It was already dark when the nurse arrived. In fulfilment of the orders he had received from the Registrar, he brought with him the pills and phials that the doctor had prescribed, but, to Senhor José's surprise, he also brought a package which he placed gingerly down on the table and said, I hope it's still hot, I hope I haven't spilled anything, which meant that there was food inside, as the Mowing words confirmed, Eat it while it's hot, but first, I'll give you that injection. Now, Senhor José did not like injections, especially ones into the veins in the arm, when he always had to look away, which was why he was so pleased when the nurse told him that the jab would be in his posterior, he was very polite, this nurse, from another age, he had got used to using the term "posterior" instead of bottom so as not to shock the sensibilities of lady patients, and had almost ended up forgetting the usual term, he used "posterior" even when he was dealing with patients for whom "bottom" was merely a ridiculous euphemism and who preferred the vulgar variant "bum." The unexpected appearance of food and the relief he felt at not being injected in the arm broke down Senhor José's defences, or perhaps he simply forgot, or more simply still, perhaps he hadn't noticed until then that his pyjama trousers were stained with blood at the knees, a consequence of his nocturnal adventures as a climber of school roofs. The nurse, holding the syringe prepared and ready, instead of saying Turn over, asked, What's that, and Senhor José, converted by this lesson from life to the definitive kindness of injections in the arm, replied instinctively, I fell down, You don't have much luck do you, first you fall down, then you get the flu, it's just as well you've got a kind boss, now turn over, then I'll take a look at those knees. Debilitated in body, soul and will, his nerves shattered, Senhor José almost burst into tears like a child when he felt the needle go in and the slow, painful entry of the liquid into the muscle, I'm a wreck, he thought, and it was true, a poor feverish human animal, lying on a poor bed in a poor house, with the dirty clothes worn to carry out the crime hidden away, and a damp stain on the floor that seemed never to dry. Turn over onto your back again, and let's have a look at those knees, said the nurse, and sighing, coughing, Senhor José obeyed, heaving himself around again, and now, bending forwards, he can see the nurse rolling up his pyjama legs above the knee, he can see him removing the dirty plasters, dabbing peroxide on them and very carefully and slowly unsticking them, fortunately he's a real professional, the bag he carries with him is a veritable first-aid kit, he has a cure for almost everything. When he saw the wounds, the look on his face was that of someone unconvinced by Senhor José's explanation, that business about a fall, his experience of grazes and bruises even led him to remark with unconscious perspicacity, Anyone would think you'd been rubbing your knees against a wall, I told you. I fell, Did you tell your boss about this, It's nothing to do with work, a person can have a fall without telling his superiors, Unless the nurse they've called in to give you an injection has to do some extra work, Which I didn't ask for, No, that's true you didn't, but if tomorrow you come down with a serious infection because of these wounds, then who's going to get blamed for neglect and lack of professionalism, me, besides, the boss likes to know everything, that's his way of pretending that he doesn't care about anything, All right, I'll tell him tomorrow, I would advise you most strongly to do so, that way the report will be confirmed, What report, Mine, I can't see that a few simple grazes can be significant enough to be mentioned in a report, Even the simplest graze is significant, Once mine have healed they'll leave nothing but a few small scars that will disappear in time, Ah, yes, wounds heal over on the body, but in the report they always stay open, they neither close up nor disappear, I don't understand, How long have you been working at the Central Registry, Going on twenty-six years, How many Registrars have you had up until now, Including this one, three, And you've never noticed anything, Noticed what, You've never twigged, I don't know what you mean, Is it or is it not true that the Registrars have very little to do, It's true, everyone says so, Then it's time you knew that, in the many empty hours they enjoy while their staff are working, their main occupation is collecting information about their subordinates, all kinds of information, they've been doing it for as long as the Central Registry has existed, one after the other, from the very beginning. Senhor José shuddered, which did not pass unnoticed by the nurse, You shuddered, he said, Yes, I did, Just so that you have a clearer idea of what I'm telling you, even that shudder must appear in my report, But it won't, No, it won't, I know why, Tell me, Because then you would have to say that the shudder occurred when you were telling me that the bosses collect information about the staff at the Central Registry and the boss would be bound to want to know why you had that conversation with me and also how a nurse came to know about such a confidential matter, so confidential that in twenty-five years of working in the Central Registry I have never heard anything about it, There's a lot of the confidant in nurses, although rather less so than with doctors, Are you insinuating that the Registrar confides in you, I'm not saying that he does, I'm not even insinuating that he should, I simply take orders, So then you just have to follow them, No, you're wrong, I have to do a great deal more than just follow them, I have to interpret them, Why, Because there's usually a difference between what he tells me to do and what he actually wants, He sent you here so that you could give me an injection, That's how it would appear, And what did you see in this case, apart from what it appears to be, You can't imagine the number of things you can discover by looking at someone's wounds, You only saw them by chance, You can never discount chance, it's a great help, What did you discover in my wounds then, That you grazed them on a wall, I fell, So you said, Information like that, always supposing that it's true, wouldn't be of much help to the Registrar, It doesn't matter to me whether it is or not, I just write the reports, He already knows about the flu, But not about the wounds on your knees, He knows about the damp stain on the floor too, But not about the shudder, If you've nothing further to do here, I'd be grateful if you'd leave, I'm tired, I need to sleep, You must eat first, don't forget, I hope your supper hasn't gone completely cold after all this talking You don't need much food when you're just lying in bed, But you. need some, Was it the Registrar who told you to bring me some food, Do you know anyone else who might have done it, Yes, if she knew where I lived, Who, An elderly lady who lives in a ground-floor apartment Wounds on the knees a sudden unexplained shudder an old lady in a ground-floor apartment, Yes ground floor right, This would be the most important report I've ever written in my life if I wrote it You're not going to write it though, Yes I am, but only to say that I gave you an injection, Thank you for cleaning my wounds, Of all the things I was taught, that's what I'm best at. After the nurse had left, Senhor José remained lying down for a few more minutes, not moving, recovering his calm and his strength. It had proved a difficult dialogue, with traps and false doors swinging open at every step, the slightest slip could have dragged him into a full and complete confession if his mind had not been attentive to the multiple meanings of the words he carefully pronounced, especially those that appeared to have only one meaning, those are the ones you have to be most careful with. Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide into branches and branchlets, until they disappear from view, the sense of every word is like a star hurling spring tides out into space, cosmic winds, magnetic perturbations, afflictions.