“Ah, she’s moving a bit. O-kay. She’s moved a whole yard. Now she’s completely focused on a soup tureen. Does this Irene of yours like soup?”
“E—excuse me?”
“Soup. S-o-u-p. Broth, consommé, bouillon?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Now, that’s a bad sign. You have to know everything a woman likes and dislikes, if you want to keep her. How old are you?” she adds, frowning.
I hesitate for a moment. “Thirty … thirty-nine.”
“Really?”
She knits her brow like an angry schoolteacher and I stammer awkwardly, “Yes, yes, I promise you, it’s true, I’ll be forty in June, next year.”
She laughs properly for the first time. She has pretty little teeth in perfect ivory.
“It’s okay, I believe you, I believe you. In fact, I’m even going to pay you a compliment, it’ll relax you: you look younger than that. I’m thirty-three.”
She reaches for her sunglasses on top of her head and brings them down to the bridge of her nose. Not seeing her eyes makes me uncomfortable, I feel more and more at her mercy.
“And, just out of curiosity, why did you choose me?”
“Well …”
“There wasn’t much choice, is that it?”
I’m fumbling for words, but she’s not waiting for an answer: “Aha, your wannabe Sherlock Holmes has now moved to the other side of the store, and because it’s on a street corner, she’s watching us through the windows.”
She catches the waiter by the sleeve, with all the familiarity of a regular, and orders a coffee.
“Would you like one too? You’re paying for the coffees. It’s just we’ve been here awhile. I’m back at work at four o’clock. And I have some shopping to do …”
“I’m—I’m so sorry. Do you work nearby?”
“Yes, right there,” she says, pointing to a large stone building which looks like a stock exchange.
“At the theater.”
I think I understand now: “So, you’re an actor?”
She laughs. “Yes, yes, an excellent actor. I play the part of the chief accountant every day. They all believe in me.”
She tenses her biceps, Hercules-style.
“Hey, I can’t see your girl anymore. She must have given up. Or maybe she’s taken up another position without my noticing. So, shall we go and do my shopping, then? After we’ve had coffee. Tell me about yourself.”
THE QUARTER OF an hour it takes to drink a coffee is enough to sum up a life—mine, anyway.
If we don’t drown ourselves in details, it gives us a not unhappy childhood in Lyon between a fairly absent father, a manager in a bank branch, and a Portuguese mother who taught primary school; not very turbulent teenage years in Paris; history studies culminating in a master’s degree; and a small gift for writing which earns me first some freelance work for newspapers, then a job with a daily, in the arts department and later the society section. As for love, a few relationships that never lasted, meeting Irene, her rejection which made me crazy about her. Lastly, my father’s suicide, just two months ago.
I didn’t hide anything, embellish or blacken anything either, nor did I try to submerge less glorious episodes in misplaced humor. I also related the one notable event: that lost M16 bullet in Nicaragua. A couple of inches farther to the right and writing my obituary for the paper wouldn’t have been an easy job. I found it soothing to share these confidences sincerely. I also mentioned the novel about Pescheux d’Herbinville that I kept going back to, and my translation of Jaime Montestrela’s Contos aquosos.
“The what? By who?” Manuela asked.
I took out the book; she slipped her sunglasses back onto her head opened the book in the middle, and didn’t land on the best of the tales.
In the town of Chiannesi (Umbria, Italy), on Shrove Tuesday, it was customary for every inhabitant to swap minds with another, women played at being men, children being parents. This swap included animals, and mice could be seen toying cruelly with cats. The municipality brought a definitive end to this custom in 1819, when the swap between cows and flies led to a crisis.
She handed the book back, not very convinced.
“Are you really translating it?”
“Bit by bit. I like unfashionable authors, the ones who failed to produce a major famous work by which they’ll be remembered.”
Manuela smiled. She got it. Yes, I feel a sort of kinship with people who fail. Their wanderings forgive my weaknesses, and I don’t hate the fact that posterity is so unfair toward them. The wrong done them absolves me from my own inability to create, from my laziness and fickleness.
“What about your novel, what’s it about?”
“About the mathematician Évariste Galois and his murderer.”
“Is it a detective story?”
“No, Galois really did exist, he died in a stupid sort of duel between two friends, in May 1832. It’s thought his adversary was called Pescheux d’Herbinville, but there’s another name out there too. In his last letter, written the night before the duel, Galois wrote something wonderful, more about the Republic than mathematics: ‘Remember me, because fate has not given me enough life for my country to know my name.’ And it’s true, his work was found twenty years later. Even so, I’m not getting anywhere with it.”
“Finish it by 2032. Then at least you could make the most of the bicentenary.” She pulled a face, screwing up her eyes. “You’ll notice I’m giving you my most gorgeous smile. She’s still there, your Irene. I can see her again, on the far side of the shop, through the glass. I hope I’m pretty enough to compete with her. I’m not too old for you, am I? I am over thirty, you know!”
“You’re—you’re very …”
“I’m teasing you, and you’re going to say something silly.”
Manuela’s blue dolphin was leaping over the sun. It intrigued me. She saw me looking at her wrist and this made her smile.
“Ah, the dolphin?”
“Yes. It’s very pretty.”
“It’s a kid’s thing. I had it done when I was sixteen, the day after someone very close to me was buried … Slit wrists. I was in a terrible state. I had it put right where the razor would go, so that, if I ever had the same idea, the dolphin would stop me. Dolphins save men. Why not women?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. I don’t think I ever really contemplated suicide. I just had my grief inscribed on my skin. An aesthetic act, in a way, almost shameless. Come on, let’s go and do the shopping, and you’re paying for the coffees.”
She stood up, took my arm, and dragged me off.
“It’s not unpleasant having someone at your mercy.”
WE WENT INTO one of the large stores on the rua do Carmo, and Manuela led me straight to the lingerie department on the second floor. In the still prudish Portugal of the 1980s, the range was hardly exuberant, but alluring underwear has never been my specialty. It was an era of women’s liberation, and these emblems of sexual subjection were not part of the seductive palette favored by women I knew.
Manuela couldn’t have cared less. She was enjoying asking my opinion about bras and slips. She liked ochre and cream best, ignoring the blacks and purples that dominated that world. Holding a white silk corset with gray-beige lace edging, she leaned toward my ear.
“I’m going to abandon you, you’ll know why in a minute,” she said, and was just disappearing into a fitting room when Irene appeared.
“You? here? Are you playing the dirty old man in the femme fatale department?”
“I’m with someone. Anyway, you’re here yourself.”
“I saw you … I was over there, in another department.”
She waved vaguely to a place behind her where nothing was going on. A glance toward the fitting rooms betrayed her.
“I didn’t know you liked this sort of thing,” she grimaced, picking up a red leather bustier. “So, would it turn you on if I wore something li
ke this? With garters too?”
I was saved by Manuela’s tousled, smiling face peeping between the curtains.
“Vincent? Come and tell me if it suits me. Miss, this size is really very generous, would you have the next size down, a size four?”
She talked quickly and Irene didn’t speak Portuguese, but she did understand the mistake.
“I … Tell her I don’t work here,” replied Irene, not so much annoyed as disconcerted.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mademoiselle,” Manuela said in pretty presentable French. “Well, Vincent, are you coming or not?”
I moved closer. She opened the curtain and pulled me by the collar, almost lovingly.
“You speak French?” I breathed.
“No. I have a smattering.” Then she went on more loudly so she would be heard, “So, do you like it on me? Tell me the truth. I don’t look too much like a hooker?”
I tried to stare at the wall but the corset molded her too wonderfully for my gaze not to linger on the unsettling shadow between her rounded breasts, her buttocks, her very long, slim legs. I stammered some sort of reply and she whispered, “How did you like the bit about the size four? Brilliant, wasn’t it? Okay, you’ve fed your eyes long enough, you great pervert.”
“It’s feasted. Feasted your eyes.”
“Go on, scram. The show’s over.”
I stepped backward and returned to where Irene was. She said nothing for a moment, then couldn’t hold out any longer.
“Is she your Lena, then?”
I could tell from her voice, it was artificial, had too much of a singsong to it: Irene was jealous. Not a lover’s jealousy, which would have been colored with pain, just the disappointment of a woman who loathed no longer being the center of attention. I pretended not to notice.
“Yes, it’s her. I realize you’re seeing her in … the circumstances are …”
Manuela popped out of the fitting room. She had put on her jeans over the corset. And managed not to look ridiculous. She came straight over to us and gave us a twirl like a ballerina.
“It’s a bit expensive. But everything’s too expensive when you don’t need it. I’m keeping it on. I’ll start a fashion.”
Then, finally deigning to look at Irene, she asked, “Do you know each other? Come on, Vincent, aren’t you going to introduce your friend? I’m Manuela …,” she said, not waiting for my reply.
I must have paled, or perhaps Irene showed some sign of surprise, because, with no hint of embarrassment, Manuela added seamlessly, “But people also call me Lena.”
“Irene. But people also call me Irene.”
It was said provocatively, but Manuela laughed and held out her hand; Irene, caught out, had to shake it. Manuela then went off to pay, and Irene watched her, as a fox might watch a hen.
“Have you told her about me? About you and me?”
“No.” And, with as much detachment as I could muster, I added, “Why would I?”
Manuela came back over to us, smiling happily, and took my arm.
“Let’s go back to the Brasileira. Do you know that’s where Vincent held my hand for the first time, oh, how long ago was that now?”
“Two months,” I said quickly.
“Two months? I can’t believe it, it sometimes feels like two hours …”
We sat at the same table. Manuela took her role remarkably seriously and had fun terrifying me by talking the whole time. She certainly had a smattering of French. When Irene proved too inquisitive, she dropped her head on my shoulder, unaffected and complicit, and let me do the lying for her. Then she steered my stories toward the truth. Divorced? It came through “just two days ago, phew!” The banker ex-husband was called Palmer, almost the same as my name? “Let’s change the subject, I’m Miss Freire again now, and things are a lot better like that.” Restoring paintings? She was bored of it now, too many issues with ignorant, tyrannical customers, and then there were museum conservators who were “so temperamental, I mean so temperamental. One time, this is the latest time it happened, it was at the Louvre—with a Titian.” And her own painting wasn’t going very well. Nonfigurative work that doesn’t see itself as conceptual is “over-over-over. I should be doing conceptual figurative stuff. But I’m still painting theater sets. Especially white walls. I love white walls.” As for the accountancy job at the theater, her new financial situation meant she “couldn’t turn it down. Accountancy’s how I met my husband. Ah! Didn’t we say we weren’t going to talk about him anymore?” In fifteen minutes Manuela Freire had succeeded in superseding Lena Palmer.
“How about you, Irene, what brings you to Lisbon?”
But there was a cold gust of wind and Manuela looked at her watch.
“I’m sorry,” she said, standing up. “I have to go. The curse of the wage earner. See you soon, Irene, it’s been a pleasure. Vincent, will you come with me for a minute?”
I obliged, not sure what to do. But Manuela Freire knew. She positioned herself so that Irene wouldn’t be able to see her behind me, then pressed my cheeks between her hands, crushing my face so that it probably looked ridiculous and flabby. Then she came right up close till her nose brushed against mine, and whispered:
“Bet this looks like a real lovers’ kiss, don’t you? I want a detailed report tomorrow with my free cup of coffee.”
She turned on her heel and headed toward the theater. A cool raindrop fell on my hand. I went back to sit next to Irene. The sidewalk in front of us was suddenly covered with little patches of darker gray. They were born as round as coins and, wherever there was a slope, they lengthened into teardrops. All at once there was a flash of lightning, immediately followed by thunder, the stiff breeze made the whole town clink and clatter, and the heavy air took on a cooler color. A clear pattering sound came from the ground, everything darkened suddenly, and the rain started pelting down. It quickly invaded the street, dense and luminous, a shivering translucent jelly reflecting the silver of the sky. It could have been monsoon rain, both violent and gentle, cleansing the earth. But no one in Lisbon displayed the defeated nonchalance of the tropics. Everyone wanted to avoid the deluge, taking refuge under shop awnings and bringing in washing that was hanging on balconies.
Manuela was walking across the square in the shower, not rushing, already soaked, her dark hair clinging to her forehead. She tried to avoid puddles, but water streamed everywhere in wide rippling flows. So she bent down swiftly and, in a spectacularly graceful move, took off her pumps. Then she started to run barefoot toward the theater. I must have smiled inadvertently because Irene shrugged irritably.
The storm didn’t last. When Irene wanted to go back to the hotel, I didn’t offer to go with her. She left alone, turning around twice, as if wanting to test my indifference. But it wasn’t faked, and I was all the more surprised for that.
“GALILEO DISCOVERED THE four largest of Jupiter’s many moons thanks to his telescope: Ganymede (which is larger than Mercury), Callisto, Io, and Europa. Anyone who claimed to have seen them by night prior to this was deemed mad.”
That was how I started my first article about Pinheiro, and faxed it straight from the hotel. Four pages of it. I had indicated that I would write at least three articles: “Jupiter’s Moons,” “The Man in Bronze,” and “The Silent One,” covering every aspect of the investigation and Pinheiro’s personality. Then I had promised myself that, if need be, I could come back to the trial.
The editor called straightaway: “What the hell’s all this junk about Jupiter’s moons? The press hasn’t talked about any of this. A correspondent’s job isn’t to go investigating but to read, conflate, and suggest. Read, conflate, and suggest. And that’s it. Still, we’ll publish the article the day after tomorrow all the same. The others at a rate of one every three days. It’s good. Carry on like that. Say well done to Flores for the pictures.”
And he hung up.
It was dark, the air warm, and Irene decided we should eat outside on a terrace and, most importantly, we “had to
have lobster” because the way they cooked it here was “adorable.” Antonio suggested a restaurant in the pedestrian area near the rua São José, where crustaceans in window tanks frolicked gleefully although the most elementary understanding of caution would have required discretion.
We had placed our order and were drinking vinho verde while we waited when I noticed a young woman watching us. She was wearing black jeans and an AC-DC T-shirt, her spiky hair was set with gel like the punks in London’s Soho, and her eyes were ringed with heavy eyeliner. Because of the getup it took me several more seconds to realize she was Aurora. Even though I had proof of this from the man by her side, Alyosha Karamazov, the tall, brooding young man who clearly followed her wherever she went, standing there stiffly in his perennial gray three-piece suit. Aurora waved to me, but when Irene kissed Antonio she couldn’t contain a pained smile, and she moved away quickly, almost running, trailing her attentive escort in her wake.
A quarter of an hour passed and our lobsters arrived. Another Aurora appeared at the end of the street, wearing a long, black silk dress and blue ballet shoes, her hair smooth and still damp from her shower. Alyosha, let’s call him that, was still escorting her, taking large strides while she almost ran. Aurora was holding a violin case in her hand. When she reached us, she noticed a wooden crate abandoned outside the metal shutters of a greengrocer’s, and dragged it over to the restaurant terrace. The wood rasping on the road surface attracted the attention of the whole street. Irene was first to turn toward the sound with a grimace, then Antonio. I saw him freeze, petrified.
Aurora turned the crate over. It must once have contained oranges, it had the word “Jaffa” on it. She tested how firm it was with her foot and leaped onto it in one swift movement, standing with her feet along the edge. She waited for an amazed silence to descend, then laid her violin on her shoulder and wedged a cotton cloth on the chin rest.
“Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst’s Caprice for Violin on Schubert’s ‘Erlkönig’ …”
The chin rest was set very high, and Aurora hardly had to lower her head to secure the instrument, which looked like an alto next to Aurora’s tiny form in that black dress. She touched the strings twice with her bow, made a small adjustment to one peg to tune the E, and launched into the music with childlike energy, her bow fluid and active. The first staccato sequence implied this caprice would be an incredibly complex, virtuoso piece. Aurora mastered it perfectly. She didn’t look at Antonio, she had closed her eyes, concentrating, with a vertical crease down her forehead. On her temples I spotted an area of powder that the water had not quite cleaned away.
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