And if I want to lose myself?
Gregorius slipped into a light sleep, swept by a whirlwind of thoughts. The green-clad Cecília constantly addressed the judge as Your Grace, she stole expensive glittering things, diamonds and other gems, but most of all she stole names, names and kisses carried by pounding wheels through Siberia to Vladivostok, much too far from Lisbon, the place of courthouses and pain.
A warm wind greeted him when he pulled back the curtain and opened the window at noon. He stood still for a few minutes and felt his face dry and become hot under the onslaught of the desert air. For the second time in his life, he ordered a meal in his room and when he saw the tray of food was reminded of the other time, in Paris, on that crazy trip Florence had suggested after the first breakfast in his kitchen. Desire, pleasure, and security. Desire was the most fleeting, Prado had said, then came pleasure, and finally security. Therefore, it was loyalty that counted, a partisanship of the soul that went beyond feeling. A breath of eternity. You never really meant me, he had said to Florence at the end, and she hadn’t said no.
Gregorius called Silveira, who invited him for supper. Then he wrapped up the picture book about Isfahan which the Schnyders in Elfenau had given him, and asked at reception where he could buy scissors, pins, and tape. As he was about to leave, Natalie Rubin called. She was disappointed that the Persian grammar hadn’t yet arrived, despite having sent it by express mail.
‘I should have just brought it to you!’ she said, and then, scared and a little embarrassed at her own words, she asked what he was doing over the weekend.
Gregorius couldn’t resist replying, ‘I’m sitting without electricity in a school with rats and reading about the difficult love of a son for his father, who took his own life because of pain or guilt, nobody knows.’
‘You’re pulling …’ said Natalie.
‘No, no,’ said Gregorius, ‘I’m not pulling your leg. It’s exactly as I say. Only it’s impossible to explain, simply impossible, and then there is also this wind from the desert …’
‘You’re hardly … hardly recognizable any more. If I …’
‘You said it, Natalie, I can’t believe it myself sometimes.’
Yes, he would call her as soon as the grammar had come. ‘Will you also learn Persian in the fabulous rat school?’ She laughed at her own linguistic creation.
‘Naturally. That’s where Persia is.’
‘I give up.’
They laughed.
28
Why, Papá, did you never talk to me about your doubts, your inner struggles? Why didn’t you show me your letters to the Minister of Justice, your requests to resign? Why did you destroy everything so that now it’s as if you had never written them? Why did I have to hear about your attempts to fight for freedom from Mamã, and why was she ashamed to tell me about something which should have been a cause for pride?
If it was the pain that finally drove you to death: well, I couldn’t have done anything to prevent that. With pain, the force of words is soon exhausted. But if it wasn’t the pain that cast the decisive vote, but rather the feeling of guilt and failure because in the end you didn’t muster the strength to break away from Salazar and no longer close your eyes to blood and torture: why didn’t you talk it over with me? With your son who once wanted to be a priest?
Gregorius looked up. The tropical air streamed out of Africa through the open window of Senhor Cortês’s office. The wandering cone of light on the rotting floorboards was a stronger yellow today than recently. On the walls hung the pictures of Isfahan he had cut out. Dark blue and gold, gold and dark blue, and more and more of it, domes, minarets, markets, bazaars, women’s faces veiled in black, eyes with a zest for life. Eliphaz of Teman, Bildad of Shuah, and Zophar of Na’ama.
The first thing he looked for was the Bible on his sweater, which already smelt of mould and mildew. God punishes the Egyptians with plagues because Pharaoh is obstinate, Prado had said to O’Kelly. But it was God Himself who made him like that! And He made him like that so He could demonstrate His own power! What a vain, complacent God! What a show-off! Gregorius re-read the story: it was right.
For half a day, O’Kelly had said, they had argued about whether Prado should really talk about God as a show-off, a gabarola or fanfarrão, in his speech. Whether it wasn’t going too far to place the Lord – even if only for the tiny length of a single impudent word – on a level with a loud-mouthed punk. Jorge had won out over Amadeu and he had left it out. For a moment, Gregorius had been disappointed in O’Kelly.
Gregorius went through the building, avoiding the rats, and sat down on the seat where he had recently imagined Prado making eye contact with Maria João. In the basement he finally found the former library where, according to Father Bartolomeu, the young Amadeu had sometimes spent the whole night reading. When Amadeu finishes reading a book, it has no more letters. The dusty shelves were now empty. The only book still there lay propping up a shelf to keep it from tipping over. Gregorius broke off the corner of a rotten floorboard and wedged it in instead of the book. Then he brushed the dust off the book and leafed through it. It was a biography of Juana la Loca. He took it with him to Senhor Cortês’s office, then he returned to Prado’s letter.
It was much easier to be taken in by António de Oliveira Salazar, the aristocratic professor, than by Hitler, Stalin or Franco. You would never have associated with such scum, you would have been immune to them through your intelligence and your unerring sense of style, and you never raised your arm in the fascist salute, I’d stake my life on that. But the man in black with the intelligent, strained face under the bowler hat: sometimes I thought you may have had a fellow feeling with him. Not his merciless ambition or his ideological blindness, but with the iron discipline you both imposed upon yourselves. But, Father, he made a pact with the others! And allowed those crimes for which there will never be an appropriate word, as long as humans live! And we had Tarrafal! Why did you turn a blind eye to Tarrafal, Father!TARRAFAL! You would only have had to look once on such hands as I saw on João Eça: burned, scarred, maimed hands that had once played Schubert. Why didn’t you ever look at such hands, Father?
Was it because you were afraid, out of physical weakness, to pick a fight with the power of the State? And therefore looked the other way? Was it your bent back that forbade you to show any backbone? But no, I refuse to accept such an explanation; it would be unfair because it would negate the dignity you always showed: the strength never to surrender to your suffering in thoughts and deeds.
Once, Father, one single time, I was glad you could pull strings in the circle of well-dressed, top-hatted criminals, I have to admit that: when you managed to release me from the Mocidade. You saw my horror when I imagined having to put on the green shirt and raise my arm. It won’t happen, you said simply, and I was happy at the affectionate implacability in your look. I wouldn’t have wanted to be your enemy. Of course, you yourself didn’t want to imagine your son as a trendy camp-fire proletarian either. Nevertheless I felt your action – for whatever reason – as an expression of deep affection, and on the night after my release, my feelings of gratitude were overwhelming.
It was more complicated when you saved me from being arrested for causing bodily harm to Adriana. The judge’s son: I don’t know what strings you pulled, what talks you engaged in. I tell you today: I would rather have faced the judge and fought for the moral right to be able to put life above the law. Nevertheless, what you did moved me deeply, whatever it was. I can’t explain it, but I was sure that neither of the two things I couldn’t have accepted decided you: fear of scandal or the joy of being able to use your influence. You did it simply to protect me. I am proud of you, you said when I explained the medical facts to you and showed you the passage in the textbook. Then you hugged me, the only time since childhood. I smelled the tobacco on your clothes and the soap on your face. I still smell them and I can still feel the pressure of your arms holding on longer than I had expected. I dreamed o
f these arms and they were imploring arms, stretched out with a fervent plea to the son to free the father from pain like a kindly magician.
One element in this dream was the enormous expectation and hope that always appeared on your face when I explained the mechanism of your illness, the irreversible curvature of the spine named after Vladimir Bechterev, and when we spoke about the mystery of pain. Those were moments of great intimacy when you, hung on every word of the future doctor. Then I was the knowing father and you the needy son. How did your father behave towards you, I asked Mamã after one of these conversations. ‘He was unbearable,’ she said. ‘A proud, solitary, tyrant who ate out of my hand. A fanatical colonialist. He would turn in his grave if he knew what you think of that.’
That evening Gregorius arrived for dinner with Silveiras wearing his new clothes. The man lived in a villa in Belém. A maid opened the door and Silveira came to meet him in a vast hall, lit by a chandelier, that looked like the entrance to an embassy. He noticed Gregorious looking around admiringly.
‘When the children moved out after the divorce, everything was suddenly much too big. But I didn’t want to move out either,’ said Silveira, on whose face Gregorius detected the same weariness as in their first meeting on the night train.
Later, when they were sitting over dessert, Gregorius no longer knew how it had come about but he was telling Silveira about Florence, about Isfahan, and his crazy visits to the Liceu. It was a little like the time in the sleeping car when he had told this man how he had stood up in front of the students and left the classroom. ‘Your coat was damp when you took it from the hook, I remember precisely, it was raining,’ Silveira had said during the soup course, ‘and I also still know what light is in Hebrew:’ Then Gregorius had told him about the nameless Portuguese woman whom he had omitted to mention on the train.
‘Come with me,’ said Silveira after coffee and led him to the cellar. ‘Look, this was the children’s camping equipment. Everything of the finest quality, nothing missing. One day they simply left the stuff, no more interest, no thanks, nothing. A heater, a lamp, a coffee machine, everything battery-operated. Why don’t you just take them? For the Liceu? I’ll tell the driver; he’ll check the batteries and take them over there.’
It wasn’t only the generosity. It was the Liceu. A while ago, Silveira had made him describe the abandoned school and had kept wanting to know more; but that could have been mere curiosity, a curiosity like that about the bewitched fairy-tale castle. The offer of the camping equipment however, showed an understanding of his bizarre act – or, if not understanding, then respect – Gregorius hadn’t expected that from anybody, least of all from a businessman whose life was calculated on money.
Silveira saw his surprise. ‘I simply like the idea of the Liceu and the rats,’ he said, smiling. ‘Something so completely different, something that doesn’t involve money. It seems to me it has something to do with Marcus Aurelius.’
When he was alone in the living room, Gregorius looked at the books. Lots of literature about porcelain. Commercial law. Travel books. Dictionaries of English and French business language. A lexicon of child psychology. A shelf with an odd assortment of novels.
On a table in the corner was a photograph of the two children, a boy and a girl. Gregorius thought of Kägi’s letter. In their conversation that morning, Natalie Rubin had mentioned that the Rector had cancelled classes as his wife was in as hospital, in the Waldau. There are moments when my wife looks as if she’s going to pieces, the letter had said.
‘I called a business friend of mine who is often in Iran,’ said Silveira when he came back. ‘You need a visa, but otherwise it’s no problem to travel to Isfahan.’
He paused when he saw the expression that appeared on Gregorius’s face.
‘I see,’ he said slowly. ‘I see. Naturally. It’s not this Isfahan. And not Iran, but Persia.’
Gregorius nodded. Mariana Eça had been interested in his eyes which she said revealed a lack of sleep in him. But otherwise, Silveira was the only person here who had shown any interest in him. In him for himself. The only one for whom he wasn’t just a sympathetic ear, as he had been to those who inhabited Prado’s world.
As they stood in the hall saying goodbye and the maid brought Gregorius’s coat, Silveira’s eyes wandered to the gallery and on to other rooms. He looked at the floor, then back up.
‘The children’s wing. Former wing. Do you want to see it?’
Two generous-sized, light rooms with their own bath. Long rows of Georges Simenon novels on the bookshelves.
They stood in the gallery. Silveira suddenly seemed not to know what to do with his hands.
‘If you like, you could live here. For free, of course. As long as you like.’ He laughed. ‘If you’re not in Persia. Better than a hotel. You won’t be disturbed, I’m away a lot. Like tomorrow morning again. Julieta, the maid, will take care of you. And some day I’ll win a game against you.’
‘Chamo-me José,’ he said as they sealed the agreement with a handshake. ‘E tu?’
29
Gregorius packed. He was as excited as if he were setting out on a trip around the world. He imagined clearing a few Simenons off the shelf in the boy’s room and putting out his own books: the two about the plague and the earthquake, the New Testament Coutinho had given him an eternity ago, Pessoa, Eça de Queirós, the picture biography of Salazar, Natalie Rubin’s books. In Bern, he had packed Marcus Aurelius and his old Horace, the Greek tragedies and Sappho. At the last moment, also Augustine’s Confessions. Books for the next stretch of the way.
The bag was heavy, and when he picked it up from the bed and carried it to the door, he felt dizzy again. He lay down. After a few minutes, it passed and he continued reading Prado’s letter.
I start trembling at the very thought of the unplanned and unknown, but inevitable and unstoppable force with which parents leave traces in their children that, like traces of branding, can never be erased. The outlines of parental will and fear are written with a white-hot stylus in the souls of the children who are helpless and ignorant of what is happening to them. We need a whole life to find and decipher the branded text and we can never be sure we have understood it.
And you see, Papá, that’s also what happened to me with you. Not long ago it finally dawned on me that there is a powerful text in me that has dominated everything I have felt and done so far, a hidden white-hot text, whose insidious power lies in the fact that, despite all my education, it never occurred to me that it might not possess the validity I had unwittingly granted it. The text is brief and of Old Testament finality:OTHERS ARE YOUR COURT OF JUSTICE.
I can’t prove it in court, but I know that, from an early age, I read this text in your eyes, Father, in the look that penetrated full of deprivation, pain and severity from behind your eyeglasses and seemed to follow me wherever I went. The only place it couldn’t follow me was the big chair in the library of the Liceu, where I hid at night to be able to go on reading. The solid concreteness of the chair along with the darkness resulted in an impenetrable wall that protected me from all intrusions. There, your look didn’t penetrate, and so neither was there a court of justice I had to account to when I read of the women with white limbs and all the things you may do only in secret.
Can you imagine my rage when I read in the Prophet Jeremiah: Can any man hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.
‘What do you want?’ said Father Bartolomeu. ‘He is God.’
‘Yes, and that’s precisely what speaks against God: that he is God,’ I replied.
The priest laughed. He didn’t hold it against me. He loved me.
How much, Papá, would I have liked to have a father to talk to about these things! About God and His complacent cruelty, about cross, guillotine and garrotte. About the madness of turning the other cheek. About justice and revenge.
Your back, it couldn’t bear the church pews, so
that I saw you kneeling only one single time, at the requiem mass for Uncle Ernesto. The silhouette of your tortured body remains unforgettable to me; it had something to do with Dante and Purgatory, which I always imagined as a flaming sea of humiliation. For what is worse than humiliation? The fiercest pain is nothing compared to it. And we never got to talk about these things. I think I heard the word Deus from you only in hackneyed idioms, never properly, never as if it were spoken from belief. And yet you didn’t do anything against the mute impression that you bore not only the secular law books in you, but also the ecclesiastical ones from which the Inquisition emerged. Tarrafal, Father, TARRAFAL!
30
Silveira’s chauffeur came for Gregorius in the late morning. He had charged the batteries of the camping equipment and packed two blankets, with coffee, sugar and biscuits lying on top of them. At the hotel, they weren’t happy that he was moving out. ‘Foi um grande prazer,’ they said.
It had rained during the night and fine sand from the desert wind lay on the car. Filipe, the driver, opened the door to the back seat of the big, shining car for Gregorius. In the car, when I stroked the upholstery – that’s where Prado’s plan to write a letter to his father had been born.
Gregorius had ridden in a taxi with his parents only once, on the way back from a holiday on Thunersee, where his father had sprained his foot and they had to take a cab because of the luggage. He had seen from the back of his father’s head how uneasy he was. For his mother, it had been like a fairy tale; her eyes lit up and she didn’t want to get out.
After delivering Gregorius’s things to the villa, they went on to the Liceu. They arrived to find that the road which was once used to deliver supplies to the school kitchen was completely overgrown. ‘Here?’ Filipe asked, flabbergasted. The heavy-set man with shoulders like a horse anxiously avoided the rats when they entered the building. He walked gingerly around the Rector’s office, cap in hand, looking at the pictures of Isfahan.
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