All The Names - Jose Saramago

situation, the law giving advice to the criminal, gave him a certain subversive pleasure. The affair of the
unknown woman had reached its end, all that was needed now was the inquiry at the school, then the
inspection of the apartment, and, if he had time, he would drop in on the lady in the ground-floor
apartment to tell her about the latest developments, and then nothing. He wondered how he would live his
life from then on, if he would go back to his collections of famous people, for a few brief seconds he
imagined himself sitting at the table in the evening, with a pile of newspapers and magazines beside him,
cutting out articles and photographs and trying to guess whether a celebrity was on the rise or,
alternatively, on the wane, occasionally in the past he had foreseen the fate of certain people who later
became important, occasionally he had been the first to suspect that the laurels of this man or that woman
were beginning to fade, to wrinkle, to crumble into dust, It all ends up in the rubbish bin, said Senhor
José, without quite knowing, at that precise moment, if he meant lost reputations or his clippings
collection.
With the sun beating down on the facade, the trees in the playground looking green and leafy and the
flower beds blooming, there was nothing about the appearance of the school that recalled the gloomy
edifice into which Senhor José had entered one rainy night, by scaling its walls and breaking in. Now he
was going in through the main door, he was saying to a member of the staff, I need to talk to the
headmaster, no, I'm not a parent and I'm not a supplier of school materials, I work for the Central Registry,
it's an official matter. The woman rang an internal number, she told someone about the visitor's arrival,
then she said, Please go up, the headmaster's in the secretary's office on the second floor, Thank you, said
Senhor José, and began going calmly up the stairs, he already knew that the secretary's office was on the
second floor. The headmaster was talking to a woman who presumably was in charge, he was saying to
her, I need that chart tomorrow without fail, and she was saying, I'll make sure you get it, Senhor José had
stopped in the doorway, waiting for them to notice him. The headmaster finished his conversation and
looked at him, only then did Senhor José say, Good morning, headmaster, then, with his identity card in
his hand, he took three steps forward, As you can see, I work for the Central Registry, I've come on an
official matter. The headmaster made as if to brush aside the identity card, then asked, What's it about, It's
about one of your teachers, And what has the Central Registry got to do with the teachers at this school,
Not as teachers, but as the people they are or were, Could you explain what you mean, We're carrying out
an investigation into the phenomenon of suicide, both its psychological aspects and its sociological
implications, and I've been put in charge of the case of a lady who taught mathematics at this school and
who recently committed suicide. The headmaster put on a sorrowful face, Poor woman, he said, it's a very
sad story that I don't think any of us has as yet really understood My first action said Senhor José using the
most official language he could, would be to compare the identifying data that we have in the archives in
the Central Registry with the lady's professional registration, I suppose you mean the staff list, I do, sir.
The headmaster turned to the woman in charge of the secretary's office, Find me her record card, will you,
We still haven't taken it out of the drawer, the woman said in an apologetic tone, at the same time running
her fingers across the cards in a drawer, Here it is, she said. Senhor José felt a sharp contraction in the pit
of his stomach, a feeling of dizziness swept through his brain, but, fortunately, it came to nothing more,
this man's nervous system really is in a terrible state, not that we can blame him in the circumstances, we
have only to remember that the card being shown to him now was within his grasp that night, it would
have been just a matter of opening that drawer, the one with the label that says Teachers, but how could he
have imagined that the young girl he was looking for would be teaching mathematics in the very school
she had studied at. Disguising his agitation, but not the tremor in his hands, Senhor José pretended to
compare the card from the school with the copy of the card from the Central Registry, then he said, It's the
same person. The headmaster looked at him with interest, Don't you feel well, he asked, and he replied
simply, It's just that I'm not as young as I used to be, Right, I imagine you'll want to ask me a few
questions, I will, Come with me then, we'll go to my study. Senhor José smiled to himself as he followed