When I returned Vasconcelles was asleep, lying on top of the bed in the hot bedroom. He was deeply asleep, his mouth open, his arms and legs spread. His chest rose and fell slowly and I saw how very thin he was, his skin stretched tight over his ribs. When I looked closely I could see the shiver and bump of his palpitating heart.
Before dinner he asked me if he could put on his clothes. When I refused his request it seemed to make him angry. I reminded him of our gifts and their rules. But to compensate him I wore a tight sequined gown, placed his flashy rings on my fingers and roped imitation pearls around my neck. My wrists tickled and clattered with preposterous rhinestone bangles. So we sat and ate: me, Lily Campendonc, splendid in my luminous jewels and, across the table, J. Melchior Vasconcelles, surly and morose, picking at his Christmas dinner, a crisp linen napkin spread modestly across his thighs.
The various applications of cork that we are now going to consider are worthy of description, as each application has its raison d’être in one or more of the physical or chemical properties of this marvelous material. Cork possesses three key properties that are unique in a natural substance. They are: impermeability, elasticity and lightness.
Consul Schenk’s Report
I missed Boscán after this second Christmas with him, much more — strangely — than I had after the first. I was very busy in the factory that year—1934—as we were installing machinery to manufacture Kamptulicon, a soft, unresounding cork carpet made from cork powder and india rubber and much favored by hospitals and the reading rooms of libraries. My new manager — a dour, reasonably efficient fellow called Pimentel — saw capably to most of the problems that arose but refused to accept any responsibility for all but the most minor decisions. As a result I was required to be present whenever anything of significance had to be decided, as if I functioned as a symbol of delegatory power, a kind of managerial chaperone.
I thought of Boscán often, and many nights I wanted to be with him. On those occasions, as I lay in bed dreaming of Christmases past and, I hoped, Christmases to come, I thought I would do anything he asked of me — or so I told myself.
One evening at the end of April I was leaving a shop on the rua Conceição, where I had been buying a christening present for my sister’s second child, when I saw Boscán enter a café, the Trinidade. I walked slowly past the door and looked inside. It was cramped and gloomy and there were no women clients. In my glimpse I saw Boscán leaning eagerly across a table, around which sat half a dozen men, showing them a photograph; at first they peered at it, frowning, and then they broke into wide smiles. I walked on, agitated, this moment frozen in my mind’s eye. It was the first time I had seen Boscán, and Boscán’s life, separate from myself. I felt unsettled and oddly envious. Who were these men? Friends or colleagues? I wanted suddenly and absurdly to share in that moment of the offered photograph, to frown and then grin conspiratorially like the others.
I waited outside the Trinidade sitting in the back of my motorcar with the windows open and the blinds down. I made Julião, my old chauffeur, take off his peaked cap. Boscán eventually emerged at about 7:45 and walked briskly to the tramway center at the Rocio. He climbed aboard a No. 2, which we duly followed until he stepped down from it near São Vicente. He set off down the steep alleyways into the Mouraria. Julião and I left the car and followed him discreetly down a series of boqueirão—dim and noisome streets that led down to the Tagus. Occasionally there would be a sharp bend and we would catch a glimpse of the wide sprawling river shining below in the moonlight and beyond the scatter of lights from Almada on the southern bank.
Boscán entered through the door of a small decrepit house. The steps up to the threshold were worn and concave, the tiles above the porch were cracked and slipping. A blurry yellow light shone from behind drab lace curtains. Julião stopped a passerby and asked who lived there. Senhor Boscán, he was told, with his mother and three sisters.
“Mrs. Campendonc!”
“Mr. Boscán.” I sat down opposite him. When the surprise and shock began to leave his face, I saw that he looked pale and tired. His fingers touched his bow tie, his lips, his earlobes. He was smoking a small cigar, chocolate brown, and wearing his old blue suit.
“Mrs. Campendonc, this is not really a suitable establishment for a lady.”
“I wanted to see you.” I touched his hand, but he jerked it away, as if my fingers burned him.
“It’s impossible. I’m expecting some friends.”
“Are you well? You look tired. I miss you.”
His gaze flickered around the café. “How is the Kamptulicon going? Pimentel is a good man.”
“Come to my house. This weekend.”
“Mrs. Campendonc …” His tone was despairing.
“Call me Lily.”
He steepled his fingers. “I’m a busy man. I live with my mother and three sisters. They expect me home in the evening.”
“Take a holiday. Say you’re going to … to Spain for a few days.”
“I only take one holiday a year.”
“Christmas.”
“They go to my aunt in Coimbra. I stay behind to look after the house.”
A young man approached the table. He wore a ludicrous yellow overcoat that reached down to his ankles. He was astonished to see me sitting there. Boscán looked even more ill as he introduced us. I have forgotten his name.
I said goodbye and went toward the door. Boscán caught up with me.
“At Christmas,” he said quietly. “I’ll see you at Christmas.”
A postcard. A sepia view of the Palace of Queen Maria Pia, Cintra:
I will be one kilometer west of the main beach at Paço de Arcos. I have rented a room in the Casa de Bizoma. Please arrive at dawn on 25 December and depart at sunset.
I am your friend,
Gaspar Barbosa
The bark of the cork tree is removed every eight to ten years, the quality of the cork improving with each successive stripping. Once the section of cork is removed from the tree the outer surface is scraped and cleaned. The sections — wide curved planks — are flattened by heating them over a fire and submitting them to pressure on a flat surface. In the heating operation the surface is charred, and thereby the pores are closed up. It is this process that the industry terms the “nerve” of cork. This is cork at its most valuable. A cork possesses “nerve” when its significant properties — lightness, impermeability, elasticity — are sealed in the material forever.
Consul Schenk’s Report
In the serene, urinous light of dawn the beach at Paço de Arcos looked slate gray. The seaside cafés were closed up and summoned up impressions of dejection and decrepitude as only out-of-season holiday resorts can. To add to this melancholy scene a fine cold rain blew off the Atlantic. I stood beneath my umbrella on the coast road and looked about me. To the left I could just make out the tower of Belém. To the right the hills of Cintra were shrouded in a heavy opaque mist. I turned and walked up the road toward the Casa de Bizoma. As I drew near I could see Boscán sitting on a balcony on the second floor. All other windows on this side of the hotel were firmly shuttered.
A young girl, of about sixteen years, let me in and led me up to his room.
Boscán was wearing a monocle. On a table behind him were two bottles of brandy. We kissed, we broke apart.
“Lise,” he said. “I want to call you Lise.”
Even then, even that day, I said no. “That’s the whole point,” I reminded him. “I’m me — Lily — whoever you are.”
He inclined his body forward in a mock bow. “Gaspar Barbosa … Would you like something to drink?”