“I get the idea,” replied Firmino.
“And then,” continued the lawyer, “and this is something that directly concerns you as a journalist, do you know what Jouhandeau said?”
Firmino shook his head. The lawyer took a sip of wine and wiped his fleshy lips.
“He said: Since the essential object of literature is the knowledge of human nature, and since there is no place in the world where one can study it better than in courts of law, would it not be desirable, by law, for there always to be a writer among the jurymen, his presence there would be an inducement to all the others to reflect more deeply. End of quotation.”
The lawyer paused for a moment and took another sip of wine.
“Well then,” he resumed, “it’s obvious that you will never sit in the jury box of a court as Monsieur Jouhandeau wished, nor will you even be present at the preliminary enquiries, because the law does not permit it, and it is also true that strictly speaking you are not exactly a writer, but we can try to consider you as such, seeing that you write for a newspaper. Let us say that you will be a virtual juryman, and that is your role, a virtual juryman, do you grasp the concept?”
“I think so,” replied Firmino.
But he wanted to come clean, so he asked: “But who is this Jouhandeau? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Marcel Jouhandeau,” came the answer, “an irritating French theologian with a taste for provoking scandal, he was also a great eulogist of abjection, if I may so put it, and of a sort of metaphysical perversion, or rather of what he imagined to be metaphysical. You must understand that he was writing in France at the time when the Surrealists were exalting rebellion and Gide had already produced his theory of gratuitous crime. But naturally he had none of Gide’s stature, in fact he was pretty poor stuff, even if the occasional maxim about justice hit the mark.”
“We still have to settle the basic question,” said Firmino, “because my paper is naturally taking on responsibility for your fees.”
The lawyer turned his inquisitorial gaze on him.
“Meaning what?” he asked.
“Meaning that your emolument will be paid in the proper manner.”
“Meaning what?” repeated the lawyer, “what does that mean in numerical terms?”
Firmino felt slightly embarrassed.
“I couldn’t say,” he answered, “that is a question for my Editor.”
“There is a house in Rua do Ferraz,” said the lawyer inconsequentially, “in which I spent my childhood, it’s just above Rua das Flores, a small eighteenth-century palace, the marchioness my grandmother lived there.”
He heaved a nostalgic sigh.
“Where did you live as a child, in what sort of house?” he asked at length.
“On the sea at Cascais,” replied Firmino, “my father was in the coast guards and had the use of a house on the sea, my brothers and I spent almost our whole childhood there.”
“Ah yes,” exclaimed the lawyer, “the Cascais coast, that pure white light at midday that becomes tinted with pink at sunset, the blue of the ocean, the pinewoods of the Guincho…. My memories, on the other hand, are of a gloomy town house, with an unfeeling grandmother who sipped cups of tea and appeared every day with a different ribbon around her wrinkled neck, sometimes simple, other times with a narrow lace trimming. She never touched me, though occasionally she lightly brushed her cold hand against mine and told me that the only thing a child had to learn about his family was to respect his forebears. I would take a look at those whom she called my forebears. They were old oil paintings of haughty men with disdainful expressions and fleshy lips like mine, which I inherited from them.”
He took a mouthful of the salt cod and said: “I find this quite excellent, tell me, what do you think of it?”
“I like it,” replied Firmino, “but you were telling me about your childhood.”
“Very well,” continued the lawyer, “that house is now abandoned, with all its memories of the old marchioness who was a grandmother to me in her way: her portraits, her furniture, her blankets from Castelo Branco and her precious family trees. Let us say that it’s my childhood that is locked up there as in a casket. Until a few years ago I still used to go there to consult the family archives, but I don’t know if you’ve seen Rua do Ferraz, to get up the slope you’d need a cable car, and with a bulk like mine I’m not up to it, I’d have to call a cab to take me five hundred meters, so it’s seven years since I set foot in the place. Therefore I’ve decided to sell it, I’ve put it in the hands of an agency, it’s just as well that these agencies should swallow up childhoods, it’s the most antiseptic way of getting rid of them, and you cannot imagine how many middle-class upstarts, who’ve minted money over these last few years thanks to grants from the European Community, would like to lay their hands on that house. You see, it’s a place that to their way of thinking would give them the social status which they crave, a modern villa with swimming pool in the residential areas is within their reach, but an eighteenth-century mansion in old Oporto is many steps higher up the ladder, do you grasp the concept?”
“I grasp the concept,” said Firmino.
“I have therefore decided to sell it,” said the lawyer. “The keenest prospective buyer comes from the provinces. He’s a typical product of the society we live in nowadays. His father was a small-time cattle-breeder. He himself began with a small shoe business even while Salazar was in power. Actually he specialized in canvas footwear, with a couple of workmen. Then in 1974 came the revolution and he sided with the co-operatives, he even gave a practically revolutionary interview to a newspaper of that persuasion. Then, after the illusions of revolution, in came unbridled neo-liberalism, and he took sides with that, as he had to. In a word, he’s known how to look after Number One. He owns four Mercedes and a golf course in Algarve, I believe he has shares in building projects in Alentejo, and who knows if not even in the Tróia Peninsula, he knows how to handle all the political parties in the constitutional spectrum, from the Communists to the Right, and it goes without saying that his shoe factory is flourishing, exporting chiefly to the United States. What do you say then, am I right to sell?”
“The house, you mean?”
“The house, naturally,” replied the lawyer. “I might well sell it to him. A few days ago I had a visit from his wife, who I think is the only literate person in the family. I will spare you a description of that painted lady. But I raised my price, saying that I was selling the house together with its antique furniture and portraits of the old aristocracy, and I asked her: what would a family like yours do with a house like that without its antique furniture and family portraits? What do you think, young man, did I do well?”
“Very well indeed,” replied Firmino, “since you ask me for my opinion I can tell you you did just the right thing.”
“In that case,” concluded the lawyer, “you may tell your Editor that for my expenses over Damasceno Monteiro I shall be amply remunerated by two eighteenth-century paintings in my house in Rua do Ferraz, and ask him to make no further proposals concerning my fees, if he will be so good.”
Firmino made no answer but simply went on eating. He had cautiously sampled the red beans and rice and found it delicious, so he was now on his second helping. He really wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it. Eventually he tried to formulate it.
“Well my paper you know,” he stammered, “or my paper is only what it is, I mean to say you know very well what its style is, it’s the style we have to use to capture our readership, well it’s written for the masses, it’s got guts, but it’s still written for the masses, it has to make concessions to its readership in short, so as to sell more copies, if you see what I mean.”