He didn't want to think about her, but in the near darkness of the house and after their brief encounter back in Berlin, he found he couldn't prevent his mind from drifting back over the shards of the affair like gunsmoke over a battlefield. He began to discern her slow dismanding of their relationship. From the moment she'd taken him back in after they'd split up over his accusation that she was acting, to that last sexual act in his apartment before the Gestapo removed him in the morning. But even in that period he could still find moments when they'd reconnected, and he could still feel that point of contact when their knees had touched under the table in the club only a few nights ago. He rubbed it as if it was still burning.
He lit a cigarette and the draught in the room battered the smoke this way and that, whipping it away to nothing. He asked himself if this was what love was-this strange acid in the stomach that burns a constant ulceration, this airlock in his pipes that could send shudders around his system and stop the flow of everything. But that was not how he'd ever heard love described and, like a man taking a short leap over a high drop to white water, he lurched to a sudden conclusion. He'd gone from intimacy to loss without ever having experienced love. It choked him and he had to pace the room again to try and free himself of the notion. He took long hard draws on his cigarette until he was dizzy with nicotine and he reeled to the door and let himself out into the blustery afternoon.
The wind gusted needles of sleet into his face. He breathed it in as if it would somehow clean him out. He had no idea how long he stood there. The afternoon had already darkened with the weather and his face had instantly numbed. The only way he knew that there was ice in the rain was the way it spiked his tongue.
When finally he turned to go back into the house he saw that he wasn't alone in the street. Some way off two figures approached, heads bowed against the wind. Felsen came level with the steps up to the house. One figure split away and headed for the side of the house as if for cover. In profile now, he saw it was a mule. The other figure came doggedly forward and he knew from the gait and the hat that it was Abrantes. He felt the hardness of the gun in his waistband. He unbuttoned his coat in the middle. The figure didn't hesitate until he was about five metres away.
Felsen's fingers flipped open another button. Hands appeared from the clothing of the man opposite. Felsen slid his hand into the opening of his coat and gripped the handle of the gun. Abrantes' left hand came up and removed the scarfing from his face. The right hand hung limply. When it happened it was quick, too quick for Felsen to move. Abrantes covered the five metres in a fraction of a second, threw his arms around the German and smacked two hands on his leather back.
'Bom Natal,' he said. Happy Christmas.
Abrantes guided Felsen back up the stairs and into the house. He shouted for Maria and told her to take care of the mule. She disappeared out of the back of the house. They went into the parlour room and Abrantes threw logs on to the fire. Felsen's face came back to life, raw and aching. Abrantes went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of aguardente and two glasses. He poured the liquor and they drank to Christmas. He was happier than Felsen had ever seen him.
'I heard you were in Foios,' he said, as if Felsen had dropped round there for a drink and found nobody in.
'The chefe at Vilar Formoso said we could be in for a hard time. I thought I'd take a look at the mules.'
'And you saw that I'd been running them for months.'
'Months?'
'I've got more than fifty tons over there.'
'Where?'
'In a warehouse in Navasfrias.'
'You should have told me. I've had a hard time explaining the shortfall in Berlin.'
'I'm sorry for that. I was only reacting to rumours.'
'Which rumours?'
'That now you've invaded Russia and that campaign is… continuing, Dr Salazar is not so concerned about an invasion here. The Germans are too stretched, they say.'
'You remember the Corte Real going down in October?'
'And the Cassequel,' said Abrantes. 'The Cassequel was one of our best ships, seven thousand tons.'
'So you don't think this is a Lisbon problem?'
'I think we should go to Vilar Formoso tomorrow,' said Abrantes. 'Take the chefe another Christmas present.'
'I was there only a few days ago.'
'They have short memories,' he said.
'And we could cross over and take a look at the product in Navasfrias,' said Felsen. 'Is it secure?'
'It's secure.'
Secure meant men with shotguns. Felsen suddenly saw himself lying amongst the rocks and broom with his face blown apart, but he couldn't back down from Abrantes now. He nodded and checked Abrantes, but all he saw was weathered skin stretched over large bones with eyes concentrated on the task of pouring more alcohol.
What was it Poser had said to him, or someone else in the legation, about the Portuguese? Two things. The first, that there wasn't a law in Portugal that couldn't be got around, and the second, was that the Portuguese never came at you head-on. They got you looking straight ahead and then they stuck you from behind. It had been Poser. He remembered pointing it out to him that this, of course, would never happen in Germany and the Prussian had walked off sick of his irony.
The two of them ate a Christmas dinner of a large hen and some roasted bacalhau. They drank two bottles of pre-war Dao which left the warm, rounded taste of a less complicated summer at the back of the mouth.
Felsen went to bed early and smoked and drank aguardente from his metal flask in the dark. He kept his gun under his pillow. After an hour he went across the courtyard and listened at the door of the house with the gun dangling from his hand. He heard Abrantes' familiar grunt and Maria's strange hiss.
In the morning he drank coffee and smoked a cigarette and ignored the stone-faced girl. He had a problem. He didn't want to cross the border with Abrantes and walk into a team of shotguns in Navasfrias. At nine o'clock, this problem was solved by a driver who'd come up from Guarda with a telegram from Lisbon: Dutch and Australian troops invade E. Timor. Return to Lisbon immediately. Poser.
He liked Poser's use of the word 'invade'. He knew that Salazar would see it exactly like that, an invasion of Portuguese sovereignty.
'Is there a problem?' asked Abrantes, suddenly anxious.
'Our border difficulties are over,' said Felsen. 'The Allies have made a mistake. I have to go to Lisbon now. You will arrange for the one hundred and nine tons you have stored in Navasfrias to go to the compound in Ciudad Rodrigo and no more smuggling until I authorize it.'
'One hundred and nine tons?'
Felsen gave him the calculations. The numbers flickered through Abrantes' head, his face impassive and grey as hoar frost from not shaving. At that moment Felsen realized what Abrantes had been doing. He hadn't been stealing, but playing the price difference over the border. Selling high in Spain to come back and buy cheap in Portugal and pocket the difference. But he'd been caught out, the price in Spain had dropped, maybe there were no buyers at the time. He didn't have the money to replace the stock in Foios. All he could do was try to recoup the situation by underestimating the tonnage he'd smuggled. The good mood of last night had been the start of a bluff, a man playing for time to control his losses.
'When do you want the product moved?' asked Abrantes, anxiety showing through.
'It's supposed to be in last year's accounts which should be finalized by the end of January.'
Felsen went into the kitchen. Maria was there holding her baby, looking pathetic. He strode past her, crossed the courtyard and packed his clothes.
In the back of the Citroen he wrote a note to the manager of the compound in Ciudad Rodrigo and gave it to the driver. As they drove down the hill they caught up with a procession. There were men he recognized carrying a body wrapped in cloth and women walking behind. He dropped the window.