A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter IX

8th March 1941, the German legation, Lapa, Lisbon The ambassador didn't make the reception or the dinner that night. Felsen sat between two wolfram exporters, a Portuguese with three concessions in the Trancoso area in the Beira Alta, and a Belgian aristocrat who wouldn't tell him anything other than that it was his group who was providing a shell company through which Felsen was going to export his wolfram.

The members of the legation, who were without their ambassador to remind them of their own insignificance, spent too much of their time extending their own importance into areas which were none of their business. Felsen was left with the impression that all the real work would be done in the corridors of power and hotel lounges of Lisbon rather than in the bleak mountain ranges of the north. He didn't improve his popularity by asking how their oblique bargaining was going to translate into tons in trucks crossing the border. They patronized him back. They hinted at intricate negotiations but offered no substance. They said that he would feel the results. Felsen reinterpreted all this to himself. The Abwehr and Supply Department resented the intrusion of the SS into their territory. He was on his own.

After dinner, as they gathered on the steps waiting for the cars to take them out to Estoril, Felsen still couldn't help being unnerved by the unembarrassed flagrance of light everywhere. All the windows of the palacio, each one or two metres high, glowed from reckless chandeliers of glittering incandescence. As he'd left the Baixa by taxi in the evening the Nyassa was still at anchor, unconcerned in the heart of the docks, blazing with light as the loading continued. Berlin had been widowed for two years. You could end up in a concentration camp for lighting a cigarette in the street after dark. Cars moved around at night with slit eyes, blind as moles. The rest of Europe was like a coal hole and Lisbon its furnace mouth.

A crack and crump of small-arms fire started up around the city. One of the younger legation members with a glass too much of wine inside him shouted: 'The invasion!' and roared.

The Portuguese was stone-faced as they got in the cars. Felsen sat with Poser again in the back of the leading Mercedes. They dropped down the steep hill to Alcantara and headed west out of town.

'What was "the invasion"?' asked Felsen.

'A nightly reminder of who's in charge,' said Poser, looking out of the window as if he was expecting crowds. 'Salazar only allows the Lisboans to beat their carpets after nine at night.'

They drove through Belem, past lit buildings and monuments.

'Not used to the light yet, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer?' said Poser. 'Still jittery after Berlin, the flak towers and the air raid warnings? This is last year's Expo site. While London burned and France fell, Lisbon showed off its eight hundred years of sovereignty to the world.'

'I'm not sure what you're getting at, Herr Poser.'

'You went walking today.'

'You told me to go the gardens in Estrela and I just kept going, over the top of the Bairro Alto, down to the Chiado and then into the Baixa.'

'Ah, the Bairro Alto,' said Poser. 'And did you see the market in Praca da Figueira-it doesn't smell too bad at this time of the year; and that rat hole-the Mouraria, or the stinking, crumbling Alfama?'

'I walked up to the Castle of sao Jorge and took a taxi back.'

'So you've seen some of Lisbon,' he said. 'Now when you see Salazar's capital after dark perhaps you understand my point about the harlot. Lisbon's a whore, a peasant Arab whore, who wears a tiara at night.'

'Perhaps you've been here too long, Poser.'

'Ach, Salazar, he says one thing, he does another, he leans one way and sticks a foot out the other. He takes our Swiss francs and gold bars and then extends unlimited credit to the British. He rails at them for blocking his imports from the colonies and… ach… The man's a Moor and he's making the beast with two backs with anyone he pleases,' Poser finished bitterly.

'Now you're thinking that because you pay the whore she should be faithful. Next you'll be wanting her to fall in love with you.'

'Quite so, Felsen,' said Poser, coolly. 'I forgot your expertise in these matters.'

They hit the new coast road, the Marginal. The lights of the dormitory villages of Caxias, Paco de Arcos, Oeiras, Carcavelos and Parede glittered by the black heave of the unseen Atlantic. Poser was still sulking as they pulled up outside the lit facades of the Hotels Parque and Palacio. The high heads of the Washingtonian palms in the gardens in front were just out of the light. Poser pointed out the Casino at the top of the long square which sloped several hundred metres down to the sea front. Music came from the low modern building. Queues of cars stretched down the side of the gardens. The bellboy fetched the bags from the boot and Felsen and Poser went through the high Roman arch which made up the front of the Hotel Parque.

There's somebody you should meet,' said Poser, heading for the concierge's position.

'This is Felsen,' he said to the sharp-faced man behind the counter.

The concierge flicked through his register. He rattled something off to the bellboy without taking his eyes off the book.

'You don't need to tell him anything,' said Poser, of the concierge. 'He knows it before you do. Isn't that right?'

The concierge didn't say anything but Felsen could tell from his attentive stillness that he was a man of some hotel experience.

'Install yourself in your rooms, Felsen, and I'll show you around,' said Poser, and laughed looking at the concierge. 'Don't talk to the flowers. Or use the phone. Isn't that right?'

The concierge blinked once, slowly.

Felsen rejoined Poser in the bar. They left the boorish company of the other members of the legation and walked up the gardens in the balmy night to the Casino.

'The concierge knows when we talk like that it's what we want everybody to hear.'

'Is that why the bar's empty?'

'You'll see, it'll fill up as the night wears on.'

'Maybe they should make themselves more interesting-invite some women across, they all seem to be going in here.'

They entered the lobby of the Casino at the same time as a small, dark-haired, highly-manicured woman who slid out of a fur coat and an expensive hat before being escorted to the bar by two men, younger and firmer than herself. She wore nylons and more than half the room turned as she came in.

'Is she the Queen of somewhere?' asked Felsen.

'That's the Queen of Lisbon,' said Poser.

'The daughter of the Arab whore?' asked Felsen, and Poser roared.

'Her name is Madame Branescu. She runs the guichet of the visa office at the American consulate. You saw all those people who wanted to get on the Nyassa this evening?'

'She took a percentage off every one of them.'

'You wouldn't have recognized her eighteen months ago. She was half the size and you could read a newspaper through her clothes but… she speaks fourteen languages and, I don't know whether you walked past the American consulate, but she needs those fourteen languages and a few more besides.'

They went into the bar. The waiter was already standing at her table as the woman and her blonde escorts sat down. Despite the clothes, the coiffure and the make-up she was not an attractive woman. Felsen saw her in a previous life, in the office of an important lawyer. A short, plain woman in grey clothes, ignored by all but, like the Hotel Parque's concierge, she missed nothing and had learned everything-the languages, the control, the art of power. And here she was, an improbable, little person conferring life or despair on the thousands atticked in Lisbon's pensions. Men and women approached her and spoke small obsequious words, bowing from the waist. Some were allowed to brush their lips across the dimpled knuckles of her puffy hand, others scuttled back to their seats blanched and quivering.

Felsen excused himself from Poser and presented himself at her table. The escorts' eyes bored into him. He asked her in perfect English if she wanted to dance. Her eyes roved over his face trying to work out if she knew him, then glanced down at his clothes and footwear, expert on quality.

'I've heard Madame Branescu is an excellent dancer. I am too. I think we should lead the way.'

She tried to give him her steely look but he seemed like a man who had access to one himself. She smiled and gave him her hand.

'You're not English, are you?' she said, as they made their way to the dance floor, everybody watching. 'And you limp.'

'You won't be disappointed.'

'Are you Swiss, or maybe an Austrian? I can hear something in your accent.'

'I'm German.'

'I don't like Germans,' she said, switching to his language.

'We haven't arrived in Bucharest yet.'

'If what the Germans do to countries is "arrive", then you must be the arrivistes of the century.'

'Perhaps that is why you're here?'

'Because the Germans who aren't murderers are brutes. That's why I'm here.'

'I don't know what calibre of German you've been meeting.'

'Austrian Germans. I used to live in Vienna.'

'But you are Rumanian, aren't you?' asked Felsen.

'Yes, I am.'

'Allow me to show you our less brutal side.'

She looked at the Swabian ploughboy with some doubt in her mind but he whisked her into a swing number that left her breathless and amazed. Felsen had been a little worried when he'd heard the swing, he didn't know whether Madame Branescu's hips could cope, but the woman knew how to move her pork. They danced three numbers and left the floor to some light applause.

'I didn't think Hitler approved of swing,' said Madame Branescu.

'He's afraid it will unhinge our goose step.'

'You should be careful talking like that,' she said. 'You wouldn't be the first German to be taken off the streets. Did you know that the PVDE are Gestapo-trained?'

'The PVDE?'

'Policia de Vigilancia e de Defesa do Estado -Salazar's security police,' she said. 'And their jails are not so nice unless you can afford a good one.'

'I don't think there's anything that anybody can tell the Germans about jails.'

She excused herself to the powder room. Felsen calculated an extra inch of swing in her hips. Poser drew alongside.

'Most surprising, Felsen,' said Poser in his ear.

'An American taught me before the war.'

'I meant your taste… your choice of partner.'

'That's my agricultural background, Poser,' said Felsen. 'It comes from chasing piglets round the yard.'

Poser smiled and moved off. Madame Branescu reappeared having brought the flush down in her cheeks. He walked her back to her table. The escorts stood. She flapped them back into their seats.

'You're new in Lisbon, aren't you Herr…?'

'Felsen. Klaus Felsen. And yes, I'm fresh in today.'

'You don't talk like somebody who needs to get to America.'

'Because I don't need to go.'

Her eyes narrowed.

'Perhaps you're here to work?'

'On the contrary, I'm here to dance which I hope we can do again.'

He bowed and she let him brush her dimples with his lips before returning to her seat.

Felsen found Poser with his nose navigating the inside of a brandy glass.

'You seem to have the measure of this place already,' said Poser, leaning back from the fumes.

'I don't think so, Poser. It's just that you and I see things differently. You're a diplomat who wants to know what everybody's thinking. I'm an opportunist who wants to know what everybody's doing. Madame Branescu's another. We recognized each other, that's all.'

'But what could you possibly do for each other?'

'You'll see, you'll see,' he said, and moved off.

More people drifted into the casino-a mixed crowd, some happy and smiling in spectacular evening dress, others hunched and furtive in borrowed clothes. Felsen shouldered his way through to the cashier and made straight for the roulette table. Only fools played roulette.

He came across the usual sights and smells of the inside of a casino but this time their distinction was sharper and more poignant. The tables were lit by the normal harsh glare of avarice-an unblinking, hard-swallowing need. But the air in between was layered with cigarette smoke and a fear, so pungent, it cut the back of Felsen's throat like steaming vinegar. Occasionally carefree elation broke out of the canopy like tropical birds from the forest, but all the time, crouching lower and lower, a grim desperation sweated will into cheap shirts and shored-up evening dresses. The hopes riding on the clicking, chattering, hopping ivory ball were either nothing or everything. The backing for each milled chip on the green baize was either a banknote from the top of the next block or the last family jewel in the case. The faces closest to the table, the most avid, were ones that would either pale to translucence at a jaunty jump of the ball or, like the costive patient, would momentarily flood with relief at a perfect movement.

Felsen stood back from the crowd on the roulette table, only his starched shirt-front picking up the edgy light. An American talked loudly over his shoulder at anyone who'd listen, while slapping down the maximum bet on a number he didn't have to think about. He stopped only to glance at the ball and to cheer when he won and shrug when he lost. Next to him, seated and humped with age, bathing in the sunny warmth of his stacked chips, was an elderly, spectral, threadbare aristocrat, probably Russian, who gripped her minimum-stake chips with a tight, white-knuckled, sinewy hand. An Englishman, impeccable in his stiff wing collar, looked down his nose at the turning wheel and disdained all winning numbers until his collar was all the stiffness left in him. His mouth had already taken on the sneer of someone who'd have to face bread and horse mackerel for lunch until the next remittance. In front of Felsen a minute Portuguese woman, who wore the rosette of the Legion of Honour, was smoking cigarettes through a six-inch holder and wore gloves to her armpits. She played for amusement and gave cigarettes to a young woman sitting at her side who smoked them too quickly with her chest pressed against the wood of the table as if she might influence the turn of the wheel. The young woman had a single minimum-stake chip which had scored red marks on to the palm of her hand. It was a confused chip that could look confident on its own square right up until the call for last bets, when it would have to join other chips on nearby squares, before suffering the indignity of being taken back. It survived five turns of the wheel like that, until it found a home on number five, which had come up twice in ten minutes. The wheel turned, the ivory ball span and clicked, the white hand came out.

'Madame,' said the croupier severely, and the hand shot back.

The ball settled in twenty-four and the hot chip was raked in. The young woman's head dropped. The Portuguese lady's hand found her back and patted it. She gave her another cigarette. The woman stood and turned and she found Felsen's eyes on her. She smiled.

'Mr Felsen, isn't it?'

'That's right, Miss van Lennep,' he said giving her a stack of chips. 'Would you put these on red for me?'

The transfusion had an instant effect. The anaemia was gone. Blood thumped again. Red came up. She turned.

'Put them all on even,' said Felsen.

Even came up. He split the chips and gave her half.

'Those are for you. If you have to play, play fifty/fifty but remember there's a zero on the wheel which always tips the odds away from you, so…'

She'd already turned back to the table before she realized that the last piece of advice was the most important.

'So what?' she said.

'So don't play when it matters, only for fun.'

The Portuguese woman, who was the same size standing as the young woman was sitting, nodded agreement. Laura van Lennep put the chips in her handbag. Felsen offered her his arm. They went to the Wonderbar and drank whisky which she diluted with soda. They danced on the lighted dance floor until Felsen collided with one of Madame Branescu's escorts who was hauling her around as if she was a cast-iron stove. They nodded and Felsen left the floor with his partner. They sat at a front table and ordered more whisky.

'You didn't say why you were in Lisbon, Mr Felsen.'

'What happened to your friend? Edward, I think, Edward Burton.'

'He had to go up north. He's one of these Anglo-Portuguese from up there around Porto. The Allies use them a lot for buying things, you know, they understand the people. He told me it was all very important, but I think he might be a bit silly,' she said, diminishing him for her nearer purpose.

'Why did you ask him to help you?'

'He's young and good-looking and well-connected…'

'But not with the lady in the American consulate visa office.'

'He tried. She likes them young and good-looking.'

'But with money.'

She nodded dismally and looked back at the gaming rooms. The band released Madame Branescu from the next number and she walked past Felsen and gave him a little roll of her eyes.

'Who was that?' asked Laura van Lennep.

'Madame Branescu,' said Felsen. 'She runs the visa office in the American consulate.'

Something like love came into her face.

An hour later Felsen was removing the pearled stud from his throat and stripping away the collar from his shirt. He unthreaded his monogrammed gold cufflinks and put them on the dressing table next to a letter he'd written on Hotel Parque stationery for the attention of Madame Branescu. He undid a shirt button.

'Let me do that,' said the girl.

Her borrowed evening dress lay on the chaise longue where she'd thrown it with her small, tight purse. She knelt up on the bed in her black slip and stockings. He stood in front of her with the first tingle of adrenalin shivering up his legs in his voluminous black trousers. She undid his shirt, drew the braces down off his shoulders and tugged the tails out of the waistband of his trousers. He eased her towards him and felt her stiffen against his front. She undid his trousers which dropped straight to the floor. Her head trembled on her neck at the jib of his undershorts. She drew them out and over, and put her fingers to her lips. She was flushed crimson and not with whisky and soda.

In the bathroom she found something among the bottles of perfumes and unguents provided by the Hotel Parque that would suit her purpose. Jasmine oil. Back in the room Felsen stood in his opened shirt. Her careful and thorough lubrication of him brought out the desperation of a chased man. He frightened her as he pulled her round on the bed, rucked up her slip and tore at the already flimsy lace-edged knickers.

'Careful,' she said nervously, and stretched back a hand to try and slow him down.

He stood between her bald heels showing out of the holes of her overused silk stockings. She shouted out as he entered her and her elbows collapsed. Felsen grabbed at her haunches and pulled her back on to him. Her hand flailed behind. Her face was screwed up with pain, her throat contorted by the way her head bent under her as he drove in.

Felsen was shocked to find himself thrilled by her every wince, at her fingers stretching out to push him back, at the white knuckles of the other hand which gripped the rucked counterpane on the bed. He didn't last long.

They lay on the bed in the light and cold air from the open windows. She was under the covers huddled and shivering and trying not to cry. This part always made her cry. The shame of it. How many times had this been in three months?

Felsen smoked. He'd offered her one but she hadn't answered. He was irritated because he'd expected satisfaction, but in emptying himself he'd done just that, and found his head full of Eva.

He slept badly and woke early, alone in the room which was now freezing and damp from the sea air. He closed the window. The letter he'd written for the girl addressed to Madame Branescu had gone and the pair of gold KF cufflinks Eva had given him on his last birthday weren't on the dressing table.

Later in the day he caught a lift into Lisbon and went to the Pensao Amsterdao in Rua de sao Paulo. At the front desk they'd never heard of Laura van Lennep and no one answered to the description he gave of her. He worked the other pensions in the street and drew a blank. He went to the American consulate and walked the line of faces but there were no single women. Finally he went down to the shipping offices but they were closed and the docks were empty. The Nyassa had gone.