300 Days of Sun (18 page)

“Berlin is keeping the Lisbon escape hatch open for the ­people of Europe. They could close it at any time, but the reason the borders remain open is that there is some gain for the Third Reich. The Abwehr is very active. Its officers are like fishermen waiting with nets to pull out any of the arrivals who might be of interest: desperate ­people, who need money and will do almost anything to get it; adventurers with dangerous pasts and useful skills; businessmen, deal-­makers who understand that their future prosperity depends on how quickly normal economic activity resumes in Europe when the war has ended; they have no allegiance to countries, or sides, only to their own success.

“All these can be turned to the Führer's ser­vice against the enemy. I have seen it happening. I know who they are. And all I have been able to do so far is send misleading information back to Berlin. Half-­rumor, half-­reality. The very obviousness of my position gives me a certain . . . freedom. My instructions were to watch the British and the Americans, to speak to you if possible, to find out what those on the periphery of the war effort were doing, the armies of so-­called diplomats and newspaper reporters. So, among others, I watched your husband and his fellow writers.”

“They know.”

“Of course. After a while I approached them. Blake Curnow is a very thirsty man. That was a long night with a man I don't like or trust.”

Alva fidgeted with a piece of bread, but didn't eat it. “You are taking a big risk telling me this, Herr Mayer.”

“Perhaps. But I have already told it to the British in Lisbon. The problem is that they don't believe me. Or they are too cautious to believe me. They suspect a trap, and I cannot blame them for that. I went to the Canadians next, but got the same response. But they did decide to tip off one of their roving amateurs, a journalist.”

“Jim Kosek?”

Alva drank some wine, hoping to calm her nerves. Her heart was pumping fast.

“The Gestapo took him. It was a harsh punishment for mere incompetence and the suspicion that he had Polish connections. And I am left in a very difficult position. Sooner rather than later I will be exposed. Somehow I have to get protection from the British and their allies. I have to use someone who is a maverick player. So I let Ronald Bagshaw find out that a consignment of gold is coming into Faro to buy black market supplies for the Third Reich. Meanwhile I volunteer to meet it and oversee the payment while I am scouting for more Nazi informers in the south. Now I need a witness to what I will do next. It is arranged, most delicately . . .”

“But you can't have known I would come to Faro,” said Alva, reasonably enough. “Why didn't Bagshaw just come himself?”

Mayer shook his head. “Too dangerous. He is known, and one never knows who is watching.”

“And if I hadn't come?”

“I would have had to find some other way.”

“But . . . how do I know this is not a setup?”

“I will have to persuade you that it is not.”

Alva shifted in her seat. An argument had broken out among the men waiting around the telephone booth. It was impossible to tell whether it was because lines had been restored or because calls still could not be made.

“Tell me,” she said. “The crew of the boat that brought the gold. Were they Germans?”

“Germans and Spanish.”

“Did you try to save them?”

“We did. I swear we did, Palhares and his men and I. I know what you are thinking, but we had the gold. It had been handed over. We were in Palhares' ketch, alongside their boat of a similar size. We could never have got close enough to the trawler that night, so they sent two men in a launch from Tavira. They had pulled away when a series of huge waves crashed down on all of us. The water overwhelmed the launch, but we were lucky. Palhares is a fisherman. He knows these seas well. With him as skipper we seemed to rise up the steep waves and remain upright. But the two men in the launch—­they were swept away. We couldn't even see where they were. We shone lights on the water, we circled as best we could, but they had gone. There was nothing we could do but try to save ourselves. What kind of man do you think I am?”

“I don't know,” she said in a whisper. “I don't know anything anymore.”

Not even myself, she thought. They were all telling stories. The reporters told stories. The refugees arrived telling versions of their lives that seemed fantastical. The spies spun their tales. The Portuguese pretended to be on whichever side paid more or seemed to have the advantage. Husbands and wives became experienced practitioners of deception.

How did Mayer know that she had thrown away so many casual assumptions, that she was now a stranger to herself? That girl going to the newspaper office in New York, nervously sipping a coffee she didn't really want because she was thrilled to be sitting on a red leather seat in a diner with the loose-­limbed reporter who used to run up the stairs smiling in that way that made her stomach jitter; later, the newlywed whirling around Rome in a daze of excitement and happiness: that person no longer seemed to be her. Klaus Mayer was looking at her all the time she was thinking this, waiting. After a while, his gaze softened. She realized with some embarrassment that she had been staring into his eyes, never breaking the connection between them.

“I think you believe me.”

She gave nothing away.

“I have several agents and informants here in Faro. Some give me information to pass on; the most trusted send back their own reports to Berlin. The Abwehr in Lisbon is delighted with my progress and the information these carefully cultivated agents provide. It is most useful when they corroborate each other's facts, and they almost always do, as I made them all up. They don't exist. I invent all their stories for the abasement of the Third Reich.”

“You keep calling it the Third Reich. You don't call it Germany,” said Alva.

“It is not Germany. The Germany I once knew has gone.”

Like the Michael Barton she once knew had gone.

Mayer reached into a pocket, extracting a crumpled piece of paper. It looked like a typewritten letter with brown handwriting between the lines. He spoke fast, as if he thought she might get up and leave.

“This came into the Abwehr station in Lisbon a few days ago from a Serbian posing as Portuguese who exports raw materials to Britain and reports back to us. He's a terrible rogue, but one finds oneself liking him. All he wants is money. I give him a list of questions about what is being supplied to the British and what else they want and why, and he finds a way of answering them.

“I found out quite by chance that his methods involved popping round to the British MI6 station a few streets away and handing over the sheet for them to fill in. All completely misleadingly, of course, but with enough seeds of truth and verisimilitude to be most convincing. I know exactly what he's been doing. He is working for the British while pretending to work for the Germans. And now I am pretending to believe him. The ink used between the lines in the letter is made from a Pyramidon tablet, usually taken for a headache, dissolved in pure white gin. You fill a fountain pen with it, just like ink. Then more alcohol is applied to the paper at its destination to reveal the invisible writing. I want you to take this back to Lisbon, go straight to the American Embassy and ask for Hayward, the chief intelligence officer. Tell him what I have told you and hand over the paper. He will inform his British counterpart. That's all I ask.”

What he was telling her, with such urgency, was either desperate or calculated.

“What would happen if it became known that you were . . . helping the other side . . . ?”

“I would be executed by the Abwehr.”

She had a rush of light-­headedness, which must have been the wine on an empty stomach. Neither of them had eaten any of the food on the table between them.

 

vi

“
Allow me to introduce Senhor Calixto Tagaio, who is the manager of the Faro cooperative bank. Senhor, I present Mrs. Alva Barton of New York and Lisbon who is here as an independent witness to the proceedings,” said Mayer.

A small man with horn-­rimmed glasses and slicked-­back hair was sitting in front of him removing various items from a briefcase. Several substantial ledgers were open on a table and three strongboxes.

They shook hands.

“What would you like me to do?” Alva asked.

“Please be seated at the back of the room so you can see everyone in it. Make notes if you wish. Have you brought your camera?”

She nodded.

“Good. You may take any pictures you choose, though we will not pose officially. I will not dictate any terms. You shall be the judge of what you see.”

Alva looked down at the coral-­and-­white-­checkerboard floor as she walked across it, feeling like a chess piece being dropped into position for a risky move. The café was filling up, mainly with men. The atmosphere was serious. The fisherman Palhares was there, dressed in a patched Sunday suit. She thought she recognized another of the men who had been with Mayer the previous day. Many wore gaily-­patterned blankets draped over their shoulders. Others were dressed in sheepskin pants.

The Café Aliança was often used as the venue for an unofficial local exchange, she had learned, where goods and money and even ser­vices could change hands with no interference, or taxes, from outside authorities; salt and fish, carob and dried fruit might be bartered for seasoned wood or boat repairs.

The room went quiet as the fisherman addressed the gathering. He introduced Mayer and said a few words in the direction of the two other men who had been on Palhares' boat. There were gasps as gold bars were unwrapped from what looked like pieces of tarpaulin and handed over to the bank manager, who exchanged them for paper bills. Then, one by one, men were called to the table, holding black hats tight to the stomach in both hands. They were fishermen, salt-­panners, farmers, chandlers, boat builders, and fruit growers who came first, in a hierarchy of need. They spoke, the committee listened, a record was made, and money changed hands. Then came the poor and the dispossessed who had lost the roofs from their houses, and those who were facing doctors' bills for injuries.

It was evening by the time the money from the strongboxes had been dispersed and replaced by the gold. At the end, a woman dressed all in black except for a red shawl came in and sang. All shades of emotion seemed to be contained within the sound of her song: comfort, longing, nostalgia, regret, sadness, and hope for the future.

P
alhares the fisherman spoke a little English. He invited them to eat in his home, which was a great honor, Mayer explained. “You cannot refuse. It would be an insult.”

They walked the few lanes to Palhares' house, where his wife cooked white fish with preserved pimento and potato. It was good. Much wine was consumed in a seemingly endless round of toasts.

Mayer offered to show her back to her hotel.

“That was quite something, what you did today,” said Alva. It sounded trite, but she meant it. “Will they be OK, those ­people, now?”

“For most of them, the money will help. But others . . . it's not so easy. The fishermen who live out on the islands, for instance. The salt-­panners. The clam-­diggers. The shape of the land has been changed, the beaches where they worked have disappeared. Some of them have lost everything.”

They walked on, contemplating that.

“Good night, Herr Mayer,” she said, outside the Hotel Sol.

“Klaus,” he said. “From now on, I am Klaus—­to you.”

“Alva, then—­to you.”

“How are you getting back to Lisbon?”

“I am supposed to be traveling back with the ­couple I drove down with, but I won't. I'm too mad at them.”

“So, how then? By train?”

“I guess.”

“You don't have to take the train all the way. I have to go back, too. You can come with me in my car, and I will set you down at a station not too far from Lisbon. We might even have a little sunshine along the way, what do you think?”

“I think that sunshine has been in rather short supply of late.”

He held out a hand. She could hardly breathe as she moved forward to take it. The flesh of his palm was rough.

“Burned by ropes in the storm,” he said, apologizing.

I
t was such a fragile understanding it was possible it did not exist at all. Klaus Mayer claimed to be on the side of the angels, and the men of Faro believed him. Sitting beside him, in the passenger seat of his powerful gunmetal gray car, Alva felt strangely safe. She was riding a sleek, purring tiger as they headed west along the coast under a china blue sky.

There was a brittle edge to the air that was all that remained of the storm. Alva looked out to sea, then back at his profile as if she couldn't quite believe who she was trusting behind the wheel. He met her glance and smiled. She noted the laughter creases around his blue eyes and thought that yet again, she would have to reevaluate what she had learned and experienced in the past year.

“All good?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The light, the color, the sounds: today everything was like a movie flickering to life. She could hear words on the wind and see what was written on the water. Life was not always what it seemed on the surface.

By noon heat had returned to the sun. They stopped at a deserted beach where rocks tumbled into the water to breathe in the air. If this was winter, what would it be like in summer? The ocean glittered like the lights of a fiesta. The sea breeze that ruffled the hem of her skirt felt intimate, sensual. Klaus produced a pomegranate and opened it with a Swiss army knife to expose the ruby seeds; the juice from these jewels ran down her chin. He stopped a drip with his finger and laughed.

They hardly spoke except to agree that they wanted more: more of the sea and the sky and the sun.

A
t sunset they approached a small inn. It was closed until spring, but the man who answered their knock on the door offered a small boy on a bicycle to show them the way to a house where they could be put up for the night. It was hard to find, said the man, but he was sure it would please them. The boy pedaled off at a great pace and they followed, bumping on ruts in a rapidly deteriorating road, as he led them into a pine forest that grew thicker and more fragrant as they burrowed further into its heart away from the sea. The twilight thickened.

Then progress was blocked by a monumental gate hung from stone pillars. But the boy jumped off his bicycle, unlatched the gate, and pushed the fancy iron grilles open to allow the car to pass. He then waved them through, surprised and uncertain whether to accept when Klaus put a large coin in his hand.

The route led through the forest for a mile or so before they arrived at a wide courtyard in the center of which was a splashing fountain topped by a stone mermaid. Lamps were lit in the gathering darkness, as if the inhabitants of the house were expecting visitors, although there had seemed no possible way for them to have been warned of any impending arrival.

The house was enormous: grand and elegant with an aristocratic air. Lit windows cast pools of light at their feet. The fortresslike front door opened and two servants hastened out to greet them and help with their baggage.

Alva smoothed down her skirt and hoped her travel-­crumpled clothes would pass muster as she and Klaus were shown into a lofty hall that bristled with antlers. Perhaps it was an old hunting lodge. A fine array of heraldic shields fixed high on the walls intimated a glorious history.

In a large and sumptuous sitting room they were greeted warmly by an elderly lady and an even older man in a black robe. She spoke in French, the international language of diplomacy. “I am Maria de Saldanha Oliveira, and this is Monseignor de Matos, my private chaplain.”

Alva thought fast, working out what best to say. It would be unwise, for all kinds of reasons, to introduce themselves as a German officer and an American woman. As an American, she was a neutral. She took the woman's offered hand and said firmly in English, “Alva and Michael Barton. From the United States of America.”

“How delightful.” She spoke in a cultured, international accent. “I hope you will stay with us tonight, Mr. and Mrs. Barton. I can offer you a room and dinner.”

A fire crackled under a marble mantel and gave an agreeable glow to the room, which might otherwise have seemed overwhelming.

“It is we who are charmed and delighted,” said Klaus.

I
didn't know you could do an American accent,” said Alva, trying not to giggle.

“I am a master of disguise.”

“What a place!” She whirled around, giddy from her daring as much as the motion. The room they had been given was lined in silk brocade of rich forest green. The curtains of the four-­poster bed were intricately embroidered with tendrils and flowers. “It's like stepping back into bygone times—­a magical place in the middle of the forest!”

“Not real life,” said Klaus.

They looked at each other and knew they both had the same thought. It was just the day they had had, out on the road, by the sea, in the seering light. The pretense that life was gentle and safe. He was going to kiss her, she knew it, and wanted him to, so much.

But he didn't. “We have to be very careful what we say in front of the other guests.”

“Of course.”

But when they went downstairs to be taken across a gallery murmuring with ancestral portraits to a grand dining room, it was clear from the place settings that they were the only guests. They were treated to an exquisite dinner of many small courses and many glasses of velvety Portuguese wine, all served as if they were visiting royalty. The noblewoman Maria de Saldanha Oliveira was a graceful hostess. She was a widow who had lived in Paris and sought reassurance that all was not lost of the old world. The priest, she, and her late husband had met in Paris. He was an unusual man of the church in that he did not mention religion but imparted a sense of profound peace. Conversation was not of the war, but of art and philosophy and music, of which Klaus showed himself impressively knowledgeable, and of the history of the region. Their hostess told the charming tale of an Arab lord who planted thousands of almond trees to blossom white in spring for his wife who dreamed of seeing snow. She was enchanted by Alva's interest in photography.

She asked no personal questions. It was only in the months and years after the event that Alva understood this was a deliberate tactic on the part of a worldly and perceptive woman.

I
n their shared room, Klaus gave her his hand and she put it to her collarbone. Then she waited as he trailed a finger down the exposed skin below her neck, and into the low line of her dress. It began. His mouth on hers was expressively questioning at first, then generous and exciting.

His touch was warm and sure. Was the thrill of it because it was not her husband's, part of the eroticism a very private satisfaction that she was a woman who could take her pleasures with the duplicity of a man? She had claimed him as her husband and nodded her thanks to the footman who had shown them into the room with the curtained double bed.

In unseen ways, her world was shattering. Knowing it was wrong, she was falling, fleeing normality for a fantastical interlude outside real life, laughing and playing at love because they could. The smoothness of his body was so different from . . . no, she could not think it. After the storm, they had washed up on this foreign shore. The night was real, and yet it was not real. They were in a house in a perfumed pine forest. Behind brocade curtains they were in a new country. She wanted him, wanted the physical act, more than she had ever imagined possible.

Afterward, the feather mattress seemed to hold them like a cloud, high above the floor, as the night vanished, over all too soon, she had a sudden painful understanding of the meaning of the mysterious word
saudade
—­the yearning for past happiness. She was both joyful and unbearably sad. Perhaps they would wake from the dream to find themselves outside in the forest, huddled in the roots of a tree.

T
he next morning liveried retainers brought a hip bath into the adjoining room, then filled it with steaming water from copper pans and laid out a mountain of soft white towels. For breakfast they were offered coffee and eggs, oranges, honey, dried figs, and blanched almonds and a basket of food for their journey: bread and cheese, custard cakes and more fruit, with wine and a homemade cherry liqueur.

Maria de Saldanha Oliveira would not hear of taking any kind of payment. “Go well, be valiant!” she said.

Alva wanted to ask if she could take a photograph of her, but was wary of giving offense. Not even of the house, for the footman was waiting, and it was impossible to ask permission without seeming gauche.

Again their hostess wished them well, and they were off.

Through a landscape of cork trees, the enchantment receded, lost mile by mile. Men in white collarless shirts and black waistcoats and pants stopped their labors by the roadside to watch the car stir up red dust as it went past, a car still a rarity in these parts. Quarteira was passed in an instant. She recalled nothing of the earlier visit, only her longing to be elsewhere. At Setúbal, they had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the fine harbor.
Farther along, a rough fisherman's beach was dominated by the canning factory. Lines of men helped pull in the boats.

Alva was astounded at how differently she saw it now. She watched with soaring heart the way the sea sparkled so intensely; the white of the houses was dazzling above the gay colors of the boats packed tightly against the quay. It was an excitement she had last felt a lifetime ago when the lucky ones left New York on the steamer for England, and then on across Europe by train to Rome, their honeymoon trip. She wanted to whirl herself around in this otherness, this heady weightlessness in air and light.