The streetlights come on, the evening is creeping up the ramp of the sky, soon night will begin. The superintendent rang the bell, no reason for surprise, policemen mostly do ring the bell, they don't always kick the door down. The doctor's wife appeared, I was expecting you tomorrow, superintendent, I'm afraid I can't talk to you right now, she said, we have visitors, Yes, I know them, that is, I don't know them personally, but I know who they are, That doesn't seem reason enough for me to let you in, Please, My friends have nothing to do with what brought you here, Not even you know what brought me here, and it's high time you did, Come in.
THERE IS AN IDEA ABROAD THAT, GENERALLY SPEAKING, THE CONSCIENCE of a police superintendent tends, on professional grounds and on principle, to be fairly accommodating, not to say resigned to the incontrovertible fact, theoretically and practically proven, that what must be must be and that there's nothing to be done about it. The truth is, however, that, although it may not be the most common of spectacles, it has been known for one of these valuable public servants, by chance and when least expected, to find himself caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, that is, between what he should be and what he would prefer not to be. For the superintendent of providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, that day has come. He had spent at most half an hour at the home of the doctor's wife, but that short time was enough to reveal to the astonished group gathered there the murky depths of his mission. He said he would do everything possible to divert from that place and those people the more than disquieting attentions of his superiors, but that he could not guarantee success, he told them he had been given the extremely tight deadline of five days to conclude the investigation and knew that the only acceptable verdict would be one of guilty, and, addressing the doctor's wife, he said The person they want to make the scapegoat, if you'll forgive the obvious impropriety of the expression, is you, madam, and, possibly indirectly, your husband, as for the others, I don't think you're in any real danger, your crime, madam, wasn't murdering that man, your great crime was not going blind when the rest of us did, the incomprehensible can be merely an object of scorn, but not if there is always a way of using it as a pretext. It is three o'clock in the morning, and the superintendent is tossing and turning in bed, unable to get to sleep. He is mentally making plans for the next day, he repeats them obsessively and then starts all over again, telling the inspector and the sergeant that, as arranged, he will go to the doctor's house to continue the interrogation of the wife, reminding them of the task he had charged them with, following the other members of the group, but, given the present situation, none of this makes sense any more, now what he needs to do is to impede, to hinder events, to invent for the investigation advances and delays that will, without making it too obvious, simultaneously feed and hamper the minister's plans, in short, he needs to wait and see what the minister's promised help involves. It was nearly half past three when the red telephone rang. The superintendent leapt out of bed, put on the slippers bearing the police insignia and, half-ran, half-stumbled over to the desk on which the phone stood. Even before he had sat down, he was putting the receiver to his ear and saying, Hello, It's albatross here, said the voice at the other end, Hello, albatross, puffin here, Now pay attention, puffin, I have some instructions for you, Yes, albatross, Today, at nine o'clock, this morning, not tonight, a person will be waiting for you at post six-north on the frontier, the army has been warned, so there'll be no problem, Am I to understand that this person is coming to replace me, albatross, There's no reason for you to think that, puffin, you have done well so far and will, I hope, continue to do so until this affair is closed, Thank you, albatross, and what are your orders, As I said, a person will be waiting for you at nine o'clock this morning at post six-north on the frontier, Yes, albatross, I've already made a note of that, You will give this person the photograph you mentioned, the one of the group in which the main suspect appears, you will also give him the list of names and addresses you obtained and which you have in your possession. The superintendent felt a shiver run down his spine, But that photograph is necessary for my on-going investigations, he said, Well, I don't think it's as necessary as you say it is, puffin, indeed, I would go so far as to say that you don't need it at all, given that, either personally or through your subordinates, you have already made contact with all the members of the gang, You mean group, don't you, albatross, A gang is a group, Yes, albatross, but not all groups are gangs, Why, puffin, I had no idea you were so concerned about correct definitions, you obviously make good use of dictionaries, Forgive me for correcting you, albatross, my mind's still a bit fuzzy, Were you asleep, No, albatross, I was thinking about what I have to do tomorrow, Well, now you know, the person who will be waiting for you at post six-north is a man about your age and he will be wearing a blue tie with white spots, I shouldn't think there will be many other ties like that at military posts on the frontier, Do I know him, albatross, No, you don't, he's not from our department, Ah, He will respond to your password with the phrase No, there's never enough, And what's mine, There's always plenty of time, Very good, albatross, your orders will be carried out, I'll be there on the frontier at nine o'clock to meet him, Now go back to bed and sleep well for the rest of the night, puffin, I myself have been working up until now, so I'm going to do the same, May I ask you a question, albatross, Of course, but keep it short, Does the photograph have anything to do with the help you promised me, Very sharp of you, puffin, nothing gets past you, does it, So it does have something to do with it, Yes, it has everything to do with it, but don't expect me to tell you how, if I told you that, it would ruin the element of surprise, Even though I'm the person directly responsible for the investigations, Exactly, Does that mean you don't trust me, albatross, Draw a square on the ground, puffin, and put yourself inside it, within the space delineated by the lines of that square I trust you, but outside of it, I trust only myself, your investigation is that square, be content with the square and with your investigation, Yes, albatross, Sleep well, puffin, you'll hear from me before the week is out, I'll be here waiting, albatross, Good night, puffin, Good night, albatross. Despite the minister's conventional wishes for a good night's sleep, what little remained of the night did not prove of much use to the superintendent. Sleep refused to come, the doors and passageways of the brain were all closed, and inside ruled insomnia, queen and absolute mistress. Why does he want the photo, he asked himself over and over again, what did he mean by that threat that I would hear from him before the week was out, there was no threat contained in the individual words, but the tone, yes, the tone was threatening, if the superintendent, after a lifetime of interrogating all kinds of people, has learned to distinguish in amongst the tangled labyrinth of syllables the path he must follow to get out, he is also perfectly capable of noticing the shadowy zones that each word produces and trails behind it whenever it is pronounced. Say out loud the words You'll hear from me before the week is out, and you will see how easy it is to introduce into them a drop of insidious dread, the putrid stench of fear, the authoritarian timbre of a paternal ghost. The superintendent would prefer to think such soothing thoughts as these, But I have no reason to feel afraid, I do my work, I carry out the orders I'm given, and yet, in the depths of his conscience, he knew this was not true, he wasn't carrying out those orders for the simple reason that he did not believe that because the doctor's wife had not gone blind four years she was therefore to blame for eighty-three percent of the capital's voting population having cast blank votes, as if the first odd fact were automatically responsible for the second. Even he doesn't believe it, he thought, he just wants a target to aim at, if this one fails, he'll find another, and another, and another, as many as it takes until he finally gets it right, or until, by dint of sheer repetition, the people he is trying to persuade of his merits grow indifferent to the methods and processes he adopts. In either case, the party will have won. Thanks to the skeleton key of digression, sleep had managed to open a door, escape down one of the corri
dors and immediately set the superintendent dreaming that the interior minister had asked him for the photograph so that he could stick a pin through the eyes of the doctor's wife, all the while singing a wizard's spell, Blind you were not, blind you will be, white you wore, black you will see, with this pin I prick you, from behind and before. Terrified, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding, the superintendent woke to the screams of the doctor's wife and the loud laughter of the minister, What an awful dream, he muttered as he turned on the light, what monstrous things the brain can generate. According to the clock, it was half past seven. He calculated how much time he would need to reach post six-north and was almost tempted to thank the nightmare for having been so kind as to wake him. He dragged himself out of bed, his head weighed heavy as lead, his legs weighed even more than his head, and he staggered uncertainly to the bathroom. He emerged twenty minutes later, slightly reinvigorated by the shower, newly shaved and ready for work. He put on a clean shirt and finished dressing, He'll be wearing a blue tie with white spots, he thought, and went into the kitchen to heat up a cup of coffee left over from the previous evening. The inspector and the sergeant must still have been sleeping, at least, they gave no sign of life. He munched his way unenthusiastically through a biscuit, and even bit into another one, then returned to the bathroom to clean his teeth. He went into the bedroom, placed in a medium-sized envelope the photograph and the list of names and addresses, having first copied the latter onto another piece of paper, and when he went back into the sitting-room, he heard noises coming from the room in the apartment where his subordinates were sleeping. He didn't wait for them, nor did he knock on their door. He scribbled a note, I had to go out early, I'm taking the car, do as I told you yesterday and concentrate on following the women, the wife of the man with the black eye-patch and the ex-wife of the man who wrote the letter, have lunch out if you can manage it, I'll be back here later this afternoon, I expect results. Clear orders, precise instructions, if only everything could be like that in this superintendent's difficult life. He left providential ltd and took the lift down to the garage. The attendant was already there, the superintendent said good morning, received a greeting in return, and wondered, in passing, if the man actually slept in the garage too, There don't seem to be any specific hours of work in this place. It was nearly half past eight, I've got time, he thought, I'll be there in less than half an hour, besides, I shouldn't be the first to arrive, albatross was quite explicit, quite clear about that, the man will be waiting for me at nine o'clock, so I can arrive a minute later, or two or three, at midday if I want. He knew this wasn't true, that he must simply not arrive before the man he was going to meet, Perhaps it's because the soldiers on guard at post six-north would get nervous seeing someone parked on this side of the dividing line, he thought, as he put his foot down on the accelerator to go up the ramp. Monday morning, but there wasn't much traffic, the superintendent would take twenty minutes at most to reach post six-north. But where the devil is post six-north, he suddenly asked out loud. In the north, of course, but six, where the hell was that. The minister had said six-north as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if it were one of the capital's most famous monuments or else the metro station that had been destroyed by a bomb, the kind of place that everyone was sure to know, and, foolishly, it had not occurred to him to ask, Just where exactly is that, albatross. In a matter of a moment the amount of sand in the upper part of the hour-glass had dwindled dramatically, the tiny grains were rushing through the opening, each grain more eager to leave than the last, time is just like people, sometimes it's all it can do to drag itself along, but at others, it runs like a deer and leaps like a young goat, which, when you think about it, is not saying much, since the cheetah is the fastest of all the animals, and yet it has never occurred to anyone to say of another person He runs and jumps like a cheetah, perhaps because that first comparison comes from the magical late middle ages, when gentlemen went deer-hunting and no one had ever seen a cheetah running or even heard of its existence. Languages are conservative, they always carry their archives with them and hate having to be updated. The superintendent, having managed to park the car somewhere, had unfolded the map of the city and was now resting it on the steering-wheel, anxiously searching for post six-north on the northern periphery of the capital. It would be relatively easy to locate if the city were shaped like a rhombus or a lozenge or formed a parallelogram, a space whose four lines circumscribed, as albatross had so coolly put it, the amount of trust he deserved, but the city's outline is irregular and, on the fringes, on either side, it is impossible to tell where the north ends and where the east or the west begins. The superintendent looks at his watch and feels as afraid as a sergeant expecting a reprimand from his superior. He won't arrive on time, it's simply impossible. He tries to reason calmly, Logic would say, but since when has logic ruled human decisions, that the various military posts would have been numbered in a clockwise direction from the westernmost point of the northern sector, hour-glasses are clearly of no use in this instance. Perhaps this reasoning is wrong, but then since when has reason ruled human decisions, not an easy question to answer, but it's always better to have one oar than none, and, besides, it is written that a moored boat goes nowhere, and so the superintendent put a cross where it seemed to him post number six should be and set off. Since the traffic was light and there wasn't so much as the shadow of a policeman on the streets, he was sorely tempted to jump every red light he came to, a temptation he did not resist. He was not speeding, he was flying, he barely took his foot off the accelerator, and when he had to brake, he performed a controlled skid, as those acrobats of the steering-wheel do in car chases in the movies, making the more nervous spectators jump in their seats. The superintendent had never driven like this in his life and he never would again. It was already gone nine o'clock when he finally reached post six-north, and the soldier who came to find out what this agitated driver wanted told him that this was, in fact, five-north. The superintendent swore out loud and was about to turn round, but stopped this precipitate gesture just in time and asked in which direction he would find six-north. The soldier pointed east and, just in case there was any doubt, uttered two brief words, That way. Fortunately, there was a road running more or less parallel to the frontier, it was only a matter of three kilometers, the way is clear, there aren't even any traffic lights, the car started, accelerated, braked, took a bend at breathtaking speed and screeched to a halt, almost touching the yellow line painted across the street, there it is, post six-north. Next to the barrier, about thirty meters away, a middle-aged man was waiting, So he's quite a bit younger than me, thought the superintendent. He picked up the envelope and got out of the car. He couldn't see a single soldier, they must have had orders to keep out of sight or to look the other way while this ceremony of meeting and handing-over took place. The superintendent walked toward the man. He was holding the envelope in his hand and thinking, I mustn't make any excuses about being late, if I were to say Hello, good morning, sorry about the delay, I had a bit of trouble finding the place, and, do you know what, albatross forgot to tell me where post six-north was, you didn't have to be a genius to realize that this long, rambling sentence could be understood by the other man as a false password, and then one of two things would happen, the man would either summon the soldiers to arrest this liar and provocateur, or he would take out his gun and with a cry of Down with blank ballot papers, down with sedition, death to all traitors, would carry out a summary execution. The superintendent had reached the barrier. The man did not move, he just looked at him. He had his left thumb hooked in his belt, his right hand in his raincoat pocket, all far too natural to be real. He's armed, he's carrying a gun, thought the superintendent, and said, There's always plenty of time. The man did not smile or even blink, he said, No, there's never enough, and then the superintendent gave him the envelope, perhaps now they could say good morning to each other, perhaps chat for a few moments about what a pleasant Monday
morning it was, but the other man merely said, Fine, you can leave now, I'll make sure this finds its way to the right person. The superintendent got into his car, reversed and drove back to the city. Feeling embittered and utterly frustrated, he tried to console himself by imagining what a good joke it would have been to hand the man an empty envelope and then wait to see what happened. The minister, ablaze with anger and incandescent with rage, would immediately phone him to demand an explanation and he, the superintendent, would then swear by all the saints in the court of heaven, including those on earth still awaiting canonization, that the envelope had contained the photograph and the list of names and addresses, just as he had ordered, My responsibility, albatross, ended the moment that your messenger, having put down the gun he was holding, yes, I could see he was carrying a gun, took his right hand out of his raincoat pocket to receive the envelope, But the envelope was empty, I opened it myself, the minister would scream, That's nothing to do with me, albatross, he would reply with the serenity of someone at perfect peace with his conscience, Oh, I know what you're up to, the minister would bawl, you don't want me to touch so much as a hair on the head of your fancy woman, She's not my fancy woman, she's a person who is entirely innocent of the crime she's been accused of, albatross, Don't call me albatross, your father was an albatross, your mother was an albatross, but I'm the interior minister, If the interior minister has ceased to be an albatross, then the police superintendent will cease to be a puffin, At this precise moment, the puffin is very likely to cease being a superintendent, Well, anything's possible, Anyway, send me another copy of the photo today, do you hear, But I haven't got one, Oh, but you will have, more than one if necessary, How, Very easy, by going to where you'll find one, in your fancy woman's apartment or in the other two apartments, you don't expect me to believe that the photo that disappeared was the only copy, do you. The superintendent shook his head, The minister's no fool, there would be no point handing him an empty envelope. He was almost in the center of the city now, where things were, of course, livelier, although not in any exaggerated or noisy way. He could see that the people he passed had their worries, but, at the same time, they seemed quite calm. The superintendent ignored the obvious contradiction, the fact that he could not explain in words what he saw did not mean that he couldn't feel it, that he could not sense it with his feelings. The man and woman over there, for example, you can see that they like each other, that they're fond of each other, that they love each other, you can see that they're happy, look, they just smiled, and yet, not only are they worried, they are, if I may put it like this, calmly and clearly aware of that. You can see that the superintendent is worried too, perhaps, well, what does one more contradiction matter, perhaps that is why he has gone into this café to have a proper breakfast that will distract him and make him forget the warmed-up coffee and the stale biscuits of providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, he has just ordered some freshly squeezed orange juice, some toast and a cup of real coffee with milk. God bless whoever invented you, he murmured piously to the toast when the waiter set it down before him, wrapped in a napkin in the old-fashioned way, so that it would not get cold. He asked for a newspaper, the front page carried only foreign news, there was nothing of local interest, apart from a statement from the minister of foreign affairs announcing that the government was preparing to consult various international bodies about the former capital's anomalous situation, starting with the united nations and ending with the court in the hague, passing through the european union, the organization for economic cooperation and development, the organization of petroleum-exporting countries, the north atlantic treaty organization, the world bank, the international monetary fund, the world trade organization, the world organization for atomic energy, the world organization for labor, the world meteorological organization, and a few other bodies, which were only secondary or still under discussion, and therefore not mentioned. Albatross will be most put out, it seems they're trying to steal his sweets, thought the superintendent. He looked up from the newspaper like someone who feels a sudden need to gaze into the distance and said to himself that perhaps this news was the reason behind that unexpected and urgent demand for the photograph, He never was one to allow people to get one over on him, he's obviously preparing his next trick, and it'll probably be a dirty trick, the dirtiest of the dirty, he murmured. Then it occurred to him that he had the whole day to himself, that he could do whatever he wanted. He had set the inspector and the sergeant their task, and a useless task it was, they would, at this moment, be lurking in some doorway or behind a tree, they would already be waiting to see who left the house first, the inspector doubtless hoping it would be the girl with dark glasses, while the sergeant, because there was no one else, would have to content himself with the ex-wife of the man who wrote the letter. The worst thing that could happen to the inspector would be for the old man with the black eye-patch to appear, not so much for the reason you are thinking, that following a pretty, young woman is obviously a more attractive prospect than trailing after an old man, but because people with only one eye see twice as much, they don't have their other eye to distract them or to insist on looking at something else, we've said as much before, but truths need to be repeated many times so that they don't, poor things, lapse into oblivion. And what shall I do, wondered the superintendent. He summoned the waiter, returned the newspaper, paid the bill and left. As he was sitting down behind the wheel again, he glanced at his watch, Half past ten, he thought, a good time, precisely the hour I set for the second interrogation. A good time, he had thought, but he would not have been able to say why or for what. He could, if he chose, go back to providential ltd and rest until lunchtime, perhaps even sleep a little and make up for the sleep he had lost during the wretched night he had had to endure, the painful conversation with the minister, the nightmare, the screams of the doctor's wife when the albatross stuck the pin through her eyes, but the idea of shutting himself up between those gloomy walls seemed repulsive to him, he had nothing to do there, he certainly didn't want to spend his time reviewing the store of arms and munitions, as he had thought he would do when he first arrived, and as was his duty as superintendent, as surely as if it had been set down in writing. The morning still retained some of the luminous quality of dawn, the air was cool, the ideal weather for a walk. He got out of the car and started walking. He went to the end of the street, turned left and found himself in a square, he crossed it, set off down another street and reached another square, he had a memory of having been here four years ago, one blind man amongst other blind men, listening to speakers who were also blind, the last echoes, if one could but hear them, would be from the most recent political meetings to have been held in those places, the p.o.t.r. in the first square, the p.i.t.m. in the second, and as for the p.o.t.l., as if this were its historical fate, it had had to make do with a bit of waste ground right on the edge of the city. The superintendent walked and walked, and suddenly, how he didn't know, found himself in the street where the doctor and his wife lived, he did not, however, think, This is the street where the doctor lives. He slackened his pace, continuing along on the other side, and he was perhaps twenty meters away when the door of the building opened and the doctor's wife appeared with the dog. The superintendent immediately swung round, went over to a shop window and stood there looking in and waiting, if she crossed over, she would see him reflected in the glass. She didn't. The superintendent stared studiously in the opposite direction, the doctor's wife was moving away from him, the dog, with no lead, was walking along beside her. Then it occurred to the superintendent that he should follow her, that it wouldn't go amiss if he were to do what the sergeant and the inspector were doing at that very moment, if they were trudging the streets behind the other suspects, then he had a duty to do the same even if he was a superintendent, now where's that woman going, the dog is probably just a cover, or perhaps she uses the dog's collar for transporting secret messages, ah, what happy times they were when St Bernard
dogs used to carry little barrels of brandy around their neck and with that small amount how many lives feared lost in the snowy alps were saved. His pursuit of the suspect, if we want to continue calling her that, did not last long. In a secluded spot, rather like a village forgotten in the middle of the city, there was a slightly neglected park, with large shady trees, sandy walks and flower beds, rustic, green-painted benches, and, in the middle, a lake in which a statue, representing a female figure, bent over the water with her empty water jar. The doctor's wife sat down, opened the bag she had brought with her and took out a book. Until she had opened the book and started reading, the dog would not move from there. She looked up from the page and said, Off you go, and he ran off to do, as people used to say in more euphemistic days, what no one else could do for him. The superintendent watched from a distance and remembered his question to himself after breakfast, And what shall I do. For about five minutes he lurked behind the bushes, it was lucky the dog hadn't come this way, he might have recognized him and this time done more than just growl at him. The doctor's wife wasn't waiting for anyone, she had, as so many other people do, simply taken her dog for a walk. The superintendent went straight over to her, making the sand crunch underfoot, and stopped a few feet away. Slowly, as if she found it hard to tear herself away from her reading, the doctor's wife raised her head and looked at him. She did not appear to recognize him at first, probably because she wasn't expecting to see him there, then she said, We were waiting for you, but when you didn't come and the dog was getting impatient for his walk, I decided to bring him here, but my husband's at home, he'll look after you until I get back, unless, of course, you're in a hurry, No, I'm not in a hurry, You go ahead, then, I'll be right there, once the dog has had a bit of a run, after all, it's not his fault people decided to cast blank ballot papers, If you don't mind, and since chance seems to have arranged it this way, I'd prefer to talk to you here, without witnesses, And I assumed that this interrogation, to continue calling it by that name, would take place with my husband present, like the first one, It wouldn't be an interrogation, my notebook won't leave my pocket, and I haven't got a tape-recorder concealed about my person either, besides, I have to say that my memory isn't what it was, it forgets easily, especially when I don't tell it to record what it hears, Oh, I had no idea the memory could hear, It's our second set of ears, those on the outside only serve to carry the sound inside, What do you want then, Like I said, I want to talk to you, About what, About what's happening in this city, Superintendent, I'm very grateful to you for coming to my house yesterday evening and for telling us, and my friends too, that there are people in the government interested in the strange phenomenon of the doctor's wife who failed to go blind four years ago and who now, it seems, is the organizer of a conspiracy against the state, but, to be perfectly frank, unless you have something more to say to me on the subject, I really don't think there's much point in our talking about anything else, The interior minister made me hand over the group photograph of you, your husband and your friends, this very morning I went to a military post on the frontier to do so, So you did have something to tell me, but there really wasn't any need for you to follow me, you could have gone straight to my house, you know the way, But I didn't follow you, I wasn't hiding behind a tree or pretending to read a newspaper while I waited for you to leave your house so that I could follow you, as the inspector and the sergeant engaged with me on this investigation will be doing with your friends right now, although the only reason I ordered them to do so was to keep them occupied, that's all, Do you mean to tell me you're here by chance, Yes, I happened to be walking down the street and I saw you leaving your house, It's hard to believe that it was pure chance that brought you to the street where I live, Call it what you like, But it was, at any rate, a happy coincidence, if you prefer to call it that, without it I wouldn't have found out that the photograph is now in the hands of your minister, Oh, that I would have told you on another occasion, And what, may I ask, does he want with it, I've no idea, he didn't tell me, but I'm sure it won't be for any good purpose, So you didn't come to submit me to a second interrogation, said the doctor's wife, No, not today, not tomorrow, never, as far as I'm concerned, I know all I need to know about this story, You'll have to explain yourself better, sit down, don't just stand there like that woman with the empty water jar. The dog suddenly appeared and came bounding out from behind some bushes heading straight for the superintendent, who instinctively drew back, Don't be frightened, said the doctor's wife, grabbing the dog by the collar, he won't bite you, How did you know I was afraid of dogs, Oh, I'm no witch, I just observed you when you were in our apartment, Is it that obvious, It is rather, steady, this last word was addressed to the dog, who had stopped barking and was instead producing a low, continuous noise in its throat, far more intimidating than a growl, the sound of an organ the bass notes of which have been badly tuned. You'd better sit down, that way he'll know you mean me no harm. The superintendent gingerly sat down, keeping his distance, Is his name Steady, No, it's Constant, but for us and for my friends he's the dog of tears, we called him Constant for short, Why the dog of tears, Because four years ago I was crying and this creature came and licked my face, During the time of the white blindness, Yes, during the time of the white blindness, this dog is the second marvel from those wretched days, first the woman who did not go blind when it seems it was her duty to do so, then this compassionate dog who came and drank her tears, Did that really happen, or was I dreaming, What we dream also happens, superintendent, Hopefully not everything, Do you have some reason for saying that, No, not really, I was just talking for the sake of it. The superintendent was lying, the sentence he had refused to allow his mouth to utter would have been quite different, Hopefully the albatross will not come and poke out your eyes. The dog had come closer and was almost touching the superintendent's knees with its nose. It was looking at him and its eyes were saying, I won't hurt you, don't be afraid, she wasn't when I found her on that other day. Then the superintendent slowly reached out his hand and touched the dog's head. He felt like crying and letting the tears course down his face, perhaps the marvel would be repeated. The doctor's wife put her book away in her bag and said, Let's go, Where, asked the superintendent, You'll have lunch with us, won't you, if you've nothing more important to do, Are you sure, About what, That you want to have me sitting at your table, Yes, I'm sure, And you're not afraid I might be tricking you, Not with those tears in your eyes, no.
The Collected Novels of José Saramago Page 330
