Requiem

by Antonio Tabucchi

  ANTONIO TABUCCHI

  REQUIEM

  A HALLUCINATION

  TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE

  BY MARGARET JULL COSTA

  A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

  Contents

  Note

  The Characters Encountered in this Book

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  A Note on Recipes in this Book

  Other Titles

  Copyright

  NOTE

  THIS STORY, which takes place on a Sunday in July in a hot, deserted Lisbon, is the Requiem that the character I refer to as “I” was called on to perform in this book. Were someone to ask me why I wrote this story in Portuguese, I would answer simply that a story like this could only be written in Portuguese; it’s as simple as that. But there is something else that needs explaining. Strictly speaking, a Requiem should be written in Latin, at least that’s what tradition prescribes. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d be up to it in Latin. I realised though that I couldn’t write a Requiem in my own language and that I required a different language, one that was for me a place of affection and reflection.

  Besides being a “sonata”, this Requiem is also a dream, during which my character will meet both the living and the dead on equal terms: people, things and places that were, perhaps, in need of a prayer, a prayer that my character can only express in his own way, through a novel. But this book is, above all, a homage to a country I adopted and which, in turn, adopted me, to a people who liked me as much as I liked them.

  Should anyone remark that this Requiem was not performed with due solemnity, I cannot but agree. But the fact is that I chose to play my music not on an organ, which is an instrument proper to cathedrals, but on a mouth-organ that you can carry about in your pocket, or on a barrel-organ that you can wheel through the streets. Like Carlos Drummond de Andrade, I’ve always had a fondness for street music and I agree with him when he says: “I have no desire to be friends with Handel, I’ve never heard the dawn chorus of the archangels. I’m happy with the noises that drift up from the street, which bear no message and are lost, just as we are lost.”

  A.T.

  THE CHARACTERS

  ENCOUNTERED IN THIS BOOK

  The Young Junky

  The Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller

  The Taxi Driver

  The Waiter at the Brasileira

  The Old Gypsy Woman

  The Cemetery Keeper

  Tadeus

  Senhor Casimiro

  Senhor Casimiro’s Wife

  The Porter at the Pensão Isadora

  Isadora

  Viriata

  My Father as a Young Man

  The Barman at the Museum of Ancient Art

  The Copyist

  The Ticket Collector

  The Lighthousekeeper’s Wife

  The Manager of the Casa do Alentejo

  Isabel

  The Seller of Stories

  Mariazinha

  My Guest

  The Accordionist

  REQUIEM

  I

  I THOUGHT: the guy isn’t going to turn up. And then I thought: I can’t call him a “guy,” he’s a great poet, perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century, he died years ago, I should treat him with respect or, at least, with deference. Meanwhile, however, I was beginning to get fed up. The Late July sun was blazing down and I thought: Here I am on holiday, I was having a really nice time at my friends’ house in the country in Azeitão, so why did I agree to this meeting here on the quayside?, it’s utterly absurd. And, at my feet, I glimpsed the silhouette of my shadow and that seemed absurd to me too, incongruous, senseless; it was a brief shadow, crushed by the midday sun, and it was then that I remembered: He said twelve o’clock, but perhaps he meant twelve o’clock at night, because that’s when ghosts appear, at midnight. I got up and walked along the quayside. The traffic along the avenue had almost stopped, only a few cars passed now, some with sunshades on their roof-racks, people going to the beaches at Caparica, it was after all a sweltering hot day. I thought: What am I doing here in Lisbon on the last Sunday in July?, and I started walking faster in order to reach Santos as quickly as possible, it might be a little cooler in the small park there.” The park was deserted, apart from the man at the newspaper stand. I went over to him and the man smiled. Have you read the news?, he asked cheerily, Benfica won. I shook my head, no, I hadn’t seen the news yet, and the man said: it was an evening game in Spain, a benefit match. I bought the sports paper, A Bola, and chose a bench to sit down on. I was reading about the shot that had given Benfica the winning goal against Real Madrid, when I heard someone say: Good afternoon, and I looked up. Good afternoon, repeated the unshaven youth standing in front of me, I need your help. Help? For what?, I asked. Food, he said, I haven’t eaten for two days. He was a young man in his twenties, wearing jeans and a shirt, and was timidly holding out his hand to me, as if asking for alms. He was blond and had bags under his eyes. You mean you haven’t had a fix for two days, I said instinctively, and the young man replied: it comes to the same thing, drugs are food too, at least for me they are. In theory, I’m in favour of all drugs, I said, soft and hard, but only in theory, in practice I’m against them, I’m afraid I’m one of those bourgeois intellectuals full of prejudices and I don’t think it’s right that you should take drugs in a public park, that you should make such a distressing spectacle of your body, I’m sorry, but it’s against my principles, I might be able to accept you taking drugs in the privacy of your own home, as people used to do, in the company of intelligent and cultivated friends, listening to Mozart or Erik Satie. By the way, I added, do you like Erik Satie? The Young Junky looked at me in surprise. Is he a friend of yours? he asked. No, I said, he’s a French composer, he was part of the avant-garde movement, a great composer from the age of surrealism, if one can speak of surrealism as belonging to an age, he wrote mostly for the piano, a deeply neurotic man I believe, like you and me perhaps, I’d like to have known him but we were born into different ages. Just two hundred escudos, said the Young Junky, two hundred escudos is all I need, I’ve got the rest of the money, Camarão will be along in half an hour, he’s the dealer, I need another fix, I’m getting withdrawal symptoms. The Young Junky took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose loudly. He had tears in his eyes. You’re not being fair, he said, I could have been aggressive, I could have threatened you, I could have played the hardened addict, but no, I was friendly, pleasant, we even chatted about music, and you still won’t give me two hundred escudos, it’s incredible. He blew his nose again and went on: Besides, the one hundred escudo notes are cool, they’ve got a picture of Fernando Pessoa on them, and now let me ask you a question, do you like Pessoa? Very much, I replied, I could even tell you a good story about him, but it’s not worth it, I feel a bit strange, I’ve just come from the Cais de Alcântara, but there was no one there, and I intend going back there at midnight, do you understand? No, I don’t, said the Young Junky, but it doesn’t matter, and thanks. He slipped the two hundred escudos I was holding out to him into his pocket, then blew his nose again. Right, he said, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and look for Camarão now, I’m sorry, I really enjoyed talking to you, have a nice day, goodbye.

  I leaned back on the bench and closed my eyes. It was horribly hot, I didn’t feel like reading A Bola any more, maybe it was hunger, but I couldn’t really be bothered to get up and go off in search of a restaurant, I preferred to stay there, in the shade, barely breathing.

  It’s the big draw tomorrow, said a voice, wouldn’t you like to buy a lottery ticket? I opened my eyes. The voice belonged to a smal
l man in his seventies, who was dressed modestly but bore on his face and in his manner the traces of a former dignity. He came limping over to me and I thought: I know this man, and then I said to him: Just a moment, we’ve met before somewhere, you’re the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, I know you from somewhere else. Where?, asked the man, sitting down on my bench and breathing a sigh of relief. I don’t know, I said, I couldn’t say now, I just have an absurd feeling, the idea that I’ve come across you in a book somewhere, but it might just be the heat, or hunger, heat and hunger can play funny tricks on you sometimes. I have the feeling you’ve got quite a few odd ideas, said the old man, forgive me for saying so, but you do seem a touch obsessive. No, I said, that’s not my problem, my problem is that I don’t know why I’m here, it’s as if it were all a hallucination, I can’t really explain it to you, I don’t even know what I mean, let’s just say I was in Azeitão, do you know Azeitão?, well, that’s where I was, at a friends’ house, in their garden, sitting under a big tree there, a mulberry tree I think, I was stretched out in a deckchair reading a book I particularly like and then I suddenly found myself here, ah, now I remember, it was in The Book of Disquiet, you’re the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller who was always bothering Bernardo Soares, that’s where I met you, in the book I was reading under the mulberry tree in the garden of a farmhouse in Azeitão. I know all about disquiet, said the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, and sometimes I feel as if I’d walked out of a book too, a book full of splendid illustrations, richly laid tables, finely furnished rooms, but the rich man died, and the only Bernardo in the story was my brother, Bernardo António Pereira de Melo, he was the one who squandered the family fortune, London, Paris, prostitutes and, before I knew it, the lands we owned in the North had been sold for next to nothing, an operation in Houston for cancer saw off the rest, the money in the bank ran out and here I am, selling lottery tickets. He paused for breath and said: By the way, forgive me, I don’t wish to be rude, but since I’ve been addressing you formally as “o senhor”, right from the start, I don’t quite understand why you’ve been addressing me as “você”, allow me to introduce myself, my name’s Francisco Maria Pereira de Melo, delighted to meet you. I’m sorry, I said, I’m Italian and I sometimes get confused over the different forms of address, they’re so complicated in Portuguese, forgive me. We can speak in English if you prefer, said the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, the problem doesn’t arise in English, they just use “you” all the time, and my English is good, or perhaps you’d prefer French, there’s no confusion there either, it’s always “vous”, I speak excellent French as well. No, I replied, I’d rather speak Portuguese, this is a Portuguese adventure after all, and I don’t want to step outside my adventure.

  The Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller stretched out his legs and leaned back on the bench. And now, if you’ll forgive me, he said, I’m going to read for a bit, I devote a few hours every day to reading. He took a book out of his pocket. It was a magazine, Esprit, and he said: I’m reading an article about the soul by a French philosopher, it’s odd to read things about the soul again, for a long time it’s hardly been spoken of at all, at least not since the 1940s, now it seems that the soul is back in fashion, people are rediscovering it, I’m not a Catholic but I believe in the soul in the vital, collective sense, perhaps even in a Spinozist sense, do you believe in the soul? It’s one of the few things I do believe in, I said, at least at this moment, in this garden where we’re sitting and talking, it’s my soul that was the cause of all this, I mean, I’m not sure if it’s my soul exactly, perhaps it’s my Unconscious, because it was my Unconscious that brought me here. Hold on, said the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, the Unconscious, what does that mean?, the Unconscious is something found in the Viennese bourgeoisie at the turn of the century, we’re in Portugal here and you yourself are Italian, we belong to the South, to the Graeco-Roman civilisation, we have nothing to do with Central Europe, no, we have soul. That’s true, I said, I do have a soul, you’re right, but I have an Unconscious too, I mean, now I do, you see, the Unconscious is something you catch, it’s like a disease, I just happened to catch the virus of the Unconscious.

  The Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller regarded me with an air of despondency. Look, he said, do you want to do a swap? I’ll lend you my Esprit and you lend me A Bola. But I thought you were interested in the soul, I objected. I was, he said resignedly, but my subscription runs out after this issue and I’m beginning to grow into my role now, I’m turning into the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, I’m more interested in the goal Benfica scored. All right, I said, in that case, I’d like to buy a lottery ticket, have you got a number that ends in a nine?, you see, nine is my month, I was born in September, and I’d like to buy a lottery ticket that includes that number. I do indeed, sir, said the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, when were you born exactly?, because I was born in September too. I was born at the time of the Autumn Equinox, I said, when the moon is mad and the ocean swells. A most fortunate moment to be born, said the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, you’re in for some good luck. I certainly need it, I replied, paying him for the ticket, but not on the lottery, I need it for today, today is a very strange day for me, I’m dreaming but what I dream seems to me to be real, and I have to meet certain people who exist only in my memory. Today is the last Sunday in July, said the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller, the city is deserted, it must be forty degrees in the shade, I should think it’s the best day there is for meeting people who only exist in memories, your soul, I mean, your Unconscious is going to be kept very busy on a day like today, I wish you a good afternoon and good luck.

  II

  I’M TERRIBLY SORRY, said the Taxi Driver, but I don’t know where Rua das Pedras Negras is, could you give me some directions? He smiled a smile full of white teeth and went on: I’m from São Tomé, you see, I’ve only been working in Lisbon for a month and I don’t know the streets yet, in my own country I was an engineer but nothing needs engineering there, so here I am working as a taxi driver and I don’t even know the streets, I mean I know the city really well, I never get lost, it’s just that I don’t know the names of the streets. Oh, I said, it’s a street I know from twenty-five years back and I can’t remember how to get there either, though I know it’s near the castle. Let’s head in that direction then, said the Taxi Driver, smiling, and we set off.

  Only then did I realise that I was sweating profusely. My shirt was drenched and it clung to my chest and back. I took off my jacket, but even then I went on sweating. Look, I said, perhaps you can help me, my shirt’s sopping wet, I need to buy a new one, can you suggest where I might go? The Taxi Driver braked and turned to me. Do you feel ill?, he asked, a worried expression on his face. No, I replied, I don’t know, I mean I don’t think so, it must be the heat, the heat and some sort of anxiety attack, sometimes anxiety can make you sweat, anyway I need a clean shirt to put on. The man lit a cigarette and thought for a moment. Today’s Sunday, he said, the shops are all shut. I tried to wind down the window on my side, but the handle was broken. This fact only increased my anxiety, I could feel the sweat pouring from my head and a few drops fell onto my knees. The Taxi Driver was looking at me with real concern now. Then he said, I know, I’ve got a great idea, I’ll give you my shirt, if you don’t mind wearing it that is. You can’t do that, I said, you can’t drive around naked from the waist up. I’ve got a T-shirt on underneath, he replied, I can just wear that. But there must be somewhere in the whole of Lisbon where I can buy a shirt, I said, perhaps a shopping centre, a market, I don’t know. Carcavelos! exclaimed the Taxi Driver triumphantly, there must be a Sunday market in Carcavelos, that’s where I live, my wife goes shopping there every Sunday, or is it Thursday? I don’t know, I said, I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, there’s a beach at Carcavelos and today’s Sunday, it’ll be packed, it could be dreadful, can’t you think of anywhere here in Lisbon? The man struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. The gypsies! he exclaimed, I’d forgotten about the gypsies! He smiled his broad, candi
d smile again and said: Don’t you worry, my friend, you’ll get your shirt, I’ve just remembered that on Sundays the gypsies set up stalls at the entrance to the Cemitério dos Prazeres, they sell everything, shoes, socks, shirts, T-shirts, let’s try them, the only problem is I don’t know how to get there, I mean, I know vaguely where the Cemitério dos Prazeres is, but I don’t know which route to take, can you help me at all? Let’s see, I said, I’m a bit confused too, let’s review the situation, where are we now? We’re at Cais do Sodré, said the Taxi Driver, on the avenue, almost opposite the station. Right, I said, I think I know how to get there, but to start with let’s go up Rua do Alecrim, I’d like to drop in at the Brasileira to buy a bottle of wine. The Taxi Driver drove round the square and set off up Rua do Alecrim, he switched on the radio and gave me a sideways look. Are you sure you’re OK?, he asked. I reassured him and leaned back in the seat. Now I really was bathed in sweat. I undid the top buttons of my shirt and rolled up the sleeves. I’ll wait here with the engine running, said the man, stopping on the corner of Largo Camões, but do be quick, because if a policeman turns up, he’ll move me on. I got out of the taxi. The Chiado was deserted apart from a woman, dressed in black and carrying a plastic bag, who was sitting at the foot of the statue of António Ribeiro Chiado. I went into the Brasileira and the barman gave me a mocking look, did you fall in the river?, he asked. Worse than that, I said, I seem to have a river inside me, do you have any French champagne? Laurent-Perrier and Veuve Clicquot, he said, they’re both the same price and they’re nice and chilled. Which would you recommend? I asked. Look, he said, with the air of one who knows about such things, they’re always advertising Veuve Clicquot, to read the magazines you’d think it was the best champagne in the world, but I find it a touch acidic, besides I don’t like widows, I never have, anyway, if I were you, I’d buy the Laurent-Perrier, especially since, as I said, it’s exactly the same price. Fine, I said, I’ll take the Laurent-Perrier. The barman opened the fridge, wrapped the bottle up and put it in a plastic bag on which was written in red letters: “A Brasileira do Chiado, the oldest café in Lisbon”. I paid, went out into the sun again, still sweating like mad, and got into the taxi. Right, said the Taxi Driver, now you have to tell me the way. It’s easy, I said, drive into Largo Camões and where Silva’s the jeweller’s is, take the road going down, it’s called Calçada do Combro, then take Calçada da Estrela and when you reach Largo da Estrela, go up Domingos Sequeiros as far as Campo de Ourique, and then on the left you’ll find Saraiva de Carvalho which will take us straight to Largo do Cemitério dos Prazeres. You’ll have to tell me the streets one at a time, my friend, said the Taxi Driver pulling out, I’m sorry but you’ll have to be patient. I said, let me just close my eyes for a minute or two, I’m exhausted, look, it’s easy to remember: Calçada do Combro, Calçada da Estrela, Largo da Estrela, Domingos Sequeiros, Campo de Ourique, and when we get there I’ll tell you.