All The Names - Jose Saramago

The concierge hadn't come and asked him where he had sprung from, the building is silent, it seems
uninhabited. It was this silence that provoked an idea, the most daring he had ever had, What if I were to
stay here tonight, what if I were to sleep in her bed, no one would ever know. Tell Senhor José that
nothing could be easier, he just has to go up in the lift again, go into the apartment, take off his shoes,
maybe another wrong number will ring, if they do, then you'll have the pleasure of hearing again the grave,
veiled voice of the mathematics teacher, I'm not at home, she'll say, and if, during the night, lying in her
bed, some pleasant dream excites your old body, as you know, the remedy is to hand, but you'll have to be
careful not to mess up the sheets. These are sarcasms and vulgarities that Senhor José does not deserve,
his daring idea, rather more romantic than daring, goes just as it came, and he is no longer inside the
building, but outside, what helped him to leave, apparendy, was the painful memory of his old, darned
socks and his bony, white shins with their sparse hairs. Nothing in the world makes any sense, murmured
Senhor José, and set off for the road where the lady in the ground-floor apartment lives. The afternoon is
at an end, the Central Registry will already have closed, the clerk does not have many hours in which to
invent an excuse to justify having missed a whole day's work Everyone knows he has no family that would
require him to rush to them in an emergency, and even if he did, there can be no excuse in his case, living
as he does right next to the Central Registry, all he had to do was go in and stand at the door and say, I'll
be back tomorrow, one of my cousins is dying. Senhor José decides he's ready for anything, that they can
dismiss him if they want, expel him from the civil service, perhaps the shepherd needs an assistant to help
him change the numbers on the graves, especially if he's considering widening his field of activity, there's
really no reason why he should limit himself to the suicides, the dead are all equal, what you can do to
some you can do to all, jumble them up, confuse them, it doesn't matter, the world doesn't make sense
anyway.
When Senhor José knocked at the door of the lady in the ground-floor apartment he was thinking only
of the cup of tea he would have. He rang once, twice, but no one answered. Perplexed, worried, he rang
the doorbell of the apartment opposite. A woman appeared who asked him sharply, What do you want, No
one's answering across the way, So what, Has anything happened to her, do you know, What do you mean,
An accident, an illness, for example, It's possible, an ambulance came to get her, And when was that,
Three days ago, And you've heard nothing since, do you happen to know where she is, No, I don't, now if
you'll excuse me. The woman slammed the door, leaving Senhor José in the dark. Tomorrow I'll have to
go to all the hospitals, he thought. He felt exhausted, he had spent all day walking from one place to
another, bombarded by emotions all day, and now this shock on top of everything else. He left the building
and stood on the sidewalk wondering if he should do something more, go and ask one of the other tenants,
they couldn't all be as unpleasant as the woman opposite, Senhor José went back into the building, went
up the stairs to the second floor and rang at the door of the mother with the child and the jealous husband,
who by now would be back from work, not that it matters, Senhor José is only going to ask if they know
anything about the lady in the ground-floor apartment. The stair light is on. The door opens, the woman
isn't carrying her baby and doesn't recognise Senhor José, Can I help you, she asks, I'm sorry to trouble
you, I came to visit the lady in the ground-floor apartment, but she's not there and the woman opposite told
me that an ambulance took her away three days ago, Yes, that's right, You don't happen to know where she
is, do you, in which hospital, or if she's with some member of her family. Before the woman had time to
reply, a male voice asked from inside, What is it, she turned her head, It's someone asking about the lady
in the ground-floor apartment, then she looked at Senhor José and said, No, we don't know anything.
Senhor José lowered his voice and asked, Don't you recognise me, she hesitated, Oh, yes, I do now, she
said in a whisper and slowly closed the door.
Out in the street, Senhor José hailed a taxi, Take me to the Central Registry, he said distractedly to the
driver. He would have preferred to walk, in order to save what little money he had and to end the day as
he had begun it, but weariness would not allow him to take another step. Or so he thought. When the