Senhor José had yet another difficult night to add to other recent nights that had been no better. Meanwhile, despite the intense emotions experienced during his brief nocturnal excursion, he had just pulled the top part of the sheet over his ears, as was his custom, and had already fallen into a sleep which, at first glance, any other person would have described as deep and restful, when he was jerked into wakefulness again, as if some disrespectful, inconsiderate person had shaken him by the shoulder. He was woken by an unexpected idea that erupted into the middle of his sleep in such a devastating fashion that there wasn't even time for a dream to become woven about it, the idea that perhaps the unknown woman, the one on the card, was in fact the woman he had heard rocking the child, the one with the impatient husband, in which case his search would have ended, foolishly, at the very point when it should begin. His throat tightened with sudden anxiety, while his beleaguered reason tried to resist, it wanted him not to care, to say, Just as well really, that'll mean less work for me to do, but the anxiety would not let go, it continued to tighten and tighten its grip, and now it was his anxiety asking his reason, What's he going to do if he can't carry out this plan of his, He'll do what he always did, he'll collect newspaper clippings, photographs, news items, interviews, as if nothing had happened, Poor thing, I don't think he'll be able to, Why not, Because anxiety, when it comes, isn't that easy to get rid of, He could choose another record card and go in search of that person instead, Chance doesn't choose, it proposes, it was chance that brought him the unknown woman, and only chance has any say in these matters, There's no shortage of strangers in the files, But he has no reason to choose one rather than another, one in particular, and not just one of many, It doesn't seem a very good rule in life to let yourself be guided by chance, Regardless of whether it's a good rule or not, whether it's convenient or not, it was chance that put that card in his hands, And what if that woman is the same one, If she is, then that was what chance offered, With no further consequences, Who are we to speak of consequences, when out of the interminable line of consequences that come marching ceaselessly towards us we can only ever distinguish the first, Does that mean something could still happen, Not just something, everything, I don't understand, It's only because we live so sunk in ourselves that we don't notice that what is actually happening to us leaves intact, at every moment, what might happen to us, Does that mean that what might happen is constandy being regenerated, It's not only being regenerated, it's multiplying, you just have to compare the events of two consecutive days, I never thought of it like that, These are things known only to the angst-ridden.
As if this conversation had nothing to do with him, Senhor José tossed and turned in bed unable to get back to sleep, If she is the woman on the card, he repeated, if, after all this, she is the same woman, I'll tear up that wretched card and think no more about it. He knew he was merely trying to disguise his disappointment, he knew that he could not bear to return to his usual gestures and thoughts, it was as if he had been on the point of setting off to discover a mysterious island and, at the last moment, with his foot already on the gangplank, someone had come up to him holding an outspread map, There's no point in your going now, the unknown island you wanted to find is here, look, on latitude so-and-so, longitude such and such, it's got ports and cities, mountains and rivers, all with their names and histories, you'd better just resign yourself to being who you are. But Senhor José did not want to resign himself, he continued to stare out at the horizon that appeared to be lost, and suddenly, as if a black cloud had lifted and allowed the sun to shine through, he realised that the idea which had woken him was misleading, he remembered that there were two entries on the card, one for marriage, the other for divorce, and the woman in that apartment was certainly married, if it was the same woman, there should be another entry on the card for a second marriage, of course, the Central Registry did sometimes make mistakes, but Senhor José preferred not to think about that.