It was an ordinary foolscap envelope made of cheap paper, already grubby and crumpled, as if someone had kept it too long in their pocket or their hand. This may have been unusual, but it wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened. Now and then, advertising flyers would be pushed under the door, even though most days the door was left open from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon. Whether people did this because they were in a hurry or simply didn’t want to be seen, or even because they couldn’t be bothered to do otherwise, were questions that had never entered, not even momentarily, the quiet, opaque mind of Reis, who enjoyed the honorific title of office boy as well as that of less elevated roles, such as porter, errand boy, cleaner, and even, now and then, shoeshine for the notary Dr. Boaventura’s boots, and the doctor’s assistant and colleague Senhor Silvano’s shoes.
There seemed to be no doubt that Dr. Boaventura was indeed a notary, although the majority of the inhabitants of that small town clearly weren’t entirely convinced. Confirmation, however, was to be found in an old framed certificate, the glass of which had cracked, and where some clearly very competent person declared (in fine Gothic script) that Dr. Raul Heleno Boaventura had graduated from such and such a university in such and such a year. And yet people would still say they didn’t believe a word of it. The truth is that all wills and large bequests automatically bypassed him and ended up in the wise hands of his friend, neighbor, and rival, Margarido. He was given only insignificant documents to witness. Anyway, the certificate confirmed that Dr. Boaventura was a notary. As for Silvano being his assistant… In what way did he assist him? There was really very little that required any assistance.
It was only when Dr. Boaventura reached the age of fifty—or more precisely the exact day on which he turned fifty—that he finally understood that he was doing nothing in this world; or still worse, that he had never done anything in this world. This, it must be said, is something that happens to many people, although only a few go to the trouble of finding it out. Having too much time on his hands certainly contributed, because Dr. Boaventura decided to devote that day—for want of anything better to do and because of Reis’s memory lapse—to examining his conscience, a task to which people rarely devote themselves and one to which they really never should devote themselves. It couldn’t be called a bad habit exactly, but it is nonetheless extremely dangerous and, if one can put it like this, unhealthy. Because there is such a thing as being too clean, which can bring on a bad bout of double pneumonia.
When Dr. Boaventura arrived at the office, he already, all unknowing, carried within him the germ of that examination. He had felt a slight twinge as he was coming up the stairs. For some reason he had thought, “What am I doing in this world?” perhaps because his fiftieth birthday brought with it a certain feeling of melancholy. “Why haven’t I been as successful as Margarido?” he thought. And at the same time: “Why can’t I be like Silvano? Life is such a hard thing to explain,” he had added as he went up the final flight of stairs. “Still, there’s no point worrying about these things, and asking why something turned out this way and not that. That’s life, and that’s all there is to it.” And he shrugged, the equivalent of drawing a line under something.
As he went into the office, though, Reis immediately informed him—once he had said his usual “Good morning, sir, how are you?”—that Silvano had gone to Senhora Dona Amélia’s house. This, among other things, meant—for Boaventura was feeling extremely sensitive that morning—that Reis had forgotten it was his birthday. This, to Dr. Boaventura, was a gross lapse of memory. Reis may have been profoundly stupid, but he had a prodigious memory for dates, addresses, food prices, and telephone numbers. He also knew where to find all the files, which were in less-than-perfect order, as were their contents. On every 17th of March in the past, Reis had always greeted his boss with a broad smile that revealed his rotten teeth and with a few words especially reserved for the occasion: “A very happy birthday, sir, and many happy returns.” And Boaventura would reply, “Thank you, Reis, how very kind of you to remember. I had quite forgotten, and if it wasn’t for you… Of course, when one gets to my age…” Reis would then say that Dr. Boaventura was in fine form, really top notch, and looked much younger than his years. If he, Reis, hadn’t known how old he was… But he did. Reis knew everyone’s age.
On that day, however, nothing like this happened, and Boaventura glanced anxiously around him, as if he suspected that someone had stolen his wallet or pinned a donkey’s tail on his coat. There was something wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Things weren’t right, and he felt uneasy. Reis was, as usual, sweeping the office floor, and, just in case, Boaventura opened the drawer in his desk, the top one on the right, and slyly took out a bottle of nasal spray. A quick squirt up each nostril and he would be immune. Who knows what diseases the dust might cause! Reis continued his sweeping and, as was his custom, talked as he did so:
“What weather, eh? What is going on? I mean, it’s March for heaven’s sake…”
Dr. Boaventura took a risk and said:
“It’s not just March, it’s the 17th of March…”
This was Reis’s cue to spin around, possibly drop his broom, and exclaim in great embarrassment, “Oh, sir, many congratulations!” But he didn’t. He carried on sweeping and merely commented, as he stooped to pick up a paper clip, that he was convinced that the blame lay squarely with the Americans and the Russians. “You just have to look at what’s happening with football…” This change of subject was skillfully done, but not unexpected. Dr. Boaventura knew that any conversation involving Reis, even as a mere onlooker, always ended up, in word or thought, at football, the one area where his ideas could move around with relative ease.
Boaventura stopped him, though, saying that he had some very urgent work to do, and so Reis took his broom out into the corridor, where he sat down to ponder whether the new player Sporting had just bought really would turn out to be as valuable an acquisition as people said.
It was a rainy morning, one of winter’s final tantrums, which needed to be gotten out of the way before spring arrived. Sitting at his desk underneath his framed degree certificate, and opposite the wicker chair—the client’s chair—Dr. Boaventura involuntarily began his examination of conscience.
There wasn’t really much to examine. What can one see in an empty glass except what lies behind it? But what did lie behind his life? His parents’ lives? The endless arguments, that life of constant battles, which had, even then, made him want to withdraw into his shell? He could see his mother, driven to distraction by the slightest sign of fever in him, as if she had no one else but him in the world. Nights spent at his bedside, the wide, anxious gaze he found so troubling. And her words of advice when he set off to school: “Be sure to put your hat on at playtime, because this sun can be very treacherous. And be careful when crossing the road; always look both ways…”
And when he was a child, there had hardly been much traffic in the provincial town where he was born and grew up. Even now, there were still not that many cars. Dona Arminda Guerreiro’s Citroën, the Costa Pais’s Ford, and the one owned by the Vasques family…theirs was the biggest. They were, after all, the richest and most influential family in the town. Property, land, a large factory, a cousin who was a monsignor, an uncle who was a judge… When he was twenty-five, Boaventura had fallen in love with the Vasques’ youngest daughter, Amélia. She had been a slender girl, very fair, with large blue eyes. It was said that she wrote poetry and had a weak chest. When that final detail reached his ears, Boaventura was just about to send her a declaration of love. He had been encouraged to do so by a few glances she had sent his way during the last dance at the local social club. A weak chest. He hesitated. This was not something to be taken lightly. He asked his mother’s advice, and she thought it best to go no further. “You might catch something, Raulinho, and what about your children? You need to think about the children.”
She was right. And so he never said a word to Amélia, who, only yesterday—now a widow and a grandmother—had come to the office to witness a document. And the wicker chair had creaked under her weight. Life! He had stayed a bachelor because of that large woman, now verging on plump, and all that remained of the little Amélia of yesteryear were her sweet, ingenuous blue eyes.
Then his father had died, and he had continued to live with his mother. “Take good care of yourself, Raulinho; you might catch cold, so wrap up warm…” He was Raulinho, and his life was like an old bottle of medicine that had formed a sediment at the bottom. Shake before use, says the label. No, he couldn’t do that. Not now. Was he happy like that? Happy? Well, at least he had no problems to speak of. And why get married? And to whom? Then time passed, and he was already forty, forty-five, forty-nine. Today he was fifty.
He could have had a “nice” career, as his mother used to say. But he hadn’t even managed that. Why? Because he was incapable or just unlucky? He would say it was down to a lack of will. It wasn’t worth it. Why bother? For the same reason, because it wasn’t worth it, he had almost lost touch with his friends. Were they really friends though? Acquaintances more like, yes, acquaintances. Margarido, who proclaimed from the rooftops that Boaventura was utterly useless; Costa Pais, whom he hadn’t seen for more than two months; Silvano…
Silvano was his bête noire. He was everything that Boaventura wasn’t. He was a handsome fellow (“Silvano always looks the same, the years don’t seem to pass for him, he must have made a pact with the Devil,” Amélia had said only yesterday), and he was very bright and totally at ease with himself, something that never failed to astonish Boaventura. Silvano wasn’t always careful (in fact he rarely was), but if Silvano did make some major error, he just had to say a few words, smile sweetly as only he knew how, and people would come and apologize to him. I’m so sorry, sir, so sorry. And as for women, it was positively sickening. Boaventura couldn’t stand his fatuous air, grand gestures that he always made at just the right moment, but the truth was, he had to put up with him, because ten years earlier, he had made him a partner, urged on by his mother, who adored “poor Silvano.” Yes, even his mother. Even her.
And all these thoughts arose because no one had wished him Happy Birthday. Not Reis, not his mother, although she, poor thing, had now squashed all her ideas into a ball, and from that coagulated mass a single idea would occasionally emerge and be repeated obsessively for a while before returning to the ball. His mother had no idea it was his birthday. His mother didn’t even know people had birthdays.
Silvano arrived at around eleven, complete with his calf-leather briefcase, his manicured nails, and a delicate waft of lavender. How did he manage to look so prosperous? True, he was much sought after, people liked him and asked him to collect rents, to deal with demanding tenants, to sell property. And the word was that he was involved with a rich widow.
Amélia! The idea entered his head with the force of an axe striking the trunk of an old tree. Of course, the rich widow must be Amélia. And he was so stupid that it had never once occurred to him. He had mentally run through all the town’s wealthy widows, wondering who it could be… Amélia. No, it was impossible. He could hear her saying yesterday, without a flicker of embarrassment, “That Silvano always looks the same…” He couldn’t believe that she would behave so contemptibly…no he couldn’t.
He picked up the mail just in order to do something, to look as if he were busy. A letter from Lisbon of no importance, the catalog from a bookshop in Porto, another from a manufacturer of sewing machines (why would he want a sewing machine?), an advertisement for a new detergent. Underneath all this the narrow envelope made of cheap paper, crumpled and grubby, that had been laboriously sealed with someone’s spit, then pressed down with their fingers, the way people do who are not in the habit of writing letters. The seal was not properly stuck down, some parts of it not at all. The writing was clumsy; even the address had several spelling errors in it, as well as two ink blots. A letter asking for money or even, who knows, a poison-pen letter.
Boaventura nervously tore open the envelope, all the while thinking of Amélia. The words formed a tangled heap on the cheap paper and were so poorly written as to be almost illegible. There were more inkblots too. The notary began reading in the spirit of someone piecing together a jigsaw puzzle or solving a crossword: to pass the time and to avoid having to think about anything else. Suddenly, though, he gave a yelp, and the piece of paper he had in his right hand and the envelope he was still holding in his left were both hurled into the air, where they hovered briefly before landing near the door. Silvano raised his dark, velvety eyes. Reis ran in, looking distressed and clutching the sports page.
Boaventura was pointing at the letter and saying:
“Quick, Reis, pick it up and flush it down the toilet. It’s a letter from a…leper.”
Reis was already bending down and about to do as he was told. However, he immediately straightened up.
“But I might catch it too, sir.”
“Sweep it up then, man, do whatever you like, but get rid of it!”
Silvano got slowly to his feet. He took a few steps, pushed Reis to one side, picked up the letter, and read it attentively.
“He’s going to come by this afternoon to know what your answer is. Listen, Reis, tell him to go to Senhora Dona Amélia’s house; give him her address. He can say I sent him. She has lots of useful contacts in Lisbon, and I’m sure she’ll find something for him.”
Reis said faintly, reluctantly:
“But will I have to speak to him?”
Silvano laughed and clapped him on the back.
“Don’t be such a coward, man. Don’t worry, you can’t catch leprosy that easily.”
Boaventura felt even more alone and more wretched than ever. What did he want? Even he didn’t know. Perhaps, above all, he wanted it not to be his birthday.