They came to the bar. Men were playing cards at half a dozen tables; none of them was Afonso. The barman had not seen him that evening, but there was still time – it was not yet ten o’clock. The trio decided to wait, and they soon had their reward. Afonso appeared in the doorway, surveying the assembled drinkers with the air of a man fulfilling the last of the day’s many and onerous obligations. Walter had failed to provide a description of Afonso’s appearance, so there was some disappointment: he was an unimposing specimen. Not more than five feet tall, Afonso had legs that were disproportionately short, and bowed, and too thin for his torso. His upper body was almost cylindrical, with wide shoulders sloping into a sturdy neck. His hair, straight and dark as carbon fibre, came down to jaw level and was the same length all around; his skin was dark, and his cheekbones high and wide; the nose too was broad; his eyes were small, and the whites were pale amber. He wore a Brazil football shirt and capacious white shorts, heavily stained.
Smiling as if at the arrival of a long-time friend, Walter waved a hand to beckon him. At the same time, in a far corner of the bar, a man with the face of a long-retired and frequently beaten boxer was beckoning Afonso to join his card game. The latter, it appeared, was the more attractive proposition, but Afonso nevertheless made a detour to the table of Walter, Oszkár and Bernát. A bottle was brought for him, as an inducement. He sat down. It could not have been clearer that he was in no mood to be exhibited. The reluctance to linger was so palpable, as Bernát described it, that it was as if the seat were the north pole of a magnet and his shorts were another north. Introduced by Walter, Afonso shook hands with Bernát and gave him a grimace-smile, revealing the wreckage of his teeth; Oszkár received a fleeting grip and a semi-second of eye contact. There was an exchange between Walter and Afonso, in which ninety per cent of the talking was done by Walter. Afonso nodded as he listened, and glanced at Bernát a few times, and applied himself to the emptying of his bottle. This bottle, evidently, was far from being his first of the evening. It seemed that Walter had problems in making sense of what Afonso muttered at him. The gist of one extended grumble was that Afonso was very tired. Bernát said something to the effect that he had heard Afonso’s story, and that it had made a strong impression on him; Walter translated the remark; Afonso nodded, drawing a finger through the little puddle that his bottle had left on the tabletop. Now the ex-boxer was signalling again, impatiently. Afonso glanced in his direction and shrugged, as if to say that the matter was out of his hands. He spoke to Walter at some length, and Walter, with a sympathetic smile, responded in a whisper; their hands briefly clasped; another bottle arrived.
After a deep swig, Afonso gathered himself for the effort of congeniality. He threw his arms wide, embracing the air that the foreigners occupied, and made a statement that Walter translated as a question: ‘You would like to hear something?’ He closed his eyes and released a long murmur, a sort of melodious gargling, a flow of vowel sounds and soft glottal stops. It lasted for perhaps twenty seconds.
‘What was that?’ Oszkár asked.
‘A rhyme about a fish,’ said Afonso, through Walter. ‘A big fish.’
Oszkár looked to Walter for further elucidation. Walter spoke to Afonso, whose response, given with a show of apology, was: ‘Portuguese doesn’t have the words. Europe doesn’t have this fish.’
An encore of the rhyme was respectfully requested. Afonso did not seem to be averse to the idea. He pondered; he drank some more beer; he spoke. What he had said turned out to be: ‘London is a very large city.’
Bernát confirmed that this was the case.
In London, Afonso believed, there were buildings a hundred times higher than anything in Tefé, and everyone owned a car, and in a single week a man would be paid as much as a year’s work in Tefé would bring him.
‘But it’s cold,’ Bernát added.
‘But there is work, and money,’ countered Afonso. Suddenly thrusting his face close to Bernát’s, he demanded: ‘Why are you here?’
‘To see my brother,’ answered Bernát.
‘Brazilian women are the most beautiful in the world,’ said Afonso, slumping back. ‘Are you here for the women?’
‘I’m here for my brother,’ Bernát told him.
‘You are here for the men,’ said Afonso; this amused him hugely; his laugh was like the bark of a small dog. ‘How are the women in England?’ he asked Oszkár.
‘Some nice, some not,’ said Oszkár.
‘I think I will see the English women for myself,’ said Afonso. Something in Oszkár’s reaction both amused and antagonised him. ‘You think I cannot want to see England?’ he demanded. ‘You think I am in heaven here?’
‘Finding work in England is hard,’ Oszkár warned. ‘People sleep on the streets. There are hungry people in England.’
Afonso was incredulous. ‘In London there are hungry people?’ he shouted.
‘Yes,’ said Oszkár.
‘You see them?’
‘My brother lives in London. I live in a different city, where there are also people who have no money.’
Afonso’s metallic eyes were trained on Oszkár for ten seconds; there was no discernible thought behind them. Then he turned to Bernát and, abruptly as a soldier speaking to a civilian of an occupied territory, demanded: ‘Give me your phone number.’ Gratified by the surprise he had caused, he laughed loudly, displaying every one of the shattered teeth. ‘You live in London. You can help me,’ he said.
Bernát recited a string of digits; he was so taken aback by the man’s aggressiveness, he gave his true number. In English, Afonso repeated it perfectly. ‘I will call you,’ he stated, putting out a hand to conclude the agreement. That done, he stood up. He smacked the emptied bottle on the table like a gavel, before shaking the hands of Walter and the two Englishmen, as if he had bested the team of foreigners in negotiation. ‘I am happy to have met you,’ he said, in Walter’s translation, then veered across the room to the card players. And thus ended the interview with Afonso – ‘Walter’s saint of the authentic’, as Bernát called him.
Two days later, at the waterfront, Bernát encountered Afonso again: he was sitting on a rusted oil drum, behind a counter made from a cardboard box, on which various souvenirs were displayed for sale. He was threading beads into fish scales as Bernát approached; he gave no sign of recognition. Some sort of exchange was conducted, primarily by means of mime. At no point was there the slightest hint that the vendor had met his customer only two days before. Bernát bought six pairs of earrings, and added a substantial tip to the payment, as goes without saying. ‘Goodbye,’ said Afonso, in English, then he recited the London phone number, correctly, and laughed, aiming a finger-pistol at Bernát’s face.
11.
There is potential in the character of Afonso, it seems to Kate. She lies on the recliner in her room, imagining him. A continuation of the story soon offers itself. Perhaps a year after the scene in Tefé, the phone of the Englishman rings, and a voice says, in accented English: ‘I am in London.’ Kate takes a notebook from the desk to jot down the words: voice on phone – I am in London. The caller identifies himself: it is Afonso. ‘Things are not good with me,’ he says. He seems to be implying that the Englishman had omitted to warn him that London was not a land of prosperity for all. They arrange to meet at the statue in Piccadilly Circus, the following evening. Afonso & xxxx – Piccadilly – rain – café – women (tourists?), Kate writes.
Afonso appears, twenty minutes late. His hair is pulled back into a ponytail and he is wearing a bin liner with armholes cut into it, over a sweatshirt and jeans. His trainers make a squelching noise on the wet pavement. ‘Good to see you again,’ says the Englishman, or words to that effect. Afonso informs him that he wants a coffee. His skin has shrivelled around the eyes. He asks for a cigarette, but the Englishman does not smoke. Grimly, head down, Afonso follows him to a café.
‘English coffee is bad,’ he comments, on the first taste. Nothing in London is good:
it is dark and dirty, and the people are hostile. He is working at a restaurant. ‘They call it a restaurant, but it is not a restaurant,’ says Afonso. ‘It is a place where people go to stop feeling hungry,’ says Afonso, Kate writes. His job was a job that English people do not do, he tells the Englishman. All day he cleans floors, cleans toilets, empties bins, digs grease out of drains, unpacks boxes of burgers that look as if someone has painted them to look like meat. The boss is English but the people Afonso works with are not. ‘We are the ones you do not see,’ he says, swivel-ling his gaze to encompass everyone in the indictment. At night he sleeps in a garage, many miles away. He walks to work, because the buses cost too much money. But sometimes, it occurs to Kate, Afonso rides on the Underground trains, because on the Underground it is easy to steal. ‘Some days I steal a lot,’ he announces, loudly. Some teeth have been lost since the Englishman last saw him. Afonso eyes a handbag that is hanging on the back of a nearby chair, then laughs. One day soon he was going to get caught by the police, he said, because then he would be sent back home. ‘I hate England,’ he says. ‘But it is not so easy to be sent home,’ he complains. One of the men at the restaurant where Afonso worked had been arrested for taking things from a car, and had been to prison, but they did not send him home when he came out. ‘Why is that?’ he demands. The Englishman confesses that he does not know; his ignorance is what Afonso was expecting, it seems, Kate writes. ‘Do you have money?’ he asks. ‘I must eat, and today I have no money.’ A twenty-pound note is pocketed immediately, like a debt belatedly repaid. Abruptly he stands up. ‘I am working tonight,’ he announces; he shakes the Englishman’s hand with a single downward motion, as though throwing a lever. ‘Thank you,’ he says. By the door he stops to ask a young Japanese woman for a cigarette; she shrinks from him in fear; he bows low to her, then flings open the door and runs into the rain. And here the scene evaporates. Where does this go? Kate writes. Does it go nowhere? A short story? Two locations: Brazil & London. Perhaps not Brazil? Lisbon? Afonso encountered in Lisbon? Whole story in Lisbon? Englishman speaks Portuguese???
An hour later, she has relinquished the story of Afonso and the Englishman. She is now in Prague, with Dorota; this name has been fixed, as has the location. A scene is being sketched: walking home at dusk, Dorota is passed by a tram, which slows almost to a halt a few yards beyond her; at one of the windows, a face has turned to look at her; the reflections on the glass make it hard to make out the features at first, but as she comes alongside the tram she sees that the face is the face of Jakub, her dead husband. He has aged since he left her, and he has a beard, but there is no doubting that this is Jakub. She mouths his name; her voice is trapped within her throat. He smiles at her, but the smile has no recognition in it: it is the smile of a man who has gained the attention of an attractive stranger. The tram gathers speed, and the man at the window smirks, knowing that he has made an impression; it is an unattractive expression, and unlike Jakub.
She is writing – the tram turns: flash of sunlight on the glass, then the face has gone?? – when she becomes aware of an intermittent rumbling sound: Naomi’s voice, from the room above. The pitch of her voice rises briefly, as does the volume: a phrase is uttered with force, with anger, but no words are audible. The rumbling resumes, and stops after half a minute. Kate goes upstairs and knocks.
‘Do come in,’ Naomi calls out, with strained gaiety. She is sitting on the floor, holding her phone; she pulls herself up onto the bed. ‘Sorry about the disturbance,’ she says.
‘Everything all right?’ asks Kate.
‘Gabriel,’ Naomi answers.
‘Oh?’
‘He thinks we have things to discuss.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘I’m all discussed out.’
‘He cares about you,’ says Kate.
‘He’s seeing a new woman,’ says Naomi; she might be referring to an incorrigible brother. ‘Another one off the internet. Edwina.’
‘And how’s that going?’
‘Going OK. Nice-looking, apparently. Reads Tolstoy. Fan of Tarkovsky. Ticks a lot of boxes.’
‘But—?’
‘Well, for one thing, she loves Tchaikovsky. Really really loves Tchaikovsky.’
‘That’s a problem?’
‘For Gabriel, yes.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Oh yes. And I think there are bedroom complications too,’ she says, with a squeamish wince. ‘I get the impression that Edwina is a bit too …’ – she pretends to search for the word – ‘dynamic.’
‘I don’t want to know any more.’
‘It’s OK – I don’t have the details,’ says Naomi. ‘But I hope he gives Edwina a bit more time. Maybe she’ll do him some good. Widen his horizons. And give him a kick up the backside. He got one from me, obviously, in the end. But evidently it wasn’t strong enough. Edwina might be just what’s required. Get him out of his comfort zone, as we say nowadays. You never know.’
Before, it always appeared that Gabriel’s inertia was fundamental to his appeal; he was gentle and cultured, and he knew how to cook, but above all he ‘refused to play the game’; Kate remembers her sister saying this – nearing forty, but talking like a teenager. ‘So you think he needs a kick up the backside now?’ Kate asks.
‘Very much so.’
‘Because?’
‘He’s in a rut. A neck-high rut,’ Naomi pronounces.
Previously Naomi had wanted her sister to believe that Gabriel’s dead-end jobs were chosen deliberately, to ‘cultivate boredom’, as she once put it; in boredom there was freedom; in boredom he could think. He was in the world of retailing, but not of it. ‘Is this news?’ says Kate. ‘I thought the rut was meant to be a good place.’
‘He’s been in that bookshop far too long,’ says Naomi. Resentment is becoming Gabriel’s dominant tone, she says; he is no longer suffering silently in the desert of commerce. ‘He needs to do something instead of feeling sorry for himself,’ she says.
‘Like what?’ asks Kate.
‘I’ve no idea. His brother thinks he should write his gypsy book.’
‘Is that such a terrible idea?’
‘He’s missed the boat on that one, I reckon,’ says Naomi. ‘Besides, he doesn’t have your stamina.’ As she says this, her phone buzzes; exasperated, she directs the call to voicemail, then laughs.
‘What’s funny?’
‘For a man with no stamina he’s bloody persistent,’ says Naomi. She looks at her phone as if at the photo of a dead friend.
‘He’s very attached to you,’ says Kate.
‘So it appears,’ says Naomi. ‘But God knows why. I’m awful,’ she states.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because it’s true. I’m hard work, for little reward.’
‘I don’t think that. Gabriel doesn’t think that.’
Naomi turns to squint at her sister, as though the compliment has taken her by surprise, and is opaque. Her gaze returns to the phone. ‘It’s odd, what’s happened with Gabriel,’ she says. She withdraws into a brief reminiscence, then elucidates: ‘The first thing he said to me was: “I’m not desperate.” Within a minute of sitting down. “I’m not desperate.” And I said to him: “That’s good. Because neither am I.”’ She was not one of those women who do this sort of thing because the clock is ticking; the ticking of her clock did not worry her, she had told him. And Gabriel wanted her to know, right at the outset, that he was not hoping for ‘consequence-free sex’; nearly all of the other women he had met in this way had been hoping that the evening was going to end in bed; some of them, even after meeting him, had thought that the bedroom was the inevitable destination. Naomi assured him that she was an exception. ‘I find lightness difficult,’ Gabriel had said; it was nothing like an admission; he might have been informing her of his blood group. It had been the most peculiar conversation: more like an interview than a date – ‘a mutual interview’, says Naomi. When he was in his twenties, Gabriel disclo
sed, he had lived with a woman; he had decided that he would never live with a woman again; he did not go into the reasons for this decision, but Naomi understood that possessiveness had been the crucial issue. Gabriel was not a possessive person, he said; Naomi, who had never lived with anyone, felt herself to be in accord with this strange and forthright man. ‘But now—’ she laments, and she points to the phone as evidence of the change that has come over Gabriel.
Before Kate can suggest that something other than possessiveness might be at work here, the phone buzzes again – a text this time. Naomi reads it, with a rueful frown, and drops the phone on the bed; she looks out of the window, uncertain as to what she should do. ‘What time are you going to see Mum?’ she asks.
‘Twelve.’
Naomi considers for ten seconds. ‘I think it would be too much for her, seeing us together,’ she decides.
Kate refrains from the observation that Naomi has not seen her mother for many months, and is therefore in no position to judge what would or would not be too much for her.
‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ says Naomi. ‘If you don’t mind dropping me off. Or I could walk.’
‘It’s too far,’ says Kate; Naomi knows this.
‘I do care about him,’ says Naomi, picking up her phone, ‘but this has to stop.’
On the stairs Kate can hear her sister’s voice, mollifying.
12.
Leonor had lived with her daughter and Martin and Lulu for a year, until it became clear that the arrangement was unsustainable. Incidents were frequent in the later months, and often involved the granddaughter. ‘You never know what you’re going to get from one hour to the next,’ said Lulu, in tears; her grandmother, unable to find something that she had misplaced, yet again, had accused her of stealing. More than once Lulu came home to find her room in disarray. Under the misapprehension that the house in which she was living was her own, Leonor announced one evening that it might be best if Lulu were to find somewhere else to stay. In a moment of tenderness, she put her arms around her granddaughter and called her Daniela; Daniela, it was learned, had been a friend of Leonor’s, when they were Lulu’s age. At night Leonor sometimes wandered into Lulu’s room, weeping, not fully awake. At the table she would stare at her, as if trying to determine who this child might be; she might suddenly press Lulu’s hand in a paroxysm of affection. Lulu’s friends stopped coming to the house; her schoolwork suffered; she could no longer sleep properly. Something had to be done.
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