A Small Death in Lisbon

by Robert Wilson

  After half an hour of circular thinking I went upstairs. Olivia's light was out under her door. I continued up the stairs to my attic room and the weakness I'd been indulging for the past six months.

  I had a desk set up in the dormer window with a simple raffia-seated wooden chair. In the desk I had a photograph of my wife, a head shot taken by me at night on the terrace of a house we were staying in near Lagos in the Algarve. In the shot her face is luminous. It was a colour shot, but only black and white and a yellow aura had come out in the flash. She never liked having her photo taken. I'd surprised her, but she wasn't wide-eyed and shocked. She was actually staring intendy and with some intensity, at the moment just before evasive action would be taken.

  I set the photograph up in a black frame on the desk facing the window. Her face came up in one of the panes of glass, as if she was outside looking in.

  Also in the desk, in a locked drawer, was a bag of grass and a packet of Rizla+ papers. I used to smoke it as a kid in Africa. It was the poor man's booze and the gardeners used it all the time. I hadn't smoked since I left London, but when I had to stop drinking to lose the weight, I knew I wasn't going to get through the occasional hard, lonely moment without something to soften the edges.

  I'd smoked maybe two or three joints a week for six months. When I smoked I talked to my wife in the window, and the strange part was, that after the dope had taken hold and I'd fallen into myself, she'd talk back.

  I sat with the desk lamp on to give the reflection and smoked. It didn't take much. It was good stuff. Not local. I mean, I could have just walked out the front door and bought a deal in five minutes but that wouldn't do. My father's old driver from Guinea provided the gear for me. My black brother.

  'It's been a day,' I said.

  No answer, her gaze as steady as a ship's purpose through water.

  'You like my new face?'

  Her lips, slightly apart, dark against her white face, didn't move.

  'I've lost my rag twice today. What does that mean? I've never lost control like that before, not even when I've been drinking. That stuff about my father ... Carlos talking about my father like that. I couldn't stand it.'

  'Maybe you feel guilty,' she said.

  'What was that? I didn't catch that.'

  'Maybe you feel guilty about your father.'

  'Guilty?' I said. 'I was defending him.'

  'But you were lefter than left when I first met you.'

  'It was the way to rebel against the ... against fascism.'

  'Was it? Was it just that?'

  Silence. I steeplechased a marathon around my head. I knew the answer to this, but how to get it out?

  'You can just say it,' she said. 'It's only me and you.'

  'It wasn't the right thing for him to have done,' I said.

  'That's what you thought?'

  'And I still think that now.'

  'That's a hard thing for you to have to admit,' she said. 'I know how much you admired him.'

  'But why did I go crazy like that? Banging my fists down on the table...'

  'You always said that the Portuguese prefer to live in the past ... perhaps you've decided to live in the present and the future,' she said. 'You're changing. You're lonely and you're changing. Maybe you don't want to be lonely any more.'

  'I missed you tonight. Hearing Olivia say your words, I missed you.'

  'You didn't mind me telling her that?'

  'No, no. Not that.'

  'What then?'

  'I just had the thought that even when you were alive I was still a bit lonely.'

  'Not lonely. A loner,' she said, correcting my English. 'It's what makes you the man you are, but it can break you, too.'

  'In my job you mean?'

  'You don't have to think of your job all the time, Ze.'

  'You're right. I spent too much time thinking about that.'

  'You were too inquisitive for the truth about everything and everybody. Nobody likes that. Not even policemen, and the ones closest to you don't always want to tell it or know it, either.'

  'I don't get that.'

  'Especially when you don't reveal your own little truths ... when you hide.'

  'Ah, yes, I knew we'd get to that. The beard.'

  'The beard,' she snorted. 'The beard didn't matter.'

  'Metaphorically, I meant.'

  'OK, if you like,' she said. 'But remember, that's the first time you've told me about what you thought of your father's actions.'

  'Why didn't you tell me about Olivia?' I said it in a rush. 'She trusted me not to.'

  'I see.'

  'She said she couldn't have borne your disappointment.'

  'My disappointment?'

  'She remembers all those times you used to take her off as a little girl. All those hours you spent with her telling her about things and about how wonderful she was and how much she meant to you. Were you disappointed?'

  I took the joint down to the roach and stubbed it out in the tin seashell ashtray. I re-experienced that crushed feeling after a girl you've fallen for lets you down lightly. 'We're strange creatures,' I said. 'Love is a complicated business.'

  I stared at my own reflection in the pane above my wife.

  'I met someone today,' I said.

  'Who was that?'

  'A teacher.'

  'He or she?'

  'She.'

  'What about her?' she asked, with a little edge.

  'I'm ... I like her.'

  'Like? What's like?'

  'I'm attracted to her.'

  Silence.

  'She's the first woman I've met that I'd like to...'

  'You don't have to be explicit, Ze.'

  'I didn't mean to...'

  'Then don't.'

  'It was just that...'

  'Ze?'

  Her image shuddered in the windowpane, a breeze smartening off the sea rattled the loose panes, whose putty had come out long ago. The lamp buzzed on the corner of the table. I leaned back and found myself crouching, braced against the edge of the desk. Tiles on the roof shifted against each other as the breeze freshened more. The jolt, when it came, seemed to come from behind my sternum. It thumped me forward into the desk, the photograph collapsed, the pane blackened, the lamp keeled over.

  I lay on the floor in the dark, my hands folded on my stomach. I was half under the desk, unable to get enough air in my lungs. A doctor might have thought it was a heart attack and it was, of sorts. After a small aeon I crawled up the chair, just made it to the door and half-fell down the stairs.

  I stripped vehemently, my clothes sticking to me like a crazed lover's. I lay on the bed with my hand in her dent of the mattress. Tears leaked down the side of my face, over my ears and wet the pillow.

  Chapter XXVII

  24th December 1961, Monte Estoril, near Lisbon

  Felsen sat on the edge of a wooden chest with his back to the black, rain-lashed window which in daylight would have shown the grey ocean and, off to the right, the Fort of Cascais, squat, robust, taking on the waves. He was watching Pica's family leave after a Christmas Eve dinner. Pedro, Joaquim's eldest son, was in amongst the guests, kissing and shaking hands. Manuel leaned against the wall, feet crossed at the ankle, hands in pockets, watching. Confident in his watching.

  The party broke up, Pica went upstairs, Pedro and Manuel disappeared into the house. Abrantes and Felsen poured themselves some pre-war Armagnac and lit a Cuban cigar apiece. Abrantes sat down in his favourite piece of furniture, a high-backed leather armchair with an arched hood. He liked to gently and absentmindedly slap the arm of this chair, and there was a dark patch where the natural grease of his palm had been kneaded in.

  You don't look well,' said Abrantes. 'You're not eating properly.'

  It was true Felsen hadn't had any appetite for some weeks. He felt as if there was a big moment pending, and to be ready for it he wanted to be sharp, hungry, concentrated. He looked out of the black window watching Abrantes' reflection.

 
'You put alcohol on an empty stomach, you'll ruin yourself,' said Abrantes, demonstrating his all-round expertise, as if his visits to Harley Street with Pica had been part of his education, and allowed him to pontificate on all things medical. Felsen puffed on his cigar, the coal at the end sending Morse code back to him.

  'Smoking's bad too ... unless you eat,' added Abrantes, which tempted Felsen to announce a midnight swim to see if his partner would say that that would kill him too. 'Everything's all right as long as you eat properly.'

  Felsen paced the length of the window looking out across the other houses to the ocean.

  'You're nervous too,' said Abrantes. 'You can't sit still any more. You're not working. You're spending too much time with too many different women. You should calm down, marry...'

  'Joaquim?'

  'What?' he asked, looking up from his chair, innocent, put-upon. 'I'm just trying to help. You haven't been yourself since you came back from Africa. If you had a wife I wouldn't have to worry about you ... that's what wives do.'

  'I don't want to get married,' said Felsen, for the first time out loud.

  'But you have to, you have to have children or ... or...'

  'Or what?'

  'It all stops. You don't want to be the end of the line.'

  'It's not as if I'm the last male Hapsburg, Joaquim.'

  Abrantes wasn't sure what a Hapsburg was. It shut him up. They drank. Felsen refilled and went back to the window. He saw Abrantes reflected, craning his neck to see what was worth looking at.

  'Manuel is doing very well in PIDE,' said Abrantes.

  'You told me.'

  'They say he has a natural ability for the work.'

  'A suspicious mind, maybe?'

  'An enquiring mind,' said Abrantes. 'They tell me he likes to know everything ... they're going to make him an agente de i° classe.'

  'Is that impressive?'

  'After less than six months in the job? I think so.'

  'What does he do?'

  'You know ... he checks up on people. He talks to informers. He finds the worms in the apple.'

  Felsen nodded, hardly listening. Abrantes writhed in his favourite chair unable to get comfortable.

  'I meant to ask you this,' said Abrantes. 'I meant to ask you this months ago.'

  'What?' said Felsen, turning away from the window, interested for the first time that night.

  'Did you see the Senhora dos Santos about your problem in the summer?'

  'Of course I did.'

  Abrantes sat back, legs spread, relieved.

  'I was worried,' he said. 'That you wouldn't take it seriously. It's a very serious business.'

  'She didn't do anything,' said Felsen. 'She said it wasn't her type of magic.'

  Abrantes came out of his chair as if a mechanism had thumped him in the back. He took Felsen by the elbow, squeezed it hard to impress upon him the gravity of the matter.

  'Now I know,' he said, his eyes staring and wide. 'Now I know why you're behaving in this way. You must see someone. Immediately.'

  Felsen eased his elbow out of the man's mechanical grip. He threw back the Armagnac remaining in his glass and left the house.

  It was 10.30 P.M. He was drunk but not too drunk to drive himself back out to Cabo da Roca. He drove his Mercedes through the silent streets, black and glistening from the rain. He slowed past a couple of addresses in Cascais but each time moved on—not lacking in any physical appetite, just the talk necessary to get him to that point. He smoked the remains of the cigar and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and it occurred to him out there, in the blustery darkness on the Guincho road with the storms stacked up over the Atlantic waiting to come in, that in a fit of madness Maria might have told Abrantes thai: Manuel was not his child. Was that why she was back up in the Beira? Was that why Abrantes talked about continuing the line, and in the next breath mentioned Manuel and his success in PIDE? Abrantes had made a remark at that party in the summer too, about Manuel not having the same parents as Pedro. He shook his head at the indecisive windscreen wipers, at the rain gusting across the road, slashing and buffeting the car. His thoughts unnerved him. He began to feel uncomfortable between his shoulders and up the back of his neck, suspicious suddenly that the back seat of the car was not empty.

  Drunk again, he sighed.

  A car approached on a long straight section of the road. They dipped their headlights at each other. As the car drew nearer he took advantage of the light to check the back seat in the rear view. Nothing. He reached behind him and swept his hand across the seats. Stupid drunk.

  Red lights receded into the blackness, quickly obliterated.

  The road climbed up through the dense darkness of the pine trees, past Malveira da Serra, the road winding, cutting back on itself, the steering wheel shooting through his hands, a little sweat on his top lip from the drink oozing out of his system.

  He turned off at the top and dropped down through the village of Azóia and out towards the lighthouse where his house, huddled in its own courtyard, shouldered the weather. He got out to open the gates. The wind inflated his lungs, the rain battered his hot ear. He drove the car up to the garage and went back to close the gates. He'd left a lamp on outside the house on the corner and in the light that shone off the hard wet mud in the courtyard, he saw footprints going to the side of the house.

  He put his own foot down over one of the footprints. His were smaller. He squeezed his chin and swallowed. The GNR had warned him that bandits were operating on the roads around the Serra da Sintra. He drove the car into the garage. He opened the glove compartment and removed an old Walther P48 he'd kept from the war. He checked the magazine and tucked it into his waistband. His mind worried over ammunition corroded by the sea air, and he tried to remember when he'd last cleaned and oiled the damn thing. Still, having it in his hand was the important thing.

  He stumbled into the house and saw his rubbery face in the hall mirror. Maybe, that was it. He was just drunk and they were the gardener's footprints. That must be it. He took off his coat, shook the rain off it and hung it up. The gardener was small, didn't even come up to his shoulder, had the feet of an elf. His ears strained for movement and returned to him the tinnitus that had developed since coming back from Africa.

  He wiped his feet and moved down the corridor. His leather soles sounded loud against the wooden flooring. He turned on the kitchen light. Empty. He crossed to the living room. Flicked that light on. The Rembrandt looked down on him. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a shot of aguardente from an unmarked bottle. He sniffed it, the raw alcohol unstuffed his head, the paranoia backed off a notch. He lit a cigarette, took two fast drags and crushed it out. He removed the gun from his waistband and turned.

  A man was standing by the door, grey hair swept back, blue raincoat, the wet shoulders glistening in the light. He had a gun in his hand.

  'Schmidt,' said Felsen, surprisingly calm, given that the name had come into his head like a lobbed grenade.

  Schmidt adjusted his grip on the .38 revolver, and the four-inch barrel performed a small circle. He was surprised that Felsen wasn't thrown against the wall in astonishment at the sight of him. He was surprised to see the Walther in the man's hand. How could he be armed and ready? Did he know things?

  'You should put that down,' said Schmidt.

  'You could do the same.'

  Neither of them moved. Schmidt breathed loudly through his broken nose, his mouth sealed, the stress of the situation working his jaw muscles, his brain calculating as hard as a chess grandmaster's but without the clarity.

  'Smoke?' said Felsen.

  'I gave up,' he said. 'My lungs didn't like the tropics.'

  'A drink then?'

  'I had a brandy earlier.'

  'I didn't think you drank.'

  'I don't usually.'

  'Have another then, see if you can get a taste for it.'

  'Put the gun down.'

  'I don't think so,' said Felsen, his heart p
ounding in the roof of his mouth. 'Why don't we both put our guns down over here on the sideboard.'

  Schmidt moved through the furniture, his gun leading. As he came closer the greyness in his face became more apparent. He was a sick man and more dangerous for it. With a nod they laid their guns down simultaneously on the polished wood. Felsen poured drinks.

  'I'm surprised,' said Felsen, not sounding it, a day's drinking and the burst of adrenalin having a curious effect on him. 'I was told you were lying in a river with your pockets full of rocks and a bullet in your head.'

  Felsen handed him a glass of the aguardente. Schmidt sniffed it.

  'Your partner. He never even came after me. I saw him. He stayed close to the house as if he was giving me time to get away, and when he thought I was well gone, he walked out into the poppy fields and let off a round into the air. Not a brave man, but not a stupid one either. I'd have killed him.'

  'Why didn't you come into the house after us?'

  'Like they do in the films,' said Schmidt, canting his head to one side, sardonic. 'I thought about it, but I decided it was too dangerous, and anyway, killing the two of you wasn't the point at that time.'

  'Was that why you sent Eva after me?'

  'Eva?'

  'Susana. I meant Susana Lopes ... from'são Paulo.'

  'Susana got close. She made a beginner's mistake, but then, that was what she was.'

  'Are you working for someone, Schmidt?'

  'This is a personal thing,' he said.

  'Why don't we start with what you want,' Felsen said. 'Let's get that out into the open. You're not after the gold, are you?'

  'Gold,' he said, not a question, not an answer.

  'You're sick,' said Felsen, disturbed by the man's lack of direction. 'I can see that.'

  'Fibrosis of the lungs,' said Schmidt.

  'Where are you living now?'

  'Back in Germany, Bayreuth,' he said, sipping his drink. 'I was from Dresden. Did you know that? You know what they did to Dresden. I haven't been back.'

  'Did your family survive?'

  'They're in Dortmund,' he said.

  'Children?'

  'Two boys and a girl. They're quite grown-up now.'