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BY CHANCE OR FOR SOME OTHER UNKNOWN REASON, SOMEone must have gone to tell the headmaster that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso was in the staff room, apparently filling in time until lunch, since all he had done since going in there had been to read the newspapers. He wasn't marking homework, he wasn't putting the final touches to a lesson plan, he wasn't making notes, he was just reading the newspapers. He had begun by taking from his briefcase the receipt for the rental of the thirty-six videos, which he unfolded and placed on the table, then he looked for the entertainment page in the first newspaper, the cinema section. He would do the same with another two newspapers. Although, as we know, his addiction to the seventh art is very recent and his ignorance about anything to do with the image industry unchanged, he knew, assumed, imagined, or guessed that any new releases would not be launched immediately onto the video market. In order to reach this conclusion he did not need to be endowed with a prodigious deductive intelligence or with some extraordinary access to a knowledge beyond reason, it was a simple and obvious matter of applying very ordinary common sense and looking under the section devoted to videos to buy and rent. He looked for cinemas that showed older films, and, one by one, ballpoint in hand, he compared the titles of the films shown there with those on the receipt, marking the titles on the latter with a small cross whenever they coincided. If anyone were to ask Tertuliano Máximo Afonso why he was doing this, if he intended going to those cinemas to see films he already had on video, he would probably look at us surprised, astonished, perhaps offended that we judged him capable of such an absurd act, not that he would give us an acceptable explanation either, apart from the one that erects walls to keep out other people's curiosity and which in two words says, Just because. Meanwhile, we, who have been privy to the history teacher's intimate thoughts and have insinuated ourselves into his secrets, can tell you that the sole point of this absurd undertaking is to keep his attention fixed on the one objective that has obsessed him for the last three days, or to prevent his attention from becoming distracted, for example, by reading the news in the newspapers, as the other teachers present in the room probably imagine he is doing now. Life, however, is made in such a way that even doors we considered firmly locked and bolted against the world find themselves at the mercy of the modest, solicitous errand boy who has just come into the room to announce to the history teacher that the headmaster would very much like to see him in his office. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso got to his feet, folded up the newspapers, put the receipt back in his briefcase, and went out into the corridor where some of the classrooms were. The headmaster's office was on the floor above, and the stairs that led up to it had, in the roof, a skylight so opaque inside and so grimy outside that, winter and summer, it allowed in only a miserly amount of natural light. He went down another passageway and stopped at the sec ond door. The green light was lit, and so he rapped on the door and opened it when he heard a voice inside say, Come in, then he said his good mornings, shook the headmaster's hand, and, at a sign from him, sat down. Whenever he went into this room, he had the feeling that he had seen this same office somewhere else, it was like one of those dreams we know we have dreamed but which we cannot manage to recall when we wake up. The floor was carpeted, there were thick curtains at the window, the desk was large and old-fashioned, the black leather armchair modern. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso knew this furniture, these curtains, this carpet, or thought he did, one possibility is that he had one day read in a novel or a story the brief description of another office belonging to another headmaster of another school, in which case, if this could be proved with book in hand, he would be forced to replace, with a banal occurrence that could happen to anyone endowed with a reasonable memory, something that he had always thought, up until now, was an intersection between his routine life and the majestic circular flow of the eternal return. Fantasies. Absorbed in these visions, the history teacher had not heard the headmaster's first words, but we, who will always be around lest anything be missed, can safely say that he did not miss much, merely the reciprocation of his good morning, the question, How have you been, the preamble I asked you to come and see me, but from then on, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso was there in body and in spirit, with the light of his eyes and understanding awake. I asked you to come and see me, said the headmaster again because he noticed what appeared to be an air of distraction on the other man's face, to talk to you about what you said at yesterday's meeting about the teaching of history, What did I say at yesterday's meeting, asked Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, Don't you remember, Well, I have a vague idea, but my head's not very clear, I didn't sleep much last night, Are you ill, No, not ill, just slightly anxious, that's all, That's bad enough, Really, sir, it's of no importance, there's no need to worry, What you said, word for word, I've got it written down on this piece of paper, was that the only serious decision to be taken as regards the teaching of history is whether we should teach it from back to front or from front to back, It's not the first time I've said that, Precisely, you've said it so often that your colleagues no longer take it seriously, they start to smile as soon as you say the first words, My colleagues are lucky, they're easily amused, and you, And I what, Do you take me seriously, I wonder, or do you too smile as soon as I say the first words, or perhaps the second, You know me well enough to realize that I'm not easily amused, still less in a situation like that, as for taking you seriously, there's no question, you're one of our best teachers, the students admire and respect you, which, these days, is nothing short of miraculous, So why did you ask to see me, Just to ask you not to repeat, That business about the only serious decision to be taken, Yes, In that case, I won't open my mouth in meetings anymore, if someone thinks they have something important to say and the others don't want to hear it, then it's best to keep quiet, Personally, I've always found your idea very interesting, Thank you, sir, but don't tell me that, tell my colleagues, tell the ministry, besides, it's not even my idea, I didn't invent it, people far more competent than me have proposed and defended it, Without noticeable success, That's understandable, sir, talking about the past is the easiest thing there is, it's all written down, it's just a question of repeating, of parroting, of checking in books what students write in their essays or say in the oral exams, whereas talking about a present that is exploding in our face at every minute, talking about it every day of the year and at the same time navigating the river of History back to the source, or thereabouts, always struggling to get a better understanding of the chain of events that has brought us where we are now, that's quite another story, it's a lot of work, requires great perseverance in its application, you have to keep the rope pulled tight all the time, What you've just said is admirable, indeed, I think even the minister would be persuaded by your eloquence, Hm, I doubt it, sir, ministers are put there in order to persuade us, Look, I withdraw what I said before, from now on, I'll support you all the way, Thank you, but it's best not to foster illusions, the system has to render accounts to the person in charge and that's a kind of arithmetic they don't like at all, We'll insist, Someone once said that all the great truths are basically trivial and so we have to find new ways, preferably paradoxical ways, of expressing them, in order to keep them from falling into oblivion, Who said that, A German, a man called Schlegel, but others probably said it before him, It makes you think, though, Yes, but what I like most about it is the fascinating assertion that the great truths are just so much trivia, the rest, the supposed need for a new, paradoxical way of expressing them and thus prolonging their existence and giving them substance doesn't really concern me, after all, I'm just a history teacher in a secondary school, We should talk more, my friend, There isn't time to do everything, sir, besides, there are my other colleagues who doubtless have more important things to tell you, for example, how to find easy amusement in difficult words, and the students, we mustn't forget the students, poor things, who, if they didn't have someone to talk to, might one day end up with nothing to say, imagine what school life would be like with everyone talking to each other, we'd never get anything done, and work calls. The headmaster looked at his watch and said, So does lunch, let's go and eat. He got up, walked around his desk, and, in a spontaneous expression of real regard, placed his hand on the shoulder of the history teacher, who had also stood up. There was, inevitably, something paternalistic about this gesture, but coming as it did from the headmaster, this was only natural, only right even, human relations being what we know them to be. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's hypersensitive electricity generator did not react to this touch, a sign that there had been no troublesome hyperbole in the headmaster's show of appreciation, or, who knows, perhaps it was just that this morning's illuminating conversation with the mathematics teacher had simply unplugged the generator. One can never repeat too often that other trivial truth, that small causes can produce great results. When the headmaster went back to his desk to fetch his glasses, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso looked around the room, saw the curtains, the black leather armchair, the carpet, and again thought, I've been here before. Then, perhaps because someone had suggested that he might merely have read somewhere a description of an office similar to this, he added another thought, Reading is probably another way of being in a place. The headmaster's glasses were now safely in his top jacket pocket and he was saying, smiling, Off we go then, and Tertuliano Máximo Afonso will be unable to explain now or ever why the air seems to have thickened, as if impregnated with an invisible presence, as intense and powerful as the one that roused him brusquely from his bed after watching that first video. He thought, If I had been here before I became a schoolteacher, what I'm feeling now could be nothing more than a memory of myself reactivated by my current nervous state. The remainder of that thought, if there was a remain der, was never developed, the headmaster was taking his arm and saying something about great lies, wondering if they were also trivial, and if paradoxes could stop them from falling into oblivion too. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso just managed to pick up the thread at the very last moment, Great truths, great lies, I suppose in time everything becomes trivial, the usual dishes with the same old sauce, he replied, Now I hope that isn't a criticism of our kitchens, joked the headmaster, Certainly not, I'm a regular customer, responded Tertuliano Máximo Afonso in the same vein. They went downstairs to the canteen and, on the way, were joined by the mathematics teacher and a teacher of English, which meant that the headmaster's table was full for that lunchtime. So, said the mathematics teacher in a low voice, while the headmaster and the English teacher went on ahead of them, how are you feeling, Good, very good actually, Did you have a little chat, Yes, he called me to his office to ask me not to bring up that business of teaching topsy-turvy history again, Topsy-turvy, It's just a figure of speech, And what did you say, Oh, I explained my point of view for the hundredth time and I think I finally managed to persuade him that my crazy idea was not quite as dotty as he had always thought, A victory, Which won't get us anywhere, True enough, though, of course, one can never be quite sure where exactly victories get us anyway, sighed the mathematics teacher, Whereas everyone knows where defeats get us, especially the people who poured everything they were and everything they had into the battle, but no one pays any attention to that particular lesson from history, Anyone would think you were fed up with your job, Perhaps I am, it's just that we seem to be putting the same old sauce on the usual dishes, nothing changes, Are you thinking of leaving teaching, I don't know exactly, or even vaguely, what I think or want, but I imagine it would be a good idea, To abandon teaching, To abandon anything. They went into the canteen, sat down at a table for four, and the headmaster, as he unfurled his napkin, said to Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, I'd like you to tell our colleagues here what you told me just now, About what, About your very original concept for the teaching of history. The English teacher began to smile, but the look that the history teacher gave her, deadpan, absent, and, at the same time, cold, froze the smile just beginning to appear on her lips. Always assuming concept is the right word, sir, it's not in the least original, that particular laurel wreath was not meant for my head, said Tertuliano Máximo Afonso after a pause, Ah, yes, but the speech that convinced me was yours, retorted the headmaster. In an instant, the history teacher's gaze left the canteen, went down the corridor, up to the next floor, through the locked door of the headmaster's office, saw what it was expecting to see, then returned by the same route, and became present again, but this time, there was in his gaze a look of troubled perplexity, a tremor of disquiet that bordered on fear. It was him, it was him, it was him, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso repeated over and over to himself, while, with his eyes fixed on his colleague the mathematics teacher, he restated, using more or less the same words, the various stages of his metaphorical navigation up the river of Time. He didn't say the river of History now, he felt that river of Time would have more impact. The English teacher was looking at him, grave faced. She is about sixty years old, a mother and a grandmother, and contrary to first impressions, she is not one of those people who go through life dispensing mocking smiles right, left, and center. What happened was only what has happened to so many of us, we go astray not because we intended to but because we saw in that going astray a connecting link, a comfortable complicity, a knowing wink from someone who thought they understood what was going on, purely on the say-so of others. When Tertuliano Máximo Afonso ended his brief speech, he saw that he had convinced someone else. The English teacher murmured shyly, You could do the same thing with languages, I mean, teach them in the same way, and navigate back up to the source of the river, perhaps that way we might get a clearer understanding of what it means to speak, There's no shortage of specialists on that subject, commented the headmaster, But I'm not one of them, I'm expected to teach English in a complete void, as if nothing had existed before. The mathematics teacher said, smiling, I don't think these methods would work with arithmetic, the number ten is stubbornly invariable, it didn't even have to be a nine first nor is it consumed with ambition to be an eleven. The food had been brought to the table and the conversation turned to other things. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso was no longer so sure that the person responsible for the invisible plasma dissolving in the atmosphere of the headmaster's office was the bank clerk. Or the hotel receptionist. Especially not with that ridiculous little mustache, he thought, and then, smiling sadly to himself, I must be losing my mind. In the class he gave after lunch, he spent the whole lesson, completely inappropriately and apropos of nothing, since the subject was not part of the syllabus, discoursing on the Amorites, on Hammurabi's code of law, the Babylonian legal system, the god Marduk, the Accadian language, with the result that he changed the view of the student who, the day before, had whispered to his neighbor that the teacher looked really pissed off. The much more radical diagnosis now was that he either had a screw loose or else a screw with a badly worn thread. Fortunately, the next class, for younger students, went smoothly enough. A single passing reference to historical films was greeted with passionate interest by the class, but that was as far as the divertimento went, there was no mention of Cleopatra or Spartacus, nor of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, nor even of the everreliable Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte. A fairly forgettable day, thought Tertuliano Máximo Afonso when he got into his car to go home. He was being unjust to the day and to himself, after all, he had won over the headmaster and the English teacher to his reforming ideas, there would be one less person smiling at the next staff meeting, and, anyway, he has nothing to fear from the former, who, as we found out a few hours ago, is not easily amused.

The house was clean and tidy, the bed as neat as a marriage bed, the kitchen bright as a new pin, the bathroom exuding detergent odors, a sort of lemon smell, which one had only to breathe in for one's body to be purified and one's soul to be exalted. On the days when the upstairs neighbor comes to bring order to this single man's apartment, the occupier eats supper out, he feels it would show a lack of respect to soil plates, light matches, peel potatoes, open cans, and then put a frying pan on the stove, that would be unthinkable, the oil would spurt everywhere. The restaurant is close by, last time he was there he ate meat, this evening he will eat fish, it's good to make changes, if we're not careful, life can quickly become predictable, monotonous, a drag. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has always been a very careful man. The thirty-six videos he brought from the shop are piled up on the small coffee table in the living room, the three remaining from the previous visit, and which have not yet been seen, are in a drawer in the desk, the magnitude of the task ahead is quite simply overwhelming, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso would not wish it on his worst enemy, not that he knows who that might be, perhaps because he is still young, perhaps because he has always been so careful with life. To pass the time until supper, he started putting the videos in order according to the dates when the original film was issued, and since they would not fit on the table or on the desk, he decided to line them up on the floor, at the bottom of one of the bookshelves, the oldest, on the left, is called A Man Like Any Other, the most recent, on the right, The Goddess of the Stage. If Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had been consistent with the ideas he has been defending about the teaching of history to the point of applying them, insofar as this was possible, to his everyday activities, he would watch this row of videos from front to back, that is, he would begin with The Goddess of the Stage and end with A Man Like Any Other. We all know, however, that the enormous weight of tradition, habit, and custom that occupies the greater part of our brain bears down pitilessly on the more brilliant and innovative ideas of which the remaining part is capable, and although it is true that, in some cases, this weight can balance the excesses and extravagances of the imagination that would lead us God knows where were they given free rein, it is equally true that it often has a way of subtly submitting what we believed to be our free will to unconscious tropisms, like a plant that does not know why it will always have to lean toward the side from which the light comes. The history teacher will therefore faithfully follow the teaching program placed in his hands and will therefore watch the videos from back to front, from the oldest to the most recent, from the days of effects that we did not need to call natural to these days of effects we call special and which, because we don't know how they are created, fabricated, or produced, should really be given a much more neutral name. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has returned from supper, he did not, after all, have fish, the dish on offer was monkfish, and he does not like monkfish, that benthonic marine creature that lives on the sandy or muddy sea bottom, from inshore areas to depths greater than a thousand meters, that can measure up to two meters in length and weigh more than forty kilos, with a vast, flat head equipped with very strong teeth, which, in short, is a most disagreeable animal to look at and one that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's palate, nose, and stomach have never been able to tolerate. He is gleaning all this information now from an encyclopedia, finally prompted by curiosity to find out something about this creature that he has detested since the first day he saw it. This curiosity dates from times past, from years back, but today, inexplicably, he is giving it due satisfaction. Inexplicably, we said, and yet we should know that this is not so, we should know that there is no logical, objective explanation for the fact that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has spent years and years knowing nothing about the monkfish apart from its appearance and the taste and consistency of the pieces put on his plate, and then suddenly, at a certain moment on a certain day, as if he had nothing more urgent to do, he opens the encyclopedia and finds out more. We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we collect others through education, conversation, our contact with books, and yet, in comparison, there are only a tiny number about whose meaning, sense, and denotation we would have absolutely no doubts if, one day, we were to ask ourselves seriously what they meant. Thus we affirm and deny, thus we convince and are convinced, thus we argue, deduce, and conclude, wandering fearlessly over the surface of concepts about which we have only the vaguest of ideas, and, despite the false air of confidence that we generally affect as we feel our way along the road in the verbal darkness, we manage, more or less, to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other. If we had time and if impatient curiosity were to prick us, we would always end up finding out exactly what a monkfish was. The next time the waiter at the restaurant suggests this inelegant member of the Lophiidae family, the history teacher will know what to say, What, that hideous benthonic creature that lives in the sand or on the muddy sea bottom, and will add firmly, Certainly not. Responsibility for this tedious piscine and linguistic digression lies entirely with Tertuliano Máximo Afonso for having taken such a long time to put A Man Like Any Other in the VCR, as if he were hesitating at the foot of a mountain, pondering the effort required to reach the summit. Like nature, they say, a narrative abhors a vacuum, which is why, since Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has, in this interval, done nothing worth telling, we had no option but to improvise some padding to more or less fill up the time required by the situation. Now that he has decided to take the video out of its box and put it in the VCR, we can relax.

After an hour, the actor still had not appeared, and it seemed likely that he was not in the film. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso fast-forwarded the tape to the end, carefully read the credits, and removed from his list of participants any names that were repeated. If we had asked him to explain in his own words what he had just watched, he would probably have shot us the angry glance one reserves for the impertinent and replied with another question, Do I look like someone who would be interested in such vulgarities. We would have to agree with him here, because the films he has so far seen clearly belong to the so-called B-movie category, films made quickly for quick consumption and which aspire only to help pass the time without troubling the spirit, as the mathematics teacher had so neatly put it, albeit in other words. Another video has been put in the VCR, this one is called A Merry Life, and Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's twin will appear in the role of doorman at a cabaret or nightclub, it will be impossible to gauge with any clarity which of the two definitions best suits this place of worldly delights that is the scene of jollities shamelessly copied from various versions of The Merry Widow. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso thought at first that it wasn't worth watching the whole film, he already knew what he needed to know, that is, whether his other self appeared in the story, but the plot was so gratuitously convoluted that he let himself be carried along until the end, surprised to notice stirrings inside him of compassion for the poor devil who, apart from opening and closing the doors of cars, did nothing but raise and lower his peaked cap to greet the elegant clientele as they came and went, with a grave though not always subtle blend of respect and complicity. At least I'm a teacher of history, he murmured. A statement like that, made with the overt intention of pointing up and emphasizing his superiority, not only professionally, but also morally and socially, compared with the insignificance of the character's role, was crying out for a response that would restore courtesy to its proper place, and this was supplied by his common sense with an unusual touch of irony, Beware of pride, Tertuliano, think of what you've missed by not being an actor, they could have made your character a headmaster, a teacher of mathematics, but since you obviously couldn't be an English teacher of the female sex, you'll just have to be a plain old male teacher. Pleased with the warning note it had sounded, common sense, deciding to strike while the iron was hot, again brought the hammer down hard, Obviously, you'd have to have some slight talent for acting, but apart from that, my friend, as sure as my name is Common Sense, they would be bound to make you change your name, no self-respecting actor would dare to appear in public with that ridiculous Tertuliano, you'd have no option but to adopt an attractive pseudonym, although, on second thoughts, that might not be necessary, Máximo Afonso wouldn't be bad, think about it. A Merry Life returned to its box, the next film appeared with an intriguing title, very promising in the circumstances, Tell Me Who You Are it was called, but it contributed nothing to Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's knowledge of himself and nothing to the research he is embroiled in. To amuse himself, he fast-forwarded it to the end, added a few crosses to his list, and, with a glance at the clock, decided to go to bed. His eyes were red, his temples throbbed, and he could feel a weight on his forehead. I'm not going to kill myself over this, he thought, the world won't end if I don't manage to watch all the videos this weekend, and if it did end, this wouldn't be the only mystery left unresolved. He was in bed, waiting for sleep to answer the call of the tablet he had taken, when something that might have been common sense again, but which did not announce itself as such, said that, quite frankly, in his opinion, the easiest route would be to telephone or to go in person to the production company and ask straight out for the name of the actor in this, this, and this film who played the parts of receptionist, bank clerk, medical auxiliary, and nightclub doorman, they must be used to it, they might find it odd that such a question should be about an insignificant, bit-part actor, little more than an extra, but at least it would make a change from having to talk about stars and superstars all the time. Vaguely, as the first tangled mesh of sleep was wrapping around him, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso replied that it was a stupid idea, far too simple, too humdrum, I didn't study history just to come up with ideas like that, he added. These last words had nothing to do with anything, they were just another display of pride, but we must forgive him, it's the sleeping tablet talking, not the person who took it. From Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, on the very threshold of sleep, came the final remark, as strangely lucid as the flame of a candle about to burn out, I want to find him without anyone knowing and without him suspecting. These were definitive words that brooked no argument. Sleep closed the door. And Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is now slumbering.