THE DAYS PASSED AND TERTULIANO MÁXIMO AFONSO DID NOT phone. He was pleased by the way the conversation with António Claro's wife had gone, and he felt, therefore, confident enough to try again, but on further consideration, he had decided to opt for silence. For two reasons. The first was his realization that he enjoyed the idea of prolonging and increasing the atmosphere of mystery that his phone call must have created, he even amused himself by imagining the dialogue between husband and wife, his doubts about the supposed absolute identity of the two voices, her insistence that she would never have confused them if they hadn't been identical, Well, I just hope you're home next time he calls, then you'll be able to judge for yourself, she would say, and he would say, If he does call again, after all, he's already found out from you what he wanted to know, that I live here, He asked for Daniel Santa-Clara, remember, not António Claro, Yes, that is odd. The second and more pressing reason was that he now accepted as entirely justified his original idea as to the advantages of clearing the decks before taking the next step, in other words, waiting until the classes and the exams were over before, with a cool head, drawing up new strategies for approach and siege. It is true that awaiting him is the dull task the headmaster had asked him to undertake, but during the nearly three months of holiday that lie ahead, he is bound to be able to find both the time and the necessary disposition of mind for such arid studies. In fulfillment of the promise he had made, it is even likely that he will go and spend a few days, though only a few, with his mother, on condition, however, that he can find some sure way of confirming his near certainty that the actor and his wife will not be taking their holidays early, we need only remember the question asked by her when she thought she was speaking to her husband, Has filming been delayed, to conclude, putting two and two together, that Daniel Santa-Clara is making a new film and that, if his career is on the rise, as The Goddess of the Stage demonstrated, he must, of necessity, spend much more time working than he did in his early days when he was little more than an extra. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's reasons for delaying the call are, therefore, as we have seen, convincing and substantive. They do not, however, oblige him or condemn him to inactivity. His idea of going to see the street where Daniel Santa-Clara lives, despite the brutal bucket of cold water thrown on the idea by common sense, had not been entirely discarded. He even considered this, shall we say, prospective act of surveillance to be indispensable to the success of subsequent operations, since it constituted a way of gauging the situation, rather like, as used to happen in time of war, sending out a reconnaissance party in order to evaluate the enemy's strength. Fortunately, for his own safety, common sense's providentially sarcastic remarks about the more-than-likely effects of his appearing there barefaced have not been wiped from his memory. He could, it is true, grow a beard or a mustache, place on his nose a pair of dark glasses, wear a hat on his head, but, apart from the hat and the glasses, which can be put on and taken off, he was certain that these hairier ornaments, beard and mustache, whether by some capricious decision on the part of the production company or by some last-minute change to the script, would already be starting to grow on Daniel Santa-Clara's face. Consequently, the inevitable disguise would have to resort to the fakery of all ancient and modern masquerades, this unanswerable necessity overriding the fears he had felt the other day, when he had started imagining the catastrophes that might have ensued if, thus disguised, he had gone to the production company in person to request information about the actor Santa-Clara. Like everyone else, he knew of the existence of establishments that specialized in the sale and hire of costumes, props, and all the other paraphernalia indispensable both to the art of theatrical trickery and to the protean transformations of the spy. The possibility that he might be mistaken for Daniel Santa-Clara when he made his purchases could be taken seriously only if it were the actors themselves who went to buy false beards, mustaches, and eyebrows, wigs and hairpieces, eye patches for perfectly healthy eyes, warts and moles, stuffing to plump out cheeks, various kinds of padding for either sex, not to mention cosmetics capable of producing chromatic variations at the whim of the client. Certainly not. Any production company worth its salt will have everything it might need in its warehouses and will buy anything else that isn't, and, should there be budget constraints, or if something simply isn't worth buying, then they will rent it, it won't blacken their family's reputation. Honest housewives used to put blankets and overcoats in hock as soon as the warm spring days arrived, and their lives were considered no less deserving of the respect of society, which must, surely, know all about need. There is some doubt as to whether what we have just written, from the word "Honest" to the word "need," was actually generated by Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's own thought processes, but since these words, and what lies between them, represent the holiest and purest of truths, it seemed a shame to pass up the opportunity to set them down. What should finally reassure us, now that it is clear what steps he should take, is the certainty that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso will, without fear, be able to visit the shop selling disguises and props, to choose and purchase the kind of beard that best suits his face, on the absolute condition, however, that a pathetic little beard of the kind generally known as a flea trap, even were it to transform him into an arbiter of elegance, would have to be firmly rejected, without haggling and without succumbing to the temptations of a discount, since the ear-to-ear design and the relative shortness of the hair, not to mention the bare upper lip, would leave revealed to the broad light of day the very features he is trying to conceal. For quite the opposite reason, that is, because it would attract the attention of the curious, any kind of very long beard should also be resisted, even if it isn't of the apostolic variety. The best choice would therefore be a full, fairly thick beard, tending more to the short than to the long. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso will spend hours trying it out in front of the bathroom mirror, sticking on and pulling off the thin film in which the hairs have been implanted, carefully adjusting it to his own sideburns and to the shape of his jaw, eyes, and lips, particularly the latter, since he will have to move them in order to speak and even, who knows, to eat, or even, for one never really does know, to kiss. When he first saw his new physiognomy, he felt a terrible tremor inside him, the intimate, insistent, nervous palpitation in his solar plexus that he knows so well, however, this shock was caused not merely by seeing himself looking entirely different but, and this is much more interesting when we bear in mind the peculiar situation in which he has recently found himself, by his having a whole new sense of himself, as if, finally, he had come face-to-face with his own authentic identity. It was as if, by looking different, he had become more himself. So intense was the sense of shock, so extreme the feeling of energy rushing through him, so exalted and incomprehensible the joy filling him, that an urgent need to preserve the image made him go out, taking every care not to be seen, and head for a photographic studio far from where he lived in order to have his picture taken. He did not want to subject himself to the erratic lighting and blind mechanisms of a photo booth, he wanted a proper portrait, which it would please him to keep and to contemplate, an image before which he could say to himself, This is me. He paid a surcharge for having the photograph developed on the spot and sat down to wait. To the comment from the assistant who said, It will take a while yet, and suggested he go for a walk to kill time, he replied that he would prefer to wait right there, adding unnecessarily, It's for a present, you see. Now and then, he would raise his hands to his beard, as if to smooth it, and check with his fingers that everything was in place, then go back to the pile of photography magazines set out on a table. When he left, he took with him, as well as the respective enlargement, half a dozen medium-sized portraits, which he had already decided to destroy so as not to have to see himself multiplied. He dropped in at a nearby shopping center, went into a public toilet, and there, safe from prying eyes, removed the beard. If anyone had noticed a bearded man going into the toilets, he would have been hard pushed t
o swear that it was this same cleanshaven man who has just emerged five minutes later. Gener ally speaking, one does not notice what a bearded man is carrying, but the telltale envelope he had been clutching in his hand is now hidden between shirt and jacket. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, up until now a placid teacher of history at a secondary school, clearly has talent enough for the exercise of either of these two professional activities, that of the disguised criminal or that of the policeman on his trail. Time will tell which of these two vocations will prevail. When he got home, he burned the six small copies of the enlarged photo in the sink, turned on the tap to wash the ashes down the plughole, and, after smugly studying his new, clandestine image, restored it to the envelope, which he then hid on one of his bookshelves, behind a history of the Industrial Revolution that he himself had never read.
The Collected Novels of José Saramago Page 291
