Given that preference is likely to be given to a device blessed with the seal of academic approval, the easiest thing for the relater or narrator, having reached this point, would be to say that nothing happened during the history teacher's homeward journey across the city. Like a time machine, especially when professional scruples will not permit the invention of a public fracas or a traffic accident just to fill in any gaps in the plot, those words, Nothing Happened, are used when there is an urgent need to move on to the next incident or when, for example, one does not know quite what to do with the character's own thoughts, especially if these bear no relation to the existential milieu in which the character is supposed to live and work. The teacher and fledgling lover of videos, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, is in precisely this situation as he is driving his car. He was in fact thinking, a lot and very intensely, but his thoughts bore so little relevance to the last twenty-four hours he had just lived through that if we were to take them into account and include them in this novel, the story we had decided to tell would inevitably have to be replaced by another. True, it might be worthwhile, or rather, since we know everything about Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's thoughts, we know that it would be worthwhile, but this would mean declaring all our hard work, these forty or so dense, difficult pages, null and void, and going back to the beginning, to the ironic, insolent first page, throwing away all that honest toil to take a chance on an adventure, not just new and different, but also highly dangerous, for, of this we are sure, that is precisely where Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's thoughts would lead us. Let us remain therefore with this bird in the hand, rather than suffer the disappointment of seeing two fly away. Besides, we haven't got time for anything else. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has just parked his car and is walking the short distance to his apartment, in one hand he has his teacher's briefcase, in the other the plastic bag, what will he be thinking about now apart from calculating how many videos he will manage to view, to use the more formal term, before going to bed, that's what comes of taking an in terest in bit-part players, if he were a star, he'd be there in the very first scenes. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has already opened the front door, gone in, and closed the door behind him, he puts the briefcase down on the desk and, beside it, the bag containing the videos. The air is free of any presences, or perhaps they are simply not apparent, as if what came into the apartment last night had meanwhile become an inseparable part of it. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso went to his room to change his clothes, opened the fridge in the kitchen to see if there was anything in it he fancied eating, closed it again, and went back into the living room with a can of beer and a glass. He took the videos out of the bag and arranged them in order of date of production, from the oldest,
The Accursed Code, made two years before The Race Is to the Swift, which he has already seen, to the most recent, The Goddess of the Stage, from last year. The other four, in the same order, are Passenger without a Ticket, Death Strikes at Dawn, The Alarm Rang Twice, and Phone Me Another Day. An involuntary reflex movement, doubtless provoked by the last of these titles, made him turn and look at his own phone. The light on the machine was blinking, informing him that there were messages for him. He hesitated for a few seconds but ended up pressing the button to hear them. The first was a female voice that did not announce its identity, knowing presumably that it would be instantly recognized, it said only, It's me, then went on, I don't know what's wrong, but you haven't phoned me for a week now, if you want to end the relationship, then it would be better to tell me so to my face, surely this silence isn't to do with the fact that we quarreled the other day, well, only you know that, anyway, just to say that I still care about you, lots of love, bye. The second message was the same voice, Please phone me. There was a third message, but this was from the mathematics teacher, Listen, my friend, I got the impression that I did something today to annoy you, but, to be perfectly honest, I can't imagine what it was I did or said, I think we should talk and clear up any possible misunderstanding between us, if I owe you an apology, then please take this call as at least the beginning of one, all the best, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you that you have a friend in me. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso frowned, he vaguely remembered that something irritating or unpleasant had happened at school involving the mathematics teacher, but he couldn't remember what it was. He rewound the tape and listened again to the first two messages, this time with a half smile and a look on his face that is usually described as dreamy. He got up to remove the tape of The Race Is to the Swift from the VCR and to replace it with The Accursed Code, but at the last moment, his finger already on the play button, he realized that, if he went on, he would be committing a grave infraction, omitting one of the sequential points in the plan of action he had drawn up, that is, copying down from the end of The Race Is to the Swift the names of the lowest-ranking bit-part actors, the ones who, even though they occupy time and space in the story, even though they say a few words and serve as satellites, tiny ones, of course, at the service of the interconnections and crossed orbits of the stars, do not even have the right to one of those temporary names, as necessary in life as in fiction, although we should not perhaps say so. He could, of course, do it afterward, at another time, but order, as people also say of the dog, is man's best friend, although, like the dog, it does occasionally bite. Everything in its place and a place for everything has always been the golden rule in prosperous families, just as, time and again, do what you have to do in good order has been shown to be the most solid insurance policy against the phantoms of chaos. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso quickly wound on the now familiar tape of The Race Is to the Swift, paused it at the relevant place, copied onto a sheet of paper the names of the men, only the men, because this time, most unusually, the object of the search is not a woman. We assume this provides an adequate explanation of the plan Tertuliano Máximo Afonso drew up during his long deliberations, that is, to try and identify the hotel receptionist, the one who was the spitting image of himself in the days when he had a mustache, and who doubtless continues to be so today without the mustache, and, who knows, tomorrow too, when the receding hairline of one begins to move in the direction of the baldness of the other. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's plan was, like Columbus's discovery of the Indies, obvious once one had thought of it, to note down all the names of the supporting actors, both in the films in which the receptionist appeared and those in which he did not. For example, if his human copy does not appear in the film, The Accursed Code, that he has just slotted in the VCR, he can strike from the first list all those actors who also appeared in The Race Is to the Swift. As we know, a Neanderthal's brain would be no use at all in a situation like this, but for a history teacher accustomed to grappling with people from the most various places and times, why, only yesterday he was reading a chapter on the Amorites in that erudite tome about ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, this poor man's version of a treasure hunt is pure child's play and probably did not merit, on our part, such a detailed and comprehensive explanation. In the end, contrary to all our expectations, the hotel receptionist did appear in