Requiem (7 page)

I would like to have closed my eyes for a few minutes, but he went on chatting. We were
passing São Pedro and he pointed something out to me. Can you imagine building anything
more horrible than that?, he said indicating the houses you could see through the opposite
window, have you ever seen anything uglier? They’re certainly ugly, I said, but who
allowed such monstrosities to be built? I don’t know, said the Ticket Collector, I
don’t know, the local councils in Portugal are a law to themselves, they take on
architects who are like kids playing with Lego, they’re all a bunch of incompetents
really, who want more than anything else to be modern. I get the impression you don’t
much like anything modern, I said. I hate it, he said, it’s hideous all of it, good
taste is basically fucked, if you’ll pardon the expression, you just have to look at the
miniskirt, horrible don’t you think?, a young girl can get away with it, but on fat
women, with those great knees of theirs, it looks really revolting, it takes away a
woman’s charm, takes away their mystery. He looked down at his crossword puzzle again
and said: Here we are, here’s a bit of modernity for you: “Modern architect
— singer with a stutter”? It’s got five letters. Aalto, I said, he was a
Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto. Aalto, he said, I doubt he was any good. On the contrary, I
said, he more or less rebuilt Helsinki in the fifties and designed some other really lovely
houses in other parts of Europe too, I like his work. Have you been to Helsinki?, the Ticket
Collector asked. I have, I said, it’s an odd city, all in brick and with these buildings
designed by Aalto and it’s surrounded by forests. What about the people?, he asked, what
are they like? They read a lot and they drink a lot, I said, they’re good people, I like
people who know how to drink. So you like the Portuguese then, he said, not entirely
illogically.

The train was just entering Cascais. Nice, eh?, said the Ticket Collector indicating the
Estoril Sol. Modern, I replied, so modern it’s already out of date. And then I asked: Do
you think a taxi as far as the road to Guincho will cost more than five hundred
escudos
? I shouldn’t think so, he said, taxis are still cheap in Portugal, as
a foreigner you should know that, look, I’ll tell you something, the only time I left
Portugal was to go to Switzerland to visit my son who lives in Geneva, he lives outside the
city so I caught a taxi and the taxi fare used up all the money I’d brought with me from
Portugal, by the way, are
you
Swiss? Swiss?!, I exclaimed, do you mind? no,
I’m Italian. But you’re practically Portuguese, he said, I suppose you’ve
lived here for a long time. No, I said, but I must have some Portuguese ancestor I don’t
know about, I think Portugal’s imprinted on my genetic baggage. Genetic baggage?,
repeated the Ticket Collector, I’ve seen that expression in the
Diário de
Notícias
, it’s that thing with the signs, the plus sign and the minus
sign, isn’t that it? More or less, I said, but to be honest, I don’t really know
what genetic baggage is either, I think it means something like nature or character, it would
be simpler to call it that. I like the word nature, said the Ticket Collector, my wife always
says I’m good-natured, what do you think? I think you’re extremely good-natured, I
said, and I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, without this chat my journey would have
been very boring.

The old woman appeared at the door and looked at
me suspiciously. Good afternoon, I said, I’ve come to see the house, I’d like to
visit it, if you don’t mind that is. My house?, asked the old woman, alarmed and
uncomprehending. No, I said, not your house, the big house, the one next to the lighthouse.
It’s all locked up, said the old woman patiently, no one lives there, it’s been
closed for years now. I know, I said, that’s why I wanted to see it, I’ve come all
the way from Lisbon just for that, look, I’ve got a taxi waiting for me. I pointed to
the taxi parked on the other side of the road to prove to her that what I was saying was true.
The house is all locked up, she repeated, I’m sorry, but the house is locked up. Are you
the housekeeper?, I asked. No, she said, I’m the lighthousekeeper’s wife, but when
I have time I also take care of the house, I open the windows now and then and do some
dusting, here by the sea everything falls to bits, windows, furniture, and the owners
don’t care, they don’t live here, they live abroad, they’re Arabs. Arabs?!,
I exclaimed, this house belongs to Arabs now? That’s right, said the
Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, the last owner, who’d bought it for next to nothing from
the old owners, wanted to build a hotel here, but his company went bust, it seems he was some
kind of con man, at least that’s what my husband says, so he sold it to the Arabs.
Arabs, I repeated, I would never have imagined that one day this house would be owned by
Arabs. The whole country’s up for grabs, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife,
foreigners are buying up everything, you know. Yes, I said, unfortunately, but what are these
Arabs going to do with the house? Well, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, to tell you
the truth, I think they’re waiting for it to fall down of its own accord, at the moment
the council won’t give permission to build a hotel, but if it falls down, that’s
different, they can build something new then. Is it falling down?, I asked. Well, said the
Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, in April, when we had those storms, the roof collapsed and made
a hole in the ceiling in two of the rooms, the rooms facing the sea are in a terrible state, I
think that come this winter, the whole top floor will cave in. That’s why I came, I
said, to see the house before it fell down. Are you interested in buying?, asked the
Lighthousekeeper’s Wife. No, I said, I don’t quite know how to explain, but a long
time ago I lived here for a whole year, it was before you worked here. That must have been
before 1971 then, she said, that’s when we arrived, Vitalina and Francisco must have
been here then. Yes, I remember Vitalina and Francisco well, I said, they were around the year
I was here, Vitalina looked after the house and did the cooking, she made the best
arroz
de tamboril
I’ve ever had, what happened to them? Francisco died of cirrhosis of
the liver, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, he used to drink a lot, he was a cousin of
my husband, and Vitalina’s living with her son now in Cabo da Roca. The whole family are
lighthousekeepers, I said. Yes, she said, the whole family, Vitalina’s son is
lighthousekeeper at Cabo da Roca, but he’s earning good money, I think Vitalina’s
much better off now than when Francisco was alive, she had a terrible time with him, he was
always drunk, sometimes she had to go up to the lighthouse herself because he wasn’t in
a fit state to. I know, I said, one night she came to ask me for help, it was a terrible
night, rainy and misty, Francisco was drunk in bed and Vitalina came to wake me up, she wanted
to turn on the radio but she couldn’t get it to work, so she came and woke me, I spent
the whole night with her in the lighthouse. Poor Vitalina, said the Lighthousekeeper’s
Wife, she had a hard life, it’s a real tragedy when all a man thinks about is drink. But
Francisco was a nice man, I said, I think he loved his wife. Oh, he loved her all right, said
the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, he never hit her, but that didn’t stop him getting
paralytic every night.

The taxi driver sounded his horn, wanting to know what I intended to do. I signalled to him
to wait and said to the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife: You don’t want to show me the
house then? Oh, all right, she said, but we’ll have to be quick, my son will be here
soon with his family, it’s my little granddaughter’s birthday today and I have to
finish making the supper. That’s fine by me, I said, I’ve got to get the train in
Cascais, I have to be in Lisbon at nine o’clock. The Lighthousekeeper’s Wife
disappeared inside the house. She came back with a bunch of keys and told me to follow her. We
crossed the yard to the porch. This is the way in now, she said, I expect when you were here,
you used to go in through the French windows on the terrace, but they can’t be used any
more, the glass is all broken. We went in and I immediately recognised the smell of the house.
It smelled a bit like the metro in Paris in winter, a mixture of mustiness, varnish and
mahogany, a smell peculiar to that house, and my memories all came back to me. We went into
the large sitting room and I saw the piano. It was covered with a sheet, but I still had the
urge to sit down at it. Excuse me, I said, but there’s something I must play, I’ll
be quick, I don’t really know how to play properly but anyway. I sat down and with one
finger, from memory, I played the melody from a nocturne by Chopin. Other hands, in other
times, used to play that melody. I remembered those nights, when I was upstairs in my room,
and I would lie listening to Chopin nocturnes. They were solitary nights, the house in winter
was swathed in mist, my friends were in Lisbon and didn’t come to visit, no one came, no
one phoned, I was writing and wondering why I was writing, the story I was working on was a
strange story, a story without a solution, what had made me want to write a story like that?,
how did I come to be writing it? More than that, the story was changing my life, would change
it, once I’d written it, my life would never be the same again. That’s what I
would say to myself, closeted upstairs writing that strange story, a story that someone
afterwards would imitate in real life, would transfer back to the plane of reality. I
didn’t know that, but I imagined it, I don’t know why, but I sensed that one
shouldn’t write stories like that, because there’s always someone who’ll try
and imitate fiction, who’ll manage to make it come true. And that was what happened.
That same year someone imitated my story, or rather, the story became flesh, was
transubstantiated, and I had to live that crazy story all over again, but this time for real,
this time the characters inhabiting the story weren’t made of paper, they were flesh and
blood, this time the development, the sequence of events in my story unravelled day by day, I
followed its progress on the calendar, to the point that I knew what would happen.

Was it a good year?, the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife asked me, I mean, were you comfortable
here in this house? It was a bewitched year, I replied, there was some kind of witchcraft
going on. Do you believe in witches?, asked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, people like
yourself don’t usually, they think it’s just popular superstition. Oh, I believe,
I said, at least in some forms of witchcraft, you know, you should never try to influence
things by suggestion, if you do, things end up happening that way. I went to see a clairvoyant
when my son was in the war in Guinea Bissau, said the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, I was
terribly worried because I’d had a dream, I dreamed that he would never come back, so I
talked to my husband and said: Look, Armando, you’ve got to give me some money because I
want to go to the clairvoyant, I had a bad dream, I dreamed that Pedro would never come back
and I want to know whether he will or not, anyway, I went to the woman and she laid out the
cards, then she turned one card over and said: Your son will come back, but he’ll be
maimed, and Pedro did come back, but he’d lost an arm. The Lighthousekeeper’s Wife
opened a door and said: This is the dining room, was this where you used to have supper?

The dining room was exactly as it had been: the fireplace, the sideboard, the Indo-Portuguese
furniture, the large, dark-wood table. It was indeed, I said, I used to sit here, in this
chair, a woman friend used to sit to my right and, here and here, two other friends of mine.
Did Vitalina serve at table?, asked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife. She did, I said, or
rather, she brought the things from the kitchen and left them on a tray in the middle of the
table and we served ourselves, Vitalina didn’t like
to serve at table,
she preferred the kitchen, apart from
arroz de tamboril
she made a magnificent
açorda de mariscos,
but her speciality was
sopa alentejana
.
Because she was from the Alentejo, remarked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, that’s
why she could do
sopa alentejana
. You know, my day today has been full of people from
the Alentejo, I said, I’ve just realised that almost everyone I’ve met today has
been from there.
Alentejanos
are very proud, remarked the Lighthousekeeper’s
Wife, but I like them, I mean, they’re nothing like me, I’m from Viana do Castelo
and I’m a very different type of person, but I still like them. The
Lighthousekeeper’s Wife wiped the layer of dust off the sideboard with her apron. Would
you like to see upstairs too?, she asked. If you wouldn’t mind, I said. Be careful on
the stairs, she said, they’re very slippery because the wood’s so worn, I’ll
go first.

I opened the door of the room, looked up and saw the sky. It was a very blue sky,
transparent, it dazzled the eyes. It was unreal, that room with the bed, the wardrobe and the
bedside tables, and almost no roof over it. It’s dangerous here, said the
Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, that one last bit of roof could fall any minute, we can’t
stay in here. Just for a second, I said, it’s not going to fall right now. I stretched
out on the bed and said: I’m sorry but I just have to lie down for a moment, as a way of
saying goodbye, it’s the last time I’ll ever lie on this bed. Seeing me lying
there, the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife discreetly left the room and I stared up at the sky.
It was very odd, when I was younger I’d always thought of that blue as mine, as
something that belonged to me, but now it seemed exaggerated, distant, like a hallucination,
and I thought: It can’t be true, it just can’t be true that I’m lying here
on this bed again and instead of looking up at the ceiling, as I did on so many nights,
I’m looking up at a sky that once belonged to me. I got up and went to find the old
woman, who was waiting for me in the corridor. One last thing, I said, there’s just one
other room I’d like to see. There’s no guestroom any more, she said, when the roof
fell in, everything was ruined, my husband took all the furniture out. I’d just like a
look, I said. But you can’t go in, she said, my husband says even the floor is
dangerous. She opened the door and I peered in. There was nothing in the room and the roof had
disappeared completely. You could see the lighthouse through the window. My husband’s up
there, she said, but he’s probably asleep now, there’s nothing to do at this hour,
but he’s so stubborn, and instead of coming home for a sleep, he goes and sleeps in the
lighthouse. Do you know what I used to do with that lighthouse in the old days?, I said,
I’ll tell you, I used to play a game sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d
come into this room and stand at the window, the lighthouse has three intermittent lights, one
white, one green and one red, and I used to play a game with the lights, I’d invented a
luminous alphabet and I used to speak through the lighthouse, as it were. And who were you
speaking to?, asked the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife. Well, I said, I used to speak to
certain invisible presences, I was writing a story at the time, I suppose you could say I was
speaking to ghosts. Oh my God, exclaimed the Lighthousekeeper’s Wife, weren’t you
afraid of talking to ghosts? I should never have done it, I said, it’s not a good idea
to talk to ghosts, you shouldn’t do it, but sometimes you have to, I can’t explain
it really, but that’s partly why I’m here today.