my right hand, I'll be wearing a white flower in my buttonhole, and, in the end, no parasol and no flower, perhaps one person waiting in vain at the arranged spot, perhaps neither, the flower thrown hastily into the gutter, the parasol hiding a face that preferred not to be seen. Daniel Santa-Clara, however, need not worry, Maria da Paz is young, pretty, elegant, with a nice figure and a good character, that last attribute, though, is irrelevant to the matter at hand, for, nowadays, the scales on which the fate of the parasol or the destiny of the flower were once decided are not particularly sensitive to considerations of this nature. Meanwhile, Antonio Claro has an important problem to resolve if he does not want to spend hours and hours hanging about on the pavement outside Maria da Paz's building, waiting for her to appear, with fatal and dangerous consequences arising from the natural apprehensions of the neighbors, who would, in no time, be phoning the police to alert them to the suspicious presence of a bearded man who certainly wasn't there just to keep the building propped up. He must have recourse, therefore, to reason and to logic. It is likely that Maria da Paz works, that she has a regular job and leaves and returns at regular hours. Like Helena. But Antonio Claro does not want to think about Helena, he tells himself that the two things have nothing to do with each other, that whatever happens with Maria da Paz will not put his marriage at risk, you could almost call it a whim, of the kind to which men are said to be so easily prone, if, in the present case, the right words were not vengeance, revenge, retaliation, retribution, redress, reprisal, rancor, vindictiveness, if not the very worst of them all, hatred. Good heavens, how ridiculous, where will it all end, cry those happy people who have never come face-to-face with a copy of themselves, who have never suffered the terrible affront of receiving in the post a false beard in a box without even a pleasant, good-humored note to soften the blow. What is, at this moment, going through Antonio Claro's head will show to what extent, and contrary to the most elementary good sense, a mind dominated by base feelings can make its own conscience fall in with them, slyly forcing it to reconcile the worst actions with the best reasons and to use both to justify each other, in a kind of double game in which the same player will always win or lose. What Antonio Claro has just thought, incredible though it may seem, is that taking Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's lover to bed under false pretenses would, as well as being a way of returning the slap in the face with a still more resounding one, be the most extreme way, now can you imagine anything more absurd, of avenging his wife Helena's wounded dignity. However hard we pleaded, Antonio Claro would be unable to explain what extraordinary offenses these were that could, theoretically, be avenged only by a new and no less shocking offense. This has now become in him an idee fixe, and there is nothing to be done. It is something of an achievement that he is still capable of returning to his interrupted reasoning, when he recalled that Helena was similar to Maria da Paz in having work obligations, a regular job, and particular hours for leaving and returning. Instead of walking up and down the street in the hope of some highly unlikely chance encounter, what he should do is get there really early, stand somewhere inconspicuous, wait for Maria da Paz to come out, and then follow her to work. What could be easier, one might think, and yet how wrong one would be. The first problem is that he does not know if Maria da Paz, on leaving her building, will turn left or right, and therefore to what extent the position he chooses to keep watch from, as regards both the direction she chooses to take and the place where he will leave his car, will complicate or facilitate the task of following her, not forgetting, and here is the second and no less serious problem, the possibility that she may have her own car parked outside the door, which would not give him enough time to run back to his car and join the traffic without losing sight of her. What will probably happen is that he will fail completely on the first day, return on the second to fail in one respect but succeed in another, and then trust that the patron saint of detectives, impressed by his pertinacity, will take it upon himself to make the third day a perfect and definitive triumph in the art of following a trail. Antonio Claro will still have one other problem to resolve, relatively insignificant, it is true, compared with the enormous difficulties already overcome, but which will have to be dealt with using a remarkable degree of tact and spontaneity. Apart from when he has to drag himself from between the sheets when obliged to do so by work, an early-morning shoot or one taking place outside the city, Daniel Santa-Clara, as you will have noticed, prefers to remain snug in his bed for one or two hours after Helena has left for the day. He will, therefore, have to come up with a good explanation for the unusual fact that he intends to get up at the crack of dawn, not on one day, but on two, possibly even three, when, as we know, he is currently resting professionally, waiting for the call for action on
It was a few minutes after eight o'clock the following morning when he parked the car almost opposite the door out of which he expected Maria da Paz to emerge, on the other side of the street. It seemed that the patron saint of detectives had been there all night, saving the place for him. Most of the shops are still closed, some of them, according to the notices fixed on the doors, for the purpose of staff holidays, there are not many people about, a queue of them, shorter rather than long, is waiting for the bus. Antonio Claro soon realized that his laborious musings on how and where he should place himself in order to spy on Maria da Paz had been not only a waste of time, but also a useless waste of mental energy. Inside the car, reading the newspaper, is where he is least at risk of attracting attention, he'll just look like he's waiting for someone, which is true but can't be spoken out loud. A few people, mainly men, occasionally emerge from the building under surveillance, but none of the women correspond to the image that Antonio Claro, without realizing it, had been forming in his mind with the help of a few female characters from films in which he has taken part. It was half past eight on the dot when the building door opened and a pretty, young woman, pleasing to look at from head to toe, came out, accompanied by an elderly lady. That's them, he thought. He put down his newspaper, turned on the engine, and waited, as restless as a horse in the starting gate before the pistol sounds. The two women continued slowly along on the right-hand side of the pavement, the younger giving her arm to the older, there is no doubt about it, they are mother and daughter and probably live alone. The old lady is the one who answered the phone yesterday, and by the way she's walking, she must have been ill, but the other one, I would bet anything you like that the other one is the famous Maria da Paz, and she's got a pretty good body, yes, sir, the history teacher has excellent taste. The two of them were moving off, and Antonio Claro didn't know what to do. He could follow them and come back when they got into the car, but then he would risk losing them. What shall I do, shall I stay or go, where's she taking the old biddy, his rather nervous state is to blame for this somewhat discourteous expression, Antonio Claro does not normally talk like that, it just came out. Ready for anything, he leaped out of the car and strode after the two women. When they were about thirty meters away, he slowed his pace and tried to match his speed to theirs. To avoid getting too close, he had to stop now and then and pretend he was looking in the shop windows. He was surprised to find that the slowness was beginning to irritate him, as if he saw in it an obstacle to future actions that, although not yet fully defined in his head, would, in any case, brook no impediment. The false beard was making him itch, the walk seemed endless, and he hadn't even gone very far, about three hundred meters in all, the next corner brought the end of the journey, Maria da Paz helps her mother up the steps of the church, kisses her good-bye, and is now walking back the way she came, with the nimble step of certain women who walk as if they were dancing. Antonio Claro crossed over to the other side of the street and paused farther on outside a shop in whose window, shortly afterward, the slender figure of Maria da Paz would pass. Alertness is all now, a moment of indeci sion could ruin everything, if she gets into one of these cars and he doesn't manage to reach his quickly enough, then he can kiss
