his colleague the mathematics teacher said good-bye to him, I'm off on holiday now, but afterward, if you need anything, phone me, and be careful, be very careful, Don't forget what we agreed, the headmaster told him, and I'll phone you when I get back from holiday to find out how the work's going, but if you do decide to go away, because you do, after all, have a right to some rest, leave me a contact number on your answering machine. Some days later, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso invited Maria da Paz out to supper, his appalling treatment of her had finally begun to weigh on his conscience, not even so much as a formal thank-you for her help, not even some explanation of what the letter had said, even if he had to invent one. They met in the restaurant, she arrived a little late, sat down immediately, and blamed her lateness on her mother, to look at them no one would think they were lovers, or you might perhaps think that they had been lovers until recently and were still not yet used to their new state of mutual indifference, or having to pretend to be indifferent. They exchanged a few polite words, How are you, How have you been, Are you very busy, Me too, and while Tertuliano Maximo Afonso was once again hesitating as to which way the conversation should go, she anticipated him and jumped in with both feet, Did the letter tell you what you wanted to know, she asked, did it give you all the information you needed, Yes, he said, all too aware that his response was at once true and false, That wasn't my impression, Why's that, Well, I was expecting a bulkier envelope, Sorry, I don't understand, If I remember rightly, the facts you needed were so many and so detailed that they couldn't possibly have fit on one sheet of paper, and that was all the envelope contained, How do you know, did you open it, asked Tertuliano Maximo Afonso sharply and knowing, even as he said it, what response this gratuitous provocation would receive. Maria da Paz looked him straight in the eye and said serenely, No, I didn't, as you well know, Forgive me, I spoke without thinking, he said, Oh, I'll forgive you if you insist, but I can go no further than that, Further than what, For example, I can't forget that you considered me capable of opening a letter intended for you, Deep down, you know that isn't what I really think, Deep down, I know that you don't know me at all, If I didn't trust you, I would never have asked you if it was all right for the letter to be sent to you, My name was just a mask, a mask for your name, a mask for you, But I explained at the time why I thought that was the best way to proceed, Yes, you explained, And you agreed, Yes, I agreed, So, So, from now on I will be expecting you to show me this information you say you received, not because I'm interested, but simply because I think it's your duty to do so, Now you're the one who distrusts me, Yes, but I'll stop distrusting you if you can tell me how all the facts you asked for could possibly have fit on one sheet of paper, They didn't give me all the facts, Ah, they didn't give you all the facts, That's what I said, Then you'll have to show me what you've got. The food was growing cold on their plates, the sauce on the meat was congealing, the wine was sleeping forgotten in their glasses, and there were tears in Maria da Paz's eyes. For a moment, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso thought what an infinite relief it would be to tell her the whole story from the beginning, about this extraordinary, singular, astonishing, and never- before-seen case of the duplicate man, the unimaginable become reality, the absurd reconciled with reason, the final proof that for God nothing is impossible, and that the science of this century is, as someone said, a fool. If he did so, if he was open with her, then all his previous troubling actions would be explained, including those that had been, as far as Maria da Paz was concerned, aggressive, rude, or disloyal, or that had, in short, offended against the most elementary common sense, that is to say almost all his actions. Then harmony would be restored, all errors and mistakes would be unconditionally and unreservedly forgiven, Maria da Paz would beg him, Don't go on with this madness, it might turn out badly, and he would reply, You sound like my mother, and she would ask, Have you told her, and he would say, No, I just said that I had a few problems at the moment, and she would conclude, Now that you've talked to me about it, let's sort it out together. Not many tables are occupied, they have been given a corner table, and no one is paying them any particular attention, situations like this, couples who come to air their sentimental or domestic grievances between the fish and the meat courses or, worse, because the conflicts have taken longer to resolve, between the aperitif and paying the bill, form an integral part of the catering trade, whether in restaurants or in cafeterias. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's well-intentioned thought vanished as quickly as it came, the waiter asked if they had finished and took away the plates, Maria da Paz's eyes are almost dry, it's been said thousands of times before that there's no point crying over spilled milk, the problem in this case is what has happened to the jug, which lay shattered on the floor. The waiter brought the coffee and the bill that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso had asked for, and a few minutes later, they were in his car. I'll take you home, he had said, Yes, if you wouldn't mind, she had said. They did not speak until they reached the street where Maria da Paz lived. Before they reached the place where he normally dropped her, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso parked the car by the sidewalk and turned off the engine. Surprised by this unusual gesture, she shot him a glance, but still said nothing. Without turning his head, without looking at her, in a tense, determined voice, he said, Every word that has come out of my mouth during these last few weeks, including the conversation we've just had in the restaurant, has been a lie, but don't ask me what the truth is because I can't tell you, So it wasn't statistical data you wanted from the production company, Exactly, And I suppose there's no point expecting you to tell me what the real reason for your interest was, No, Presumably it's something to do with the videos you've got in your apartment, Just be satisfied with what I've told you and stop asking questions and making suppositions, Oh, I can promise you I won't ask you any questions, but I'm free to make all the suppositions I want, however absurd you may think them, You seem oddly unsurprised, Why should I be surprised, You know what I mean, don't make me repeat it, Sooner or later you would have had to tell me, I just didn't expect it to be today, And why would I have had to tell you, Because you're more honest than you think, Although not honest enough to tell you the truth, The reason for that isn't a lack of honesty, something else is keeping your lips sealed, What, A doubt, an anxiety, a fear, What makes you think that, Because I've read it in your face and heard it in your words, But the words were lying, They were, yes, but not the way they sounded, The moment has come to use the phrase politicians always use, I can neither confirm nor deny it, That's just one of those low rhetorical tricks that deceive no one, Why, Because anyone can see that the phrase inclines more toward confirmation than toward denial, Well, I've never noticed that, Neither have I, it only occurred to me now, thanks to you, But I didn't confirm the fear, the anxiety, or the doubt, You didn't deny them either, Now is not the time for word games, Well, it's better than sitting at a restaurant table with tears in your eyes, Forgive me, This time there's nothing to forgive, now I know half of what there is to know, so I can't complain, But all I said was that everything I told you was a lie, That's the half I know, from now on I hope to be able to sleep better, You might not be able to sleep at all if you knew the other half, Don't frighten me, please, There's no reason to be frightened, don't worry, there are no corpses involved, Don't frighten me, It's all right, as my mother usually says, in the end everything finds a solution, Promise me you'll take care, Yes, I promise, Great care, Yes, And if, among all the secrets I'm incapable of imagining, you find one you can tell me about, you will tell me, won't you, however insignificant it may seem to you, It's a promise, but, in this case, it's either all or nothing, Even so, I'll wait. Maria da Paz bent toward him, kissed him lightly on the cheek, and made to get out of the car. He placed one hand on her arm and stopped her, Stay, come back home with me. She gently pulled away, No, not tonight, you couldn't give me more than you already have, Unless I told you everything, No, not even then. She opened the door, turned once more to say goodbye with a smile, and got out. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso started the engine, waited until she had gone into the building, and then, with a weary gesture, set the car in motion and drove home, where, patient and confident of its power, loneliness was waiting for him.
The following day, about midmorning, he set off for his first reconnoitering of the unknown territory where Daniel Santa-Clara lived with his wife. He was wearing the false beard meticulously fixed to his face and a peaked cap to throw a protective shadow over his eyes, which he decided at the last moment not to conceal behind a pair of dark glasses because, in conjunction with the rest of the disguise, they gave him an outlaw air likely to awaken the suspicions of the whole neighborhood and to be the cause of a full-scale police hunt, with the all-too- foreseeable consequences of capture, identification, and public opprobrium. He was not making this expedition in the expectation of collecting any particularly significant facts, at most he would learn something of the exterior of things, gain a topographical knowledge of places, the street, the building, but little more. It would be the most extraordinary fluke to see Daniel Santa-Clara going into the building, with remnants of makeup still on his face, and wearing the irresolute, perplexed expression of someone who is taking rather too long to emerge from the skin of the character he had been playing an hour before. Real life has always seemed to us more frugal in coincidences than the novel or other forms of fiction, unless we were to allow that the principle of coincidence is the one true ruler of the world, in which case, we should give as much value to the coincidence one actually experiences as to that which is written about, and vice versa. During the half hour that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso spent there, stopping to look in shopwindows and to buy a newspaper, then sitting reading the paper outside a cafe right next to the building, Daniel Santa-Clara was seen neither entering nor leaving. Perhaps he's resting in the peace of his home with his wife and his children, if he has any, perhaps, as he was the other day, he is busy at a film shoot, perhaps there is no one in the apartment, the children because they have gone to spend the holidays with their
