Estoril

by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic

  ‘Give us two glasses of champagne.’

  ‘Wait a minute, you’re getting ahead of yourself. We haven’t struck a deal yet and you already want to celebrate,’ the gentleman interceded.

  ‘We have struck a deal,’ said the boy, trying to placate him.

  ‘All right, if you say so. You’re the boss... Still, I’d just like to make sure I’ve understood everything. You showed him a kind of diamond that he had never seen before? Is that right?’ Duško asked.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Did we offer it to him for a lot of money?’

  ‘It’s not cheap. But it’s not that expensive either; they’re just spoiled, they’re used to buying from desperate people for peanuts.’

  ‘Is that the only one of its kind you’ve got?’ asked Duško.

  ‘Not at all. This one is the poorest of the lot, I just didn’t want to show him the others. This way he’ll think he’s buying something nobody else has.’

  ‘I take my hat off to you, young man,’ said Duško. ‘Now tell me something, if it’s not a secret. What did you invest all that money in?’

  ‘You don’t know? I didn’t tell you?’ said the boy, surprised. ‘I invested it in Gordana’s factory.’

  ‘Oh, okay, I’ve got nothing to worry about then. You’re a clever one. That woman turns one penny into three. The two of you should stick together; you’ll go far.’

  Just then a young man appeared in front of them. He wished them a good day and said that the jeweller would like to speak with them.

  ‘Tell your boss that we will drop by before lunch,’ said Popov.

  The young man disappeared and they stayed, sipping their champagne in the sunshine.

  ‘How old are you again?’ Duško asked the boy.

  ‘Twelve and a half.’

  ‘Isn’t it about time for your bar mitzvah?’

  ‘Yes, but I’d like to read in temple when my mother and father come...’ said the boy. He stopped, thought for a moment, then turned to Duško and asked him out of the blue: ‘Do you think they will come?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ his friend replied honestly.

  ‘I don’t know either anymore...’

  Saddened, the two of them dropped the subject. They looked straight ahead, in case either should shed a tear.

  Duško pointed to the monument of King Pedro looking out over the city from his tall column.

  ‘Look up there! At the column! At the male pigeon jumping on the female on top of the fellow’s head,’ he laughed. ‘Look at that maniac, for heaven’s sake.’

  Estoril, 27 March 1944

  Tonio, my friend, how are you?

  Thanks very much for the book. I’ve read it twice, and some parts even more than that. What I liked most were all the sunsets on the little planet and the pictures of the boa constrictor with the elephant in his stomach. What I liked least was the ending. It would have been much better if the prince had returned to his planet and if he had a mother and father there so that he was not so alone. There you are. You asked for my honest opinion so don’t now hold it against me.

  I’m fine. I had my bar mitzvah. It was a few months late but the rabbi said it didn’t matter. I stumbled only two or three times reading, but hardly anybody noticed.

  After the synagogue we all went to my friends’, the Bajlonis, place. Lunch was my present from their mother. Grada Bajloni wants to be a pilot like you. He can drive and he went to aviation school. He was thrilled when I told him you and I are friends. He says he’s read your books and you’re his idol. He sends you his best.

  My friends from the hotel came too – Duško, Papagaio, Bruno, Mr Black and Lourdes. Manuel and Lino couldn’t come, they couldn’t get the day off from work.

  I got lots of presents. Grada gave me an Argentinian pencil, the kind RAF pilots have; it writes with ink but you don’t have to fill it. Gordana and Lila gave me a new prayer shawl and a see-through ball with a little house inside; it snows when you shake it. I don’t remember if I ever saw snow. Lourdes and Papagaio gave me a shirt, Mr Black a magazine about cars and Bruno a book in English, Moby Dick. Duško brought the musicians from the hotel as his present. They played for us all day, and Duško tucked money into their instruments.

  Aunt Radmila kept shoving food at me during lunch. Later we played football. But Duško got uppity and wouldn’t play. Bruno was in defence. I kicked two goals and Mr Black kicked the ball into the lake. Papagaio fell and hurt his knee and after that he couldn’t play anymore. Even Gordana played a bit with us men. Afterwards we had cake, and then I went for a walk with Papagaio. It’s a very interesting place and there’s so much to explore. We went to a spot that looks like the prehistoric forest we saw at the Natural History Museum, remember? The palms are like gigantic ferns and underneath it’s all dark. All that’s missing are those huge dragonflies. There’s also a big round rock pool with goldfish. (They’re called goldfish but actually they’re red.) Papagaio told me that while we were playing football he saw Duško and Lila kissing by the pool. He said they were kissing like in the movies and that he was touching her breasts but couldn’t do much because she kept moving his hands away.

  When we went home, I sat in the car with Duško. Slavcho, the musician, came with us. It was funny because Duško’s car has only two seats so we put him in the trunk. Duško said that Gypsies are a noble people, they don’t need much to be happy. While we were driving back, Duško kept shouting, ‘Come on, Slavcho, play!’ Then Slavcho would play something from the closed trunk. Like a radio. I don’t know why Slavcho is so fond of him when Duško gives him such a hard time.

  Duško sends his best. He already has forty hours of flying time with an instructor, but he still can’t fly on his own. He needs another twenty hours, but is too busy to fit it in.

  I go to the Bajlonis often. I invested money in the tinned food factory they opened on their property. We are reinvesting the excellent dividends. I was very lucky to find a partner like Gordana. Duško’s business isn’t going well, for instance. I can see that he’s trying, he goes to London, he’s been to the US, but nothing’s happening.

  The hotel is much less crowded than when you were here. The other day Fennec got into a scrap with a female dog called Sisi. Fennec is much smaller, but, like David and Goliath, she got the better of her. We barely managed to pull them apart. Then the boy who owns Sisi called me a Jewish pig. I didn’t get mad, but Duško heard him and said something to him. I’m too embarrassed to repeat it. Later he said something even worse to the boy’s father. The father is a German officer and he took offence. He challenged Duško to a duel. Duško told him to eat shit and that if it was killing he liked he should kill himself. Later Duško even reported the man to Inspector Cardoso. He said he had threatened to shoot him dead.

  I play chess with whoever is around, mostly with Bruno. I’ve been the top chess player at the hotel for the past few months. I can’t play with children anymore. I win straight off.

  There’s no news from my parents.

  I can’t write anymore, I have to do my geometry homework. I’ve got French to do too, but that’s easy.

  I drew the mythical cow above for you.

  PS: Did you know that in India cows are considered to be sacred?

  PPS: Can you tell me what you meant when you said ‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye’? I’m not sure I quite understood it.

  THERE ARE DEAD BODIES INSIDE!

  ‘It’s not the walls or the furniture that are the key, it’s the service,’ Mr Black maintained. ‘You can’t have a good hotel without good staff.’

  That is why here at the Palácio, every employee must meet several basic criteria; they must speak at least two or three languages and be amiable, which is not one but a cocktail of qualities, such as patience, forbearance, politeness, diplomacy, being good-natured, cheerful, even physically attractive. All of that is important because the hotel’s guests are demanding and capricious; the
y give themselves liberties that others would never even dream of. One really does have to be amiable to deal with them.

  Bruno was recruited from a cruise ship where he had been working, and he was hired solely because Mr Black felt he fitted the required profile. The fact that it later transpired that the two of them shared similar interests was pure luck. They both like to discuss abstract subjects, especially politics, and they are not merely each other’s ideal but rather only possible partner for this kind of entertainment, because it is not a popular sport in these parts; often it is not even legal.

  Fortunately, the Portuguese are not particularly fond of politics, that most dangerous of all topics. They are a gentle, dutiful people, as everybody agrees, but whereas the majority believe that this is because of their God-given, kind nature, Bruno thinks their submissiveness comes from long years of oppression stretching from the Inquisition to Salazarism. ‘Here, anybody who doesn’t keep his mouth shut is considered an extremist,’ said Bruno; it was not an accusation, merely an observation. ‘If you come out with any, especially political opinion, people move away from you lest anybody think that they are complicit. Then you can shout your head off.’

  Needless to say, he would only express such extreme views in front of Mr Black. And even then, only when they were alone.

  Every morning and afternoon, the two of them read the newspapers. Mr Black read the stale English and American press, and Bruno read those papers and the fresh but censored Portuguese papers. They listened to the news on Radio London whenever they had a chance.

  Later, when they had an opportunity to talk, which was when Bruno was driving the manager somewhere, they exchanged views on current affairs and on the future. Sometimes they agreed, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes their predictions came true, sometimes they didn’t. With time, it started to look like a game.

  The other person Bruno talked to was Gaby. Every day except Sunday he drove him to Lisbon and back, sometimes to the French lycée, at other times to the synagogue. Thus, every day the two of them spent more than an hour in the car talking. If it happened that they were both free at the same time, they enjoyed playing a game of chess. Papagaio was like a brother, but Bruno, while not exactly like Gaby’s father, though he was old enough to be, was more like his best adult friend.

  There is a lot that can be said in an hour. Gaby usually talked about what they had learned at school that day. Then Bruno, who had left school after learning how to read, write and count and therefore had little to say on the subject, would tell Gaby something about his own experience in reference to the topic at hand. For instance, when Gaby explained to Bruno the connection between the tilt of the Earth, the changing seasons and the planet’s climate zones, the former sailor told Gaby that when you sailed from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland you passed through all these zones and all four seasons of the year. Or, for instance, when Gaby was learning ancient history, Bruno, who had been to the Mediterranean ports hundreds of times, described to him the size of the Colosseum in Rome, the pyramids in Egypt and what Constantinople and the Parthenon looked like today. Bruno kept telling Gaby to study because knowledge was power. He told him how happy he was that Gaby was clever and had money for his education because most people lacked either the brains or the money, usually both, to become learned. This was already the fourth year that Gaby had been growing up in Bruno’s car; the boy was precocious, the driver curious, and they got along well.

  *

  It was a spring day. Bruno dropped Gaby off at school, then quickly finished his chores in Lisbon, taking some packages to the post office and papers to the notary. On his way back he stopped off at a hardware store on the outskirts of town and bought two shovels and a pair of secateurs to prune the hedges. It was around nine-thirty in the morning when he finished and headed back for Estoril; he would be returning along the same road at five in the afternoon to pick up the boy from school.

  He was driving, lost in thought, when suddenly he heard a loud whirring, buzzing noise coming from the direction of the sea. A two-engined plane was flying low towards him on his left, trailing smoke. It looked as if the pilot was attempting an emergency landing but had lost control. The plane was rapidly losing altitude and rocking right and left, like when the pilot at an air show greets the public by tipping the wings of his plane. It was flying so low that Bruno thought it would hit him. But it didn’t. It came down a bit further on, into a field. There was a tremendous crash and the roar of the engine fell silent. The wreckage lay there in the field, just a few hundred metres away from Bruno.

  By the time Bruno had found a way to get to the crash scene with his car, a number of peasants and children had already reached the spot. The children were probably shepherd boys because they were not in school. They crept up to the site of the crash, trod on the deep ruts left by the plane, but did not approach the smoking aircraft. They were afraid it might explode. A woman could be heard wailing:

  ‘There are dead bodies inside! Oh, my goodness, they are dead!’

  Bruno immediately dispatched one of the boys to fetch the police and tell them what had happened and where. Then he ran over to the plane. The blades of the propeller were mangled. Behind the pilot cabin’s shattered, blood-splattered windshield were two men wearing pilot caps. One of them was hanging his head in a strange way, as if he had broken his neck. The other looked as if he had lost his face. The door was stuck so Bruno ripped it off. The engine was not on fire, but the plane’s metal body was broken and bent and everything in its belly was strewn all over the ground. The bodies of two uniformed soldiers were in the fuselage crushed between heavy boxes and mangled metal. One of them, a young officer, showed signs of life. He was groaning.

  It is hard to say whether it was humanity that got the better of fear or if it was sheer curiosity, but suddenly the peasants ran over to the plane. Together, they tried to pull at least the surviving soldier out of the wreckage but they couldn’t because the slightest movement made him scream in pain. They reorganized themselves, dragged away the boxes of ammunition, knapsacks and armaments, and freed his crushed legs. He was still stuck. Then Bruno remembered that he had a big pair of secateurs in the boot of the car. He retrieved them, quickly cut through the wires and metal and managed to free the injured man. As the six of them were pulling him out of the fuselage, the German kept moaning and groaning through clenched teeth. Both his legs were limp. His left thighbone, very white, was sticking out of his trouser leg. Meanwhile, on Bruno’s instructions, somebody had already brought a plank of wood from a nearby truck and they used it as a stretcher for the poor man. It was only when they moved him onto the plank that they realized how badly he was bleeding. Bruno tied his belt around the man’s leg, above the open wound, to stop any more loss of blood.

  As there was no sign of either the police or fire-fighters, they lifted the wounded man on the plank into the truck and drove for the hospital.

  It was at the hospital that Bruno realized he looked as if he had been in a bullfight: his uniform, shirt, hands and face were smeared with the injured man’s blood. Luckily, he always had a fresh change of clothes in the car. He washed and changed his clothes; then he noticed the police. They led him to the side, checked his papers and took his statement. Everything that Bruno had been through that day – the blood, the death, the open fractures, the screaming and the pain – had been hard, but hardest of all was being interrogated by the police.

  ‘Do you know that, unless on official duty, citizens are strictly forbidden from approaching an aircraft that has landed in Portugal irregularly until the authorities arrive on the scene?’ they asked him.

  ‘Just as well I didn’t know. If we hadn’t run over right away the man would have bled to death,’ Bruno replied.

  ‘Where did you learn how to administer first aid?’ they asked him.

  ‘I worked on a ship. We had training.’

  ‘And why didn’t you first notify the authorities?’ they wanted to know.

  ‘I did. I
sent a boy on his motorbike to tell you, but you needed time,’ Bruno answered.

  ‘How do you know how to dress a wound?’

  ‘I told you, I had a first aid course in America.’

  ‘Where did you get the secateurs?’

  ‘They were in the car.’

  ‘Who put them there?’

  ‘I did. I was supposed to take them to the hotel. They’re for pruning the hedges,’ Bruno said.

  Their job was to look for the guilty, to question suspects, but in the absence of any criminal they questioned him. As if they suspected that he might somehow be responsible for the plane crash, they kept asking him the same questions, hoping they might eventually extract something from him. They let him go only when Cardoso and some uniformed Germans arrived and brought them to their senses.

  The wounded man was undergoing surgery in the operating theatre. Bruno was in a hurry; at the hotel they had probably already noticed that he was missing, they were maybe even worried, and anyway he had to pick Gaby up from school. But even though the police had finally let him go, Bruno still could not just leave. He felt it would be inhumane to leave while the poor man was fighting for his life. He asked if he could phone the hotel to tell them that he would not be able to drive and that they should send somebody else to pick up the boy. But before he managed to make the call, a man in a blood-stained white coat walked out into the corridor.

  ‘Gentlemen, the officer has unfortunately died,’ said the surgeon.

  Everybody cast down their eyes.

  ‘He died in pain,’ said Bruno.

  But there was no time to mourn; he left the hospital just in time to pick up Gaby from school.

  * * *

  Gaby was chatty that day. As soon as he got into the car he asked the driver: