Theotónio led me up the stairs chattering away. He was a great talker and had no inhibitions; he had lived a long time in Portugal, in Vila do Conde, he said, where he had some relatives; he liked Portuguese cakes, especially pão de ló.
The staircase was made of dark wood and led up to a large, dimly lit gallery with a long table and a globe. On the wall were life-size paintings of serious-looking bearded figures, darkened by time. Theotónio left me at the door to the library and hurried back downstairs as if he had a lot to do. The room was large and cool with a strong stale smell. The bookshelves had baroque twirls and ivory inlays, but were in bad condition, I thought. There were two long central tables with big twisted candlestick legs and some smaller low tables near the walls with church-style pews and old wicker armchairs. I took a look at the first shelf on the right. There were some books on patristics and some seventeenth-century Jesuit chronicles. I took out two books at random and sat down on the armchair near the entrance. On the next table a book lay open, but I didn’t look at it; I leafed through one of the books I had taken, the Relaçao do novo caminho que fez por Terra e por Mar, vindo da India para Portugal, o Padre Manoel Godinho da Companhia de Iesu. The colophon said: Em Lisboa, na Officina de Henrique Valente de Oliveira, Impressor del Rey N.S., Anno 1665. Manoel Godinho had a pragmatic vision of life, which didn’t clash in the slightest with his profession as guardian of the Catholic faith in that enclave of counter-reform besieged by the Hindu pantheon. His narrative was exact and circumstantial, free of pomposity or rhetoric. He had no love of metaphors or similes, this priest; he had a strategic eye, dividing the earth into promising and unpromising areas, and he thought of the Christian West as the centre of the world. I had got to the end of a long preface dedicated to the King, when, without knowing in response to what signal, I had the sensation I was not alone. Perhaps I heard a slight squeak or sigh; or, more likely, I simply had the sensation you get when you’re being watched. I raised my eyes and scanned the room. In an armchair between the two windows at the other end of the room, the dark mass, which when I came in I had thought was a cloak carelessly thrown over the back of the chair, turned slowly round, exactly as if he had been waiting for the moment I would look at him, and stared at me. He was an old man with a long hollow face, his head covered by some kind of hat whose shape I couldn’t make out.
‘Welcome to Goa,’ he grunted. ‘You have committed the imprudence of coming from Madras; the road is full of bandits.’
He had a very hoarse voice, and made occasional gurgling noises. I looked at him in amazement. It seemed odd to me that he should use the word ‘bandits’, and odder still that he knew where I had come from.
‘And the overnight stop in that horrible place certainly won’t have been very reassuring for you,’ he went on. ‘You are young and enterprising, but you are often afraid; you wouldn’t make a good soldier, perhaps cowardice would get the better of you.’ He looked at me indulgently. I don’t know why, but I felt a deep embarrassment which prevented me from replying. But how did he know about my trip, I thought, who had told him?
‘Don’t worry,’ said the old man, as if guessing what I was thinking. ‘I’ve got plenty of informers, I have.’
He pronounced this last remark in an almost menacing tone, and this made a strange impression on me. We were speaking in Portuguese, I remember, and his words were cold and dull, as if a great distance lay between them and his voice. Why did he speak like that, I wondered, who on earth could he be? The long room was in semi-darkness and he was at the other end, quite a distance from me, his body partly hidden by a table. All this, together with the surprise, had prevented me from seeing his face. But now I saw that he wore a triangular hat of soft cloth and had a long grey beard that brushed against his chest which was covered by a corset embroidered with silver thread. His shoulders were wrapped in a roomy black cloak cut in an antique style, with puffed-out sleeves. He read the uneasiness on my face, shifted his seat and sprang up toward the middle of the room with an agility I would never have suspected. He was wearing high boots turned down at the thigh and had a sword at his hip. He made a somewhat ridiculous theatrical gesture, tracing a generous spiral with his right arm which he then placed over his heart, exclaiming in a booming voice: ‘I am Afonso de Albuquerque, Viceroy of the Indies!’
Only then did I realise that he was mad. I realised it and at the same time, in an odd way, I thought that he really was Afonso de Albuquerque, and none of this surprised me: it just made me feel tired and indifferent, as if everything was predestined and unavoidable.
The old man looked me over warily, suspiciously, his small eyes gleaming. He was tall, majestic, arrogant. I realised that he was expecting me to speak; and I spoke. But the words came out of their own accord, involuntarily. ‘You look like Ivan the Terrible,’ I said, ‘or rather the actor who played him.’
He said nothing and put his hand to his ear.
‘I mean in an old film,’ I explained, ‘you made me think of an old film.’ And while I was saying this, a glow spread across his face, as if a fire were blazing in a hearth nearby. But there was no hearth, the room was getting darker and darker, perhaps it had been the last ray of the setting sun.
‘What have you come here for?’ he shouted suddenly. ‘What do you want from us?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I don’t want anything. I came here to do some archive research, it’s my job. This library is almost unknown in the West. I’m looking for old chronicles.’
The old man tossed his large cloak over one shoulder, just as theatre actors do when they’re about to fight a duel. ‘It’s a lie!’ he cried vehemently. ‘You had a different reason for coming here.’
His violence didn’t frighten me, I wasn’t afraid he would attack me: yet I did feel a strange sense of subjugation, as if he had uncovered some guilt that I had been concealing from him. I lowered my eyes in shame and saw that the book open on the table was Saint Augustine. I read these words: Quo modo praesciantur futura. Was it just a coincidence, or did someone want me to read those words? And who, if not the old man? He had told me he had his informers, that was his word, and this I found menacing and inescapable.
‘I’ve come here to search for Xavier,’ I confessed. ‘It’s true, I’m searching for Xavier.’
He looked at me triumphantly. There was irony in his expression now, and scorn perhaps. ‘And who is Xavier?’
I saw this question as a betrayal, because I felt he was going back on a tacit agreement, that he ‘knew’ who Xavier was and shouldn’t have had to ask me. And I didn’t want to tell him, I felt that too.
‘Xavier is my brother,’ I lied.
He laughed cruelly and pointed his forefinger at me. ‘Xavier doesn’t exist,’ he said. ‘He’s nothing but a ghost.’ He made a gesture that took in the whole room. ‘We are all dead, haven’t you realised that yet? I am dead, and this city is dead, and the battles, the sweat, the blood, the glory and my power, all dead, all utterly in vain.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘there is always something survives.’
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘His memory? Your memory? These books?’
He took a step toward me and I was swept by a great sense of horror, because I already knew what he was about to do, I don’t know how, but I already knew. With his boot he kicked a little bundle that lay at his feet, and I saw it was a dead mouse. He shifted the creature across the floor and grunted with derision: ‘Or this mouse?’ He laughed again and his laughter froze my blood. ‘I am the Pied Piper of Hamelin!’ he cried. Then his voice became friendly, called me professor and said: ‘I’m sorry if I woke you.’