A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter X

15th March 1941, Guar da, Beira Baixa, Portugal It had been raining in Guarda all night. It rained throughout breakfast and it rained during the strategy meeting Felsen had convened with his fellow-agents to decide on the necessary tactics if they were to buy and ship in the region of three hundred tons of wolfram per month for the rest of the year.

The size of his task had only just crystallized in his head on seeing the British Beralt mine in Panasqueira, near Fundao in the south of the Beira. The mine and buildings were extensive, the colossal slag already part of the landscape. To have created that quantity of slag there had to be a small city of hundred-metre-deep shafts and kilometres of galleries under his feet. There was nothing remotely comparable in the rest of the Beira. This feat of engineering was ripping two thousand tons of thick horizontal wolfram veins from the earth each year. All the other mines in the area were nothing but scratches and nicks on the earth's crust by comparison. His only hope was total motivation of the people. The galvanizing of thousands to the task of gleaning the surface. And, of course, theft.

The strategy meeting had started off badly. These men were already working at full stretch and had never achieved anything close to three hundred tons in a month. They started off by complaining that the Portuguese concession-holders had sensed which way the market was going and were stockpiling. Then they railed against the British who had instituted some pre-emptive buying operations which had forced the price up and encouraged the Portuguese to sit tight.

'Price is no longer an issue,' said Felsen, which quietened the meeting. 'Our job now is to get our hands on the product by any means we can. My intelligence briefing in Lisbon indicates that the UKCC has a slow decision-making process, that they are active in the market only for short periods, that they are frightened of high prices because their managers are cautious and are buying with borrowed money. They have shot themselves in the foot. They've driven the prices up and now they've started to lose labour from their own mines. Their miners have begun to see that they can earn more fossicking than by taking wages to go underground. We don't have any of these problems. We have money. We can be aggressive. We can be consistent.'

'What do you mean by consistent?'

'It means we never fail to buy. The British can't do that. They work in fits and starts. They disappoint. We will never disappoint. We'll develop close relationships with people on the ground, people who control the local communities and we'll make them loyal to the German buying cause.'

'And how do we make them loyal?' roared one of the agents. 'The British give them tea and cakes and kiss their children. Do we have time for that, chasing three hundred tons a month?'

'They're only loyal to one thing in the Beira,' said another agent, grimly.

'That's not true,' said the first agent. 'There are concession-owners who will only sell to the British, some of them have British blood. They will never come over to us.'

'You're both right,' said Felsen. 'First-I've seen the people here, the ordinary men. They are living like we did in the Middle Ages. They have nothing. They walk twenty miles with fifty kilos of charcoal on their back to sell in town. They make enough money to fill their stomachs so they can make it back to their villages. These are very poor people. They can't read or write. They have a hard life ahead of them. And it is these people who will scour the Beira for us and bring in every rock of wolfram they can find. In time, people will see how easy the money is up here and more will come up from the south. The Alentejo is full of the same victims of poverty, and they'll work for us too.'

'And what about the mines who sell to the British whatever the price?'

'My second point-the people who work in those concessions live in villages. We will move into the villages and encourage them to do some night shifts. We will buy from them at market rates.'

'You mean stealing?'

'I mean distributing wealth. I mean taking from the enemy. I mean waging war in the Beira.'

'They're difficult people in the Beira.'

'They're mountain people. Mountain people are always difficult. They have hard, cold lives. Your job is to understand them, to like them, to befriend them… and to buy their wolfram.'

Felsen divided the region up, putting a group of agents in Viseu, Mangualde and Nelas, another group in Celorico and Trancoso, one further south in Idanha-a-Nova and he took for himself the area south of Guarda to the Serra da Malcata from the foot of the Serra da Estrela in the west to the Spanish border. Most of the product would travel on the Guarda/Vilar Formoso road and cross the border at that point. He needed the Guarda Nacional Republicana in one pocket so that the trucks would get there and the alfandega in the other so that it would cross the border into Spain without any trouble. The town of Guarda was the central point of the wolfram area. It was the obvious headquarters.

The rain had stopped by the time he'd finished the conference. His driver came in to say that he'd delivered the two bottles of brandy to the chefe of the GNR and that he should go to the GNR post now, preferably before lunch, for a meeting.

The chefe of the GNR had recently been transferred to this post from Torres Vedras. He was a big man with a small face encased by a fat head. His moustache was thick, black and luxuriant as mink with ends tweaked to points, making him look as if he was permanently delighted, which most of the time he was. His hand felt small and soft in Felsen's peasant grip and not one that was in the habit of coming down with the full force of the law. Felsen sat on the other side of the man's desk which looked as if it had seen heavy skirmishing during the Peninsular Wars. The chefe thanked him for his gift and offered him a glass of absinthe. He poured the green liquor into two small glasses. Felsen's mouth crinkled at the bitterness of the wormwood as he laid a piece of newspaper down in front of the chefe. He tapped an article near the bottom of the page. The chefe read it, sipping his absinthe and thinking about lunch. He took one of Felsen's cigarettes.

'You're making the front page in Lisbon,' said Felsen.

'Murder,' said the chefe looking out of the window at the clearing sky, 'is very common now in this area.'

'This is the third murder in two weeks. The bodies were all found in the same area and they were all stripped, bound and bludgeoned to death.'

'It's the wolfram,' said the chefe, as if it was nothing to do with him.

'Of course it's the wolfram.'

'They've all gone crazy Even the wild rabbits are collecting wolfram.'

'How is your investigation coming along?'

The chefe shifted in his seat and drew on the strange Turkish tobacco. The fire hissed in the chimney.

'There's since been a fourth death,' he said.

'One of your officers?'

He nodded his head and refilled the glasses. The absinthe was smoothing the creases out in his fat face so that the schoolboy was beginning to come back into it.

'Are you pursuing the matter?'

'A state of lawlessness exists in the land,' he said, dramatically, sweeping his hand over his desk. 'We have found the body.'

'In the same area?'

The nod was slower this time.

'Where did the officer start his enquiries?'

'In a village called Amendoa.'

'Perhaps you will be going up there with a larger force?'

'The area I have to cover is large. The present circumstances-difficult.'

'So you'd like this lawlessness to stop without using up your manpower.'

'This is unlikely,' he said, sadly, 'there's a lot of money at stake here. These people have been living on five tostoes here, five there. For them a single escudo is a fortune. When a small rock of wolfram is worth seventy-five, eighty, a hundred escudos, it's like a fever in their brains. You can't imagine. They go mad.'

'If I could ensure that your law is upheld, that there'll be no more violence, perhaps you'd be able to help me with some of my difficulties?'

'No more violence,' he said, repeating this back to his glass of absinthe as if it had put the idea to him. 'None?'

'None,' said Felsen, repeating the lie.

'What would be the nature of your difficulties?'

'As you know, there'll be a lot of my trucks moving product around the mining areas and out to the border at Vilar Formoso.'

'Customs is a separate organization.'

'I understand that. Where you can help is with the papers, the guias that we have to present when we're moving the product around.'

'But the guias are very important for the government. They have to know what's going where.'

'That is true and ordinarily there would be no problem… but the bureaucracy.'

'Ah, yes, the bureaucracy,' said the chefe, suddenly feeling trussed in his uniform. 'You're a businessman. I understand. Businessmen like to do what they want, when they want.'

They lapsed into silence. From the chefe's facial expressions it appeared that there was some internal struggle going on, as if there was something indigestible going down or a painful wind ballooning in his bowel wanting to get out.

'I'll find out what happened to your officer too,' said Felsen, but that wasn't it. The chefe was not wildly overconcerned at that.

'The guias are a very important government mechanism. This would be a serious breach of…'

'There will, of course, be a commission for you on every ton we move,' said Felsen, and he realized he'd hit the point. The creases unfurled. The belly quietened. The chefe took another of Felsen's cigarettes and skewered him with a look at the same time.

'But without the guias, ' said the chefe, 'how will I know how many tons you have moved? How will my commission be calculated?'

'You and I will have a meeting with customs once a month.'

The chefe' s smile was extended another foot by the joy of his moustache. They shook hands and finished their drinks. The chefe opened the door for him and clapped him on the shoulder.

'If you go up to Amendoa,' he said, 'you should talk to Joaquim Abrantes. He's a very influential man in that area.'

The door closed behind Felsen, leaving him in the gloom of an unlit corridor. He walked slowly out of the building contemplating his first lesson in underestimating the Portuguese. He got into his car and instructed the driver to take him up to Amendoa in the foothills of the Serra da Estrela.

There was no road up to Amendoa. It was a rough track of beaten earth with slabs of granite showing through, lined on either side by broom and heather, and then later and higher, pine forest. The rain had stopped but the cloud was still hanging and drifting lower down the mountains to the treetops until it sucked in the car itself. The driver rarely got out of second gear. Men appeared on the track. Cowled like monks, they wore split sacks over their heads. Grey and silent, they moved to the side, without turning.

Felsen sat in the middle of the back seat feeling every metre between himself and the rough civilization of Guarda lengthening behind him. He'd mentioned the Middle Ages in the conference but this was more like the Iron Age or earlier. He wouldn't have been surprised to see people hoeing with bone. He hadn't seen a mule or a donkey yet. All the carrying was done on the shoulders by men, and on the head by women.

The car came up on to the flat. There was no sign announcing Amendoa. Granite block houses appeared out of the mist, a woman in black shuffled across the road. The driver pulled over at the only house on two levels in the village. They got out. There was an open door at street level. An old woman was working amongst sacks of grain, boxes for salting hams, cured cheeses, racks of potatoes, bunches of herbs, buckets and tools. The driver asked for Joaquim Abrantes. The woman left her work, locked the door with knobbed and crooked fingers, and took the two men up the granite steps on the outside of the house to a porch supported by two granite pillars. She left them there and went into the house.

A few minutes later she reopened the door and Felsen ducked into the dark house. The driver went back to the car. A fire was smoking heavily in a large fireplace emitting no heat. As his eyes got used to the lack of light he began to pick out an old man sitting in the fireplace. There were chouricos hanging along a pole above his head. The woman had taken a rag out of her pocket and was wiping the old man's eyes. He moaned quietly as if disturbed from sleep and coming into a world of pain. She left the room. A throat, somewhere in the house, coughed and spat. The woman returned with two small clay lamps burning olive oil. She put one on the table and pointed Felsen into a chair. Some of the slate tiles were visible through the laths between the rafters of the roof. She left the other lamp in a wall niche, wiped the old man's eyes again and left. The two windows in the room were permanently closed up to the weather by heavy wooden shutters.

After some minutes the double doors behind Felsen shuddered open and a short and very wide man engineered himself through the gap sideways. He roared something to the back of the house and then offered his hand which gripped Felsen's with a mechanical hardness. He sat resting his forearms across the table, the rough hands, with split nails, hung off square wrists. The body under the heavy jacket was thick-boned and powerful. Felsen recognized something in him, and knew from that first moment, that this was the man who was going to help him control the Beira.

A girl in a headscarf brought in a bottle of aguardente and two glasses. The Portuguese's face was still in the glow from the oil lamp and as big as a landscape opencast-mined. His hair was swept back in a thick black and grey lava flow, his brow and nose like an escarpment with an exposed ridge of granite, his eye sockets and cheekbones like craters. The whole geography of the face was hardened to bleakness by years of cold dry wind. It was impossible to tell his age-anything from thirty-five to fifty-five. But whatever the minerals he had in the bones of his face, they were not extended to his teeth, which were blackened and worn, sheered off and yellowing or just missing. Joaquim Abrantes poured the pale alcohol into the glasses. They drank.

The girl returned with bread, cured ham, cheese and chourico. She laid a knife in front of Abrantes. The girl's face was very young, her eyes light-coloured, blue or green, it was difficult to say in the yellow oily light. A strand of blonde hair hung down from her headscarf. She was prettier than anything Felsen had seen since leaving Lisbon, but young, no older than fifteen, but strangely, with the body, the full form, of a grown woman.

Abrantes watched the German looking at the girl. He moved the ham in front of him and handed him the bread and knife. He ate. The ham was perfectly sweet.

'Bolotas,' said Abrantes, acorns. 'They make the meat sweet, don't you think?'

'I haven't seen many oak trees around here. It's all broom and pine.'

'They have them away from the mountains. I bring them up here. I have the sweetest pigs in the Beira.'

They ate and drank more. The chourico was lumpy with chunks of fat. The cheese soft, sharp and salty.

'I heard you were coming to see me,' said Abrantes.

'I don't know how.'

'News gets through to us up here. We've even heard about your war.'

'So you know why I'm here.'

'To investigate murder,' said Abrantes, his shoulders shaking, metal chinking in his jacket. The man laughing.

'Murder interests me, that's true.'

'I don't know why you should be interested in the death of a few Portuguese peasants.'

'And the GNR officer.'

'That was an accident. He fell off his horse. These things happen on difficult terrain,' said Abrantes. 'And anyway, what's interesting? Isn't there enough killing in your war to keep you occupied without having to come to the Beira?'

'It's interesting because it means that someone is controlling the situation.'

'And this is a situation you would, perhaps, like to control yourself.'

'This is your country, Senhor Abrantes. They are your people.'

The glasses were refilled. Felsen offered a cigarette. Abrantes refused, not ready to accept anything yet. Felsen admired the psychology.

'Senhor Abrantes,' said Felsen. 'I'm going to make you a very rich man.'

Joaquim Abrantes turned his glass on the wooden table as if he was screwing it in. He didn't respond. Maybe he'd heard it before.

'You and I, Senhor Abrantes, are going to corner the market in every scrap of uncontracted wolfram in this area.'

'Why should I work with you when I do very well myself and… if you can make me rich, can't the British do the same? Perhaps I'd prefer to play the market. It has only one direction as far as I can see.'

'The British will never be in the market for as much tonnage as us.'

'They still buy. They buy to close you out.'

'What do you think of the wolfram price now?' asked Felsen.

'It is high.'

'Are you buying?'

Abrantes rearranged himself in his seat.

'I have stocks,' he said. 'The price is going up.'

'If, as you say, the wolfram price has one direction, then you're going to sell high to buy higher… that is, if you want to stay in the market.'

Abrantes' darker eye, the one away from the light, looked over the granite ridge of his nose.

'What are you proposing Senhor Felsen?'

'I'm proposing to increase your capacity to trade wolfram for my account.'

'You have the money, I have no doubt, but do you have any idea how you can do it?'

'Perhaps you know the country better than I do.'

Abrantes thumbed a lump of bread and cheese into his mouth and swilled it back with the aguardente.

'A lot of the wolfram that's brought to me is not pure,' he said. 'There's always quartz and pyrites in it. If we set up companies to clean the wolfram we will attract more of the mineral and guarantee the quality.'

Felsen nodded.

'I'd want financial control,' said Abrantes. 'I don't want to have to ask permission for every rock I buy and I'd want a share of the profits and if there are no profits a guaranteed percentage of the turnover.'

'How much?'

'Fifteen percent.'

Felsen stood and went towards the door.

'You might be able to make that on your own account with small volume but I can't offer anywhere near that for the volumes I'm talking about.'

'What are these volumes?'

'Thousands rather than hundreds of kilos.'

The Portuguese balanced that in his head.

'If I go with you I'm out of the market…'

'I'm not stopping you from trading for your own account.'

'How long will you be in the market? I have no guarantee that you'll…'

'Senhor Abrantes. This war… this war that we need all this wolfram for, will change everything. Do you know what's happening in Europe? Germany controls everything from Scandinavia to North Africa, from France to Russia. The British are finished. Germany will control the economy of Europe and, if you work with me, you will be a friend of Germany. So to answer your question, Senhor Abrantes, we will be in the market for your lifetime, the lifetime of your children and theirs and more.'

'Ten percent.'

'That's not a percentage that the business can bear,' said Felsen and reached for the door.

'Seven.'

'I don't think you understand where this business is going, Senhor Abrantes. If you did, you'd know that a single percent would make you the richest man in the Beira.'

'Come, sit down,' he said. 'We can discuss this. We must eat. You must know how important it is for us to eat by now.'

'I know it,' said Felsen and sat down.

The girl brought in a thick stew of pork, liver and black pudding. She put more bread on the table and a jug of red wine. The two men ate alone. Abrantes told Felsen the dish was called Sarrabulho and that it was the best thing the girl had learnt from her mother.

Joaquim Abrantes might have been a peasant once but he wasn't one any more. This didn't mean, as Felsen found out during their discussion towards an agreement on volumes and percentages, that he could read or write. It meant that his father had farmed land and between them they'd acquired more. He had the house which was joined to two others at the back and to the side. They had livestock. He appreciated good food and drink. He had his young wife. He was a strange brute. On the few occasions that their eyes met, Felsen had the same feeling as he did looking into a bull's head. There was something big, private and planetary going on inside the man's brain. He understood surprising things about business and numbers but had no concept of maps or distances unless he'd travelled them. He had an instinct for power. He didn't like anybody except his old, half-blind father. Women did not speak to him.

After lunch he excused himself. Felsen stood and stretched. Through the double doors he saw into a parlour where the mother was crocheting and beyond that into the kitchen. Abrantes was standing behind the girl who was leaning with both hands on the table. He had his hand up her skirt. He straightened the front of his trousers and looked down as if he might mount her there and then. He thought better of it and went outside and down the back stairs.