Electrico W

DAY THREE: AURORA

When I returned to the hotel Antonio was still asleep. His jacket was lying on one of the armchairs. I stood there in the silence for a moment. I pulled his wallet from the pocket and took out the photo of Duck. Just a loan, for no more than a few hours, time enough to make a copy.

There was another picture, this one in black and white. Antonio was in it, looking very young, in a group of other young men. It was almost like a class photo. I didn’t want to spend too long studying it. I took it as well. For no reason.

Then I went to bed and fell straight into a deep sleep. Antonio told me later that I snored, and I grimaced my apology. I hate those periods of complete abandon, a languor in which I can picture my flaccid, noisy hideousness, my face on the pillow like a dead jellyfish, my mouth half open, my breath fetid, times when — yet again — I wish I were someone else.

THAT MORNING THE press announced that the Pinheiro trial would begin any day, and I bought every newspaper. Leader writers had reopened their files, reused the photographs of bloodied corpses, recapped the circumstances of each murder. Soon the victims’ families would be put through it all again.

When Pinheiro was arrested, I had written two or three columns about the man they were calling the Mad Killer of Lisbon. They had chosen a photograph of him as a young man with a laughing face and a sailor’s uniform, accompanied by an enticing caption.

When he turned fifty, he changed into a small, thin man with brown hair, a smooth face, and sad, nearly gray eyes. A man with no history, virtually invisible. At the time of his arrest, he had been working as an administrator in the port’s customs offices for more than ten years. An honest, scrupulous employee, well viewed by his superiors, liked by his co-workers, a bachelor not known to have any relationships, no enemies, nor friends in fact. If he ate out in the evening, it was always alone, and when he had lunch in the customs canteen, he took a book from his leather case and never joined in conversations.

Antonio had called the hospital where Pinheiro was incarcerated, and had had little trouble securing an interview with the psychiatric expert. We were to meet him in three days.

IT WAS STILL early when we went down to the port and along to berth 24, drawn by a sound of tortured steel. In berth 13, I noted in my notebook, an old cargo boat with a Russian flag was baring its prow with a fresh three-foot scar in it. A workman balancing on a hanging footbridge was cutting away the dented sheet metal with a circular saw. Sprays of red sparks swirled around him, accompanied by a strong smell of burning and an almost unbearably strident noise. Under his heavy welding mask and thick leather overalls, the man handled the machine powerfully and with such ease that he seemed extraordinarily strong.

Antonio started taking pictures at machine gun speed with his Leica, then thrust the camera at me rather violently.

The telephoto lens shielded the view from the sky’s brilliance, making the scene both more immediate and more terrifying. Against a background of rust and sickening metal, the workman had pride of place among waterfalls of fire, the blacksmith god of lava and volcanoes. I released the shutter, heard its crisp click and the soft whirr of the motor.

I turned slowly and Antonio appeared in the black rectangle. Small red numerals lined up in the viewfinder, right in the middle of his chest. He was standing in profile, his features distorted by the bluish shade of the filthy cargo boat that filled the picture beside him. Coils of rope lay behind him, like sleeping black pythons. Farther away, a giant crane stood out in the sunlight, truncated sharply by the corner of the shot. I took the picture, not sure whether the light levels were good enough.

Antonio came over to me slowly, pointing toward me. His cheek was colored by the electric glow of the sparks, and the wail of the saw drowned out everything. There was something strange or even aggressive about the gesture he was making, and I saw it as a threat, a trap. What did Antonio want from me that I was so afraid of losing, that I hadn’t already lost? I took a step back, penetrated by the chill that precedes a ghostly apparition, panicked by my incomprehensible terror.

Time stretched out and slowed down as it had in childhood nightmares where I was pursued by monsters, where my hopeless stumbling flight got me nowhere, where the vampires and dinosaurs always inevitably caught up with me. Antonio was coming closer, he was smiling, an enemy’s smile. All at once his giant hand hid his face from me. Then his palm covered the lens and everything went red and black.

I staggered. Antonio looked at me, concerned.

“Are you all right, Vincent? You look pale …”

“I need to sit down a minute, I must be overtired. I–I’m not sleeping much at the moment.”

Antonio laughed, winked, gave me a little pat on the shoulder. The friendly physical contact made me shudder.

“I’m feeling better. Let’s go back.”

“No, no, let’s wait for a bit. There, look, how about going over there?”

He was pointing to a large barge with sky-blue sides, a cable’s length from the quay but connected to it by a long narrow footbridge. A bistro terrace had been set up on its deck, with wobbling garden tables, Fanta parasols in faded colors, and, stranded in the middle, a sort of prefabricated yellow workman’s hut. On the quay, an oval sign with rounded blue letters announced STROMBOLI’S, ITALIAN SPECIALTIES.

We were just boarding the barge when a good-natured, bald imp in a white apron sprang from the hut.

“We’re closed, the restaurant’s closed!” The little man ran over to us and stood puffing at the end of the footbridge. “It’s José, he didn’t take the sign down, so you obviously have no way of knowing, but we’re closed — I can’t let you—”

“Be kind,” said Antonio, “my friend’s feeling faint.”

“Faint? Oh …” The fellow moved aside, as if I were contagious. “Well, you are white as a sheet. You must be having an attack of hippopotitis … Don’t move a muscle, okay? I’ll be back …”

While Antonio stifled his explosive laughter, the man pushed a white plastic chair toward me, dusting it carefully: “Sit yourself there, sir … There you are … I’ll bring you something to drink. A glass of water, or no, better than that, a Coke, it’s stuffed full of sugar, it’ll clear your head and do you good.”

Before I had a chance to refuse he was running for his hideout. The blood pounding in my temples was already calmer. I heard the sound of a car door and looked over to the quay.

A woman was sitting at the wheel of a little red Fiat, beside a large container. She took one last energetic drag on her cigarette and threw the stub out the window. The sun must have been in her eyes, she looked away, turned the key in the ignition, and drove off. I had seen her face for only a second. From that distance she looked like Duck. If that’s who it was, she hadn’t seen Antonio, and because he was sitting facing the sun, he couldn’t have seen her. I stood up, the car was already driving away. Antonio also turned, too late. The Fiat had disappeared behind a warehouse.

“What is it, Vincent? You’re still very pale.”

“I–I thought I recognized someone …”

“Your Lena Palmer? You see her everywhere … not a good sign. You’ve got it bad.”

I shook my head.

“No, it’s nothing. I must have been wrong …”

Our enthusiastic imp was back already with a bottle and a kindly smile. He uncapped it and handed it to me.

“Here, drink that,” he said and winked as he added, “it’s the real thing, you know, I make it myself.”

He stood up and found two more chairs for Antonio and himself. Then he suddenly looked worried.

“Hey, are you sure you don’t want to call a doctor?”

“No thanks, I’m feeling better already.”

“All right. Well, that’s a relief, because I do have a phone here, but it’s out of order.”

He watched me for a moment, suspiciously, while I drank the sparkling too sugary drink and he ran his hand over his sweating head.

“If you want my opinion, it’s because of the heat. You don’t really notice, but it’s very hot already, isn’t it?”

Antonio nodded in silence. “Are you Italian?” he asked, pointing at the sign.

“No, I’m from Porto, like my father. But my mother, now she’s from Milezza in Sicily. That’s why I called the restaurant Stromboli’s. And I have an Italian name too. Leopoldo. Well, Leo. But I thought Stromboli’s sounded better than Leo’s. Don’t you think?”

There was a warm westerly breeze heavy with salt blowing off the sea.

“There’s always a bit of wind in this part of the port. It even carried off one of my parasols once.”

I don’t know whether I owed it to Leopoldo’s remedy, but I was feeling better. I took a step toward the footbridge, reached for my wallet.

“You must be joking!” the little man said indignantly, shaking our hands. “But you have to come and eat here, you will, won’t you? I’ll make penne all’arrabiata for you. It’s the house specialty, lots of chili, lots of garlic, lots of olive oil. And two or three pieces of penne, well, you have to. So, do you promise?”

We promised and left the barge. I would have liked to follow the route taken by the Fiat, perhaps it wasn’t that far away, but Antonio insisted on heading toward the streets he had known as a child.

We climbed up a narrow street toward Bairro Alto.

“You see there, Vincent, where there’s an electrical store, there used to be a hardware store, maybe it’s the old owner’s son who’s now selling Walkmans. He always used to hang things outside, dish racks and plastic bowls in sky blue, bright yellow, every color. When he opened in the morning he hung bunches of them from the awning, like Chinese lanterns. The candy was kept inside in glass jars, with lids to stop thieving fingers. He had hard candy, caramel, red and green barley sugar …”

“Did you come here with Duck?”

“I don’t remember. When I was with her I didn’t feel much like eating candy.”

“Where did she live?”

He tilted his chin toward one of the ten-story buildings at the top of the street. It was built in the sixties and had about a hundred peeling balconies, all laden with parched potted plants, broken old toys, bicycles, and laundry dryers.

“Do you remember which apartment it was?”

“No, just that it was on the other side of the building. On the seventh or eighth floor, I can’t remember. From her bedroom you could see the April 25 Bridge and the statue of Christ the King.”

Antonio looked away and we slowed imperceptibly.

We walked toward Eduardo VII Park, toward the clammy heat of Estufa Fria. Antonio couldn’t wait to rediscover the smell of the tropical hothouses, and he bought two tickets.

A slatted wooden canopy softened the sun’s rays. We wandered among the ferns and umbrella trees, and followed the meanders of an artificial river that snaked through the gardens. Antonio stopped from time to time to take a photograph.

A tousled-haired kid in sandals ran up to Antonio. He was holding a long cluster of milk-white flowers.

“Here,” he said, handing him the flowers with his arm held high. It was an insistent, determined gesture, not the sort of childish command that could be shrugged off. Antonio knelt, accepted the present, and put it in his buttonhole.

“Like that?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s great like that.”

The boy backed away slightly to look at Antonio and said solemnly, “They’ll bring you good luck. What are you going to give me in exchange?”

Antonio reached up and took his wallet from his jacket. I blenched: I hadn’t yet had time to put back the two photos after having them copied. All Antonio offered was a stamp, a French one.

“Here, it’s a French stamp. Is that okay?”

“That’s robbery …,” the kid retorted sulkily. He rubbed his head to show he was thinking, and added, “But it’ll do. Just this once.”

And he put the stamp in his pocket.

An elderly man appeared behind the child, slightly out of breath. He was holding his hat in his hand and automatically raised it above his head to greet us.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Please forgive him, he does whatever he pleases. Marco, did you pick that off a tree? You mustn’t take flowers off the trees. Oh, I can’t cope with him, he won’t stay still for a moment.”

The child had already gone on ahead, escaping his minder.

“Marco, wait for me. Do forgive him, really, please.”

The old man trotted off in pursuit of the boy, and Antonio put the viewfinder to his eye, snapping the pair of them before they disappeared behind the foliage.

We crossed a bridge sculpted out of cement, then another. Passing by waterfalls and lagoons, the path took us to an indoor pond covered in water hyacinths. In the middle of this small lake stood a gray-and-pink marble building, it was imposing, monumental even, and overrun with creepers. It must have been the hothouse curator’s home or a reception area for summer shows. We were alone on the edge of the water, and I felt uncomfortable. We shouldn’t have been there, we had gone into an area out of bounds to visitors.

On the paved terrace in front of the building, sitting between the paws of a marble lion, a girl was twisting and turning a bamboo stick in the water. At first I thought she couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She was wearing a short dress with a red-and-blue pattern, her legs were slender but toned and tanned, and her black hair was held in a multicolored ribbon. Beside her on the flat tiles lay a sketchbook covered with pictures in charcoal and pastels. An old case for a child’s violin lay open, full of oil pastels. She didn’t appear to notice us and, for a moment, perhaps because she looked so unaware and peaceful, the place seemed to belong to her for all eternity.

She was describing shapes in the emerald water, ephemeral figures, no two the same, manipulating the bamboo precisely, unhesitatingly. It was as if she was forming letters, writing words long forgotten by the waters but carried to us silently on the shimmering wavelets.

Antonio was mesmerized. He set off along a paved path that ran through the water lilies and other water plants, crossing the lake that lay between us and the terrace. Something about the way he moved made me think he knew her, but he asked, “What’s your name?”

Antonio’s presumptuous familiarity, his intrusion, wasn’t paternal, it didn’t have the authority of an adult addressing an adolescent. It had more to do with an instant instinctive intimacy, the first words from a besotted prince to a shepherdess, or rather a fascinated shepherd to a princess.

“Aurora,” she replied, not looking up or even stopping her twirling of the bamboo in the lagoon.

All at once she threw the stick in the water and stared at Antonio and then at me, as I too crossed toward the terrace, clumsily, trying not to slip on the mossy paving stones. She jumped to her feet and when she looked me in the eye I realized she reminded me of Irene, because of her black, almond-shaped eyes, olive skin, and other indefinable qualities.

“Are you two lost? You realize this is my house, here, my island?”

Antonio smiled. “Your island?”

“Yes. It may not actually be completely an island but it is mine. I come here whenever I like, even when it’s closed. I have the keys to the little door at the end. That’s where my father keeps his machines. I always do my studying here. Textile drawings, but not printed patterns. I mean I do designs for woven fabrics. Do you know what I mean? Look.”

She opened her sketchbook at random. Every inch of paper was covered with sketches of geometric designs. One area looked like the cubist weave of cotton, another like pencil-drawn stitches in wool.

She stood on tiptoe and smelled the flowers on Antonio’s lapel.

“That’s pretty. Clivia minata. And where was it stolen?”

“Some kid just gave it to me,” Antonio apologized, embarrassed. “It’s a good luck charm …”

“Really? A good luck charm? Do you believe in good luck, then?”

She pirouetted on the spot.

“At night I sometimes light the little blue suns,” she said, pointing to ultraviolet lights on the roof arches.

“At night?” Antonio asked, smiling and running his hand through his red hair in a rather contrived, affected way.

The girl crouched, closed her sketchbook, and started clearing the pastels scattered over the paving stones into the violin case.

“Don’t you believe me? Are you laughing at me?”

“No, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She looked down, arranging her oil pastels in order like the colors of the rainbow. Antonio knelt beside her, picked up a few crayons, and handed them to her. Without looking up, she took them and said, “And do you two have names? You, what’s your name?”

“Antonio, Antonio Flores. And my friend is Vincent. Vincent Balmer.”

I introduced myself with a bow.

“Vincent Balmer? Are you English, then?” Aurora asked, but not waiting for a reply, she turned to Antonio: “And what about Flores? Is that really your name? Is that why you’ve come to see your cousins the flowers? That’s Jewish, isn’t it? They say all flower and tree names are Jewish. My name’s Jewish too, it’s Oliveira. And my middle name’s Judith. But I was baptized. Gods are so complicated.”

Of all the pastels she chose cyan and ran it along her forearm, tracing a streak of azure, like war paint.

“I’ll draw a bird for you Antonio, okay?”

She snatched Antonio’s wrist like a bird of prey launching itself at a mouse. In one fluid movement she drew a beak and a neck on his palm, created the line of a wing on his thumb, then another on his little finger, and, on his index finger, a long tail like a magpie’s, pointing upward. She put down the blue crayon, picked up a sunny yellow one, and, with a roll of her fingers, created the eye in the middle of his palm where his heart line and luck line crossed. She let go of Antonio’s hand and put away the pastels.

“Bird-hand, by Aurora Oliveira,” she laughed. “A good luck charm, and this one’s real. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you know.”

Antonio moved his hand and the bird came fleetingly to life, spreading its wings, ready to fly. Antonio opened and closed his hand slowly, fascinated, unable to say a thing, and Aurora watched him closely, smiling. In the golden light, Antonio’s hair looked almost brown, and for the second time I thought him handsome, even more so. Then he turned to Aurora, and his whole voice had changed, husky but gentle too: “How old are you, Aurora?”

“Twelve.” Antonio opened his eyes wide and she burst out laughing: “No, I’m not, I’m thirty. What about you? Don’t say a thing, don’t tell me, whatever you do, you fool … Telling your age makes you older.”

A sudden bright light made me look up. Something was twinkling far overhead, way up in a huge rubber palm whose leaves hung over the top of the building, over the bay window. The twinkling came from a pair of round, steel-framed glasses. As it had grown, the plant had gradually engulfed the metal sidepieces, and the glasses were set right into the trunk. Two growths within the wood, two bulging green protuberances, formed a pair of froglike eyes. I instinctively pushed my own glasses back up my nose. Aurora noticed the gesture.

“Are you admiring Monstro?” she asked. “When I was little, even littler, it used to frighten me with its strange cut-out leaves, like witches’ masks. So I put an old pair of glasses between two of its branches. Then when it grew they were imprisoned. I called it Monstro because, according to the gardeners, it’s a monstera deliciosa. And it was the name of the whale in Pinocchio, you know, the film of Pinocchio …”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Monstro, off that pair of glasses trapped in the thick trunk where acrid white sap must have been seeping over them. That fragment of human life gave the towering plant a strange personality. Behind the filthy lenses, you could almost imagine there lurked a climbing-plant philosophy, with sententious words impounded in its chlorophyll.

Aurora was smiling mischievously. She must have been keeping a real, far deeper secret.

“Well,” said Antonio, “I think Monstro was one of your lovers and you were bored of him and turned him into a philodendron.”

Aurora touched Antonio’s cheek very lightly.

“You’re so clever, Antonio,” she said mockingly. “You guessed. I always turn my lovers into plants, do you think there would be this many here otherwise? Over there, that drooping fatsia, the one that needs water and is drying out because I won’t let anyone water it, that’s that idiot José. He was always hovering around me, constantly trying to look at my breasts, when he gave me an ice cream, when he read a book over my shoulder … One day, what a nightmare, he put his hand on my hip. Ugh, it was disgusting. And in a flash, changed him into a fatsia. Ciao, José.”

She ran over to a burgeoning plant clinging to a wall of rock.

“This staghorn fern here is Ruiz, he always wanted people to believe he was a real man. He rolled his pack of cigarettes in the sleeve of his T-shirt and made a lot of noise on his scooter. He’s much quieter like this, with these dangling fronds like dogs’ tongues.”

She gave a sneer to staghorn-Ruiz, walked on a few paces, and stroked a leaf on a palm tree near the water lilies.

“And this howea which won’t stop growing is Tadeus. He was the kindest one. He used to say, ‘Tell me, Aurora, do you think you’ll ever love me? Because, as you know, I just adore you and I want to live with you.’ He was so sweet, poor Tadeus … Then he got a bit too persistent and eventually even quite nasty. There’s no getting away from it, with boys, if they love you and you don’t love them they call you a bitch. That’s oversimplifying, isn’t it?”

Aurora talked on and on with an almost singsong accent, and I could see Antonio was increasingly unsettled.

“Monstro’s another story,” Aurora went on, “I don’t like shortsighted boys. They make you feel you should protect them, and when they wake up in the morning their glasses are always more important than you. One day Monstro—”

I put my hand up to my glasses without even thinking, and she burst out laughing. She tapped her finger on the copy of Contos aquosos that was peeping out of my pocket.

“What are you reading?”

“They’re short stories.”

I handed the book to her, and she took it and leafed through it, frowning, but smiling too.

“Jaime Montestrela … What a weird name. It doesn’t mean anything to me. The stories are weird too.”

She handed it back to me, made as if to leave the terrace along the paved path, but turned back, rummaged through her large canvas bag, and took out two invitation cards which she slipped into Antonio’s hand.

“I almost forgot: you must come tomorrow, there’s a concert. Baroque music, Purcell, Monteverdi, you’ll see when you get here. It’s at eight o’clock sharp, on the nose, you need to wear a suit, it says so on the invitation. I’ll be wearing a full-length dress. You’ll see there are plenty of people who’ll want to get their tuxedos out, and it looks very funny in the hothouse, like a colony of penguins visiting the Amazon. Okay, see you tomorrow then?”

She ran off, a gazelle, and vanished into her jungle. I heard the motor of Antonio’s Leica. She was already hidden but her voice echoed round the hothouse: “Come back soon, Antonio, and I’ll draw a cat for you on your other hand.”

“NO, ANTONIO, NOT like that … Don’t say My Irene, don’t start with that possessive, it’s too worn, too overused, just say Irene, it’s truer, stronger, more sensitive. She’ll read her name and hear your voice saying it, you breathing it, and Irene’s a word that never really ends, it hangs in the air long after you’ve said it, it doesn’t need anything else.

“Write: Irene, I’m lost, I don’t know what I want. After all, that’s always true, we never have any idea what we want from other people. When I left for Lisbon—no, you weren’t leaving, it was a separation, a wrench, so write When I set off from Paris, yes, that’s better, it’s much better to refer to the place you’re leaving than some nebulous destination. When I set off from Paris, I couldn’t know that you would become—no, actually, that I had become such an important part of your life. I don’t like thinking you’re hurt, I didn’t want either of us to be hurt.

“This letter needs to be short, it’s better to show you don’t feel comfortable with words, so start a new paragraph, pause, let your writing catch its breath: Irene, dear sweet Irene—but did you ever call her sweet? You didn’t? Well, do it then, it’ll be like you’re daring to use words in this letter that you held back in person, words you’ve never spoken, that will be hers all brand-new and subtly different.

“Look out the window, Antonio, let the city speak for you. Tell her it’s two in the morning, or even later, it’s raining in Lisbon, and I can see the Avenida da Liberdade from the window, it’s glistening and gloomy as a canal in Amsterdam. That’s a bit of a hollow image, Antonio, I realize, but have a look, don’t you think that tonight Lisbon looks like a cold northern city, silent in the mist, and that the deserted street’s reflecting the darkness the way a slow-moving waterway would? And you need to give this letter a bit of color, even if it is gray, particularly if it’s gray. Say I want to sleep, but I can’t, the sound of the rain, perhaps, or a feeling that I’m not getting anywhere with my work, or my life. I shot two or three rolls of film today, in the port. I don’t know what they’re going to be like, these articles I’m working on with Vincent. We have ten days left to wrap everything up, and I feel I don’t recognize this place, even though not much has changed in ten years.

“Then say, Of course, I didn’t tell you Vincent Balmer’s in Lisbon with me. There, Antonio, that’s when she needs to find out. Make the point He lives here now. As of two months ago. Or a bit longer. A big room in the port neighborhood. Not very tidy. Anyway, we took rooms in a hotel together. It’s more practical. Explain that He’s doing the writing. He spends his days making notes, in the big black book he takes everywhere with him, and he speaks Portuguese with a funny accent, like he’s imitating a Portuguese imitating a Frenchman imitating a Portuguese, or the other way around. Does that make you laugh, Antonio? But it’s true, isn’t it? Write it. He’s not very chatty but the two of us get on well. We can say that, Antonio, can’t we? Don’t say anything more. If you say too much, it’ll never be enough. She’ll want to have details, to work out how much you know, to try and read between the lines.

“The hotel’s comfortable, a bit impersonal, but I think it suits our work. I know, Antonio, here you can add in this, it’s a snippet from my notes, it fits perfectly with your last sentence: The place is both tired-looking and luxurious, dating back to the early 1900s, one of those palaces where you never feel at home, and never even want to unpack your bags. Say Irene, what if you came and joined me? No, that’s a stupid, bland construction with that simpering what if like a childish game. Say Come and join me in Lisbon. And don’t look at me like that, Antonio, I’m sure it’s a good idea. You’ll be on your territory here, everything will seem clearer. Don’t worry about me, I’ll go and sleep in my studio in São Paulo. Or with Lena. I’ll leave you in peace. You can give yourself enough time to be sure. Say For a few days at least. A long weekend.

“We need to finish this letter, make it short. No lying now, we can’t go and end it with a stock phrase, an I miss you or an I can’t stop thinking about you. Anyway, you’re not in love yet, she’d know you were lying. Girls can see through everything, they’re so clever. Just say I’d really like to show you the city where I grew up. You take good care of yourself—no, put really good care.

“And sign it. Legibly. Not impatiently. As if you regret it.

“Shall we tell her about Aurora, in a PS? No, come on, Antonio, I’m kidding. I’m kidding, I tell you.”

“SHE USED TO LIVE in this building, you say?”

The man filled the whole doorway, his arms were huge, larded with unhealthy fat. On his wrist he wore a heavy gold watch, and a chain, also gold, hung over his flaccid white chest. It wasn’t all that hot, but he was sweating, and sweat flecked his shirt.

He was holding the duplicate picture of Duck between his fingers, and I had an urge to take it back from him, as if he might soil it. His obese figure made me feel uncomfortable, like a reflection of my own ugly intentions. I nearly capitulated and turned back for the hotel.

“Yes, that’s right, she lived in this building. On this side, actually. It’s just the floor I’m not sure about.”

“Ten years ago, you say? Wait …” And without turning around he cried, “Baby? Ba-by?”

It made me jump. A woman appeared behind him. Small, thin, dark-haired, in her fifties, a hard face with black eyes, not unlike a witch.

“Look at this, Baby, do you recognize her? This man says she lived here.”

He rubbed his hand over his sweating face.

“I work nights, so, you know, people from the building …”

The woman wiped her hands on her apron and studied the photograph for a long time, and then me for even longer. The man stepped aside to let her through and disappeared into the apartment without a word. She took the picture and turned it over as if looking for a date or a note.

“What do you want from this girl?”

“I’m looking for her … it has to do with a legacy. All I know is she lived here, in this building.”

“A legacy … But tell me, this picture was taken a long time ago.” It was not a question, and there was a harsh note of reproach in her voice. “At least five years, isn’t it?”

“Ten years.”

I said this quietly, as if asking forgiveness for the passing years, and she looked back at the photo, her eyes more human now.

“You’re French, aren’t you, you have an accent,” she said, her voice softer. “A legacy, you say? Who’s died? She didn’t have any family in France, poor little thing—”

“So you do know her?”

The woman sighed.

“Of course I know her,” she said, “like everyone in the building, well, the ones who were here at the time. Because there’s a lot of coming and going in the neighborhood, it’s getting expensive for the likes of us, the rents are going up so much.”

She peered up at me.

“Now, this girl, yes, I remember her, she had a funny name, something like Arnica, or Arcana, but everyone called her something else.”

“Arcana?”

The voice grew suspicious: “But you must know the girl’s name if you’re really looking for her.”

“No, I don’t have a name like that … I have one or two clues, and this photo. I’ve been paid to find her, that’s all. You see, she’s inheriting from an American, not someone in her family, but you know, the will is impeccably within the law, even if I don’t have a name. Under U.S. law, well, Texas state law, you can leave your pet canary to someone if you want.”

“Texas …”

The word came to me just like that, but it had its effect. The woman looked convinced, because she shook her head.

“No, I don’t know where she is. She got pregnant, she wasn’t even fifteen, and her father sent her away north, I think. He moved away after that. A real bastard.”

She took a step back, I thought she was going to walk away so I persisted: “You really have no idea where I should try to look for her?”

“No. You could always go asking at the tasca, on the rua das Tangentes. Ask if anyone’s heard from Ruiz, yes, that was her father’s first name, he sometimes has a drink there with the regulars. Ask them about Ruiz Domingo, that’s what everyone called him, I don’t know why. A nasty man, really, a brute. When the girl was expecting the baby, he almost threw her down the stairs. D’you know, I thought he was going to kill her …”

The woman fell silent for a moment and her voice softened again: “Tell me, is it a big sum she stands to inherit?”

“I can’t … not a great deal, to be honest.”

“You can’t tell me, is that it? You’re not allowed to?”

“That’s right, yes. And the child, did she have it?”

“I dunno.”

Her expression went blank, she stepped back out of the light from the doorway and the shadows carved deep lines on her face.

“Are you coming, Baby?” her husband called from behind her.

She put her hand on the door handle and took another step back. At the last moment, she turned toward me, her hands clenching the fabric of her apron, and I met her eyes as they pried into mine, trying to read my thoughts. She spoke differently now, with gentleness in her voice: “I’m glad she’s inheriting it, and all that money’s going to her, not him. After everything she’s been through. It’s a good thing.”

She stared at me for a long time, without a word, then seemed to reach a decision: “If you find her, tell her …”

She shuddered and shook her head. “No, forget that, don’t tell her anything, she won’t want to come back here. People weren’t … kind, no, they weren’t kind at all. Just tell her to take care from me. My name’s Maria Simões … No, say it’s Pita, that’s not my name, but she used to call me Pita. She gave everyone nicknames, that girl, even herself in fact.”

“I know …” I murmured.

The door was already closed.

THE TASCA WAS on the corner of rua das Tangentes and rua Antunes. It was a seedy drinking hole, forbiddingly dark once you stepped through the sun-drenched doorway. Every couple of minutes, when the Eléctrico W passed, the screech of metal drowned all conversation. The barman was in his sixties with bug-eyes like Peter Lorre. He remembered Ruiz well.

“Did you say Domingo? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, oh yes. That’s what they called him in the neighborhood, because Sunday was the only day of the week he was just about sober. He used to go to the cemetery, where his wife was buried, so he didn’t drink for the whole day.”

He thought about this and added with a laugh: “Well, he wasn’t drinking here at least.”

He wiped the top of the bar with a cloth.

“To be honest,” he went on, “it was after she died that he started drinking … But hey, I’m not here to stop people from drinking, am I?”

I nodded with a grimace. I hadn’t put any sugar in my coffee and it was acrid. Its bitterness was my act of contrition.

“What about his daughter, do you remember his daughter?”

“The little girl? Oh yes, very well. When she was just a kid, she used to come to find Ruiz here in the evenings, when he was too drunk. He couldn’t stand up, she even had to put him to bed. When her mother died she must have been, what, about nine years old. She was already a hell of a pretty kid. Is she the one you want or Ruiz? Because I dunno where she is … She had some problems, if you know what I mean.”

He ballooned his arms over his stomach. I looked away.

“And Ruiz?”

“Oh, he comes by sometimes. The last time was about two or three months ago, I think. He used to work in highway maintenance, on street lighting. Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s retired now. Or switched to another job. He was good with his hands.”

The barman remembered a name, Custódia. Ruiz Custódia. He also told me where to find his wife’s cemetery. In the suburbs. Ruiz used to go there every Sunday afternoon, at around four or five o’clock. But he could have changed his habits, of course.

I finished my coffee, knocked back a glass of brandy, and paid, leaving a good tip. As I was leaving the barman called to me: “Say, if Ruiz comes by, because you never know, shall I tell him someone’s looking for him or not? What’s your name? Do you have a business card?”

“It’s the girl I’m looking for.”

It wasn’t an answer, but the guy didn’t persist.

I WALKED TOWARD the hotel, slowly, feeling slightly nauseous. As the main post office was on my way, I went in. It was cold because of the air conditioning, heels clacked on the floor tiles and conversations smacked against the walls. I looked for the name Ruiz Custódia in phonebooks for all the major cities, and made a note of the addresses. There were no Arcana Custódias, or Arnicas or Arcanis, not anywhere. So, I started making a note of the Adelina, Adriana, Albertina, Anna, Anita, and Augusta Custódias. Twenty-five names in all, in Lisbon alone.

Someone put a hand on my shoulder. I was startled to hear Antonio’s voice and dropped my pen like a little boy caught red-handed.

“What are you doing here?”

Antonio was amused to have caught me. He was chewing a sandwich. I leaned down, picked up my pen, and stuffed my notebook in my pocket. He wasn’t inquisitive about what I was hiding, but I couldn’t help answering.

“I’m looking for an address, I’m trying to call someone. Like everyone else.”

“From here? Do it in the hotel.”

“In the hotel … yes. Are you here to post your letter? Or rather our letter?”

Now I was smiling too. Antonio shook his head: “No. It turns out I won’t need to post it. Irene just called. She’s coming to Lisbon. In a couple of days. Monday or Tuesday. She’ll call. I told her you were here …”

He took a bite of his sandwich, seemed to want to gauge the effect he had made.

“Really? And … what did she say?”

He stayed silent, an impish crease at the corners of his mouth, and I realized that my speedy response had betrayed my anxiety. He took another bite of his sandwich.

“She told me not to trust you …”

He swallowed a mouthful with gusto and looked around.

“I really like post offices, big post offices. The bustle, the echoing voices. It’s like the anteroom to the whole world.”

He smiled, pleased with his phrase.

“But you see, not like an airport, or a station. There are no departures here, no stopovers. Just addresses, languages, alphabets, letters and parcels. Absolutely anybody writing to absolutely anybody else. A huge great phonebook of the planet …”

Antonio was pontificating. He threw the last bit of bread in the trash.

“Shall we go change?”

“Excuse me?”

“For the concert this evening, with Aurora … the Estufa Fria. You are coming with me, aren’t you? Don’t leave me alone with the sorceress.”

He laughed and showed me his palm. There, still shimmering in the light, was the ghost of a blue bird.

AURORA WAS RIGHT, penguins visiting the Amazon was an accurate image. With advancing years and an accumulation of good port, many of the guests had even achieved the embonpoint of emperor penguins. I tried to tell Antonio the joke about never competing with Emperor Peng (because Emperor Peng wins), but he was too busy looking for Aurora to get it, or even listen to me.

“Hey, Vincent, look, there she is. Look how beautiful she is …”

I didn’t recognize Aurora in the young woman he was already walking toward. Perhaps because of the long cobalt-blue dress, or her hair, which was now not held in check by any ribbons so it spilled over her shoulders. Beside her was a very tall, very dark, fairly good-looking boy of about twenty wearing a dated gray suit. He was doing his utmost to generate some of the tragic darkness of a Russian soul in his expression. If this were a game of Happy Families, then he could have been the youngest of the Karamazov brothers. This Alyosha spoke very little and smiled very little but never took his eyes off Aurora. She meanwhile seemed distant, a stranger.

When she saw Antonio her face came to life, blossomed. She put a lock of hair behind her ear and abandoned her suddenly powerless companion. She cut through the crowd to reach us, stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Antonio’s left cheek. Then, in a move that was both intimate and incredibly brazen, she tilted her head for him to return the kiss, in the crook of her neck. He looked helplessly at that shoulder line offered up to him and, as if drawn in by the smell of it, furtively kissed the base of her neck.

“I was worried you wouldn’t come, Antonio.”

“Well, you can see I have.”

I greeted her with a nod, and she skimmed my cheek with her lips.

“Thank you for coming to see me again.”

She looked up at the glass roof, where all the ultraviolet lights had been lit.

“Have you seen? Little blue suns … I wasn’t lying …”

She had lost her childish voice and adopted a woman’s, but not quite a lady’s: “Would you like some champagne? Follow me.”

She took Antonio’s hand with energy and determination and guided us to the buffet, walking quickly through the dense crowd. Antonio was Aurora’s prisoner, leaning forward as he ran after his own hand. Beside the trays of canapés, she finally released him and chose a small pink éclair with sparrowlike voracity, nibbled one creamy end, then put it back down on the tablecloth with a smirk of distaste.

“It’s gelatinous and too sweet. Too bad, I really like the color, like a chubby child’s finger. Yummy. The concert’s going to start soon, I saved you two places, near me.”

“Who organizes all this, the concert, the reception?” Antonio asked.

“Well … the Philarmonica, isn’t it? Why does it matter?”

“Why are you invited? You said your father worked in the hothouse?”

“Have you quite finished with the questions? I’ve already said, this is my home. Shall we go?”

She took Antonio’s hand again and led us to the concert hall. The seats were theater red, the décor rococo. Aurora sat us in our places, 31 and 33, in the middle of the third row of the stalls.

“The best seats, these are. You don’t know how lucky you are to know me.”

She slipped a program into my pocket with a conspiratorial expression and narrowed her eyes mischievously. She knelt before us, crucifying the fabric of her dress with all the aplomb of a little countess in a silk gown playing in a dusty alleyway.

“Are you comfortable here? I won’t be far away, and I’ll be watching you the whole time.”

She snatched Antonio’s hand and opened it like a rose.

“But … where’s the bird? Did you frighten it? Did it fly away?”

And before Antonio could reply, she was kissing him on the lips and running off toward the wings. After a moment of stupefaction, he looked rather bemused and turned toward me. In the lamplight, his black eyes had gone the harsh green of a hornbeam leaf.

“That girl is …”

“Yes, isn’t she.”

I was smiling, amused by the helplessness on Antonio’s face. I was amazed to feel no jealousy at all. Aurora was very pretty, beautiful even, but I wasn’t attracted to her. I’m not attracted to women who are too beautiful, because they wear their refusal to seduce like a badge, because a cold hostility seeps out of them, helping them avoid being pestered too often.

And yet Aurora was not a sensual desert. She was well aware of her charms, but tried to please with daring and gentleness. She was sincere and naive, like a girl who doesn’t know she has a woman’s face and who hasn’t yet learned to see herself in men’s expressions. To crown it all she had a natural candor that forgave everything else. I would never have dared envy Antonio the tenderness she showed him, because she held the secret to ultimate propriety, she knew how to be desirable to him alone.

The hall was filling up and I opened the simple program printed on a lightweight card. The ensemble was called Quatuor Papageno, they were going to play some Purcell, some Dubois, and some Moulinié. I pointed out a line in the program to Antonio.

“Look, that’s where your Aurora’s going.”

Antonio snatched it from my hand. Among the musicians was Aurora Oliveira, tenor viola. Antonio read and reread those few words, shook his head, and turned to me: “Have you ever heard of a tenor viola?”

“No. Do you think it’s like a viola da gamba?”

“I …”

Antonio bit his lower lip as if to repress a laugh.

The bell, darkness, one last creak of the seats. As the hubbub died, the curtain rose. A narrow beam of moonlight came through the glass roof. It caressed the smooth face of a young woman standing onstage. Once again I failed to recognize Aurora. I was disarmed to discover how pure her features were, how perfect the oval of her face. Her cheeks glowed with a touch of pink, her lips with a hint of vermilion. Behind her, in the half light, the silhouettes of three musicians were just visible.

Aurora stepped forward, hesitantly at first, like a child about to give a little speech, but her voice proved surprisingly assured: “Moulinié’s Fantasy for Four Violas.”

She then went and sat in the middle of the quartet. She braced her instrument against her chin, the musicians tuned their instruments one last time, and the concert began.

Antonio never took his eyes off Aurora. I closed mine, to be alone with the music, or perhaps just alone.

I was six years old when I was taken to a concert for the first time. I can remember the rough feel of the worn crimson velvet of the seats, how uncomfortable they were, how my tie squeezed too tightly around my neck. But not the music. It must have been something by Mozart. A child’s first concert is always Mozart. I was probably treated to the inevitable: “At your age, little Wolfgang had composed his first symphony,” which can convince the most robust that their life is already a waste. I don’t remember it.

I have few childhood memories. In the most detailed one, I must be about four. I’m going into a very white villa, I’m wearing shorts that are too big for me, held up by a leather belt that isn’t mine. An old woman with dyed black hair hands me a glass of orangeade, but it manages to be both too sugary and too bitter, I pour it over the floor and scream and cry. The woman slaps me, my mother intervenes, defending me. We leave, in a hurry, running over the noisy gray gravel.

That woman doesn’t exist, that scene never took place, my mother told me so a hundred times. Even so, this false memory grows more real every year. I know the color of the sky, I can feel the moisture in the hot air, I can still hear the slap of that dry, lined hand on my cheek. Oddly, there is a word associated with this experience I never had, the word “beaver,” which meant nothing to me for a long time. To this day I don’t know whether that beaver is masking or perhaps belongs to a buried slice of real memories. One day much later, I learned that it was a rodent with large yellow teeth and a strange flat tail. Later still, I knew it was sometimes used to mean a woman’s vulva.

I also remember one afternoon in June. June 15 to be precise, because if was my ninth birthday. My great aunt had died a few days earlier. Aunt Odile. I was walking along the sunny street, the rue Lecourbe, where I lived with my parents in a small apartment at number 19, and thinking about Aunt Odile who always smelled of violets, a rather stout, red-faced woman I would never see again. An idea struck me with terrifying force, petrifying me there on the sidewalk with my satchel in my hand: Aunt Odile belonged in the past. I was only nine and yet I had a past, and I existed now because I was aware of it. I went home, devastated by the discovery. I stayed awake all night on June 15, my eyes bulging in the dark. I tried to remember the scene, to rewind back to my summer vacation by the sea, to my last birthday present, but my mind was so abuzz that, in my terror and confusion, nothing came back completely. So in the morning I made a decision never to forget anything again, ever, in order to stay alive.

That is how I was born a second time when I was nine. Before that date of June 15 nothing feels real to me at all. In my own puerile way, I had lived each perishable moment in the present, or rather on the slope of the present that is already sliding toward the future.

I opened my eyes. A smile hovered on Antonio’s lips as he watched Aurora play. I realized how much I could loathe this man whose memory was anchored so far out and so deeply, who had been given the gift of existing so early on. If women were drawn to him, then it was because of this past that carried him, making him both lighter and more weighty, a force that told them there was an invisible secret in him, a mysterious “before” that would never be accessible to them.

AURORA JOINED us on the terrace shortly after the concert ended. It was a hot, humid, almost suffocating night, and in the darkness the jungle inside the hothouse seemed to go on forever. Hundreds of sparrows perching up in the palm trees cheeped busily, barely disturbed by the electric lighting.

Aurora had showered, the ends of her damp hair clung to her temples, her forehead was still moist from the steam. A feral child in evening dress. Antonio handed her a handkerchief and she ran it over her face.

“Did you see?” she laughed happily. “Three encores …”

She was about to return the handkerchief, but two pale red initials embroidered on it stopped her short. She turned it over in her hand, intrigued. An I and an S.

“I.S.? Like International Socialist? Intelligence Service? Are you an English spy, Antonio? Or is it … Irresponsible Savage?”

Antonio took the square of cloth from Aurora’s hand without a word.

I.S. Irene Simon. It was Irene’s. It was even that same handkerchief, I’m sure of it, that she had waved with a pretense of emotion from the window of a Paris — Rome train one autumn morning. The train was still stationary, she had lowered the window and waggled the piece of white cotton mockingly to point out how ridiculous I was to stay there on the platform. Then she sat down, opposite a young student who was already showing an interest in her, and she pretended to be immersed in some women’s magazine.

Her face had disappeared behind a stranger’s profile. All that was left in view for me was a fold in the fabric of her jacket, the tips of her gloves, and the colorful carousel of pages as she leafed lazily through them. With a labored creak, the doors closed, the train swayed, and I stood there stupidly watching it move away. The scene tore open like an old bedsheet, I was left empty of all feeling except for my longing for this woman, who was suddenly as unreachable as the distant glitter of those train cars following their tracks on the horizon.

When I remember that handkerchief dancing in the air and that actor’s smile you gave to everyone, I realize how much the gesture was calculated to make fun of me and my hangdog eyes. The young man watching you who must eventually have struck up a conversation with you, the ticket collector who helped you carry your cases on board, and even the surly boy in the station buffet, they must all have been privately laughing at me, they had all worked out that you clearly didn’t love me.

And yet there were nights when you decided to sleep by my side. I think I amused you just enough for you to want to stay. I spent hours in sleepless torment, inhaling the smell of your body, swamped by your sharp perfume, choked by your heat and coldness like a gnat in a spider’s cocoon. I listened to you breathing and couldn’t get to sleep, frantic with desire for you. You said you hated that bed where I had slept with other women, I should have burned the sheets, moved house, and you complained when I looked at other women even though you refused to give yourself to me.

Antonio folded the handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

A ripple ran through the crowd and the loudspeakers crackled, started a hum of interference that was quickly stifled. An English blues song came from nowhere, something like Paul Armstrong’s “I’m the Flirt of Jesus,” and a dozen or so teenagers started dancing on the paved terrace.

Aurora slipped between Antonio and me, and took us by the arm.

“Come on, come and dance … it’s such a warm evening …”

But Antonio took a step back, intimidated, and she pirouetted in front of him. She jigged like a little girl, then began a slow sway with her hips. In the blue shadows above her, with his pair of glasses grafted to a branch, Monstro leaned forward to watch.

Every move Aurora made opened a slit in her dress, her leg was revealed up to the top of her thigh, and Antonio stared irresistibly at her dark skin exposed for a moment and almost immediately hidden. Aurora danced like the jubilant waters of a spring. She was alive, carnal, sensuality itself.

Disconcerted, Antonio stepped backward, apparently wanting to melt into the crowd.

Aurora was dancing, alone, a few paces from him but not with him. She smiled at everyone and no one, and he felt a rush of bitterness, an icy wind that made him back away. The whole world toppled and Antonio understood. She was offering herself to anyone who watched her and wanted her. She didn’t belong to him, and he was just realizing that he could lose her at any moment.

Antonio turned to me. He affected indifference, but his unspoken fear had suddenly aged him.

“Do you want to go back to the hotel, Vincent?”

“Didn’t you want to dance?”

He shook his head and I remembered that night, in Verona, the night when Irene was drunk.

She too danced, stumbling, abandoned, laughing a drunken laugh, flaunting herself on that dance floor, her dress riding up, revealing her tanned thighs, attracting stares, fanning flames. Two men behind me were laughing and talking loudly, one of them used the word puttana, whore. I didn’t have the courage to hit him, neither did I find the strength to leave, to tear myself away from that spectacle that was nothing but treachery, betrayal. I was drained of all energy, and I stood there, crushed by powerless anger, and watched Irene dance. Of course I could have gotten up, taken her hand, and dragged her off the dance floor, but she would have pushed me away, driven me off, slinging sarcastic comments at me. That night I should have turned my rage to contempt, my defeat to derision, my blindness to strength. I should have left that woman who didn’t want to be mine.

Antonio was now also having his doubts that Aurora had ever wanted to be his, he was finally realizing there was too little in life to connect them, that she would leave one day, was already moving away now, he would suffer, and was suffering already.

Perhaps a man would come and take Aurora by the waist, twirl her around and pull her to him, making her laugh in his arms. Their bodies would touch, their faces would be so close he would have to look away. It would feel as if the other man were possessing her right there in front of him, as if she were abandoning herself to pleasure. This other man would lead her away, taking her arm, and she would hold his hand. She wouldn’t even acknowledge Antonio, poor idiotic Antonio, she would have forgotten him already, and he would feel dirtied and then, over time, just dirty. He would want to be left alone to imagine those endlessly repeated moves of fingers and mouths over bodies.

The blues song had finished and the music continued with a slower jazz rhythm, perhaps a Negro spiritual. Possibly Neil Oven’s “God Is Sitting on My Knee”? Now that’s something Harry would have known.

Aurora was sweating, her skin shimmering like mica, she was radiant with life, a man came up to her and asked her to dance but she shook her head, rejected him with a little bow. She came back toward Antonio and smiled at him, and Antonio’s nightmare evaporated. Not entirely, though. Never entirely again.

ANTONIO DIDN’T LEAVE Aurora’s side for the rest of the evening. She had coupled herself to his arm, and dragged him behind her from one group to another. She introduced him every time, saying, “Antonio, my friend,” or occasionally to some people, “my husband.”

When people looked astonished she asked indignantly, “What? Didn’t you know? Well, it is very recent. Really very recent.”

Antonio tilted his head politely in silence, discomfited, intoxicated. One time Aurora said “my fiancé,” and I smiled.

It was not a well-meaning smile. Talk of fiancés and engagement reminded me of Stéphanie Poterin du Motel, Pescheux d’Herbinville’s fiancée whose favor Galois had obtained. If Pescheux and Stéphanie had been married, perhaps her deceit would have been less hurtful. Cuckolding a fiancé is proof of impatience.

My brother was engaged once. His young intended was called Virginie, she was twenty to his twenty-two, and this ritual annunciation of a forthcoming marriage was almost obscene, in fact between a Paul and a Virginie — like the book — it was pretty close to ridiculous. But I said nothing and, at Paul’s insistence, even wrote a speech for the engagement, it was the fashion then.

I reminded them that this promise did not, either in canonical law or contemporary French law, entail any legal obligation to marry. That the engaged couple could indulge in copula carnalis, carnal union, but should not forget that if consummated, it was then a case of matrimonium praesumptum, a presumption of marriage, and hence de facto marriage.

While I outlined the rules for an engagement, I reminded them that this very expression, rules of engagement, was more usually associated with warfare.

Referring also to Søren Kierkegaard, whose first name I love with that crossed-out ø, Kierkegaard who was engaged to Regina Olsen when he was twenty-six and she barely fifteen, and whose engagement ring he returned three years later. She threatened to commit suicide but eventually found consolation in one Fritz Schlegel. I concluded by saying that this was one of the rare textbook examples where an engagement had ended well, but alas, we did have to face the fact that in most cases the two parties ended up married.

The speech was an unequivocal success. Virginie burst into tears, probably the tension. Paul led me to understand that it had not been what he had meant by amusing. Our father, on the other hand, laughed.

Speech or not, Virginie broke up with Paul a year later as the wedding drew near, apologizing and saying she wasn’t “capable of such a formal commitment,” was “terrified,” and would rather “get things in perspective.” She had actually been getting things in perspective for several weeks with one Maxime, a pharmaceuticals student like herself. Paul had never been engaged since, and Virginie, who now ran a drugstore in Asnières, had also got Maxime in perspective and married an Aurélien, whom she was probably also cheating on with some other Roman emperor’s name.

The hothouse was gradually emptying. I had sat myself on a bench near the water lilies, to make notes. Aurora walked toward me, smiling. Behind her the tiny lights on the vaulted roof shone like newly polished upholstery tacks.

“Are you still translating that Jaime Montestrela? I asked my father and he said the name rang a bell. He took exile in Brazil when Salazar was in power, is that right? Did he write poetry too?”

“Yes.”

“My father couldn’t find his old copy of Prisão. Apparently it’s not bad. Hard to translate.”

I had no way of knowing. But the obituary in O Século ended with these two lines from Prisão, which was cited as his founding work:

Num raio de sol, a poeira faz palhaçadas

Mas que idiota pintou o azul entre as minhas barras?

In a ray of sunshine, dust plays the fool

But what idiot painted blue between my bars?

I had been more interested in Montestrela’s life than his writing, as if his existence were an interrogation of my own. If a dictatorship took over, would I go into exile like him, like Zweig, rather than bowing my head completely in the face of barbarity? There was a certain honesty in not being ashamed of one’s own lack of courage, in knowing oneself well enough to opt for fleeing anticipated submission, which would be as abject as the violence of the tyrant it empowers.

Aurora headed straight off again toward Antonio while the last guests were leaving. Antonio whispered something to her and turned to me with the shifty, embarrassed eyes of a liar: “I’m going to stay a bit longer. I’ll be back later.”

I went home to the hotel, walking quickly, almost running. It was only when I reached Avenida da Liberdade that I slowed down. I took the photograph of Duck from my pocket and looked at her for a long time in the glow of neon lights. I tried to find a name for the feeling budding inside me, tenderness perhaps, the sort you would feel for a sister far away.

At that very moment Antonio was betraying Duck, and I resented him for it. He was probably betraying Irene first, but I was delighted by that particular felony. His distraction gave me strength. Soon, when Irene was there, he would be indebted to me for my silence.

I translated a few more Contos aquosos. I knew that, botched by my anger, they would need reworking later.

In the morning when the waiter brought up breakfast for two — we had adopted the habit of taking it in the large lounge — Antonio was not there. I waited until midday, in vain, and, as it was Sunday, I thought of Ruiz Custódia and the cemetery in the suburbs. So I decided the time had come to try my luck.