My bedroom window opened onto a splendid vista. The extensive estuary had no current, and was dead still. All the boats going to and from Lisbon sailed through its waters — from large transatlantic liners to slender schooners and river lighters, with square sales the color of pumpkin or nicotine. It was a continuous spectacle that lasted night and day. On the other side lay a very low, treeless, interminable, toast-colored plain. The river breeze sometimes carried the hubbub from Lisbon to the east; the city was invisible, but you could see its glow: by day, a gray murk and by night, a greenish pink. To the west were views of the sandbar and beyond that the Atlantic Ocean.
Sunsets died opposite my window. The still waters could be orange, the color of new wine, or often a purple hue that was far too ghostly and literary. The sky could be draped in a mass of rich red, a sumptuous curtain, as in Pincio’s gardens.
I found the boarding house to be very comfortable. In the afternoon I’d go for a long stroll and end up in Estoril. I’d converse at length with Ferrés the architect and his partners. Nightfall would often catch us under the pine trees, talking, listening to the crickets, and smoking cigarettes. In bad weather, we’d drink our aperitifs at the casino. It was a very crowded spot and, though only just inaugurated, it was already a legend. Prone to outbursts of patriotism, the Portuguese were extremely proud of it. Eccentric characters abounded. A cosmopolitan atmosphere was beginning to gather over Estoril.
Perfect order reigned in the boarding house. It was very quiet. There were two Scandinavians who worked for export companies in Lisbon, a nice English couple, a Swiss bank clerk, and two or three Portuguese. The Portuguese were, of course, very keen on politics and that meant I avoided them. Nevertheless, one, by the name of Pacheco, became a really good friend. He was definitely a conspirator — of the center-left variety — but he seemed to be in no rush to convert anyone. One day he admitted to me, very sotto voce, that what he most feared was his own party’s victory.
Pacheco had been living in the house for years and seemed to have free run of the place — to the extent that free run was possible there, which wasn’t great. By talking to him — he was idle as I was — I found things out about the boarding house.
It belonged to a Sra Souza who lived far away, in a city in northern Portugal, where she led a nondescript existence. Her marriage to Sr Souza, a rich property owner, had been a disaster. She was an affluent provincial lady, of the house-loving, naïve variety. Her husband seemed fine on the surface, but was in the grip of a passion for gambling. After three or four years of marriage Sra Souza realized her husband was on the point of losing his own wealth and was about to start on her own. Her indignation didn’t lead to loud outbursts. It was a cold rage. No arguments or attempts to reach an agreement could shift her. The marriage was ended and husband and wife lost sight of each other. Sra Souza managed to save the best part of her fortune. Maria, the couple’s daughter, a child at the time of their separation, was brought up by her mother according to the strictest principles.
Several years passed, during which Sra Souza’s income was drastically reduced. Meanwhile Srta Souza grew up, was full of life and seemed fascinated by life’s ways. Above all she found provincial life too sleepy and dull. When she was nineteen, seeing her mother’s financial worries — the Portuguese currency had lost most of its purchasing power as a result of all those revolutions — she suggested setting up a boarding house in Lisbon so she could earn a living. Her usual frosty self, the old lady agreed without comment. She’d have preferred her daughter to make a typical provincial marriage: an exemplary civil servant, ten year’s her daughter’s senior, who’d be on the wane, insipid, and about to wither away. Maria refused point-blank and established their boarding house on the outskirts of Lisbon on the road to Estoril. When they did so, above all they had in mind a summer income. Building developments in Estoril ensured it was permanent.
For the first few months Sra Souza helped her daughter run the boarding house. The truth is she had to teach her very little. The young woman turned out to be active, lively, indeed the perfect mistress of the house. The old lady returned to the provinces convinced the business couldn’t be in better hands. As she gradually turned drowsier and danker in the rainy provincial city in the north of the country, she felt secretly envious of her daughter’s strength and energy.
When I met her, Maria Souza was a pleasant, delightful woman. She was an extraordinarily fine brunette, with large ecstatic pale gray-blue eyes, moist lips, and pink luminous skin. She was tall and buxom. However, what most surprised me about that woman was the absolutely natural way she spoke and walked. Belonging to a country where so many women shout, scream, speak through their noses, continually act up, grumble, make absurd lip movements when they talk, huff and puff, who in the course of a conversation pass from languid mindlessness to hysterical clowning, a woman who behaves naturally is a real find and makes an astonishing impression. Maria Souza was one such woman. She was a woman many men dream of in these latitudes: pleasant but not saccharine, easy-going, ever good-tempered, never trite or affected and always rather distant — even in her most intimate moments.
She managed the boarding house. She saw to the accounts, gave the orders, was in charge. She did it well, succinctly, with great common sense. She did what she could for everyone without making a fuss. She always had an appropriate smile at the ready for her boarders. A lovely collection of smiles! We all became rather childish in her presence and frankly fell languishingly in love with her.
“This young lady could perfectly well raise her prices and not meet a single objection …” I told my friend Pacheco one day, in a lucid moment.
“If she did so, she’d be in her right!” declared Pacheco firmly, his knightly eyes gleaming tenderly.
Pacheco was the boarder who was most sensitive to the young woman’s presence. And that was only natural.
In any case, there was a strange atmosphere in that house, an atmosphere I’d rarely experienced. Boarding houses with a clientele from different countries are cold places. It’s self-evident — and, moreover, understandable. In these temporary households comprising people from such diverse backgrounds and unknown provenance, conversation never breaks through the routine masks people put on. In this house a special sort of coldness existed that was linked to the presence of Maria Souza. She permanently lived in that atmosphere. Yes. She was agreeable, pleasant, most affable, but at the same time was incredibly distant, distinctly remote from her physical presence, mentally and physically separate from her environment: one always felt in the presence of someone who was a complete stranger. She seemed to be a woman obsessed by her own inner life that was totally unknown and secret, at least as far as I was concerned. At times she seemed to be afraid something might happen at any moment, something she clearly dreaded. It was easy to see. You noted her moments of amnesia in the tiniest detail. It was very apparent in conversation. Srta Souza was present, but wasn’t present. Her face sometimes seemed to betray the effort she was being forced to make to shed an abiding obsession and return to the present. It was a huge, very painful effort.
One day Pacheco sidled stealthily over and said, half worried, half astonished, “Sr Souza was here this afternoon …”
“Sr Souza? Who might that be?”
“It’s her father, you know?”
“So what …?”
“His daughter refused to see him. It was all in vain. The wretched man twisted and turned, wept, wrung his hands, and said he was hungry. He was a pitiful sight …”