All the Names Read Online Free PDF Page B

table was the birth certificate of an unknown person, and. it was as if he had placed them both in the pans of a scale, a hundred this side one the other and was surprised to discover that all of them together weighed no more than this one that one hundred equalled one, that one was worth as much as hundred. If someone had gone into his house at that moment and out of the blue asked him My dear sir do you really believe that the one that you are is' also worth the same as a hundred, that the hundred people in your cupboard to be precise are worth the same as you, he would have replied without hesitation, My dear sir, I'm just a clerk, just an ordinary fifty-year-old clerk, who has never even been promoted to senior clerk, if I thought that I was worth the same as even one of the people in there, or worth the same as any one of the five less famous people, I would never have started my collection, Then why is it that you keep staring at the card of that unknown woman, as if she were suddenly more important than all the others, Precisely, my dear sir, because she is unknown, Oh, come on, the card index in the Central Registry is full of unknown people, But they're in the card index, they're not here, What do you mean, I don't quite know, In that case, forget all these metaphysical thoughts for which your brain doesn't seem particularly well suited, go and put the card back in its place and get a good night's sleep, That's what I hope to do, as I do every night, the tone of his reply was conciliatory, but Senhor José had one more thing to add, As for the metaphysical thoughts, my dear sir, allow me to say that any brain is capable of producing them, it's just that we cannot always find the words.
       Contrary to his desire, Senhor José did not have his customary, relatively peaceful night's sleep. He was pursuing through the confused labyrinth of his unmetaphysical head the trail of motives that had led him to copy out the details from the unknown woman's card, and he could not find a single one that could consciously have determined that unexpected action. He could only remember the movement of his left hand picking up a blank card, then his right hand writing, his eyes going from one card to the other, as if, in reality, they were the ones carrying the words from there to here. He also remembered how, to his surprise, he had walked calmly into the Central Registry, the flashlight grasped firmly in his hand, feeling not the least bit nervous or anxious, how he had put the six cards back in their places, how the last had been that of the unknown woman, lit until the last moment by the flashlight beam, then sliding down, disappearing, vanishing between the card bearing the previous letter and the card bearing the subsequent letter, a name on a card, that's all. In the middle of the night, worn out from not sleeping, he turned on the light. Then he got up, put his raincoat on over his underclothes and went and sat at the table. He fell asleep much later, his head resting on his right forearm and his left hand on the copy he had made of the record card.

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       Senhor José's decision appeared two days later. Generally speaking, we don't talk about a decision appearing to us, people jealously guard both their identity, however vague it might be, and their authority, what little they may have, and prefer to give the impression that they reflected deeply before taking the final step, that they pondered the pros and cons, that they weighed up the possibilities and the alternatives, and that, after intense mental effort, they finally made a decision It has to be said that things never happen like that. Obviously it would not enter anyone's head to eat without feeling hungry, and hunger does not depend on our will, it comes into being of its own accord, the result of objective bodily needs, it is a physical and chemical problem whose solution, in a more or less satisfactory way, will be found in the contents of a plate. Even