The Parallel of Terror, which was still in the video player, followed the same route, it hadn't been so easy to impose order on chaos since the world began. Experience has taught us, however, that there are always a few ends left untied, always some milk spilled along the way, always a line that comes out of alignment, which, when applied to the situation under scrutiny, means that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is aware that his war is lost even before it's begun. The way things stand now, thanks to the sovereign stupidity of his speech on ideological signals, and after her masterstroke, that comment about the existence of order in chaos, of a decipherable order, it is impossible to tell the woman who is now in the kitchen making coffee, Our relationship has come to an end, we can still be friends if you like, but that's all, or else, I hate to have to tell you this, but I've been weighing up my feelings for you and I just don't feel that first flush of enthusiasm anymore, or even, It's been very nice, my dear, but it's over, from now on, you go your way and I'll go mine. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso goes over the conversation, trying to find out where his tactic failed, always assuming he had a tactic and wasn't just led by Maria da Paz's changes of mood, as if they were sudden minor fires he had to put out as they arose, unaware that flames were meanwhile licking around his feet. She always was more confident than me, he thought, and at that moment he saw the reasons for his defeat quite differently, who was this grotesque figure, disheveled and unshaven, in down-at-the-heels slippers, the stripes on his pajama bottoms like faded fringes peeping out from beneath his dressing gown, which has been tied clumsily so that one edge is higher than the other, there are some decisions in life that must be taken only when dressed to the nines, with one's tie knotted and one's shoes polished, so that one can exclaim in noble, wounded tones, If my presence bothers you, madam, say not another word, then sweep out of the door, without looking back, looking back brings with it terrible risks, a person can be turned into a pillar of salt at the mercy of the first shower of rain. But Tertuliano Máximo Afonso now has another problem to solve, one that requires great tact, great diplomacy, a talent for maneuvering which has so far eluded him, especially since, as we have seen, the initiative always lay in Maria da Paz's hands, even right at the start, when she arrived and threw herself into her lover's arms like a woman about to drown. This was precisely what Tertuliano Máximo Afonso thought, caught between admiration, annoyance, and a kind of dangerous tenderness, She looked as if she were about to drown, but she actually had her feet firmly on the ground. Returning to the problem, what Tertuliano Máximo Afonso cannot allow is for Maria da Paz to be left alone in the living room. What if she appears with the coffee, and, by the way, why is she taking so long, coffee takes only a few minutes to make, gone are the days when you had to strain it, what if, after drinking their coffee in sweet harmony, she says to him, either with or without ulterior motives, You go and get dressed while I have a look at one of these videos of yours, to see if I can spot any of your famous ideological signals, what if cruel fate were to make Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's double appear in the role of nightclub doorman or bank clerk, imagine Maria da Paz's scream, Máximo, Máximo, come here, quick, come and see this actor playing a medical auxiliary and who looks just like you, really, you can call him anything you like, good Samaritan, divine Providence, brother of charity, but he's certainly no ideological signal. None of this, however, will happen, Maria da Paz will bring in the coffee, you can hear her coming down the corridor now, the tray with two cups and a sugar bowl on it, a few biscuits to placate the stomach, and everything will pass off as Tertuliano Máximo Afonso would never have dared to dream, they drank their coffee in silence, but it was a companionable silence, not hostile, the perfect domestic bliss that, as far as Tertuliano Máximo Afonso was concerned, turned into utter heaven when he heard her say, While you're getting dressed, I'll sort out the chaos in the kitchen, then I'll leave you in peace to get on with your work, Oh, don't let's talk any more about that, said Tertuliano Máximo Afonso in order to remove this importunate stone from the middle of the road, but aware that he had just put another stone there in its place, more difficult to remove, as he will soon find out. In any case, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso did not want to leave anything to chance, he shaved in a trice, washed in a twinkling, got dressed in a flash, did all this, in short, so rapidly that when he went into the kitchen, he was still in plenty of time to dry the dishes. The most touchingly familiar of all scenes then took place in this apartment, the man drying the plates and the woman putting them away, it could have been the other way around, but destiny or fate, call it what you will, decided that it should be thus so that what had to happen happened as Maria da Paz was reaching up to place a serving dish on a shelf, thus, either wittingly or unwittingly, offering up her slender waist to the hands of a man incapable of resisting the temptation. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso put down the tea towel, and while the cup, slipping from his grasp, shattered on the floor, he embraced Maria da Paz, clasped her furiously to him, and the most objective and impartial of spectators would readily have admitted that his so-called first flush of enthusiasm could never have been greater than this. The question, the painful and eternal question, is how long will this last, will this really mean a rekindling of an affection that will have occasionally been confused with love, with passion even, or do we merely find ourselves once more before the familiar phenomenon of the candle that, as it goes out, burns with a higher and unbearably brighter flame, unbearable only because it is the last, not because it is rejected by our eyes, which would happily remain absorbed in looking. It is said and has been said before that between the lashes the back takes its pleasure, but it is not the back, in fact, that is taking its pleasure, indeed we would go so far as to say, if we can allow ourselves to be so crude, that it is, rather, the lash that is taking its pleasure, however, the truth is, although this is not the moment for high-flown lyricism, that the joy, pleasure, and delight of these two people stretched out on the bed, one on top of the other, arms and legs literally entwined, should prompt us respectfully to doff our hat and hope that it will be always thus for them, or for each of them, whoever their future partners might be, if, that is, the candle that is burning now does not last beyond this brief, final spasm, the very spasm that, even as it melts us, also hardens and drives us apart. Bodies, thoughts. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is thinking about life's contradictions, about the fact that in order to win a battle it might sometimes be necessary to lose it, the present situation is a case in point, to win would have been to guide the conversation in the direction of the desired total and definitive split, and that battle, at least for the time being, had to be given up as lost, but to win would also be to distract Maria da Paz's attention from the videos and the imaginary study on ideological signals, and that battle has, for the moment, been won. According to popular wisdom, you can't have everything, and there's a good deal of truth in that, the balance of human lives is constantly swinging back and forth between what is gained and what is lost, the problem lies in the equally human impossibility of coming to an agreement on the relative merits of what should be lost and what should be gained, which is why the world is in the state it's in. Maria da Paz is also thinking, but, being a woman, and therefore closer to things fundamental and essential, she is remembering her anxiety of mind when she entered the apartment, her certainty that she would leave here vanquished and humiliated, and yet, after all, the one thing that she had never for a moment imagined would happen has happened, going to bed with the man she loves, which just goes to show how much this woman still has to learn if she does not know that it is in bed that so many dramatic arguments between coup