at home on holiday, but even though I'm not shooting a film, we won't be going anywhere. That would be tantamount to admitting that she doesn't know what's going on, and where there is no trust, nonexistent in the present case, no sensible, well-balanced person would lay bare the secrets of his married life, especially in view of the gravity of the situation. An-tonio Claro, whose sharp wits have been shown to be in no way inferior to those of Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, realizes that the roles they have been playing up until now have been switched and that, from now on, he will be the one who has to disguise himself, and what had, at first sight, appeared to be a tardy and gratuitous provocation on the part of the history teacher, sending him, like a slap in the face, that false beard, did, it appears, have meaning and purpose, was born out of some presentiment. Antonio Claro, not Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, will be the one who has to go in disguise to wherever their next meeting place will be. And just as Tertuliano Maximo Afonso came to this street, wearing a false beard, in order to catch a glimpse of Antonio Claro and his wife, so Antonio Claro, complete with false beard, will go to the street where Maria da Paz lives to find out what kind of woman she is, and will follow her to the bank and occasionally even to within sight of where Tertuliano Maximo Afonso lives, thus he will be her shadow for however long is necessary and until the compelling force of what is written and what might be written disposes otherwise. After what has been said, it will come as no surprise that Antonio Claro should go to the chest of drawers where he keeps the box containing the mustache that, in times past, adorned the face of Daniel Santa-Clara, a disguise clearly inadequate for the present situation, the same empty cigar box that for some days now has also been home to the false beard that Antonio Claro is going to wear. Also in times past, there lived a king considered to be very wise and who, in a moment of easy philosophical inspiration, stated, one assumes with all the solemnity due to his position, that there was nothing new under the sun. We should never take these phrases too seriously, just in case we should still be saying them when everything around us has changed and the sun itself is not what it once was. The movements and gestures people make, on the other hand, have not changed very much, not just since the third king of Israel, but since that immemorial day when a human face first saw itself in the smooth surface of a pond and thought, That's me. Now, here, where we are, where we have our existence, even after the passing of four or five million years, those primeval gestures continue to be monotonously repeated, oblivious to any changes in the sun and in the world illumined by that sun, if we need further proof that this is so we have only to watch as, before the smooth surface of his bathroom mirror, Antonio Claro ad justs the beard that once belonged to Tertuliano Maximo Afonso with the same care, with the same concentration of mind, and perhaps with the same tremor of fear with which, not many weeks ago, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, in another bathroom and before another mirror, had drawn Antonio Claro's mustache on his own face. Less sure of themselves than their brutish common ancestor, they did not fall into the ingenuous temptation of saying, That's me, for fears have changed a lot since then and doubts have changed even more, now, here, instead of a confident affirmation, all that emerges from our mouth is the question, Who's that, and probably not even another four or five million years will be enough to provide an answer. Antonio Claro took off the beard and put it back in the box, Helena will be home soon, tired from work, even more silent than usual, moving about the apartment as if it were not her home, as if the furniture were unfamiliar to her, as if the corners and edges of the furniture did not recognize her and, like zealous guard dogs, growled threateningly at her as she passed. A single word from her husband might perhaps change things, but we know that neither An-tonio Claro nor Daniel Santa- Clara will say it. Perhaps they don't want to, perhaps they can't, all fate's reasons are human, purely human, and anyone who, basing themselves on the lessons of the past, says otherwise, be it in prose or in verse, doesn't know what he or she is talking about, if you'll forgive such a bold opinion.
The following day, after Helena had gone out, Antonio Claro phoned Maria da Paz's house. He did not feel particularly nervous or excited, silence would be his protective shield. The voice that answered was flat, with the hesitant fragility of someone recovering from some physical ailment, and yet although everything indicated that the voice belonged to a woman of a certain age, it did not sound as frail as that of an old woman, or, if you prefer euphemisms, an elderly lady. She did not say much, Hello, hello, who is it, say something, will you, hello, hello, honestly, how rude, a person can't even get any peace in her own home, and she hung up, but Daniel Santa-Clara, although he does not orbit the solar system of the really famous actors, has an excellent ear, for relationships in this case, and so it was easy for him to work out that the elderly woman, if she isn't the mother, is the grandmother, and if she isn't the grandmother, she's the aunt, excluding out of hand, because it bears no relation to actuality, that tired old literary cliche of the old-servant-who-never-got-married-out-of-love-for-her-master-and- mistress. Obviously, given his method of approach, he still doesn't know if there are any men at home, a father, a grandfather, an uncle, or a brother, but Antonio Claro need not worry overmuch about such a possibility, since, in every respect, in sickness and in health, in life and in death, he will appear before Maria da Paz not as Daniel Santa-Clara, but as Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, who, while they may not fling wide the doors for him, either as friend or lover, must at least enjoy the advantages of a tacitly acknowledged relationship. Were we to ask Antonio Claro what his preference would be, in accordance with the objectives he has in mind, as to the nature of the relationship between Tertuliano Maximo Afonso and Maria da Paz, whether they are lovers or friends, we have no doubt whatsoever as to his reply, that if the relationship were merely one of friendship, it would not hold half the attraction for him as it would if they were lovers. As we can see, the plan of action that Antonio Claro has been working on has not only advanced greatly as regards the setting of objectives, it is also beginning to grow in strength as regards the motivation it previously lacked, although that strength, unless we have made a grave error of interpretation, seems to be based entirely on malevolent ideas of personal revenge that the situation, as we see it, neither promised nor in any way justified. True, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso did challenge Daniel Santa-Clara directly when, without a word, and that, perhaps, was the worst thing, he sent him the false beard, but with a little common sense, the matter could have ended there, Antonio Claro could have shrugged and said to his wife, The man's a fool, if he thinks he can provoke me that easily, he's very much mistaken, throw it in the bin, will you, and if he's stupid enough to repeat this nonsense, then we'll call the police and put a stop to this whole story once and for all, whatever the consequences. Unfortunately, common sense does not always appear when it is needed, and its brief absences have often resulted in some major dramas and in some of the most terrifying of catastrophes. The proof that the universe was not as well-thought-out as it should have been lies in the fact that the Creator ordered the star that illumines us to be called the sun. Had the king of the stars borne the name Common Sense, imagine how enlightened the human spirit would be now, both by day and by night, because, as everyone knows, the light we call moonlight comes not from the moon but always and solely from the sun. It's worth considering that the reason so many theories about the origin of the universe have been created since the birth of speech and the word is that all of them, one by one, have failed miserably, with a regularity that augurs rather ill for the one that, with a few variations, is currently in vogue. Let us return, however, to Antonio Claro. It is clear that he wishes, as soon as possible, to meet Maria da Paz, and that, for entirely wrongheaded reasons, he has become obsessed with revenge, and, as you will no doubt already have noticed, there is no power in heaven or on earth that will dissuade him from this. Obviously, he cannot go and stand outside the building where she lives and ask every woman who goes in or out, Are you Maria da Paz, nor could he entrust himself to the hands of chance and fortune and, for example, walk up and down her street once, twice, three times and, on the third occasion, address the first woman he saw, You look like Maria da Paz, you can't imagine what a pleasure it is finally to meet you, I'm a movie actor and my name's Daniel Santa-Clara, allow me to invite you to a coffee, it's just across the road, I'm sure we're going to have lots to talk about, ah, the beard, yes, I congratulate you on your perspicacity, on not being deceived, but I ask you, please, don't be alarmed, keep calm, when we can meet in some more private place, a place where I can remove the beard without danger, you will see before you a person you know well, intimately I believe, and whom I, without a flicker of envy, would congratulate were he here, our very own Tertuliano Maximo Afonso. The poor woman would be utterly overwhelmed by the prodigious transformation, which would, however, be quite inexplicable at this point in the narrative, for it is vital to keep in mind the fundamental, guiding idea that things should patiently await their moment and not push or reach over the shoulders of those who arrived first, shouting, I'm here, although we would not entirely reject the hypothesis that if, occasionally, we did let them through, certain potential evils might lose some of their virulence or vanish like smoke in the air, for the banal reason that they had missed their turn. This outpouring of thoughts and analyses, this benevolent scattering of reflections and their offshoots over which we have been lingering, should not make us lose sight of the prosaic reality that, deep down, what Antonio Claro wants to know is if Maria da Paz is worth it, if she is really worth all the trouble he is going to. If she was unattractive, as thin as a rail, or, on the contrary, suffering from an excess of fat, neither of which, we hasten to add, would constitute any great obstacle if love were playing a part, then, we would see Daniel Santa-Clara taking a rapid step backward, as must have happened so often in the past, during encounters based on friendships formed through correspondence, the ridiculous stratagems, the ingenuous means of identification, I'll be carrying a blue parasol in
