The lawyer picked up the cigar, which already had an inch of ash on it, and took a voluptuous puff. “You really ought to study these so-called games of patience,” he resumed, “some of them have mechanisms resembling the intolerable logic that conditions our life, and Milligan is one of them. But do sit down, young man, please take that chair.”
Firmino sat down and placed his sheaf of newspapers on the floor.
“This Milligan is very interesting,” said the lawyer, “based as it is on the moves each player makes to set traps and restrict the choices of the next player, and so on round the table, as at international conferences at Geneva.”
Firmino stared at him, his face taking on an expression of bewilderment. He made a rapid, fruitless attempt to decipher the lawyer’s meaning.
“Conferences at Geneva?” he queried.
“The fact is that a few years ago,” said the lawyer, “I asked to be an observer at the discussions on nuclear disarmament which regularly took place at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva. I struck up a friendship with a certain lady, the ambassadress of a country in favor of disarmament. So I came to learn that her country, at that time carrying out nuclear experiments, was also committed to worldwide abolition of atomic weapons, do you grasp the concept?”
“I grasp it,” said Firmino, “it’s a paradox.”
“Well then,” continued the lawyer, “this was a lady of considerable culture and knowledge, as you may suppose, but above all she was a passionate card-player. One day I asked her to explain to me the mechanism of those negotiations, since this eluded my sense of logic. Do you know what she answered?”
“I can’t imagine,” replied Firmino.
“That I should study Milligan,” said Don Fernando, “because the logic was the same, and that is that every player who pretends to be collaborating with another is in fact constructing a sequence of cards which will trap his opponent and limit his choices. What do you think of that?”
“Some game,” replied Firmino.
“You’ve said it,” agreed Don Fernando, “but that’s what the nuclear balance of our planet rests on — on Milligan.
He tapped the top of one of the stacks of cards.
“But I play it on my own, introducing the variant of Spite and Malice, it seems to me more appropriate.”
“Meaning what?” asked Firmino.
“That I play a game of patience in such a way as to be at the same time myself and my opponent, I think the situation requires it, being concerned with missiles to be launched and others to be avoided.”
“One missile we have got,” declared Firmino, evidently pleased with himself, “it hasn’t got a nuclear warhead but it’s better than nothing.”
Don Fernando broke up his game of patience and collected the cards one by one. “You interest me, young man,” he said.
“At ‘Puccini's Butterfly,’” said Firmino, “drugs are not only peddled but consumed on the premises. In the corridor at the back there are private rooms, complete with comfortable sofas and operatic music, I think it is mostly cocaine but there could be other stuff as well, a sniff costs two hundred dollars, and the man who runs the show is certainly Titânio Silva. Shall I shoot him down in our paper?”
The lawyer got to his feet and crossed the room unsteadily. He stopped near an Empire-style console on which stood a framed photograph which Firmino had not noticed before. He propped an elbow on the marble top of the console, assuming an attitude which to Firmino appeared theatrical and almost as if he were addressing a court of law.
“You are a good reporter, young man,” he exclaimed, “within certain limits of course, but don’t go doing a Don Quixote on me, because Sergeant Titânio Silva is a very dangerous windmill. And since we well know that our gallant Don Quixote got the worst of it when he was caught up in the sails of the windmill, and since I cannot and have no wish to be his Sancho Panza anointing his poor bruised body with balsamic oils, I will tell you one thing only, so listen carefully. Listen carefully because it’s of basic importance as a move in our game of Milligan. You will now proceed to draw up an exhaustive statement to send to a press agency, describing ‘Puccini's Butterfly’ in the minutest detail, with its little cozy dens, its operatic music, its packets of various substances and dollars accurately added up by the efficient cashier Titânio Silva, all this, I say, will be reported en bloc by the Portuguese press, all the papers possible or imaginable, that part of it which espouses the magnificent and progressive destinies of the human race and also the sector devoted to the sports cars owned by the petty manufacturers of the North, which after all just means another way of conceiving the magnificent and progressive destinies, in short, every paper in its own way will be forced to publish this story, some with savage rage, others scandalized, others again with reservations, but they will all have to write that probably, and I repeat probably, in the face of incontestable evidence, on those premises, with perfect impunity, on account of the curious forgetfulness of the Republican Guardia Nacional, which has never taken it into its head to search them, are peddled certain oneirizing powders, how’s that for a description? at the modest price of two hundred dollars a sniff, which is to say a third of the monthly wage of the average Portuguese worker. In this way we will bestow on ‘Puccini’s Butterfly,’ and obviously also on Senhor Titânio, the privilege of a search by the criminal investigation department.”
The lawyer paused as if to draw breath. And draw it he did, like a drowning man, and the sound he made was like a pair of old bellows.
“It’s all the fault of these puros,” said he, “I have to smoke these Spanish puros because you can’t get Havanas any more, they’ve become a memory, but perhaps that island itself has become a mere memory.” Then he continued: “We are straying from the point, though in fact it is only I who am straying from the point, please forgive me, I have too many things buzzing about in my head today.”
The hand on which his chin was resting was all the while fingering his flabby cheek.
“And then I slept badly, I have too many sleepless nights, and sleepless nights bring ghosts with them and make time recoil. Do you know what it means when time recoils?”
He looked questioningly at Firmino, and Firmino once again felt nettled and embarrassed. He didn’t at all like the way Don Fernando treated him, and perhaps others, as if he were looking for an accomplice, as if expecting a confirmation of his doubts, but in an almost threatening manner.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” he said, “you talk in such an ambiguous way, I don’t understand what you mean by time recoiling.”
“I realize,” murmured the lawyer, “that you are not the right person to talk to on the subject of time. Of course, you are young, and for you time is a ribbon stretching out before you, you are like a driver on an unknown road, whose only interest is in what will happen after the next bend. But that was not what I meant to say, I was referring to a theoretical concept, hell and dammit, who knows why theories have such a hold on me, perhaps because I practice law, and that too is one enormous theory, a shaky edifice surmounted by an infinitely great dome, like the celestial vault which we may observe while comfortably seated in a planetarium. You know, I once happened to come across a treatise on the theory of physics, one of those elucubrations thought up by mathematicians cloistered in comfortable cells in universities, and it spoke of a time, and one phrase really struck me and made me think, a phrase which said that at a certain time, in the universe, time came into existence. This scientist perfidiously added that this concept cannot be grasped by our mental faculties.”