The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro Read online

  “The house, you mean?”

  “The house, naturally,” replied the lawyer. “I might well sell it to him. A few days ago I had a visit from his wife, who I think is the only literate person in the family. I will spare you a description of that painted lady. But I raised my price, saying that I was selling the house together with its antique furniture and portraits of the old aristocracy, and I asked her: what would a family like yours do with a house like that without its antique furniture and family portraits? What do you think, young man, did I do well?”

  “Very well indeed,” replied Firmino, “since you ask me for my opinion I can tell you you did just the right thing.”

  “In that case,” concluded the lawyer, “you may tell your Editor that for my expenses over Damasceno Monteiro I shall be amply remunerated by two eighteenth-century paintings in my house in Rua do Ferraz, and ask him to make no further proposals concerning my fees, if he will be so good.”

  Firmino made no answer but simply went on eating. He had cautiously sampled the red beans and rice and found it delicious, so he was now on his second helping. He really wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it. Eventually he tried to formulate it.

  “Well my paper you know,” he stammered, “or my paper is only what it is, I mean to say you know very well what its style is, it’s the style we have to use to capture our readership, well it’s written for the masses, it’s got guts, but it’s still written for the masses, it has to make concessions to its readership in short, so as to sell more copies, if you see what I mean.”

  The lawyer was concentrating on his food and said nothing. He was completely absorbed in eating the salt cod. “I don’t know if you grasp the concept,” said Firmino, taking over the lawyer’s formula.

  “I do not grasp the concept,” replied the lawyer.

  “Well,” continued Firmino, “what I mean is that my paper is the paper you know it to be, while you, well, you are a leading lawyer, you have the surname you have, and in a word I wanted to say you have a reputation to keep up, if you see what I mean.”

  “You continue to disappoint me, young man,” replied the lawyer, “you do everything in your power to be a lesser person than you really are, we must never be less than we really are, what was it you said about me?”

  “That you have a reputation to keep up,” said Firmino.

  “Listen to me,” murmured the lawyer, “I don’t think we’ve understood each other, so I’ll tell you something once and for all, but open your ears and hear. I defend the unfortunates of this world because I am like them, and that is the pure and simple truth. Of my ancient lineage I exploit only what material inheritance is still left to me, but like the unfortunates whom I defend I think I have experienced the miseries of life, have understood them and even taken them on myself, because to understand the miseries of life you have to put your hands in the shit, if you will excuse the expression, and above all be aware of it. And kindly don’t force me to be rhetorical, because this form of rhetoric is cheap.”

  “But what do you believe in?” asked Firmino impulsively.

  He had no idea what had made him ask such an ingenuous question at that moment, and even as he spoke it seemed to him one of those questions you ask of a schoolmate, that make you both blush. The lawyer raised his head from his plate and looked at him with those inquisitorial eyes of his.

  “Are you asking me a personal question?” he inquired with explicit annoyance.

  “Let’s call it a personal question,” replied Firmino bravely.

  “And why do you ask this question?” insisted the lawyer.

  “Because you don’t believe in anything,” Firmino burst out, “I get the impression that you don’t believe in anything.”

  The lawyer smiled. Firmino felt that he was ill at ease.

  “I might, for example, believe in something that to you seems insignificant,” he answered.

  “Give me a convincing example,” said Firmino. He had got himself into this and wanted to keep up his role.

  “For example a poem,” replied the lawyer, “just a few lines, it might seem a mere trifle, or it might also be a thing of the essence. For example:

  Everything that I have known

  You’ll write to me to remind

  Me of, and likewise I shall do,

  The whole past I’ll recount to you.

  The lawyer fell silent. He had shoved away his plate and sat fumbling with his napkin.

  “Hölderlin,” he went on, “it’s a poem called Wenn aus der Ferne, which means ‘If From the Distance,’ it’s one of his last. Let us say that there might be people who are waiting for letters from the past, do you think that a plausible thing to believe in?”

  “Perhaps,” replied Firmino, “it might be plausible, though really I’d like to understand it a bit more.”

  “Nothing to it,” murmured the lawyer, “letters from the past which give us an explanation of a time in our life which we have never understood, an explanation whatever it might be that enables us to grasp the meaning of the years gone by, a meaning that eluded us then, you are young, you are waiting for letters from the future, but just suppose that there are people waiting for letters from the past, and maybe I am one of these, and maybe I go so far as to imagine that one day I shall receive them.”

  He paused, lit one of his cigars, and asked: “And do you know how I imagine they will arrive? Come on, try and think.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Firmino.

  “Well,” said the lawyer, “they will arrive in a little parcel done up with a pink bow, just like that, and, scented with violets, as in the most trashy romantic novels. And on that day I shall lower my horrible old snout to the package, undo the pink bow, open the letters, and with the clarity of noonday I shall understand a story I never understood before, a story unique and fundamental, I repeat, unique and fundamental, such a thing as can happen but once in our lives, that the gods grant only once in our lives, and to which at the time we did not pay enough attention, for the simple reason that we were conceited fools.”

  Another pause, longer this time. Firmino watched him in silence, taking stock of his fat old droopy cheeks, his almost repulsively fleshy lips, and the expression of one lost in memories.

  “Because,” the lawyer went on in a low voice,“que faites-vous faites-vous des anciennes amours?. It’s a line from a poem by Louise Colet, and goes on like this: les chassez-vous comme des ombres vaines? Ils ont été, ces fantômes glacés, coeur contre coeur, unepart de vous même* There’s no doubt the lines were addressed to Flaubert. I should add that Louise Colet wrote very bad poems, poor dear, even if she thought of herself as a great poetess and wanted to make a hit in all the literary salons in Paris, really mediocre stuff, no doubt about it. But these few lines really get to one, it seems to me, because what in fact do we do with our past loves? Push them away in a drawer along with our socks full of holes?”

  He looked at Firmino as if expecting confirmation, but Firmino said not a word.

  “Do you know what I say,” continued the lawyer, “that if Flaubert didn’t understand her then he was really a fool, in which case we have to agree with that smarty-pants Sartre, but maybe Flaubert did understand, what do you think, did Flaubert understand or not?”

  “Maybe he understood,” replied Firmino, “I couldn’t say offhand, maybe he did understand but I’m not in a position to swear to it.”

  “I beg your pardon, young man,” said the lawyer, “but you claim to be studying literature, indeed that you intend to write a paper on literature, and you here own up to me that you can’t say anything for sure on the fundamental question, whether Flaubert did or did not understand Louise Colet’s coded message.”

  “But I’m studying Portuguese literature in the 1950s,” Firmino defended himself, “and what has Flaubert to do with Portuguese literature in the 1950s?”

  “Apparently nothing,” said the lawyer, “but only apparently, because in literature ev
erything has to do with everything else. Look, young man, it’s like a spider’s web, you know what a spider’s web is like? Well think of all those complicated threads woven together by the spider, all of which lead to the center, looking at those at the outer edge you wouldn’t think it, but everything leads to the center, I’ll give you an example, how could you understand L’éducation sentimentale, a novel so terribly pessimistic and at the same time so reactionary, because according to the criteria of your friend Lukács it is terribly reactionary, if you don’t know the tasteless novelettes of that period of appalling bad taste that was the Second Empire? And along with this, making the proper connections, what if you were to be unaware of Flaubert’s state of mental depression? Because, you know, when Flaubert was shut up there in his house at Croisset, peering out at the world through a window, he was fearfully depressed, and all this, even though it seems not so to you, forms a spider’s web, a system of underground connections, of astral conjunctions, of elusive correspondences. If you want to study literature at least learn that you must study correspondences.”

  Firmino gave him a look and tried to come up with an answer. Strangely enough he was seized with that same absurd sense of guilt the owner had caused him when he had told him what was on the menu.

  “I try in all humility to concern myself with Portuguese literature in the 1950s,” he replied, “without getting all swollen-headed about it.”

  “Right,” said the lawyer, “without getting swollen-headed you have to plumb the depths of that particular period. And to do so perhaps you ought to know the weather reports published in the Portuguese papers during those years, as you may learn from a magnificent novel by one of our own authors who succeeded in describing the censorship imposed by the political police by referring to the weather reports in the papers, do you know the book I mean?”

  Firmino didn’t answer but moved his head in a noncommittal fashion.

  “Well then,” said the lawyer, “I give you that as a clue to a possible line of research, so remember, even weather reports can come in handy as long as they are taken as metaphors, as clues, without falling into the sociology of literature, do I make myself clear?”

  “I think so,” said Firmino.

  “Sociology of literature my foot!” repeated the lawyer with an air of disgust, “We live in barbarous times.”

  He made to rise to his feet and Firmino leapt to his so as to get there first.

  “Put it all on my bill, Manuel,” called out the lawyer, “our guest enjoyed his lunch.”

  They wended their way out, but the lawyer stopped in the doorway.

  “This evening I’ll let you know something about what position Torres adopts,” he said, “I’ll send you a message at Dona Rosa’s. But it is essential for you to interview him tomorrow and for your paper to bring out another special edition, since you are running so many special editions about this severed head, have you got me?”

  “I’ve got you,” replied Firmino, “you can count on me.”

  They emerged into the afternoon light of Oporto. The streets were full of bustle and steamy heat, with a light mist blurring the outlines of the city. The lawyer wiped his brow with a handkerchief and made a brief gesture of farewell.

  “I’ve eaten too much,” he grumbled, “I always eat too much. Incidentally, do you know how Hölderlin died?”

  Firmino simply looked at him without answering. For the moment he really couldn’t recall how Hölderlin died.

  “He died mad,” said the lawyer, “and that’s something to bear in mind.”

  And supporting his enormous bulk he moved off with uncertain steps.

  * * *

  * “Would you send them away like useless shadows? These gelid ghosts were, heart pressed to heart, a part of yourself.”

  Thirteen

  LEONEL TORRES, TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF age, no criminal record, married with one child nine months old, born in Braga, resident in Oporto, a friend of Damasceno Monteiro. They were together on the night of the murder, he has already made a deposition to the examining magistrates. He has agreed to grant an exclusive interview to our paper. His statements open a new chapter in the story of this murky case and cast disquieting doubts on the conduct of our police. From your special correspondent in Oporto.

  —How did you come to know Damasceno Monteiro?

  I met him when my family moved to Oporto. I was twelve years old, at that time his parents lived in the Ribeira. But not in the same building as they do now, his father was a basketmaker and earned good money.

  —We know that in recent months you were very close friends.

  He was in trouble and often came to my house for a meal, he had very little money.

  —But he’d found a job not long before.

  He’d been taken on as errand-boy at the Stones of Portugal, an import-export firm in Gaia, most of his work was with the containers.

  —And what had Senhor Monteiro found unusual, so to speak, about his work?

  Well, inside the containers, along with electronic instruments, there were also packets of drugs, in plastic bags embedded in stearin.

  —So you think that Damasceno Monteiro knew too much?

  I don’t think it, I know it.

  —Could you explain more fully?

  Damasceno realized that the receiver was the night watchman, the old man who died a few days ago. Of course the firm knew nothing about this traffic, but the night watchman was in cahoots with these peddlers in Hong Kong, where the containers came from. He received the packets and unloaded them in Oporto.

  —What kind of drugs were involved?

  Heroin in its pure state.

  —And where did it end up?

  The Green Cricket came by and picked up the packages.

  —Excuse me, but who is the Green Cricket?

  He’s a sergeant in the local commissariat of the Guardia Nacional.

  —And his name?

  Titânio Silva, known as the Green Cricket.

  —Why do they call him the Green Cricket?

  Because when he gets angry he stammers and hops up and down like a cricket. Also he has an olive-green complexion.

  —And what happened next?

  A few months ago Damasceno worked as an electrician at the ‘Borboleta Nocturna,’ a nightclub belonging to the Green Cricket, though he’s got it registered under his sister-in-law’s name. That’s the base he uses to peddle all the drugs in Oporto. The big dealers come there to buy it and then they distribute it to the mules.

  —The mules?

  The retail-pushers, the guys who sell their asses unloading the stuff around the streets, to junkies.

  —And what was it that Monteiro found out?

  Nothing special, he’d simply realized that the Green Cricket was receiving consignments of heroin from Hong Kong through an import-export firm. Could be that he’d got on their track, who knows, for the fact is that soon afterwards he got a job as errand-boy at Stones of Portugal, in whose containers the stuff arrived from Asia, and he came to realize that the receiver was the night watchman.

  —Who, it appears, has died of a stroke.

  Yes, the old man had a sudden apoplectic fit and kicked the bucket. It was such a unique opportunity: the firm’s boss was abroad, the secretary on holiday and the accountant a cretin.

  —So what happened?

  So in the evening, soon after the night watchman had his stroke, Damasceno came to my house and told me that the astral conjunction had arrived, in fact, that it would be the coup of our lives, after which we could go off to Rio de Janeiro.

  —How was that?

  Because the containers loaded with stuff had just arrived from Hong Kong, as Damasceno Monteiro well knew, and since the Green Cricket and his gang would only be coming to pick them up the next day, as arranged with the night watchman, we would rip them off and take all the stuff.

  —And how did you react to that?

  I told him he must be mad, that if we screwed the Green Cricket like
that he’d have us bumped off. And apart from that, where the hell would we have sold all that stuff?

  —And what did Monteiro have to say to that?

  He said that he’d see to the sales side, he knew a good base in Algarve where they could dispatch it to France and Spain, and that it was just millions for the taking.

  —Go on.

  Well, I told him I wouldn’t go with him that night, that I had a wife and baby and could get by on my pay at the garage, he told me that he was in the shit, that his father took Antabuse and was sick as a dog all night long, and that he, Damasceno, couldn’t stand that life any longer and wanted to go and live in Copacabana, and since I had a car and he didn’t I had to drive him there.

  —And so you drove him?

  Yes I drove him there, and to tell the truth I even went into the front yard with him, I did this of my own free will without him forcing me in any way, because I didn’t like the idea of hanging around outside the gates while he went off on that dangerous errand all alone.

  —Excuse me, but put like that it sounds like a grand act of generosity on your part. Couldn’t it be that at the time you were thinking more of all the money you might get out of this robbery?

  Maybe yes, I’ll be frank about it. I work all day long as an electrician and earn a pittance, my home is in a basement which my wife has tried to doll up with flower-patterned curtains, but in winter the walls ooze with damp, it’s an unhealthy place. And I’ve got a baby only a few months old.