These investigations developed, in Manuel, an adolescent passion for spying on people. He found it thrilling to observe without being seen, to soak up information that people would never know he knew. It empowered him against their unconcern and it taught him things about people, and about sex.
His sex education started with the next-door neighbour's maid and his father's chauffeur. He'd let himself in to the neighbour's house and was wandering about, rifling through drawers, poking about in cupboards, when he heard them come in. He hid in the laundry room, and waited for them to leave but they followed him in there. He wasn't sure what he was watching at first as the man and woman tussled gently, making strange scoffing noises. He was only twelve at the time. But as soon as he saw the girl's skirts go up, her bare legs and a coppery bush at their apex, his own excitement told him that this was a thrill in a totally different category to Pica's underwear drawer.
He was shocked by the chauffeur's behaviour, the man dropping his trousers as if he was going to do caca in front of the girl, who he'd picked up and placed on the table. It was repellent. But when he saw the man's equipment, the state of it, the size of it, where he put it, the way he rammed it up against the girl's shiny bush, her strange, fearful gratitude, the increased savagery of the chauffeur's thrusts, and the confusion followed by the man's semen spraying everywhere-he realized he was on to something extraordinary. The state of his own pants told him so. His mind told him something different-part thrilled, part disgusted, with a strange overhanging calamity that this was what would be expected of him.
Part of the mystery was clarified two days later (the laundry room was now one of his permanent hideouts) when his father burst in with the same maid. Manuel realized that only lower-class people sprayed their semen everywhere, whereas proper people, more politely he thought, and less messy, left it all in the girl's bush.
It was a number of years later, and a succession of maids later, that he fully understood the situation and even then it took a visit to a prostitute around his eighteenth birthday to completely demystify the procedure. It was she who, with a well-positioned knee, demonstrated that the withdrawal technique was a cross-class practice in a Catholic society.
Felsen moved to get a better view of what was fascinating Manuel. Was it Pica's bottom? If so, it was a healthy sign as his own eyes had frequently drifted over that region. She'd kept her figure. She hadn't had any children. Abrantes had offered to take her up to see the Senhora dos Santos in the Beira and been met with a pitying silence. Instead he'd taken her to London several times and spent large amounts of money in Harley Street but she'd never even been pregnant, let alone miscarried. This was why her parents were excessively polite whenever they came to Abrantes' house or his parties. It made for dull conversation.
Felsen drifted back to Manuel who, in that instant, straightened as if he'd seen what he'd come for. His father's hand had slipped off Patricia's back and was now definitely cupping a buttock while, with the other hand, he was playing with the suspender clip beneath the material of Pica's dress. The old dog, thought Felsen, as Pica turned and saw the white of Manuel's shirt beneath the bougainvillea. She shrugged her husband's hand off her bottom. Abrantes' other hand shot off Patricia's buttock quick as a lizard.
The afternoon progressed. People left as the food ran out. Abrantes joined Felsen on the veranda with two brandy glasses and a bottle of aguardente he'd brought down from the Beira. They sat on raffia-seated chairs with a wrought-iron table between them and drank and smoked cigarettes while Abrantes softly slapped the painted wooden rail.
'That's the Portuguese for you,' said Felsen, watching people leave, 'they can't do anything without food.'
Abrantes wasn't listening. He flicked ash over the rail not caring where it went.
'It's been a bad year,' he said, slipping into the role of very successful, but naturally pessimistic businessman.
'We got out of Africa without losing our shirts,' said Felsen.
'No, no, I'm not talking about business. Business was all right. It's what you say… it's the colonies. That African trouble is not going to go away.'
'Salazar will follow the British. They've given independence to Ghana and Nigeria. Kenya will follow. So will Salazar. In a couple of years we'll be back in Africa making money with new independent governments.'
'Ah,' said Abrantes, leaning forward, knees spread, ankles crossed, glad, for once, to be able to correct the German, 'if you think that, then you don't understand Salazar. You're forgetting what happened when the Australians landed on East Timor during the war. Salazar will never give up the colonies. They are Empire. They are Portugal. They are part of his Estado Novo.'
'Come on, Joaquim… the man's seventy-two years old now.'
'If you don't think he's got the stomach for it, you're wrong. It's a weakness of his. Everybody knows it. Why do you think he's having all this trouble at home?'
'Moniz trying to get him to resign?' Felsen sneered and threw his hand up in the air as if he was chucking salt over his shoulder.
'And don't forget General Machedo. He's still out there.'
'In Brazil, a few thousand kilometres away.'
'There's a man with popular support,' said Abrantes, ignoring Felsen. 'There's a man who would do anything to get into power… and if he couldn't get the top military on his side he'd even talk to those people.'
'Those people?' asked Felsen.
Abrantes wound his hand round and round, slapping the rail each time to show there was more and more, the two businessmen acting at each other as if they were performing some brand of formal theatre.
'These people are drawing attention to themselves. They took that cruise liner, the Santa Maria. They hijacked that TAP aircraft. They…'
'Who are they? Who are those people or these people… which people?'
'The communists,' said Abrantes, his eyes widening in what Felsen assumed was mock fear, but was, in fact, astonishment. 'These are people to be feared. You, of all people, should know that. Look what they've done to Berlin.'
'The wall? That won't last.'
'It's a wall,' said Abrantes. 'You don't build a wall unless you expect it to last. Believe me. And they're gathering strength here too. I know.'
'How?'
'I have friends,' said Abrantes, '…in PIDE.'
And PIDE talk like that about Salazar?'
'You don't understand, my friend. You've spent a lot of time out of the country. I am here in Lisbon all the time. The PIDE,' he said, stretching out an evangelical hand, 'the PIDE aren't just the police, they're a state within the New State. They see how things really are. They understand the dangers. They see the African wars. They see trouble at home. They see dissent. They see communism. All these things are a threat to the stability of the… Do you know what communists do to banks?'
Felsen said nothing. He knew Abrantes as a lot of animals-the shrewd business partner, the ruthless practitioner of brutal labour relations, the cost-cutter, the deal-maker-but never, not to his knowledge, the political animal.
'They nationalize them,' said Abrantes, throwing his hand out as if there was a bible in it.
Felsen ran his hand over his grey fuzz. Abrantes was irritated by his apparent lack of concern.
'That means we own nothing, ' he reiterated the horror.
'I know what nationalization is,' said Felsen. 'I know what communism is. I'm scared of it. I don't need any convincing. But what are you proposing? That we sell up and get out? I'm not going to Brazil.'
'Manuel is joining PIDE,' said Abrantes and Felsen bit back his instinct to shout with laughter- that was a solution?
'What about his university education?' he asked, automatically.