He didn’t say anything for a long time. I could see he was shaking but his eyes were obscured by shadows. He was breathing hard, or perhaps that was merely the rarefied, obsessive awareness of sound produced by the dark.
“Do you want to sleep?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I was ashamed for not trying to disguise how tired I was. Red, green, a motorbike setting off and fading away. He sighed.
“Row with Irene. Violent. Nasty. In the letter I called her ‘sweet.’ Anyway … she’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Did you see Aurora?”
He whispered her name as if calling to her softly.
“I went to the hothouse, to her ‘island,’ as she calls it. She was there with a fair-haired man with very fine, almost feminine features, he was holding her hand, they were kissing. As soon as she saw me she came over, smiling. She didn’t seem to feel caught out. I wanted to explain things but she stopped me short by kissing my cheek. She introduced me to her friend, with a simple ‘Timoteo, my friend.’ And to him she said, ‘Antonio.’ She didn’t say anything resentful, behaved quite naturally, was sweet. It was as if an eternity had passed. I belonged to her past. I left pretty much right away. I looked back one last time, Aurora and her Timoteo gave me a friendly wave goodbye. And I knew I’d lost her.”
He put his glass on the table, near the Macintosh.
“Do you think she really loved me?”
I repressed a smile at this adolescent question. But what sort of answer could I give, as I know nothing about love, and never understand women better than on the day they leave me. He leaned with his back to the wall, against the nearly empty bookshelves. We stayed like that for a long time, not speaking.
I recognized the color of that silence. Years ago I spent three weeks in Inuit country, in Iqaluit and then Kugaaruk, far above the Arctic Circle. That was where I got the Reverend Samuel Wallis’s mask. Rather than staying in the Pelly Bay Inn, a hotel made of prefabricated units, I rented a room in a private home. My host was called Niam Amgoalik. In Inupiak, Niam means “sweetness” or “my darling” but, although he was welcoming enough, this man was not the image Europeans have of sweetness. One evening when Niam and I were in the living room—I was reading a copy of Nunatsiak News several months old and he was repairing the handlebar of his Skidoo—there was a knock at the door and a man came straight in without waiting for an answer. Niam didn’t say a word, just gave a friendly nod. The visitor took a Coke from his bag, opened it and sat slowly in an armchair. Niam carried on mending his handlebars while his friend sipped his Coke. It wasn’t completely silent: Niam breathed loudly as he tinkered with the brake lever, his friend burped from time to time, and I turned the pages of the newspaper. Outside there was the noise of a snowstorm, the smack of a badly secured shutter.
I eventually got used to this muteness and forgot my initial embarrassment. But while Niam and his friend were sharing the simple fact of being together, I was withdrawing into myself to the point of indifference. And when, after half an hour, or perhaps a little more, the friend waved goodbye to Niam and left, I felt incomplete, like a deaf person who has watched musicians play but heard nothing of the tune. I never knew Niam’s friend’s name.
A motorbike backfiring on the street broke the spell. Antonio knocked back the rest of his ouzo.
“Thanks, Vincent. I’ll go back to the hotel.”
But he didn’t move. The wall turned from red to green. I went over to the window and opened it wide, a breeze carrying the smell of the sea swept through the room.
“I think I have a couple beers, if you like.”
“Okay.”
I opened the fridge, and as I took the bottles out the cold neon light briefly illuminated the portrait of Duck. It was too late to hide it from Antonio.
“What the hell’s that, Vincent? It’s—it can’t be.”
He took out his wallet, searching through it feverishly.
“Yes, it’s Duck,” I preempted him. “I—drew it from memory. I thought she was beautiful. Her face is so … pure.”
Antonio found the photo and compared it to the portrait, speechless.
“I know I should have told you,” I went on, “but I never thought you’d end up seeing it.”
“But, Vincent, I don’t understand. You don’t know her, and this portrait … it’s not just a drawing.”
“I could give it to you, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a, what would you call it? Just an amateur sketch. I wanted to get back into working with charcoal. Since meeting Aurora.”
“You’re messing with me, Vincent … I think this is … sick. Kind of love by proxy.”
“What are you talking about? What love? Forgive the comparison, but Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t in love with Mona Lisa. It’s just a picture.”
I must have hit the right note because Antonio grimaced, then smiled properly.
“Okay. I’ll give you that. I should apologize. Let’s open these bottles.”
I prized the lids off and Antonio took one of the beers and walked over to the window. He looked at the portrait, more relaxed, appeased.
“It’s good, for something done from memory. It would have been even more faithful if you’d had the photo. You’ve aged her a bit, but she must actually look like that now.”
I didn’t mention the printers on the rua da Barroca but asked, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“No.”
It was a cold no. I showed Antonio the map of the Okavango Delta.
“Do you remember Okavango in Botswana, Antonio? You took the pictures, I wrote the piece. You hired a small plane, flew over the delta and the Moremi Reserve … They were magnificent pictures.”
“That was a long time ago. I don’t know why you brought that up. Sorry, I’m tired, I’m going back.”
Antonio finished his beer, nodded, and left.
But no one forgets the Okavango. It’s an African river, a really long river, much more powerful than the Tagus or the Rhône and over half a mile wide at the Popa Falls. Its source is in Angola, it flows through Namibia before reaching Botswana. That’s where it meets the Kalahari Desert, where it coils into meanders, creating a rich tropical forest and producing a vast, swampy, saltwater delta that is home to tens of thousands of flamingoes. In the dry season, there are a myriad of islands formed around giant termite mounds and dense shrubs. Tourist leaflets describe luxuriant marshes, a miracle performed by water, an earthly paradise. All rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full, says Ecclesiastes. That’s not true: the Kalahari is vast and all the water of the Okavango gradually evaporates, or seeps into mud and sand.
The Okavango never reaches the sea. Its destiny as a river is never fulfilled. Of course other watercourses have the same fate: the Awash in the Afar region of Ethiopia simply irrigates that country’s great lakes, the Bear River ends its days in the brine of the Great Salt Lake. But no river is as powerful as the Okavango, none as indomitable. Its defeat in the face of the scorching Kalahari Desert is a catastrophe, its slow absorption like the end of the world. I’ve always liked old geographical maps, which is why I had bought the one I hung on the wall. That old map of the Okavango Basin was a metaphor for unfinished business, for adversity, for an unreachable goal.
I listened to Antonio walking along the deserted street. He suddenly started running and I heard the sound of his racing footsteps for a long time. Then the hubbub from farther down in the city smothered everything. I knew why Antonio was running. Sometimes the sound of our own footsteps becomes unbearable. It describes our impotence, our density, our weight. Walking means being resigned to that. So we refuse to be, and we run, it doesn’t matter where, because we’re running away from ourselves.
DAY EIGHT
DUCK
In the morning I bought the Diário. The front page showed Mexico City in ruins, buildings collapsed like houses of cards, rows of bodies, and the dust-caked faces of survivors. There too, churches had caved in onto th
e faithful. On an inside page was the report on the Pinheiro case. The journalist who had covered it had some literary background. In Pinheiro’s incoherent outburst he had recognized Petrarch’s criticism of astrologers and their predictions. So he didn’t like horoscopes then. What to make of that? You tell me.
I hadn’t envisaged the Pinheiro case like this. I had hoped—and the general public had hoped to an even greater extent—there would be confessions, or better, revelations. Diabolical machinations revealed for all to see. I’d pictured a sect, a clandestine criminal hierarchy with esoteric rites. But everything was still dark and vague, and I was almost ashamed of sending the newspaper my daily chatty report of this obscurity.
It was not until eleven o’clock that I made up my mind to go to LisboPrint, Soares & Filhos printers, with the excuse of photocopying and faxing my article. I felt, with a hint of superstition, that fate would repay me for my efforts to curb my eagerness. I was hoping to see Duck, but the premises went back a long way, and a wide set of shelves housing files blocked my view of the presses and any employees. The only person at the till was a tall man of about forty with an overly purple tie. He was a bit slow and clumsy: the photocopier wasn’t self-service, neither was the fax, and it took him nearly ten minutes to complete these tasks.
I tried to find an excuse to stay a little longer, to get a chance to see her. I thought about business cards, which people kept asking me for. The tall guy shouted Constantino! in a loud high-pitched voice, several times, until a pudgy little man built like Ubu appeared. He took out three large files filled with samples of hundreds of different styles.
“You’ve certainly come to the right place for business cards: what with the size, choice of paper, font, layout, and inking techniques, we can give you the choice of, guess how many combinations. Guess.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Okay, ten sizes, twenty types of paper, fifteen fonts, ten basic formats, and six different inking methods, that gives us … a hundred and eighty thousand different business cards! And that’s not counting logos and colored ink,” he concluded triumphantly.
“And can you give me a recommendation?”
He pointed to the first card on the first page of the first file.
“Take the standard one. It’s sensible and professional, it’s simple without being boring. How many do you need? I would recommend two hundred. It’s not much more expensive to print than one hundred, and with five hundred you never use them all. If you did need more, don’t worry, we keep the offset plates for a year.”
“All right then, two hundred of the standard style.”
“Perfect. It’s our best seller. You’ll be very pleased with it.”
I paid for the photocopying and the cards. It was no giveaway. I’d now run out of ideas so I just came out and asked, “Forgive me, but I came by a few days ago and was served by a dark-haired young woman who—”
“Oh, are you also picking up a rebound book? You should have said. When did you leave it with us? If it was last week and it was being leather-bound, it’s a bit too soon. They haven’t been delivered.”
I immediately thought of the Contos aquosos that I had in my pocket.
“No, it’s something I want to have done, I have the book with me.”
The man called Constantino cried Cátia! two or three times, with the same energy and the same high-pitched voice as the photocopying man. It must have been the exact intonation and volume needed for a voice to carry over the noise of the machines.
Cátia … so this wasn’t Duck. I was disappointed, but it was logical: old Custódia saw so little of his daughter that he probably didn’t know where she now worked. I would have to start all over again. At least I would have some business cards to hand out.
But a young woman appeared and there she was. She had changed very little, perhaps her features had hollowed slightly. Her straight hair was cut shorter, under her work smock she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She was a modern young woman, ordinarily pretty and prettily ordinary. I thought I would be disconcerted, bowled over when my secret heroine of the last few days turned up. But I felt the tension in me subside, I was finally liberated by the very simplicity of her incarnation.
I must have looked slightly dazed. She peered at me probingly, tilting her head. I had forgotten what I was doing there.
“This is for a book binding, isn’t it?” she asked.
She had a slightly hoarse, deep, but very sensual voice that I would never have suspected from her. I showed her my copy of the Contos. She opened it and examined the inner pages. She was a professional.
“Apart from the cover, it’s in good condition. It’s got, let me see, twelve signatures. I’ll redo all the stitching and put a double lining on the spine. Will these be all right, this marbled paper for the cover, and this green for the cloth-bound spine and the corners?”
“Green, yes, that would be great.”
“That’s good then. I’ll be able to slip it in with another order right away today. Not only will it cost you less, but you’ll have it back in under forty-eight hours, perhaps even tomorrow. Glue dries quickly at the moment. Would you like the bookmark in red, blue, or gold?”
“Whatever you like.”
“Let’s say gold. It’ll look very nice with the green cloth binding.”
She handed me her card: Cátia Moniz. I smiled—hers was also the standard style, Constantino’s best seller.
“Call me tomorrow morning then, Mr.…”
“Balmer. Vincent Balmer. I’ve given all my contact details … for my cards.”
Before taking the book she looked at its cover.
“Jaime Montestrela …”
“Do you know him? You’re definitely the first.”
“He wrote a beautiful book, Cidade de lama, about the loneliness of exile. I haven’t read it, but the phrase ‘exile is an endless insomnia’ is from him.”
CÁTIA MONIZ. CÁTIA Moniz. Nothing of the Duck I had imagined could be filed under that completely new name.
When I reached Rossio Square it started pouring rain. I sheltered and watched the slow pirouette of taxis describing a wide circle around Dom Pedro IV’s column. It was 1985 but the Peugeot 403 was already looking ancient. It was closely followed by a Datsun with a crumpled front wing, then a Mercedes with battered chrome that was spewing as much soot as smoke.
A young couple were waiting at the head of the queue, more mismatched than a pelican and a chickadee. He was tall and bulky but trussed up in a tight raincoat, his neck squeezed by a too-thin tie, she was short and slim, wearing a soaked multicolored dress. From that far away, hidden as she was by a straw hat ravaged by the rain shower, she could have been Aurora, Manuela, or even Duck. Watching them, I succumbed to the all-encompassing amazement I always feel about lives that are not my own. The boy talked the whole time while she gazed into the distance. When the 403 stopped beside them, she opened the rear door, climbed in quickly, and leaned toward the driver. Her movements suggested relief, she was in a hurry for the date to be over. She closed the door and the young man stayed outside, mouth agape, his words hanging in the air. He leaned forward, almost kneeling, and gesticulated for her to lower the window, to exchange a last few words or perhaps a kiss. She looked away and the Peugeot plowed its tires into an oily puddle as it set off. The young man in the tie watched the Peugeot move away before climbing into the Datsun behind. He closed the door on his raincoat, a big flap of it hung down to the ground and was spattered with mud as the taxi pulled away. The city displayed two or three hundred shows like this in parallel, comedies and tragedies, and I didn’t know what to make of this gift of fate.
The shower stopped, the sun dried the sidewalks, and I walked to the Brasileira. I wanted to see Manuela. In the previous night’s unfathomable nightmare she was the one I wanted. And perhaps that was all I needed to understand from that dream. That one fantasy was coming to an end, given that I was ready—at worst—to move on to another. If she hadn’t been
there I would have kept on walking to the theater and demanded to see her. But she was at the Brasileira, sitting at a table with a woman with very short blond hair, an elegant, athletic woman, a little older than she was. Manuela was not wearing her provocative corset, just a dress that could have been demure if she hadn’t shortened it by pulling it up over a belt.
I waved to her and she introduced us: Anna, Vincent. The woman looked up at me and, with her cool reception, implied I was interrupting. I waited at another table and ordered a coffee. The blond woman looked annoyed, she squeezed Manuela’s hand and stood up, and Manuela sat still for a moment before giving me a little wave. I went to join her.
“I’m sorry, Vincent. Anna’s not very sociable. How’s the dragon Irene doing?”
“She’s—she’s fine.”
Manuela laughed. “I meant you and her.”
“I’m—I’m getting better.”
“Well, that’s reassuring. I didn’t see much of her, but I can tell you what does it for her, she’s desperate to be found attractive and terrified of being abandoned. She must have given you quite a runaround.”
“Because that was what I wanted.”
“Of course. When someone looks like a whipped dog, you want to hurt them. It’s the rule.”
“Do I look like a whipped dog?”
“With her you do. You look like you’ve lost before you’ve even tried. No one wants to be with a permanent loser.”
I looked at the dolphin on her wrist and felt like touching her hand. I took her fingers for a moment but she withdrew them immediately.
“Vincent … please. Don’t always put yourself in situations where you can be humiliated. Do you really misread things that badly?”
“I—I’m really sorry.”
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