All The Names - Jose Saramago

it, Oh, enough of your hypocrisy, we're all getting on a bit, the question is how much, if it's not much,
you're young if it's a lot, you're old, the rest is just idle twaddle, Oh, forget it, All right, Anyway, I'm going
to look in the phone book, That's what I've been telling you to do for the last half hour. In pyjamas and
slippers and wrapped in a blanket, Senhor José went into the Central Registry. His unusual outfit made
him feel rather uneasy, as if he were being disrespectful to the venerable archives, to that eternal
yellowish light which, like a moribund sun, hovered above the Registrars desk. The telephone book was
there, on one corner of the table, you were not allowed to consult it without permission, even if it was an
official call, and now, as he had done before, Senhor José could sit down at the desk, it's true that he had
done so only once before, in a peerless moment that had seemed to him triumphant and glorious, but this
time he didn't dare, perhaps because he was improperly dressed, out of an absurd fear that someone might
surprise him like that, but what other living being, apart from him, wandered about there after hours. He
thought it might be best to take the phone book with him, he would feel more comfortable at home, without
the threatening presence of those towering shelves that seemed about to hurl themselves down from the
shadowy ceiling, up there where the spiders weave and gorge. He shuddered as if the dusty, sticky webs
really were falling on him and he very nearly made the rash mistake of picking up the phone book without
first taking the precaution of measuring exactly the distances that separated it, above and to the side, from
the edge of the table, and not just the distances, the precise angles too, fortunately, though, the Registrar's
geometrical and topographical inclinations showed a clear preference for right angles and parallel lines.
He returned home in the certainty that, shortly afterwards, when he replaced the phone book, it would be
in exactly the right place, to the millimetre, and that the Registrar would not have to give orders to his
deputies to find out who had used it how when and why. Up until the very last moment he was still
expecting something to happen that would prevent him from taking the book a murmur, a suspicious
creaking, a bright light emerging suddenly out of the mortuary depths of the archives, but there was
absolute quiet, not even the sound of the woodworms tiny grinding jaws.
Now, Senhor José, with the blanket round his shoulders, is sitting at his own table, in front of him is
the telephone book, he opens it at the beginning and lingers over the instructions, the codes, the price
tariffs, as if that were what he was looking for. After a few moments, a sudden, unwitting impulse makes
him leaf rapidly through the pages, forwards and backwards, until he stops on the page where the name of
the unknown woman should be. Either it isn't there or his eyes won't see it. No, it's not there. It should
come after that name, and it doesn't. It should come before that name, and it doesn't. Just as I said, thought
Senhor José, and it wasn't true that he had said any such thing, that's just a way of proving oneself right in
the eyes of the world, of giving expression, in this case, to joy, any police investigator would have shown
his irritation by thumping the table, not Senhor José, Senhor José wears the ironic smile of someone who,
having been sent to look for something he knew did not exist, returns from the search with these words on
his lips, Just as I said, either she hasn't got a phone or she doesn't want her name to appear in the book He
was so pleased that, immediately after that, without bothering to weigh the pros and cons, he looked for
the name of the unknown woman's father, and that was there. Not a fibre of his being trembled. On the
contrary, determined now to burn all his bridges, drawn on by an impulse known only to the true
researcher, he looked for the name of the man. whom the unknown woman had divorced, and he was there
too If he had a map of the city he would be able to mark the first five established staging posts, two in the
street where the girl in the photo had been born another at the school and now these the beginning of a
design made up like that of all lives of broken lines, crossings, intersections, but never bifurcations,
because the spirit never goes anywhere without its legs, and the body would be incapable of moving
without the wings of the spirit. He noted down the addresses, then what he would need to buy, a large map
of the city, a thick piece of cardboard of the same size on which to fix it, a box of pins with coloured
heads, red so they could be seen from a distance, for lives are like paintings, you always need to look at
them from four paces away, even if one day you manage to touch their skin, catch their smell, taste them.