A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter XXXVII

Friday, 12th June 1998, Pensao Nuno, Rua da Gloria, Lisbon How come girls do this now? How come this girl is doing this now? How has it come this far? 'My God,' said Miguel, finally and out loud, but not so loud that who he was watching in the next room, through the back of the mirror, through the rough hole in the plaster, through the ragged edges of the lath, would hear the thick, blood-clotted lechery in his voice.

It had been a long slow slide to this latest little vice. He'd done with whoring now. It was surprising how boring it got and how quickly. Pornography was no more than biology. Whoring no more than practical dissection. He hadn't liked it. It hadn't been the point.

The pressure of names had finally got to him, too. All the Teresas, the Fatimas, the Marias. All those little saints, the santinhas he called them, with their eyes staring up at him. He didn't need it. He got enough of that at church on Sundays.

No more whores. No more santinhas. He thought he might be cured, except that he found himself still reaching for something, like an artist who's painted the same scene again and again, trying to find what it was he had to say.

He'd told Jorge not to send him any more girls and that had been that. But Jorge… Jorge had kept something back. He had something special, but Miguel would have to come to the Pensao to see it.

He'd come on a Friday lunchtime. When was that? Years ago now or not? Jorge had taken him up to the room, told him about the two-way mirror and left. A familiar constriction had come into his throat and he'd pinched the skin around it with his thumb and finger. He lifted the mirror away on his side of the wall and there, framed raggedly, was a leading Lisbon architect he knew by name for God's sake, with a girl, a young girl, her legs splayed, heels braced against the sink.

As he was watching he had a sudden jagged fear that this wasn't a mirror but a window. Then he realized the heavily made-up eyes of the girl were focused elsewhere. Of course they were. There'd have been uproar if they'd seen his bald head ducked into the alcove. He waved at them to test their reactions. They toiled on, oblivious. He sat back on the bed unblinking for the minutes it took the architect to finish his business.

He watched, fascinated, as they fell back on to the bed and the man tipped the girl off his lap into the pillows. He shuddered slightly as the man came to the mirror and inspected his face for telling defects and then set about some frantic washing of his peeled-prawn penis, jaw clenched, teeth bared. He found himself enclosed by the drama of this private screening. The architect dressing, tearing at his shirt, desperate to be clothed again. The throwing of money, too much, on to the bed, the girl still not moving. He found his heart thumping in his chest as the door closed and he heard the clattering feet on the wooden stairs. He ran his hands over his pate and into the hairline of his neatly clipped, brilliantined head to the fat of his neck and shoulders which he gripped.

The girl remained face-down in the pillows. She stretched a small hand behind her. He was touched to see a cheap puzzle ring on her third finger. She reached in between her legs with thumb and forefinger and, as if she was pulling a splinter, yanked out the used condom. The fat man sank to his knees with a low groan. This had satisfied something in him, turned some grey beaten crust of earth and found dark rich soil underneath.

Miguel admired history. He liked its weight, its huge, glacial, unstoppable movement onwards. He would have liked to have fashioned it. He had in a way. But not enough. He supposed that this was why he enjoyed this little scene so much-a shot of a man's secret history. His real story. The one that would never get published but would be known… had been observed.

Then he saw this girl.

Jorge had been right. She was different. She was 'something special'. Jorge remembered things that worried him.

She was naked now and looking across the room to the mirror. He liked to see her face. He liked to see her front-on facing the mirror across the bed. She never closed her eyes. Her big blue eyes stared out with terrible innocence and this is what joined him to her. In all these things she did she was looking for something. Like him. Turning things over and over. Reworking things over and over. Never quite getting to the source, not knowing what the source was.

He'd already made up his mind. He had to speak to her. He already knew where she went to school. He'd followed her. Today would be the day.

He sat on the edge of the bed and held his belly in both hands. Black hairs burst through a hole in his shirt where a button had come undone. He opened up his shirt and stood in front of the mirror. He sucked in his gut. Fatter than an acorn-fed black pig's arse. He rebuttoned the shirt, flicked the collar up and fed the tie round, the tie made for him by Sofia's friend, the Inspector's daughter. He humped on his jacket and from a pig's arse made a patrician banker.

He looked around the room as if for the last time. The cracked cornice, the concentric stains on the ceiling, the seasick floor, patched with shagged and pileless rugs, covering holes in the biscuit-brittle lino, the wardrobe with its door hanging open, permanently stupid. He put his hands in his pockets and buffed his leg with his credit cards. He left the room, down the weakly-lit wooden staircase with its strip of blue lino, past the neon-lit reception with no Jorge, down more stairs, and more stairs to the huge wooden front doors and into the dark and shade of the sunstroked street and the distant applause of traffic. He breathed. That was the last time. That was definitely the last time.

He sat outside the school on Avenida Duque de Avila, in his wife's Mercedes with the engine running. She'd be coming out soon. There was something sharp sticking into him from his pocket. He put his hand in and… what was this? A tube of lubricant. How did that get in there? He didn't want to do that. And condoms. This was not what he had intended. He threw them in the glove compartment.

It's her. Who's she with? Who's she talking to? He's after her. The look in his eyes. He's been there. Anybody can tell. She's walking away now. This is not how it should be. Look at her walk. One foot in front of the other, just like the models do. He's not letting her get away. He's after her. He's grabbed her wrist now and she's turned and twisted it away from him. She doesn't want this. My God. He's hit her. That look on her face. What does that say?

Miguel swallowed hard. Everything happening quicker than he'd expected. More things happening than he'd expected. All these people in the street. He pulled out. She was on the move again… down the catwalk.

He pulled up at the traffic lights and buzzed the passenger window down.

'Excuse me,' he shouted.

She's turned to him. Those eyes are on him now. Can he get the words out?

'How do I get to the Monsanto park from here?' he said.

She's come off the pavement. She's rested an elbow on the window ledge. She's glanced into the back of the car. Why? What does she want suddenly? Her fingernails are bitten down to nothing.

'Monsanto park… from here. That's a bit complicated,' she said.

The sweat came up into his palms.

'Am I going in the right direction?'

'More or less. It's just… it can get complicated after the Parque de Palhava.'

'You're not going in that direction are you?'

'I'm getting the train to Cascais.'

'I'm going to Cascais. I just don't want to go out on one of the main routes at this time of day on a Friday. I want to cut through Monsanto and join the Cascais motorway that way. I'll give you a lift… to your door. How's that?'

She looked at Miguel. Those blue eyes looked into his. And what did they see? The vulnerability of the old fat guy. Nothing to worry about.

'Unless…' he said, inspired by the stress of the moment. 'You haven't got to go back to your office first or anything, have you?'

The psychology was right. He remembered things.

She got in. The lights changed. Miguel's foot came off the clutch a little too quick and the car shot forward with a squeak from the tyres. He eased himself back into his seat. Calmed down. They were together now. He'd done it. He'd made contact.

She had a small bag. She threw it between her feet. She didn't put on the seat belt. He buzzed the window up. They were comfortable in the air conditioning.

'Keep going straight,' she said, and rocked very slightly backwards and forwards.

Sadness flapped inside his chest like a flag at half-mast.

He changed gear. His knuckle made contact with her brown thigh. She didn't move it away. He rested his hand on the gear stick.

'What's your name?' he asked.

'Catarina,' she said.

He smiled behind his moustache. She didn't ask him his. Kids don't.

He talked about his daughter, Sofia. His brother's daughter, but he didn't say that. He tried to shut out the second voice in his head, which told him that it knew what he was doing. He was being nice. He was good at being nice and it was working already. She kicked off one of her clumpy shoes and brought her leg up, rested the heel on the edge of the seat.

'Go right here, and take the first left,' she said.

'Do you like music?' he asked, wondering instantly if that sounded stupid.

'Sure,' she said, and shrugged a small shoulder at him.

'What sort of music?'

'Maybe not your sort of music.'

'Try me. I know them all. My daughter plays them all the time.'

'The Smashing Pumpkins.'

He nodded and engaged her in a game to translate the band's name into Portuguese, but there were too many names for different types of pumpkin and they couldn't decide. That was when she told him that she was a singer in a band, and they missed the turning to Monsanto. They headed north and wandered the streets of Sete Rios around the zoo, and then back down towards the gigantic Aguas Livres aqueduct striding out into the hot afternoon, and then on to the right road which underpassed the railway line and into the park.

As they talked, as she fielded his questions, she'd gather her blonde hair behind her in a fist and, gnawing a non-existent nail, would study the windscreen looking for a reply in her head. It made him feel how young she was again. How sometimes she was fifteen, and other times twenty-five. How sometimes she was a schoolgirl, and other times she could be having sex in a Pensao with… forget that. Strike it from the text.

They climbed up into the park through the pines, the stone pines threaded with empty tarmacked tracks, some leading up to the military installation and the Forte de Monsanto, others cutting through to the motorway and still others heading deeper into the park.

'What time is it?' she said and leaned over to look at the dashboard.

He smelt her hair.

'Just gone five o'clock.'

She sat back and slipped her shoe back on again and stretched her legs out into the footwell.

'There's a place up here with a great view of Lisbon, shall we take a look?' he asked, wanting it to be just an outing.

'OK,' she shrugged.

He pulled into the empty car park of the restaurant at the Alto da Serafina and drew up at the low wall. They got out and stood on the wall. The city stretched out before them. The squat, colossal dark glass towers of the Amoreiras dominated the skyline.

'Those towers…' she said.

'That whole area used to be mulberry trees for the Lisbon silk industry,' he said, talking to her like he talked to his own daughter, his brother's daughter.

'They're alien those towers… they look like they're going to kill the city. Suck up all its energy.'

It surprised him. He didn't say anything.

'Do I know you?' she asked, doing her catwalk away from him down the low wall.

He tensed in his shirt and looked at her legs.

'I don't think so.'

'I keep thinking I've seen you.'

'Let's get back in the car,' he said. 'I don't want to be late.'

She got off the wall, flashing the gusset of her knickers.

He pulled out of the car park and carried on through the pines, the endless umbrella pines. He took a wrong turning. Out of the sun. She didn't notice. He stopped the car.

'This isn't right,' he said, his heart pounding in his throat.

He backed into the trees.

'What are you doing?' she asked.

'I'm just turning round.'

He moved deeper into the trees and into a clearing. Out of sight of the road now. The engine stalled. The sun shone into the car. The tinted windows darkened. She looked down at his hand on the gear stick.

'What's the matter?' she said.

'I don't know.'

'I did see you before,' she said. 'I remember now. You came into the cafe near the school. You were standing behind me.'

'The cafe? What school?'

'The Bella Italia near the school.'

'Not me. I didn't know you were at school.'

'I'm sure it was you. That tie. In the mirror.'

'In the mirror?' he asked, something travelling through his veins now like electricity gone bad.

He saw everything pin-sharp, right down to the tiniest blonde two-millimetre-long hairs on her leg. She moved into the corner of her seat and brought her feet up on to it, not slipping out of her shoes this time.

'I've seen you before,' he said, and she brought her fists up under her chin. 'In the Pensao Nuno at lunchtime with your two boyfriends. Were they the ones from your band?'

The information mesmerized her.

How had it happened? How had it gone wrong? It should not have been like this. He swallowed again looking at her but not. Looking at her reflection in the windscreen.

'What do you want?' she asked, her voice quavering.

There was still time to stop this. He could stop it now, go back to the talk, go back to the Smashing Pumpkins. He didn't have to…

He stretched out a hand. A hand thick with hair. Hair that went up the fingers nearly to the top joint. Animal hands. He circled her ankle with his thumb and forefinger.

She flicked her foot out and the rhinestone-studded heel of her shoe thumped into him just above his heart. He gripped the ankle and held on. She grabbed his tie. He crushed her wrist in his hand and she yelped and let go. He twisted her arm. She lashed out with her other foot and caught him high on the chest this time. He twisted her arm more and she turned. She had to turn. He pressed forward with his weight over her. He pushed her face into the corner of the seat and the door.

'Don't hurt me,' she said. 'Please don't hurt me.'

He grunted. Her noise coming to him muffled. He pushed up her skirt and yanked her pants down, under her knees, right off, over her stupid shoes. She felt her back cracking under his weight. Heard him fumbling in the glove compartment not far from her head. She wrenched her other arm out from underneath her and tried to lash out. He drew her head back.

'No,' she said. 'No, please. Don't hurt me. Do what you want, but don't hurt me.'