Like a Fading Shadow

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  * * *

  I saw Dizzy Gillespie often for a period of ten years. I saw him at the height of his musical and physical powers and also in the decline of old age. Sometimes he wore a puffy hat that matched his prodigious cheeks. In his later years, he wore a kufi cap and a dashiki. I spoke enough English to tell him how much I admired him and to ask a few questions, but I always missed parts of the response. It peeved him that jazz was associated with alcohol and drugs, and the more worked up he got the harder it was for me to follow what he was saying. John Coltrane only came into his full powers when he stopped doing heroin. Heroin and alcohol did not make Charlie Parker a better musician, they just killed him at thirty-four. As for himself, he said, with his thumb pointing at his chest, and a huge smile, how could he tour all year around the world, at his age, if he did not care for his health like an athlete? One night, in the Isabel la Católica Theatre in Granada, I went to look for him backstage. I found him in his dressing room. He was sitting in front of the mirror, legs wide apart, the tunic rolled up to the waist. He was wearing black pants, big black shoes, and short red socks. As I entered, I caught a glimpse of Dizzy Gillespie’s face when he was alone, without the great smile, without the swelling cheeks. The trumpet was on the floor beside him, and he had both hands on his knees. He looked exhausted, facing the mirror but looking somewhere far beyond, so absorbed in his thinking that he didn’t hear me come in. He was seventy-three, and as of the beginning of that November he had already given three hundred concerts that year. We had had dinner together and he had talked the entire time, but as he smiled at me from the mirror it was clear he did not remember me. He had told me that most of the cities he visited were little more than names to him, webs of lights seen from an airplane, cityscapes that extended beyond the windows of a taxi or the hotel rooms where he usually arrived in the late hours and left before dawn. He asked me if Granada was by the sea.

  6

  He left the hotel one morning in May, walked down a dark, narrow street and out onto the sunny square with the statue of the king on horseback. The white light was reflected from all sides, from the limestone walls of the buildings, from the tiles on the ground. He had to close his eyes. It was the first time he had seen tiles like that. Before, he had only walked on the concrete sidewalks, which were no different from those in American cities. How did Lisbon appear to him as he walked out of the hotel for the first time? He had only seen it from the taxi window the night before—empty, poor, dark. He probably did not sleep well. He must have been exhausted from the transatlantic flight, and after so many nights on the run, nights when he could barely close his eyes, waiting for the last newscast of the day or reading every newspaper front to back, looking for the face and name that are no longer his.

  Nothing remains of who he was, except that which cannot be erased—his fingerprints. But to check those, they must first arrest him, they must first suspect him. And that is very unlikely now and even more so in this European city, where he now finds himself, perhaps by chance, after seeing the name on the departures board in Heathrow Airport, the split-flap letters that changed so rapidly with those clicking sounds, making his head spin. Fast like everything else around him—the moving escalators, the slippery floor, the humming of the air conditioners, the signs, the storefronts with endless rows of newspapers and magazines and books, the voices on the loudspeakers echoing. It would be easier to reach Africa from Lisbon, to find one of those places with ongoing revolutions or civil wars; countries with powerful names, emphatic vowels—Angola, Biafra, Congo, Rhodesia—where white mercenaries fight colonial wars; brave soldiers of fortune in camouflage and berets who will welcome him as a hero when they realize who he is, what he has done. A geography book he read in prison had the names of all the Portuguese colonies. He repeated them at night to relieve his insomnia or during the long lineups and cell counts—the names of political and economic capitals, rivers, bays, harbors. He also memorized lists of techniques to seduce women, sailing terms, names of wines, the sites and dates of the World War, the islands in the Pacific, the names of the planets and their moons.

  * * *

  Outside the hotel it smelled like a port. Coal smoke and roast chicken. Nothing is more specific, more ephemeral, than a smell. It smelled and sounded like Africa in the corner of the square where João das Regras Street would lead him: black women wearing colorful tunics and head wraps; men chatting and smoking by a church, enjoying the sun in a state of calm he had never seen in black people in America. Music from an improvised drum and a thick smell of fried food permeated the air.

  He had a map on which the hotel receptionist had marked how to get to the port, but he did not need it, he instinctually drifted toward places like that without searching for them—ports, cheap hotels, pawnshops, dive bars with prostitutes, secondhand book stands, pornography stores and cinemas, the corners and alleys frequented by drug dealers. Certain places can’t be found by asking directions the way you would for a post office or pharmacy. I wonder how he saw the world, what he saw in the streets I see now. He must have been perceptive to cues that are invisible to me, like frequencies beyond my range of hearing, smells I don’t heed—tar, cheap disinfectant, decomposing fish and fruit, stagnant water. What must it be like to live in a constant state of alert, for that to become your way of life, like a spy or a shadow. Calculating every step, every word; checking the peephole before opening the door, making sure it’s bolted; sleeping with your clothes on, over the blankets, ready to go; memorizing each face in the hotel lobby; choosing the darkest corner of the bar from which to observe the entrance; noting emergency exits; checking the bathroom for windows to the backstreet; drinking a beer or two, a couple of shots of bourbon, feeling the warm beginnings of intoxication, but declining when the bartender suggests another round for this customer who looks nothing like the regulars, he who came one night and never returned or maybe he came back several days in a row, or several weeks; so quiet, so out of place; the only one that keeps glancing at the television—a show has just started, FBI: The Ten Most Wanted Criminals; it’s on every Sunday. He fears his face will appear on the screen, but he is also proud, pride that often goes frustrated, except last time: number one of the Ten Most Wanted. Pride turned into arrogance, fear into terror and vertigo, the exaltation of impunity, a reckless challenge. As he sat at a bar in Toronto, his were the only eyes fixed on the television, staring at his unrecognizable face, barely able to hear the announcer through the noise of conversations and laughter, the voice that said his former name as a number appeared under the photo: one hundred thousand dollars.

  * * *

  How would someone who has spent more than half his life in prison react to the calm bustling of the average street in this city; someone who is used to always being on guard, always avoiding notice but also carrying himself in a way that thwarts antagonism. It had been a vast, gloomy prison with resounding domes and battlement towers with big searchlights.

  Here in Lisbon, there seemed to be no threat. People muttered in an incomprehensible language. The hotel maid greeted him one morning with a smile and a brief nod as he walked out of his room. Her name was Maria Celeste. She had black hair and one of those serious yet friendly Portuguese faces. She was photographed in the room where he stayed. The photo shows her leaning on the marble edge of a dresser, wearing a black dress and a pleated white apron. She said he was well-dressed and kept his room tidy, but didn’t seem to bathe. According to her, he left each morning at the same time.

  The worn-out carpet muffled his steps. All the voices that spoke to him or that he heard in the street enveloped him in a suffocating and numbing gauze—he did not understand anything. He had observed the world his entire life as if from a window in an empty room. He passed by cafe windows and restaurants where big pots of food sat on display. He stared at the menus taped to the glass and the small, handwritten signs listing the daily specials. He was starving but the exotic smells also made him nauseous. He did not trust those small es
tablishments with their paper tablecloths and everything so crammed; they were unlike anything he knew. The grocery stores had a unique blend of smells: freshly ground coffee, dried cod, spices, lard, herring, olive oil.

  The smell of fried fat made him want to eat a hamburger. He liked to sit in those cafeterias that were open all day and order a medium-rare hamburger with lots of ketchup, mustard, and a Pepsi. He still had the habit—from prison—of eating quickly, leaning into the plate and glancing to the sides. It was odd to see the gentleman with the suit, tie, and glasses wolf down fries by the handful.

  Some thought he was a plainclothes policeman or an informer. Now, as he walked through the square—wet morning light washing over the old king on horseback at the center—the pangs of hunger were making him lose focus. He could not see the newsstand the receptionist had mentioned. He entered another square, a bigger one with another king or whatever it was standing on a column. A former cellmate of his admired how he boasted of being an atheist and read a book by a philosopher named Nietzsche. The sidewalk was wider and crowded with street vendors and beggars, men without legs dragging their bodies between the tables of an outdoor cafe. Suddenly he recognized the pages of the Herald Tribune and the Times from afar. The newsstand was a small kiosk with vibrant colors and the newspapers and magazines hung from pins on a clothesline. In this new undecipherable world, those newspapers were the only things with words he could comprehend. He bought the Times, the Tribune, Life, Newsweek. The man who sold him the stuff found it strange that he made no eye contact and only extended his arm to offer a handful of coins.

  Disoriented and hungry, he did something he had never done before. He walked to one of the fancier cafes and sat down with some hesitation. The interior was lined with mirrors, dark wood, marble, and waiters in black jackets and bow ties, like in the movies. He was unsure about the etiquette and felt no one would be convinced by his suit, the shoes, the glasses. The secret agents in novels know how to fit in the most expensive cafes and restaurants. They only have to look at the wine list for a few seconds to know the best bottle in the house. A waiter approached him, silver tray in hand, and asked him something with a smile. He hunched his shoulders and pressed the newspapers against his chest. “Cafe,” he said. The waiter responded with another sentence he could not understand. Later he would realize the waiter had been trying to speak English. “Coffee,” he muttered, avoiding eye contact, then pointing at a glass case with small cakes stacked in a pyramid. He felt the urge to run away when the waiter left with the order.

  But he did nothing. He stared at the people walking past the window. He looked at the cobblestone, the trees, the white-marble figures at the base of the column where the dark green bronze king stood against the blue sky. It was like being in a black-and-white photo, or one of those old movies they used to play in prison, where a man with slicked-back hair sits at a cafe smoking and looks up as a woman with a hat and a short veil appears. But he must be careful because the meeting could very well be a trap, the woman just bait, and as he gets ready to leave, a policeman or a traitor with a strange accent and a goatee suddenly appears.

  The waiter finally came with the coffee in a porcelain cup, sugar, and a piece of cake on a plate with gilded edges and a monogram. He ate the cake in a few big bites, getting cream all over his newspapers. On one of the pages was his old name and the unrecognizable face. He looked heavier in the photo and was wearing sunglasses; a side shadow accentuated the cleft chin. It’s important to change your weight often. Eat and drink as much as possible for a few months, then undergo a severe diet. As a result, some will remember you fat and some will remember you skinny. They will all have a hard time recognizing you later. Fatness and thinness are exaggerated in photographs. He looked up and saw his image in the mirror. His face was thin, more angular. He looked younger.

  This time the newspaper said that someone had spotted him at an airport cafeteria in Caracas wearing a green trench coat and carrying a briefcase. They repeated the same things they always said, adding a few new details or witness accounts to make it seem like they were making progress. Some had seen him in Geneva, laughing and dining in an expensive restaurant with a blond woman who looked like a prostitute, ordering the most expensive wine and dishes. Others had seen him in a taxi, crossing the jungle between Mexico and Guatemala; or at the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, buying a ticket to Jamaica; or getting off a small plane in Cuba, where Fidel Castro was due to announce, any day now, that he had been granted asylum. Others said he had been beaten to death in Acapulco and was buried in some beach.

  * * *

  To feel, even if just for a moment, the relief of escape, the knowledge that your pursuers are far behind; to stare at this square and listen to all the conversations, the clinking of spoons and coffee cups, people’s steps, the water fountain; to feel safe in a city where no one seems interested in recognizing you, a city on the other side of the world, far from all the anxiety of the previous months, the highways, the police car sirens, the motel rooms where you could only stay one night and had to leave in a hurry, ringing telephones, urgent door knocks, boarding calls in airports, the sound of steps behind you in a back alley. To see Rossio Square through the eyes of this man that first morning in Lisbon, the pale man in the dark suit and the sunglasses reading English newspapers in the Pastelaria Suiça, or pretending that he was reading, using the large pages as a screen, anonymous among all the tables although it would have taken little effort to notice how different he was, not because of any feature in particular, but something else about him, a strange aura of solitude like that of an animal or a statue, or one of the mannequins in the windows of those tailor shops he would later pass as he walked down the street with his armful of newspapers, a street that led to an arch of white stone or marble and into a misty glow where one could look up and see the silhouette of another bronze king on horseback atop a column; or perhaps, he found himself walking past the shops and bars of Cais do Sodré, not really knowing how he got there, turning onto the backstreets where it smelled of beer and urine and rotting fish, places barely reached by daylight.

  The hotel and the food were very cheap, and when he had exchanged money at the airport they had given him a wad of cash so big that for a few moments he felt newly rich. But he would run out of money soon, he didn’t know how to get more, and he still had to buy a ticket to Africa and get by until the departure date.

  He took a taxi to Cais do Sodré on his first day in Lisbon, or maybe it was a streetcar. He walked down the narrow Arsenal Street or along the river. It was an intensely bright morning so he wore sunglasses. He began to recognize signs that confirmed he was on the right track: a certain thickness in the air, bars with foreign names, neon hotel signs, half-opened doors leading to darkly lit stairs. It was mid-morning and the streets were already lined with women and girls. Old women with thick makeup; women with low-cut dresses leaning out windows decorated with geraniums in tin cans; African women; Indian women; Arab women.

  As he got deeper into the neighborhood, he began to see other men: sailors pushing their way along the sidewalks, marines in uniform; soldiers in their last days before departing to the colonies in Africa—a raw and alcoholic masculinity. He looked out of place in his suit and sunglasses, which gave him an air of distinction but also depravity. Almost instinctually, his eyes looked for the drunkest sailor, one who could fall behind the rest of the group so he could push him into an alley and steal his wallet and documentation. It felt like Montreal, Saint Louis, or New Orleans—a jungle of smells and human forms, the promise of decadence and adventure, docked boats that would soon be departing for cities that made all his favorite lies seem plausible. Head chef on a cargo boat on the Mississippi. First officer taking time off after a grueling voyage. A war correspondent trying to get to the colonies in Africa so he could report on the conflict. James Bond introduces himself as John Bryce, an ornithologist, when he arrives on the island of Dr. Julius No. He recognized a few drunk conversations in
English and a faint familiar smell. John Bryce sounds like a real name. Ornithology is the scientific study of birds. Neon signs lined a stretch of walls corroded by the salty humidity of the ocean. Pink, red, and blue incandescent letters hung below balconies and clotheslines. They announced the entrances to the Jakarta, the Oslo, the Copenhagen, the Burma, the Arizona Bar, the Niagara Bar, the California Bar, the Bolero Bar.

  To smell, at last, something familiar—roasted beef fat and butter-fried potatoes, air freshener, the musty carpets of those bars with red and black curtains. His eyes set on the most tempting of them all. Inside a stone arch: a neon cactus with a Texan hat, a beer, and a name that still exists today, forty-five years later, TEXAS BAR.

  7

  I had been writing for over three months and the words were flowing like music played with eyes closed. I felt removed from my external reality like the musician who leans into his instrument, oblivious to the sounds of clinking glasses, cocktail shakers, and low conversations; immune to all distraction and attentive to every interior impulse and intuition, anything that could be fertile ground for my writing.

  My son was born and by the time my wife returned from the hospital, exhausted and happy with the baby in her arms, a small cap and wool blanket protecting him from the December cold, I had already resumed my writing. I would go to the pharmacy to buy diapers and on the way back stop for paper and whatever cheap whiskey I could afford. Alcohol and nicotine seemed as necessary as ink and paper.