A Small Death in Lisbon

Then quiet, apart from the blood thundering in my ears, and the tick of a woodworm eating its way up the table leg.

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.