A Small Death in Lisbon

by Robert Wilson

  'I see,' said Felsen, feeling oddly like a bank manager. 'That's an American gun you have there.'

  'A souvenir.'

  'Does it fire the Stars and Stripes?'

  Schmidt smiled. The stress eased. Felsen edged him away from the guns. He sat on the arm of a leather sofa with Schmidt on the arm of one of the chairs, their knees almost touching.

  'That painting looks familiar,' said Schmidt.

  'Another souvenir.'

  'It doesn't look like a cheap print.'

  'I bought it on the Bayswater Road in London.'

  'Is it a copy of...?' asked Schmidt, starting to get up.

  Felsen rested his hand on the man's shoulder.

  'It's a Rembrandt, Schmidt. Now tell me the purpose of your social call. I've had a long dinner and I'm tired.'

  Schmidt's creased neck turned in its frayed collar. He had a patch of grey bristles visible under the jawline missed in the morning shave. A thicket of dark hair protruded from his ear.

  'I'm not the only one with a sensitive past,' he said.

  'Ah,' said Felsen, the angle revealed. 'Another of your American imports, Schmidt. I've heard blackmail's very popular over there now.'

  Schmidt's eyes switched back to the guns on the sideboard, the old man in the Rembrandt watching.

  'They're very interested in certain circles,' he said, his mind not on it.

  'You don't think they've got their hands full with the Russians?'

  'They've got plenty of hands when it comes to a multi-million-dollar corporation established with wartime SS funding.'

  'There's a risk, of course, that it could all blow up in your face, Schmidt. You've got no evidence except your own colourful past.'

  Schmidt threw himself at the sideboard. Felsen, who'd been half-waiting for this moment, found that the other half wasn't as alert as it should have been. He lashed out with his foot and caught Schmidt on the shin. Schmidt's arms flailed but his hands managed to come down on the sideboard. A gun clattered across the uncarpeted edge of the floor. Schmidt fell and twisted on to his back. Felsen found himself kneeling and looking down the barrel of his own gun held in Schmidt's hand.

  'I thought we were talking, Schmidt.'

  'We were, but I changed my mind,' he said. 'Blackmail's a complicated business ... a lot of things can go wrong in it.'

  'So is burglary and fencing an old master.'

  'I was thinking about murder.'

  'Murder?' asked Felsen. 'What do you get from murder? Your health's gone, you should be thinking about your children's future.'

  'They don't know me. I've seen them ... but they don't know me.'

  'What is this?' asked Felsen. 'I don't know what this is about any more.'

  'This is about loyalty,' he said.

  Felsen gasped as Schmidt pulled the trigger. There was a dry click. Schmidt racked the slide. Felsen leapt towards the corner of the room, his hand reaching out for Schmidt's gun. There was a head-ringing explosion, far louder than a detonating bullet in a confined space, and Felsen's ear and arm burnt white hot. The next sound he heard was the horror sound from Prinz Albrechtstrasse, the sound of a man on the brink of orgasm. He picked up the gun and rolled over.

  Schmidt was slumped against the sideboard, his legs out in front of him, his eyes wide and staring at the bloodied stump at the end of his right arm. Blood covered his chest and lap. His raincoat was torn open, his face and grey hair flecked with red. Schmidt wanted to scream but, like a man having a nightmare, his mind shuddered but his voice only whimpered.

  The quantity of blood that had spurted from his severed brachial artery was creating a creeping stain through the carpet towards the leather furniture.

  'I'm going,' he said in a strange polite voice, as if he'd got what he'd come for and he'd be running along now.

  Felsen got to his feet. His reflection in the window showed dark streaks across his face. The mirror showed him that he'd lost half an ear. His left arm burned from shoulder to wrist. He eased the fingers of his right hand around there and they disappeared into a deep wound in his triceps. His knees went and he nearly fainted.

  He stripped off his jacket in the bathroom and washed himself as best he could. He ran water over his arm. It made no difference. It felt as if he had a white hot lump of charcoal in there. He hung his head over the sink. Not only did he have Schmidt to move, but he also had furniture and a large antique Arraiolos carpet to shift. He wrapped a towel around his arm.

  He went back to the living room. He reached over Schmidt and uncorked the aguardente bottle and drank heavily from it. He sat on the divan with the bottle in his crotch and with the most westerly telephone in Europe put a call through to Abrantes. The operator connected him.

  The maid answered and refused to disturb Abrantes. Felsen worked on her for half a minute. He knew what Abrantes was doing. He drank again and found a new packet of cigarettes. Abrantes finally picked up the telephone.

  'I need your help,' said Felsen.

  'Can't it wait?' he said, irritated.

  'I need help from your friends ... the ones Manuel works for.'

  Silence now. He had the man's attention. He gulped more spirit, blinked back the tears.

  There's been a development from that situation I had with Susana Lopes. There's a man dead up here.'

  'That's enough,' said Abrantes. 'Shut up now. I'm sending somebody. Are you hurt?'

  Felsen's face was burning from the alcohol. His lips, with the cigarette stuck to the bottom one, itched. Sweat sprang from the sandpaper of his moustache.

  'My arm.'

  'Leave the door open,' said Abrantes.

  Felsen raided the phone back. He made it to the front door and halfway back. He fell across the threshold to the living room, Schmidt's white face was his last image.

  He was vaguely aware of people in the room. Shadows and light in his eyes, furniture scraping, voices remote and indistinct and the wind still driving into the house, rattling the windows. He was being moved. Something flashed in the dome of his cranium and he floated out again, his raft creaking under the heave of a big sea.

  He woke up several times over a period he could not judge. Each time the heat inside him was tremendous as if his body was burning fossil fuels. On the last occasion there was a smell, a terrible smell, one that frightened him and left him as weak as the runt cub in a litter of twelve.

  There was morning light when he came round. The very first inch of the day when the earliest grey seeps out of the black. His head was too heavy to lift off the pillow. Was he awake this time? Was he conscious? He waited to see where he was, to make sure that he wasn't still inside his own head. More light leaked into the room, a little white, the colour of bone. He felt cool. Not so much pain in his bad arm, a saline drip in the other. Not parched as before. He heard voices talking in the corridor about a coup attempt in Beja, the name of General Machedo, but it was too much effort to listen and he tuned out.

  He lifted his right arm. It was secured to the bed frame by a pair of handcuffs. He lifted his left, gingerly, the pain still there. The arm came up easily. He looked down his chest at it, but it wasn't there. It felt there. But it wasn't. The hand was there but it wasn't. The wrist. The elbow. The biceps. All there, but not. He yelled loud enough to split the two sacs of his lungs.

  Two guards, both with rifles, crashed into the room.

  'What the hell's going on?' said the first and older one.

  'My arm,' roared Felsen. 'My arm's gone.'

  They looked at him dumbly from across the room.

  'That's right,' said the younger one. 'They cut it off.'

  The older guard nudged him with his elbow.

  'What?' said the younger one.

  'He's lost his arm, for God's sake.'

  'He smells a lot better now than when they brought him in.'

  The older guard gave him a dead-eyed look and went to get a doctor. The younger one paced the room.

  'Why am I chained to the bed?' asked Felsen
.

  'You killed a guy,' said the guard. 'You were completely drunk and you killed a guy. As soon as you're fit to move we're taking you back to Caxias.'

  'I don't remember the trial.'

  'That'll come.'

  Felsen dumped his head back on the pillow and did some blinking at the ceiling.

  'Will you do something for me?'

  'You don't look as if you've got much money on you.'

  'If I give you a number will you call Joaquim Abrantes? He'll give you money.'

  The guard shook his head. Not worth the bother.

  Two weeks later Felsen was moved back to the Caxias prison. A week after that he was taken out of his cold damp cell to a room with a table, an empty sardine tin for an ashtray and two chairs. Abrantes was shown in by a prison officer. He and Felsen shook hands. Abrantes clapped him on the shoulder and tried to nod some encouragement into him. Felsen tried to keep the coldness out of his eyes—Abrantes the only man on the outside who could help him. They sat down. Abrantes produced some of Felsen's favourite Turkish cigarettes and a hip flask of brandy. They lit up and drank to each other.

  'So what's happening?' asked Felsen.

  'A very difficult and now, bureaucratic, situation.'

  'I don't remember very much after I called you.'

  'That was the first problem. You came through to an operator in Cascais. By the time I'd contacted my friends in PIDE another squad had already been advised by the telephone exchange that a death had occurred and that you weren't phoning the police to report it. Suspicious. Very suspicious.'

  'He broke into my house. He was armed.'

  'So were you. Your fingerprints were on the unregistered gun. A bullet from that was found in the dead man.'

  'I don't...' Felsen drifted, and chewed on his remaining thumbnail.

  'You see how complicated it has become.'

  'That wasn't my gun. He had my gun. My gun blew up in his face.'

  'What was he doing with your gun, what were you doing with his?'

  Felsen closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He told Abrantes as best as he could remember what had happened. Abrantes listened, glancing at his watch and drinking more of the brandy than was his share. He nodded and murmured to keep Felsen going.

  'You know,' said Abrantes, once he was sure the German was finished. 'I don't think you can say any of that in court.'

  'In court?'

  'There has to be a trial.'

  'What about your PIDE friends?'

  'As I mentioned ... a very difficult and now, bureaucratic, situation. You're in the system. It's not so easy to get you out.'

  'I don't remember being charged.'

  'The charge, my friend, is murder.'

  Felsen dabbed the sardine tin around the table with the end of his cigarette.

  'You know who he was, don't you?'

  'Who?'

  'The dead man.'

  'According to his papers he was a German tourist called Reinhardt Glaser.'

  Felsen shook his head, his eyes so intense, they grabbed Abrantes around the throat.

  'You owe me,' he said.

  'I owe you?'

  'The dead man was Schmidt ... you remember him?'

  'Schmidt?'

  'The one you told me you shot that night in the Alentejo. You said you put him in the river...'

  'No, no, no, no.'

  'Yes, Joaquim,' said Felsen, easing the hip flask from Abrantes' grip. 'It was him. You lied to me. He said you didn't come after him. He said you fired a shot out in the poppy fields. He saw you. Schmidt saw you.'

  'No, no, no ... his name was Reinhardt Glaser. You made a mistake.'

  'I didn't make a mistake. You know I didn't.'

  'Me? How? I never saw him.'

  It was quiet enough to hear the tobacco crackling in their cigarettes.

  'You owe me for that, Joaquim.'

  'Look,' he said, 'you lost your arm, I'm sorry for that. You've had a bad experience. You're still in a state of shock. Your memory is playing tricks with you. This is what I'm going to do for you. I'm getting one of the best criminal lawyers to help you out of this mess. If he can't get you an acquittal nobody can. Now drink. I have to be going. Pica is waiting for me in the Chiado. The later I am, the more she spends. Força, amigo meu.'

  That was the last Felsen saw of Abrantes. The lawyer never appeared. His old partner didn't attend the trial nine months later, and he wasn't present to see Felsen sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment for the murder of the German tourist, known from his passport details as Reinhardt Glaser.

  As Felsen began two decades of imprisonment in Caxias he had a short, vivid dream. It featured four horseshoes which gradually straightened out into a lattice of metal strips, and behind the strips was a live lizard with its head mashed to a bloody pulp, front legs braced, bobbing. He woke with a jerk and into his head came the memory of a dark stretch of road out to Guincho on a squally Christmas Eve night. He knew then, that even in his drunken state, his instinct had been right—Maria had told Abrantes that Manuel was not his son. He replayed that last meeting with Abrantes. The man seemed to have come with drink and cigarettes and the possibility of hope, but Felsen now realized that he was there to enjoy his satisfaction, to rub his hands over the warm fire of completed vengeance.

  Two weeks after the trial on November 18th 1962 Joaquim Abrantes sat down with his new lawyer, Dr Aquilino Dias Oliveira, and rewrote the statutes of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha. Amongst the shareholders and directors there was no mention of the convicted murderer, Klaus Felsen.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Sunday, 14th June 1998, Paço de Arcos, near Lisbon

  Olivia was still sleeping when I looked in on her in the morning, face-down under her black hair. I went downstairs and ate fruit, drank coffee, and talked to the cat, who'd stretched herself out into the longest cat in Paço de Arcos. The time snipped round to 9.00 A.M. and I went to look at the telephone. The telephone had been mildly interesting years ago when we had a large Bakelite affair that was heavy enough to curtail young girls' conversations. Now we had a sleek graphite-grey push-button apparatus that looked absurd in the room's decaying décor, and was light enough for Olivia to tuck it behind her ear and cut a suit of clothes whilst talking about boys. I straightened the telephone on its table, checked the flex. Olivia came in wearing a T-shirt down to her knees, her eyes still puzzled by sleep.

  'What are you doing?' she asked.

  'I'm looking at the phone.'

  She did, too.

  'Is it due to perform?'

  'I was thinking of making a call.'

  The cat came in and sat beside her, paws neat, sensing a moment of possible interest. She yawned widely.

  'Who are you going to call?'

  I gripped my chin and looked up at her, suddenly feeling in need of something and not just a beard. My head was suddenly crowded—I was going to call a possible witness in a murder trial to ask her out to lunch, I was going to have to tell my daughter about her, I had to explain last night's madness.

  The door bell rang.

  'I wanted to talk to you about what happened last night,' I said, shif ting on to my back foot.

  The door bell rang again. She left the room, fast. Glad to be out of there. The cat looked around to see if there was anything worth nicking and left too. I lunged at the telephone and dialled Luisa Madrugada's number. She picked it up before it had even rung.

  'This is Inspector Zé Coelho,' I said, the words sprinting out, panic-struck. 'Would you like your work interrupted?'

  'I always want my work interrupted, Inspector, we talked about that yesterday. It's by what and whom ... that's the question.'

  'Lunch,' I said. 'Would lunch...?'

  'Inspector?' she asked, suddenly grave and chill. 'Is this business?'

  Something cold ran through me. I felt sick with regret.

  'Absolutely not,' I said, changing my original idea, forcing the words out.

  She laughed a
nd told me to come to her apartment at one o'clock.

  Olivia came back into the room followed by Carlos with a newspaper under his arm and the cat still looking for the cocktail party.

  'Progress,' said Olivia, still unimpressed.

  I refitted the handset, reliving the rollercoaster moments of the start of something new—hope, despair, joy—all in ten seconds. I'd forgotten the stamina it took.

  Carlos approached and held out his hand. I took it. He held on and, with his head bowed, uttered an extensive apology that must have kept him up all night. I looked at Olivia, who was transfixed until something more important occurred to her and she left the room.

  I put my hand on Carlos' shoulder. He was suffering and still couldn't look me in the eye. My chest felt as big as a cathedral roof. If I'd opened my mouth there'd have been a chord from an organ with all the stops pulled out. I put an arm around his shoulders.

  'You're a good man,' I said. 'Apologizing's never easy, especially when it wasn't entirely your fault.'

  'I should never have said that about your father. It was unforgivable. It's my problem. I say things when they come into my head. I don't think about other people. I've tried to get my thoughts into some kind of holding pattern, but I can't. That's why they move me around. I upset people. You know that by now.'

  'It's a sensitive subject ... the revolution,' I said. 'We shouldn't have been talking about it after a day like that.'

  'That's what my father said. He said it's not even a generation old. It's still raw.'

  And you ... your generation can be objective about it. I'm still ... I was ... involved,' I said. 'What about your father?'

  'He was a communist, a union activist in one of the shipyards. He did nearly four years in Caxias.'

  We stood there nodding. The seriousness too big and awkward to be commented on. I felt like a man who'd joined hands with someone around the trunk of a massive tree. I steered him into the kitchen and sat him down with some coffee. He put the well-read newspaper down on the table.

  'Anything interesting in that?' I asked.

  'Catarina Oliveira's in there.'

  'Is she?'