Pereira Maintains

FIVE

When Pereira got up next morning, he maintains, there ready and waiting for him was a cheese omelette sandwiched between two hunks of bread. It was ten o’clock and his daily, Piedade, came in at eight. She had evidently made it for him to take to the office for lunch, because this woman knew his tastes inside out and Pereira adored cheese omelettes. He drank a cup of coffee, had a bath, put on a jacket but decided not to wear a tie. However, he slipped one in his pocket. Before leaving the flat he paused in front of his wife’s photograph and told it: I’ve come across a lad called Monteiro Rossi and have decided to take him on as an outside contributor and get him to do advance obituaries, at first I thought he was very bright but he now seems to me a trifle dim, he’d be about the age of our son if we’d had a son, there’s even a slight resemblance to me, he has that lock of hair flopping into his eyes, do you remember when I had a lock of hair flopping into mine? it was in our Coimbra days, well, I don’t know what else to tell you, we’ll just have to wait and see, he’s coming to the office today, he says he’ll bring me an obituary, he has a beautiful girlfriend with copper-coloured hair, called Marta, she’s just a bit too cocksure and talks politics but never mind, we’ll see how it goes.

He took the tram to Rua Alexandre Herculano, then trudged laboriously on foot up to Rua Rodrigo da Fonseca. When he reached the door he was drenched with sweat, it was a real scorcher. In the hallway as usual he met the caretaker who said: Good morning Dr Pereira. Pereira gave her a nod and climbed the stairs. The minute he entered the office he got down to shirtsleeves and switched on the fan. He couldn’t decide how to spend the time, it was nearly midday. He contemplated eating his omelette sandwich, but it was still early for that. Then he remembered the ‘Anniversaries’ feature and started to write. ‘Three years ago died the great poet Fernando Pessoa. By education he was English-speaking, but he chose to write in Portuguese because he declared that his motherland was the Portuguese language. He left us many beautiful poems scattered in various magazines and one long poem, Message, which is the history of Portugal as seen by a great artist who loved his country.’ He read over what he had written and found it nauseating, yes, nauseating was the word, Pereira maintains. So he chucked that page away and wrote: ‘Fernando Pessoa died three years ago. Very few people, almost no one, even knew he existed. He lived in Portugal as a foreigner and a misfit, perhaps because he was everywhere a misfit. He lived alone, in cheap boarding-houses and rented rooms. He is remembered by his friends, his comrades, those who love poetry.’

He reached for his omelette sandwich and took a bite. At that very moment he heard a knock at the door, so he hid the omelette sandwich away in a drawer, wiped his mouth on a sheet of flimsy paper and said: Come in. It was Monteiro Rossi. Good morning Dr Pereira, said Monteiro Rossi, I’m sorry I’m a bit early but I’ve brought you something, in fact last night when I got home I had an inspiration, and anyway I thought there was a chance of something to eat here at the Lisboa. Pereira patiently explained that that room was not the Lisboa itself but a separate office for the culture page, and that he, Pereira, was the whole office staff, he thought he had already made this clear, it was simply a room with a desk and a fan, because the Lisboa was only a minor evening paper. Monteiro Rossi sat himself down and pulled out a sheet of paper folded in four. Pereira took it and read it. Unpublishable, Pereira maintains, a completely unpublishable article. It described the death of Lorca, and began as follows: ‘Two years ago, in obscure circumstances, we lost the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. He was assassinated, and suspicion rests on his political opponents. The whole world is still wondering how such an act of barbarism could have been perpetrated.’

Pereira looked up from the page and said: My dear Monteiro Rossi, you tell an excellent yarn but my paper is not the proper place for yarns, in newspapers we have to write things that correspond to the truth or at least resemble the truth, it is not up to you to say how a writer died, for what reasons and in what circumstances, you must simply state that he is dead and then go on to speak of his work, of his novels and poems, because when you write an obituary you are essentially making a critical assessment, a portrait of the man and his work, what you have written is absolutely unusable, Lorca’s death is still wrapped in mystery and what if things didn’t happen as you say they did?

Monteiro Rossi protested that Pereira had not finished reading the article, that further on it dealt with the work, the figure and stature of Lorca as man and artist. Pereira read doggedly on. Dangerous, he maintains, the article was dangerous. It spoke of the hidden depths of Spain, of the rigidly Catholic Spain which Lorca had made the target of his shafts in The House of Bernarda Alba, it told of the ‘Barraca’, the travelling theatre which Lorca brought to the people. At which point there was a long panegyric on the Spanish working classes and their longing for culture and drama which Lorca had satisfied. Pereira raised his head from the article, he maintains, smoothed back his hair, turned back his cuffs and said: My dear Monteiro Rossi, permit me to be frank with you, your article is unpublishable, completely unpublishable. I cannot publish it, no newspaper in Portugal could publish it, and no Italian paper either, seeing as how Italy is the land of your ancestors, so there are two possibilities: you are either irresponsible or a troublemaker, and journalism nowadays in Portugal has no place for either irresponsibility or troublemaking, and that’s that.

Pereira maintains that as he was saying this he felt a trickle of sweat running down his spine. Why was he sweating? Heaven knows. Pereira is unable to say exactly why. Perhaps because the heat was terrific, no doubt of that, and the fan was too feeble to cool even that poky room. But maybe also because his heart was touched by the sight of that youngster looking at him with an air of amazement and disappointment, who even before he finished speaking had begun to gnaw at his fingernails. So he couldn’t bring himself to say: Well hard luck, it was a try but it hasn’t come off, that will be all, thank you. Instead he sat for a while with folded arms looking at Monteiro Rossi until Monteiro Rossi said: I’ll rewrite it, I’ll rewrite it by tomorrow. At which Pereira plucked up the courage to say: Oh no, that’s enough about Lorca if you please, there are too many things about his life and death that won’t do for a paper like the Lisboa, I don’t know whether you are aware of it, my dear Monteiro Rossi, but at this moment there’s a civil war raging in Spain, and the Portuguese authorities think along the same lines as General Francisco Franco and for them Lorca was a traitor, yes, traitor is the very word.

Monteiro Rossi got to his feet as if the word struck the fear of God into him, backed towards the door, stopped, came a step forward and said: But I thought I’d found a job. Pereira did not answer, he felt a trickle of sweat running down his spine. Then what must I do? muttered Monteiro Rossi on a note of entreaty. Pereira got up in turn, he maintains, and went and stood by the fan. He said nothing for a minute or two, waiting for the cool air to dry his shirt. You must write me an obituary of Mauriac, he said, or of Bernanos, whichever you prefer, do I make myself clear? But I worked all night, stammered Monteiro Rossi, I expected to be paid, I’m not asking much after all, just enough for a meal today. Pereira would have liked to remind him that the evening before he had advanced him the money for a new pair of trousers, and clearly he could not spend all day every day giving him money, he wasn’t his father. He would have liked to be firm and tough. Instead he said: If your problem is a meal, all right I can treat you to lunch, I haven’t eaten yet either and I’m quite hungry, I wouldn’t say no to a nice grilled fish or a wiener schnitzel, how about you?

Why did Pereira suggest such a thing? Because he lived alone and that room was a torment to him, because he was genuinely hungry, or because his thoughts were running on the photograph of his wife, or for some other reason? This, he maintains, he cannot presume to say.