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arrange his legs, first drawing them in, then letting them splay out to either side, while the man who wanted the boat patiently waited for the next question, And may one know what you want this boat for, was what the king did in fact ask when he had finally managed to install himself with a reasonable degree of comfort on the cleaning woman"s chair, To go in search of the unknown island, replied the man, What unknown island, asked the king, suppressing his laughter, as if he had before him one of those utter madmen obsessed with sea voyages, whom it would be as well not to cross, at least not straightaway, The unknown island, the man said again, Nonsense, there are no more unknown islands, Who told you, sir, that there are no more unknown islands, They"re all on the maps, Only the known islands are on the maps, And what is this unknown island you want to go in search of, If I could tell you that, it wouldn"t be unknown, Have you heard someone talking about it, asked the king, more serious now, No, no one, In that case, why do you insist that it exists, Simply because there can"t possibly not be an unknown island, And you came here to ask me for a boat, Yes, I came here to ask you for a boat, And who are you that I should give you a boat, And who are you to refuse me one, I am the king of this kingdom, and all the boats in the kingdom belong to me, You belong to them far more than they belong to you, What do you mean, asked the king, troubled, I mean that without them you"re nothing, whereas, without you, they can still set sail, Under my orders, with my pilots and my sailors, But I"m not asking you for sailors or a pilot, all I"m asking you for is a boat, And what about this unknown island, if you find it, will it be mine, You, sir, are only interested in islands that are already known, And unknown ones too, once they"re known, Perhaps this one won"t let itself be known, Then I won"t give you the boat, Yes, you will. When they heard these words, uttered with such calm confidence, the would-be supplicants at the door for favors, whose impatience had been growing steadily since this conversation had begun, decided to intervene in the man"s favor, more out of a desire to get rid of him than out of any sense of solidarity, and so they started shouting, Give him the boat, give him the boat. The king opened his mouth to tell the cleaning woman to call the palace guard to come and reestablish public order and impose discipline, but, at that moment, the people watching from the windows of the houses opposite enthusiastically joined in the chorus, shouting along with the others, Give him the boat, give him the boat. Faced by such an unequivocal expression of the popular will and worried about what he might have missed meanwhile at the door for favors, the king raised his right hand to command silence and said, I"m going to give you a boat, but you"ll have to find your own crew, I need all my sailors for the known islands. The cheers from the crowd drowned out the man"s words of thanks, besides, judging from the movements of his lips, he might just as easily have been saying, Thank you, my lord, as Don"t worry, I"ll manage, but everyone clearly heard what the king said next, Go down to the docks, ask to speak to the harbormaster, tell him I sent you, and that he is to give you a boat, take my card with you. The man who was to be given a boat read the visiting card, which bore the word King underneath the king"s name, and these were the words the king had written as he rested the card on the cleaning woman"s shoulder, Give the bearer a boat, it doesn"t have to be a large boat, but it should be a [image]
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safe, seaworthy boat, I don"t want to have him on my conscience if things should go wrong. When the man looked up, this time, one imagines, in order to say thank you for the gift, the king had already withdrawn, and only the cleaning woman was there, looking at him thoughtfully. The man moved away from the door, a signal for the other supplicants finally to approach, there is little point in describing the ensuing confusion, with everyone trying to get to the door first, but alas, the door was once more closed. They banged the bronze doorknocker again to summon the cleaning woman, but the cleaning woman wasn"t there, she had turned and left, with her bucket and her broom, by another door, the door of decisions, which is rarely used, but when it is used, it decidedly is. Now one can understand the thoughtful look on the cleaning woman"s face, for it was at that precise moment that she had decided to go after the man as he set off to the port to take possession of the boat. She decided that she had had enough of a life spent cleaning and scrubbing palaces, that it was time to change jobs, that cleaning and scrubbing boats was her true vocation, at least she would never lack for water at sea. The man has no idea that, even though he has not yet started recruiting crew members, he is already being followed by the person who will be in charge of swabbing down the decks and of other such cleaning tasks, indeed, this is the way fate usually treats us, it"s there right behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we"re still muttering to ourselves, It"s all over, that"s it, who cares anyhow.
After walking quite a way, the man reached the harbor, went down to the dock, asked for the harbormaster and, while he was waiting for him, set to wondering which of the boats moored there would be his, he knew it wouldn"t be large, the king"s visiting card was very clear on that point, that excluded the steamships, cargo ships and warships, nor could it be so small that it would not withstand the battering winds or the rigors of the sea, the king had been categorical on that point too, It should be a safe, seaworthy boat, those had been his actual words, thus implicitly excluding rowboats, barges and dinghies, which, although entirely seaworthy and safe, each in its own way, were not made to plough the oceans, which is where one finds unknown islands. A short way away, hidden behind some barrels, the cleaning woman ran her eyes over the moored boats, I fancy that one, she thought, not that her opinion counted, she hadn"t even been hired, but first, let"s hear what the harbormaster has to say. The harbormaster came, read the card, looked the man up and down, and asked the question the king had [image]
neglected to ask, Do you know how to sail, have you got a master"s ticket, to which the man replied, I"ll learn at sea. The harbormaster said, I wouldn"t recommend it, I"m a sea captain myself and I certainly wouldn"t venture out to sea in just any old boat, Then give me one I could venture out in, no, not one like that, give me a boat I can respect and that will respect me, That"s sailor"s talk, yet you"re not a sailor, If I talk like a sailor, then I must be one. The harbormaster reread the king"s visiting card, then asked, Can you tell me why you want the boat, To go in search of the unknown island, There are no unknown islands left, That"s just what the king said to me, He learned everything he knows about islands from me, It"s odd that you, a man of the sea, should say to me that there are no unknown islands left, I"m a man of the land and yet I know that even known islands remain unknown until we set foot on them, But, if I understood you right, you"re going in search of one that no one has set foot on, Yes, I"ll know it when I get there, If you get there, Well, boats do get wrecked along the way, but if that should happen to me, you must write in the harbor records that I reached such and such a point, You mean that you always reach somewhere, You wouldn"t be the man you are if you didn"t know that. The harbormaster said, I"m going to give you the boat you need, Which one, It"s a very experienced boat, dating from the days when everyone was off searching for unknown islands, Which one, Indeed it may even have found some, Which is it, That one. As soon as the cleaning woman saw where the harbormaster was pointing, she emerged from behind the barrels, shouting, That"s my boat, that"s my boat, one must forgive her unusual and entirely unjustifiable claim of ownership, the boat just happened to be [image]
the one she had liked too. It looks like a caravel, said the man, It is more or less, agreed the harbormaster, it started life as a caravel, then underwent various repairs and modifications that altered it a bit, But it"s still a caravel, Yes, it"s pretty much kept its original character, And it"s got masts and sails, That"s what you need when you go in search of unknown islands. The cleaning woman could contain herself no longer, As far as I"m concerned, that"s the boat for me, And who are you, asked the man, Don"t you remember me, No, I don"t, I"m the cleaning woman, Cleaning what, The king"s palace, The woman who opened the door for pet.i.tions, The very same, And why aren"t you back at the king"s palace cleaning and opening doors, Because the doors I really wanted to open have already been opened and because, from now on, I will only clean boats, So you want to go with me in search of the unknown island, I left the palace by the door of decisions, In that case, go and have a look at the caravel, after all this time, it must be in need of a good wash, but watch out for the seagulls, they"re not to be trusted, Don"t you want to come with me and see what your boat is like inside, You said it was your boat, Sorry about that, I only said it because I liked it, Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking. The harbormaster interrupted their conversation, I have to hand over the keys to the owner of the ship, which of you is it to be, it"s up to you, I don"t care either way, Do boats have keys, asked the man, Not to get in with, no, but there are store cupboards and lockers, and the captain"s desk with the logbook, I"ll leave it all up to her, I"m going to find a crew, said the man and walked off.
The cleaning woman went to the harbormaster"s office to collect the keys, then she boarded the boat, where two things proved useful to her, the palace broom and the warning about the seagulls, she was only halfway up the gangplank joining the side of the ship to the quay when the wretches hurled themselves upon her, screaming furiously, beaks open, as if they wanted to devour her on the spot. They didn"t know who they were dealing with. The cleaning woman set down the bucket, slipped the keys down her cleavage, steadied herself on the gangplank and, whirling the broom about her as if it were a broadsword of old, managed to scatter the murderous band. It was only when she actually boarded the ship that she understood the seagulls" anger, there were nests everywhere, many of them abandoned, others still with eggs in them, and a few with nestlings waiting, mouths agape, for food, That"s all very well, but you"re going to have to move house, a ship about to set sail in search of the unknown island can"t leave looking like a henhouse, she said. She threw the empty nests into the water, but left the others where they were for the moment. Then she rolled up her sleeves and started scrubbing the deck. When she had finished this arduous task, she went and opened the sail lockers and began carefully examining the sails to see what state the seams were in after so long without going to sea and without being stretched by the vigorous winds. The sails are the muscles of the boat, you just have to see them swelling and straining in the wind to know that, but, like all muscles, if they"re not used regularly, they grow weak, flabby, sinewless. And the seams are like the sinews of the sails, thought the cleaning woman, glad to find she was picking up the art of seamanship so quickly. Some seams were fraying, and these she carefully marked, since the needle and thread which, only yesterday, she had used to darn the pages" socks, [image]
would not suffice for this work. The other lockers, she soon discovered, were empty. The fact that there was no gunpowder in the gunpowder locker, just a bit of black dust in the bottom, which she at first took to be mouse droppings, did not bother her in the least, indeed there is no law, at least not to the knowledge of a cleaning woman, that going in search of an unknown island must necessarily be a warlike enterprise. What did greatly annoy her was the complete absence of food rations in the food locker, not for her own sake, for she was more than used to the meager pickings at the palace, but because of the man to whom this boat was given, the sun will soon be going down, and he"ll be back clamoring for food, as all men do the moment they get home, as if they were the only ones who had a stomach and a need to fill it, And if he brings sailors back with him to crew the ship, they"ve always got monstrous appet.i.tes, and then, said the cleaning woman, I don"t know how we"ll manage.
She needn"t have worried. The sun had just vanished into the ocean when the man with the boat appeared at the far end of the quay. He was carrying a package in his hand, but he was alone and looked dispirited. The cleaning woman went to wait for him by the gangplank, but before she could open her mouth to find out how the rest of the day had gone, he said, Don"t worry, I"ve brought enough food for both of us, And the sailors, she asked, No one came, as you can see, But did some at least say they would come, she asked, They said there are no more unknown islands and that, even if there were, they weren"t prepared to leave the comfort of their homes and the good life on board pa.s.senger ships just to get involved in some oceangoing adventure, looking for the impossible, as if we were still living in the days when the sea was dark, And what did you say to them, That the sea is always dark, And you didn"t tell them about the unknown island, How could I tell them about an unknown island, if I don"t even know where it is, But you"re sure it exists, As sure as I am that the sea is dark, Right now, seen from up here, with the water the color of jade and the sky ablaze, it doesn"t seem at all dark to me, That"s just an illusion, sometimes islands seem to float above the surface of the water, but it"s not true, How do you think you"ll manage if you haven"t got a crew, I don"t know yet, We could live here, and I could get work cleaning the boats that come into port, and you, And I, You must have some skill, a craft, a profession, as they call it nowadays, I have, did have, will have if necessary, but I want to find the unknown island, I want to find out who I am when I"m there on that island, Don"t you know, If you don"t step outside yourself, you"ll never discover who you are, The king"s philosopher, when he had nothing to do, would come and sit beside me and watch me darning the pages" socks, and sometimes he would start philosophizing, he used to say that each man is an island, but since that had nothing to do with me, being a woman, I paid no attention to him, what do you think, That you have to leave the island in order to see the island, that we can"t see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves, you mean, No, that"s not the same thing. The blaze in the sky was dying down, the waters grew suddenly purple, now not even the cleaning woman could doubt that the sea really is dark, at least at certain times of the day. The man said, Let"s leave the philosophizing to the king"s philosopher, that"s what they pay him for after all, and let"s eat, but the woman did not agree, First, you"ve got to inspect your [image]
boat, you"ve only seen it from the outside, What sort of state did you find it in, Well, some of the seams on the sails need reinforcing, Did you go down into the hold, has the ship let in much water, There"s a bit in the bottom, sloshing about with the ballast, but that seems normal, it"s good for the boat, How did you learn these things, I just did, But how, The same way you told the harbormaster that you would learn to sail, at sea, We"re not at sea yet, We"re on the water though, My belief was that, with sailing, there are only two true teachers, one is the sea and the other the boat, And the sky, you"re forgetting the sky, Yes, of course, the sky, The winds, The clouds, The sky, Yes, the sky.
It took them less than a quarter of an hour to go round the whole ship, a caravel, even a converted one, doesn"t really allow for long walks. It"s lovely, said the man, but if I can"t get enough crew members to work it, I"ll have to go back to the king and tell him I don"t want it any more, Honestly, the first obstacle you come across and you lose heart, The first obstacle was having to wait three days for the king and I didn"t give up then, If we can"t find sailors willing to come with us, then we"ll have to manage alone, You"re mad, two people on their own couldn"t possibly sail a ship like this, why, I"d have to be at the helm all the time, and you, well, I couldn"t even begin to explain, it"s madness, We"ll see, now let"s go and eat. They went up to the quarterdeck, the man still protesting at what he called her madness, and there the cleaning woman opened the package he had brought, a loaf of bread, hard goat"s cheese, olives and a bottle of wine. The moon was now but a hand"s breadth above the sea, the shadows cast by the yard and the mainmast came and lay at their feet. Our caravel"s really lovely, said the woman, [image]
then corrected herself, I mean your caravel, It won"t be mine for very long I shouldn"t think, Whether you sail it or not, it"s yours, the king gave it to you, Yes, but I asked him to give it to me so that I could go in search of an unknown island, But these things don"t just happen from one moment to the next, it all takes time, my grandfather always used to say that anyone going to sea must make his preparations on land first, and he wasn"t even a sailor, With no crew members we can"t sail, So you said, And we"ll have to provision the ship with the thousand and one things you need for a voyage like this, given that we don"t know where it might lead us, Of course, and then we"ll have to wait for the right season, and leave on a good tide, and have people come to the quay to wish us a safe journey, You"re making fun of me, Not at all, I would never make fun of the person who got me to leave the palace by the door [image]
of decisions, Forgive me, And I won"t go back through that door whatever happens. The moonlight was falling directly on the cleaning woman"s face, Lovely, really lovely, thought the man, and this time he didn"t mean the caravel. The woman did not think anything, she must have thought all she had to think in those three days during which she would open the door now and then to see if he was still out there, waiting. There wasn"t a crumb of bread or cheese left, not a drop of wine, they had thrown the olive stones into the sea, the deck was as clean as it had been when the cleaning woman had wiped a cloth over it for the last time. A steamship"s siren let out a potent growl, such as leviathans must have made, and the woman said, When it"s our turn, we won"t make so much noise about it. Although they were still in the harbor, the water lapped slightly as the steamship pa.s.sed, and the man said, But we"ll certainly sway about a lot more. They both laughed, then fell silent, after a while, one of them suggested that perhaps they should go to sleep, Not that I"m particularly sleepy, and the other agreed, No, I"m not either, then they fell silent again, the moon rose and continued to rise, at one point, the woman said, There are bunks down below, the man said, Yes, and that was when they got up and went below decks, where the woman said, See you tomorrow, I"m going this way, and the man replied, I"m going this way, see you tomorrow, they did not say port or starboard, probably because they were both new to the art. The woman turned back, Oh, I forgot, and she took two candle stumps out of her ap.r.o.n pocket, I found them when I was cleaning, but I don"t have any matches, I do, said the man. She held the candles, one in each hand, he lit a match, then, protecting the flame beneath the dome of his cupped fingers, he carefully applied it to the old wicks, the flame took, grew slowly like the moonlight, lit the face of the cleaning woman, there"s no need to say what he thought, She"s lovely, but what she thought was this, He"s obviously got eyes only for the unknown island, just one example of how people can misinterpret the look in another person"s eyes, especially when they"ve only just met. She handed him a candle, said, See you tomorrow, then, sleep well, he wanted to say the same thing, only differently, Sweet dreams, was the phrase he came out with, in a little while, when he is down below, lying on his bunk, other phrases will spring to mind, wittier, more charming, as such phrases should be when a man finds himself alone with a woman. He wondered if she would already be asleep, if it had taken her long to fall asleep, then he imagined that he was looking for her and couldn"t find her anywhere, that the two of them were lost on a vast ship, sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they"re lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another, the woman is sleeping only a few yards away from him and he cannot reach her, yet it"s so very easy to go from port to starboard.
He had wished her sweet dreams, but he was the one who spent all night dreaming. He dreamed that his caravel was on the high seas, with the three lateen sails gloriously full, cutting a path through the waves, while he controlled the ship"s wheel and the crew rested in the shade. He couldn"t understand what these sailors were doing there, the same ones who had refused to embark with him to go in search of the unknown island, they probably regretted the crude irony with which they had treated him. He could see animals wandering the deck too, ducks, rabbits, chickens, the usual domestic livestock, pecking at the grains of corn or nibbling on the cabbage leaves that a sailor was throwing to them, he couldn"t remember bringing them on board, but however it had happened, it was only natural they should be there, for what if the unknown island turned out to be a desert island, as had so often been the case in the past, it was best to play it safe, and we all know that opening the door to the rabbit hutch and lifting a rabbit out by the ears is always easier than having to pursue it over hill and dale. From the depths of the hold he could hear a chorus of neighing horses, lowing oxen, braying donkeys, the voices of the n.o.ble beasts so vital for carrying out heavy work, and how did they get there, how can they possibly fit into a caravel which has barely enough room for the human crew, suddenly the wind veered, the mainsail flapped and rippled, and behind was something he hadn"t noticed before, a group of women, who, even without counting, must be as numerous as the sailors and are occupied in womanly tasks, the time had not yet come for them to occupy themselves with other things, it"s obvious that this must be a dream, no one in real life ever traveled like this. The man at the ship"s wheel looked for the cleaning woman, but couldn"t see her, Perhaps she"s in the bunk to starboard, resting after scrubbing the deck, he thought, but he was deceiving himself, because he knows perfectly well, although again he doesn"t know how he knows, that, at the last moment, she chose not to come, that she jumped onto the quay, shouting, Goodbye, goodbye, since you only have eyes for the unknown island, I"m leaving, and it wasn"t true, right now his eyes are searching for her and do not find her. At that moment, the sky clouded over and it began to [image]
rain, and, having rained, innumerable plants began to sprout from the rows of sacks filled with earth lined up along the bulwarks, they are there not because of fears that there will not be enough soil on the unknown island, but because in that way one can gain time, the day we arrive, all we will have to do is transplant the fruit trees, sow the seeds from the miniature wheat fields ripening here, and decorate the flower beds with the flowers that will bloom from these buds. The man at the wheel asks the sailors resting on the deck if they can see any uninhabited islands yet, and they say they can see no islands at all, uninhabited or otherwise, but that they are considering disembarking on the first bit of inhabited land that appears, as long as there is a port where the ship can anchor, a tavern where they can drink and a bed to frolic in, since there"s no room to do so here, with so many people crowded together. But what about the unknown island, asked the man at the wheel, The unknown island doesn"t exist, except as an idea in your head, the king"s geographers went to look at the maps and declared that it"s been years since there have been any unknown islands, You should have stayed in the city, then, instead of hindering my voyage, We were looking for a better place to live and decided to take advantage of your journey, You"re not sailors, We never were, I won"t be able to sail this ship all alone, You should have thought of that before asking the king to give it to you, the sea won"t teach you how to sail. Then the man at the wheel saw land in the distance and tried to sail straight past, pretending that it was the mirage of another land, an image that had traveled across s.p.a.ce from the other side of the world, but the men who had never been sailors protested, they said that was where they wanted to disembark, This island"s on the map, they cried, we"ll kill you if you don"t take us there. Then, of its own accord, the caravel turned its prow toward land, entered the port and drew alongside the quay, You can leave, said the man at the wheel, and they immediately all trooped off, first the women, then the men, but they did not leave alone, they took with them the ducks, the rabbits and the chickens, they took the oxen, the donkeys and the horses, and even the seagulls, one after the other, flew off, leaving the boat behind, carrying their nestlings in their beaks, something never seen before, but there"s always a first time. The man at the wheel watched this exodus in silence, he did nothing to hold back those who were abandoning him, at least they had left him the trees, the wheat and the flowers, as well as the climbing plants that were twining round the masts and festooning the ship"s sides. In the rush to leave, the sacks of earth had [image]
split and spilled open, so that the whole deck had become a field, dug and sown, with just a little more rain there should be a good harvest. Ever since the voyage to the unknown island began, we have not seen the man at the wheel eat, that must be because he is dreaming, just dreaming, and if in his dreams he fancies a bit of bread or an apple, it would be pure invention, nothing more. The roots from the trees are now penetrating the frame of the ship itself, it won"t be long before these hoisted sails cease to be needed, the wind will just have to catch the crown of the trees and the caravel will set off for its destination. It is a forest that sails and bobs upon the waves, a forest where, quite how no one knows, birds have begun to sing, they must have been hidden somewhere and suddenly decided to emerge into the light, perhaps because the wheat field is ripening and needs harvesting. Then the man locked the ship"s wheel and went down to the field with a sickle in his hand, and when he had cut down the first few ears, he saw a shadow beside his shadow. He woke up with his arms about the cleaning woman, and her arms about him, their bodies and their bunks fused into one, so that no one can tell any more if this is port or starboard. Then, as soon as the sun had risen, the man and the woman went to paint in white letters on both sides of the prow the name that the caravel still lacked. Around midday, with the tide, The Unknown Island finally set to sea, in search of itself.
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All the Names Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Juil Costa A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc.
San Diego New York London Jose Saramago e Editorial Caminho SA 1997 English translation Margaret Jull Costa 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
This is a translation of Todos os Noma. Todos os Noma.
www.harcourt.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saramago, Jose.
[Todos os nomes. English]
All the names/Jose Saramago; translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.-1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-15-100421-8 0-15-100421-8.
ISBN 0-15-601059-3 (pbk) 0-15-601059-3 (pbk) I. Costa, Margaret Jull. II. Tide PQ9281.A66 T6313 2000.
869.3"42-dc21 00-036949 Text set in Dante MT Designed by Lori McThomas Buley Printed in the United States of America First Harvest edition 2001 K.
For Pilar You know the name you were given, You know the name you were given, you do not know the name that you have. The Book of Certainties The Book of Certainties
Above the door frame is a long, narrow plaque of enamelled metal. The black letters set against a white background say Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths. Here and there the enamel is cracked and chipped. The door is an old door, the most recent layer of brown paint is beginning to peel, and the exposed grain of the wood is reminiscent of a striped pelt. There are five windows along the facade. As soon as you cross the threshold, you notice the smell of old paper. It"s true that not a day pa.s.ses without new pieces of paper entering the Central Registry, papers referring to individuals of the male s.e.x and of the female s.e.x who continue to be born in the outside world, but the smell never changes, in the first place, because the fate of all paper, from the moment it leaves the factory, is to begin to grow old, in the second place, because on the older pieces of paper, but often on the new paper too, not a day pa.s.ses without someone"s inscribing it with the causes of death and the respective places and dates, each contributing its own particular smells, not always offensive to the olfactory mucous membrane, a case in point being the aromatic effluvia which, from time to time, waft lightly through the Central Registry, and which the more discriminating noses identify as a perfume that is half rose and half chrysanthemum.
Immediately beyond the main entrance is a tall, glazed double door, through which one pa.s.ses into the enormous rectangular room where the employees work, separated from the public by a long counter that seamlessly joins the two side walls, except for a movable leaf at one end that allows people in and out. The room is arranged, naturally enough, according to a hierarchy, but since, as one would expect, it is harmonious from that point of view, it is also harmonious from the geometrical point of view, which just goes to show that there is no insurmountable contradiction between aesthetics and authority. The first row of desks, parallel with the counter, is occupied by the eight clerks whose job it is to deal with the general public. Behind them is a row of four desks, again arranged symmetrically on either side of an axis that might be extended from the main entrance until it disappears into the rear, into the dark depths of the building. These desks belong to the senior clerks. Beyond the senior clerks can be seen the deputy registrars, of whom there are two. Finally, isolated and alone, as is only right and proper, sits the Registrar, who is normally addressed as "Sir."
The distribution of tasks among the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be pa.s.sed to the category above. This means that the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas the senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never. The continual state of agitation of the eight clerks in the front row, who have no sooner sat down than they get up again, and are always rushing from their desk to the counter, from the counter to the card indexes, from the card indexes to the archives, tirelessly repeating this and other sequences and combinations to the blank indifference of their superiors, both immediate and distant, is an indispensable factor in understanding how it was possible, indeed shamefully easy, to commit the abuses, irregularities and forgeries that const.i.tute the main business of this story.
In order not to lose the thread in such an important matter, it might be a good idea to begin by establishing where the card indexes and the archives are kept and how they work. They are divided, structurally and essentially, or, put more simply, according to the law of nature, into two large areas, the archives and card indexes of the dead and the card indexes and archives of the living. The papers pertaining to those no longer alive are to be found in a more or less organised state in the rear of the building, the back wall of which, from time to time, has to be demolished and rebuilt some yards farther on as a consequence of the unstoppable rise in the number of the deceased. Obviously, the difficulties involved in accommodating the living, although problematic, bearing in mind that people are constantly being born, are far less pressing, and, up until now, have been resolved in a reasonably satisfactory manner either by recourse to the physical compression of the individual files placed horizontally along the shelves, in the case of the archives, or by the use of thin and ultra-thin index cards, in the case of the card indexes. Despite the difficulty with the back wall mentioned above, the foresight of the original architects of the Central Registry is worthy of the highest praise, for they proposed and defended, in opposition to the conservative opinions of certain mean-minded, reactionary individuals, the installation of five ma.s.sive floor-to-ceiling shelves placed immediately behind the clerks, the central bank of shelves being set farther back, one end almost touching the Registrar"s large chair, the ends of the two sets of shelves along the side walls nearly flush with the counter, and the other two located, so to speak, amidships. Considered monumental and superhuman by everyone who sees them these constructions extend far into the interior of the building, farther than the eye can see, and at a certain point darkness takes over the lights being turned on only when file has to be consulted. These are the shelves that carry the weight of the living. The dead, or, rather, their papers, are located still farther inside, in somewhat worse conditions than respect should allow, which is why it is so difficult to find anything when a relative, a notary or some agent of the law comes to the Central Registry to request certificates or copies of doc.u.ments from other eras. The disorganisation in this part of the archive is caused and aggravated by the fact that it is precisely those people who died longest ago who are nearest to what is referred to as the active area, following immediately on the living, and const.i.tuting, according to the Registrar"s intelligent definition, a double dead weight, given that only very rarely does anyone take an interest in them, only very infrequently does some eccentric seeker after historical trifles appear. Unless one day it should be decided to separate the dead from the living and build a new registry elsewhere for the exclusive use of the dead, there is no solution to the situation, as became clear when one of the deputies had the unfortunate idea of suggesting that the archive of the dead should be arranged the other way around, with the remotest placed farthest away and the more recent nearer, in order to facilitate access, the bureaucratic words are his, to the newly deceased, who, as everyone knows, are the writers of wills, the providers of legacies, and therefore the easy objects of disputes and arguments while their body is still warm. The Registrar mockingly approved the idea, on condition that the proposer should himself be the one responsible, day after day, for heaving towards the back of the building the gigantic ma.s.s of individual files pertaining to the long since dead, in order that the more recently deceased could begin filling up the s.p.a.ce thus recovered. In an attempt to wipe out all memory of his ill-fated, unworkable idea, and also to distract himself from his own humiliation, the deputy felt that his best recourse was to ask the clerks to pa.s.s him some of their work, thus offending against the historic peace of the hierarchy above as much as below. After this episode, the state of neglect grew, dereliction pros pered, uncertainty multiplied, so much so that one day, months after the deputy"s absurd proposal, a researcher became lost in the labyrinthine catacombs of the archive of the dead, having come to the Central Registry in order to carry out some genealogical research he had been commissioned to undertake. He was discovered, almost miraculously, after a week, starving, thirsty, exhausted, delirious, having survived thanks to the desperate measure of ingesting enormous quant.i.ties of old doc.u.ments which neither lingered in the stomach nor nourished, since they melted in the mouth without requiring any chewing. The head of the Central Registry, who, having given the man up for dead, had already ordered the imprudent historian"s record card and file to be brought to his desk, decided to turn a blind eye to the damage, officially attributed to mice, and immediately issued an internal order making it obligatory, at the risk of incurring a fine and a suspension of salary, for everyone going into the archive of the dead to make use of Ariadne"s thread.
It would, however, be unfair to forget the problems of the living. It has long been known that death, either through innate incompetence or a duplicity acquired through experience, does not choose its victim according to length of life, a fact which, moreover, let it be said in pa.s.sing, and if one is to believe the words of the innumerable philosophical and religious authorities who have p.r.o.nounced on the subject, has, indirectly and by different and sometimes contradictory routes, had a paradoxical effect on human beings, and has produced in them an intellectual sublimation of their natural fear of dying. But, returning to the matter at hand, no one could ever accuse death of having left behind in the world some forgotten old man of no particular merit and for no apparent reason merely for him to grow ever older. We all know that, however long old people may last, their hour will always come. Not a day pa.s.ses without the clerks" having to take down files from the shelves of the living in order to carry them to the shelves at the rear, not a day pa.s.ses without their having to push towards the end of the shelves those that remain, although sometimes, by some ironic caprice of enigmatic fate, only until the following day. According to the so-called natural order of things, reaching the farthest end of the shelf means that fate has grown weary, that there is not much more road to be travelled. The end of the shelf is, in every sense, the beginning of the fell. However, there are files which, for some unknown reason, hover on the very edge of the void, impervious to that final vertigo, for years and years beyond what is conventionally deemed to be a sensible length for a human life. At first those files excite the professional curiosity of the clerks, but soon a feeling of impatience begins to stir in them, as if the shameless obstinacy of these Methuselahs were reducing, eating and devouring their own life prospects. These superst.i.tious clerks are not entirely wrong, if we bear in mind the many cases of employees at every level whose files had to be prematurely withdrawn from the archive of the living, while the covers of the files of those obstinate survivors grew yellower and yellower, until they became dark, inaesthetic stains at the end of a shelf, an offence to the public eye. That is when the Registrar says to one of the clerks, Senhor Jose, replace those covers for me, will you. "
Apart from his first name, Jose, Senhor Jose also has surnames, very ordinary ones, nothing extravagant, one from his father"s side, another from his mother"s, as is normal, names legitimately transmitted, as we could confirm in the Register of Births in the Central Registry if the matter justified our interest and if the results of that inquiry repaid the labour of merely confirming what we already know. However, for some unknown reason, a.s.suming it is not simply a response to the very insignificance of the person, when people ask Senhor Jose what his name is, or when circ.u.mstances require him to introduce himself, I"m so-and-so, giving his full name has never got him anywhere, since the people he is talking to only ever retain the first part, Jose, to which they will later add, or not, depending on the degree of formality or politeness, a courteous or familiar form of address. For, and let us make this quite clear, the "Senhor" is not worth quite what it might at first seem to promise, at least not here in the Central Registry, where the fact that everyone addresses everyone else in the same way, from the Registrar down to the most recently recruited clerk, does not necessarily have the same meaning when applied to the different relationships within the hierarchy, for, in the varying ways that this one short word is spoken, and according to rank or to the mood of the moment, one can observe a whole range of modulations: condescension, irritation, irony, disdain, humility, flattery, a clear demonstration of the extent of expressive potentiality of two brief vocal emissions which, at first glance, in that particular combination, appeared to be saying only one thing. More or less the same happens with the two syllables of Jose, plus the two syllables of Senhor, when these precede the name. When someone addresses the above-named person either inside the Central Registry or outside it, one will always be able to detect a tone of disdain, irony, irritation or condescension. The caressing, melodious tones of humility and flattery never sang in the ears of the clerk Senhor Jose, these have never had a place in the chromatic scale of feelings normally shown to him. One should point out, however, that some of these feelings are far more complex than those listed above, which are rather basic and obvious, one-dimensional. When, for example, the Registrar gave the order, Senhor Jose, change those covers for me, will you, an attentive, finely tuned ear would have recognised in his voice something which, allowing for the apparent contradiction in terms, could be described as authoritarian indifference, that is, a power so sure of itself that it not only completely ignored the person it was speaking to, not even looking at him, but also made absolutely clear that it would not subsequently lower itself to ascertain that the order had been carried out. To reach the topmost shelves, the ones at ceiling height, Senhor Jose had to use an extremely long ladder and, because, unfortunately for him, he suffered from that troubling nervous imbalance which we commonly call fear of heights, and in order to avoid crashing to the ground, he had no option but to tie himself to the rungs with a strong belt. Down below, it did not occur to any of his colleagues of the same rank, much less his superiors, to look up and see if he was getting on all right. a.s.suming that he was all right was merely another way of justifying their indifference.
In the beginning, a beginning that went back many centuries, the employees actually lived in the Central Registry. Not inside it, exactly, in corporate promiscuity, but in some simple, rustic dwellings built outside, along the side walls, like small defenceless chapels clinging to the robust body of the cathedral. The houses had two doors, a normal door that opened onto the street and an additional door, discreet, almost invisible, that opened onto the great nave of the archives, an arrangement which, in those days and indeed for many years, was held to be highly beneficial to the proper functioning of the service, since employees did not have to waste time travelling across the city, nor could they blame the traffic when they signed in late. Apart from these logistical advantages, it was extremely easy to send in the inspectors to find out if they really were ill when they called in sick. Unfortunately, a change in munic.i.p.al thinking as regards the urban development of the area where the Central Registry was located, meant that these interesting little houses were all pulled down, apart from one, which the proper authorities had decided to preserve as an example of the architecture of a particular period and as a reminder of a system of labour relations which, however much it may pain the fickle judgements of the modern age, also had its good side. It is in this house that Senhor Jose lives. This was not deliberate, they did not choose him to be the residual repository of a bygone age it may have been a matter of the location of the house, in an out-of the-way corner that would not disrupt the new plans, so it was neither punishment nor prize, for Senhor Jose deserved neither one nor the other he was simply allowed to continue living in the house. Anyway, as a sign that the times had changed and to avoid a situation that could easily be interpreted as a privilege the door that opened into the Central Registry was kept permanently closed that is they ordered Senhor Jose to lock it and told him that he could never go through it again That is why each day even if the most furious of storms is lashing the city, Senhor Jose has to enter and leave by the main door of the Central Registry just like anyone else. It must be said, however, that his having to obey that principle of equality is a relief to his methodical nature, despite the fact that, in this case, the principle works against him, even though, to tell the truth, he wishes he was not always the one who had to climb the ladder in order to change the covers on the old files, especially since, as we have already mentioned, he suffers from a fear of heights. Senhor Jose has the laudable modesty of those who do not go around complaining about their various nervous and psychological disorders, real or imagined, and he has probably never mentioned his fear to his colleagues, for if he had, they would spend all their time gazing fearfully up at him when he was perched high on the ladder, afraid that, despite his safety belt, he might lose his footing on the rungs and plummet down on top of them. When Senhor Jose returns to earth, still feeling somewhat dizzy, but disguising as best he can the last remnants of his vertigo, none of the other officials, neither his immediate colleagues nor his superiors, has any idea of the danger they have been in.
The moment has arrived to explain that, even though he had to go the long way round in order to enter the Central Registry and to return home, Senhor Jose felt only satisfaction and relief when the communicating door was finally closed. He had never been one for receiving visits from his colleagues in the lunch hour, and on the few occasions when he had been ill enough to stay in bed, he, on his own initiative, had gone into work and presented himself before the deputy he worked under so that there would be no doubt about his honesty as an employee and so that they would not have to send the medical officer to his bedside. Now that the use of the door was forbidden to him, there was even less likelihood of an unexpected invasion of his domestic privacy, when, for example, he had accidentally left open on the table the project over which he had been labouring for many a long year, namely, his extensive col lection of news items about those people in his country who, for good reasons and bad, had become famous. He was not interested in foreigners, however great their renown, for their papers were filed in far-off central registries, a.s.suming that is what they call them there, and would be written in languages he would be unable to decipher, approved by laws he did not know, and he could never reach them, not even by using the longest of ladders. There are people like Senhor Jos" everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, gla.s.s obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.
Now, since Senhor Jose"s obsession is clearly wholly innocent, it"s hard to understand why he takes such pains to prevent anyone"s ever suspecting that he collects clippings from newspapers and magazines containing news and photos of famous people purely because they are famous, since he doesn"t care whether they"re politicians or generals, actors or architects, musicians or football players, cyclists or writers, speculators or ballerinas, murderers or bankers, con men or beauty queens. Yet he was not always so secretive. It is true that he never chose to talk about this hobby to the few colleagues whom he trusted, but that was due to his natural reserve, not to a conscious fear that they might ridicule him. His concern with the jealous defence of his privacy came about shortly after the demolition of the other houses in which Central Registry employees had lived, or, to be more exact, after being told that he could no longer use the communicating door. This might just be coincidence, there are, after all, so many coincidences in life, for one cannot see any close or immediate relationship between that fact and a sudden need for secrecy, but it is well known that the human mind very often makes decisions for reasons it clearly does not know, presumably because it does so after having travelled the paths of the mind at such speed that, afterwards, it cannot recognise those paths, let alone find them again. Anyway, whether or not that is the explanation, late one night, while he was at home quietly working on updating his clippings about a bishop, Senhor Jose had an illumination that would transform his life. It is possible that a sudden, more disquieting awareness of the presence of the Central Registry on the other side of the thick wall, the enormous shelves laden with the living and the dead, the small, pale lamp hanging from the ceiling above the Registrars desk, which was lit day and night, the thick shadows filling the aisles between the shelves, the fathomless dark that reigned in the depths of the nave, the solitude, the silence, it may be that all this, in an instant, following the same uncertain mental paths already mentioned, had made him realise that something fundamental was missing from his collection, that is, the origin, the root, the source in other words, the actual birth certificate of these famous people, news of whose public doings he had devoted so much time to collecting. He did not know, for example, the names of the bishop"s parents, nor who his G.o.dparents had been at baptism nor where exactly he had been born on which street in which building, on which floor and, as for his date of birth, if indeed it happened to appear in one of his clippings, the offi rial register in the Central Registry was the only one that could testify to the truth of that, rather than a random sc.r.a.p of information in a newspaper, it might not even be right, the journalist might have misheard or copied it down wrongly, the copyeditor might have changed it back, it would not be the first time in the history of the deleatur deleatur that this had happened. The solution was within his grasp. The reason that the key to the communicating door was still in Senhor Jose"s possession lay in the Registrar"s unshakable belief in the absolute weight of his authority, in his certainty that any order uttered by him would be carried out with maximum rigour and scrupulousness, without the risk of capricious consequences or arbitrary digressions on the part of the subordinate who received it. Senhor Jose would never have thought of using it, he would never have taken it out of the drawer where he had placed it if he had not reached the conclusion that his efforts as a voluntary biographer would be of very little use, objectively speaking, without the inclusion of doc.u.mentary proof, or a faithful copy, of the existence, not only real but official, of the subjects of those biographies. that this had happened. The solution was within his grasp. The reason that the key to the communicating door was still in Senhor Jose"s possession lay in the Registrar"s unshakable belief in the absolute weight of his authority, in his certainty that any order uttered by him would be carried out with maximum rigour and scrupulousness, without the risk of capricious consequences or arbitrary digressions on the part of the subordinate who received it. Senhor Jose would never have thought of using it, he would never have taken it out of the drawer where he had placed it if he had not reached the conclusion that his efforts as a voluntary biographer would be of very little use, objectively speaking, without the inclusion of doc.u.mentary proof, or a faithful copy, of the existence, not only real but official, of the subjects of those biographies.
Imagine now, if you can, the state of nerves, the excitement with which Senhor Jose opened the forbidden door for the first time, the shiver that made him pause before going in, as if he had placed his foot on the threshold of a room in which was buried a G.o.d whose power, contrary to tradition, came not from his resurrection, but from his having refused to be resurrected. Only dead G.o.ds are G.o.ds forever. The strange shapes of the shelves laden with papers seemed to burst through the invisible roof and rise up into the black sky, the feeble light above the Registrar"s desk was like a remote, stifled star. Although he was familiar with the territory through which he would have to move, Senhor Jose realised, once he had calmed down sufficiently, that he would need the help of a light if he was to avoid b.u.mping into the furniture, and, more important, in order not to waste too much time in finding the bishop"s papers, first the record card and then his personal file. There was a small flashlight in the drawer where he had put the key. He went to get it and then, as if having a light to carry had filled him with new courage, he advanced almost resolutely between the desks to the counter, below which was the extensive card index pertaining to the living. He quickly found the bishop"s card and, luckily, the shelf where the bishop"s file was kept was within arm"s reach. He therefore had no need to use the ladder, but he wondered fearfully what his life would be like when he had to ascend to the upper regions of the shelves, up there where the black sky began. He opened the cabinet containing the forms, took one of each sort and went back to his house, leaving the communicating door open. Then he sat down and, his hand still shaking, began to copy the identifying data about the bishop onto the blank forms, his name in full, with not a single family name or particular omitted, the date and place of birth, the names of his parents, the names of his G.o.dparents, the name of the priest who baptised him, the name of the employee at the Central Registry who had registered his birth, all the names. By the time he had completed this brief task, he was exhausted, his hands were sweating and shudders were running up and down his spine, he knew all too well that he had committed a sin against the esprit de corps of the civil service, indeed nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction. By plundering those papers, he had committed an offence against discipline and ethics, perhaps even against the law. Not because the information contained in them was confidential or secret, they were not, since anyone could go to the Central Registry and ask for copies or certificates of the bishop"s doc.u.ments without explaining why or for what purpose, but because he had broken the hierarchical chain by proceeding without the necessary order or authorisation from a superior. He considered turning back and correcting the irregularity by tearing up or destroying these impertinent copies, handing over the key to the Registrar, Sir, I would not want to be held responsible if anything should go missing from the Central Registry, and, having done that, forget what can only be described as the sublime moments he had just lived through. However, what prevailed was the pride and satisfaction he felt at now knowing everything, that was the word he used, Everything, about the bishop"s life. He looked at the cupboard where he kept the boxes with his collections of clippings and smiled with inner delight, thinking of the work that lay ahead of him, the nighttime sallies, the orderly gathering of record cards and files, the copies made in his best handwriting, he felt so happy that he was not even cowed by the thought that he would have to climb the ladder. He returned to the Central Registry and restored the bishop"s papers to their rightful places. Then, with a feeling of confidence that he had never before experienced in his entire life, he shone the flashlight around him, as if finally taking possession of something that had always belonged to him but that he had only now been able to recognise as his. He stopped for a moment to look at the Registrar"s desk, haloed by the wan light falling from above, yes, that was what he should do, he should go and sit in that chair, and from now on, he would be the true master of the archives, and only he, if he wanted to, forced as he was to spend his days here, could also choose to spend his nights here, the sun and the moon turning tirelessly around the Central Registry both the world and the centre of the world When we announce the beginning of something, we always speak of the first day, when one should really speak of the first night, the night is a condition of the day, night would be eternal if there were no night. Senhor Jose is sitting in the Registrar"s chair and he will stay there until dawn, listening to the faint rustle of the papers of the living above the compact silence of the dead When the street lamps went off and the five windows above the main door turned the colour of dark ash, he got up from the chair and went into his house, closing the communicating door behind him. He washed, shaved, had some breakfast, filed away the bishop"s papers, put on his best suit, and when it was time, he went out through the other door, the street door, walked around the building and went into the Central Registry. None of his colleagues noticed who had arrived, they responded to his greeting as they always did, Good morning, Senhor Jose, they said and they did not know to whom they were speaking.
Fortunately, there are not that many famous people. As we have seen, even using such eclectic, generous criteria of selection and representation as those employed by Senhor Jose, it is not easy, especially when one is dealing with a small country, to come up with a good hundred truly famous people without falling into the familiar laxness of anthologies of the one hundred best love sonnets or the one hundred most touching elegies, which so often leave us feeling perfectly justified in suspecting that the last to be chosen are only there to make up the numbers. Considered in its entirety, Senhor Jose"s collection far exceeded one hundred, but, for him, as for the compiler of anthologies of elegies and sonnets, the number one hundred was a frontier, a limit, a ne plus ultra, or, to put it in ordinary language, like a litre bottle which, however hard you try, will never hold more than a litre of liquid. According to this way of thinking, the relative nature of fame could, we believe, be best described as "dynamic," since Senhor Jose"s collection, necessarily divided into two parts, on the one hand, the hundred most famous people, on the other, those who have not quite got that far, is in constant movement in that area which we normally refer to as the frontier. Fame, alas, is a breeze that both comes and goes, it is a weather vane that turns both to the north and to the south, and just as a person might pa.s.s from anonymity to celebrity without ever understanding why, it is equally common for that person, after preening himself in the warm public glow, to end up not even knowing his own name. If one applies these sad truths to Senhor Jose"s collection, one will see that it, too, contains glorious rises and dramatic falls, one person will have left the group of subst.i.tutes and entered the ranks, another will no longer fit in the bottle and will have to be disposed of. Senhor Jose"s collection is very much like life.
Working with determination, sometimes long into the night until dawn, with the foreseeable negative consequences on the level of productivity he was obliged to reach in his normal work as a clerk, it took Senhor Jose less than two weeks to collect and transcribe the original data into the individual files of the one hundred most famous people in his collection. He experienced moments of indescribable panic each time he had to perch on the topmost rung of the ladder in order to reach the upper shelves, where, as if his suffering from vertigo were not enough, it seemed that every spider in the Central Registry had decided to go and weave the densest, dustiest, most entangling webs that ever brushed a human face. Repugnance, or, put more crudely, fear, made him wave his arms about wildly to free himself from that repellent touch, it was just as well that he was tied firmly to the rungs with his belt, but there were occasions when both he and the ladder came close to tumbling down, dragging with them a cloud of ancient dust and a triumphal rain of papers. In one such moment of affliction he even went so far as to consider detaching the belt and accepting the risk of an unbroken fall, this happened when he imagined the shame that would forever stain his name and memory if his boss should come in one morning and discover Senhor Jose caught between two shelves, dead, his head cracked open and his brains spilling out, ridiculously bound to the ladder by a belt. Then it occurred to him that untying the belt would save him from ridicule, but not from death, and that it was not, therefore, worth it. Struggling against the fearful nature with which he came into the world, and despite the fact that he had to carry out the work in near-darkness, towards the end of the task he managed to create and perfect a technique of locating and manipulating the files which allowed him to extract the doc.u.ments he needed in a matter of seconds. The first time that he had the courage not to use the belt it was as if an immortal victory had been inscribed in his very modest curriculum vitae as clerk. He felt exhausted, in need of sleep, he had b.u.t.terflies in the pit of his stomach, but he was happier than he had ever been in his entire life when the celebrity cla.s.sified as number one hundred, now fully identified in accordance with all the rules of the Central Registry, took his place in the corresponding box, Senhor Jose thought then that, after such a great effort, he needed a bit of rest, and since the weekend began the following day, he decided to postpone until Monday the next phase of work, which involved giving full civil status to t