Electrico W (10 page)

She peered up at me.

“Now, this girl, yes, I remember her, she had a funny name, something like Arnica, or Arcana, but everyone called her something else.”

“Arcana?”

The voice grew suspicious: “But you must know the girl’s name if you’re really looking for her.”

“No, I don’t have a name like that … I have one or two clues, and this photo. I’ve been paid to find her, that’s all. You see, she’s inheriting from an American, not someone in her family, but you know, the will is impeccably within the law, even if I don’t have a name. Under U.S. law, well, Texas state law, you can leave your pet canary to someone if you want.”

“Texas …”

The word came to me just like that, but it had its effect. The woman looked convinced, because she shook her head.

“No, I don’t know where she is. She got pregnant, she wasn’t even fifteen, and her father sent her away north, I think. He moved away after that. A real bastard.”

She took a step back, I thought she was going to walk away so I persisted: “You really have no idea where I should try to look for her?”

“No. You could always go asking at the tasca, on the rua das Tangentes. Ask if anyone’s heard from Ruiz, yes, that was her father’s first name, he sometimes has a drink there
with the regulars. Ask them about Ruiz Domingo, that’s what everyone called him, I don’t know why. A nasty man, really, a brute. When the girl was expecting the baby, he almost threw her down the stairs. D’you know, I thought he was going to kill her …”

The woman fell silent for a moment and her voice softened again: “Tell me, is it a big sum she stands to inherit?”

“I can’t … not a great deal, to be honest.”

“You can’t tell me, is that it? You’re not allowed to?”

“That’s right, yes. And the child, did she have it?”

“I dunno.”

Her expression went blank, she stepped back out of the light from the doorway and the shadows carved deep lines on her face.

“Are you coming, Baby?” her husband called from behind her.

She put her hand on the door handle and took another step back. At the last moment, she turned toward me, her hands clenching the fabric of her apron, and I met her eyes as they pried into mine, trying to read my thoughts. She spoke differently now, with gentleness in her voice: “I’m glad she’s inheriting it, and all that money’s going to her, not him. After everything she’s been through. It’s a good thing.”

She stared at me for a long time, without a word, then seemed to reach a decision: “If you find her, tell her …”

She shuddered and shook her head. “No, forget that, don’t tell her anything, she won’t want to come back here. People weren’t … kind, no, they weren’t kind at all. Just tell her to take care from me. My name’s Maria Simões … No, say it’s Pita, that’s not my name, but she used to call me Pita. She gave everyone nicknames, that girl, even herself in fact.”

“I know …” I murmured.

The door was already closed.

THE TASCA WAS
on the corner of rua das Tangentes and rua Antunes. It was a seedy drinking hole, forbiddingly dark once you stepped through the sun-drenched doorway. Every couple of minutes, when the Eléctrico W passed, the screech of metal drowned all conversation. The barman was in his sixties with bug-eyes like Peter Lorre. He remembered Ruiz well.

“Did you say Domingo? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, oh yes. That’s what they called him in the neighborhood, because Sunday was the only day of the week he was just about sober. He used to go to the cemetery, where his wife was buried, so he didn’t drink for the whole day.”

He thought about this and added with a laugh: “Well, he wasn’t drinking here at least.”

He wiped the top of the bar with a cloth.

“To be honest,” he went on, “it was after she died that he started drinking … But hey, I’m not here to stop people from drinking, am I?”

I nodded with a grimace. I hadn’t put any sugar in my coffee and it was acrid. Its bitterness was my act of contrition.

“What about his daughter, do you remember his daughter?”

“The little girl? Oh yes, very well. When she was just a kid, she used to come to find Ruiz here in the evenings, when he was too drunk. He couldn’t stand up, she even had to put him to bed. When her mother died she must have been, what, about nine years old. She was already a hell of a pretty kid. Is she the one you want or Ruiz? Because I dunno where she is … She had some problems, if you know what I mean.”

He ballooned his arms over his stomach. I looked away.

“And Ruiz?”

“Oh, he comes by sometimes. The last time was about two or three months ago, I think. He used to work in highway maintenance, on street lighting. Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s retired now. Or switched to another job. He was good with his hands.”

The barman remembered a name, Custódia. Ruiz Custódia. He also told me where to find his wife’s cemetery. In the suburbs. Ruiz used to go there every Sunday afternoon, at around four or five o’clock. But he could have changed his habits, of course.

I finished my coffee, knocked back a glass of brandy, and paid, leaving a good tip. As I was leaving the barman called to me: “Say, if Ruiz comes by, because you never know, shall I tell him someone’s looking for him or not? What’s your name? Do you have a business card?”

“It’s the girl I’m looking for.”

It wasn’t an answer, but the guy didn’t persist.

I WALKED TOWARD
the hotel, slowly, feeling slightly nauseous. As the main post office was on my way, I went in. It was cold because of the air conditioning, heels clacked on the floor tiles and conversations smacked against the walls. I looked for the name Ruiz Custódia in phonebooks for all the major cities, and made a note of the addresses. There were no Arcana Custódias, or Arnicas or Arcanis, not anywhere. So, I started making a note of the Adelina, Adriana, Albertina, Anna, Anita, and Augusta Custódias. Twenty-five names in all, in Lisbon alone.

Someone put a hand on my shoulder. I was startled to hear Antonio’s voice and dropped my pen like a little boy caught red-handed.

“What are you doing here?”

Antonio was amused to have caught me. He was chewing a sandwich. I leaned down, picked up my pen, and
stuffed my notebook in my pocket. He wasn’t inquisitive about what I was hiding, but I couldn’t help answering.

“I’m looking for an address, I’m trying to call someone. Like everyone else.”

“From here? Do it in the hotel.”

“In the hotel … yes. Are you here to post your letter? Or rather our letter?”

Now I was smiling too. Antonio shook his head: “No. It turns out I won’t need to post it. Irene just called. She’s coming to Lisbon. In a couple of days. Monday or Tuesday. She’ll call. I told her you were here …”

He took a bite of his sandwich, seemed to want to gauge the effect he had made.

“Really? And … what did she say?”

He stayed silent, an impish crease at the corners of his mouth, and I realized that my speedy response had betrayed my anxiety. He took another bite of his sandwich.

“She told me not to trust you …”

He swallowed a mouthful with gusto and looked around.

“I really like post offices, big post offices. The bustle, the echoing voices. It’s like the anteroom to the whole world.”

He smiled, pleased with his phrase.

“But you see, not like an airport, or a station. There are no departures here, no stopovers. Just addresses,
languages, alphabets, letters and parcels. Absolutely anybody writing to absolutely anybody else. A huge great phonebook of the planet …”

Antonio was pontificating. He threw the last bit of bread in the trash.

“Shall we go change?”

“Excuse me?”

“For the concert this evening, with Aurora … the Estufa Fria. You
are
coming with me, aren’t you? Don’t leave me alone with the sorceress.”

He laughed and showed me his palm. There, still shimmering in the light, was the ghost of a blue bird.

AURORA WAS RIGHT
, penguins visiting the Amazon was an accurate image. With advancing years and an accumulation of good port, many of the guests had even achieved the embonpoint of emperor penguins. I tried to tell Antonio the joke about never competing with Emperor Peng (because Emperor Peng wins), but he was too busy looking for Aurora to get it, or even listen to me.

“Hey, Vincent, look, there she is. Look how beautiful she is …”

I didn’t recognize Aurora in the young woman he was already walking toward. Perhaps because of the long cobalt-blue dress, or her hair, which was now not held
in check by any ribbons so it spilled over her shoulders. Beside her was a very tall, very dark, fairly good-looking boy of about twenty wearing a dated gray suit. He was doing his utmost to generate some of the tragic darkness of a Russian soul in his expression. If this were a game of Happy Families, then he could have been the youngest of the Karamazov brothers. This Alyosha spoke very little and smiled very little but never took his eyes off Aurora. She meanwhile seemed distant, a stranger.

When she saw Antonio her face came to life, blossomed. She put a lock of hair behind her ear and abandoned her suddenly powerless companion. She cut through the crowd to reach us, stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Antonio’s left cheek. Then, in a move that was both intimate and incredibly brazen, she tilted her head for him to return the kiss, in the crook of her neck. He looked helplessly at that shoulder line offered up to him and, as if drawn in by the smell of it, furtively kissed the base of her neck.

“I was worried you wouldn’t come, Antonio.”

“Well, you can see I have.”

I greeted her with a nod, and she skimmed my cheek with her lips.

“Thank you for coming to see me again.”

She looked up at the glass roof, where all the ultraviolet lights had been lit.

“Have you seen? Little blue suns … I wasn’t lying …”

She had lost her childish voice and adopted a woman’s, but not quite a lady’s: “Would you like some champagne? Follow me.”

She took Antonio’s hand with energy and determination and guided us to the buffet, walking quickly through the dense crowd. Antonio was Aurora’s prisoner, leaning forward as he ran after his own hand. Beside the trays of canapés, she finally released him and chose a small pink éclair with sparrowlike voracity, nibbled one creamy end, then put it back down on the tablecloth with a smirk of distaste.

“It’s gelatinous and too sweet. Too bad, I really like the color, like a chubby child’s finger. Yummy. The concert’s going to start soon, I saved you two places, near me.”

“Who organizes all this, the concert, the reception?” Antonio asked.

“Well … the Philarmonica, isn’t it? Why does it matter?”

“Why are you invited? You said your father worked in the hothouse?”

“Have you quite finished with the questions? I’ve already said, this is my home. Shall we go?”

She took Antonio’s hand again and led us to the concert hall. The seats were theater red, the décor rococo. Aurora sat us in our places, 31 and 33, in the middle of the third row of the stalls.

“The best seats, these are. You don’t know how lucky you are to know me.”