by William Boyd
This is what I must retain. These are the fragments I must hoard from these last three years. The soft explosion of a pile of leaves. The querulous where-the-hell-are-you tooting of a waiting motorist. The scent of menthol jujubes. A lone yacht on a silver bay. The immaculate dicing of a garlic clove. The dark trees of Carlyle Square. Oursins à la provençale. A slim male figure in white khakis and a navy sweater. A tin of cumin. A taxi klaxonning in the lane. A pungent shouting salsa that obliged me to suck peppermints for days.
Cork
(A man is not an animal;
Is intelligent flesh,
Although sometimes ill.)
Fernando Pessoa
My name is Lily Campendonc. A long time ago I used to live in Lisbon. I lived in Lisbon between 1929 and 1935. A beautiful city, but melancholy.
Agostinho Boscán, Christmas 1934: ‘We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.’
‘Mrs Campendonc?’
‘Yes?’
‘May I be permitted to have a discreet word with you? Discreetly?’
‘Of course.’
He did not want this word to take place in the office so we left the building and walked down the rua Serpa towards the Arsenal. It was dark, we had been working late, but the night was warm.
‘Here, please. I think this café will suit.’
I agreed. We entered and sat at a small table in the rear. I asked for a coffee and he for a glass of vinho verde. Then he decided to collect the order himself and went to the bar to do so. While he was there I noticed him drink a brandy standing at the bar, quickly, in one swift gulp.
He brought the drinks and sat down.
‘Mrs Campendonc, I’m afraid I have some bad news.’ His thin taut features remained impassive. Needlessly he restraightened his straight bow tie.
‘And what would that be?’ I resolved to be equally calm.
He cleared his throat, looked up at the mottled ceiling and smiled vaguely.
‘I am obliged to resign,’ he said; ‘I hereby offer you one month’s notice.’
I tried to keep the surprise off my face. I frowned. ‘That is bad news, Senhor Boscán.’
‘I am afraid I had no choice.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Of course, of course, you have every right.’ He thought for a while, saying nothing, printing neat circles of condensation on the tan scrubbed wood of the table with the bottom of his wineglass.
‘The reason is . . .’ he began, ‘and if you will forgive me I will be entirely candid – the reason is,’ and at this he looked me in the eye, ‘that I am very much in love with you, Mrs Campendonc.’
‘Cork’
The material of which this monograph treats has become of double interest because of its shrouded mystery, which has never been pierced to the extent of giving the world a complete and comprehensive story. The mysticism is not associated with its utility and general uses, as these are well known, but rather with its chemical makeup, composition and its fascinating and extraordinary character.
Consul Schenk’s Report on the Manufacture of Cork, Leipzig, 1890
After my husband, John Campendonc, died in 1932 I decided to stay on in Lisbon. I knew enough about the business, I told myself, and in any event could not bear the thought of returning to England and his family. In his will he left the company – the Campendonc Cork Co. Ltd – to me with instructions that it should continue as a going concern under the family name or else be sold. I made my decision and reassured those members of John’s family who tried earnestly to dissuade me that I knew exactly what I was doing, and besides there was Senhor Boscán who would always be there to help.
I should tell you a little about John Campendonc first, I suppose, before I go on to Boscán.
John Campendonc was twelve years older than me, a small strong Englishman, very fair in colouring, with fine blond hair that was receding from his forehead. His body was well muscled with a tendency to run to fat. I was attracted to him on our first meeting. He was not handsome – his features were oddly lopsided – but there was a vigour about him that was contagious and that characterized his every movement and preoccupation. He read vigorously, for example, leaning forward over his book or newspaper, frowning, turning and smoothing down the pages with a flick and crack and a brisk stroke of his palm. He walked everywhere at high speed and his habitual pose was to thrust his left hand in the pocket of his coat – thrust strongly down – and, with his right hand, to smooth his hair back in a series of rapid caresses. Consequently his coats were always distorted on the left, the pocket bulged and baggy, sometimes torn, the constant strain on the seams inevitably proving too great. In this manner he wore out three or four suits a year. Shortly before he died I found a tailor in the rua Garrett who would make him a suit with three identical coats. So for John’s fortieth birthday I presented him with an assortment of suits – flannel, tweed and cotton drill – consisting of three pairs of trousers and nine coats. He was very amused.
I retain a strong and moving image of him. It was about two weeks before his death and we had gone down to Cascaes for a picnic and a bathe in the sea. It was late afternoon and the beach was deserted. John stripped off his clothes and ran naked into the sea, diving easily through the breakers. I could not – and still cannot – swim and so sat on the running-board of our motor car, smoked a cigarette and watched him splash about in the waves. Eventually he emerged and strode up the beach towards me, flicking water from his hands.
‘Freezing,’ he shouted from some way off. ‘Freezing freezing freezing!’
This is how I remember him, confident, ruddy and noisy in his nakedness. The wide slab of his chest, his fair, open face, his thick legs darkened with slick wet hair, his balls clenched and shrunken with cold, his penis a tense white stub. I laughed at him and pointed at his groin. Such a tiny thing, I said, laughing. He stood there, hands on his hips, trying to look offended. Big enough for you, Lily Campendonc, he said, grinning, you wait and see.
Two weeks and two days later his heart failed him and he was dead and gone for ever.
Why do I tell you so much about John Campendonc? It will help explain Boscán, I think.
The cork tree has in no wise escaped from disease and infections; on the contrary it has its full allotted share which worries the growers more than the acquiring of a perfect texture. Unless great care is taken all manner of ailments can corrupt and weaken fine cork and prevent this remarkable material from attaining its full potential.
Consul Schenk’s Report
Agostinho da Silva Boscán kissed me one week after he had resigned. He worked out his month’s notice scrupulously and dutifully. Every evening he came to my office to report on the day’s business and present me with letters and contracts to sign. On this particular evening, I recall, we were going over a letter of complaint to a cork grower in Elvas – hitherto reliable – whose cork planks proved to be riddled with ant borings. Boscán was standing beside my chair, his right hand flat on the leather top of the desk, his forefinger slid beneath the upper page of the letter ready to turn it over. Slowly and steadily he translated the Portuguese into his impeccable English. It was hot and I was a little tired. I found I was not concentrating on the sonorous monotone of his voice. My gaze left the page of the letter and focused on his hand, flat on the desktop. I saw its even, pale brownness, like milky coffee, the dark glossy hairs that grew between the knuckles and the first joint of the fingers, the nacreous shine of his fingernails . . . the pithy edge of his white cuffs, beginning to fray . . . I could smell a faint musky perfume coming off him – farinaceous and sweet – from the lotion he put on his hair, and mingled with that his own scent, sour and salt . . . His suit was too heavy, his only suit, a worn shiny blue serge, made in Madrid he had told me, too hot for a summer night in Lisbon . . . Quietly, I inhaled and my nostrils filled with the smell of Agostinho Boscán.
‘I
f you say you love me, Senhor Boscán,’ I interrupted him, ‘why don’t you do something about it?’
‘I am,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I’m leaving.’
He straightened. I did not turn, keeping my eyes on the letter.
‘Isn’t that a bit cowardly?’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s true. I would like to be a bit less . . . cowardly. But there is a problem. Rather a serious problem.’
Now I turned. ‘What’s that?’
‘I think I’m going mad.’
My name is Lily Campendonc, née Jordan. I was born in Cairo in 1908. In 1914 my family moved to London. I was educated there and in Paris and Geneva. I married John Campendonc in 1929 and we moved to Lisbon where he ran the family’s cork-processing factory. He died of a coronary attack in October 1931. I had been a widow for nine months before I kissed another man, my late husband’s office manager. I was twenty-four years old when I spent my first Christmas with Agostinho da Silva Boscán.
The invitation came, typewritten on a lined sheet of cheap writing paper.
My dear Lily,
I invite you to spend Christmas with me. For three days – 24, 25, 26 December – I will be residing in the village of Manjedoura. Take the train to Cintra and then a taxi from the station.
My house is at the east end of the village, painted white with green shutters. It would make me very happy if you could come, even for a day. There are only two conditions. One, you must address me only as Balthazar Cabral. Two, please do not depilate yourself – anywhere.
Your good friend,
Agostinho Boscán
‘Balthazar Cabral’ stood naked beside the bed I was lying in. His penis hung long and thin, but slowly fattening, shifting. Un-circumcised. I watched him pour a little olive oil into the palm of his hand and grip himself gently. He pulled at his penis, smearing it with oil, watching it grow erect under his touch. Then he pulled the sheet off me and sat down. He wet his fingers with the oil again and reached to feel me.
‘What’s happening?’ I could barely sense his moving fingers.
‘It’s an old trick,’ he said. ‘Roman centurions discovered it in Egypt.’ He grinned. ‘Or so they say.’
I felt oil running off my inner thighs on to the bed-clothes. Boscán clambered over me and spread my legs. He was thin and wiry, his flat chest shadowed with fine hairs, his nipples almost black. The beard he had grown made him look strangely younger.
He knelt in front of me. He closed his eyes.
‘Say my name, Lily, say my name.’
I said it. Balthazar Cabral. Balthazar Cabral. Balthazar Cabral . . .
After the first stripping the cork tree is left in the juvenescent state to regenerate. Great care must be taken in the stripping not to injure the inner skin or epidermis at any stage in the process, for the life of the tree depends on its proper preservation. If injured at any point growth there ceases and the spot remains for ever afterward scarred and uncovered.
Consul Schenk’s Report
I decided not to leave the house that first day. I spent most of the time in bed, reading or sleeping. Balthazar brought me food – small cakes and coffee. In the afternoon he went out for several hours. The house we were in was square and simple and set in a tangled uncultivated garden. The ground floor consisted of a sitting-room and a kitchen and above that were three bedrooms. There was no lavatory or bathroom. We used chamber pots to relieve ourselves. We did not wash.
Balthazar returned in the early evening bringing with him some clothes which he asked me to put on. There was a small short maroon jacket with epaulettes but no lapels – it looked vaguely German or Swiss – a simple white shirt and some black cotton trousers with a drawstring at the waist. The jacket was small, even for me, tight across my shoulders, the sleeves short at my wrists. I wondered if it belonged to a boy.
I dressed in the clothes he had brought and stood before him as he looked at me intently, concentrating. After a while he asked me to pin my hair up.
‘Whose jacket is this?’ I asked as I did so.
‘Mine,’ he said.
We sat down to dinner. Balthazar had cooked the food. Tough stringy lamb in an oily gravy. A plate of beans the colour of pistachio. Chunks of greyish spongy bread torn from a flat crusty loaf.
On Christmas Day we went out and walked for several miles along unpaved country roads. It was a cool morning with a fresh breeze. On our way back home we were caught in a shower of rain and took shelter under an olive tree, waiting for it to pass. I sat with my back against the trunk and smoked a cigarette. Balthazar sat cross-legged on the ground and scratched designs in the earth with a twig. He wore heavy boots and coarse woollen trousers. His new beard was uneven – dense around his mouth and throat, skimpy on his cheeks. His hair was uncombed and greasy. The smell of the rain falling on the dry earth was strong – sour and ferrous, like old cellars.
That night we lay side by side in bed, hot and exhausted. I slipped my hands in the creases beneath my breasts and drew them out, my fingers moist and slick. I scratched my neck. I could smell the sweat on my body. I turned. Balthazar was sitting up, one knee raised, the sheet flung off him, his shoulders against the wooden headboard. On his side of the bed was an oil-lamp set on a stool. A small brown moth fluttered crazily around it, its big shadow bumping on the ceiling. I felt a sudden huge contentment spill through me. My bladder was full and was aching slightly, but with the happiness came a profound lethargy that made the effort required to reach below the bed for the enamel chamber pot prodigious.
I touched Balthazar’s thigh.
‘You can go tomorrow,’ he said. ‘If you want.’
‘No, I’ll stay on,’ I said instantly, without thinking. ‘I’m enjoying myself. I’m glad I’m here.’ I hauled myself up to sit beside him.
‘I want to see you in Lisbon,’ I said, taking his hand.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Why?’
‘Because after tomorrow you will never see Balthazar Cabral again.’
From this meagre description we now at least have some idea of what ‘corkwood’ is and have some indication of the constant care necessary to ensure a successful gathering or harvest, while admitting that the narration in no wise does justice to this most interesting material. We shall now turn to examine it more closely and see what it really is, how this particular formation comes about and its peculiarities.
Consul Schenk’s Report
Boscán: ‘One of my problems, one of my mental problems, rather – and how can I convince you of its effect? – horrible, horrible beyond words – is my deep and abiding fear of insanity . . . Of course, it goes without saying: such a deep fear of insanity is insanity itself.’
I saw nothing of Boscán for a full year. Having left my employ he then, I believe, became a freelance translator, working for any firm that would give him a job and not necessarily in the cork industry. Then came Christmas 1933 and another invitation arrived, written on a thick buff card with deckle-edges in a precise italic hand, in violet ink:
Senhora Campendonc, do me the honour of spending the festive season in my company. I shall be staying at the Avenida Palace hotel, rooms 35–38, from the 22nd–26th December inclusive.
Your devoted admirer,
J. Melchior Vasconcelles
PS Bring many expensive clothes and scents. I have jewels.
Boscán’s suite in the Avenida Palace was on the fourth floor. The bellhop referred to me as Senhora Vasconcelles. Boscán greeted me in the small vestibule and made the bellhop leave my cases there.
Boscán was dressed in a pale grey suit. His face was thinner, clean-shaven and his hair was sleek, plastered down on his head with Macassar. In his shiny hair I could see the stiff furrows made by the teeth of the comb.
When the bellhop had gone we kissed. I could taste the mint from his mouthwash on his lips.
Boscán opened a small leather suitcase. It was full of jewels, paste jewels, rhinestones, strings of artificia
l pearls, diamanté brooches and marcasite baubles. This was his plan, he said: this Christmas our gift to each other would be a day. I would dedicate a day to him, and he to me.
‘Today you must do everything I tell you,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow is yours.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But I won’t do everything you tell me to, I warn you.’
‘Don’t worry, Lily, I will ask nothing indelicate of you.’
‘Agreed. What shall I do?’
‘All I want you to do is to wear these jewels.’
The suite was large: a bathroom, two bedrooms and a capacious sitting-room. Boscán/Vasconcelles kept the curtains drawn, day and night. In one corner was a freestanding cast-iron stove which one fed from a wooden box full of coal. It was warm and dark in the suite; we were closed off from the noise of the city; we could have been anywhere.
We did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wore as many of his cheap trinkets as my neck, blouse, wrists and fingers could carry. We ordered food and wine from the hotel kitchen which was brought up at regular intervals, Vasconcelles himself collecting everything in the vestibule. I sat and read in the electric gloom, my jewels winking and flashing merrily at the slightest shift of position. Vasconcelles smoked short stubby cigars and offered me fragrant oval cigarettes. The hours crawled by. We smoked, we ate, we drank. For want of anything better to do I consumed most of a bottle of champagne and dozed off. I woke, fuzzy and irritated, to find Vasconcelles had drawn a chair up to the sofa I was slumped on and was sitting there, elbows on knees, chin on fists, staring at me. He asked me questions about the business, what I had been doing in the last year, had I enjoyed my trip home to England, had the supply of cork from Elvas improved and so on. He was loquacious, we talked a great deal but I could think of nothing to ask him in return. J. Melchior Vasconcelles was, after all, a complete stranger to me and I sensed it would put his tender personality under too much strain to inquire about his circumstances and the fantastical life he led. All the same, I was very curious, knowing Boscán as I did.