Electrico W (7 page)

“You and Irene … I didn’t know, I would never have imagined …”

He gave a small private laugh, little more than a breath, and it hurt me.

Why would you never have imagined, Antonio? Was there something absurd, ridiculous about her and me? Yes, of course, you’re right. What with her being so young next to my forty years, my thinning hair, my deepening wrinkles, my body which wants to pass itself off as smooth and firm but isn’t very convincing anymore. What was it Irene once said? Oh yes, it was a young man’s body that hadn’t aged well. It was a cruel turn of phrase, and a pointless one too, because surely she knew no one ever ages well.

“Do you know why I’m laughing?” he asked. “I wanted to ask you to help me. To help me write to her.”

“Write to her? About what?”

“I don’t know, to say I love her, or I don’t love her yet … to tell her … about how confused my feelings are. I write so badly, I’m so awkward. I don’t want to hurt her. You’d have been better at finding the words than me. I honestly thought you didn’t know her. Well, not like that. I read a short story you once wrote for the paper. For you it would have been …”

I put down my glass, afraid Antonio would notice my hand shaking. And I finished his sentence: “… just an exercise in style … a little Cyrano de Bergerac moment. Minus the nose, I might say.”

“Yes, if you like … Let’s drop the subject.”

I had the seeds of an idea which made me smile. A bitter smile, but in the darkness Antonio could have read it as friendly.

“No, it’s okay, Antonio, I understand. It doesn’t bother me, not at all …” My eyes didn’t betray a thing, I’m sure they didn’t betray a thing. “Let’s write this letter.”

I laughed and asked for another Sagres. Antonio would be reassured seeing me pouring it carefully into the glass, eyeing the froth in eager anticipation, then bringing it to my lips. I performed this little beer-lover routine, nicely underplaying it. A man so focused on slaking his thirst is not one who’s suffering. And in spite of myself, I appreciated that beer, it was nice and cool, with a tangible, noticeable bitterness. I felt freer, more alive.

“Does Irene know I’m in Lisbon?” I asked. “That I’m working with you?”

“I’ve no idea. I don’t think so.”

“You need to tell her. She’ll find out sooner or later. And then …” I tried to find the words as I stroked the rough stone of the balcony.

“Also, tell her you know about her and me. That I mentioned it. You see, let’s be honest, we parted in difficult circumstances. I was quite … nasty—a bit of an asshole to be frank. That’s ancient history, but I don’t want her thinking I would try to keep you two apart, out of jealousy or revenge. Do you see what I mean?”

“Yes … of course.”

I drank some more beer, tried to think of other lines of argument.

“She cares about you, that’s obvious. And when you care about someone, you worry about everything …”

Antonio nodded in silence. I moved my last pawn into position: “No more hesitating … I think we should even admit to her about Lena and me.”

I was very pleased with myself for finding that “we,” making us accomplices. I mustn’t abuse that complicity, whatever happened. Men struggle with the notion of “we,” or rather when they have a “we” it often ends badly, in dubious conniving. I finished my beer and put the glass down resolutely: “I’m sure she’ll find it reassuring knowing I’m in love with someone else …”

I looked at my watch again, automatically. It was one o’clock in the morning. I got ready to leave even though it was far from plausible to be meeting anyone so late.

Antonio smiled. “Is this Lena of yours a night owl?”

“She sometimes paints right through the night, using artificial light. If the light’s on in her window, I’ll know.”

He opened the fridge and took out another bottle.

“I’m going to stay here for a bit, Vincent, it’ll give me a chance to think … so, how about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? What tomorrow?”

“The letter … can we write it tomorrow?”

He took the top off the bottle, some froth spilled over his fingers, obscenely.

“Yes, that’s right,” I replied, “we’ll write it tomorrow.”

I LEFT THE HOTEL
and tried to find a taxi. At exactly the same time, Antonio was calling Irene, she was talking to him tenderly. I walked a few paces, if that, my head spinning. I leaned against the wall and slid down onto my heels, my legs buckling beneath me. I stayed there for many minutes before going home to my studio. I put an album on the deck, Sting’s
The Dream of the Blue Turtles
, which I had bought the day I broke up with Irene, and I lay down on the bed to listen to “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” on a loop.

It was that night I made my decision. I would put up one last fight, with all the fire and skill typical of serial losers, of people who have gone from one defeat to the next so often that winning no longer means anything to them. The hopeless philosophy of the old, the ugly, and the poor.

I was going to search for Duck, and was going to find her. At some point predetermined by me, Antonio would meet her and I would find a way of rebuilding their lost happiness, I would rewrite fate, I would be their fate. I wanted Irene to come, to be there, in Lisbon so that she
could see her ruin; and the city that had brought Tonio and Duck together would be my most faithful ally.

That would be my complete revenge, that wound to her pride, the pain she would feel. I knew I no longer wanted Irene, I would be able to reject her, to say with a smile but without hatred that she meant nothing to me now, and never would again.

But almost immediately, despite my own plans, I also hoped that in that confusion of passions, that muddle of emotions, she would finally conceive some feeling for me. Something unclear at first, but that might one day be like love.

What did Montestrela say about love? “When you’re making it, don’t think about the fact that at that very moment, someone, somewhere, is dying.”

W
hen I returned to the hotel Antonio was still asleep. His jacket was lying on one of the armchairs. I stood there in the silence for a moment. I pulled his wallet from the pocket and took out the photo of Duck. Just a loan, for no more than a few hours, time enough to make a copy.

There was another picture, this one in black and white. Antonio was in it, looking very young, in a group of other young men. It was almost like a class photo. I didn’t want to spend too long studying it. I took it as well. For no reason.

Then I went to bed and fell straight into a deep sleep. Antonio told me later that I snored, and I grimaced my apology. I hate those periods of complete abandon, a languor in which I can picture my flaccid, noisy hideousness, my face on the
pillow like a dead jellyfish, my mouth half open, my breath fetid, times when—yet again—I wish I were someone else.

THAT MORNING THE
press announced that the Pinheiro trial would begin any day, and I bought every newspaper. Leader writers had reopened their files, reused the photographs of bloodied corpses, recapped the circumstances of each murder. Soon the victims’ families would be put through it all again.

When Pinheiro was arrested, I had written two or three columns about the man they were calling the Mad Killer of Lisbon. They had chosen a photograph of him as a young man with a laughing face and a sailor’s uniform, accompanied by an enticing caption.

When he turned fifty, he changed into a small, thin man with brown hair, a smooth face, and sad, nearly gray eyes. A man with no history, virtually invisible. At the time of his arrest, he had been working as an administrator in the port’s customs offices for more than ten years. An honest, scrupulous employee, well viewed by his superiors, liked by his co-workers, a bachelor not known to have any relationships, no enemies, nor friends in fact. If he ate out in the evening, it was always alone, and when he had lunch in the customs canteen, he took a book from his leather case and never joined in conversations.

Antonio had called the hospital where Pinheiro was incarcerated, and had had little trouble securing an interview with the psychiatric expert. We were to meet him in three days.

IT WAS STILL
early when we went down to the port and along to berth 24, drawn by a sound of tortured steel. In berth 13, I noted in my notebook, an old cargo boat with a Russian flag was baring its prow with a fresh three-foot scar in it. A workman balancing on a hanging footbridge was cutting away the dented sheet metal with a circular saw. Sprays of red sparks swirled around him, accompanied by a strong smell of burning and an almost unbearably strident noise. Under his heavy welding mask and thick leather overalls, the man handled the machine powerfully and with such ease that he seemed extraordinarily strong.

Antonio started taking pictures at machine gun speed with his Leica, then thrust the camera at me rather violently.

The telephoto lens shielded the view from the sky’s brilliance, making the scene both more immediate and more terrifying. Against a background of rust and sickening metal, the workman had pride of place among waterfalls of fire, the blacksmith god of lava and volcanoes. I released
the shutter, heard its crisp click and the soft whirr of the motor.

I turned slowly and Antonio appeared in the black rectangle. Small red numerals lined up in the viewfinder, right in the middle of his chest. He was standing in profile, his features distorted by the bluish shade of the filthy cargo boat that filled the picture beside him. Coils of rope lay behind him, like sleeping black pythons. Farther away, a giant crane stood out in the sunlight, truncated sharply by the corner of the shot. I took the picture, not sure whether the light levels were good enough.

Antonio came over to me slowly, pointing toward me. His cheek was colored by the electric glow of the sparks, and the wail of the saw drowned out everything. There was something strange or even aggressive about the gesture he was making, and I saw it as a threat, a trap. What did Antonio want from me that I was so afraid of losing, that I hadn’t already lost? I took a step back, penetrated by the chill that precedes a ghostly apparition, panicked by my incomprehensible terror.