All The Names - Jose Saramago

...
Determined to catch up on his lost sleep, Senhor José got into bed as soon as he arrived home, but
only two hours later, he was awake again. He had had a strange, enigmatic dream in which he saw himself
in the middle of the cemetery, amid a multitude of sheep so numerous that he could barely see the mounds
of the graves, and each sheep had a number on its head that kept changing continually, but, because the
sheep were all the same, you couldn't tell if it was the sheep that were changing numbers or if the numbers
were changing sheep. He heard a voice shouting, I'm here, I'm here, it couldn't come from the sheep
because they stopped talking a long time ago, nor could it be the graves because there is no record of a
grave ever having spoken, and yet the voice kept calling insistently, I'm here, I'm here, Senhor José looked
in that direction and saw only the raised snouts of the animals, then the same words rang out behind him,
or to the right, or to the left, I'm here, I'm here, and he would turn swiftly, but he couldn't tell where it was
coming from. Senhor José began to grow desperate, he wanted to wake up and he couldn't, the dream was
continuing, now the shepherd was there with his dog, and Senhor José thought, There's nothing this
shepherd doesn't know, he'll tell me whose voice it is, but the shepherd didn't speak, he just made a
gesture with his crook above his head, the dog went to round up the sheep, herding them towards a bridge
which was crossed by silent cars with signs made of lightbulbs that flickered on and off, saying Follow
me, Follow me, Follow me, in a moment the flock disappeared, the dog disappeared, the shepherd
disappeared, all that remained was the cemetery floor strewn with numbers, the ones that before had been
on the heads of the sheep, but, because they were now all together, all attached end to end in an
uninterrupted spiral of which he himself was the centre, he couldn't tell where one began and the other
finished. Anxious, drenched in sweat, Senhor José woke up saying, I'm here. His eyes were closed, he
was half-conscious, but he said, I'm here, I'm here, twice out loud, then opened his eyes to the mean little
space where he had lived for so many years, he saw the low ceiling, the cracked plaster, the floor with its
warped floorboards, the table and the two chairs in the middle of the living room, if such a term has
meaning in a place like this, the cupboard where he kept the clippings and photos of his celebrities, the
corner beyond which lay the kitchen, the narrow recess that served as a bathroom, that was when he said,
I must find a way of freeing myself from this madness, he meant, obviously, the woman who would now
forever be unknown, the house, poor thing, was not to blame, it was just a sad house. Fearful that the
dream would return, Senhor José did not attempt to fall asleep again. He was lying on his back, looking
up at the ceiling, waiting for it to ask him, Why are you looking at me, but the ceiling ignored him, it
merely observed him, expressionless. Senhor José gave up any hope of help coming from there, he would
have to resolve the problem on his own, and the best way would still be to persuade himself that there
was no problem, When the beast dies, the poison dies with it, was the rather disrespectful proverb that
came to his lips, calling the unknown woman a poisonous beast, forgetting for a moment there are poisons
so slow-acting that they produce an effect only when we have long since forgotten their origin. Then the
penny dropped, he muttered, Careful, death is often a slow poison, then he wondered, When and why did
she begin to die. It was at that point that the ceiling, without there being any apparent connection, direct or
indirect, with what it had just heard, emerged from its indifference to remind him, There are at least three
people you haven't spoken to yet, Who, asked SenhorJosé, Her parents and her ex-husband, It wouldn't be
a bad idea to go and talk to her parents, I thought of doing that earlier on, but I decided to leave it for
another occasion, If you don't do it now, you never will, meanwhile you can divert yourself by going a
little farther down this road, before you finally bump your nose against the wall, If you weren't a ceiling,
stuck up there all the time, you would know that it has not been a diverting experience, But it has been a
diversion, What's the difference, Go and look it up in the dictionary, that's what they're there for, I was