* * *
Someone watching the river from the center of the square will see me as a solitary figure, quite abstract, a hieroglyph of human presence, a shadow. It suddenly occurs to me that he could have been that same silhouette one early morning in May, forty-five years ago, in this unchanging scene. The great expanse of the river, the empty square, the white-stone arches, the bronze horse on the pedestal and the king with his plumed helmet. He has stopped on his way back to the hotel after a night of drinking or being with a woman. He stands on the edge of the steps, his sunglasses blocking the clarity of morning, his anxiety temporarily numbed by all the alcohol.
He liked to come here to clear his mind, and if the tide was low, like it is now, he would also descend to the beach. There he would stand motionless, his back to the city, watching the river and breathing in the smell of the water, remembering the Mississippi, spellbound by the similarity, the wide and green horizon on the other side, the bridge in the distance to his right, like in Memphis, the same violet mist, the slow ships passing him by.
* * *
Standing on this beach and breathing the air of the Atlantic soothes the mind of the insomniac but does not alleviate the intoxication, the fever. I imagine his footprints on this sand, the steps of Ramon George Sneyd. Who can ever know what really happened inside somebody else’s mind, the way a place must have seemed and felt. He secretly carries the monstrous distinction of being the most wanted criminal in the world, number one, Sunday after Sunday, on the FBI’s list of infamous celebrity. Vanity and terror. What he did just a few weeks prior probably fades in the banality of his immediate situation, the routine of the helpless wait, the fatigue of being on the run, his shock that they are going to such great lengths to find him.
On my way back to the apartment I will follow the route that would have taken him back to the Hotel Portugal. I will sit at my desk and when I turn on the laptop the same page from the FBI’s website will be staring back at me. If I fall asleep after breakfast, the thought of him will filter back into my dreams, ruining the sweetness of our bedroom with the curtains drawn and the warmth of your body still present.
* * *
Back then, before I met you, I believed the task of literature was to create perfect forms, symmetries and resonances that imbued the world with an order and significance it otherwise lacked. I loved to concoct arguments, police mysteries, surprising twists, unexpected outcomes, stories that opened emphatically and ended like a drumroll, like a stab or flash of lightning that suddenly illuminates the plot. I loved Chesterton’s detective stories. I was convinced that some of his best had actually been written by Borges. I studied Bioy Casares’s arguments the way an architect would have analyzed the blueprints for a building designed by Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe. I wanted to create endings that did justice to the mysteries they resolved.
* * *
But gradually, in another future life, I began to realize that beauty, harmony, symmetry, are properties or spontaneous consequences of natural processes that exist without the need for an organizing intelligence, just as natural selection operates without an ultimate purpose, and certainly without a Supreme Being determining its laws in advance. The symmetry of a leaf or a tree or a body is self-organizing, a virtue of the instructions encoded in its DNA. The sinuous curves of a river or the ramifications of a delta draw themselves on a plane like the veins on a hand or a wave retreating from the sand. The highest aspiration of literature is not to improve an amorphous matter of real events through fiction, but to imitate the unpremeditated, yet rigorous, order of reality, to create a scale model of its forms and processes. Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Nature is a haunted house—but Art—a house that tries to be haunted.”
* * *
Over the course of a month in Lisbon, I have come daily to the small beach next to Cais das Colunas. This trip is the first time I noticed it. Every day, the highest point of the tide is recorded by a dotted line of small objects, beads on a necklace threaded by water: tiny shells, bits of plastic in different colors, fragments of blue tile, wood chips. There are successive lines, fossil impressions of every stage of the tide, roughly parallel to one another, a dendrite geometry. The lines intertwine to form the contours of a mountain landscape reminiscent of Chinese painting; lines of uncertain appearance but the precision of ink flowing from a brush on a sheet of rice paper; they are the work of the water washing over the sand, returning small objects it once took and has been pounding, shredding, abandoning for years, for centuries.
* * *
I come to Commerce Square and the small beach first thing in the morning, at mid-afternoon, and sometimes even late at night. I follow the same path each time, as if repeating a musical motif while exploring different variations marked by the character of the light, the time of day, the smell of the air, the people, the tram. Early in the morning, there are homeless people or old hippies huddled under blankets or sleeping bags. Every few days, a quiet young man comes to the beach and works tirelessly for hours on sand sculptures: a siren, the god Neptune with a crown and trident, a whale, a giant turtle, a family of frogs sitting on a sofa with their legs crossed. The sculptor comes barefoot and with his pants rolled up. His hair is long and he wears a full beard. His skin is the color of copper. I think of him as a castaway who has gotten used to solitude and silence after years on a desert island. Eventually the tide will rise and slowly chip away at the sculptures, and the wind will soften their features almost to the point of erasure, like sphinxes in the sands of Egypt.
* * *
There are always people hanging out around the steps of Cais das Colunas, like on the edge of a stage that is the river and its maritime amplitude. There will be someone taking photos. There will be couples, some in each other’s arms, some keeping a safe distance. People sit by the lower walls or the stone benches along the parapets. Two women are having a conversation on one of the lower steps. Between them is a bottle of white wine and a bag of chips. The tide is rising and will soon force them to move back. They pour wine in plastic cups and look each other in the eyes as they talk. The river wind tousles their long gray hair.
This is a powerful place. In it, presences that stood ages apart suddenly become simultaneous. In the tower on the west side of Commerce Square, we went to see an exhibit about the tens of thousands of European refugees that came through Lisbon during the summer and fall of 1940, a great wave that rose after the fall of Paris and the German occupation of France. Lisboa en tempo de guerra, A última fronteira. Seaplanes departed to England or America from the waters of the Tagus River, while those from Casablanca and Tangier arrived. From the beach of Cais das Colunas, I see the sun shine on the windows of the exhibit hall. The silhouettes that now stand by the edge of the water could have belonged to Erich Maria Remarque or Arthur Koestler, or any of the nameless refugees who did not manage to leave Lisbon and are now lost to history. One of those figures facing away could have been me in January 1987, or Ramon George Sneyd in 1968.
18
You see the mistake when it is already irreparable, a second or a tenth of a second after the fact; or even right before, just as it is happening, but you continue like some kind of impotent witness to your own actions. Later on, you replay that moment in your head, over and over again. You examine every detail and every second like an insect under a magnifying glass, in the silence of a room locked from the inside. Memory was unforgiving about the details of past mistakes.
* * *
He could pinpoint the exact moment when he had missed his chance to change course. The exact take in the imagined sequence of events. Photographic memory. He was ever-vigilant, his eyes like a camera moving on a rail, scanning every detail of his surroundings as he turned corners and advanced toward closed doors. But it wasn’t just photographic. This was an olfactory and tactile memory.
He remembered the feel of the bag handle, the plastic seam digging into his left palm seconds before he unclenched his fist and dropped it on the sidew
alk of South Main Street. He had seen a group of police officers running toward him. They were heading toward the epicenter of the shot. The sun was beginning to set.
He remembered the rifle’s rearward motion and the ache it left in his shoulder. He remembered standing outside the bathroom after the shot and staring at the weak glow of the red EXIT sign at the end of the hallway. Only the last three letters were on, forming a strange word, XIT.
He had placed the binoculars inside the bag and wrapped the rifle in the same blanket he brought it in. He remembered the sharp pain in his eardrums, the scent of gunpowder, the nauseating smell of the bathroom. XIT, like an incantation, conjuring the way out. He walked down the narrow hallway in a straight line. He remembered feeling like he was floating or walking on the moon. It had been a perfect shot, like a transoceanic missile guided by an electronic brain. A perfectly executed mission from a spy novel. Not a single mistake so far.
He blinked and a shadow suddenly appeared in the distance close to the exit. He lowered his head and tightened the sweaty grip around the bag and the rolled-up blanket. He walked toward the figure, staring at the ground, his chin almost touching his chest. The ringing in his ear was subsiding. The world was slowly filling up with other sounds again. He shot a quick side glance as he passed the man. A set of bulging eyes stared back from behind thick glasses. He remembered the teeth, the thick, wet tongue, the moving lips forming words he couldn’t quite hear. The man had been standing by the entrance to his room with the door wide open. Inside, a television was on and another person lay in bed. The man had said something, a question or an affirmation with the word “shot.” “It was a gunshot, no doubt,” he replied as he exited.
* * *
He remembered the small door window at the end of the dark stairway. On the other side was South Main and the corner where the street sloped down toward the end of the city and the train station and the open road to Mississippi. He only had to get to the Mustang. He had to stay on the sidewalk and not look toward the Lorraine Motel and the balcony where the man lay bleeding. He had to ignore the screams and perhaps the ambulance sirens. He had to focus for the twenty or thirty steps between the door and the Mustang. He had imagined it many times: walk straight to the car, open the trunk, place the bag and the blanket inside, drive away.
* * *
He anticipated what was about to happen or what he would do a few seconds later. Imagining things and situations in detail willed them into existence. There were no police sirens yet, which was surprising. The sun was setting but light still permeated the evening sky. He had passed Jim’s Grill and its blinking pink sign with the neon green Irish shamrocks. Now he was approaching the corner next to a music store, Canipe Amusement Company.
That’s when he saw the police officers walk in his direction, though not exactly toward him. They were surveying the windows above the street and the terraces. They were old and slightly overweight. One of them was having difficulty removing his gun from the holster. Suddenly, the white, shining Mustang, which was already within view, seemed miles away. The bag and the blanket felt heavier than ever. The plastic seams on the handle were digging into his left palm. Any second now, the police would notice him and point their guns at him, yelling that he drop the bag and put his hands where they could see them. Everything would be over.
The danger of imaging even the worst-case scenarios with such intensity is that you inadvertently cause them to happen. You’re about to make a mistake, you know that you’ll regret it as it is happening, and a second later there is no turning back. The moment that is passing is already part of the irreparable past. You replay it in slow motion, under the magnifying glass of insomnia. Break each movement into second-by-second sequences like those photos of bullets in mid-shot or the flapping wings of a bird in Modern Photography magazine. Identify the exact fraction of time, the threshold that makes the difference between ruin and salvation, captivity and escape, the exorbitant price, twenty years in prison for a split-second error in a robbery, the electric chair for a gun fired by mistake.
He loosened the grip on the bag but still held on to it. One of the police officers walked right next to the Mustang with his gun out. He reached for the keys inside his pocket and it took him a second to recognize their contour. The recessed entrance to the music store created a shaded triangle, a corner where he could wait for the police to pass, hide the bundle. He knew, as he seamlessly dropped the bag and continued walking toward the Mustang and the officers, that he was making a mistake. His precaution had been pointless. The officers had not even looked at him as they passed. A few seconds later he was already by the car and they were busting into the boardinghouse.
He could have walked back to the music store and collected the bag and the blanket. It would have taken less than a minute to retrieve the bundle and place it in the trunk of the car.
But doing so seemed as impossible as turning back time. His fingers were numb but he could still feel the plastic seam of the bag handle. He flexed them as he reached for the door of the car. The car keys could have fallen and now he would be lost. Police and ambulance sirens sounded in the distance.
He felt an urge to turn around and see it one more time, the sign for the Lorraine Motel and the crowd on the balcony scrambling to help a man who was already dead. But he had to resist the temptation. Staring at the scene would only make him suspicious and aggravate his previous mistake. He felt intoxicated, frightened, elated, overwhelmed by the irrefutable fact of what he had accomplished, incredulous that it had actually happened. He could still take a few steps back and retrieve the bag, the rifle, the blanket, put it all in the car and escape. It would buy him time. It would make it much harder for them to piece together all the clues they would eventually find.
The sirens were getting closer. Why didn’t he use latex gloves or put tape on his fingertips. He was standing next to the car and could not manage to get the key in the door. The handle was a soft yellow, almost white, and it radiated the accumulated heat of the day. His hands were shaking when the car door finally opened. He sat at the wheel and watched as the red and blue lights of the police cars got closer. He started the engine and the accelerator vibrated powerfully under his foot.
Within a few minutes, a quiet street with low buildings would take him south past the train station and onto a country road that led to the state border. A thick jungle darkened on both sides of the road, interrupted by cotton fields, rustic houses, and industrial buildings with broken windows reflecting the last of the sun from the west. The city lights were quickly disappearing in the rearview mirror. How effortlessly speed multiplied the distance to the crime scene. On the radio there were bursts of music, commercials, and sermons. He turned it off and all he could hear was the soft breeze of nightfall in the fields. Perhaps the bundled blanket with the bag and the rifle remained unnoticed by the doorway to the music store.
Once you make a mistake it continues its irreparable course, like the ticking of a time bomb. You replay it in your head so often it seems incredible that you cannot correct it. You want to remember every single thing that you’ve left behind and could be used to identify you. The mental effort is so intense you end up confusing your memory and even blocking it. Distance from the site of the error is no remedy, only a mirage. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going, the bundled blanket is going nowhere, it’s just waiting to be found.
It was six twenty-five and he was already in Mississippi. White gas-station lights began to appear. Tall motel signs radiated neon pinks, blues, and greens against the dark forest. Since the beginning of his escape, he had spent countless nights, in Toronto, in Lisbon, trying to remember every little thing he had inadvertently left behind, as if a full inventory would earn him some kind of advantage, some kind of absolution.
* * *
A pillowcase; a pair of bedsheets; a pair of underwear; a cotton shirt; a rubber sandal; a light jacket with a black-and-white square pattern; a short-sleeved Arturo Rosetti shirt; Diplom
at Hong Kong sport shorts; a knife with a rusty blade; an old quilt; pliers; a box with first-aid tape; maps of Georgia and Alabama from the Standard Oil gas station; a copy of the Memphis Commercial Appeal with a front-page column about Martin Luther King’s visit to the city, and a photo on the inside where King could be seen leaning against a railing in the Lorraine Motel with Room 306 clearly marked behind him; a roll of toilet paper; a Gillette travel kit, which included a razor blade, shaving cream, aftershave, deodorant, hair pomade, and a replacement blade; a white and yellow towel; a handkerchief; a tube of Colgate toothpaste; a pair of black socks; one spray can of Right Guard deodorant; a Channel Master pocket radio with the serial number scratched off; a bottle of Bufferin headache medicine; a tube of Brylcreem hair cream; a bar of Cashmere Bouquet soap; a red toothbrush, brand Pepsodent; a hairbrush; a small bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo; Kiwi black shoe polish; Palmolive’s Rapid Shave shaving cream; a loose brown button; two pins; two cans of Schlitz beer; two plastic hangers; a few strands of hair on the brush; a chewed toothpick; a pair of binoculars; a Remington 760 Gamemaster .30-06 caliber, a Redfield variable scope with a fingerprint that was identical to the one found on a can of Schlitz beer, a fingerprint so clearly pressed it would have been almost too easy to find in the FBI database. You make a big mistake and you see it as it is happening and there is no turning back. But the small blunders, the ones you don’t realize until much later, can be just as lethal—like that time you pulled a beer from a six-pack and noticed how good the ice-cold metal felt on your fingertips.
19
The sun stung his eyes as he came out of the arcades of Commerce Square. The humid heat seemed to emanate from the misty river, the still water of the high tide, which flooded the base of the two columns flanking the marble stairway at Cais das Colunas. Some of the steps were covered in dark algae, others glistened with oil slicks. The smell was unmistakable: rotten fruit and dead animals, like the Mississippi in New Orleans. Submerged in a hot fog, the view of the other side reminded him of Memphis. He left the shade and walked toward the water, holding the unnecessary trench coat under one arm, feeling the weight of the gun in his back pocket.
Like a Fading Shadow Page 20