Letter from Casablanca

by Antonio Tabucchi

  In 1934 Mozambique was a colony inhabited by bizarre people and by great loneliness, with disquieting, obliging shadows, rare, phantom presences, transitory, improbable, adventurous characters. It had something of Conrad’s stories, perhaps the restlessness, the degradation, and the secret melancholy.

  I had disembarked at Lourenço Marques four years earlier with a new degree in political and colonial science in my pocket, a surname that prompted bows from government officials, the memory of a brief squabble with my father which still burned me to my soul and which seemed unbecoming for a family like ours, and an appointment as “District Chief’’ in an uncivilized country—in short, colonial officer. Maybe it didn’t seem suitable even for me. But Lisbon was uncomfortable for me like a suit not my own. The Chiado, the Caffe della Brasileira, the summer holidays at Cascais in the family villa, days of youthful idleness, the horses at the Club della Marinha, the dances in the embassies—all these had become suffocating. But whatever could I do, if I wanted to live my life, with a degree in colonial science? Perhaps it had been a mistake to embark on these studies, but by this time they were completed. The choice rested with me between Lisbon’s idleness and Africa. I chose Africa. I was alone, available, unattached, and composed. I was twenty-six years old.

  Inhambane, after two years in Tete, seemed almost like Europe to me, even though it was a sleepy, dirty city of ravaged beauty, passed through by transitory people. Somehow the little commercial harbor sheltered behind the Punta da Barra, where every month the steamers put into port from Port Elizabeth and Durban straight from the Red Sea, gave an illusion of civilization, constituted a remote tie to the world. A walk as far as the docks, when the little English steamers or the ship from the Lisbon Line arrived, was fairly modest comfort, but it was as much as it was possible to have. And the smoke from the ship that was moving off into the horizon awoke a nostalgia for a Europe as remote as a children’s tale, already inconstant in its memories, perhaps nonexistent.

  Africa, with its immensity and its lassitude, magnified distances and deadened memories. The newspapers reported that in Austria Chancellor Dollfuss had been assassinated, that in America there were seventeen million unemployed, that in Germany the Reichstag burned. My father wrote me informative, verbose letters: my brother was thinking about taking holy orders, they had installed a telephone in the villa at Cascais, the monarchists’ cause had suffered a hard blow with the loss of Don Manuel. His death left the claim to the throne to an unknown young foreigner tied to the Miguelist faction, while my family belonged to the liberal aristocracy. The new Portuguese constitution, a copy of which was wide-open in front of me, defined my country as “a cooperative, united state,” and a government dispatch ordered the photograph of a young professor from Coimbra, with a scornful and presumptuous face, who had become Cabinet Minister—Antonio de Oliveira Salazar—to be hung up in public offices. I had hung it behind my back with a vague sense of uneasiness. But on my table I kept the portrait of Don Manuel, to whom I was bound by an almost familial affection. It was a contradiction, but Africa let contradictions live with perfect tolerance.

  The last English steamer had brought me a novel popular in Europe that took place on the Côte d’ Azur, but it lay uncut on the table. The nights of Inhambane were too far from the lights of Antibes of which popular novels spoke. Apparently the life was similar. There were palm trees, the moon was spectacular, there was lobster for supper at the Club, people loved with intense, voluble passion, the orchestra ventured upon jazz, the women accepted courtship with disarming ease. But everything was lived as if it were different and far away. Africa was a space in the spirit, unanticipated, hazardous. In Africa everyone had the sensation of being far away, even from himself.

  The trip had not, in fact, gone very well. I had lied to the captain. It had turned out to be uncomfortable and studded with incidents, including getting bogged down in the mud, which had stolen an entire morning. Fortunately, Joaquim was a first-rate mechanic and had a perfect knowledge of the road. He was an elderly mulatto, kind and pleasant, used to adversity and resigned to misfortune, who faced life as an obligation and the inconveniences of the roads as a diversion from the tedium of the trip.

  Lying down on the berth of the truck, while the African forest passed by above, I thought about the Vice-Governor’s rod that had moved over the map hung on the wall in his office in Inhambane pointing out to me the most favorable route. It was hot, the fan hummed loudly, from the wide-open window came the afternoon light and the buzz of a market deadened by the trees in the garden. The pointer moved slowly along Tete’s heavy-duty road, then swerved toward the northeast. The route on the map at that point was a slender white thread across the dark green of the forest, with no city within the radius of three hundred kilometers. The first large center was Kaniemba. Then there were two days by truck, if no breakdowns occurred. Now I was pursuing the course of the pointer, carrying out that incomprehensible, possibly rather absurd, order. A census at the boundary of the region of Kaniemba, five hundred kilometers away from my seat, work that in theory could last ten months, had the taste of punishment, together with a threatening warning. I wondered about the reasons why I had been able to induce my superior to entrust me with this task. I saw again the photograph of Don Manuel on my desk, I thought of the trial of a rich colonist for bullying his employees, at which I acted as plaintiff, I remembered the threats of a most excellent personage whose trafficking I indiscreetly set out to investigate. Perhaps something of all this entered into it, or something that I was unable to imagine. But by this time even to know did not change things much.

  The “sepoy” brought me the note while we were having coffee. The captain had been telling me a very Portuguese story of misery and nobility. It was a printed invitation, one of those used on ceremonious occasions among persons who have a certain place in society. It was slightly wrinkled and looked frankly old. It said in English that Sir Wilfred Cotton had the honor to invite for supper (a blank space followed filled in by pen with my name) for Thursday, October 24, at seven o’clock. Evening dress would be preferred. R.S.V.P.

  I turned the note around between my fingers. I must have looked as perplexed as the situation was perplexing. A barracks inhabited by an officer and two old “sepoys,” the city of Kaniemba—granted that it could be called a city—two days away by road, the deepest forest within kilometers, and an invitation to dine in evening dress and would I please respond. I asked the captain who Sir Wilfred was. An Englishman—well, of course, that I had supposed. But what kind of Englishman? Who was he? What did he do? He had arrived a few months earlier, he may have come from Salisbury—at least it was believed so—he lived in a little cottage at the edge of the village, who he was no one had the slightest idea, he always looked after his own affairs, he was an elderly gentleman—well, let’s say fifty, maybe a little more—he had an elegant appearance, he seemed to be a refined person.

  I was about to put the invitation into my pocket, but the “sepoy” looked at me with an aggrieved expression without leaving the room. I asked him what more there was. Mr. Cotton’s servant was at the kitchen door, Excellency, was what it was, maybe he should send him away? Sent to tell His Excellency that he took the liberty of reminding him that tomorrow was Thursday, he said exactly that.

  Wilfred Cotton’s cottage had belonged to the administration of the lumber company before the factory had moved two kilometers to the south toward the Zambezi. On the wooden colonnade at the entrance, under a recent paint job, you could still see an axe with a swallow-tail blade, the company trademark. A small uncultivated banana plantation separated it from the village. In the background, in the direction of the river, the heavy-duty road for Tete passed by. The rest was overhung with forest tentacles.

  It was exactly seven o’clock. Cotton was standing on the veranda waiting for me. He was wearing a white jacket with a silk bow tie. He said welcome, supper was almost ready, would I please sit down, my chauffeur could eat in the kitchen�
��he sent a servant to call him—would I care for an aperitif? A boy in black trousers and a white shirt was waiting near a sideboard with a bottle of wine in his hand. On the table there was a meat pie spread with currant jelly. It was a short supper, pleasant, relaxing, with neutral, formal conversation. Would I remain here for long? Perhaps a year. Oh, really? He hoped that this prospect did not frighten me. Did I like the place? Moderately? Oh, certainly, he found it understandable, but the climate was not too bad, didn’t I think? The humidity was bearable. A phonograph in the living room softly played Haydn.

  At tea we talked about tea. What we were drinking, so dark and aromatic, was a mixture of his: leaves of Li-Cungo, those tiny ones, that give an intense color and contain a high percentage of theine, mixed with some quality Niassa, very light and fragrant. A carillon clock struck eight, and Wilfred Colton asked me if I liked the theatre. I liked it very much, I admitted with a certain regret. In Lisbon I had liked it very much. Perhaps it was the artistic expression which I had liked the best. My host stood up with a certain haste, it seemed to me. Very well, he said. In that case I believe that this evening there is a performance. If you will come this way, I will have the pleasure to invite you. We should hurry.

  The hut was situated in the middle of the clearing that separated the cottage from the forest. It was a spacious round hut made of straw reeds, like those of the Negroes, but more robust in appearance. On the inside the reeds were whitened with lime. In the center was a little platform with a reading-desk, and leaning against the wall a modest bench. There was nothing else. Wilfred Cotton invited me to sit down, went up on the platform, opened a book which he had held under his arm, and said, “William Shakespeare. King Lear. Act One. Scene One. A state room in King Lear’s palace.”

  He read, or better still, he recited, with a surprising intensity, all the first act and half of the second. He was a Lear devastated by a mortal melancholy, but also a Fool sparkling with cynical, burning genius. Toward the middle of the second act, his voice seemed to betray his fatigue, and the conversation between Lear and Regan went slowly, perhaps a bit awkwardly. I thought of getting up, of saying to him, Enough now, Sir Wilfred, please sit down. It’s been lovely, but perhaps you’re tired. You look a little pale, too, you’re sweating. But at that moment the Duke of Cornwall spoke. He had a deep, troubled voice, full of foreboding. “Let us withdraw, ’twill be a storm!” And so the tragedy regained momentum, the voices got livelier, Gloucester leapt forward to say that the king was in a towering rage, that night was approaching and the winds becoming furious. And at that point the deep voice of Cornwall, as if thundering from the spacious room of a palace with very high ceilings, shouted to bolt the doors, in that tempestuous night, to protect themselves from the hurricane.

  It’s intermission, said Wilfred Cotton. Shall we go to the foyer for something to drink?

  The servant was waiting for us on the veranda of the cottage, where drinks were ready. We drank a cognac standing up, leaning on the wooden railing, gazing at the night before us. The monkeys, which all through twilight had made a frightening uproar, were now sleeping quietly in the trees. From the forest there were only rustling, stifled noises, a cry of a bird. Sir Wilfred asked me if the tragedy was to my liking. Yes, I admitted. And the interpretation, what did I think of that? Did I prefer King Lear or the Fool? I confessed that I felt the interpretation of the Fool was fascinating, so aggressive and passionate, almost demented. But to tell the truth, I had been overcome by the interpretation of Lear. There was something unhealthy, vile, about him, a metaphysical weakness, a condemnation. He agreed. For this reason the recitation of the Fool had been too hysterical, hallucinatory, feverish, because a strong “comic relief” was necessary in order to underline Lear’s obscure weakness. That Lear, he said, that evening rendered homage to Sir Henry Irving. I did not know him? It was normal—when he died perhaps I had not yet come into the world. Henry Irving, 1838-1905, the greatest Shakespearean actor of all time. He had the gestures of a king and the voice of a harp. Lear was his sublime role. No one had ever been able to equal it. His sadness was as deep as hell, and his torment was unbearable in the third scene of Act Five when he held his hands to his temples as if he wanted to protect them from an interior explosion and murmured, “She’s gone for ever. I know when one is dead, and when one lives. She’s dead as earth.”

  But perhaps we can continue our conversation on another occasion, Wilfred Cotton said without a pause. The third act is about to begin.

  For six months, until the end of 1934, every Thursday I went to the theatre with Wilfred Cotton. He was, from time to time, an awkward Hamlet, clumsy and cowardly, but also a kind Laertes; a mad Othello, but also a wicked Iago; a Brutus tormented and bitter, but also a presumptuous, scornful Anthony; and still many other characters in the pretense of joy and pain, of victories and defeat, on the shabby platform of the hut. Our evening conversations, at supper as in the foyer, were always polite without ever being friendly, cordial without ever being confidential, affable without ever being intimate. We talked very much about the theatre, and then about the climate, and the food, and the music. We thought highly of each other without ever admitting it, united by a complicity that expression would have irreparably compromised.

  The night before my departure, as an added attraction—it was a Saturday evening—Wilfred Colton invited me for a good-bye supper. That evening, in honor of the happiness that shone in my face notwithstanding my careful control, he put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because he said that that comedy, written to celebrate a noble marriage, was also well suited to celebrate my divorce from a part of the terrestrial globe which perhaps I had not particularly loved.

  We said good-bye at the theatre. I told him not to come to the truck with me, I preferred that we leave each other in that strange place which had been the scene of our curious relationship. I never saw him again.

  In October of 1939, in my study in Lourenço Marques, a dispatch passed across my desk. It was a request from the British Consulate in Mozambique for the recovery of the body of a subject of His British Majesty, deceased in Portuguese territory. The subject was named Wilfred Cotton, sixty-two years of age, born in London, died in the district of Kaniemba. Only then, when the tacit understanding that I had stipulated at another time had no more reason to be, human curiosity got the better of me and I rushed to the British Consulate.

  I was received by the consul, a good friend of mine. He seemed surprised when I revealed to him my old acquaintanceship with Wilfred Cotton, and even appeared slightly amazed that I did not know he had been a great Shakespearean actor, much loved by the English public, who had disappeared from the civilized world years before without anyone ever succeeding in tracing him. With confidentiality that was not usual with him, the consul also wanted to reveal to me the reasons that had induced Sir Wilfred Cotton to go off to die in that remote corner of the world. I believe that to report them would add little to this story. The reasons were generous, noble, perhaps pathetic. They would have suited not at all badly a play by Shakespeare.

  THE BACKWARDS GAME

  When Maria do Carmo Meneses de Sequeira died, I was gazing at The Young Ladies in Waiting by Velásquez in the Prado Museum. It was a July noon and I did not know that she was dying. I remained looking at the picture until quarter past twelve, then I left slowly, trying to carry away in my memory the expression of the figure in the background. I remember that I thought of Maria do Carmo’s words: “The key to the picture is in the figure in the background—it’s a backwards game.” I crossed the garden and took the bus as far as the Puerta del Sol, had dinner in the hotel—a well-chilled gazpacho and fruit—and went to lie down in the dimness of my room in order to escape the midday heat.

  The telephone woke me around five, or perhaps it didn’t wake me. I found myself in a strange drowsiness. Outside hummed the city traffic and inside hummed the air conditioner, which in my consciousness, however, was the motor of a little blue tugboat that crossed the
mouth of the Tagus at twilight while Maria do Carmo and I watched it. “There’s a call from Lisbon,” the voice of the telephone operator told me. Then I heard the little electric discharge of the switch and a masculine voice, indifferent and low. He asked my name and then said, “I am Nuno Meneses de Sequeira. Maria do Carmo died at noon. The funeral will be tomorrow at five. It was her express wish that I call you.” The telephone made a click and I said, “Hello, hello.” “They hung up, sir,” said the operator. “The connection is broken.”

  I took the Lusitania Express at midnight. I carried with me only a small suitcase with the bare necessities, and asked the concierge to hold my room for two days. The station was almost deserted at that hour. I had not reserved a couchette, and the conductor assigned me a compartment at the end of the train where there was one other passenger, a corpulent man who snored. I prepared myself with resignation for a night of insomnia, but contrary to my expectation I slept soundly until the outskirts of Talavera de la Reina. Then I lay motionless, awake, looking out the dark window at the dark desert of the Estremadura. I had many hours to think about Maria do Carmo.

  “Saudade,” said Maria do Carmo, “yearning. It isn’t a word, it’s a category of the spirit. Only the Portuguese are able to feel it, because they have this word in order to say that they have it. A great poet said this.” And then she began to talk about Fernando Pessoa. I called for her at her home in Rua das Chagas about six o’clock in the afternoon. She was waiting for me behind a window. When she saw me enter Largo Camñes, she opened the heavy front door and we went down toward the harbor, wandering through Rua dos Fanqueiros and Rua dos Douradores. “Let’s take a Fernandian itinerary,” she said. “These were the favorite places of Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper—semi-heteronomous by definition—for the city of Lisbon. It was here that he practiced his metaphysics, in this barber shop.”