The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro Read online

  Of what followed Firmino only managed to memorize a phrase or two here and there. He tried to pay as much attention as he could, but his mind, as if out of control, wandered off on its own and dragged him back in time, out of that farce of a courthouse, and without any logical sequence he felt himself now staring at a severed head placed in a dish, now in a gypsy encampment on a suffocating August day, now in a botanical garden gazing at a century-old exotic tree planted by a lieutenant in Napoleon's army. And at that point they were discussing Titânio Silva’s migraines, and of this Firmino managed to take in a few scraps, the exhibiting of a medical certificate attesting to the fact that Sergeant Silva was affected by terrible migraine following the rupture of an eardrum caused by a mine exploding near him in Angola, though he had never claimed a State pension on those grounds, and because of this ailment he had been obliged to go home for an injection of Zomig, leaving the body of Monteiro there on the floor, after which his two deputies began to stammer words to the effect that yes, now they realized, now they understood that they might be accused of the crime of concealment of a corpse, but that evening their minds were far from the Penal Code, and in any case neither of them knew a ruddy thing about the Penal Code, they had just been so thunderstruck, and so damn scared, that they’d removed the body and left it in a public park.

  When it came to the cigarette burns found on Monteiro’s body, Titânio Silva took it on himself to reply in person. And while Firmino listened to his words, which were deadened as if by wads of cotton wool yet at the same time sharp, he realized he was beginning to sweat, as if he were on fire within, and all the time the thin lips of Titânio Silva were explaining to the Court with complete aplomb that he had had “No Smoking” notices put up all over the station, because as the scientists tell us and civilized countries have printed by law on every packet of cigarettes, smoking causes cancer. Someone in the courtroom laughed inanely, and curiously enough that laugh struck Firmino as some kind of demented message, he realized that his hand was trembling slightly, but mechanically he wrote down: laughter in court.

  And then the Judge, after the intervention of the Public Prosecutor, asked if Counsel wished to make any declaration before pronouncing their addresses to the Court. Counsel for the defense, a pot-bellied bumptious little man, announced that one thing had to be recorded in the acts of the proceedings, a question of principle, yes indeed, of nothing less than principle, his voice was curt and peremptory, Firmino tried to follow what he was saying, but as if his own mental integrity were at stake he felt threatened by those words and only managed to scribble down a few notes that now seemed to him disconnected: heroic conduct in the wars in Africa, bronze medal for military valor, devotion to the flag, lofty patriotism, the defense of true values, the struggle against crime, perfect trust in the State and Nation.

  There followed an interval of no more than a few seconds, to Firmino it seemed endless, a sort of limbo during which his memory carried him back to a white house on the shore at Cascais and his father's face, to a blue sea with white-crested waves, to a wooden Pinocchio doll with whom an infant Firmino had his bath in a zinc tub on a terrace. The Judge said: The prosecution has the floor. Don Fernando rose, negligently, put on his gown, carried himself over to beneath the Bench and surveyed the public. His face was a pasty yellow. His pendulous cheeks hung down on either side of his face like the ears of a basset-hound. In his hand was his unlit cigar, and with that cigar he indicated a point in the ceiling as if aiming at someone in particular.

  “I will start with a question which I address chiefly to myself,” said Don Fernando. “What does it mean to be against death?”

  At that moment Firmino pressed the button on his tape recorder.

  THE TRAIN RUMBLED ON through the darkness. Out of the window Firmino saw a cluster of distant lights. Maybe it was Espinho. He’d taken a seat in the restaurant car, which in fact was nothing but a self-service with a couple of tables at one end. Behind the counter stood a waiter, a weary look on his face and a cloth in his hand. He approached Firmino.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t stay here without taking refreshment.” “Bring me whatever you like,” said Firmino, “perhaps a cup of coffee.”

  “The machine is switched off sir,” said the waiter.

  “In that case a glass of mineral water.”

  “I am sorry,” said the waiter, “but I cannot serve you anything because the restaurant is closed.”

  “So what’s to be done?” asked Firmino.

  “You cannot stay here without ordering something,” repeated the waiter, “but you cannot order anything.”

  “I don’t follow the logic,” retorted Firmino.

  “It’s Company regulations,” explained the waiter placidly.

  “But what do you have to do now?” enquired Firmino tactfully.

  “I have to clean up sir,” said the waiter, “I’m supposed to be only a waiter, because that’s what’s written in my contract, but the Company makes me do the cleaning up as well, and my union doesn’t stick up for me.”

  “Very well then,” said Firmino, “while you are cleaning up let me sit here, I won't give you any trouble, we can keep each other company.”

  The waiter gave a comprehending nod and went off. Firmino fished out his notepad and tape-recorder. He thought about how to write his article about the trial. He hadn’t taken notes, but for the general drift he could trust to his memory. As for Don Fernando’s speech he had it in that little contraption, and even if the recording was defective it could be transcribed with a bit of effort. More lights came into view through the window. La Granja? Dammit, he couldn’t remember whether La Granja came before or after Espinho.

  Darkness pressed on the window-panes. He got out his pen and prepared to take shorthand. He thought that one doesn’t realize it at the time, but everything in life can come in useful, even that shorthand course he had taken long ago. He hoped he was still fast enough and pressed the button to start.

  The voice seemed to come from far away. The recording was very faulty, the words drifted off into nothing.

  “… question I address chiefly to myself: what does it mean to be against death? ..........................................................................................

  ...................................................................................................................

  ........................................................................................................ every man is absolutely indispensable to to all the others and all are absolutely indispensable to each ............................................................

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  ...................................................... and all are beings in a human sense leading to him, each man is the root of the human essence .......................................................................................................................

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  ........................................ I repeat, the human essence of man is the point of reference .....................................................................................

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  .............................................................. the ethical affirmation is originally aimed against the negation of man, therefore the fact of his being against death is a positive thing in man, but since man has no experience of his own death, only that of others, in the light of which he can only imagine and fear his own .....................................................

  .....................................................................................................................

  ..........................................................
...................... and it is the ultimate basis and insuperable condition of any humanistic ethic, that is of any ........................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................”

  The waiter came up and Firmino switched off the machine.

  “Listening to the radio?” asked the waiter.

  “No,” answered Firmino, “it’s a recording I made this morning, it’s a lawcase.”

  “If it’s a law case it must be interesting,” said the waiter, “I once saw a trial on television and it was just like a film.”

  Then he added: “If you want to stay here you’ve got to eat or drink something.”

  “And if I did?” asked Firmino, “what if I did eat something?”

  “You can’t, it’s against Company regulations.”

  “Have you any idea who the Railway Company is?” retorted Firmino.

  The man appeared to give the matter some thought. He propped his broom against the side of the carriage.

  “To tell you the truth I only know Senhor Pedro, who’s the bloke at the window in the personnel office.” “And do you think this Senhor Pedro is the Railway Company personified?” “Not likely,” replied the waiter, “in any case he’s due for a pension.”

  “In that case why not have something to eat,” said Firmino, “we could even eat together at this very table, and what’d you say to something hot, eh?”

  The waiter scratched his head.

  “The coffee machine’s off,” he said, “but we could switch on the electric hotplates.”

  “Good idea,” declared Firmino, “and what could we cook on the hotplates?”

  “What would you say to scrambling each of us a couple of eggs?” suggested the waiter.

  “With ham?” prompted Firmino.

  “With ham from Trás-os-Montes!” declared the waiter, moving off.

  Firmino switched on the recorder again.

  “Es ist ein eigentümlicher Apparat, this is an odd sort of machine. These words were written way back in 1914 by an unknown Jew, born in Prague, but who wrote in German ......................................................

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  ..................................................................................... a very odd sort of machine that perpetuates a barbarous law .............................................

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  .........................................................perhaps the machine of a penal colony or a terrible prediction of the monstrous event which Europe was due to witness? .................................................................................

  .....................................................................................................................

  ....................................... monstrous, ungeheuer, the monster and vampire concealed behind the Grundnorm ...........................................

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  ............................ writing there in Prague he could scarcely know what the people in whose language he wrote would later commit ..................

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  ......................... because it is evident that murder is not enough ....................................... torture .............................................................

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  .................................................. before killing a man you have to inflict pain, to savage him, to lacerate the flesh of a man ................................

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  ........................ are we to claim, you and I, that none of us is responsible for this abiding monstrosity of human history? But what then becomes of individual responsibility, for torture, one of the theoretical bases of monstrosity? ........................................................”

  More incomprehensible buzzing, with background noises and mutterings from the public. Firmino pressed the STOP button. The waiter arrived with a steaming pan of scrambled eggs and buttered toast. He proceeded to set the table.

  “Did you switch it off?” he asked.

  “I can’t hear much, worse luck, and when he turns towards the Bench his voice gets completely lost in the sound of electronic crackle.”

  “Who’s it talking?” asked the waiter.

  “A lawyer in Oporto,” replied Firmino, “but you can only catch a phrase here and there.”

  “May I listen in?” asked the waiter.

  Firmino pressed the button.

  “… therefore if I may be permitted a literary allusion, because literature also is an aid to understanding law .........................................

  ............................................. the machines célibataires as the French Surrealists called them, the things most deadly to life ..........................

  ................................. our police stations today, in this year of grace in which we live, are our machines célibataires .........................................

  ............................... the needles they use in penal colonies or merely cigarettes stubbed out on the naked flesh .............................................

  .................................... reading the reports of the inspectors appointed by the Council of Europe for Human Rights relating to places of detention in our so-called civilized countries .................................... a blood-curdling document dealing with places of detention in Europe ..............................”

  The old lawyer’s voice was lost in a sort of gurgle.

  “He was too far away,” said Firmino, “and worse still he sometimes lowers his voice and almost mumbles to himself.”

  “Try again,” said the waiter.

  Firmino pressed the START button.

  “… a great contemporary writer has interpreted that prophetic narrative written in 1914, arriving at the humanistic conclusions with which I opened this speech .....................................................................

  ........................... if it is true, as he asserts, that that narrative succeeded in giving body and meaning to the phantoms of regret ........................................................................................................................................

  .....................................................................................................................

  .......................... but what sort of nostalgia are we speaking of? Some paradise lost, a nostalgia for purity, a time when man was not yet contaminated by evil? we are not in a position to say, but we can assert with Camus that the great revolutions are always metaphysical and that, as he affirms by referring to Nietzsche, the great Problems are to be found by the roadside ..............................................................

  ............................... this man who stands before us, and whom I have not the least compunction in calling ignoble, on account of the tortures he practices, because surely no one can imagine anybody stubbing out cigarettes on a corpse, so ..................................................

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  .............
................................................. our police stations without any legal control and protection, where individuals such as Sergeant Titânio Silva operate ...................................................”

  More incomprehensible noises were heard and Firmino switched off the tape-recorder.

  “Time to eat these eggs,” said the waiter.

  “They’re still warm,” replied Firmino.

  “Like a spot of ketchup?” asked the waiter, “everyone asks for ketchup nowadays.”

  “I can do without,” said Firmino.

  “What he said about the big problems being found by the roadside really struck me I must say,” said the waiter, “who was it who wrote that?”

  “Albert Camus,” replied Firmino, “he was a French writer, but in fact he was quoting a German philosopher.”

  “About this lawyer,” said the waiter, “what’s his name?”

  “It’s a bit long and complicated,” said Firmino,” but there in Oporto everyone calls him Attorney Loton.”

  “Press the button again, I’d like to hear more of what he has to say.”

  Firmino pressed the button.

  “......................................................................... and as for the supposed suicide of Damasceno Monteiro ............................................

  ........................................................... Jean Améry .................................