The Destiny of Nathalie X

  Consul Schenk’s Report

  Agostinho da Silva Boscán kissed me one week after he had resigned. He worked out his month’s notice scrupulously and dutifully. Every evening he came to my office to report on the day’s business and present me with letters and contracts to sign. On this particular evening, I recall, we were going over a letter of complaint to a cork grower in Elvas—hitherto reliable—whose cork planks proved to be riddled with ant borings. Boscán was standing beside my chair, his right hand flat on the leather top of the desk, his forefinger slid beneath the upper page of the letter, ready to turn it over. Slowly and steadily he translated the Portuguese into his impeccable English. It was hot and I was a little tired. I found I was not concentrating on the sonorous monotone of his voice. My gaze left the page of the letter and focused on his hand, flat on the desktop. I saw its even, pale brownness, like milky coffee, the dark glossy hairs that grew beneath the knuckles and the first joint of the fingers, the nacreous shine of his fingernails … the pithy edge of his white cuffs, beginning to fray … I could smell a faint musky perfume coming off him—farinaceous and sweet—from the lotion he put on his hair, and mingled with that his own scent, sour and salt … His suit was too heavy, his only suit, a worn shiny blue serge, made in Madrid, he told me, too hot for a summer night in Lisbon … Quietly, I inhaled and my nostrils filled with the smell of Agostinho Boscán.

  “If you say you love me, Senhor Boscán,” I interrupted him, “why don’t you do something about it?”

  “I am,” he said after a pause. “I’m leaving.”

  He straightened. I did not turn, keeping my eyes on the letter.

  “Isn’t that a bit cowardly?”

  “Well,” he said. “It’s true. I would like to be a bit less … cowardly. But there is a problem. Rather a serious problem.”

  Now I turned. “What’s that?”

  “I think I’m going mad.”

  My name is Lily Campendonc, née Jordan. I was born in Cairo in 1908. In 1914 my family moved to London. I was educated there and in Paris and Geneva. I married John Campendonc in 1929 and we moved to Lisbon, where he ran the family’s cork processing factory. He died of a coronary attack in October 1931. I had been a widow for nine months before I kissed another man, my late husband’s office manager. I was twenty-four years old when I spent my first Christmas with Agostinho da Silva Boscán.

  The invitation came, typewritten on a lined sheet of cheap writing paper.

  My dear Lily,

  I invite you to spend Christmas with me. For three days—24, 25, 26 December—I will be residing in the village of Manjedoura. Take the train to Cintra and then a taxi from the station. My house is at the east end of the village, painted white with green shutters. It would make me very happy if you could come, even for a day. There are only two conditions. One, you must address me only as Balthazar Cabral. Two, please do not depilate yourself—anywhere.

  Your good friend,

  Agostinho Boscán

  “Balthazar Cabral” stood naked beside the bed I was lying in. His penis hung long and thin, but slowly fattening, shifting. Uncircumcised. I watched him pour a little olive oil into the palm of his hand and grip himself gently. He pulled at his penis, smearing it with oil, watching it grow erect under his touch. Then he pulled the sheet off me and sat down. He wet his fingers with the oil again and reached to feel me.

  “What’s happening?” I could barely sense his moving fingers.

  “It’s an old trick,” he said. “Roman centurions discovered it in Egypt.” He grinned. “Or so they say.”

  I felt oil running off my inner thighs onto the bedclothes. Boscán clambered over me and spread my legs. He was thin and wiry, his flat chest shadowed with fine hairs, his nipples were almost black. The beard he had grown made him look strangely younger.

  He knelt in front of me. He closed his eyes.

  “Say my name, Lily, say my name.”

  I said it. Balthazar Cabral. Balthazar Cabral. Balthazar Cabral …

  After the first stripping the cork tree is left in the juvenescent state to regenerate. Great care must be taken in the stripping not to injure the inner skin or epidermis at any stage in the process, for the life of the tree depends on its proper preservation. If it is injured at any point, growth there ceases and the spot remains forever afterward scarred and uncovered.

  Consul Schenk’s Report

  I decided not to leave the house that first day. I spent most of the time in bed, reading or sleeping. Balthazar brought me food—small cakes and coffee. In the afternoon he went out for several hours. The house we were in was square and simple and set in a tangled uncultivated garden. The ground floor consisted of a sitting room and a kitchen, and above that were three bedrooms. There was no lavatory or bathroom. We used chamber pots to relieve ourselves. We did not wash.

  Balthazar returned in the early evening, bringing with him some clothes that he asked me to put on. There was a small short cerise jacket with epaulets but no lapels—it looked vaguely German or Swiss—a simple white shirt and some black cotton trousers with a drawstring at the waist. The jacket was small, even for me, tight across my shoulders, the sleeves short at my wrists. I wondered if it belonged to a boy.

  I dressed in the clothes he had brought and stood before him as he looked at me intently, concentrating. After a while he asked me to pin my hair up.

  “Whose jacket is this?” I asked as I did so.

  “Mine,” he said.

  We sat down to dinner. Balthazar had cooked the food. Tough stringy lamb in an oily gravy. A plate of beans the color of pistachio. Chunks of grayish spongy bread torn from a flat crusty loaf.

  On Christmas Day we went out and walked for several miles along unpaved country roads. It was a cool morning with a fresh breeze. On our way back home we were caught in a shower of rain and took shelter under an olive tree, waiting for it to pass. I sat with my back against the trunk and smoked a cigarette. Balthazar sat cross-legged on the ground and scratched designs in the earth with a twig. He wore heavy boots and coarse woolen trousers. His new beard was uneven—dense around his mouth and throat, skimpy on his cheeks. His hair was uncombed and greasy. The smell of the rain falling on the dry earth was strong—sour and ferrous, like old cellars.

  That night we lay side by side in bed, hot and exhausted. I slipped my hands in the creases beneath my breasts and drew them out, my fingers moist and slick. I scratched my neck. I could smell the sweat on my body. I turned. Balthazar was sitting up, one knee raised, the sheet flung off him, his shoulders against the wooden headboard. On his side of the bed was an oil lamp set on a stool. A small brown moth fluttered crazily around it, its big shadow bumping on the ceiling. I felt a sudden huge contentment spill through me. My bladder was full and was aching slightly, but with the happiness came a profound lethargy that made the effort required to reach below the bed for the enamel chamber pot prodigious.

  I reached out and touched Balthazar’s thigh.

  “You can go tomorrow,” he said. “If you want.”

  “No, I’ll stay on,” I said instantly, without thinking. “I’m enjoying myself. I’m glad I’m here.” I hauled myself up to sit beside him.

  “I want to see you in Lisbon,” I said, taking his hand.

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because after tomorrow you will never see Balthazar Cabral again.”

  From this meager description we now at least have some idea of what “corkwood” is and have some indication of the constant care necessary to ensure a successful gathering or harvest, while admitting that the narration in no wise does justice to this most interesting material. We shall now turn to examine it more closely and see what it really is, how this particular formation comes about and its peculiarities.

  Consul Schenk’s Report

  Boscán: “One of my problems, one of my mental problems, rather—and how can I convince you of its effect?—horrible, horrible beyond words—is my deep and
abiding fear of insanity … Of course it goes without saying; such a deep fear of insanity is insanity itself.”

  I saw nothing of Boscán for a full year. Having left my employ, he then, I believe, became a freelance translator, working for any firm that would give him a job and not necessarily in the cork industry. Then came Christmas 1933 and another invitation arrived, written on a thick buff card with deckle edges in a precise italic hand, in violet ink:

  Senhora Campendonc, do me the honor of spending the festive season in my company. I shall be staying at the Avenida Palace hotel, rooms 35–38, from 22 to 26 December inclusive.

  Your devoted admirer,

  J. Melchior Vasconcelles

  P.S. Bring many expensive clothes and scents. I have jewels.

  Boscán’s suite in the Avenida Palace was on the fourth floor. The bellhop referred to me as Senhora Vasconcelles. Boscán greeted me in the small vestibule and made the bellhop leave my cases there.

  Boscán was dressed in a pale gray suit. His face was thinner, clean-shaven and his hair was sleek, plastered down on his head with macassar. In his shiny hair I could see the stiff furrows made from the teeth of the comb.

  When the bellhop had gone we kissed. I could taste the mint from his mouthwash on his lips.

  Boscán opened a small leather suitcase. It was full of jewels, paste jewels, rhinestones, strings of artificial pearls, diamante brooches and marcasite baubles. This was his plan, he said: this Christmas our gift to each other would be a day. I would dedicate a day to him, and he one to me.

  “Today you must do everything I tell you,” he said. “Tomorrow is yours.”

  “All right,” I said. “But I won’t do everything you tell me to, I warn you.”

  “Don’t worry, Lily, I will ask nothing indelicate of you.”

  “Agreed. What shall I do?”

  “All I want you to do is to wear these jewels.”

  The suite was large: a bathroom, two bedrooms and a capacious sitting room. Boscán/Vasconcelles kept the curtains drawn, day and night. In one corner was a freestanding cast-iron stove that one fed from a wooden box full of coal. It was warm and dark in the suite; we were closed off from the noise of the city; we could have been anywhere.

  We did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wore as many of his cheap trinkets as my neck, blouse, wrists and fingers could carry. We ordered food and wine from the hotel kitchen, which was brought up at regular intervals, Vasconcelles himself collecting everything in the vestibule. I sat and read in the electric gloom, my jewels winking and flashing merrily at the slightest shift of position. Vasconcelles smoked short stubby cigars and offered me fragrant oval cigarettes. The hours crawled by. We smoked, we ate, we drank. For want of anything better to do I consumed most of a bottle of champagne and dozed off. I awoke, fuzzy and irritated, to find Vasconcelles had drawn a chair up to the sofa I was slumped on and was sitting there, elbows on knees, chin on fists, staring at me. He asked me questions about the business, what I had been doing in the last year, had I enjoyed my trip home to England, had the supply of cork from Elvas improved and so on. He was loquacious, we talked a great deal, but I could think of nothing to ask him in return. J. Melchior Vasconcelles was, after all, a complete stranger to me, and I sensed it would put his tender personality under too much strain to inquire about his circumstances and the fantastical life he led. All the same, I was very curious, knowing Boscán as I did.

  “This suite must be very expensive,” I said.

  “Oh yes. But I can afford it. I have a car outside too. And a driver. We could go for a drive.”

  “If you like.”

  “It’s an American car. A Packard.”

  “Wonderful.”

  That night, when we made love in the fetid bedroom he asked me to keep my jewels on.

  “It’s your day today.”

  “Thank you. Merry Christmas.”

  “And the same to you … What do you want me to do?”

  “Take all your clothes off.”

  I made Vasconcelles remain naked for the entire day. It was at first amusing and then intriguing to watch his mood slowly change. Initially he was excited, sexually, and regularly aroused. But then, little by little, he became self-conscious and awkward. At one stage in the day I watched him filling the stove with coal, one-handed, the other hand cupped reflexively around his genitals, like adolescent boys I had once seen jumping into the sea off a breakwater at Cidadela. Later still, he grew irritable and restless, pacing up and down, not content to sit and talk out the hours as we had done the day before.

  In midafternoon I put on a coat and went out for a drive, leaving him behind in the suite. The big Packard was there, as he had said, and a driver. I had him drive me down to Estoril and back. I was gone for almost three hours.

  When I returned Vasconcelles was asleep, lying on top of the bed in the hot bedroom. He was deeply asleep, his mouth open, his arms and legs spread. His chest rose and fell slowly and I saw how very thin he was, his skin stretched tight over his ribs. When I looked closely I could see the shiver and bump of his palpitating heart.

  Before dinner he asked me if he could put on his clothes. When I refused his request it seemed to make him angry. I reminded him of our gifts and their rules. But to compensate him I wore a tight sequined gown, placed his flashy rings on my fingers and roped imitation pearls around my neck. My wrists tickled and clattered with preposterous rhinestone bangles. So we sat and ate: me, Lily Campendonc, splendid in my luminous jewels and, across the table, J. Melchior Vasconcelles, surly and morose, picking at his Christmas dinner, a crisp linen napkin spread modestly across his thighs.

  The various applications of cork that we are now going to consider are worthy of description, as each application has its raison d’être in one or more of the physical or chemical properties of this marvelous material. Cork possesses three key properties that are unique in a natural substance. They are: impermeability, elasticity and lightness.

  Consul Schenk’s Report

  I missed Boscán after this second Christmas with him, much more—strangely—than I had after the first. I was very busy in the factory that year—1934—as we were installing machinery to manufacture Kamptulicon, a soft, unresounding cork carpet made from cork powder and india rubber and much favored by hospitals and the reading rooms of libraries. My new manager—a dour, reasonably efficient fellow called Pimentel—saw capably to most of the problems that arose but refused to accept any responsibility for all but the most minor decisions. As a result I was required to be present whenever anything of significance had to be decided, as if I functioned as a symbol of delegatory power, a kind of managerial chaperone.

  I thought of Boscán often, and many nights I wanted to be with him. On those occasions, as I lay in bed dreaming of Christmases past and, I hoped, Christmases to come, I thought I would do anything he asked of me—or so I told myself.

  One evening at the end of April I was leaving a shop on the rua Conceição, where I had been buying a christening present for my sister’s second child, when I saw Boscán enter a café, the Trinidade. I walked slowly past the door and looked inside. It was cramped and gloomy and there were no women clients. In my glimpse I saw Boscán leaning eagerly across a table, around which sat half a dozen men, showing them a photograph; at first they peered at it, frowning, and then they broke into wide smiles. I walked on, agitated, this moment frozen in my mind’s eye. It was the first time I had seen Boscán, and Boscán’s life, separate from myself. I felt unsettled and oddly envious. Who were these men? Friends or colleagues? I wanted suddenly and absurdly to share in that moment of the offered photograph, to frown and then grin conspiratorially like the others.

  I waited outside the Trinidade sitting in the back of my motorcar with the windows open and the blinds down. I made Julião, my old chauffeur, take off his peaked cap. Boscán eventually emerged at about 7:45 and walked briskly to the tramway center at the Rocio. He climbed aboard a No. 2, which we duly followed until he stepped
down from it near São Vicente. He set off down the steep alleyways into the Mouraria. Julião and I left the car and followed him discreetly down a series of boqueirão—dim and noisome streets that led down to the Tagus. Occasionally there would be a sharp bend and we would catch a glimpse of the wide sprawling river shining below in the moonlight and beyond the scatter of lights from Almada on the southern bank.

  Boscán entered through the door of a small decrepit house. The steps up to the threshold were worn and concave, the tiles above the porch were cracked and slipping. A blurry yellow light shone from behind drab lace curtains. Julião stopped a passerby and asked who lived there. Senhor Boscán, he was told, with his mother and three sisters.

  “Mrs. Campendonc!”

  “Mr. Boscán.” I sat down opposite him. When the surprise and shock began to leave his face, I saw that he looked pale and tired. His fingers touched his bow tie, his lips, his earlobes. He was smoking a small cigar, chocolate brown, and wearing his old blue suit.

  “Mrs. Campendonc, this is not really a suitable establishment for a lady.”

  “I wanted to see you.” I touched his hand, but he jerked it away, as if my fingers burned him.

  “It’s impossible. I’m expecting some friends.”

  “Are you well? You look tired. I miss you.”

  His gaze flickered around the café. “How is the Kamptulicon going? Pimentel is a good man.”

  “Come to my house. This weekend.”

  “Mrs. Campendonc …” His tone was despairing.

  “Call me Lily.”

  He steepled his fingers. “I’m a busy man. I live with my mother and three sisters. They expect me home in the evening.”

  “Take a holiday. Say you’re going to … to Spain for a few days.”