Read "The Tale of the Unknown Island" by José Saramago online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
He went there the following morning, but he decided not to go up and ask the present occupants of the apartment and the buildings other tenants if they had known the girl in the photograph. It was more than likely that they would tell him they hadn't, that they had been living there only a short time, or that they didn't remember, You know how it is, people come and go, I really can't remember anything about the family, it's not worth puzzling your head about, and if someone did say yes and did seem to have a vague recollection, they would probably only go on to add that their relationship had been the usual one among the polite classes, So you never saw them again, Senhor José would ask, No, never, after they moved out, I never saw them again, That's a shame, I've told you everything I know, I'm sorry not to be of more use to the Central Registry.
The good fortune of immediately finding the lady in the ground-floor apartment, so well informed, so close to the original sources, could not possibly happen twice, but only much later, when none of what is being related here was of any importance anymore, did Senhor José discover that here too the same good fortune had acted prodigiously in his favour, saving him from the most disastrous of consequences.