A Small Death in Lisbon

by Robert Wilson

  'They're leaving.'

  I went into the corridor and threw open the door. The black guy was lying collapsed on his back, still breathing heavily, slick with sweat in the airless room. The girl lay face-down with her legs apart. I kicked their clothes at them. The girl twisted round, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unfocused.

  'You two. Out!'

  Chapter XXIII

  15th April 1955–, Abrantes' office, Banco de Oceano e Rocha, Rua do Ouro, Baixa, Lisbon

  'Absinthe eats the brain,' said Abrantes. Abrantes suddenly knowing everything about everything these days, full of his success in the Lisbon business fraternity. Felsen took another sip of the green liquid in his glass and watched the platoons of black umbrellas in the rain-lashed street below. It was ten o'clock in the morning and the second absinthe of the day. Felsen fingered his head wondering where the rot would start and why Abrantes had dragged him out of his apartment before lunch.

  Felsen had been back from Africa for two weeks, having spent most of the last decade out there setting up branches of the bank in Luanda, Angola and Lourenço Marques in Mozambique. He was at a low point, as he always was whenever he set foot back in Europe and its unfolding history.

  Berlin had been isolated by the Reds, the Iron Curtain was rusting into place across the middle of the continent and the whole of the Iberian Peninsula was as good as cut off and adrift out in the Atlantic with Salazar and Franco, madmen on the bridge, flying their old-fashioned fascist flags. The great empires were breaking up. The British lost India. The French lost Morocco, Tunisia and Indo-China culminating in the humiliation of Dien Bien Phu in May last year. World power transferred to the Americans while Europeans contemplated their own nations, bleakened by the expense of war, their nails torn and bloody from the last desperate attempt to hold on to world domination.

  To Felsen the whole place had the stink of death about it, the rotten odour of decline and to keep that stench out of his nostrils, during the second coffee of the morning, he'd let the absinthe trickle greenly into his glass.

  After the war the Allies had moved into Portugal. The Americans had set up shop in the Nazi legation's old palácio in Lapa. But Felsen and Abrantes had been lucky. Their wolfram mines had been sealed, but: wolfram had little value. Their stocks of cork, olive oil and canned sardines had been confiscated because they were perceived as future German goods. But the bank, with its curious management structure, had survived several attempts at having its assets frozen by the men in dark suits sent by the Allies. It was Abrantes' connections in the Salazar government that had saved them. As the war ended, construction boomed in Portugal and Abrantes was there, sitting at the table, knowing nothing about building but everything about graft. Officials in the Ministry of Public Works received plots of land and had houses built for them, their sons earned jobs they didn't deserve, planners and municipal architects in Lisbon town hall, the mayor, all suddenly began to find life more affordable. The Banco de Oceano e Rocha developed a property company, a construction arm, eased projects towards friends and earned protection from the highest offices in government.

  And the gold was still there, ten metres below Felsen's feet, sitting in the underground vaults with the traffic on the Rua do Ouro thundering above it.

  Abrantes sat over his third small half-cup of tar of the morning. He drank these until he moved his bowels which normally happened around number five or six. After a successful movement he'd take an anis, after a poor one, more coffee. He smoked cigars now. They too seemed to help loosen his guts, constipation a problem since he'd moved away from the Beira to worry at a desk, and eat too much meat.

  'Haven't they finished that house of yours yet?' he asked Felsen, knowing they had.

  'I suppose you need my apartment for one of your mistresses,' said Felsen, turning away from the window, quick to find the acid that morning.

  Abrantes sucked on his cigar knowing something Felsen didn't. He stared up at the ceiling looking for inspiration. A stain was developing up there after the winter rains and these April showers. It was fat and broad at the corner where a crack ran through it like a river and tapered off to something like Argentina, and Tierra del Fuego close to the ceiling rose.

  'Have you thought any more about Brazil?' asked Abrantes.

  'You can have the apartment, Joaquim,' said Felsen. 'I'll move out, really. There's no problem.'

  They grinned at each other.

  'Brazil's a natural step,' said Abrantes. 'Maybe we should have gone there first. The Brazilians, they...'

  'We didn't know anybody ... we still don't.'

  'Ah!' said Abrantes and took a flamboyant drag of his cigar, enjoying himself, grinding Felsen down. He blew the smoke out extravagantly.

  'Tell me,' said Felsen, bored.

  'You were always the German who spoke Portuguese with a Brazilian accent. That's how I first heard about you.'

  'I told you about that, a Brazilian girl in Berlin taught me.'

  'Susana Lopes,' said Abrantes, 'wasn't that her name?'

  An image flashed in Felsen's brain—Susana hooking her legs over the back of his knees and pressing her pubis down on to him. He cleared his throat. His penis lumbered in his trousers.

  'Did I tell you about her?' said Felsen.

  Abrantes shook his head. We're getting to it now, thought Felsen.

  'I don't think I told you her name even.'

  'I had a phone call last night. Susana Lopes, looking for her old friend Klaus Felsen who she'd heard had become a director of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha.'

  Felsen's heart leapt forward and he had to press himself back into the chair.

  'Where is she?'

  'A very charming woman,' said Abrantes, toying with his cigar clipper.

  'She's here?' he said, possibilities suddenly opening up.

  'We talked about Brazil.'

  'Did I tell you how I met her?'

  'No, she did,' said Abrantes.

  'She was a girl in a club...' Felsen faltered as a huge chunk of complex history broke off the glacier of his memory and crashed into his mind.

  'Those kind of girls know everybody,' said Abrantes.

  'What?' said Felsen, still mid-avalanche.

  'She seems to have done well over there. She owns a beachside club on an estate outside'são Paulo ... place called Guarujá.'

  'You covered some ground,' said Felsen, cooling to him now.

  'They're different to us, the Brazilians. They like to talk, have fun, they always look ahead. The Portuguese, well, you know the Portuguese,' he said, flapping his hand at the squally weather, the dark street, the stain blooming across the ceiling to the size of Russia.

  Felsen sat back, not wanting to give Abrantes any more sport. His partner saw it was over.

  'I said you'd meet her for lunch ... in Estoril ... Hotel Palácio.'

  Felsen sat in the dining room of the Hotel Palácio. He was wearing a powder-blue suit and a yellow silk tie. The light outside darkened and brightened as clouds crashed across the clearing sky, bringing showers which dashed through the gardens and wrestled with the palm trees in the square. He was feeling sick, then hungry, then sick again. His life came back to him in waves, in big, thumping Atlantic rollers. He gulped back another glass of white wine and reached for the bottle in the ice bucket, already three-quarters gone. He ordered another.

  Felsen watched the diners arrive, watched all the women settle into their chairs until he found one who just kept coming and coming at him. She was taller than he remembered. Her youth had gone—the long black, shiny hair was cut short, the whippy slenderness of a girl in her late teens had filled out but had been replaced by what an American would have called 'class'. She wore a figure-hugging, crisp, white square-necked dress which looked as if it had some material in it, and her nyloned thighs swished like a mating call. Male heads strained to keep their eyes from drifting over to her.

  Susana knew the effect she was having. She'd designed it. But there was only so much time she'd
allow a man to get his slack jaw working.

  'Well?' she said, and cutlery resumed on china.

  Felsen got to his feet. The waiter appeared with another bottle of wine. They danced around each other, kissed, sat, manoeuvred closer.

  'How long's it been?' asked Felsen, at a loss for a moment.

  'Fifteen years...'

  'No, no, sixteen, I think,' he said, and was annoyed at himself for being so German about it.

  He held up his glass. They chinked and drank without taking their eyes off each other.

  'My partner says you're a big success,' he said.

  'That's only what I told him.'

  'You look successful.'

  'I've just been to Paris and bought some clothes.'

  'That proves something.'

  'I've been lucky,' she said. 'I've had good friends. Rich men who wanted somewhere to go...'

  '...to get away from their wives?'

  'I learnt a lot in Berlin,' she said. 'From Eva. Eva taught me everything I needed to know. Do you still see her?'

  The name shot past him like a wild animal in the night, leaving him stunned, shaky. The dining room darkened. Rain raked the windows, turning heads in the room.

  'She died in the war,' he said, blurting it a little, sinking his face into the wine. Susana shook her head.

  'We heard about the bombing.'

  'You got out just in time,' said Felsen.

  The waiter laid a bread roll on her side plate with a pair of silver tongs.

  'So what did you learn from Eva?'

  'What men want,' she said, and left it at that, so that Felsen began to think that she'd learnt other things from Eva, like leaving things unsaid. It excited him.

  The waiter gave them the menus. They ordered instantly.

  'You lost your Brazilian accent,' said Susana.

  'I've been in Africa.'

  'Doing what?'

  'The bank. Minerals. Logging.'

  'You should come to Brazil. You're not in Brazil yet, are you?'

  'We're thinking about it.'

  'Well, I'll be there ... if you need any help.'

  'With your friends,' he said, and she smiled at him without volunteering what he wanted to know.

  The soup arrived. A crab bisque. They sipped through it. The wind shuddered against the dining room windows and the rain thrashed the petals off the roses in the gardens.

  'I wanted to ask you,' he said, 'if you ever came across someone called Lehrer, in Berlin? Oswald Lehrer.'

  She put her glass down. The waiter removed the soup plates.

  'I didn't like him,' she said, looking above his head. 'He had very unpleasant tastes.'

  'He gave me a job down here in the war. He knew I spoke Portuguese.'

  'That was Lehrer's way,' she said. 'He always liked to know everything.'

  A piece of turbot in a white sauce appeared in front of her, a swordfish steak before Felsen. Felsen found himself wanting to smoke, drink, eat and everything else humanly possible. Susana opened up her fish. Felsen tore a roll apart. They'd touched on all their history. Each point with its pain and pleasure. He felt welded to her in spots.

  'You're looking good, Susana,' he said, confirming his notion out loud.

  'Even after two children,' she said, looking to see how he took it.

  'A mother,' he said.

  'But not a wife,' she said. 'And you?'

  He laid down his cutlery and opened his hands.

  'I didn't think so,' she said.

  'And why not?'

  'A powder-blue suit and a yellow tie doesn't say "Daddy" to me.'

  He smiled. She laughed. The sun came up in the room like theatre lights zoomed to the maximum. They ordered more wine and talked about her two children who were with her mother in'são Paulo. She didn't elaborate on the absent father.

  They took coffee in another part of the hotel and Felsen smoked one of the slim tan-coloured cheroots which Susana preferred. They went wordlessly up to her room. She unlocked the door. They kissed. Her hand went to the front of his trousers, firm, expert, gripping.

  Felsen stripped and was naked before she'd stepped out of her underwear. He fell on her. Her suspendered thighs rasped on his. They made love with only marginally less urgency than they had done sixteen years ago. The only difference—after Felsen had come shuddering to a halt—she pushed his head down into her lap and drew him to her. He wasn't sure about it. He hadn't done that before. He didn't like it. But she held him there until he felt her trembling in his hands.

  Susana had a week left of her stay. She'd wanted to go to Berlin but couldn't get a visa and that had left her with spare time in Lisbon. They spent most of the week together. Felsen moved into her room at the Hotel Palácio for the duration. They spent the time driving out to his house, the westernmost house on mainland Europe—only heather, gorse, the cliffs and the lighthouse at Cabo da Roca between it and the ocean. They walked through the empty rooms which still smelled of paint and the musty humidity of drying plaster. They bought two chairs and sat in the enclosed terrace on the roof and drank brandy and watched the storms out at sea, the deranged clouds and the blood-orange sunsets. They talked. They renamed the house—Casa ao Fim do Mundo—House at the End of the World. Together they furnished the house from the contents sale of an old palácio on the Serra da Sintra, Susana bidding wildly for a pair of old rose-coloured divans which they 'christened' the next afternoon and lay under rough blankets telling each other their own plans and then, eventually, making one together.

  Felsen bought a ticket on the same plane to'são Paulo. He spent an afternoon talking things through with Abrantes about the opening of the'são Paulo branch, how Susana would introduce him to her friends, get the business started. The three of them had lunch the next day, Abrantes on one side of the table, impressed by Susana and nearly jealous of Felsen.

  On the day of the flight Felsen woke with a teak-hard erection and his head full of the future. He pressed himself against Susana and felt her stiffen. She rolled. He grinned over the monolith. She flicked the tip. The menhir toppled.

  'I came on in the night,' she said. 'We're going to be late.'

  The luggage was enough to make the bellhop straighten his cap. Felsen went down to pay the bill, which was enormous and came on several pages. He wrote a cheque with his mind on other things.

  They sent the luggage in one taxi and followed in another. It was a bright, clear, blustery day and the sea, by the Marginal, was deep blue and white-capped. They didn't speak. Susana looked out of the window. Felsen drummed the upholstery, still smarting slightly from the morning's rejection.

  At the airport Felsen organized a porter for the luggage. Susana paced around in tight geometry, her heels nervous on the pavement. They joined the queue at the check-in desk. Susana gave Felsen her passport and went to find the ladies' room. Felsen flicked through her passport, checked her photo, one taken a few years ago, the hair longer, the eyebrows denser, unplucked. He riffled the pages. A paper fell out which he picked up. It was a ticket stub for a return internal flight Frankfurt/Munich/Frankfurt dated 28th March 1955, just over three weeks earlier. Felsen turned over the stub. There was a telephone number written on the back, not a local one.

  He went back to the passport and found the German visa and an entry stamp for the 24th March in Frankfurt. There was an exit stamp from Lisbon next to it and below it the stamps for the return dated 13 th April. On another page were the exit and entry stamps out: of'são Paulo and into Lisbon dated 20th March. There were no other stamps. There was no French visa. He looked at the telephone number again, thinking quicker than he had done for a month. He took out the hotel bill and noticed, this time, the colossal amount of the telephone bill. He turned the pages. Seven calls had been made to a number which matched the one on the ticket stub.

  He went to one of the airline offices and asked to use the telephone. He called the operator and gave her the number and asked where it came from. She told him immediately that it was
a Brazilian number and after a minute that it came from a town called Curitiba. His chest suddenly felt as a cold as a cathedral.

  Susana appeared next to the luggage looking around for him. He crossed the highly polished floor on stiff legs, his thigh muscles feeling weak and cold. Susana asked if anything was the matter. He shook his head. They checked in. The flight was delayed until three in the afternoon. Susana fumed silently as she reclaimed her passport and boarding card. They went to the restaurant and sat opposite each other. The place was as crowded as Felsen's head. He ordered wine and looked out of the window as the four propeller engines of a cargo plane started up with a clatter followed by a long, unending howl.

  The wine was poured into the palpable silence between them. Susana looked around, aware that the presence in front of her was not where she wanted her eyes to rest. Felsen relaxed his shoulders down from around his ears, leaned back.

  'Saúde!' he said, raising his glass, forcing some lightness.

  She matched him.

  'I never asked,' he said, lighting a cigarette, 'how you found me.'

  'By accident,' she said. 'I was looking for the number of a friend of mine whose surname is Felizardo, yours was underneath. I didn't think it would be you but I called anyway. There was no answer. The next day I was in Lisbon I went to the address and found your apartment above the bank. My friend's father knew who you were. When I came back to Lisbon after my trip, with my extra week, I called again—this time the bank. They put me through to your partner.'

  He nodded through the plausibility. The lengthy, well-thought-out, plausibility.

  'But you didn't go to Paris, did you?'

  'Is this...' she paused, '...an interrogation?'

  He laid the ticket stub out in front of her.

  'I was in Germany,' she said, coolly, eyes sliding to the right.

  'That number on the back,' said Felsen, 'comes from Curitiba in Brazil. You've called that number every day since we've been in the Palácio. Whose is it? Your friends?'

  'My family...'

  'A different one to your mother and children in'são Paulo?'

  The waiter came and reared away from Felsen who'd shown him the back of his hand.