António Claro's letter arrived on the Friday. Accompanying the map was a handwritten note, unsigned and with no salutation, it said, Let's meet at six in the evening, I hope you don't have too much difficulty finding the place. The writing isn't exactly like mine, but there's very little difference, and it's mainly in the way he writes his capital letters, murmured Tertuliano Máximo Afonso. The map showed a road leading out from the city and, on either side of the road, two villages separated by eight kilometers, and between them, a road off to the right, heading into the countryside toward another village, smaller than the others to judge by the drawing. From there, another narrower road came to a halt about a kilometer farther on, at a house. This was indicated by the word "house," not by a rudimentary drawing, the simple outline that even the least skillful of hands can draw, a roof with a chimney, a facade with a door and a window on either side. Above the word, a red arrow left no room for doubt, Go no farther. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso opened a drawer, took out a map of the city and environs, found and identified the right exit, here's the first village, the road that turns off to the right before reaching the second, the little village up ahead, all that's missing is the final stretch of track. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso looked at the sketch map again, If it's a house, he thought, then I don't need to take a mirror, all houses have mirrors in them. He had imagined that the meeting would take place in open countryside, far from prying eyes, perhaps beneath the protection of some leafy tree, and instead it would take place under a roof, rather like a meeting of acquaintances, with a glass in one hand and some nuts to nibble on. He wondered if Antonio Claro's wife would go too, if she would go there in order to confirm the size and shape of the scars on the left knee, to measure the distance between the two moles on the right forearm and the distance that separates one from the epicondyle and the other from the wrist bone, and then say, Don't leave my sight, so that I don't get you muddled up. He thought not, it wouldn't make sense for any man worthy of the name to go to a potentially difficult, not to say hazardous, meeting, one has only to remember António Claro's gentlemanly warning to Tertuliano Máximo Afonso that he would be armed, and to drag his wife along with him, as if ready to hide behind her skirts at the slightest sign of danger. No, he'll go alone, I won't take Maria da Paz either, Tertuliano Máx imo Afonso pronounced these disconcerting words unaware of the profound difference that exists between a legitimate spouse, adorned with all the inherent rights and duties, and a temporary romantic relationship, however steadfast the aforementioned Maria da Paz's affections have always seemed to us, and given that it is reasonable, if not obligatory, to doubt those of the other party. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso put the city map and the sketch map away in the drawer, but not the handwritten note. He put it in front of him, picked up his pen, and wrote the whole sentence on a piece of paper, in a hand that tried to imitate as closely as possible the other hand, especially the capital letters, which is where the difference was most noticeable. He kept writing, repeating the sentence, until he had covered the whole sheet, and in the last attempt, not even the most experienced of graphologists would have been able to discover even the most insignificant suggestion of forgery, what Tertuliano Máximo Afonso achieved when he quickly copied Maria da Paz's signature is a mere shadow of the work of art he has just produced. From now on, all he will have to find out is how António Claro forms the capital letters from A to H, J to K, and M to Z, and then learn to imitate them. This does not mean, however, that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is nurturing in his mind future projects that involve the person of the actor Daniel Santa-Clara, he is merely, in this particular case, satisfying the taste for study that led him, when still a young man, to the public exercise of the praiseworthy profession of schoolmastering. Just as it is always possible that it might prove useful to know how to stand an egg on its end, so one should not exclude the possibility that being able to produce an accurate imitation of Antonio Claro's capital letters might also serve some purpose in Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's life. As the ancients taught, never say, Of this water I will not drink, especially, we would add, if you have no other water. Since these thoughts were not formulated by Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, it is not in our power to analyze the connection that might nevertheless exist between them and the decision he has just taken and to which he was obviously led by some thought of his own that we failed to catch. This decision reveals the, shall we say, inevitable nature of the obvious, for now that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has the sketch map that will guide him to the location where the meeting will take place, what could be more natural than that it should occur to him to go and inspect the location first, to study its entrances and exits, to take its measure, if we can use that expression, with the added and not insignificant advantage that, by doing so, he will avoid the risk of getting lost on Sunday. The thought that this short journey would distract him for some hours from the painful duty of writing the proposal to the ministry not only brightened his thoughts, it also, in truly surprising fashion, lifted the gloom from his face. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso does not belong to that extraordinary group of people who can smile even when alone, his nature inclines him more to melancholy, to reverie, to an exaggerated awareness of the transience of life, to an incurable perplexity when faced by the genuine Cretan labyrinths of human relationships. He does not properly understand the mysterious workings of a beehive nor why the branch of a tree should spring out where and in the way it does, that is, neither higher up nor lower down, neither thicker nor thinner, but he attributes his difficulty in understanding this to the fact that he does not know the genetic and gestural communication codes used among the bees, still less the flow of information that more or less blindly circulates along the tangled network of vegetal motorways that link the roots deep down in the earth to the leaves that clothe the tree and which rest in the noonday stillness and stir when the wind moves them. What he absolutely does not understand, however much he cudgels his brain, is why it is that while communication technologies continue to develop in a genuinely geometric progression, from improvement to improvement, the other form of communication, proper, real communication, from me to you, from us to them, should still be this confusion crisscrossed with culs-de-sac, so deceiving with its illusory esplanades, and as devious in expression as in concealment. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso might not perhaps mind becoming a tree, but he will never be one, his life, like that of all humans who have lived and will live, will never know the supreme experience of the vegetal. Supreme, or so we imagine, since, up until now, no one has read the biography or the memoirs of an oak tree, written by the same. Let Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, therefore, concern himself with the things of the world to which he belongs, the world of men and women who shout and boast in every natural and artificial setting, and let him leave in peace the arboreal world, which has quite enough things to cope with, phytopathological diseases, the electric saw, and forest fires, to name but a few. He is preoccupied too with driving the car that is taking him out into the countryside, carrying him away from a city that is the very model of modern difficulties in communication, in the form of vehicles and pedestrians, especially on days like today, Friday afternoon, when everyone is leaving for the weekend. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is leaving, but he will soon be back. The worst of the traffic is behind him now, the road he must take is not very busy, soon he will find himself outside the house where, the day after tomorrow, António Claro will be waiting for him. He has his beard on, carefully stuck to his face, just in case, as he is driving through the last village, someone addresses him as Daniel Santa-Clara and invites him to have a beer, always assuming that the house he has come to see belongs to António Claro or is rented by him, a house in the country, a second home, these supporting actors who work in films certainly live high on the hog if they already have access to luxuries that, not so very long ago, were the privilege of the few. Meanwhile, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is concerned that the narrow road that leads to the house and which is now there before him may have no other use
, that is, if it does not go beyond the house and there are no other houses nearby, then the woman who appeared at the window will be asking herself or her neighbor beside her, Where's that car going, there's no one staying at António Claro's house at the moment as far as I know, and I didn't like the look of that man's face, men with beards have usually got something to hide, it's just as well Tertuliano Máximo Afonso didn't hear her, he would have had yet another serious reason to feel worried. There is scarcely room on the tarmac road for two cars to pass, there obviously isn't much traffic here. To the left, the stony ground slopes gently down to a valley where a long, unbroken line of tall trees, which from here look to be ash trees and white poplars, marks the probable course of a river. Even at the prudent speed at which Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is driving, in case a car should suddenly appear coming toward him, a kilometer takes no time at all to cover, and this kilometer is covered already, and this must be the house. The road continues, snaking up two hills set one above the other, then disappearing around the other side, it probably serves other houses that cannot be seen from here, the distrustful woman seems, after all, to be concerned solely with what is near the village where she lives, what lies beyond her frontiers doesn't interest her. From the broad terrace in front of the house another, even narrower road and in even worse condition leads down toward the valley, That must be another way to get here, thought Tertuliano Máximo Afonso. He is aware that he should not go too near the house, lest some walker or goatherd, for it looks like the kind of area where goats might be kept, should sound the alarm, Stop thief, and in two ticks the police would be there, or, if not them, a detachment of locals armed, as in the old days, with sticks and scythes. He must behave like a traveler just passing through, who has paused for a moment to admire the view and who, now that he's there, casts an appreciative eye over a house whose owners, now absent, are fortunate enough to enjoy this magnificent vista. The house is a simple one-story building, a typical rural dwelling that looks as if it had undergone some careful restoration work, although there are signs of neglect too, as if the owners did not come here very often and only on brief visits. One usually expects a house in the country to have potted plants outside the door and on the window ledges, but this has hardly any, a few dry stalks, the occasional fading flower, and a single brave geranium that continues to do battle against absence. The house is separated from the road by a low wall, and, behind it, raising their branches up above the roof, are two chestnut trees that, judging by their height and their evident great age, must have been there long before the house was built. A solitary place, ideal for contemplative people, for those who love nature for what it is, making no distinction between sun and rain, heat and cold, wind and stillness, between the ease that some of these bring and that others withhold. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso walked around to the back of the house, through a garden that once merited the name but which is now no more than a barely-walled-in space invaded by thistles, a tangle of rampant weeds swamping an atrophied apple tree, a peach tree whose trunk is covered with lichen, and a few thorn apples, or Datura stramonium, to give them their Latin name. For António Claro, and perhaps for his wife too, the country house must have been a love of only brief duration, one of those short-lived bucolic passions that occasionally assail city dwellers and which, like loose straw, burn with the lightest touch of a match and are reduced immediately to black ash. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso can now return to his second-floor apartment with a view of the other side of the road and await the phone call that will bring him back here on Sunday. He got into the car, drove back the way he had come, and, to show the woman at the window that no crime committed against another person's property weighed heavy on his conscience, he drove slowly through the village as if he were nudging his way through a herd of goats as calmly accustomed to the streets as they were to the fields where they grazed among the broom and the thyme. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso wondered if, just to satisfy curiosity, it would be worth investigating the shortcut that seemed to lead from the house down to the river, but he soon changed his mind, the fewer people who saw him around these parts, the better. After Sunday, of course, he will never come here again, but it would still be best if people forgot the man with the beard. As he left the village, he accelerated, and in a few minutes he was back on the main road, and less than an hour afterward he was home. He had a bath, which restored him after the heat of the journey, changed his clothes, and, accompanied by a lemon drink that he took from the fridge, sat down at his desk. He is not going to continue work on the proposal for the ministry, he is, like a good son, going to telephone his mother. He will ask how she's been, she'll say fine, how are you, oh, much as usual, no complaints, I was beginning to wonder why you hadn't phoned, sorry, but I've had a lot to do, in human beings these words are presumably the equivalent of the rapid touches of recognition that ants give to each other with their antennae when they meet on a path, as if they were saying, You're one of us, now we can talk about serious matters. So how are your problems, his mother asked, On the way to being resolved, don't worry, The very idea, as if I had nothing better to do with my life than to worry about you, Well, I'm glad you're not taking it all too seriously, You can't see my face, Come on, now, Mama, calm down, Oh, I'll calm down, but only once you're here, It won't be long now, And what about your relationship with Maria da Paz, how does that stand at the moment, It's not easy to explain actually, You could at least try, Well, I do like her and need her, Other people have got married for lesser reasons, Yes, but I think that my need for her is just a thing of the moment, nothing more, and what if I stop feeling it tomorrow, what will I do then, And what about liking her, That's only to be expected in a man who lives alone and has been lucky enough to meet a nice woman, with a pretty face, a good figure, and who is, as people say, a very caring person, Oh, so not very much then, It's not that it's not much, just that it's not enough, You loved your wife, Did I, I can't remember now, that was six years ago, Six years isn't very long to forget so much, Well, I thought I loved her, and she must have thought the same about me, but it turns out we were both mistaken, that's what tends to happen, And you don't want to make the same mistake with Maria da Paz, No, I don't, For your sake or for hers, For both our sakes, More for your own sake than for hers though, Look, I know I'm not perfect, it will be enough that I save her from the evil I don't want to happen to me, but at least my selfishness, in this case, doesn't mean I don't care about protecting her as well, Perhaps Maria da Paz wouldn't mind taking the risk, Another divorce, my second, her first, no, Mama, absolutely not, It might turn out well, we don't know precisely what awaits us beyond each action we take, True enough, Why do you say it like that, Like what, As if we were sitting in the dark and you had suddenly turned a light on and off, It's just your imagination, Say it again, Say what again, What you said, Why, Repeat it, please, As you wish, true enough, Say just the two words, True enough, No, it wasn't the same, What do you mean it wasn't the same, It just wasn't the same, Come on, Mama, stop imagining things, please, too much imagination is not the best way to gain peace of mind, the words I said just signified agreement, conformity, Thanks, I could work that out for myself, I too used to consult dictionaries when I was young, you know, Now don't get angry, When are you coming, Like I said, soon, We need to have a talk, We can have all the talks you want, Yes, but I just want the one talk, Which one, Don't pretend you don't know, I want to know what's going on, and please don't come with any ready-prepared stories, fair play and cards on the table, that's what I expect from you, That doesn't sound like you talking, It's what your father often used to say, do you remember, All right, I'll put all my cards on the table, And you promise you'll play fair, no tricks, Yes, I'll play fair and there'll be no tricks, That's what I like to hear from my son, We'll see what you have to say when I lay down the irst card in the pack, Oh, I think I've seen just about all there is to see in life, Cherish that illusion until we have that conversation, Is it so very serious, Time will tell when we get there, Well,
don't take too long, please, It could be as soon as the middle of next week, Well, I certainly hope so, Take care, Mama, Take care, son. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso put down the receiver, then he let his thoughts wander, as if he were still talking to his mother, Words can be the very devil, there we are thinking we allow out of our mouths only the words that suit us, and suddenly another word slips out, where it came from we don't know, we didn't ask for it to appear, and because of that word, which we often have difficulty remembering afterward, the whole conversation abruptly changes direction, and we find ourselves affirming what we denied before, or vice versa, what happened just now was a perfect example, I hadn't intended to speak to my mother so soon about this whole mad story, if I ever really intended to do so at all, and then, from one moment to the next, how I don't know, she has my formal promise that I'll tell her everything, she's probably already putting a cross on the calendar, for next Monday, just in case I should turn up unannounced, I know her, the day she chooses is the day I should arrive, and it won't be her fault if I don't. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso isn't annoyed, on the contrary, he feels an indescribable sense of relief, as if a weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders, he wonders what he has gained by remaining silent all these days and he cannot find a single decent answer, in a while he might be able to come up with a thousand explanations, each more plausible than the last, now all he can think of is getting it off his chest as soon as possible, he'll have the meeting with António Claro on Sunday, in two days' time, so there's nothing stopping him getting in the car on Monday morning and going to show his mother all the cards that make up this puzzle, all of them, because it would be one thing to have told her some time ago, There's a man who looks so like me that even you couldn't tell us apart, and quite a different thing to say, I've met him and now I don't know who I am. At that moment, the tiny fragment of consolation that had been charitably caressing him vanished, and in its place, like a pain that suddenly reasserts itself, fear reappeared. We don't know precisely what awaits us beyond each action we take, his mother had said, and this banal truth, within the grasp of a mere provincial housewife, this trivial truth that forms part of the infinite list of those truths not worth saying because they won't cause anyone any sleepless nights, this truth that belongs to everyone and means the same thing to everyone, can, in certain situations, afflict and frighten more than the worst of threats. Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds. If the future is empty, thought Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, then nothing that one might call Sunday exists, its possible existence depends on my existence, if I were to die now, part of the future or part of possible futures would be canceled out forever. The conclusion Tertuliano Máximo Afonso was about to reach, For Sunday to exist I must continue to exist, was interrupted by the phone. It was António Claro asking, Did you get the map, Yes, I did, Any problems, None, Look, I know I said I'd ring tomorrow, but I thought the letter must have arrived by now and so I thought I'd just call to confirm the meeting, Fine, I'll be there at six, Don't worry about having to drive through the village, I'll be taking a shortcut that goes straight to the house, that way no one will find it odd seeing two people with the same face driving past, And what about the car, Which car, Mine, Oh, that doesn't matter, if anyone does mistake you for me, they'll just think I've got a new car, besides, I haven't been to the house much lately, All right then, See you the day after tomorrow, Yes, see you on Sunday. After hanging up, it occurred to Tertuliano Máximo Afonso that he should have mentioned he would be wearing a beard. Not that it matters, he will take it off as soon as he gets there. Sunday has just taken a great step forward.
The Collected Novels of José Saramago Page 295
