‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ said Father Pimentel.
He was a man of about fifty with a solid build and a frank manner. He held out his hand and I got up, confused.
‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, ‘I was having a bad dream.’
He sat on the small armchair near mine and made a reassuring gesture. ‘I got your letter,’ he said. ‘The archives are at your disposal, you can stay as long as you like. I imagine you’ll be sleeping here this evening, I’ve prepared a room for you.’ Theotónio came in with a tray of tea and a cake that looked like pão de ló.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘your hospitality is most kind. But I won’t be stopping this evening, I’m going on to Calangute, I’ve hired a car. I want to try and find out something about somebody. I’ll be back in a few days’ time.’
IX
Another thing that can happen to one in the course of a lifetime is to spend a night in the Hotel Zuari. At the time it may not seem a particularly happy adventure; but in the memory, as always with memories, refined of immediate physical sensations, of smells, colour, and the sight of a certain little beasty beneath the washbasin, the experience takes on a vagueness which improves the overall image. Past reality never seems quite as bad as it really was: the memory is a formidable falsifier. Distortions creep in, even when you don’t want them to. Hotels like this already populate our fantasy: we have already come across them in the books of Conrad or Somerset Maugham, in the occasional American film based on the novels of Kipling or Bromfield: they seem almost familiar.
I arrived at the Hotel Zuari late in the evening and I had no choice but to stay there, as is often the way in India. Vasco da Gama is a small town in the State of Goa, an exceptionally ugly, dark town with cows wandering about the streets and poor people wearing Western clothes, an inheritance of the Portuguese period; it thus has all the misery without the mystery. Beggars abound, but there are no temples or sacred places here, and the beggars don’t beg in the name of Vishnù, nor lavish benedictions and religious formulas on you: they are taciturn and dazed, as if dead.
In the lobby of the Hotel Zuari there is a semi-circular reception desk behind which stands a fat male receptionist who is forever talking on the telephone. He books you in, talking on the telephone; still talking on the telephone he gives you the keys; and at dawn, when the first light tells you you can finally dispense with the hospitality of your room, you will find him talking on the telephone in a monotonous, low, indecipherable voice. Who is the receptionist of the Hotel Zuari talking to?
There is also a vast dining room on the first floor of the Hotel Zuari, so as not to contradict the sign on the door; but that evening it was dark and there were no tables and I ate on the patio, a little courtyard with bougainvillaea and heavily scented flowers and low little tables with small wooden benches, all dimly lit. I ate scampi as big as lobsters and a mango dessert, I drank tea and a kind of wine that tasted of cinnamon; all for a price equivalent to three thousand lira, which cheered me up. Along one side of the patio ran the veranda onto which the rooms looked out; a white rabbit was hopping over the stones of the courtyard. An Indian family was eating at a table at the far end. At the table next to mine was a blonde woman of indefinable age and faded beauty. She ate with three fingers, the way the Indians do, making perfect little balls of rice and dipping them in the sauce. She looked English to me, and so, as it turned out, she was. She had a mad glint in her eyes, but only every now and then. Later she told me a story that I don’t really think I should put down here. It may well have been an anxiety dream. But then the Hotel Zuari is not a place for happy dreams.
X
‘I worked as a mailman in Philadelphia, at eighteen already walking the streets with my bag over my shoulder, without fail, every morning, in summer when the tar turns to molasses and in winter when you slip on the icy snow. For ten years, carrying letters. You don’t know how many letters I’ve carried, thousands and thousands. They were all upper class, rich, the people on the envelopes. Letters from all over the world: Miami, Paris, London, Caracas. Good morning, sir. Good morning, madam. I’m your mailman.’
He raised an arm and pointed to the group of young people on the beach. The sun was going down and the water sparkled. Near us some fishermen were preparing a boat. They were half naked, wearing loincloths. ‘Here we’re all equal,’ he said, ‘there’s no upper class, no ladies and gentlemen.’ He looked at me and a sly expression crossed his face. ‘Are you a gentleman?’
‘What do you think?’
He looked at me doubtfully. ‘I’ll answer that later.’ Then he pointed to the huts made of palm leaves on our left that leant against the dunes. ‘We live there, it’s our village, it’s called Sun Village.’ He pulled out a little wooden box with papers and a mixture and rolled himself a cigarette. ‘Smoke?’
‘Not as a rule,’ I said, ‘but I’ll have one now if you’re offering.’
He rolled another for me and said: ‘It’s good this mixture, it makes you feel happy. Are you happy?’
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I was enjoying your story, go on with it.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘one day I was walking down a street in Philadelphia, it was very cold, I was delivering the mail, it was morning, the city was covered in snow, Philadelphia is so ugly. I was walking down these huge roads, then I turned into a smaller street, long and dark, with just a blade of sunlight that had managed to break through the smog lighting the end of the street. I knew that street, I delivered there every day, it was a street that ended in the wall of a car repair place. Well, you know what I saw that day? Try and guess.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.
‘Try and guess.’
‘I give up, it’s too difficult.’
‘The sea,’ he said. ‘I saw the sea. At the end of the street there was a beautiful blue sea with the waves crested with foam and a sandy beach and palm trees. How about that, eh?’
‘Strange,’ I said.
‘I’d only seen the sea at the cinema before, or on postcards from Miami or Havana. And this was exactly like those, an ocean, but with nobody there, the beach deserted. I thought, they’ve brought the sea to Philadelphia. And then I thought, I’m seeing a mirage, like you read about in books. What would you have thought?’
‘The same,’ I said.
‘Right. But the sea can’t get to Philadelphia. And mirages happen in the desert when the sun is burning down and you’re desperately thirsty. And that day it was freezing cold with the city full of dirty snow. So I crept up, very slowly, drawn on by that sea and feeling like I’d like to dive right in, even if it was cold, because the blue was so inviting and the waves were gleaming, lit by the sun.’ He paused a moment and took a drag on his cigarette. He smiled with an absent, distant expression, reliving that day. ‘It was a picture. They’d painted the sea, those bastards. They do it sometimes in Philadelphia, it’s an idea the architects had, they paint on the concrete, landscapes, valleys, woods and the rest, so that you don’t feel so much like you’re living in a shithole of a city. I was about a foot away from that sea on the wall, with my bag on my shoulder; at the end of the street the wind made a little eddy and beneath the golden sand there was litter and dry leaves whirling around, and a plastic bag. Dirty beach, in Philadelphia. I looked at it a moment and thought, if the sea won’t go to Tommy, Tommy will go to the sea. How about that?’