Letter from Casablanca

THE BACKWARDS GAME

When Maria do Carmo Meneses de Sequeira died, I was gazing at The Young Ladies in Waiting by Velásquez in the Prado Museum. It was a July noon and I did not know that she was dying. I remained looking at the picture until quarter past twelve, then I left slowly, trying to carry away in my memory the expression of the figure in the background. I remember that I thought of Maria do Carmo’s words: “The key to the picture is in the figure in the background — it’s a backwards game.” I crossed the garden and took the bus as far as the Puerta del Sol, had dinner in the hotel — a well-chilled gazpacho and fruit — and went to lie down in the dimness of my room in order to escape the midday heat.

The telephone woke me around five, or perhaps it didn’t wake me. I found myself in a strange drowsiness. Outside hummed the city traffic and inside hummed the air conditioner, which in my consciousness, however, was the motor of a little blue tugboat that crossed the mouth of the Tagus at twilight while Maria do Carmo and I watched it. “There’s a call from Lisbon,” the voice of the telephone operator told me. Then I heard the little electric discharge of the switch and a masculine voice, indifferent and low. He asked my name and then said, “I am Nuno Meneses de Sequeira. Maria do Carmo died at noon. The funeral will be tomorrow at five. It was her express wish that I call you.” The telephone made a click and I said, “Hello, hello.” “They hung up, sir,” said the operator. “The connection is broken.”

I took the Lusitania Express at midnight. I carried with me only a small suitcase with the bare necessities, and asked the concierge to hold my room for two days. The station was almost deserted at that hour. I had not reserved a couchette, and the conductor assigned me a compartment at the end of the train where there was one other passenger, a corpulent man who snored. I prepared myself with resignation for a night of insomnia, but contrary to my expectation I slept soundly until the outskirts of Talavera de la Reina. Then I lay motionless, awake, looking out the dark window at the dark desert of the Estremadura. I had many hours to think about Maria do Carmo.

“Saudade,” said Maria do Carmo, “yearning. It isn’t a word, it’s a category of the spirit. Only the Portuguese are able to feel it, because they have this word in order to say that they have it. A great poet said this.” And then she began to talk about Fernando Pessoa. I called for her at her home in Rua das Chagas about six o’clock in the afternoon. She was waiting for me behind a window. When she saw me enter Largo Camñes, she opened the heavy front door and we went down toward the harbor, wandering through Rua dos Fanqueiros and Rua dos Douradores. “Let’s take a Fernandian itinerary,” she said. “These were the favorite places of Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper — semi-heteronomous by definition — for the city of Lisbon. It was here that he practiced his metaphysics, in this barber shop.”

At that hour the Baixa, the lower part of the city, was crowded with hurrying, shouting people. The offices of the navigation companies and the commercial businesses were closing their doors. At the tram stops there were long lines. You could hear the propagandizing cry of the shoeshine boys and the newspaper sellers. In the confusion we slipped into Rua da Prata, crossed Rua da Conceição, and went down toward the Terreiro do Paço, white and sad, where the first ferries crowded with commuters were sailing for the opposite bank of the Tagus. “This is really an Álvaro de Campos zone,” said Maria do Carmo. “In a few streets we’ve passed from one heteronomous to the other.’’

At that hour the light of Lisbon was white toward the mouth of the river and pink on the hills, the eighteenth-century buildings looked like an oleograph, and the Tagus was furrowed by a myriad of boats. We went on toward the first quays, those quays where Álvaro de Campos went to wait for no one, as Maria do Carmo said, and she recited some verse from the Ode Marittima, the passage in which the shape of the little steamer is outlined on the horizon and Campos feels a flywheel begin to revolve in his breast.

Dusk was falling on the city, the first lights were lit, the Tagus glistened with iridescent reflections. In Maria do Carmo’s eyes there was a great sadness. “Maybe you’re too young to understand — at your age I wouldn’t have understood, I wouldn’t have imagined that life was like a game that I used to play when I was a little girl in Buenos Aires. Pessoa is a genius because he understood the reversal of real and imagined things. His poetry is a juego del revés, a backwards game.”

The train stopped. From the window the lights of the border town could be seen. My traveling companion had the surprised, uneasy look of one who has suddenly been awakened by the light. The policeman carefully turned the pages of my passport. “You come to our country often,” he said. “What do you find so interesting here?” “Baroque poetry,” I answered: “What did you say?” he murmured. “A lady,” I said. “A lady with a strange name — Violante do Céu.” “Is she beautiful?’’ he inquired archly. “Maybe,’’ I said. “She’s been dead for three centuries and she always lived in a convent. She was a nun.” He shook his head and smoothed his mustache with a mischievous air, stamped my visa, and handed me my passport. “You Italians always love to joke,” he said. “Do you like Totò?” “Very much,” I said, “and do you?” “I’ve seen all his films,” he said. “I like Alberto Sordi better.”

Our compartment was the last to be checked. The door was closed with a thud. After a few seconds someone on the platform waved a lantern and the train began to move. The lights went out again. Only the pale blue lamp remained. It was the middle of the night. I was entering Portugal as I had many other times in my life. Maria do Carmo was dead. I felt a strange sensation, as if from on high I were watching another me who, one July night, inside a compartment of a semi-dark train, was entering a foreign country in order to go to see a woman whom he knew well and who was dead. It was a sensation that I had never fell before and it made me think that it had something to do with the backwards-ness.

“The game was like this,” said Maria do Carmo. “We made a circle — four or five children — we counted off, and the child whose turn it was went into the middle. He chose anyone he wanted and tossed him a word, any word at all—mariposa, for example. And that child had to pronounce it backwards immediately, but without thinking it over, because the other one was counting — one, two, three, four, five — and at five he won. But if you were able to say asopiram in time, then you were the winner of the game, you went into the middle of the circle and tossed your word at whomever you wanted.”

Climbing toward the city, Maria do Carmo told me about her Buenos Aires childhood as a daughter of exiles. I imagined a courtyard on the outskirts of the city, populated by children, sad, impoverished holidays. “It was full of Italians,” she said. “My father had an old horn-type gramophone and he had brought some fado records with him from Portugal. It was 1939. The radio said that Franco’s forces had taken Madrid. He cried and put on the records. In his last months I remember him like this, in pajamas in his armchair, crying in silence, listening to the fados of Hilário and of Tomás Alcaide. I would escape to the courtyard and play the juego del revés.”

Night had fallen. The Terreiro do Papo was almost deserted. The bronze horseman, green from the salty air, seemed absurd. “Let’s go to Alfama for something to eat,” said Maria do Carmo. “Arroz de cabidela, for instance. It’s a Sephardic dish. The Jews don’t tear the neck off the hen, they cut off the head, and they make the rice with the blood. I know a tavern where they make it like no other place. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

A yellow tram passed, slowly, rattling, full of tired faces. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Why did I marry my husband? Why do I live in that absurd palace? Why am I here playing at being a countess? When he arrived in Buenos Aires he was a courteous, elegant officer, I was a poor, sad young girl. From my window all I could see was that courtyard. And he took me away from that grayness, from a house with dim lights and the radio turned on at supper time. In spite of everything, I can’t leave him. I can’t forget.”

My traveling companion asked if he could have the pleasure of inviting me for coffee. He was a jovial, ceremonious Spaniard who frequently traveled that line. In the dining car we talked amiably, exchanging detailed and formal impressions of the many places we had in common. “The Portuguese have good coffee,” he said, “but this doesn’t help them much, so it seems. They’re so melancholy. They lack charm, don’t you think so?” I told him that maybe they had substituted saudade for charm. He agreed, but preferred charm. “There’s only one life,” he said. “You have to know how to live, dear sir.” I didn’t ask how he managed this himself, and we talked of something else — sports, I think. He adored skiing, the mountains. Portugal was really unliveable from this point of view. I objected that there were mountains there, too. “Oh, the Serra da Estrela!” he exclaimed. “It’s an imitation of a mountain. In order to get to two thousand meters you have to put up an antenna.” “It’s a maritime country,” I said, “a country of people who leap into the ocean. They’ve given the world urbane, dignified madmen, anti-abolitionists, and poets ill with homesickness.” “By the way,” he asked, “what’s the name of that poet you mentioned tonight?” “Soror Violante do Ceu,” I said. “Her name is splendid in Spanish, too — Madre Violante del Cielo. She was a great Baroque poetess. She spent her life sublimating her desire for a world which she had renounced.” “Is she better than Gongora?” he asked with a certain absent-mindedness. “Different,” I said, “with less charm and more saudade, naturally.”

The arroz de cabidela had a most refined taste and a repugnant appearance. It was served on a large earthenware tray with a wooden spoon. The boiled blood and wine made a dense, brown sauce. There were marble tables between a row of barrels and a zinc counter dominated by the corpulence of Senhor Tavares. At midnight an emaciated-looking fado singer arrived, accompanied by an elderly violist and a distinguished gentleman with a guitar. She sang ancient, faint, languid fados. Senhor Tavares turned out the lights and lit the candles on the tables. The transient patrons had already gone, only the devotees remained. The place was filled with smoke. At every finale there was discreet, solemn applause. Some voices requested Amor é agua que corre, Travessa da Palma. Maria do Carmo was pale, or maybe it was the candlelight, or maybe she had drunk too much. She had a fixed stare and her pupils were huge. The candlelight danced in them. She seemed to be more beautiful than usual. She lit a cigarette abstractedly, lost in revery. “Enough, now,” she said. “Let’s go. Saudade, yes. but in small doses — it’s better not to get indigestion.”

The Alfama was semi-deserted. We stopped there on the belvedere of Santa Luzia. There was a pergola thick with bougainvillea. Leaning on the parapet we looked at the lights along the Tagus. Maria do Carmo recited Lisbon Revisited, by Alvaro de Campos, a poem in which a person is at the same window as in his childhood, but it isn’t the same person anymore and it isn’t the same window anymore, because time changes men and things. We began to go down toward my hotel. She took my hand and said to me, “Listen — who knows what we are? Who knows where we are? Who knows why we are here? Listen — we live this life as if it were a dream. Tonight, for instance, you must think you are me and that you’re squeezing yourself between your arms. I think that I’m you squeezing me between my arms.”

“Anyway, it isn’t that I love Góngora so much,” said my traveling companion. “I don’t understand him — you need the vocabulary — and then I’m not cut out for poetry. I prefer the short story — Blasco Ibañez, for instance. Do you like Blasco Ibañez?” “Moderately,” I said. “Perhaps it’s not my genre.” “Then who? Pérez Galdós, maybe?” “Yes, now we’re getting somewhere,” I said.

The waiter served us coffee on a shining tray. He had a sleepy face. “I’m making an exception for you gentlemen because the dining car isn’t open now. It comes to twenty crowns.” “In spite of everything, the Portuguese are kind,” said my traveling companion. “Why in spite of everything?” I said. “They’re kind. Let’s be fair.”

We were approaching a zone of shipyards and factories. It was not yet full day. “They choose to be on Greenwich time, but in reality, according to the sun, it’s an hour earlier. And then, have you ever seen a Portuguese bullfight? They don’t kill the bull, you know. The bullfighter dances around him for half an hour and then at the end makes a symbolic gesture with his arm — a thrust like a sword. A herd of cows comes in with cowbells, the bull troops back into the herd, and everyone goes home—olé. If this seems like a bullfight to you …” “Maybe it’s more elegant,” I said. “To kill someone it isn’t always necessary to murder him. Sometimes a gesture is enough.” “Oh, come on!” he said. “The duel between man and bull has to be mortal, otherwise it’s a ridiculous pantomime.” “But all ceremonies are stylizations,” I objected. “This one keeps only the wrappings, the gesture. It seems more noble to me, more abstract.” My traveling companion appeared to reflect. “Could be,” he said without conviction. “Oh, look, we’re at the outskirts of Lisbon. We’d better go back to the compartment and get our luggage ready.”

“It’s a rather delicate thing. We didn’t have the courage to ask you about it … We’ve discussed it … It can present some inconveniences, too … I mean the most that can happen to you is that they refuse your entrance visa at the border … Listen, we don’t want to keep you in the dark about anything … At first, Jorge was the courier. He was the only one who had a passport from the UN … Do you know what time it is in Winnipeg? He teaches in a Canadian university. We still haven’t found a way to replace him.”

Nine o’clock in the evening on a bench in Piazza Navona in Rome. I looked at him. Perhaps my expression was perplexed. I didn’t know what to think. I felt vaguely embarrassed, at a disadvantage, like talking with a person you’ve known for ages and one day he reveals to you something you didn’t expect.

“We don’t want to involve you … It would be a special thing … Believe me, we feel terrible about having to ask you … Even if you say no to us, our friendship for you won’t change, you know … So … Think aboul it… We don’t ask for an answer right now. We just want you to know that you’d be a great help to us.”

We went to have an ice cream at a café in the piazza. We chose a little table outdoors, far away from the people. Francisco had a tense expression. Perhaps he, too, was embarrassed. He knew that this was something that even if I refused, I would never be able to forget. Maybe he was really afraid of my possible remorse. We ordered two water ices at the cafe. We remained silent a long time, slowly sipping the ices. “There are five letters,” said Francisco, “and a sum of money for the families of the two writers who were arrested last month.” He told me their names and waited for me to speak. I said nothing and drank a little water. “I believe it’s not necessary to tell you that it’s clean money — it’s the demonstration of solidarity from three democratic Italian parties we asked for help. If you consider it relevant, I can have you meet with the representatives of the parties in question. They will confirm it to you.” I said that I did not consider it relevant.

We paid, we took a walk around the piazza. “All right,” I said. “I’ll leave in three days.” He gave me an energetic, rapid handshake, thanked me. “Now, remember what you have to do. It’s a very simple thing.” He wrote a number on a ticket. “When you arrive in Lisbon, telephone this number. If a man’s voice answers, hang up. Keep on trying until a woman’s voice answers. Then you must say, ‘A new translation of Fernando Pessoa has come out.’ She will tell you how to meet. She’s the one who keeps the exiles who live in Rome in touch with their families at home.”

It had been very easy, as Francisco had predicted. At the border they did not even have me open my suitcase. At Lisbon I stayed in the center behind the Trinity Theatre, two steps from the national library, in a small hotel where there was a cordial, talkative Algarvite concierge. At my first attempt at telephoning, a woman’s voice had answered me, and I had said, “Good evening. I’m an Italian. I’d like to let you know that a new translation of Fernando Pessoa has come out. Perhaps it would interest you.” “Let’s meet in half an hour at Bertrand’s Bookstore,” she had replied, “in the periodical room. I’m in my forties, I have dark hair, and I’m wearing a yellow dress.”

Nuno Meneses de Sequeira received me at two o’clock in the afternoon. When I had telephoned in the morning, a servant had answered. “The Count is resting now. He can’t receive you this morning. Come by at two in the afternoon.” “But where is the lady’s body?” “I don’t know what to tell you, sir, excuse me. Come at two in the afternoon, please.” I got a room at my usual small hotel behind the Trinity Theatre, took a shower, and changed my clothes. “I haven’t seen you for some time,” the concierge told me, the cordial Algarvite. “Five months the end of February,” I said. “And your work,” he asked, “still for libraries?” “That’s my fate,” I answered.

Largo Camões was bathed in sunlight. In the little square there were pigeons perched on the head of the poet, some pensioners on the benches, shy, dignified old people, a soldier and a serving girl — the sadness of Sunday. Rua das Chagas was deserted. A rare unoccupied taxi went by. The sea breeze was not enough to alleviate the thick, damp heal. I stopped in a café to search for a little cool. It was secluded and dirty. On the ceiling the blades of an enormous fan whirred uselessly. The owner dozed behind the counter. I asked for an iced sumo. He waved away the flies with a rag and wearily opened the refrigerator. I had not eaten and was not hungry. I sat down at a table and lit a cigarette, waiting for the time.

Nuno Meneses de Sequeira received me in a Baroque salon with many stuccos on the ceiling and two huge gnawed tapestries on the walls. He was dressed in black, had a shiny face, and his bald skull glistened. He was seated in an armchair of crimson velvet. When I entered, he stood up, bowed his head imperceptibly, and invited me to sit down on a divan under the window. The shutters were closed and a heavy odor of old upholstery stagnated in the room.

“How did she die?” I asked. “She had an ugly disease,” he said. “You did not know?” I shook my head. ‘“What kind of disease?” Nuno Meneses de Sequeira folded his hands on his lap. “An ugly disease,” he said. “She telephoned me in Madrid two weeks ago. She didn’t say anything to me about it, not even a hint. Did she know about it yet?” “She was already very ill, and she was well informed.” “Why didn’t she tell me anything?” “Perhaps she did not consider it opportune,” said Nuno Meneses de Sequeira. “I would be grateful if you did not come to the funeral. It will be strictly private.” “I had no intention of doing so,” I reassured him. “I am grateful to you,” he murmured faintly.

The silence in the room became tangible, uncomfortable. “May I see her?” I asked. Nuno Meneses de Sequeira looked at me a long time, ironically, I thought. “It is impossible,” he said. “She is at the Cuf Clinic. She died there, and then the doctor ordered the casket closed. It was not possible to leave it open, given the conditions.”

I thought of leaving. I wondered why he had telephoned me, even if it had been Maria do Carmo’s wish, what the purpose was in having me come to Lisbon. There was something that escaped me, or maybe there was nothing strange. The situation was simply painful, and it was useless to prolong it further. But Nuno Meneses de Sequeira had not finished talking. He kept his hands on the arms of the armchair as if he were about to rise at any moment. He had watery eyes and an expression that was tense, ill-tempered, or perhaps it was the nervous tension that he must have felt. “You never understood her,” he said. “You are too young. You were much younger than Maria do Carmo.” “And you were much older,” I would have liked to say, but I kept quiet. “You work in philology, ah, ah.” He made a little laugh. “Libraries are your life. You could not understand such a woman.” “Please explain yourself,” I said. Nuno Meneses de Sequeira stood up, went to the window, opened the shutters slightly. “I would like to dispel an illusion,” he said, “that of your having known Maria do Carmo. You knew only a fictional Maria do Carmo.” “Please explain yourself,” I repeated.

“Well,” smiled Nuno Meneses de Sequeira, “I imagine Maria do Carmo must have told you a tearful story of her unhappy childhood in New York, a republican father who died heroically in the Spanish Civil War. You will do well to listen to me, dear sir. I have never been to New York in my life. Maria do Carmo is the daughter of large landowners. She had a golden childhood. Fifteen years ago, when I met her, she was twenty-seven years old and was the most courted woman in Lisbon. I had returned from a diplomatic mission in Spain, and we both had our love for our country in common.” He paused as if to give greater weight to his words. “Love for our country,” he repeated. “I do not know if I make myself understood.” “It depends in which sense you use the word,” I said. Nuno Meneses de Sequeira adjusted the knot in his tie, drew out from his pocket a handkerchief, assumed an attitude both dry and patient. “You will do well to listen to me. Maria do Carmo liked a game very much. She played it all her life. We always played it by mutual consent.” I made a gesture with my hand as if to prevent him from continuing, but he went on: “She must have reached her backwards side.” In a room far away a pendulum clock struck. “Unless she reached the backwards side of her backwards side,” I said. Nuno Meneses de Sequeira smiled again. “How beautiful,” he said. “Indeed, it could be a sentence by Maria do Carmo. It is logical that you believe this hypothesis, even if it is a presumption, believe me.” There was a vein of contempt in his soft voice. I remained silent, my eyes lowered, looking at the carpet. It was an Arraiolos carpet of deep blue with some gray peacocks.

“I am distressed that you oblige me to be more explicit,” continued Nuno Meneses de Sequeira. “I assume that you like Pessoa.” ‘I like him very much,” I admitted. “Then perhaps you are also aware of his translations that go abroad.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Nothing special,” he said. “Only this: Maria do Carmo received many translations from abroad. You understand me, do you not?” “I don’t understand you,” I said. “Let us say that you do not want to understand me,” Nuno Meneses de Sequeira corrected me, “that you prefer not to understand me, and I understand that you prefer not to understand me. Reality is unpleasant and you prefer dreams. I beg you not to insist on details — details are always so vulgar. Let us limit ourselves to the concept.”

From the window came the sound of a siren. Perhaps a ship had entered the harbor. Immediately I felt an immense desire to be one of the passengers on that ship, to enter the harbor of an unknown city called Lisbon, and to have to telephone an unknown woman to tell her that a new translation of Fernando Pessoa had come out, and that woman was called Maria do Carmo. She would come to Bertrand’s Bookstore wearing a yellow dress, she loved the fado and Sephardic food, and I already knew all this. But that passenger, who was I and who was gazing at Lisbon from the deck of the ship, did not know it yet, and everything would be identical and new for him. And this was saudade. Maria do Carmo was right — it’s not a word, it’s a category of the spirit. In its way it, too, was backwards.

Nuno Meneses de Sequeira observed me in silence. He seemed calm and satisfied. “Today is the first day of Maria do Carmo’s new life,” I said. “You could at least concede a truce.” He nodded his head imperceptibly as if in assent, as if to say, “That’s really what I wanted to propose to you.” And then I said, “I believe we have nothing further to say to each other.” He rang a bell and a servant in a striped jacket appeared. “Domingos, the gentleman is leaving.” The servant stepped aside at the door so that I could precede him. “Ah — one moment,” said Nuno Meneses de Sequeira. “Maria do Carmo left you this.” He extended a letter that, was on a little silver tray on a small table next to his armchair. I look it and put it in my pocket. When I was at the door, Nuno Meneses de Sequeira said something else to me. “I feel sorry for you,” he said. “The feeling is mutual,” I said, though probably with a different nuance. I walked down the stone stairs, went out into the afternoon light of Lisbon. A taxi drove by and I hailed it.

In the hotel I opened the letter. On a sheet of white paper was written, in capital letters and without accents, the word SEVER. I reversed it mechanically in my mind and then under it I, loo, wrote with a pencil, in capitals and without accents, REVES. I meditated for a moment on that ambiguous word, which could be Spanish or French and have two absolutely different meanings. I thought that I had no desire to return to Madrid. I would have a check sent from Italy and would write to the Madrid hotel to send my luggage. I telephoned the front desk and asked the concierge to find an agency. I needed a plane ticket for the next day, the airline was not important, the first available flight. “What, are you leaving already?” asked the concierge. “You’ve never had such a short visit before.” “What time is it?” I asked. “It’s five-fifteen by my watch, sir.” “Well, then, wake me for supper, around nine.” I undressed calmly, closed the shutters. The sheets were cool. Again the faraway wail of a siren reached me, muffled by the pillow on which I rested my head.

Perhaps Maria do Carmo had finally achieved her backwards side. I wished for her that it was as she had desired, and thought that the Spanish word and the French one perhaps coincided at one point. It seemed to me that this was the vanishing point of a perspective, as when the perspective lines of a picture are drawn. And at that moment the siren wailed again, the ship docked, I went slowly down the gangplank and began to walk along the quays. The harbor was completely deserted. The quays were the perspective lines that verged toward the vanishing point of a picture. The picture was The Young Ladies in Waiting by Velásquez. The figure in the background, on which the lines of the quays converged, had that melancholy, enigmatic expression that was impressed on my memory. And how funny — that figure was Maria do Carmo in her yellow dress. I was saying to her, “I understand why you have that expression, why you see the backwards side of the picture. What do you see from that point? Tell me. Wait for me to come, too. I’m coming to see now.” And I walked toward that point. And at that moment. I found myself in another dream.