Free All the Names by José Saramago Page A

example, with her eyes closed, the one with her head resting on the window, must be what, thirty-five, thirty-six, that was all Senhor José needed for his imagination to take wing, And what if she's the woman I'm looking for, it wasn't, in fact, impossible, in this life we meet strangers all the time, and you just have to resign yourself to it, we can't go around asking everyone, What's your name, and then produce a record card from our pocket to see if that is the person we want. Two stops later, the woman got off, then she stood on the pavement waiting for the bus to continue its journey, she probably wanted to cross to the other side of the road and, since she wasn't carrying an umbrella, Senhor José could see her face full on despite the tiny raindrops clinging to the bus windows, there was a moment when, perhaps impatient because the bus was taking a while to draw away, she looked up, and that was when her eyes met his. Both he and she stayed like that until the bus set off again, they stayed like that for as long as they could see each other, Senhor José craning and turning his neck, the woman following his movements from where she was standing, perhaps asking herself, I wonder who that is, he saying to himself, It's her.
       It wasn't very far from Senhor José's stop to the Central Registry, a most praiseworthy show of consideration on the part of the transport services for the people who had to go to the Central Registry to deal with various papers, but despite that, Senhor José arrived home soaked from head to foot. He quickly took off his raincoat, changed his trousers, socks and shoes, rubbed his dripping hair with a towel, and, while he was doing all this, continued his interior dialogue, It's her, It's not her, It could be, It could, but it wasn't, But what if it was, You'll know that when you find the woman on the card, If it was her, I'll say we've already met, that we saw each other on the bus, She won't remember, If I find her soon, she's bound to remember, But you don't want to find her soon, perhaps not even later, if you really wanted to you would look up her name in the telephone book, that's where you should start, I forgot, The phone book's in there, I don't feel like going into the Central Registry just now, You're afraid of the dark, Not at all, I know that darkness like the back of my hand, You don't even know the back of your hand, If that's what you think, then just let me wallow in my own ignorance, after all, the birds don't know why they sing, but they still sing, You're very poetic, No, just sad, Hardly surprising considering the life you lead, Imagine the woman on the bus was the woman on the card, imagine I never find her again, that that was the one and only time, that my destiny was there and I let it slip by, You have one way of finding out, What, Do what the old girl in the ground-floor apartment said, Watch your tongue, please, But she is an old girl, She's just getting on a bit, Oh, enough of your hypocrisy, we're all getting on a bit, the question is how much, if it's not much, you're young if it's a lot, you're old, the rest is just idle twaddle, Oh, forget it, All right, Anyway, I'm going to look in the phone book, That's what I've been telling you to do for the last half hour. In pyjamas and slippers and wrapped in a blanket, Senhor José went into the Central Registry. His unusual outfit made him feel rather uneasy, as if he were being disrespectful to the venerable archives, to that eternal yellowish light which, like a moribund sun, hovered above the Registrars desk. The telephone book was there, on one corner of the table, you were not allowed to consult it without permission, even if it was an official call, and now, as he had done before, Senhor José could sit down at the desk, it's true that he had done so only once before, in a peerless moment that had seemed to him triumphant and glorious, but this time he didn't dare, perhaps because he was improperly dressed, out