The man filled the whole doorway, his arms were huge, larded with unhealthy fat. On his wrist he wore a heavy gold watch, and a chain, also gold, hung over his flaccid white chest. It wasn’t all that hot, but he was sweating, and sweat flecked his shirt.
He was holding the duplicate picture of Duck between his fingers, and I had an urge to take it back from him, as if he might soil it. His obese figure made me feel uncomfortable, like a reflection of my own ugly intentions. I nearly capitulated and turned back for the hotel.
“Yes, that’s right, she lived in this building. On this side, actually. It’s just the floor I’m not sure about.”
“Ten years ago, you say? Wait …” And without turning around he cried, “Baby? Ba-by?”
It made me jump. A woman appeared behind him. Small, thin, dark-haired, in her fifties, a hard face with black eyes, not unlike a witch.
“Look at this, Baby, do you recognize her? This man says she lived here.”
He rubbed his hand over his sweating face.
“I work nights, so, you know, people from the building …”
The woman wiped her hands on her apron and studied the photograph for a long time, and then me for even longer. The man stepped aside to let her through and disappeared into the apartment without a word. She took the picture and turned it over as if looking for a date or a note.
“What do you want from this girl?”
“I’m looking for her … it has to do with a legacy. All I know is she lived here, in this building.”
“A legacy … But tell me, this picture was taken a long time ago.” It was not a question, and there was a harsh note of reproach in her voice. “At least five years, isn’t it?”
“Ten years.”
I said this quietly, as if asking forgiveness for the passing years, and she looked back at the photo, her eyes more human now.
“You’re French, aren’t you, you have an accent,” she said, her voice softer. “A legacy, you say? Who’s died? She didn’t have any family in France, poor little thing—”
“So you do know her?”
The woman sighed.
“Of course I know her,” she said, “like everyone in the building, well, the ones who were here at the time. Because there’s a lot of coming and going in the neighborhood, it’s getting expensive for the likes of us, the rents are going up so much.”
She peered up at me.
“Now, this girl, yes, I remember her, she had a funny name, something like Arnica, or Arcana, but everyone called her something else.”
“Arcana?”
The voice grew suspicious: “But you must know the girl’s name if you’re really looking for her.”
“No, I don’t have a name like that … I have one or two clues, and this photo. I’ve been paid to find her, that’s all. You see, she’s inheriting from an American, not someone in her family, but you know, the will is impeccably within the law, even if I don’t have a name. Under U.S. law, well, Texas state law, you can leave your pet canary to someone if you want.”
“Texas …”
The word came to me just like that, but it had its effect. The woman looked convinced, because she shook her head.
“No, I don’t know where she is. She got pregnant, she wasn’t even fifteen, and her father sent her away north, I think. He moved away after that. A real bastard.”
She took a step back, I thought she was going to walk away so I persisted: “You really have no idea where I should try to look for her?”
“No. You could always go asking at the tasca, on the rua das Tangentes. Ask if anyone’s heard from Ruiz, yes, that was her father’s first name, he sometimes has a drink there with the regulars. Ask them about Ruiz Domingo, that’s what everyone called him, I don’t know why. A nasty man, really, a brute. When the girl was expecting the baby, he almost threw her down the stairs. D’you know, I thought he was going to kill her …”
The woman fell silent for a moment and her voice softened again: “Tell me, is it a big sum she stands to inherit?”
“I can’t … not a great deal, to be honest.”
“You can’t tell me, is that it? You’re not allowed to?”
“That’s right, yes. And the child, did she have it?”
“I dunno.”
Her expression went blank, she stepped back out of the light from the doorway and the shadows carved deep lines on her face.
“Are you coming, Baby?” her husband called from behind her.
She put her hand on the door handle and took another step back. At the last moment, she turned toward me, her hands clenching the fabric of her apron, and I met her eyes as they pried into mine, trying to read my thoughts. She spoke differently now, with gentleness in her voice: “I’m glad she’s inheriting it, and all that money’s going to her, not him. After everything she’s been through. It’s a good thing.”
She stared at me for a long time, without a word, then seemed to reach a decision: “If you find her, tell her …”
She shuddered and shook her head. “No, forget that, don’t tell her anything, she won’t want to come back here. People weren’t … kind, no, they weren’t kind at all. Just tell her to take care from me. My name’s Maria Simões … No, say it’s Pita, that’s not my name, but she used to call me Pita. She gave everyone nicknames, that girl, even herself in fact.”
“I know …” I murmured.
The door was already closed.
THE TASCA WAS on the corner of rua das Tangentes and rua Antunes. It was a seedy drinking hole, forbiddingly dark once you stepped through the sun-drenched doorway. Every couple of minutes, when the Eléctrico W passed, the screech of metal drowned all conversation. The barman was in his sixties with bug-eyes like Peter Lorre. He remembered Ruiz well.
“Did you say Domingo? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, oh yes. That’s what they called him in the neighborhood, because Sunday was the only day of the week he was just about sober. He used to go to the cemetery, where his wife was buried, so he didn’t drink for the whole day.”
He thought about this and added with a laugh: “Well, he wasn’t drinking here at least.”
He wiped the top of the bar with a cloth.
“To be honest,” he went on, “it was after she died that he started drinking … But hey, I’m not here to stop people from drinking, am I?”
I nodded with a grimace. I hadn’t put any sugar in my coffee and it was acrid. Its bitterness was my act of contrition.
“What about his daughter, do you remember his daughter?”
“The little girl? Oh yes, very well. When she was just a kid, she used to come to find Ruiz here in the evenings, when he was too drunk. He couldn’t stand up, she even had to put him to bed. When her mother died she must have been, what, about nine years old. She was already a hell of a pretty kid. Is she the one you want or Ruiz? Because I dunno where she is … She had some problems, if you know what I mean.”
He ballooned his arms over his stomach. I looked away.
“And Ruiz?”
“Oh, he comes by sometimes. The last time was about two or three months ago, I think. He used to work in highway maintenance, on street lighting. Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s retired now. Or switched to another job. He was good with his hands.”
The barman remembered a name, Custódia. Ruiz Custódia. He also told me where to find his wife’s cemetery. In the suburbs. Ruiz used to go there every Sunday afternoon, at around four or five o’clock. But he could have changed his habits, of course.
I finished my coffee, knocked back a glass of brandy, and paid, leaving a good tip. As I was leaving the barman called to me: “Say, if Ruiz comes by, because you never know, shall I tell him someone’s looking for him or not? What’s your name? Do you have a business card?”
“It’s the girl I’m looking for.”
It wasn’t an answer, but the guy didn’t persist.
I WALKED TOWARD the hotel, slowly, feeling slightly nauseous. As the main post offic
e was on my way, I went in. It was cold because of the air conditioning, heels clacked on the floor tiles and conversations smacked against the walls. I looked for the name Ruiz Custódia in phonebooks for all the major cities, and made a note of the addresses. There were no Arcana Custódias, or Arnicas or Arcanis, not anywhere. So, I started making a note of the Adelina, Adriana, Albertina, Anna, Anita, and Augusta Custódias. Twenty-five names in all, in Lisbon alone.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder. I was startled to hear Antonio’s voice and dropped my pen like a little boy caught red-handed.
“What are you doing here?”
Antonio was amused to have caught me. He was chewing a sandwich. I leaned down, picked up my pen, and stuffed my notebook in my pocket. He wasn’t inquisitive about what I was hiding, but I couldn’t help answering.
“I’m looking for an address, I’m trying to call someone. Like everyone else.”
“From here? Do it in the hotel.”
“In the hotel … yes. Are you here to post your letter? Or rather our letter?”
Now I was smiling too. Antonio shook his head: “No. It turns out I won’t need to post it. Irene just called. She’s coming to Lisbon. In a couple of days. Monday or Tuesday. She’ll call. I told her you were here …”
He took a bite of his sandwich, seemed to want to gauge the effect he had made.
“Really? And … what did she say?”
He stayed silent, an impish crease at the corners of his mouth, and I realized that my speedy response had betrayed my anxiety. He took another bite of his sandwich.
“She told me not to trust you …”
He swallowed a mouthful with gusto and looked around.
“I really like post offices, big post offices. The bustle, the echoing voices. It’s like the anteroom to the whole world.”
He smiled, pleased with his phrase.
“But you see, not like an airport, or a station. There are no departures here, no stopovers. Just addresses, languages, alphabets, letters and parcels. Absolutely anybody writing to absolutely anybody else. A huge great phonebook of the planet …”
Antonio was pontificating. He threw the last bit of bread in the trash.
“Shall we go change?”
“Excuse me?”
“For the concert this evening, with Aurora … the Estufa Fria. You are coming with me, aren’t you? Don’t leave me alone with the sorceress.”
He laughed and showed me his palm. There, still shimmering in the light, was the ghost of a blue bird.
AURORA WAS RIGHT, penguins visiting the Amazon was an accurate image. With advancing years and an accumulation of good port, many of the guests had even achieved the embonpoint of emperor penguins. I tried to tell Antonio the joke about never competing with Emperor Peng (because Emperor Peng wins), but he was too busy looking for Aurora to get it, or even listen to me.
“Hey, Vincent, look, there she is. Look how beautiful she is …”
I didn’t recognize Aurora in the young woman he was already walking toward. Perhaps because of the long cobalt-blue dress, or her hair, which was now not held in check by any ribbons so it spilled over her shoulders. Beside her was a very tall, very dark, fairly good-looking boy of about twenty wearing a dated gray suit. He was doing his utmost to generate some of the tragic darkness of a Russian soul in his expression. If this were a game of Happy Families, then he could have been the youngest of the Karamazov brothers. This Alyosha spoke very little and smiled very little but never took his eyes off Aurora. She meanwhile seemed distant, a stranger.
When she saw Antonio her face came to life, blossomed. She put a lock of hair behind her ear and abandoned her suddenly powerless companion. She cut through the crowd to reach us, stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Antonio’s left cheek. Then, in a move that was both intimate and incredibly brazen, she tilted her head for him to return the kiss, in the crook of her neck. He looked helplessly at that shoulder line offered up to him and, as if drawn in by the smell of it, furtively kissed the base of her neck.
“I was worried you wouldn’t come, Antonio.”
“Well, you can see I have.”
I greeted her with a nod, and she skimmed my cheek with her lips.
“Thank you for coming to see me again.”
She looked up at the glass roof, where all the ultraviolet lights had been lit.
“Have you seen? Little blue suns … I wasn’t lying …”
She had lost her childish voice and adopted a woman’s, but not quite a lady’s: “Would you like some champagne? Follow me.”
She took Antonio’s hand with energy and determination and guided us to the buffet, walking quickly through the dense crowd. Antonio was Aurora’s prisoner, leaning forward as he ran after his own hand. Beside the trays of canapés, she finally released him and chose a small pink éclair with sparrowlike voracity, nibbled one creamy end, then put it back down on the tablecloth with a smirk of distaste.
“It’s gelatinous and too sweet. Too bad, I really like the color, like a chubby child’s finger. Yummy. The concert’s going to start soon, I saved you two places, near me.”
“Who organizes all this, the concert, the reception?” Antonio asked.
“Well … the Philarmonica, isn’t it? Why does it matter?”
“Why are you invited? You said your father worked in the hothouse?”
“Have you quite finished with the questions? I’ve already said, this is my home. Shall we go?”
She took Antonio’s hand again and led us to the concert hall. The seats were theater red, the décor rococo. Aurora sat us in our places, 31 and 33, in the middle of the third row of the stalls.
“The best seats, these are. You don’t know how lucky you are to know me.”
She slipped a program into my pocket with a conspiratorial expression and narrowed her eyes mischievously. She knelt before us, crucifying the fabric of her dress with all the aplomb of a little countess in a silk gown playing in a dusty alleyway.
“Are you comfortable here? I won’t be far away, and I’ll be watching you the whole time.”
She snatched Antonio’s hand and opened it like a rose.
“But … where’s the bird? Did you frighten it? Did it fly away?”
And before Antonio could reply, she was kissing him on the lips and running off toward the wings. After a moment of stupefaction, he looked rather bemused and turned toward me. In the lamplight, his black eyes had gone the harsh green of a hornbeam leaf.
“That girl is …”
“Yes, isn’t she.”
I was smiling, amused by the helplessness on Antonio’s face. I was amazed to feel no jealousy at all. Aurora was very pretty, beautiful even, but I wasn’t attracted to her. I’m not attracted to women who are too beautiful, because they wear their refusal to seduce like a badge, because a cold hostility seeps out of them, helping them avoid being pestered too often.
And yet Aurora was not a sensual desert. She was well aware of her charms, but tried to please with daring and gentleness. She was sincere and naive, like a girl who doesn’t know she has a woman’s face and who hasn’t yet learned to see herself in men’s expressions. To crown it all she had a natural candor that forgave everything else. I would never have dared envy Antonio the tenderness she showed him, because she held the secret to ultimate propriety, she knew how to be desirable to him alone.
The hall was filling up and I opened the simple program printed on a lightweight card. The ensemble was called Quatuor Papageno, they were going to play some Purcell, some Dubois, and some Moulinié. I pointed out a line in the program to Antonio.
“Look, that’s where your Aurora’s going.”
Antonio snatched it from my hand. Among the musicians was Aurora Oliveira, tenor viola. Antonio read and reread those few words, shook his head, and turned to me: “Have you ever heard of a tenor viola?”
“No. Do you think it’s like a viola da gamba?”
“I …”
Antonio bit his lower lip
as if to repress a laugh.
The bell, darkness, one last creak of the seats. As the hubbub died, the curtain rose. A narrow beam of moonlight came through the glass roof. It caressed the smooth face of a young woman standing onstage. Once again I failed to recognize Aurora. I was disarmed to discover how pure her features were, how perfect the oval of her face. Her cheeks glowed with a touch of pink, her lips with a hint of vermilion. Behind her, in the half light, the silhouettes of three musicians were just visible.
Aurora stepped forward, hesitantly at first, like a child about to give a little speech, but her voice proved surprisingly assured: “Moulinié’s Fantasy for Four Violas.”
She then went and sat in the middle of the quartet. She braced her instrument against her chin, the musicians tuned their instruments one last time, and the concert began.
Antonio never took his eyes off Aurora. I closed mine, to be alone with the music, or perhaps just alone.
I was six years old when I was taken to a concert for the first time. I can remember the rough feel of the worn crimson velvet of the seats, how uncomfortable they were, how my tie squeezed too tightly around my neck. But not the music. It must have been something by Mozart. A child’s first concert is always Mozart. I was probably treated to the inevitable: “At your age, little Wolfgang had composed his first symphony,” which can convince the most robust that their life is already a waste. I don’t remember it.
I have few childhood memories. In the most detailed one, I must be about four. I’m going into a very white villa, I’m wearing shorts that are too big for me, held up by a leather belt that isn’t mine. An old woman with dyed black hair hands me a glass of orangeade, but it manages to be both too sugary and too bitter, I pour it over the floor and scream and cry. The woman slaps me, my mother intervenes, defending me. We leave, in a hurry, running over the noisy gray gravel.
That woman doesn’t exist, that scene never took place, my mother told me so a hundred times. Even so, this false memory grows more real every year. I know the color of the sky, I can feel the moisture in the hot air, I can still hear the slap of that dry, lined hand on my cheek. Oddly, there is a word associated with this experience I never had, the word “beaver,” which meant nothing to me for a long time. To this day I don’t know whether that beaver is masking or perhaps belongs to a buried slice of real memories. One day much later, I learned that it was a rodent with large yellow teeth and a strange flat tail. Later still, I knew it was sometimes used to mean a woman’s vulva.
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