All The Names - Jose Saramago

sticking a dead person anywhere, without going to the trouble of seeing if there might be space inside the
archive of the dead. If luck were not on Senhor José's side this time, if chance did not favour him, the
adventure of breaking into the school, however risky, will have been child's play compared to what
awaits him here.
One might ask why Senhor José needs a hundred-yard-long piece of string if the length of the Central
Registry, despite successive extensions, is no more than eighty. That is the question of a person who
imagines that one can do everything in life simply by following a straight line, that it is always possible to
proceed from one place to another by the shortest route, perhaps some people in the outside world
believe that they have done so, but here, where the living and the dead share the same space, sometimes,
in order to find one of them, you have to make a lot of twists and turns, you have to skirt round mountains
of bundles, columns of files, piles of cards, thickets of ancient remains, you have to walk down dark
gulleys, between walls of grubby paper which, up above, actually touch, yards and yards of string will
have to be unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle trail traced in the dust, there is no other way of
knowing where you have to go next, there is no other way of finding your way back. Senhor José tied one
end of the string to the leg of the Registrar's desk, not out of any lack of respect, but merely to gain a few
yards, then tied the other end to his ankle, and, placing on the floor the ball of string, which unravelled
with each step he took, he set off along one of the central corridors filled by the files of the living. His
plan is to start his search at the far end, where the unknown woman's file and card should be, even though,
for reasons already explained, it is highly unlikely that they will have been filed away correctly. As
Senhor José is a civil servant from another age, trained in the old methods and disciplines, his strict
character would be repelled by any collusion with the irresponsible habits of the new generation, by
beginning the search in a place where a dead person would have been deposited only by a deliberate and
scandalous infraction of basic archivistic rules. He knows that the main difficulty he is going to have to do
battle with is the lack of light. Apart from the Registrar's desk, above which hangs the inevitable lamp
giving off its usual dull light, the whole of the Central Registry is plunged in darkness, in dense shadows.
Turning on other fights in the building, however dim they might be, would be too risky, a keen policeman
doing his rounds of the area, or a good citizen, the sort who is concerned about the safety of the
community, might spot the diffuse light through the high windows and immediately sound the alarm.
Senhor José will, therefore, have only the feeble circle of light, which wavers before him in time to the
rhythm of his steps, but also because the hand holding the flashlight is trembling. There is an enormous
difference between visiting the archive of the dead in normal working hours, with the presence behind you
of your colleagues who although not particularly supportive as we have seen, would always come running
if there were any real danger or if your nerve suddenly, irresistibly failed, especially if the Registrar said,
Go and see what's happened to him, between that and venturing alone, in the middle of a black night, into
the heart of those catacombs of humanity, surrounded by names, hearing the whisper of the papers, or a
murmur of voices, for those who have ears to hear.
Senhor José has gone as far as the end of the shelves of the living, he is now looking for a passage
along which he can reach the far end of the Central Registry, in theory, and in accordance with the way the
space was laid out, it should follow the Dissecting longitudinal line on the plan, the imaginary Une that
divides the rectangular design of the building into two equal parts, but the avalanches of files, which are
always happening however firmly the masses of paper are held in place, have made something that was
intended to provide direct, rapid access into a complex network of passages and paths, where you are
constandy confronted by obstacles and cul-de-sacs. During the day and with all the lights on, it is still
relatively easy for the researcher to keep a straight course, you just have to pay attention, be vigilant, take
care to Mow the least dusty roads, a sign that they are the most frequented, and up until now, apart from a
few scares and some worrying delays, there has not been a single instance of a staff member failing to
return from an expedition. But the light from a pocket flashlight does not fill one with confidence, it seems