Nota bene. To be remembered: the serene roseate beauty of the summer dusk as I cycled homeward, a little drunk, a rare cloud trapped in a cloud-reflecting puddle at the side of the road. To be remembered: my almost insupportable feeling of happiness.
4 a.m. I am alone on the terrace of my small house, looking east beyond my blue hydrangeas toward the mainland, waiting for the sun to rise. I wonder how many people there are on that mainland as miserable as I am.
Golo’s note was terse. She had left me and our child. She was no longer in love with me. There was another man in her life whose identity she would not reveal at this moment. I must not look for her. She would be in touch with me in due course. This was the only way. She needed none of my money. She asked my forgiveness and understanding and hoped, for the sake of Dominic, that we could remain friends.
Odette said simply that during the day Madame had received and made numerous phone calls, had packed one suitcase and then, at about four o’clock, she heard the taxi claxoning for her in the lane. She was going to visit her family, she had told Odette, she had left a note for me and was gone.
I wasted no time. I drove at once back to the port, where of course there was no sign of the Clymene. En route for the Azores or God knew where. I returned to my house (not our house anymore) and cried a few hot tears of rage and frustration over my son’s cot (my son, not our son anymore) until I woke him and he began to bawl as well. I drank half a bottle of Pernod, then drove the car to the ferry and was transported to the mainland. I spent a fruitless hour searching for a “Venus of the Crossroads,” as Pappi used to refer to them, feeling the urge for revenge slowly ebb from me. At around midnight, in an overlit dockside bar I halfheartedly bought a large woman with bobbed hair and a tight jersey a few drinks but then lost my nerve. On the last ferry back to the island a bearded youngster played some form of Hawaiian music on a guitar.
The sky is lightening, a pale cornflower blue shading into lemon; my dead eyes watch the beautiful transformation, unmarveling. I must think, I must clarify my thoughts. The betrayed husband is always the last to know, they say. Didier Van Breuer. Were our friends in Sydney, Australia, all laughing behind my back that winter? What had made Didier come to our house to announce his separation? What had made him break down that way over the meal? What had been said while I was out of the room? To end this stream of answerless questions I force myself to think of Encarnación, a Mexican girl I had briefly loved and to whom I had once thought of proposing. Dear, lissome Encarna, some kind of ex-athlete, a hurdler or swimmer. So different from Golo. I think of a meal we shared in New York, that little restaurant in New York, south of Greenwich Village, where she cajoled me into eating a pungent, shouting salsa from her native province that made my eyes water, obliging me to suck peppermints for days …
This is what I must retain. These are the fragments I must hoard from these last three years. The soft explosion of a pile of leaves. The querulous where-the-hell-are-you? tooting of a waiting motorist. The scent of menthol jujubes. A lone yacht on a silver bay. The immaculate dicing of a garlic clove. The dark trees of Carlyle Square. Oursins à la provençale. A slim male figure in white khakis and a navy sweater. A tin of cumin. A taxi claxoning in the lane. A pungent, shouting salsa that obliged me to suck peppermints for days.
Cork
O hornern não é um animal
É uma carne inteligente
Embora às vezes doente.
(A man is not an animal;
Is intelligent flesh,
Although sometimes ill.)
Fernando Pessoa
MY NAME is Lily Campendonc. A long time ago I used to live in Lisbon.
I lived in Lisbon between 1929 and 1935. A beautiful city, but melancholy.
Boscán, Christmas 1934: “We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.”
“Mrs. Campendonc?”
“Yes?”
“May I be permitted to have a discreet word with you? Discreetly?”
“Of course.”
He did not want this word to take place in the office, so we left the building and walked down the rua Serpa toward the Arsenal. It was dark, we had been working late, but the night was warm.
“Here, please. I think this small café will suit.”
I agreed. We entered and sat at a small table in the rear. I asked for a coffee and he for a small glass of vinho verde. Then he decided to collect the order himself and went to the bar to do so. While he was there I noticed him drink a brandy standing at the bar, quickly, in one swift gulp.
He brought the drinks and sat down.
“Mrs. Campendonc, I’m afraid I have some bad news.” His thin taut features remained impassive. Needlessly he re-straightened his straight bow tie.
“And what would that be?” I resolved to be equally calm.
He cleared his throat, looked up at the mottled ceiling and smiled vaguely.
“I am obliged to resign,” he said. “I hereby offer you one month’s notice.”
I tried to keep the surprise off my face. I frowned. “That is bad news, Senhor Boscán.”
“I am afraid I had no choice.”
“May I ask why?”
“Of course, of course, you have every right.” He thought for a while, saying nothing, printing neat circles of condensation on the tan scrubbed wood of the table with the bottom of his wineglass.
“The reason is …” he began, “and if you will forgive me I will be entirely candid — the reason is,” and at this he looked me in the eye, “that I am very much in love with you, Mrs. Campendonc.”
The material of which this monograph treats has become of double interest because of its shrouded mystery, which has never been pierced to the extent of giving the world a complete and comprehensive story. The mysticism is not associated with its utility and general uses, as these are well known, but rather with its chemical makeup, composition and its fascinating and extraordinary character.
Consul Schenk’s Report
on the Manufacture of Cork (Leipzig, 1890)
After my husband, John Campendonc, died in 1932, I decided to stay on in Lisbon. I knew enough about the business, I told myself, and in any event could not bear the thought of returning to England and his family. In his will he left the company — the Campendonc Cork Company Ltd. — to me with instructions that it should continue as a going concern under the family name or else be sold. I made my decision and reassured those members of John’s family who tried earnestly to dissuade me that I knew exactly what I was doing, and besides, there was Senhor Boscán who would always be there to help.
I should tell you a little about John Campendonc first, I suppose, before I go on to Boscán.
John Campendonc was twelve years older than me, a small strong Englishman, very fair in coloring, with fine blond hair that was receding from his forehead. His body was well muscled with a tendency to run to fat. I was attracted to him on our first meeting. He was not handsome — his features were oddly lopsided — but there was a vigor about him that was contagious, and that characterized his every movement and preoccupation. He read vigorously, for example, leaning forward over his book or newspaper, frowning, turning and smoothing down the pages with a flick and crack and a brisk stroke of his palm. He walked everywhere at high speed and his habitual pose was to thrust his left hand in the pocket of his coat — thrust strongly down — and, with his right hand, to smooth his hair back in a series of rapid caresses. Consequently his coats were always distorted on the left, the pocket bulged and baggy, sometimes torn, the constant strain on the seams inevitably proving too great. In this manner he wore out three or four suits a year. Shortly before he died I found a tailor in the rua Garrett who would make him a suit with three identical coats. So for John’s fortieth birthday I presented him with an assortment of suits — flannel, tweed and cotton drill — consisting of three pairs of trousers and nine coats. He was very amused.