proportionate number of restaurants, a few thousand at least, and even excluding, at the one extreme, the luxurious, and at the other, the frankly repellent, he would still be left with a large range to choose from, for example, the charming place where he had had lunch with Maria da Paz today, and which they had simply happened upon, but Tertuliano Maximo Afonso disliked the idea of dining there alone when, at lunchtime, he had been in company. He therefore decided not to go out, he would, as the time-honored expression has it, just have a bite to eat at home and go to bed early. He wouldn't even need to draw back the sheets, the bed was exactly as they had left it, the sheets rumpled, the pillows unplumped, the smell of cold love. He thought that he really should phone Maria da Paz and say something nice, send her a smile that she would doubtless feel at the other end of the line, it's true that their relationship is bound to come to an end one of these days, but there are tacit obligations that cannot and should not be ignored, it would show gross insensitivity, not to mention an unforgivable moral coarseness, to behave as if, that morning, in that apartment, they had not enjoyed some of the pleasurable, beneficial, agreeable activities that, sleeping aside, tend to take place in bed. Being a man should never be an impediment to behaving like a gentleman. And we have no doubt that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso would have acted like one if, however odd this may at first seem, the thought of Maria da Paz had not returned him to his obsessive preoccupation of the last few days, that is, how to find Daniel Santa-Clara. His zero success in his attempts at phoning had left him no alternative but to write a letter to the production company, since it would be out of the question to go there himself, in the flesh, running the risk that the person of whom he was asking the information might say to him, How are you, Senhor Santa-Clara. Resorting to a disguise, the classic false beard, mustache, and wig, apart from being totally ridiculous, would be utterly stupid too, it would make him feel like a bad actor in an eighteenth-century melodrama, like an aristocratic father or the rake who turns up in the fourth act, and since he had always feared that life might choose him to be the victim of one of the frequent and tasteless practical jokes on which it preens itself, he was convinced that the mustache and beard would fall off just as he was inquiring about Daniel Santa-Clara and that the person he asked would burst out laughing and summon his or her colleagues to join in the fun, Oh, very good, very good, come over here everyone, it's Senhor Santa-Clara inquiring about himself. A letter was, therefore, the only way, and probably the safest, of achieving his conspiratorial ends, with the one condition, sine qua non, that he did not sign his own name or mention his address. As we can testify, he had lately been pondering this tangle of tactics, although in such a diffuse and confused manner that such mental labors should not properly be called thought, it was more like a drift or a meander of vacillating fragments of ideas that had only now managed to come together and organize themselves in a sufficiently focused way, which is also why we have only now recorded them here. The decision that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso has just taken is one of truly startling simplicity, of brilliant, transparent clarity. Common sense does not share this view and has just bustled in through the door asking indignantly, How could such an idea even enter your head, It's the only one and it's the best one too, said Tertuliano Maximo Afonso coldly, It might well be the only one and it might well be the best, but if you'd care to know my opinion, I think it would be shameful of you to write that letter in Maria da Paz's name and giving her address, Why shameful, Well, if you need it explained, more fool you, She won't mind, How do you know if you haven't even talked to her about it, I have my reasons, We know about your reasons, my friend, they're known as the presumptuousness of the male, the vanity of the seducer, and the arrogance of the conqueror, Well, I am male, that's my sex, but I've never seen the seducer you describe reflected in the mirror, and as for me being a conqueror of women, please, if my life is a book, then that's one chapter that's missing, Really, Believe me,
