Her breathing recovered, her face went back to its natural colour. The dove was not so fortunate. It fell dead and already stiff from her hands. They looked at it, she sad, Felsen affronted by the woman's quackery. He was in no doubt she'd killed it herself.
'What do you make of it?' he asked.
The face that looked up at him was not encouraging. Her eyes were now fully open from the slits they had been before. They were black, all pupil, no iris.
'This is not our magic,' she said.
'But what does it all mean?' he asked. 'The lizard? The horseshoes?'
'You killed the lizard… in your own bed. It means you will destroy yourself.'
'Kill myself?'
'No, no. You will bring yourself down.'
He snorted.
'And the horseshoes?'
'They will stop you from going anywhere. They will…'
'I've just been somewhere. You and I have just been in the car.'
'Not the car, Senhor Felsen,' she said, and he wondered for a moment how she knew his name.
'What then?'
'Your life.'
'What is this… this…' he said, his hand revolving over and over looking for the word.
'This is Macumba.'
'Macumba?'
'Brazilian black magic.'
Chapter XXVI
Saturday, 13th June 199-, Paco de Arcos, Lisbon During those six hard months of controlled fat intake to get myself back into shape, I'd planned to celebrate the end by cooking something exquisitely drenched in fat for Olivia and myself. Somewhere in my body there was a high whining for something like arroz de pato, duck with rice-the fat soaked into the rice, studded with chourico, the flesh of idle chunks of duck falling apart, the skin crisp-and a deep, cutting, slatey red to wash it down. But the dish took hours to make, it was late, nearly midnight, Olivia wasn't home and there was nothing in the fridge. I tipped the whisky undrunk into the sink. I showered and changed.
I slapped around the kitchen in bare feet and thawed some turkey steaks I'd found in the freezer in warm water. I boiled up some rice, a tin of corn and opened a bottle of Esteva red.
By half-past-midnight I was sitting with a small coffee and an aguardente, smoking my penultimate cigarette. Olivia came in smelling of perfume and beer. She sat down and smoked my last cigarette for me. I complained. She hugged me around the head and kissed me loudly on the ear. I crushed her to me and resisted biting her like I used to when she was small. She squirmed away from me and asked what had happened to my hand.
'A little accident,' I said, not wanting to face that again.
'So,' she said, taking a sip of my coffee, speaking in English as we did from time to time.
'You look happy,' I said.
'I am.'
'You met somebody you liked?'
'Sort of,' she half-lied, automatic at any age. 'How was your day?'
'You heard anything?'
'The girl on the beach, Dad. Paco de Arcos hasn't been talking about anything else.'
'And Cascais?'
'Cascais, too.'
'You stopped talking about the Manic Street Preachers for two seconds.'
'Not that long.'
'Yes, well, she was dead on the beach. Hit on the head and strangled. Not nice. The only thing…'
'How old was she?'
'A bit younger than you.'
'What was "the only thing"?'
My sweet daughter, my little girl. I still saw that under the clothes, the hairstyle, the make-up and perfume. I used to disturb myself at night, because I'm a man and I know men, thinking about all those young guys who wouldn't see that, who saw… who saw what she wanted them to see. I suppose that's it. Girls don't want to be little girls for ever… not even for ten minutes these days.
'Maybe you knew this girl,' I said, deviating.
'Me?'
'Why not? She's the same age. Her parents live in Cascais. She goes to school in Lisbon-Liceu D. Dinis. Her name's Catarina Sousa Oliveira. Privileged kids get murdered too.'
'I don't know anyone at the Liceu D. Dinis. I don't know anyone called Catarina Sousa Oliveira. But that wasn't "the only thing". You changed your mind. I can tell. You don't…'
'I did. The thing was… she was under sixteen and for a kid that age she was getting up to a lot of tricks.'
'Tricks?'
'It's what prostitutes do… they turn tricks.'
'I know that… it's just a weird word for the work.'
'I bet your mother didn't teach you that.'
'Mum and I talked about everything.'
'Turning tricks?'
'It's called "Sex Education". She didn't get any herself so she gave me some.'
'Did she use those words?'
'That's what women do, Dad. When boys are kicking footballs in the park, we're talking about… everything.'
'Except football.'
'I bought you a present,' she said.
'What else did your mother tell you?'
'There,' she said, and laid out a razor, five blades and a can of shaving foam. I pulled her over and kissed her on the head.
What are these for?' I asked.
'Don't be difficult.'
'Go on.'
'What?'
We were talking about your mother.'
You were being nosey about our conversations… and if Mum didn't talk to you about what she talked about with me, then she probably thought it was none of your business. Or, more likely Dad, you wouldn't have been interested.'
Try me.'
She looked up into her head, smoked a bit and polished her teeth with her tongue.
'You first,' she said.
'Me?'
'Tell me something personal that you talked about with Mum to show me… good faith.'
'Like what?'
'Something personal,' she said, enjoying herself, 'like sex. Didn't you ever talk about sex?'
I looked into my aguardente glass for quite some time.
'She talked to me about what it was like having sex with you,' she said.
'Did she?' I said, astonished.
'She said, let me get this right: "It's a wonderful thing to have sex with a man you love. Once you've felt that tenderness, the deep intimacy of his total regard for you, the thrill of that mental connection, then there's no going back…" I think that was more or less it. She told me that after my first time when I complained that it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.'
Olivia stopped. I was in trouble, unable to swallow, my eyeballs prickling, my stomach clenching. It was silent in the room. A single dog barked in the night, a long way off. My daughter put her hand on my back, rubbed me between the shoulders. I pulled back from the: precipice. She put her forehead on to my arm. I stroked her soft, black hair. More time passed. She kissed my wrist. The traffic reasserted itself in the room.
'Your first time?' I said, coming round.
Olivia sat up.
'She didn't tell you, did she? I didn't think she would.'
'Why?'
'I asked her not to. I thought you'd probably have arrested him.'
'When was this?'
'A while ago.'
'I'm not sure how long a while is in English? Sometimes it's short, sometimes it's long.'
'About eighteen months ago.'
'When exactly. I want to remember that time.'
'February last year, Carnival time.'
'You were only just fifteen.'
'That's right.'
'What happened?'
She stretched and shivered with nerves, not used to talking to me like this. Neither of us were.
'You know,' she said.
'Tell me.'
'It was at a party, he was eighteen…'
You think of these things, and then you find they've happened without you knowing. Why hadn't I seen it? Don't women get that look in their eye when they've eaten the forbidden fruit? I know boys don't-they're nerds before and afterwards they're just happy nerds.
It happened again. I thought I was relaxed, but I was coiled tighter than a metal spring. Where was all this… this rage coming from? For the second time that night my fist came down on the table and I roared against the bastard stranger who'd deflowered my daughter. I harangued my dead wife. I railed against my reflection in the window for being so blind. I castigated Olivia who kicked back her chair and volleyed her entire love-life straight back in my face. Yelling at the top of her voice, so that ship's crews heading out into the Atlantic that night would have lined up on the rails to listen. It didn't stop until she hit me, tears streaming down her face, she thundered her fists into my chest and stormed out, the doors crashing behind her, heels cracking the stairs, a final door slam and I could see her thumping face-down on the bed.