Electrico W

by Hervé Le Tellier

  I felt like calling Paul back, telling him what a family could be like, or just two brothers. Telling him about the affection I felt for him, for my younger brother who had been too many years younger for me for a long time, whom I got to know so little and so badly, also telling him how hard it would be for me to lose the scraps I had left of my childhood. I didn’t do it. I thought of writing to him. I didn’t do that either.

  I HAD A shower and went down to the cafe to read the Diário. It devoted most of page 3 to a long article about Pinheiro’s bronze coat of mail. This style of armor was a perfect copy of the lorica hamata that Roman legionaries took from the Celts and wore for six centuries. It was made of linked rings: each ring was connected to four others and sealed with a rivet known as a barleycorn, and this was illustrated with a detailed diagram. The rings were flattened and had a diameter of just a few millimeters, so the coat of mail comprised several hundred thousand of them. A peculiar detail: some of the rings had been soldered to wires connected to 4.5-volt batteries, as in toning belts athletes used for their abdominal muscles. The setup was absurd, though, given that bronze is a very good conductor so the power would inevitably be dissipated in short circuits.

  The Diário’s journalist had had an identical one made by a locksmith, who was kept busy for a whole week with the task. The alloy used was not commercially available, and he had had to order it from a foundry because no bronze sculpture had so much copper and so little pewter in it: there was also some arsenic which made the alloy harder, making the article more clean-cut. As he reproduced the original, the craftsman became convinced that Pinheiro’s coat of mail had been one of a limited edition of “at least half a dozen.”

  For nearly three hours the journalist had worn the hat, bronze bangles, and chain mail, right next to his skin as Pinheiro had, although legionaries never actually wore it naked like this but over a linen shirt. Once the wires were connected to batteries, the experiment had become painful, far less because of the electrical current than because his body hair kept getting caught in the rings.

  I covered all of this in my article, bolstering it with a few details on the capture of Rome by the Gauls under Brennus, to whom minor history owes the story of the geese at the Capitol—and to whom Roman military history owes this form of chain mail.

  My brother Paul was given a Vercingetorix the Gaul outfit for his sixth birthday. A winged helmet as on cigarette packets, a brown cape in rough fabric, a wide sword, a round shield, and a plastic coat of mail. It was a family celebration, in the countryside at Montcardon. I was thirteen and bored, rereading old Tarzan and Bob Morane stories in our bedroom. My brother spent the day running all over the place in his Gallic chieftain’s costume; toward nightfall he wanted to go and play in the woods. My mother asked me to take him and play with him. I dug my heels in and she reprimanded me with a frown: “Vincent—it’s your brother’s birthday.”

  I sighed and went out with Paul.

  We simply had to follow a dirt track alongside the house. It was impracticable by bicycle because it was too rutted up by tractor tires. First we had to walk past two cornfields, then a vineyard, and you reached the woods after half a mile. You went into the woods on a path edged with ivy and brambles, cutting through an embankment. It was just a few dozen hectares of straggly, poorly maintained forest, but in springtime there were hundreds of daffodils under the trees, and even lily of the valley. My brother liked going for walks there, bringing home moss, collecting gleaming blue beetles in jars where they scuttled under damp tree bark. Down below us, in the light of the setting sun, was the watercourse, the Vougre, where people swam in summer, although it was barely deeper than a brook. Nearby were the dark waters of a pond, known as the Tramen Pond, where people went boating. My brother could lie in the grass on the banks for hours watching the balletic moves of yellow-bellied newts, but never daring to catch them. In the middle of the forest there was also a dead tree with black, clawlike branches, the Devil Tree. It terrified Paul and that was my fault: I was the one who called it that, and I had told my little brother terrible stories, full of witches and monsters. When the tree appeared around a bend on a walk, Paul would run and hide behind me, scared. I protected him from the demon with incantations and curses. Paul’s disillusion when he grew up was in direct proportion to the admiration he had once felt.

  I’ll never forget that afternoon. Paul is running ahead of me, pushing aside brambles with his shield. From time to time he strays from the path, pursuing one of the pond’s big green dragonflies with his sword. Then he comes back, laughing, victorious. I’ve brought a comic book with me and don’t pay much attention to him. At some point I can’t hear him anymore. I call him. He doesn’t answer. I shout his name again several times and, succumbing to genuine fear, start running toward the pond. He isn’t there. I run to the river, climb back up the bank yelling Paul, Paul, with all my strength, all the way to a backwater of the Vougre even though he can’t have had time to get there. I go back to the Tramen, I search through the reeds, wading out into the water, I daren’t think the unimaginable, of finding a little blond-haired Gallic chieftain floating in the water, drowned in his chain mail, still wearing his helmet. I even go to the Devil Tree. Maybe Paul’s overcome his fear, maybe he’s waiting for me there, sitting on a low branch? But no. It’s getting dark. I can see less and less clearly. I stand with my back against a tree and start to cry. I’m paralyzed with guilt, and I’m also frightened of my mother’s fury, but I must go home and ask for help. I run along the path in sodden shoes. Again and again I trip in the deep ruts gouged out by farm machinery, grazing my knees and elbows and hands.

  I barge through the door to the house and see Paul in the kitchen. He got hungry, wanted a jelly sandwich, looked for me for a while in the woods and, when he didn’t find me, came home on his own. My mother sees me in the doorway, dripping and filthy. She comes toward me, beside herself with rage and, unable to articulate a sentence, she slaps me to dispel her own anxiety. I don’t try to avoid the blow, one of the very few in my life. The pain in my cheek frees me from my own tension, tears well up immediately and I go to our room and throw myself on my bed. I sob uncontrollably. I know that that could have been the day when my life turned upside down, when I would have been burdened forever with the atrocity of Paul’s memory. I imagine the nightmare of a life without Paul, a shameful life that would have to be lived in the shadow of his death, and yet, somewhere in that total darkness, in that abyss of misery, there is a vertiginous sort of appeal, as if I knew that only a glow as dark as that could give meaning to my own life, as if you had to be infinitely guilty to be truly saved.

  I put down the Diário with its pictures of chain mail and drove away the images it had evoked. I went over to the hotel. Antonio had left a note for me with the porter.

  “It’s early. I called your place, but you weren’t there. I’m going to the Estufa Fria. I need to talk to Aurora, to explain. Then I’m going to take some pictures around Belém, I’ll be gone all day. Let’s meet up this evening, if you can. Irene’s still asleep. Tell her I’ll be back at about five. You’ll think of an explanation, I know you’ll be discreet. Thanks. A.”

  I didn’t have to wait for Irene, she was having her breakfast. I found an explanation, and was also discreet.

  I said I was meeting someone. No, I couldn’t have lunch with her, or meet for coffee in the afternoon, and I probably wouldn’t be around this evening either. But tomorrow, it’s a promise. I stood up, pleased with my indifference. She looked at me as if she thought I was going to hurt her and she couldn’t give a damn.

  IT WAS ALSO the first day of the Pinheiro trial. I could have waited for the reports in the Portuguese press, but I had an official pass after all, and I was curious to see how he behaved in court.

  The courtroom was packed, the press box heaving. Pinheiro seemed half asleep in the dock, utterly silent, his eyes blank. That morning they were giving an inventory of the murders. He had confessed to the police fo
r all those that involved the Luger, but his lawyer made much of reminding the jury that, for three of these, he had a cast-iron alibi. The same weapon must, therefore, have been used by several assassins. That would be the position taken by the defense: Pinheiro, who had accepted the blame for all the murders, could in fact be innocent of them all, and why not also the last one, if the culprit had dropped the firearm in his pocket. Then he would simply have been the accomplice responsible for disposing of the gun, in a strange complex mechanism.

  They then showed some images provided by the pathologist. They were poorly framed, workaday shots, showing blood-stained bodies frozen in death, captured on film out of respect for protocol, without humanity. This obscenity created an awkward tension among people in the public gallery, but Pinheiro didn’t look at them.

  I was just leaving the courtroom, feeling slightly nauseous, when Pinheiro stood up and started shouting: “Why are you degrading Heaven and Earth? Why are you pointlessly humiliating the children of men? Why charge the twinkling stars with your futile laws? Why, when we are born free, do you make us slaves of an inanimate heaven?”

  Then he sat back down, dazed by so many words. His lawyer, disconcerted, leaned toward him and seemed to give copious advice. Pinheiro’s head dropped forward as if he had fallen asleep. As I was leaving, the policeman next to me muttered, “What an idiot.”

  The cop looked stupid too. Which detracted nothing from the accuracy of his comment.

  AT ONE O’CLOCK I was at the Brasileira. I had lunch there, spinning out each course, hoping Manuela would come by. I liked the newfound fever that was gradually driving out my longing for Irene. But at three o’clock she still wasn’t there.

  I went home to my studio and worked on a few more Contos aquosos, whose title I had decided to translate as Liquid Tales because Aqueous Tales sounded too much like “queer tales.” And “liquid” had the advantage of evoking the absurd, playful way Montestrela liquidated great philosophical themes:

  On the planet FH76, the bodies of living beings are not fused to their spirits. This means that the spirit can sometimes die long before the body. The latter carries on eating, running, conversing, or even copulating to the death. Bodily activity can continue for several years without anyone noticing a thing.

  Finding an editor for Liquid Tales would have been sensible, but I was beginning to feel, like Gertrude Stein, “If it can be done, why do it?” I was afraid that, as soon as an agreement was reached, I would be far less motivated. I was translating the four hundred and third tale when there was a knock at my door.

  It was Custódia. He had climbed the three floors slowly but was flushed and out of breath.

  “I was just checking you’re here,” he said, raising his hat. “And, anyway, the shelves are too heavy for me to bring them up on my own. Where are they to go?”

  I asked him in and showed him the wall. The drawing of Duck was there, framed, beneath the window. But he didn’t look at it. He just tapped the wall with a finger and listened to its resonance.

  “We could hang it off the ground here, if you like. It’s a weight-bearing wall and it would hold up well. It would look better and keep the floor space clear. I made it with brackets and I’ve brought my drill.”

  I nodded and we went downstairs. I was behind Custódia; he was losing his hair and his bald patch revealed the first liver spots. He was probably not yet sixty but was as worn as his gray cardigan. A nasty man, a brute even, was what his neighbor Pita had said. I just felt sorry for him.

  We unloaded the frame from the truck, it was incredibly heavy. Custódia handed me some gloves.

  “Oh yes, it’s definitely not balsa wood. We’ll take the shelves up separately.”

  We took a rest on each landing and when we reached my studio, I went in first and saw the portrait of Duck. I was suddenly terribly ashamed of stooping so low, being so abject. I flipped the picture to face the wall, to hide his daughter’s face from Custódia. I didn’t want to produce such pointless pain. It didn’t matter anymore.

  We put the frame against the wall, went down for the shelves, and came straight back up without exchanging a word. Custódia marked out the screw holes with a pencil. Then he moved the frame a few inches to one side to get to a socket, drilled deep into the wall, and inserted the pegs. I held the shelf unit and he secured it with a few turns of the screwdriver. The result wasn’t at all bad. Custódia had added a frieze and some moldings, filled the joints with wood glue, and waxed the unit. Moments later we had put the shelves in.

  “Your books?” Custódia asked. “Shall we put them in to see what it looks like?”

  “I—I don’t have any. In a trunk, somewhere else. I’ll bring them over.”

  Custódia pulled on the cord of his drill and that was when he caught the portrait. It fell onto the tiled floor and the glass broke. Custódia swore and apologized.

  “I’ll mend it,” he said, “don’t you worry about it.”

  Before I had a chance to react he was assessing the damage, turning the frame over in his hand. He looked at the portrait for a long time, then leaned it back against the wall.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s just glass, really.”

  “I mean forgive me for looking at the picture for so long. She looks so like my daughter.”

  Custódia nodded, it was impossible to know what he was thinking, and all at once I was afraid Duck might be dead. It was this fear rather than deceitfulness that made me ask, “Your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “How—how old is she?” I persisted, hoping for reassurance.

  “Twenty-seven. Is it someone you know, the woman in the picture, or did you buy it just like that?”

  “She’s … a friend. I drew it.” And to prove the point I showed him the charcoal still lying on my desk. Custódia put away his tools. I felt fate had decided for me, and I didn’t have the right to let the opportunity go.

  “And … do you have grandchildren?”

  “Two. A boy and a little girl.”

  Custódia stood up with a sigh and dusted himself off.

  “How old are they?”

  “The boy’s eleven and the girl’s six, I think. I’m not sure. I hardly ever see them. It’s not easy, nowadays, a father-daughter relationship.”

  “Tell me. She doesn’t have a red Fiat, does she? I saw a woman who looked liked this picture in a red Fiat.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Honestly, we don’t see each other much. Not much at all. That’s the way it is.”

  He picked up his gloves and tools and opened the door. He threw a last long glance at the portrait of Duck.

  “It’s incredible,” he said. “It really is her, believe me. Actually, she works quite near here. Printers on the corner of the rua da Barroca.”

  He shook my hand, his was callused, rough, he could easily have broken my fingers, but the handshake was civil. I closed the door and gathered up the broken glass. Custódia’s truck set off noisily.

  Printers, on the corner of the rua da Barroca, who’d have thought it?

  I remembered a story that I knew to be true, the one about a Jew who survived the Nazi camps where he lost his entire family, who emigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, gradually rebuilding his shattered life. Then one day he scratched a car in the parking lot of the supermarket he went to every week. The driver was his own wife, who he thought had died. She’d been living five blocks from him for twenty years.

  On the corner of the rua da Barroca. It was so simple.

  I SET OFF in search of the printers and found it in a matter of minutes. It was called LisboPrint, Soares & Filhos. The metal shutter was closed. The company offered faxing and photocopying services, and the window display showed business cards, wedding invitations, and small bespoke pieces such as posters and leaflets. I ate not far from there, not as impatient to get to the next day as I would have thought.

  Then I went back to my studio and opened my black notebook for The Cleari
ng and turned on my Mac to copy out the latest sentences. It wasn’t any good. I wanted to rewrite the whole text, to put it into first-person narrative, like a private journal, to turn it into Pescheux’s inner monologue, a rambling discourse, occasionally tinged with a lyricism that I wanted to ruffle up. I tried out the effect on the first few pages: “Met Galois at Palais-Royal. He was kissing Stéphanie and didn’t see me. My whole being was instantly reduced to images. The traitress’s smile betrayed the feverishness of their every move, hidden moisture, flesh and sweat, it pierced through me till I felt nauseous, till I flinched, I pulled myself together, ran toward them, drunk with rage …”

  That wasn’t very good either. I gave up.

  It was late already. The radio was talking about a terrible earthquake in Mexico City, 8.2 on the Richter scale. The city was in ruins, emergency services were converging. I listened for a while, and put my few books, including Contos aquosos, onto Custódia’s shelves. Then I turned out the light but didn’t draw the curtains. I couldn’t get to sleep. Someone rang my doorbell: Antonio. I turned on a lamp but the light was too harsh for him, so we stayed there in shadow with just the glow from the street. The facade of the building opposite went from green to red, red to green, with the traffic lights at the crossroads.

  Antonio asked for a drink. I put two glasses on the table and an almost empty bottle of ouzo. I opened the fridge to get a jug of chilled water, and closed it quickly so its wan light didn’t compromise the mood of trust. Tonio’s forehead was gleaming with clammy, anxious sweat. I wished he would wipe it, because I couldn’t take my eyes off that almost phosphorescent strip of skin reflecting colors on the street like a wet sidewalk. Orange, then red, back to green.