Electrico W

DAY FIVE: CUSTÓDIA

The following morning we woke early and worked for nearly two hours on the material gathered in the port: described the rusting metal and oily water, captured the sounds of the docks with percussive verbs and supposedly grating adjectives.

Then Antonio looked at his watch and stretched.

“Okay, I need to get to the airport. Her plane lands at 11:50. Are you coming with me? Irene’ll be pleased to see you. I’m sure she will.”

My head swam and I opted to invent a lunch date.

“Lena’s reserved a table at a restaurant. In the Alfama district. If I go with you I won’t be back in time.”

“Call her, arrange to meet later …”

“I already tried to earlier. She’d left the house for the day. No, really, it won’t work.”

“We could meet up later. For coffee maybe?”

From his insistent expression, I gathered he didn’t want to be left alone with Irene, he was weakened by his disloyalty the day before, he was vulnerable. I decided to adopt another tactic.

“Sure. Why not?”

“What’s the name of the restaurant?”

“I … I don’t know its name. Well, I only know how to get there.” Antonio smiled sardonically. My ridiculous answers made me a little more suspect. I gave in: “Okay. Come and join us. I’ll leave a message for you at the hotel with the address.”

Antonio nodded and put on his scruffy jacket.

“Okay, I’m off.”

At the last moment he turned in the doorway: “Don’t forget. About the restaurant.”

I WENT UP to the old neighborhood in the heights, near the Largo Santa Luzia, and chose a table on a terrace just before midday.

I called the hotel to leave the restaurant’s name, and told my waiter emphatically that I needed to eat quickly. The plane must have landed, and I was afraid they would appear around the corner of the street at any moment.

To create the illusion of a fellow diner, I put a chair opposite me, spilled some drops of wine and sauce on the tablecloth, scattered a few breadcrumbs, and even marked the white paper place mat with the circular imprints of a second plate and a glass. A Lena could very easily have just left the table.

The successive courses came too quickly, and when the waiter cleared the table, it was barely half past twelve. I ordered two coffees.

“At the same time,” I specified.

“At the same time?” the waiter repeated. “Your coffees?”

“Yes, please.”

“It’s no trouble coming back, sir. Or the second one will go cold.”

“No, no, bring them both, it’s fine.”

He walked away but I saw him raise his eyes to the heavens. When he came back I paid the bill so that it wasn’t left lying on the table. I drank the first coffee very quickly, almost burning my mouth.

He wanted to remove the empty cup, but I insisted he not touch it.

“No, no, leave it. I have some friends coming soon.”

He looked at me, bemused, and headed back to the kitchen. On the way he stopped to have a few words with the woman at the till. He prodded his temple with his finger, and I realized my eccentricities were being discussed.

Twenty to one. I finished the second coffee and ordered a third.

“Yes, sir. Should I leave everything on the table? All the coffee cups?”

“Please.”

“Yes, sir. No problem. No problem at all.”

I decided to look away to avoid seeing whether he stopped at the till again. I took out my newspaper and started looking through it, without managing to read it properly.

On the third page, though, a headline filled the entire width of the paper: the Pinheiro trial was about to begin. Two weeks earlier my landlady had mentioned him because he had lived only two streets away.

“You know that Pinheiro worked at the customs office at the docks,” she had said. “But he used to have lunch in my son-in-law’s restaurant every day, and he never talked to anyone. No one. He used to read the whole time. How awful!”

She had said “How awful!” again with a shudder.

I folded the newspaper, wondering what on earth I could write about Pinheiro. I was bound to find something. Murderous madness in ordinary people is always a good subject.

I was finishing the last of my coffee when Irene appeared around the street corner, side by side with Antonio. She was wearing a floaty dress in bright scarlet that I hadn’t seen before, and suede pumps. Before even making out her features, I instantly recognized her provocative saunter, which turned plenty of heads, the way she moved her whole body, that promise of the pleasures it had to offer, a painful reminder of how much she enjoyed seducing people and, even more, refusing her favors. I have never understood exactly what it was about her that made her so desirable and beautiful in my eyes. Is “beautiful” the word?

They came up to me and Irene let go of his arm to take off her sunglasses and feign astonishment. I could tell she was forcing her laughter, wriggling exaggeratedly, aping herself. Her expression felt as false as a magazine cover girl’s as she gazes at her own reflection in the lens.

She sat facing me with a smile on her lips, and her first words were “Well, where is she then, this Lena, this Lena I’ve heard so much about?”

Her tone was mocking, spiteful, but the sound of her voice still had an effect on me.

“Are you hiding her from us? Are you afraid someone’ll steal her, or I’ll tell her things you don’t want her to hear?”

The blood drained from my face and I felt like slapping her, or just saying nothing, getting up and leaving. But I managed to look amused.

“You could say hello before launching your attack, my sweet.”

“I’m not your sweet, my love. And I never was.”

I was about to reply but, infuriated, Antonio blurted, “Have you finished your little private war, the pair of you?” Then he turned to me and added more soothingly, “Has Lena left already?”

“Just this minute. You must have walked right past her.”

“She was that fat blond thing,” Irene chuckled, “the one whose jeans were cutting her up the ass.” She laughed out loud.

“Irene,” Antonio sighed, “what’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing, nothing at all. I’ll stop. There. Shall we make peace? My sweet …”

She held out her hand to me with the forced smile of a poisonous child. I took it and, before she could snatch it back, kissed it, quickly and chastely, in the crook of her palm. It was a gesture of revenge, a form of assault, subjecting her to the touch of my lips; and yet, despite being driven by vengeance, I couldn’t help savoring the sweet warmth of that hand, its ripe perfume. Irene was so surprised that she surrendered her hand to me, as if it no longer belonged to her, and I even thought for a moment that I could keep it, that open hand, for an eternity. I let it go, stirred and embarrassed in equal measure, and to disguise my emotion I managed to laugh and say, “There, peace is sealed.”

Irene stood in silence, disconcerted. Antonio seemed indifferent, he hadn’t noticed anything. He ordered three coffees, and the waiter leaned toward me, looking very worried: “Can I clear away the other cups now, sir?”

WE SPENT THE afternoon wandering aimlessly around Alfama, then headed down toward Rossio. Irene was seeing Lisbon for the first time, and made naive pronouncements about cities and docks and sailors.

From time to time she took Antonio’s hand and sometimes, at the Santana viewpoint for example, she even huddled in his arms. But Antonio kept her at a distance. He probably did it for propriety’s sake, out of tact toward me. Perhaps also because of Aurora and my presence, which forbade him the cowardly hypocrisy common to men. But also, perhaps, because the way Irene smothered him with her wheedling affection made him uncomfortable, as if he could tell that her primary aim, and I believed this to be the case, was to wound me.

I talked about Pinheiro, and Antonio and I agreed to go to the hospital the following day. I left them at about four-thirty, claiming I was meeting a friend.

“A friend, really?” Irene asked sarcastically.

I didn’t reply, making do with a smile.

“I’ll leave you, then. Tomorrow at the hotel at about ten?”

“Won’t you have supper with us this evening? Aren’t you staying at the hotel?”

“No. I can’t. Sorry. See you tomorrow.”

I shook Antonio’s hand and gave Irene a little bow.

“Madame …”

“No more hand kissing, then?”

I shook my head and, to get away as quickly as possible, stopped a taxi that was heading the other way.

“Where are you going?” asked the driver. I hadn’t thought about that. I was about to give the address for my studio when I remembered old Custódia.

“Pragal.”

“Whereabouts in Pragal?”

“I don’t know. Does Estabelecimento Custódia mean anything to you?”

“No.” He looked at me apologetically. “Would the rail station in Pragal be okay?”

“Yes. That would be great.”

The taxi set off and passed Antonio and Irene. They were holding hands. She freed hers to give me a little wave, and I thought I detected a note of sincerity in it.

IT WASN’T EASY finding Custódia’s premises. It was just a long, narrow, dark shop on the corner of a tiny street. On the dirty shopfront window were the words

EST CU TOD A. MARCE AR A

in discolored letters. The last R was about to abandon its post too, and I smiled as I remembered the notice there used to be above the wooden seats on the Paris Métro, one whose words had filled a few fruitful hours in my teens:

THESE SEATS ARE RESERVED

FOR DISABLED EX-SERVICEMEN

Armed with a good scraper, I had devised a simple literary technique, striving to extract some meaning from that sentence. I found I could turn it into an abstruse culinary recommendation:

HE EATS SE ED

FOR ABLE SERVICE

or a sensational headline:

HE S E E S RED

FOR D SE X VICE

Although my uncontested favorite was the darkly Magrittian:

H ATS ARE SERVED

OR BLED

This game was interrupted by an on-the-spot sixty-franc fine for vandalism, when I had only just embarked on the onomatopoeic poetry of:

THE SEA RE RE R E

I didn’t know where to go next with this poem, but had calculated that there were about seven hundred different solutions. Fewer than the number of Métro cars, no doubt, and some of them impossibly obscure. But what sort of Iliad could anyone get with EST CUSTÓDIA. MARCENARIA?

The cabinetmaker’s metal shutter wasn’t lowered but the door was locked. I knocked on the glass several times, then, when no one came, decided to take a walk around.

As I passed the local tasca I spotted old Custódia. He was sitting at the end of the room with a glass of red wine, his blue work overalls gray with wood dust. He sat drinking in silence. His paper was open to the financial pages, but he wasn’t reading. I went in, stood at the bar and ordered a coffee.

Custódia looked older, more stooped, more tired than at the cemetery, well into his sixties perhaps. His hands were worn and rough but still strong, I pictured Duck’s pretty face being struck by them. Four old boys were having a noisy game of cards, using matches to keep score, and staking cigarette butts as bets. Custódia wasn’t paying any attention to them. Sitting there bringing his glass to his lips, his eyes were expressionless.

When I asked the waiter if he knew where the cabinetmaker was, he called across the room: “Hey, Ruiz, I’ve found you a customer.”

The cardplayers paused for a moment to stare at me, and the old man turned to look. I took a step toward him, but he made up his mind to stand.

“What do you want? I’m closed at this time of day.”

“Closed? At five o’clock?”

Custódia shrugged and headed for the door, in spite of everything. I fell in step behind him. Just before stepping outside, he smacked his hand on the bar to catch the waiter’s attention.

“Leave the glass. I’ll be back.”

“Shall I fill it up?”

“That’s right.”

THE INSIDE OF Custódia’s shop was like its exterior. The color of the walls was unidentifiable beneath a layer of filth, the floor tiles hidden by sawdust and wood shavings. Chisels and moldings were strewn over the workbench, and the air had an intoxicating smell of turpentine and wood glue.

“What’s it for, then?”

“I need a piece of furniture … a set of shelves. I wanted to get an idea of the price.”

“Do you have the measurements?”

“More or less …”

Custódia headed for the door.

“Not more or less,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t work in more-or-less-ness. I need it spot on. I’ve seen too many of you awkward customers who give me the wrong dimensions and then say I’m dishonest. Come back when you’ve got the measurements. I’ll give you a price then.”

He reached for the door and I quickly replied, “Wait, wait, I’ve got your measurements for you. It’s … six feet by two feet six inches.”

“Is that the height, the six feet?” Custódia asked, staring at me harshly.

A sketchy plan to find Duck gave me the strength to carry on with my ploy.

“Well, that gives you six shelves inside. I’ll put four runners in it for you. Is that okay? And how deep do you want it?”

“Um … six inches.”

“That’s pretty deep. Anyway … Have you made a decision about the wood?

“I don’t know, what about pine?”

“That’s not wood,” he sneered.

“In … in oak, then … What do you think?”

“It’s for the customer to decide. Oak’s hard to cut, but it’s no worse than anything else. For the thickness, will three-quarters of an inch do, and half an inch for the shelves?

“Will that be enough?”

“Of course that’ll be enough. Otherwise, I’d suggest something thicker.”

“Aren’t you writing any of this down?”

“No,” he said flatly. “Oak, six feet, two feet six inches, six inches. Three-quarters of an inch thick, half an inch for the shelves. There’s really no point. Do you want them mortised? With moldings?”

“Whatever’s simplest,” I said weakly.

“It’s no more complicated. Anyway … When’s it for?”

“As soon as possible. When could you do it for?”

“The day after tomorrow if you want. I’m not going to lie, there’s not much work anymore, with all this self-assembly furniture. It’s been years since anyone’s asked me for shelves. So I’ve got the time, and the wood in stock. But you’ll have to pay half up front. For the oak.”

“How much will it be?”

Custódia named a figure that struck me as exorbitant and I wrote out a check without a moment’s hesitation. He looked at me oddly.

“You want to pay the whole lot now?” he asked.

“If you like,” I replied, not understanding. I took out a second check, wrote out the same figure for the balance, and handed it to Custódia, who tore it up without a smile.

“No, we missunderstood each other. The first check was enough. That pays me for everything,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re a funny kind of a guy, you really are. Do you have no idea of prices or what?”

“Can you deliver it?”

“Is it in Pragal?”

“No. Lisbon. By the docks.”

“Do you have a business card with your number? In case there’s a problem?”

“No, I’ve only just moved,” I explained, and wrote my address and telephone number on a scrap of paper. Custódia put it in his pocket without looking at it.

“Right, I’ll deliver it the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon, at about three o’clock. Make sure you’re there, won’t you?”

He turned away and walked off toward the back of the shop. As I left, I’m pretty sure I heard him fart.

BACK IN LISBON, I bought paper, charcoal, and a dark wooden frame, and went back to my studio. By nine o’clock I had enlarged and traced out the portrait of Duck, but back to front to alter the shadows and perspective. I drew her almost naked, hidden by fine tulle, hinting at the outline of her small round breasts. To age her by ten years, I accentuated her features with charcoal. It wasn’t an exact likeness, but was all the better for that. At ten o’clock it was hanging on the wall.

I opened Contos aquosos. My only discipline was to translate at least two of them a day. That evening I finished three, including one particularly absurd one, sent to someone called Ursula in January 1971:

When January 12 falls on a Sunday, the Picardy village of Abelvilly still to this day celebrates it as the Feast of the Gulerian, when this creature is hunted for the tender meat on its large fleshy ears. The gulerian is a patagrade with a bright orange pelt, similar to a badger in size and a tortoise in mobility and agility, specific to that part of the Caux region and sadly extinct since the first Feast of the Gulerian in the year of grace 1197.

Obviously, each of Montestrela’s short stories contained another story which, if not secret, was at least masked from all except the addressee. Perhaps, given that he wrote one a day, he was referring to a trip to Picardy with this Ursula on another January 12, in 1971, for example. What did the gulerian stand for? I didn’t have the keys.

At about eleven o’clock the temperature had not yet dropped, and I decided to look in at the hotel. Just for a few minutes, to return the photo to Antonio’s wallet and pick up some notes. I think I also still hoped to catch a glimpse of Irene, if only for a moment. They weren’t in the bar, I thought they might have gone out for supper, and I hurried up to the room.

I opened the door to my suite. Antonio hadn’t closed the double doors between our two lounges, and I saw the sliver of light under his bedroom door. I took one step into the dark room and closed the door discreetly behind me. I saw his coat over a chair, took out his wallet, put the photo back and lay the coat down again. After that, there were just the noises.

The bed creaking, the regular animallike squeak of the springs, a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize, Irene’s voice, moaning, repressing a cry and then failing to contain it, like a cry of pain, and there’s that man’s bass, unrecognizable, whispering such huge words, words that belong to moments no one should ever hear, words I can’t even transcribe here.

I stand there, thunderstruck, rooted to the spot, I’m the foot soldier who’s still standing, panting, his guts blown away by a cannonball, who doesn’t yet understand that he’s dead.

I can hear the heavy breathing, the tension of bodies violently seeking their own pleasure, my chest full of lead and mud. I must leave. I manage to tear myself away from the terror in that room, stumbling in the hallway, crushed, racing down the stairs. I narrowly miss falling ten times, but I’m too desperate to get away to fall completely. I go through the lobby and my flight only stops in the small grayish courtyard in front of the hotel, in front of a bellboy who daren’t come over to me. I lean my back against the bare stone and crouch down, my head slumping onto my knees, shivering. The noise and bustle of the city doesn’t reach me, there’s nothing left inside me except for these incoherent sentences going around in circles.

I blot out all thoughts of that night. But what’s the point? At dawn I went back to the hotel, confronted their faces and their eyes, but it wasn’t the same bellboy. Anger authorizes resignation and rebirth. I was like a soldier whose fear has been utterly consumed under a deluge of fire and who, because he’s no longer capable of anything, becomes capable of everything.