Electrico W

EPILOGUE

One of my tacit rules in a novel is that every door opened as the fiction unfolds should be closed at the very end. It is a sort of courtesy to the reader, for whom nothing should remain in the shade. Alas, this rule is very poorly matched with the realities of life, where nothing is so limpid, and nothing hermetically closed. But as I said this was a novel, I’ll agree to comply with the rule, by rearranging the chapters which, until now, were in an arbitary order.

I’ve come across Antonio every now and then when I’ve gone to the newspaper. We have a relationship like co-workers, nothing more, but it has improved. He hasn’t seen Irene again, she left the archive department for a job as an iconographer for a magazine, and the last time we talked about her he struggled to remember her name. Vitor is growing up and looks like him. He still has a picture of him in his wallet. We never mention those nine days spent together, but, at his request, I gave him the charcoal portrait I did of Duck.

I’ve seen Irene three or four times on my annual trips to Paris. The last time we met, a sort of erotic game was instigated. I touched her breasts, they weren’t as firm as they must have been a few years earlier. Two paltry victories.

Aurora left Lisbon for Berlin. I heard that she was awarded a European grant for the Arts and Culture, and she moved there. Antonio saw her face on a poster for a concert at the Salle Gaveau: the Wang-Oliveira duo. As for Karamazov, he fell under the spell of another young woman, a redhead who treated him badly.

Pinheiro died in prison in 1990 while serving a thirteen-year sentence for the murder of the grocer’s wife. None of the other killings could be ascribed to him, and, as the saying goes, he took his secrets to the grave. Fate has not yet brought me in contact with Dr. Vieira, whose card I kept for a long time.

I ordered more furniture from Custódia as soon as I moved into a bigger apartment in the Castelo district. He never gave me a favorable price, quite the opposite. But he wasn’t going to get rid of me that easily. I like to think that I’m the only person stopping him from closing his business. One time when he was telling me about his grandchildren, I asked whether he’d made them any wooden toys.

I’ve seen Manuela again, several times, always for lunch, never in the evening. The man she lives with, a very tall man with a beautiful, calm, regular-featured face, always says something to remind me how much he dislikes me.

My brother Paul got married. He has two boys I find unappealing and have no affection for, and he got divorced after five years. I didn’t feel sorry for him, I thought his wife was a stupid, horse-faced woman. We don’t see each other much.

Cátia Moniz — it doesn’t make much sense to call her Duck now — has another daughter. I heard that from Custódia. But I lied earlier when I implied I hadn’t seen her again. I didn’t have new business cards made — I had more than one hundred and eighty left from my old address — but I saw her at the botanical gardens with her family. Vitor was pushing the baby’s stroller and his little sister was pulling a toy behind her, a painted wooden duck with metal wheels. A duck. I smiled. I knew Custódia had made it, and I hoped he’d used off-cuts from my orders.

And then there’s me: I translated the one thousand and seventy-three Contos aquosos but haven’t found a publisher. The only one who showed any interest couldn’t find anyone responsible for Jaime Montestrela’s estate to sign the contract, and was worried there might be a court case after publication. Unless that was an excuse. As for the novel about Pescheux d’Herbinville, I never finished it, of course. I copied out my notes, but as the years went by, I lost interest in the project. I don’t feel I need to apologize for that. I didn’t make you any promises, as far as I know.

I haven’t had any luck with women, or haven’t known how to seize it if I did. Let’s say the ones I liked didn’t like me enough, and the ones I could have attracted were too ready to be attracted by pretty much anyone. Still, I’d have liked to have a child. Children. I’m sixty-five now and I’m not Picasso. The question stopped arising. There was never a Lena Balmer.

I may also know why Dad hanged himself. I’m growing steadily blind and, according to the doctor, it’s a hereditary condition. This book is a result of that sense of urgency and terror, I’ve called it Eléctrico W—although the tramline no longer exists — and I don’t know if it’s good or bad. All bad novels are alike, but every good one is good in its own way.

And every day I look at the map of the Okavango Delta, that river that doesn’t know how to find its way to the sea.