The Collected Novels of José Saramago (348 page)

T
HREE DAYS LATER, ABOUT MIDMORNING
, T
ERTULIANO
M
ÁXIMO
Afonso’s phone rang. It wasn’t his mother phoning because she missed him, it wasn’t Maria da Paz phoning out of love, it wasn’t the mathematics teacher phoning out of friendship, nor was it the headmaster from school wanting to know how the work was going. Hello, this is António Claro, the voice said, Oh, hello, Perhaps I’m phoning too early, No, don’t worry, I’m up and working, If I’m interrupting, I can always call later, What I was doing can easily wait for an hour, there’s no danger of my losing the thread, Coming straight to the point, then, I’ve been having a serious think these last few days and I’ve reached the conclusion that we should meet, That’s my view too, it doesn’t make sense for two people in our situation not to, My wife had a few doubts about it, but I’ve managed to persuade her that things couldn’t simply stay as they were, Good, The problem is that we can’t possibly appear in public together, we would gain nothing by becoming a news item on TV and in the press, especially me, it would be prejudicial to my career if people knew I had a look-alike who even had the same voice as me, More than a look-alike, A twin, More than a twin, That’s precisely what I want to confirm,
although I confess I find it hard to believe that we are as identical as you say, It’s in your power to find out, We’ll have to meet, then, Yes, but where, Any ideas, One possibility would be to come to my apartment, but there’s the problem of the neighbors, the lady who lives upstairs, for example, knows I haven’t gone out, imagine how she would feel if she saw me walking into the building I’m already in, What if I disguise myself, How, With a mustache, No, a mustache wouldn’t be enough, she would just ask you, that is, ask me, because she would assume she was talking to me, if I was now a fugitive from the police, She knows you that well, She does my cleaning for me, Ah, I see, no, it clearly wouldn’t be very sensible, and then there are the other neighbors too, Exactly, In that case, I think we’ll have to meet outside the city, in some deserted place in the country, where no one will see us and where we can talk freely, That sounds like a good idea, Actually, I know just the place, about thirty kilometers out of the city, In which direction, Explaining it over the phone would be impossible, look, I’ll send you a sketch map today, giving all the directions, we can meet in, say, four days’ time so that we can be sure the letter has arrived, Four days’ time brings us to Sunday, As good a day as any, But why thirty kilometers away, You know how it is with cities, just getting out of them takes a while, where the streets end, the factories begin, and where the factories end, the shantytowns begin, not to mention the villages that have already become part of the city without even knowing it, You put it well, Thank you, anyway I’ll phone you on Saturday to confirm the meeting, All right, There is one other thing I’d like you to know, What’s that, Well, I’ll be armed, Why, Because I don’t know you and I don’t know what other intentions you might have, If you’re afraid I’ll kidnap you, for example, or eliminate you so that I can
be alone in the world with this face that we both have, I can tell you now that I won’t have any weapons on me, not even a penknife, No, no, I don’t suspect you of that, You’ll still be armed though, Just a precaution, All I want to do is prove to you that I’m right, and as for what you say about not knowing me, allow me to object that we’re in exactly the same position, it’s true you’ve never seen me, but, up until now, I’ve only seen you pretending to be someone else, playing a part, so that makes us equal, Let’s not argue, we should go to our meeting calmly, without any previous declarations of war, But I’m not the one who’ll be armed, The gun won’t be loaded, What’s the point of taking it then, if it won’t be loaded, Pretend that I’m playing another one of my roles, that of a person drawn into an ambush from which he knows he will emerge alive because someone has given him the script to read, in short, the movies, It’s just the opposite in history, you only find out afterward, What an interesting idea, I’d never thought of that before, Nor had I, it only occurred to me now, So we’re in agreement, then, we’ll meet on Sunday, Yes, I’ll await your call, Don’t worry, I won’t forget, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, Same here, Good-bye, Good-bye, and give my regards to your wife. Like Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, António Claro was alone at home. He had warned Helena that he was going to phone the history teacher, but had said he would prefer her not to be there and that he would tell her about the conversation afterward. She didn’t try to stop him, she said she thought it a good idea, that she understood his desire to feel comfortable when embarking on a conversation that would clearly not be easy, but what he will never know is that Helena made two phone calls from the travel agency where she works, the first to her own number and the second to Tertuliano Máximo Afonso’s, as fate would have it, she did so
precisely when he and her husband were talking to each other, that way she could be sure that the matter was going ahead, but again she could not have said why she did this, it is becoming more and more evident that, after many more or less failed attempts, the only way to arrive at some proper explanation of our actions would be for us to say why we do the things about which we always say we don’t know why we do them. A trusting and conciliatory spirit would presume that, had Tertuliano Máximo Afonso’s number not been engaged, António Claro’s wife would have hung up without waiting for a reply, she would certainly not announce herself with, Hello, I’m Helena, António Claro’s wife, she wouldn’t say, I was just phoning to see how you are, such words, in the current situation, would be in a way improper, if not downright indiscreet, given that these two people, even though they have spoken twice, are not on close enough terms for it to seem natural for either of them to inquire about the state of mind or health of the other, neither can we accept as an excuse for such an excess of familiarity the fact that these are perfectly normal, everyday expressions, the kind that, in principle, do not oblige or commit anyone to anything, unless, that is, we were to tune our auditory organ to the complex range of possible underlying subtones, as set out in the exhaustive explanation given elsewhere in this story for the enlightenment of those readers more interested in what lies hidden than in what is shown. As for Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, it was with evident relief that he leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath when the conversation with António Claro came to an end. If asked which of the two, in his opinion, at the point we have now reached, was in charge of the game, he would feel inclined to reply, I am, although he was equally sure that the other man would think he had reason enough to give exactly the
same answer if asked the same question. It did not worry him that the place chosen for the meeting was so far from the city, it did not trouble him that António Claro was intending to go armed, even though he was convinced that, contrary to his assurances, the pistol, because it would in all probability be a pistol, would be loaded. In a way that he himself realized to be totally lacking in logic, rationality, and common sense, he believed that the false beard he would wear would protect him while he was wearing it, basing this absurd belief on the firm idea that he would not take it off when they first met, only later on, when the absolute identity of hands, eyes, eyebrows, forehead, ears, nose, hair, had been agreed to the satisfaction of both. He would take with him a mirror large enough so that, when he does finally remove his beard, their two faces, side by side, could be compared directly, so that their eyes could pass from the face to which they belonged to the face to which they could have belonged, a mirror that would state definitively, If what you can see is identical, then the rest must be too, I really don’t think it’s necessary for you to take all your clothes off in order to continue the comparison, this isn’t a nudist beach or a weight-lifting contest. Calmly and confidently, as if this particular chess move had been foreseen from the start, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso resumed his work, thinking that, just as with his bold proposal for the study of history, people’s lives could also be told from front to back, one could wait until they ended and then, gradually, follow the stream back to the source, identifying the tributaries on the way and sailing up them too, aware that each one, even the smallest and feeblest, was, in its time and in itself, a major river, and in this slow, deliberate way, alert to every scintillation on the surface of the water, every bubble risen from the bottom, every sudden downward flurry, every stagnant stillness,
reach the end of the narrative and place after the first of all moments the final full stop, and to take the same amount of time that the lives thus told had actually lasted. Let’s not hurry, we have so much to say when we fall silent, murmured Tertuliano Máximo Afonso and went back to his work. Halfway through the afternoon, he phoned Maria da Paz and asked if she would like to drop by when she finished work, she said she would but that she couldn’t stay long because her mother wasn’t well, and then he said not to bother, that family duties came first, and she said, No, I’d like to see you, and he agreed and said, Yes, it would be good to see each other, as if she were his beloved, and we know that she is not, or perhaps she is and he doesn’t know it, or perhaps, he stopped at this word because he didn’t know how to complete the sentence honestly, what lie or what pretend truth he would say to himself, it’s true that his eyes had grown misty with emotion, she wanted to see him, yes, sometimes it’s good to have someone who wants to see us and who tells us so, but the treacherous tear, already wiped away with the back of his hand, appeared only because he was alone and because solitude suddenly weighed on him more than in his darkest hours. Maria da Paz duly arrived, they kissed each other on both cheeks, then sat down to talk, he asked if her mother’s illness was serious, she said no, fortunately not, just one of those problems that comes with old age, they come and go, go and come, and finally stay. He asked when her holidays began, she said in two weeks’ time, but that they probably wouldn’t be going away, it all depended on her mother’s health. He asked how work was at the bank, and she said, oh, the usual, some days better than others. Then she asked if he didn’t get terribly bored, now that the classes were over, and he said no, he didn’t actually, the headmaster had set him a task, to draw up a proposal for the ministry on methods of teaching history. She said, How interesting, and then they fell silent, until she asked if he had anything to tell her, and he said no, it wasn’t the right time yet, that she must be patient a little longer. She said she would wait as long as she had to, that the conversation they had had in the car after supper the other night, when he had admitted that he had lied, had been like a door opening only to close again at once, but that at least she had found out that the thing separating them was only a door and not a wall. He said nothing, merely nodded and thought to himself that worse than any wall is a door to which one has never had the key, a key he didn’t know where to find, or even if it existed. Then, when he didn’t speak, she said, It’s getting late, I’d better go, and he said, Don’t go yet, But I’ve got to, my mother’s expecting me, Of course, forgive me. She got up, he did too, they looked at each other, they kissed each other on the cheek as they had when she arrived, Good-bye, then, she said, Good-bye, he said, phone me when you get home, Yes, they looked at each other again, then she took the hand he was about to place on her shoulder by way of farewell, and, very gently, as if he were a child, led him into the bedroom.

António Claro’s letter arrived on the Friday. Accompanying the map was a handwritten note, unsigned and with no salutation, it said, Let’s meet at six in the evening, I hope you don’t have too much difficulty finding the place. The writing isn’t exactly like mine, but there’s very little difference, and it’s mainly in the way he writes his capital letters, murmured Tertuliano Máximo Afonso. The map showed a road leading out from the city and, on either side of the road, two villages separated by eight kilometers, and between them, a road off to the right, heading into the countryside toward another village, smaller
than the others to judge by the drawing. From there, another narrower road came to a halt about a kilometer farther on, at a house. This was indicated by the word “house,” not by a rudimentary drawing, the simple outline that even the least skillful of hands can draw, a roof with a chimney, a facade with a door and a window on either side. Above the word, a red arrow left no room for doubt, Go no farther. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso opened a drawer, took out a map of the city and environs, found and identified the right exit, here’s the first village, the road that turns off to the right before reaching the second, the little village up ahead, all that’s missing is the final stretch of track. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso looked at the sketch map again, If it’s a house, he thought, then I don’t need to take a mirror, all houses have mirrors in them. He had imagined that the meeting would take place in open countryside, far from prying eyes, perhaps beneath the protection of some leafy tree, and instead it would take place under a roof, rather like a meeting of acquaintances, with a glass in one hand and some nuts to nibble on. He wondered if Antonio Claro’s wife would go too, if she would go there in order to confirm the size and shape of the scars on the left knee, to measure the distance between the two moles on the right forearm and the distance that separates one from the epicondyle and the other from the wrist bone, and then say, Don’t leave my sight, so that I don’t get you muddled up. He thought not, it wouldn’t make sense for any man worthy of the name to go to a potentially difficult, not to say hazardous, meeting, one has only to remember António Claro’s gentlemanly warning to Tertuliano Máximo Afonso that he would be armed, and to drag his wife along with him, as if ready to hide behind her skirts at the slightest sign of danger. No, he’ll go alone, I won’t take Maria da Paz either, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso pronounced these disconcerting words unaware of the profound difference that exists between a legitimate spouse, adorned with all the inherent rights and duties, and a temporary romantic relationship, however steadfast the aforementioned Maria da Paz’s affections have always seemed to us, and given that it is reasonable, if not obligatory, to doubt those of the other party. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso put the city map and the sketch map away in the drawer, but not the handwritten note. He put it in front of him, picked up his pen, and wrote the whole sentence on a piece of paper, in a hand that tried to imitate as closely as possible the other hand, especially the capital letters, which is where the difference was most noticeable. He kept writing, repeating the sentence, until he had covered the whole sheet, and in the last attempt, not even the most experienced of graphologists would have been able to discover even the most insignificant suggestion of forgery, what Tertuliano Máximo Afonso achieved when he quickly copied Maria da Paz’s signature is a mere shadow of the work of art he has just produced. From now on, all he will have to find out is how António Claro forms the capital letters from
A
to
H, J
to
K,
and
M
to
Z,
and then learn to imitate them. This does not mean, however, that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is nurturing in his mind future projects that involve the person of the actor Daniel Santa-Clara, he is merely, in this particular case, satisfying the taste for study that led him, when still a young man, to the public exercise of the praiseworthy profession of schoolmastering. Just as it is always possible that it might prove useful to know how to stand an egg on its end, so one should not exclude the possibility that being able to produce an accurate imitation of Antonio Claro’s capital letters might also serve some purpose in Tertuliano Máximo Afonso’s life. As the ancients taught, never
say, Of this water I will not drink, especially, we would add, if you have no other water. Since these thoughts were not formulated by Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, it is not in our power to analyze the connection that might nevertheless exist between them and the decision he has just taken and to which he was obviously led by some thought of his own that we failed to catch. This decision reveals the, shall we say, inevitable nature of the obvious, for now that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has the sketch map that will guide him to the location where the meeting will take place, what could be more natural than that it should occur to him to go and inspect the location first, to study its entrances and exits, to take its measure, if we can use that expression, with the added and not insignificant advantage that, by doing so, he will avoid the risk of getting lost on Sunday. The thought that this short journey would distract him for some hours from the painful duty of writing the proposal to the ministry not only brightened his thoughts, it also, in truly surprising fashion, lifted the gloom from his face. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso does not belong to that extraordinary group of people who can smile even when alone, his nature inclines him more to melancholy, to reverie, to an exaggerated awareness of the transience of life, to an incurable perplexity when faced by the genuine Cretan labyrinths of human relationships. He does not properly understand the mysterious workings of a beehive nor why the branch of a tree should spring out where and in the way it does, that is, neither higher up nor lower down, neither thicker nor thinner, but he attributes his difficulty in understanding this to the fact that he does not know the genetic and gestural communication codes used among the bees, still less the flow of information that more or less blindly circulates along the tangled network of vegetal motorways that link the roots deep
down in the earth to the leaves that clothe the tree and which rest in the noonday stillness and stir when the wind moves them. What he absolutely does not understand, however much he cudgels his brain, is why it is that while communication technologies continue to develop in a genuinely geometric progression, from improvement to improvement, the other form of communication, proper, real communication, from me to you, from us to them, should still be this confusion crisscrossed with culs-de-sac, so deceiving with its illusory esplanades, and as devious in expression as in concealment. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso might not perhaps mind becoming a tree, but he will never be one, his life, like that of all humans who have lived and will live, will never know the supreme experience of the vegetal. Supreme, or so we imagine, since, up until now, no one has read the biography or the memoirs of an oak tree, written by the same. Let Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, therefore, concern himself with the things of the world to which he belongs, the world of men and women who shout and boast in every natural and artificial setting, and let him leave in peace the arboreal world, which has quite enough things to cope with, phytopathological diseases, the electric saw, and forest fires, to name but a few. He is preoccupied too with driving the car that is taking him out into the countryside, carrying him away from a city that is the very model of modern difficulties in communication, in the form of vehicles and pedestrians, especially on days like today, Friday afternoon, when everyone is leaving for the weekend. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is leaving, but he will soon be back. The worst of the traffic is behind him now, the road he must take is not very busy, soon he will find himself outside the house where, the day after tomorrow, António Claro will be waiting for him. He has his beard on, carefully stuck
to his face, just in case, as he is driving through the last village, someone addresses him as Daniel Santa-Clara and invites him to have a beer, always assuming that the house he has come to see belongs to António Claro or is rented by him, a house in the country, a second home, these supporting actors who work in films certainly live high on the hog if they already have access to luxuries that, not so very long ago, were the privilege of the few. Meanwhile, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is concerned that the narrow road that leads to the house and which is now there before him may have no other use, that is, if it does not go beyond the house and there are no other houses nearby, then the woman who appeared at the window will be asking herself or her neighbor beside her, Where’s that car going, there’s no one staying at António Claro’s house at the moment as far as I know, and I didn’t like the look of that man’s face, men with beards have usually got something to hide, it’s just as well Tertuliano Máximo Afonso didn’t hear her, he would have had yet another serious reason to feel worried. There is scarcely room on the tarmac road for two cars to pass, there obviously isn’t much traffic here. To the left, the stony ground slopes gently down to a valley where a long, unbroken line of tall trees, which from here look to be ash trees and white poplars, marks the probable course of a river. Even at the prudent speed at which Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is driving, in case a car should suddenly appear coming toward him, a kilometer takes no time at all to cover, and this kilometer is covered already, and this must be the house. The road continues, snaking up two hills set one above the other, then disappearing around the other side, it probably serves other houses that cannot be seen from here, the distrustful woman seems, after all, to be concerned solely with what is near the village where she lives, what lies beyond her frontiers
doesn’t interest her. From the broad terrace in front of the house another, even narrower road and in even worse condition leads down toward the valley, That must be another way to get here, thought Tertuliano Máximo Afonso. He is aware that he should not go too near the house, lest some walker or goatherd, for it looks like the kind of area where goats might be kept, should sound the alarm, Stop thief, and in two ticks the police would be there, or, if not them, a detachment of locals armed, as in the old days, with sticks and scythes. He must behave like a traveler just passing through, who has paused for a moment to admire the view and who, now that he’s there, casts an appreciative eye over a house whose owners, now absent, are fortunate enough to enjoy this magnificent vista. The house is a simple one-story building, a typical rural dwelling that looks as if it had undergone some careful restoration work, although there are signs of neglect too, as if the owners did not come here very often and only on brief visits. One usually expects a house in the country to have potted plants outside the door and on the window ledges, but this has hardly any, a few dry stalks, the occasional fading flower, and a single brave geranium that continues to do battle against absence. The house is separated from the road by a low wall, and, behind it, raising their branches up above the roof, are two chestnut trees that, judging by their height and their evident great age, must have been there long before the house was built. A solitary place, ideal for contemplative people, for those who love nature for what it is, making no distinction between sun and rain, heat and cold, wind and stillness, between the ease that some of these bring and that others withhold. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso walked around to the back of the house, through a garden that once merited the name but which is now no more than a barely-walled-in space invaded by thistles, a tangle of rampant weeds swamping an atrophied apple tree, a peach tree whose trunk is covered with lichen, and a few thorn apples, or
Datura stramonium,
to give them their Latin name. For António Claro, and perhaps for his wife too, the country house must have been a love of only brief duration, one of those short-lived bucolic passions that occasionally assail city dwellers and which, like loose straw, burn with the lightest touch of a match and are reduced immediately to black ash. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso can now return to his second-floor apartment with a view of the other side of the road and await the phone call that will bring him back here on Sunday. He got into the car, drove back the way he had come, and, to show the woman at the window that no crime committed against another person’s property weighed heavy on his conscience, he drove slowly through the village as if he were nudging his way through a herd of goats as calmly accustomed to the streets as they were to the fields where they grazed among the broom and the thyme. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso wondered if, just to satisfy curiosity, it would be worth investigating the shortcut that seemed to lead from the house down to the river, but he soon changed his mind, the fewer people who saw him around these parts, the better. After Sunday, of course, he will never come here again, but it would still be best if people forgot the man with the beard. As he left the village, he accelerated, and in a few minutes he was back on the main road, and less than an hour afterward he was home. He had a bath, which restored him after the heat of the journey, changed his clothes, and, accompanied by a lemon drink that he took from the fridge, sat down at his desk. He is not going to continue work on the proposal for the ministry, he is, like a good son, going to telephone his mother. He will ask how
she’s been, she’ll say fine, how are you, oh, much as usual, no complaints, I was beginning to wonder why you hadn’t phoned, sorry, but I’ve had a lot to do, in human beings these words are presumably the equivalent of the rapid touches of recognition that ants give to each other with their antennae when they meet on a path, as if they were saying, You’re one of us, now we can talk about serious matters. So how are your problems, his mother asked, On the way to being resolved, don’t worry, The very idea, as if I had nothing better to do with my life than to worry about you, Well, I’m glad you’re not taking it all too seriously, You can’t see my face, Come on, now, Mama, calm down, Oh, I’ll calm down, but only once you’re here, It won’t be long now, And what about your relationship with Maria da Paz, how does that stand at the moment, It’s not easy to explain actually, You could at least try, Well, I do like her and need her, Other people have got married for lesser reasons, Yes, but I think that my need for her is just a thing of the moment, nothing more, and what if I stop feeling it tomorrow, what will I do then, And what about liking her, That’s only to be expected in a man who lives alone and has been lucky enough to meet a nice woman, with a pretty face, a good figure, and who is, as people say, a very caring person, Oh, so not very much then, It’s not that it’s not much, just that it’s not enough, You loved your wife, Did I, I can’t remember now, that was six years ago, Six years isn’t very long to forget so much, Well, I thought I loved her, and she must have thought the same about me, but it turns out we were both mistaken, that’s what tends to happen, And you don’t want to make the same mistake with Maria da Paz, No, I don’t, For your sake or for hers, For both our sakes, More for your own sake than for hers though, Look, I know I’m not perfect, it will be enough that I save her from the evil I don’t