All The Names - Jose Saramago

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Senhor José was quite calm, he wasn't troubled by the fact that he now knew where the unknown woman's parents and former husband lived, the husband, curiously enough, lived quite close to the Central Registry, obviously, sooner or later, Senhor José would go and knock at their doors, but only when he felt the moment had arrived, only when the moment told him, Now. He closed the phone book, returned it to the boss's desk, to the exact place where he had taken it from, and he went back home. According to the clock, it was suppertime, but the emotions of the day must have distracted his stomach, which gave no signs of impatience. He sat down again, pulled the blanket around him, tugging at the corners so as to cover his legs, and took up the notebook he had bought at the stationer's. It was time to begin making notes on how the search was going, the people he had met, the conversations he had had, his thoughts, his plans and tactics for an investigation that promised to be complex, The steps taken by someone in search of someone else, he thought, and the truth is, that although the process was only in its early stages, he already had a lot to say, If this were a novel, he murmured as he opened the notebook, the conversation with the lady in the ground-floor apartment would be a chapter in itself. He picked up a pen to begin but stopped halfway his eyes caught the paper on which he had written down the addresses, there was something he hadn't considered before the perfectly plausible hypothesis that the unknown woman, after she got divorced, had gone to live with her parents, the equally possible hypothesis that her husband had left the apartment, leaving the telephone in his name. If that was so, and bearing in mind that the street in question was near the Central Registry, the woman on the bus might well have been the same one. The inner dialogue seemed to want to start up again, It was, It wasn't, It was, It wasn't, but this time, Senhor José paid no heed to it and, bending over the notebook, he began to write the first words, Thus, I went into the building, went up the stairs to the second floor and listened at the door of the apartment where the unknown woman was born, then I heard a little baby crying, it could be her child I thought, and, at the same time, I heard a woman crooning to it softly, It must be her, later, I found out that it wasn't.
... Contrary to what people might think when viewing these things from the outside, life is not necessarily easy in a government department, certainly not in this Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths, where, since time which cannot be described as immemorial simply because the Registry contains a record of everything and everyone, thanks to the persistent efforts of an unbroken Une of great Registrars, all that is most sublime and most trivial about public office has been brought together, the qualities that make of the civil servant a creature apart, both usufructuary and dependent of the physical and mental space defined by the reach of his pen nib. Put simply, and with a view in this preamble to a more exact understanding of the general facts considered in the abstract, Senhor José has a problem to solve. Knowing how difficult it had been to squeeze out of the rule-bound reluctance of the hierarchy one miserable half hour off, which meant that he was not caught in flagrante by the husband of the young woman in the second-floor apartment, we can imagine his current distress as, night and day, he racks his brain for some convincing excuse that would allow him to ask for not one hour, but two, not two, but three hours, which is probably the amount of time he will need if he is to carry out a useful search of the schools archives. The effects of this constant, obsessive disquiet soon revealed themselves in mistakes at work, in lack of attention, in sudden bouts of drowsiness during the day due to insomnia, in short, Senhor José, until then considered by his various superiors to be a competent, methodical and dedicated civil servant, began to be the object of severe warnings, reprimands and calls to order that only served to confuse him all the more, and, needless to say, the way he was carrying on, he could be absolutely sure of a negative response if, at some point, he could actually bring himself to ask for the longed-for time off. Things reached such a pitch that, after fruitless analysis by senior clerks and deputies in turn, they had no option but to bring the matter to the notice of the Registrar, who, at first, found the whole business so absurd that he could not understand what all the fuss was about. The fact that a civil servant should have so grievously neglected his duties made any benevolent tendency towards reaching an exculpatory decision impossible, it constituted a grave offence against the working traditions of the Central Registry, something that could only be justified by some grave illness. When the delinquent was brought into his presence, that was exactly what the Registrar asked Senhor José, Are you ill, I don't think so, sir, Well, if you're not ill, how do you explain your recent poor standard of work, I don't know, sir, perhaps it's because I haven't been sleeping well, In that case, you are ill, No, it's just that I'm not sleeping very well, If you're not sleeping well, it's because you're ill, a healthy person always sleeps well, unless he has something weighing on his conscience, some reprehensible mistake, the sort that your conscience cannot forgive, for conscience is most important, Yes, sir, If your errors at work are caused by insomnia and if your insomnia is being caused by a guilty conscience, then we have to discover what your mistake was, I haven't made any mistakes, sir, Impossible, the only person here who doesn't make mistakes is me but what's wrong, why are you staring at the telephone book, Sorry, sir, I got distracted, A bad sign, you know perfectly well that you must always look at me when I'm talking to you, it's in the disciplinary regulations, I'm the only one who has the right to look away, Yes, sir, Now what was your mistake, I don't know, sir, That only makes matters worse, forgotten mistakes are always the worst ones, I've fulfilled all my duties, The information I have regarding your conduct is satisfactory, but that only serves to show that your recent poor professional performance was not the consequence of some forgotten mistake, but of a recent mistake, one you have only just made, My conscience is clear, Consciences keep silent more often than they should, that's why laws were created, Yes, sir, Now I have to make a decision, Yes, sir, Indeed, I already have, Yes, sir, I'm giving you a day's suspension, Is that just a suspension of salary, sir, or is it also a suspension from work, asked Senhor José, seeing a glimmer of hope, Of salary, of course, we can't
Page 3 and 4: ALL THE NAMES
Page 5 and 6: You know the name you were given, y
Page 7 and 8: eing born, are far less pressing, a
Page 9 and 10: ... Apart from his first name, Jos
Page 11 and 12: Now, since Senhor José's obsession
Page 13 and 14: ... Fortunately, there are not that
Page 15 and 16: and that he, as a responsible civil
Page 17 and 18: night's sleep, That's what I hope t
Page 19 and 20: hour of the night, What time was it
Page 21 and 22: ack to sleep, If she is the woman o
Page 23 and 24: and I've heard people say that she'
Page 25 and 26: inside jacket pocket, Senhor José
Page 27 and 28: love each other, you. love each oth
Page 29 and 30: ... Such was the force of this blow
Page 31: it, Oh, enough of your hypocrisy, w
Page 35 and 36: his jacket pocket, he had been walk
Page 37 and 38: José was breathing hard, amazed at
Page 39 and 40: ... Respect for the facts, and a si
Page 41 and 42: Senhor José's heart leapt to see t
Page 43 and 44: left the first-aid room, and althou
Page 45 and 46: himself up that staircase like a li
Page 47 and 48: ... The next morning, almost as soo
Page 49 and 50: were a gift, carrying a photo of so
Page 51 and 52: noticed the other man's surprise as
Page 53 and 54: firm steps approached the bed, then
Page 55 and 56: emained lying down for a few more m
Page 57 and 58: of which the deputy's key was merel
Page 59 and 60: sitting, he wasn't expecting him to
Page 61 and 62: thirteen small cardboard rectangles
Page 63 and 64: complete the movement, a sudden fee
Page 65 and 66: ed, hid the letter in the wardrobe,
Page 67 and 68: ... That night, Senhor José return
Page 69 and 70: to create its own shadows, what Sen
Page 71 and 72: prison, and over there, at the far
Page 73 and 74: ... The fact that psychological tim
Page 75 and 76: hold-up in the traffic was preventi
Page 77 and 78: feeble old woman, cretin, nincompoo
Page 79 and 80: the battles begin between heirs, th
Page 81 and 82: esponse, and she was perfectly righ
Page 83 and 84:
aware of society's need for a conti
Page 85 and 86:
ages, return to the world from whic
Page 87 and 88:
to sell off strips of land, at othe
Page 89 and 90:
Since he was known to the people th
Page 91 and 92:
tombstones and forced up into the s
Page 93 and 94:
question was in which direction. Se
Page 95 and 96:
of earth which will soon be overgro
Page 97 and 98:
that's sacred, Mr. Clerk, at least
Page 99 and 100:
... Determined to catch up on his l
Page 101 and 102:
carefully, Go on, In order to clear
Page 103 and 104:
a woman who looked about sixty or s
Page 105 and 106:
... Senhor José slept like a log.
Page 107 and 108:
the headmaster, I didn't know that
Page 109 and 110:
clerk can only do so much. With the
Page 111 and 112:
driver announced, Here we are, Senh
Page 114 and 115:
Reading Group Guide 1. How do the C
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All The Names - Jose Saramago

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