That last sentence, clearly threatening in tone, sounded like a judicial sentence, just as if it had said It would have been better if you had never been born. The superintendent's first impulse was to phone the doctor's wife, to ask if she had read the newspapers, to comfort her as best as he could, but he was prevented by the thought that, overnight, the probability of her phone being tapped had become one hundred percent. As for the phones of providential ltd, the red and the gray ones, they, of course, were linked directly to the state's private network. He leafed through the other two newspapers, which had not printed a single word on the subject. What should I do now, he asked out loud. He went back to the article, re-read it, and found it strange that they had not identified the people in the photograph, in particular, the doctor's wife and the doctor. It was then that he noticed the caption, which read thus, The suspect is indicated by an arrow. It seems, although there is no solid confirmation of this fact, that the doctor's wife took this group under her wing during the epidemic of blindness. According to official sources, identification of these people is at an advanced stage and will be made public tomorrow. The superintendent murmured, They're probably trying to find out where the boy lives, as if that would help them. Then, after some thought, At first sight, the publication of the photograph, unaccompanied by any other measures, appears to make no sense, since all the people in the photo, as I myself advised, could seize the opportunity and vanish, but then the minister loves a spectacle, a successful manhunt would give him greater political weight and more influence in both the government and the party, and as for other measures, the homes of these people are almost certainly already under round-the-clock surveillance, the ministry has had more than enough time to get agents into the city and to set up such a programme. While all of this was true, none of it answered his question What should I do now. He could phone the ministry of the interior on the pretext that, since it was now Thursday, he wanted to know what decision had been taken about his disciplinary situation, but there was no point, he was sure the minister would not speak to him, some secretary would merely come on the line, telling him to get in touch with the police commissioner, the days of conversations between albatross and puffin are over, superintendent. What shall I do now, he asked again, just sit here rotting away until someone finally remembers me and sends orders for the corpse to be removed, try to leave the city when it's more than likely that strict orders have been given at the frontier posts not to let me pass, what shall I do. He looked at the photograph again, the doctor and his wife in the middle, the girl with the dark glasses and the old man with the black eye-patch to the left, the guy who wrote the letter and his wife to the right, the boy with the squint kneeling down in front like a football player, the dog sitting at its mistress's feet. He re-read the caption, Full identification will be made public tomorrow, will be made public, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. At that moment, he was suddenly gripped by an idea for a plan of action, but the following moment, caution was immediately protesting that it would be utter madness, The sensible thing, it said, would be not to wake the sleeping dragon, the stupid thing would be to approach while it's awake. The superintendent got out of his chair, paced twice around the room, returned to the table on which the newspapers lay, and looked again at the head of the doctor's wife surrounded by a white ring that looked already like a hangman's noose, at this hour, half the city is reading the newspapers and the other half is sitting in front of the television to hear what the newsreader on the first news bulletin is going to say or listening to the voice of the radio announcing that the woman's name will be made public tomorrow, and not only her name, but her address too, so that the whole population will know where evil has made its nest. The superintendent went to fetch the typewriter and brought it over to the table. He folded up the newspapers, pushed them to one side and sat down to work. The paper he was using bore the heading providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, and could, if not tomorrow, certainly the day after tomorrow, be used by the state prosecution as proof of a second crime, that of using civil service stationery for his own purposes, an aggravating factor being the confidential nature of that correspondence and the conspiratorial use to which it was put. What the superintendent was typing was neither more nor less than a detailed account of the events of the last five days, from early Saturday morning when he and his two assistants had clandestinely breached the city blockade, until today, and this very moment of writing. Providential ltd does, of course, have a photocopier, but it seems to the superintendent impolite to give the original letter to one person and a mere copy to the other, however convincingly the very latest reprographic techniques may assure us that not even the eyes of a hawk could tell them apart. The superintendent belongs to the second oldest generation of those who still eat bread in this world, which is why he retains a respect for form, which means that, having finished the first letter, he started carefully copying it out onto a clean sheet of paper. It is, to be sure, still a copy, but not in the same way. When he had completed this task, he folded up the letters and placed each one in an envelope bearing the company name, sealed the envelopes and wrote the respective addresses. While it is true that the letters will be delivered by hand, the addressees will understand, if only by the discreet elegance of the gesture, that these letters from providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, deal with important matters deserving of the news media's attention.