The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro Page 8

  “Horrible,” said Firmino, “and you are representing her?”

  “Certainly I am,” confirmed the lawyer, “and do you know why?”

  “No,” replied Firmino, “but I’d say to see justice done.”

  “Call it that if you want,” murmured the obese man, “after all it’s a definition of sorts. You only have to know that this sadist is the young son of a petty provincial landowner who has got rich thanks to the last few governments, the worst kind of bourgeoisie to surface in Portugal in the last twenty years: money, ignorance, and a lot of arrogance. Dreadful people who have to be reckoned with. My own family has for centuries exploited women like Angela and in some sense violated them, maybe not as this young man did, but let us say in a more elegant manner. We might even hypothesize, if you wish, that what I am doing is a kind of tardy penitence for history, a paradoxical inversion of class consciousness, not as according to the primary mechanisms of your friend Lukács, let us say on a different level, but these, however, are matters entirely my own concern, that I would prefer not to go in to with you.”

  “As the civil party in these proceedings,” persisted Firmino staunchly, “we would like to retain you as our lawyer, if we manage to reach an agreement about your fees.”

  The old man emitted a couple of those little coughs that sounded like chuckles. He tapped his cigar-ash into an ashtray. He seemed amused. He made a vague sweeping gesture to indicate the room.

  “This building is mine,” he said, “it belonged to my family, and the next street belongs to me, belonged to my family. I have no descendants, so as long as the money lasts I can amuse myself.”

  “And does this case amuse you?” asked Firmino.

  “That’s not exactly what I wanted to say,” replied the lawyer calmly, “but I would like you to be more precise about the facts in your possession.”

  “I have a witness,” said Firmino, “I met him this morning in the public gardens.”

  “Is your informant prepared to give evidence before an examining magistrate?” asked the lawyer.

  “I think he would if you asked him,” replied Firmino.

  “Come to the point,” said the lawyer.

  “It seems that Damasceno Monteiro was killed at the barracks of the Guardia Nacional,” said Firmino point-blank.

  “The Guardia Nacional, eh?” murmured the lawyer. He took a puff at his cigar and chuckled: “but in that case it’s a Grundnorm.”

  Firmino gave him a bewildered look and the lawyer read his bewilderment.

  “I can’t expect you to know what a Grundnorm is,” continued the lawyer, “I realize that we men of law sometimes speak in code.”

  “Then explain it to me,” retorted Firmino, “I only studied literature.”

  “Have you heard of Hans Kelsen?” asked the lawyer in such a low voice that he might have been talking to himself.

  “Hans Kelsen,” repeated Firmino, rummaging through his scanty knowledge of jurisprudence, “I think I have heard his name, he’s a philosopher of law I think, but you can tell me more about him.”

  The lawyer heaved such a deep sigh that it seemed to Firmino that he could hear its echo.

  “Berkeley, California, 1952,” he whispered. “You may not be able to imagine what California meant at that time to a young man hailing from the aristocracy of a provincial place such as Oporto and an oppressive country like Portugal, but I can tell you in a word that it meant freedom. Not the stereotyped sort of freedom you see represented in a lot of American movies of the time, even in America in those days there was fierce censorship, but genuine freedom, inward, absolute. Just imagine, I had a fiancee and we even used to play squash, an English game then completely unknown to the rest of Europe. I lived in a wooden house overlooking the ocean, south of Berkeley, it belonged to my distant American cousins, relatives on my mother’s side. But you will be wondering why I went to Berkeley. Because my family was wealthy, there’s no doubt about that, but first and foremost because I wanted to study the reasons which have induced mankind to draw up codes of law. Not the codes of law such as were studied by my contemporaries who have since become famous lawyers, but the underlying, and in a sense abstract, reasons. Do you follow me? And if you don’t follow me, don’t worry.”

  The obese man paused for another puff at his cigar. Firmino became aware of a heavy fog hovering in the huge room.

  “Well then,” he resumed, “I set my sights on that particular man on the basis of what I had learnt as a student here in Oporto. Hans Kelsen, born in Prague in 1881, a middle-European Jew, in the 1920s he had written a treatise called Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre, which I had read as a student, because I am a German speaker, you know, all my governesses were German, it’s practically my mother tongue. So I enrolled in his course at Berkeley. He was a gaunt man, bald and gauche, and at first sight no one would have taken him for a great philosopher of jurisprudence, they would have put him down as a civil servant. He had fled first from Vienna and then from Cologne because of the Nazis. He had taught in Switzerland and then he went to the United States. I followed him to the United States. The next year he transferred again to the University of Geneva, and I followed him to Geneva. His theories about the Grundnorm had become my obsession.”

  The lawyer fell silent, stubbed out his cigar and drew a deep breath as if he were short of oxygen.

  “Grundnorm,” he repeated, “do you grasp the concept?”

  “Basic norm,” said Firmino, trying to make use of the little German he knew.

  “To be sure, basic principle is what it means literally,” specified the obese man, “except that for Kelsen it is situated at the apex of the pyramid, it’s a basic norm in reverse, it’s at the pinnacle of his theory of justice, what he described as the Stufenbau Theorie, the theory of pyramidal construction.”

  The lawyer paused. He sighed again, but this time plaintively. “It is a normative proposition,” he continued, “it stands on the pinnacle of what is called Law, but it’s the fruit of this scholar’s imagination, a pure hypothesis.”

  Firmino did not manage to discern whether his expression was pedagogical, meditative, or simply melancholy.

  “If I may so put it,” said the lawyer, “it’s a metaphysical hypothesis, purely metaphysical. And if you want, this is a truly Kafkaesque thing, it’s the norm that ensnares us all and which, though it may seem incongruous, might account for the arrogance of a little squire who thinks he has the right to whip a prostitute. The ways of the Grundnorm are infinite.”

  “The witness I spoke to this morning,” said Firmino to charge the subject, “is certain that Damasceno was murdered by the Guardia Nacionale.”

  The lawyer gave a tired smile and glanced at his watch.

  “Oh,” said he, “now the Guardia Nacionale is a military institution, it’s the very incarnation of the Grundnorm, this business is beginning to interest me, also because you have no idea how many people have recently been killed or tortured in our charming police stations.”

  “I think I have as good an idea as you do,” Firmino pointed out, “the last four cases have been covered by my paper.”

  “Of course,” murmured the lawyer, “and all the culprits acquitted, all of them comfortably back in service, this business is really beginning to interest me, but what would you say to a bite of lunch? It’s half-past one and I feel a little peckish, there’s a restaurant almost next door which I heartily recommend. Incidentally, do you like tripe?”

  “Moderately,” replied Firmino with misgiving.

  Twelve

  “UNFORTUNATELY, MANUEL, this young man doesn’t like tripe,” said the lawyer to the owner when they reached the restaurant, “so please inform him of the other specialties of the house.”

  The owner put his fists on his hips and gave Firmino such a look that he lowered his eyes for shame.

  “Don Fernando,” said the owner in easy tones, “if I do not manage to meet your guest’s requirements then I will offer the meal free of charg
e. Is he a foreigner?”

  “Almost,” replied the lawyer, “but he is beginning to get used to the ways of this city.”

  “Then I might suggest our rice with red beans and fried bass,” said the owner, “or else the roulade of salt cod.”

  Firmino cast his companion a bewildered glance, wishing to indicate that either dish would suit him fine.

  “Let’s have both,” decided the lawyer, “then we can nibble here and there. And for me the tripe, of course.”

  The restaurant, which was not so much a restaurant as a cellar lined with barrels, was at the end of an apparently nameless alleyway next to Rua das Flores. Over the doorway Firmino had spotted a sort of wooden inn sign crudely painted with the words: “The cellar for discerning palates is here.”

  “So what do you think are our next steps?” asked Firmino.

  “What’s the name of your witness?” asked the lawyer.

  “He’s called Torres,” said Firmino, “he’s an electrician at the Faisca Garage.”

  “I’ll call by and pick him up this afternoon,” said the lawyer, “and take him to the examining magistrate.”

  “And what if Torres doesn’t want to testify?” objected Firmino.

  “I repeat: I will take him to the examining magistrate,” replied the lawyer placidly.

  He poured out two glasses of a greenish wine and raised his own glass for a toast.

  “This is an Alvarinho which can’t be found on the market,” he said, “but it’s only an aperitif, after this we’ll drink red wine.”

  “I’m not all that used to drinking wine,” said Firmino apologetically.

  “You can always make up for lost time,” replied the lawyer.

  At that moment the owner appeared with dishes of food, and addressed the lawyer as if Firmino didn’t exist.

  “Here we are Don Fernando,” he declared with a satisfied air, “and if your guest doesn’t like it the lunch is on me, as I said before, however he’d do better to quit town.”

  The red beans and rice, smothered in a chestnut-colored sauce, looked far from appetizing. Firmino took two fried fish and cut himself a slice of the salt cod roulade. The lawyer watched him with his small, questioning eyes.

  “Eat up, young man,” he said, “you’d better keep your strength up, this is going to be a long, complicated business.”

  “What should I do at this point?” asked Firmino.

  “Tomorrow go to Torres,” said the lawyer, “and give him a whale of an interview, as long and detailed as possible. Then publish it in your paper.”

  “And if Torres doesn’t want to?” asked Firmino.

  “Certainly he’ll want to,” replied the lawyer calmly, “he has no choice, the reason is simple and Torres will grasp it at once, I don’t imagine he’s a fool.”

  The lawyer took a napkin to the sauce of the tripe running down his chin, and continued in a detached tone as if explaining something absolutely elementary: “Because Torres is a finished man,” he said, “this afternoon under my supervision he is going to give his evidence before a magistrate, of that I can assure you, but you know, a statement which stays in the hands of the examining authorities is a drifting mine, it’s always a good rule not to trust it, that statement might come to the knowledge of someone who doesn’t like it, and just imagine, with all the traffic accidents that happen these days, incidentally did you know that Portugal is at the top of the list in Europe for road accidents? It appears that we Portuguese drive like madmen.”

  Firmino regarded him with all the perplexity which this lawyer continued to instill in him.

  “And what purpose would be served by the interview in my paper?” he enquired.

  The lawyer, with great relish, devoured a strip of tripe. Although it was cut quite short he kept trying vainly to wind it up round his fork.

  “My dear young man,” he sighed, “you amaze me, you have been amazing me ever since you entered my house, you write for a paper with a wide circulation and you don’t seem to know the meaning of public opinion, it’s very remiss of you, so try to follow me for a moment. If after making his statement to the examining magistrate Torres repeats every word of it to your newspaper he can be easy in his mind, because he will have the whole of public opinion on his side, and any absent-minded driver, for example, would think twice before running over someone so much in the public eye, do you get the idea?”

  “I get the idea,” replied Firmino.

  “And then,” continued the lawyer, “and this is something that directly concerns you as a journalist, do you know what Jouhandeau said?”

  Firmino shook his head. The lawyer took a sip of wine and wiped his fleshy lips.

  “He said: Since the essential object of literature is the knowledge of human nature, and since there is no place in the world where one can study it better than in courts of law, would it not be desirable, by law, for there always to be a writer among the jurymen, his presence there would be an inducement to all the others to reflect more deeply. End of quotation.”

  The lawyer paused for a moment and took another sip of wine.

  “Well then,” he resumed, “it’s obvious that you will never sit in the jury box of a court as Monsieur Jouhandeau wished, nor will you even be present at the preliminary enquiries, because the law does not permit it, and it is also true that strictly speaking you are not exactly a writer, but we can try to consider you as such, seeing that you write for a newspaper. Let us say that you will be a virtual juryman, and that is your role, a virtual juryman, do you grasp the concept?”

  “I think so,” replied Firmino.

  But he wanted to come clean, so he asked: “But who is this Jouhandeau? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Marcel Jouhandeau,” came the answer, “an irritating French theologian with a taste for provoking scandal, he was also a great eulogist of abjection, if I may so put it, and of a sort of metaphysical perversion, or rather of what he imagined to be metaphysical. You must understand that he was writing in France at the time when the Surrealists were exalting rebellion and Gide had already produced his theory of gratuitous crime. But naturally he had none of Gide’s stature, in fact he was pretty poor stuff, even if the occasional maxim about justice hit the mark.”

  “We still have to settle the basic question,” said Firmino, “because my paper is naturally taking on responsibility for your fees.”

  The lawyer turned his inquisitorial gaze on him.

  “Meaning what?” he asked.

  “Meaning that your emolument will be paid in the proper manner.”

  “Meaning what?” repeated the lawyer, “what does that mean in numerical terms?”

  Firmino felt slightly embarrassed.

  “I couldn’t say,” he answered, “that is a question for my Editor.”

  “There is a house in Rua do Ferraz,” said the lawyer inconsequentially, “in which I spent my childhood, it’s just above Rua das Flores, a small eighteenth-century palace, the marchioness my grandmother lived there.”

  He heaved a nostalgic sigh.

  “Where did you live as a child, in what sort of house?” he asked at length.

  “On the sea at Cascais,” replied Firmino, “my father was in the coast guards and had the use of a house on the sea, my brothers and I spent almost our whole childhood there.”

  “Ah yes,” exclaimed the lawyer, “the Cascais coast, that pure white light at midday that becomes tinted with pink at sunset, the blue of the ocean, the pinewoods of the Guincho…. My memories, on the other hand, are of a gloomy town house, with an unfeeling grandmother who sipped cups of tea and appeared every day with a different ribbon around her wrinkled neck, sometimes simple, other times with a narrow lace trimming. She never touched me, though occasionally she lightly brushed her cold hand against mine and told me that the only thing a child had to learn about his family was to respect his forebears. I would take a look at those whom she called my forebears. They were old oil paintings of haughty men with disdainful expressio
ns and fleshy lips like mine, which I inherited from them.”

  He took a mouthful of the salt cod and said: “I find this quite excellent, tell me, what do you think of it?”

  “I like it,” replied Firmino, “but you were telling me about your childhood.”

  “Very well,” continued the lawyer, “that house is now abandoned, with all its memories of the old marchioness who was a grandmother to me in her way: her portraits, her furniture, her blankets from Castelo Branco and her precious family trees. Let us say that it’s my childhood that is locked up there as in a casket. Until a few years ago I still used to go there to consult the family archives, but I don’t know if you’ve seen Rua do Ferraz, to get up the slope you’d need a cable car, and with a bulk like mine I’m not up to it, I’d have to call a cab to take me five hundred meters, so it’s seven years since I set foot in the place. Therefore I’ve decided to sell it, I’ve put it in the hands of an agency, it’s just as well that these agencies should swallow up childhoods, it’s the most antiseptic way of getting rid of them, and you cannot imagine how many middle-class upstarts, who’ve minted money over these last few years thanks to grants from the European Community, would like to lay their hands on that house. You see, it’s a place that to their way of thinking would give them the social status which they crave, a modern villa with swimming pool in the residential areas is within their reach, but an eighteenth-century mansion in old Oporto is many steps higher up the ladder, do you grasp the concept?”

  “I grasp the concept,” said Firmino.

  “I have therefore decided to sell it,” said the lawyer. “The keenest prospective buyer comes from the provinces. He’s a typical product of the society we live in nowadays. His father was a small-time cattle-breeder. He himself began with a small shoe business even while Salazar was in power. Actually he specialized in canvas footwear, with a couple of workmen. Then in 1974 came the revolution and he sided with the co-operatives, he even gave a practically revolutionary interview to a newspaper of that persuasion. Then, after the illusions of revolution, in came unbridled neo-liberalism, and he took sides with that, as he had to. In a word, he’s known how to look after Number One. He owns four Mercedes and a golf course in Algarve, I believe he has shares in building projects in Alentejo, and who knows if not even in the Tróia Peninsula, he knows how to handle all the political parties in the constitutional spectrum, from the Communists to the Right, and it goes without saying that his shoe factory is flourishing, exporting chiefly to the United States. What do you say then, am I right to sell?”