Requiem

by Antonio Tabucchi

  I would like to have closed my eyes for a few minutes, but he went on chatting. We were passing São Pedro and he pointed something out to me. Can you imagine building anything more horrible than that?, he said indicating the houses you could see through the opposite window, have you ever seen anything uglier? They’re certainly ugly, I said, but who allowed such monstrosities to be built? I don’t know, said the Ticket Collector, I don’t know, the local councils in Portugal are a law to themselves, they take on architects who are like kids playing with Lego, they’re all a bunch of incompetents really, who want more than anything else to be modern. I get the impression you don’t much like anything modern, I said. I hate it, he said, it’s hideous all of it, good taste is basically fucked, if you’ll pardon the expression, you just have to look at the miniskirt, horrible don’t you think?, a young girl can get away with it, but on fat women, with those great knees of theirs, it looks really revolting, it takes away a woman’s charm, takes away their mystery. He looked down at his crossword puzzle again and said: Here we are, here’s a bit of modernity for you: “Modern architect — singer with a stutter”? It’s got five letters. Aalto, I said, he was a Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto. Aalto, he said, I doubt he was any good. On the contrary, I said, he more or less rebuilt Helsinki in the fifties and designed some other really lovely houses in other parts of Europe too, I like his work. Have you been to Helsinki?, the Ticket Collector asked. I have, I said, it’s an odd city, all in brick and with these buildings designed by Aalto and it’s surrounded by forests. What about the people?, he asked, what are they like? They read a lot and they drink a lot, I said, they’re good people, I like people who know how to drink. So you like the Portuguese then, he said, not entirely illogically.

  The train was just entering Cascais. Nice, eh?, said the Ticket Collector indicating the Estoril Sol. Modern, I replied, so modern it’s already out of date. And then I asked: Do you think a taxi as far as the road to Guincho will cost more than five hundred escudos? I shouldn’t think so, he said, taxis are still cheap in Portugal, as a foreigner you should know that, look, I’ll tell you something, the only time I left Portugal was to go to Switzerland to visit my son who lives in Geneva, he lives outside the city so I caught a taxi and the taxi fare used up all the money I’d brought with me from Portugal, by the way, are you Swiss? Swiss?!, I exclaimed, do you mind? no, I’m Italian. But you’re practically Portuguese, he said, I suppose you’ve lived here for a long time. No, I said, but I must have some Portuguese ancestor I don’t know about, I think Portugal’s imprinted on my genetic baggage. Genetic baggage?, repeated the Ticket Collector, I’ve seen that expression in the Diário de Notícias, it’s that thing with the signs, the plus sign and the minus sign, isn’t that it? More or less, I said, but to be honest, I don’t really know what genetic baggage is either, I think it means something like nature or character, it would be simpler to call it that. I like the word nature, said the Ticket Collector, my wife always says I’m good-natured, what do you think? I think you’re extremely good-natured, I said, and I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, without this chat my journey would have been very boring.

  The old woman appeared at the door and looked at me suspiciously. Good afternoon, I said, I’ve come to see the house, I’d like to visit it, if you don’t mind that is. My house?, asked the old woman, alarmed and uncomprehending. No, I said, not your house, the big house, the one next to the lighthouse. It’s all locked up, said the old woman patiently, no one lives there, it’s been closed for years now. I know, I said, that’s why I wanted to see it, I’ve come all the way from Lisbon just for that, look, I’ve got a taxi waiting for me. I pointed to the taxi parked on the other side of the road to prove to her that what I was saying was true. The house is all locked up, she repeated, I’m sorry, but the house is locked up. Are you the housekeeper?, I asked. No, she said, I’m the lighthousekeeper’s wife, but when I have time I also take care of the house, I open the windows now and then and do some dusting, here by the sea everything falls to bits, windows, furniture, and the owners don’t care, they don’t live here, they live abroad, they’re Arabs. Arabs?!, I exclaimed, this house belongs to Arabs now? That’s right, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, the last owner, who’d bought it for next to nothing from the old owners, wanted to build a hotel here, but his company went bust, it seems he was some kind of con man, at least that’s what my husband says, so he sold it to the Arabs. Arabs, I repeated, I would never have imagined that one day this house would be owned by Arabs. The whole country’s up for grabs, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, foreigners are buying up everything, you know. Yes, I said, unfortunately, but what are these Arabs going to do with the house? Well, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, to tell you the truth, I think they’re waiting for it to fall down of its own accord, at the moment the council won’t give permission to build a hotel, but if it falls down, that’s different, they can build something new then. Is it falling down?, I asked. Well, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, in April, when we had those storms, the roof collapsed and made a hole in the ceiling in two of the rooms, the rooms facing the sea are in a terrible state, I think that come this winter, the whole top floor will cave in. That’s why I came, I said, to see the house before it fell down. Are you interested in buying?, asked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife. No, I said, I don’t quite know how to explain, but a long time ago I lived here for a whole year, it was before you worked here. That must have been before 1971 then, she said, that’s when we arrived, Vitalina and Francisco must have been here then. Yes, I remember Vitalina and Francisco well, I said, they were around the year I was here, Vitalina looked after the house and did the cooking, she made the best arroz de tamboril I’ve ever had, what happened to them? Francisco died of cirrhosis of the liver, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, he used to drink a lot, he was a cousin of my husband, and Vitalina’s living with her son now in Cabo da Roca. The whole family are lighthousekeepers, I said. Yes, she said, the whole family, Vitalina’s son is lighthousekeeper at Cabo da Roca, but he’s earning good money, I think Vitalina’s much better off now than when Francisco was alive, she had a terrible time with him, he was always drunk, sometimes she had to go up to the lighthouse herself because he wasn’t in a fit state to. I know, I said, one night she came to ask me for help, it was a terrible night, rainy and misty, Francisco was drunk in bed and Vitalina came to wake me up, she wanted to turn on the radio but she couldn’t get it to work, so she came and woke me, I spent the whole night with her in the lighthouse. Poor Vitalina, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, she had a hard life, it’s a real tragedy when all a man thinks about is drink. But Francisco was a nice man, I said, I think he loved his wife. Oh, he loved her all right, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, he never hit her, but that didn’t stop him getting paralytic every night.

  The taxi driver sounded his horn, wanting to know what I intended to do. I signalled to him to wait and said to the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife: You don’t want to show me the house then? Oh, all right, she said, but we’ll have to be quick, my son will be here soon with his family, it’s my little granddaughter’s birthday today and I have to finish making the supper. That’s fine by me, I said, I’ve got to get the train in Cascais, I have to be in Lisbon at nine o’clock. The Lighthousekeeper’s Wife disappeared inside the house. She came back with a bunch of keys and told me to follow her. We crossed the yard to the porch. This is the way in now, she said, I expect when you were here, you used to go in through the French windows on the terrace, but they can’t be used any more, the glass is all broken. We went in and I immediately recognised the smell of the house. It smelled a bit like the metro in Paris in winter, a mixture of mustiness, varnish and mahogany, a smell peculiar to that house, and my memories all came back to me. We went into the large sitting room and I saw the piano. It was covered with a sheet, but I still had the urge to sit down at it. Excuse me, I said, but there’s something I must play, I’ll be quick, I don’t really know how to play properly but a
nyway. I sat down and with one finger, from memory, I played the melody from a nocturne by Chopin. Other hands, in other times, used to play that melody. I remembered those nights, when I was upstairs in my room, and I would lie listening to Chopin nocturnes. They were solitary nights, the house in winter was swathed in mist, my friends were in Lisbon and didn’t come to visit, no one came, no one phoned, I was writing and wondering why I was writing, the story I was working on was a strange story, a story without a solution, what had made me want to write a story like that?, how did I come to be writing it? More than that, the story was changing my life, would change it, once I’d written it, my life would never be the same again. That’s what I would say to myself, closeted upstairs writing that strange story, a story that someone afterwards would imitate in real life, would transfer back to the plane of reality. I didn’t know that, but I imagined it, I don’t know why, but I sensed that one shouldn’t write stories like that, because there’s always someone who’ll try and imitate fiction, who’ll manage to make it come true. And that was what happened. That same year someone imitated my story, or rather, the story became flesh, was transubstantiated, and I had to live that crazy story all over again, but this time for real, this time the characters inhabiting the story weren’t made of paper, they were flesh and blood, this time the development, the sequence of events in my story unravelled day by day, I followed its progress on the calendar, to the point that I knew what would happen.

  Was it a good year?, the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife asked me, I mean, were you comfortable here in this house? It was a bewitched year, I replied, there was some kind of witchcraft going on. Do you believe in witches?, asked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, people like yourself don’t usually, they think it’s just popular superstition. Oh, I believe, I said, at least in some forms of witchcraft, you know, you should never try to influence things by suggestion, if you do, things end up happening that way. I went to see a clairvoyant when my son was in the war in Guinea Bissau, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, I was terribly worried because I’d had a dream, I dreamed that he would never come back, so I talked to my husband and said: Look, Armando, you’ve got to give me some money because I want to go to the clairvoyant, I had a bad dream, I dreamed that Pedro would never come back and I want to know whether he will or not, anyway, I went to the woman and she laid out the cards, then she turned one card over and said: Your son will come back, but he’ll be maimed, and Pedro did come back, but he’d lost an arm. The Lighthousekeeper’s Wife opened a door and said: This is the dining room, was this where you used to have supper?

  The dining room was exactly as it had been: the fireplace, the sideboard, the Indo-Portuguese furniture, the large, dark-wood table. It was indeed, I said, I used to sit here, in this chair, a woman friend used to sit to my right and, here and here, two other friends of mine. Did Vitalina serve at table?, asked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife. She did, I said, or rather, she brought the things from the kitchen and left them on a tray in the middle of the table and we served ourselves, Vitalina didn’t like to serve at table, she preferred the kitchen, apart from arroz de tamboril she made a magnificent açorda de mariscos, but her speciality was sopa alentejana. Because she was from the Alentejo, remarked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, that’s why she could do sopa alentejana. You know, my day today has been full of people from the Alentejo, I said, I’ve just realised that almost everyone I’ve met today has been from there. Alentejanos are very proud, remarked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, but I like them, I mean, they’re nothing like me, I’m from Viana do Castelo and I’m a very different type of person, but I still like them. The Lighthousekeeper’s Wife wiped the layer of dust off the sideboard with her apron. Would you like to see upstairs too?, she asked. If you wouldn’t mind, I said. Be careful on the stairs, she said, they’re very slippery because the wood’s so worn, I’ll go first.

  I opened the door of the room, looked up and saw the sky. It was a very blue sky, transparent, it dazzled the eyes. It was unreal, that room with the bed, the wardrobe and the bedside tables, and almost no roof over it. It’s dangerous here, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, that one last bit of roof could fall any minute, we can’t stay in here. Just for a second, I said, it’s not going to fall right now. I stretched out on the bed and said: I’m sorry but I just have to lie down for a moment, as a way of saying goodbye, it’s the last time I’ll ever lie on this bed. Seeing me lying there, the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife discreetly left the room and I stared up at the sky. It was very odd, when I was younger I’d always thought of that blue as mine, as something that belonged to me, but now it seemed exaggerated, distant, like a hallucination, and I thought: It can’t be true, it just can’t be true that I’m lying here on this bed again and instead of looking up at the ceiling, as I did on so many nights, I’m looking up at a sky that once belonged to me. I got up and went to find the old woman, who was waiting for me in the corridor. One last thing, I said, there’s just one other room I’d like to see. There’s no guestroom any more, she said, when the roof fell in, everything was ruined, my husband took all the furniture out. I’d just like a look, I said. But you can’t go in, she said, my husband says even the floor is dangerous. She opened the door and I peered in. There was nothing in the room and the roof had disappeared completely. You could see the lighthouse through the window. My husband’s up there, she said, but he’s probably asleep now, there’s nothing to do at this hour, but he’s so stubborn, and instead of coming home for a sleep, he goes and sleeps in the lighthouse. Do you know what I used to do with that lighthouse in the old days?, I said, I’ll tell you, I used to play a game sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d come into this room and stand at the window, the lighthouse has three intermittent lights, one white, one green and one red, and I used to play a game with the lights, I’d invented a luminous alphabet and I used to speak through the lighthouse, as it were. And who were you speaking to?, asked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife. Well, I said, I used to speak to certain invisible presences, I was writing a story at the time, I suppose you could say I was speaking to ghosts. Oh my God, exclaimed the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, weren’t you afraid of talking to ghosts? I should never have done it, I said, it’s not a good idea to talk to ghosts, you shouldn’t do it, but sometimes you have to, I can’t explain it really, but that’s partly why I’m here today.

  The Lighthousekeeper’s Wife had started going down the stairs and turned to tell me to be careful. We went out into the courtyard and she closed the door. Thanks ever so much, I said, take care and say hello to your husband. Would you like something to drink, she said, I’ve got some cherry brandy, I made it myself. All right, I said, only one glass, though, but it will have to be quick, I’m afraid, I’ve got to catch the train to be back in Lisbon by nine.

  VII

  “ALENTEJANOS FOR THE ALENTEJO and the Alentejo for the Fatherland” said the inscription above the door. I went up the wide staircase and emerged into a Moorish courtyard with a small fountain, a glass door and some marble columns lit by red lights, like the lights they use in sacristies. It had a slightly absurd beauty and only then did I understand why I’d arranged to meet Isabel there: precisely because it was such an absurd place. I walked on and, beyond, I saw a reading room, with small tables and newspapers threaded onto wooden poles, like in an English gentleman’s club. But there was no one in the room. I looked at my watch and realised that I still had plenty of time before my appointment. I walked slowly across the courtyard. I saw several doors and opened one at random. It opened on to a vast panelled room, eighteenth-century in style, with great glass doors crowned by half-moons painted with frescos. It was the dining room, of monumental size, with all the tables laid and an immense, polished parquet floor. On one side of the room there was a miniature theatre with a tiny red velvet curtain that drew back to reveal a space framed by two columns and dominated by two caryatids carved in yellow wood, two naked figures which, for some reason, I found indecent, perhaps because they really were. I
closed the dining room door and returned to the courtyard. The night was hot, close, like a breath of warm air full of the seaweed smell of the sea. I opened another door and entered the billiard room. It was a large, cool room, its walls lined with fabric. A man, in black jacket and bow tie, was playing billiards on his own. When he saw me, he stopped, rested his cue on the floor and said: Good evening, and welcome. Are you a member?, I asked. The man smiled, rubbed chalk on the tip of the cue and replied: What about you? Are you a member? Me, no, I said, I’m just a visitor, a guest. This club is for members only, he said, I’m the manager, but you were quite right to come in, no one’s been in all day, I’ve spent the whole day alone here, so it’s good to see another human being at last.

  He was a very small man in his sixties, white-haired and elegant, he had pale eyes and a pleasant face. I arranged to meet someone here at nine o’clock, I said, it was a stupid thing to do, since I’m not a member and I’ve never been here before, and the person who’s coming here belongs only in my memory. The Manager of the Casa do Alentejo rested the cue on the table and smiled a melancholy smile. There’s nothing wrong with that, he said, you’ll feel perfectly at home here, this club is nothing but a memory, now. Forgive my asking, I said, but what does all this have to do with the Alentejo? The Manager of the Casa do Alentejo smiled again and said: It’s a long story, this club was founded by Alentejo landowners, people with land and money who fancied giving a European slant to their lives, they imagined Lisbon was like London and Paris; in the old days, before you were born, they all used to come here to play billiards with their foreign friends, drink port and play billiards, things were different then, this place isn’t the same now, the membership’s changed but not the club, some of the old alentejanos turn up occasionally, but not often, this is a place for memories now. The Manager of the Casa do Alentejo smiled his melancholy smile again. If you want to have supper here, there’s not much to choose from, he said, the cook has only made one dish today, it’s very good though, ensopada de borreguinho à moda de Borba. Thanks, I said, but I’m not sure I’ll be eating here, besides I’m not very hungry yet, I might just have a drink, but not right now. I see you’re not a great fan of Alentejo cooking, he said. On the contrary, I replied, I love the way they cook game and poultry in the Alentejo, in Elvas once, I had some stuffed turkey, which was simply out of this world, the best turkey I’ve ever eaten in my life. I couldn’t agree more, said the Manager, but I prefer the soups myself, I don’t know if you like poejada or not, there are two ways of making it, one is with soft cheese and the other is with eggs, which is how they make it in south of the Alentejo, that’s where I’m from, whenever I think about my childhood, I always think of the poejada my grandmother used to make, our cook makes it too, but you know, here in the city things turn out differently, the food is always more sophisticated, it’s nothing like a real poejada, it’s a soup for posh people. I think it’s because the things we remember from our childhood never return, I said. You’re right, he said, there’s no point in deluding ourselves.