Having placed before him one of the letters that Maria da Paz had written to him some time before, and after a few trial runs to loosen up and prepare his hand, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso transcribed as best he could the sober but elegant signature that concluded the letter. He did this out of respect for the childish and somewhat melancholy desire she had expressed, and not because he thought that the more perfect the forgery the more credible the document would appear, a document that, as mentioned above, will, within a matter of a few days, have vanished from this earth, burned to ashes. It makes one feel like saying, All that work for nothing. The letter is already in the envelope, the stamp is in its place, all he needs to do now is to go down to the street and put it in the postbox on the corner. Since today is a Sunday, the postal van won't be picking up the correspondence, but Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is anxious to be free of the letter as soon as possible. As long as it is here, time will remain as still as a deserted stage, or this, at least, is his vivid impression. The row of videos on the floor provokes in him the same nervous impatience. He wants to clear the stage, to leave no traces, the first act is over, it is time to remove the props. No more of Daniel Santa-Clara's films and no more anxiety, Will he be in this one, Perhaps he won't appear, Will he have a mustache, Will he wear his hair parted in the middle, no more putting little crosses by names, the puzzle has been solved. It was at this moment that he remembered the call he had made to the first of the Santa-Claras in the phone book, that house where no one had responded. Shall I try again, he wondered. If he did, if someone answered, if they said, yes, Daniel Santa-Clara did live there, the letter that had cost him so much mental labor would become unnecessary, dispensable, he could tear it up and throw it in the wastepaper basket, as useless as the failed drafts that had prepared the way for the final version. He realized that he needed a pause, a respite, even just a week or two, the time it would take for the production company to reply, a period in which he could pretend that he had never seen
The Race Is to the Swift or the hotel receptionist, knowing that this false calm, this appearance of tranquility, would have a limit, an imminent expiration date, and that when it was time, the curtain would rise inexorably on the second act. But he realized too that if he didn't try to phone again, he would remain tethered thereafter to the obsessive idea that he had behaved in a cowardly fashion in a fight to which no one had challenged him and into which he had entered of his own free will, having himself provoked it. Searching for a man called Daniel Santa-Clara who did not even know he was the object of a search, this was the absurd situation Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had created, more suited to the plot of a detective novel with no known criminal, and quite unjustifiable in the hitherto uneventful life of a history teacher. Caught thus with his back to the wall, he made an agreement with himself, I'll phone once more, if someone answers and says that Daniel Santa-Clara lives there, I'll throw the letter away and deal with whatever the consequences might be, I'll decide then whether to speak or not, but, if they don't answer, then the letter will be sent off and I'll never phone the number again, come what may. The feeling of hunger he had felt up until then had been replaced by a kind of nervous palpitation in the pit of his stomach, but the decision had been made, he would not go back on it. The number was dialed, the phone rang somewhere in the distance, the sweat started trickling slowly down his face, the phone rang and rang, it was clear there was no one at home, but Tertuliano Máximo Afonso defied fate, he gave his adversary one last chance to pick up the phone, until the ringing became a strident victory cry and the telephone fell silent of its own accord. Right, he said out loud, let no one say of me that I failed in my duty. He felt suddenly calmer than he had in a long time. His period of rest had begun, he could go into the bathroom with a clear head, shave, shower unhurriedly, and get dressed carefully, Sundays tend to be dull, gloomy days, but there are some when one feels glad to have been born. It was too late to have breakfast and too early for lunch, he would have to fill the time somehow, he could go out and buy a newspaper and come back, he could look over the lesson he has to teach tomorrow, he could sit down and read a few more pages of