A Small Death in lisbon (42 page)

'And then what'll happen to our great footballing nation?'

'They'll be well-read footballers,' she said and laughed a deep, dirty laugh that probably came from smoking Marlboro but what the hell, it made my chest boom, my spine prickle. We ate the crabs, drank more beer and talked about books, films, actors, celebrities, drugs, fame, success and I ordered a lobster split and grilled and Luisa said she'd pay for a
vinho verde
Soalheiro Alvarinho 96 which had more spunk to it than any
vinho verde
I've ever tasted. So we ordered a second bottle and drank that down in flashing gulps and two and a half hours after we'd arrived we fell out of the air conditioning and into the hot empty street with no traffic, no people and the trees still in the siesta silence.

We walked arm in arm. At the door of her apartment building she grabbed hold of my wrist and half-pulled me up the stairs. She only let go to get her keys out and then we were in the dark corridor, kissing, and she kicked the door shut with a bang so loud, glasses tinkled in the kitchen cupboards.

She led me through the living room, walking out of her sandals into her bedroom where she turned and yanked the shirt out of my trousers and ran her hands up my chest. She shrugged and the straps fell off her shoulders and the dress to the floor. She tore my jeans down my thighs. I wrestled out of my shirt. She gripped me through my undershorts and looked up with eyes that dared me. She pulled the shorts out and over and stripped down her own panties. I pulled her to me and she jumped and wrapped her legs around my waist, crooked an arm around my neck. She lowered herself slowly, her pubic hair scratching my belly, impossibly hot, heat beyond human tolerance, until we connected and she held herself there until we were both trembling, shuddering. She straightened her arms and leaned back smiling at me, smiling at my agony and, as we fell on to the bed, I felt like the surfer who feels the big wave hump underneath him, tons of ocean drawn up, the surge, the roll, the terrific speed and monumental collapse.

The traffic woke us. The Lisboans coming home at dusk. Wordlessly, we crawled into each other and made love again. The mirror looked darkly on. A red light passed across the scrap of velvet sky visible from the open window, followed by the sound of thumping helicopter blades. The room smelled of sex—sweat, perfume and something sweet like berry juice smeared on skin. Life felt suddenly rich, the city ripe, the room wine-dark and full of easy, complex possibilities.

I don't know how I got myself out of her apartment. There was a brief leaden moment and I was in the car, heading out of the city through the darkening Monsanto park, with her body smell still on me and something unfurling in my chest like the sails of a flotilla setting out.

The earth felt solid under my feet in Paço de Arcos. As I let myself into the house I had that feeling of money in the bank and a fridge full of food, neither of which was true.

It was 10.00
P.M
. There was a light on in the kitchen and voices. Olivia was tucked tight under the kitchen table listening to Faustinho, a local fisherman, who was sprawled on a chair well back from the table barely within reach of his beer. He was working himself up into a lather about the government, the European Union's fishing quotas and Benfica in ascending order.

He struggled to his feet when I came in. Olivia looked relieved, tired. We kissed.

'You smell different,' she said and went to bed.

Faustinho, grey as a wolf, tossed his beer back and put an arm around my shoulder.

'Come,' he said, 'you have to see this boy. He saw something the other night. It'll help with your investigation. You must talk to him. Have you got any money?'

We walked to the gardens and through the underpass to the car park on the other side of the Marginal. Faustinho strode ahead, looking under boats, in the sheds. I lagged behind, enjoying some purposelessness.

'What's the rush?' I shouted after him.

'It's been an hour already,' he said.

'I thought you said he was bedding down for the night.'

'He's a street kid, anything could have happened. Maybe he got scared.'

'You didn't tell him I was the police.'

'No, no, but I've been gone an hour and maybe he starts thinking.'

'You know this kid?'

'I've seen him before. Skinny little bugger. He's got some black in him too. Wears a jacket two sizes too big for him.'

We searched the boatyard and car park. Nothing. I sat on the keel of a boat and smoked and looked out to sea, feeling useful. We went back to
A Bandeira Vermelha
and drank
aguardente
distilled from
vinho verde
that António had brought down from the Minho in five-litre flagons.

Faustinho gave another longer description of the kid, having persuaded himself that I didn't believe him. António and I leaned into each other on either side of the bar and looked impassively on as Faustinho measured the kid up with the aid of his own shoulder.

I strolled home in the warm night. I hovered at the bottom of the attic stair, tempted. I went into the bedroom, stripped and got between the sheets naked, still with her smell on me.

16th July 1964, Pensão Isadora, Praça da Alegria, Lisbon

Manuel Abrantes woke up with a jerk, staring at the threadbare central panel of the bedside carpet. His moustache was full of sweat, his head confused by alcohol gone bad in his brain. He didn't know the room until the smell of cheap perfume made it through his dense nasal hair and a light snoring at his back reminded him some more. He looked over his shoulder trying to remember a face or a name. Neither came to him. She was young and a little fat. She was lying on her back, the sheet down around her waist. Her breasts were widely spaced and had slipped down her ribs under her armpits. She had a light moustache. Her Alentejana accent came back to him.

He got up, wiped the sweat out of his moustache and was repelled by the smell of the girl still on him. He found a towel and went down the corridor to the bathroom. He showered under a trickle of tepid water standing up in a cast-iron bath. A small headache had emerged which didn't bother him, and a sore penis which did. They always tell you they're clean, but...

He dressed. His shirt was in a ghastly state. Yesterday the weather had been torrid and he'd drunk too much and that had made him sweat doubly. He'd have to go to work via the family house in Lapa and pick up a fresh shirt. A suit, too. This one was trampled to death. He looked like a broken salesman rather than an
agente de i° classe
in the
Polícia International e de Defesa do Estado
(PIDE) and still not even twenty-two years old.

He clicked a coin down on the bedside table and left. He looked for his car in the Praça da Alegria, until he remembered he'd left it up in the Bairro Alto. He walked down Rua da Gloria and caught the funicular up the hill and found his car parked on Rua Dom Pedro V. He drove to Lapa. The house was silent. The rest of the family were in the Estoril villa for the summer. He shaved, showered, moved his
bowels massively and changed into fresh clothes which felt cool around his chafed penis.

He straightened himself up in the mirror, pulled his shirt loose over his gut and then tucked it back in again, undecided which looked better. He had wanted to be at his best for this day's work and it had all started badly, but he hoped he'd pulled himself back on track now.

He drove out on to the Marginal and noticed for the first time on the outskirts of the city that the air was fresher and purer. After five days of brutal swelter, the sea was blue again, the sky clear and the twin steel towers of the Ponte Salazar, the new suspension bridge being built across the Tagus, were pin-sharp in the flat calm of the estuary. The workmen were already out on the massive concrete ramp, preparing to string the first cable across the river.

He stopped off in Belem to take a coffee and a
pastel de nata
in the Antiga Confeitaria. He ate three and smoked a cigarette. Now that his body was clean and his stomach sweetened he began to relish his work. He'd been with the PIDE for two and a half years and hadn't regretted a moment. He'd spent his first year in the PIDE headquarters in Rua António Maria Cardoso in the Chiado district of Lisbon, where he'd demonstrated to his superiors a natural talent for the work. They didn't even have to tell him how to recruit informers. He knew. He found out people's weaknesses, he implied PIDE interest in their activities, and then saved them from arrest and the dreaded Caxias prison by bringing them into his network. It surprised him that his most significant weapon was charm. He'd thought he was devoid of it, but he'd learnt more than he'd thought from his elder brother, Pedro, and now that he was in a new world, where he had no history, he could use what previously he'd only observed. It was so facile. Charm was just a question of demeanour. If he smiled people liked him. The smiling made his long-lashed, blue-green eyes shine, which attracted their attention, while his moustache made him appear genial, and his thinning hair gave him an air of vulnerability so that, overall, people trusted him. He never made the mistake of despising people for this because he was so glad to be liked. He just made sure that his superiors knew that this carefully crafted exterior concealed a ruthless persistence, an unflinching severity, and an unswerving relish for following through.

Manuel asked the barman at the Antiga Confeitaria to make up a
packet of six
pastels de nata.
He crushed out his cigarette, paid and drove to the Caxias prison.

In his first year at the PIDE headquarters he'd been particularly successful at rooting out dissent in the university. It had been easier than he'd expected. His brother was at the university. He was very popular. His friends were constantly in the house. Manuel listened. He took down names and fed them into his network. He did more recruiting. He cajoled, threatened and manipulated until by the end of 1963 he had compiled dossiers on two professors, who would never work again, and eight students whose futures were over before they'd even begun. His superiors were impressed. His father wanted him to root out all the union men and communists from his factories, and was annoyed to find that he didn't have the influence over this institution that he'd come to expect elsewhere. Manuel was moved to the interrogation centre in the Caxias prison where the
Estado Novo
detained their more serious, more politically active dissidents. These people needed more persuasive methods to encourage them to help PIDE uncover the network of communist cells threatening not just the stability of the government, but the country's whole way of life.

The first months in Caxias were spent honing his interrogation skills, partly through practice but initially by watching more experienced men through a recently installed two-way mirror. The new mirror excited Manuel. It brought back memories of childhood. He liked to sit close to it, almost with his nose touching, and sometimes with the prisoner's face pressed right up against it on the other side. The pleasure was exquisite, almost sexual for him, to openly observe, without being seen, a man's shattered face as he was brought to the limits of his endurance.

This was another part of the training—the breaking-down of the prisoner. The preferred method was a combination of sleep deprivation and random beatings. They had installed sound equipment which, with little supervision, could keep a prisoner awake for days. They still used the old method, the statue, where the prisoner was made to lean against a wall, his bodyweight supported by his fingertips, but it was time-consuming and required regular beatings and therefore manpower.

Manuel parked up outside the fort. He put his jacket on, picked up his briefcase and the cakes and remembered with a thrill the
reason why he'd bought the girl the night before, and why he'd particularly wanted one with an Alentejana accent. He showed his pass, which the guard ignored. He walked across the inner courtyard to the interrogation centre. Waiting for him in his office was Jorge Raposo, an overweight twenty-one-year-old from Caldas da Rainha who was an
agente de 2° classe.
He was talking to another
agente
about an English pop group called the Beatles and their new single called 'Can't Buy Me Love'. Jorge was translating the tide into Portuguese but he shut up when Manuel came in and the other agent slipped out after a hurried
bom dia.

'What's his problem?' asked Manuel, laying his briefcase down and the packet of cakes. Jorge shrugged and eyed the cakes. 'We haven't got to the stage where we're reporting each other for listening to pop music.'

Jorge shrugged again, lit a cigarette and turned the box of matches over and over on his desk.

'So, you like the Beatles,' said Manuel.

'Sure,' said Jorge, sitting back and blowing smoke at the ceiling.

'She loves me yeah, yeah, yeah,' said Manuel in English, to show he was groovy, too.

'She loves you...' said Jorge.

'What?'

'She loves
you
yeah, yeah, yeah. Not "me".'

Manuel grunted and sat at his desk and laid his hands down flat. Jorge regretted correcting him now. He thought it might have an impact on the cake situation.

'What have we got today?' asked Manuel.

Jorge stuck his cigarette back into the corner of his mouth and looked down at his papers wondering how he could remedy the situation. The name sprang off the page.

'There's always that Maria Antónia Medinas girl,' said Jorge, who saw immediately that he'd hit the right button.

'Ah, yes,' said Manuel, frowning as if he'd forgotten her, 'the girl from Reguengos.'

'The one with the blonde hair ... the blue eyes...'

'And I thought they were all Arabs out there,' said Manuel. 'You know ... dusky ... Moorish.'

'She
certainly isn't,' said Jorge, licking his lips.

'Shut up, Jorge, and have a cake,' said Manuel quickly.

Jorge opened up the packet and took two.

'God, they're good,' he said. 'We should bring some cinnamon to the office.'