Night Train to Lisbon

  ‘Somehow that’s what it was then, too. A shared life, I mean. Shared in a close distance; in a distant closeness.’

  She looked up at the façade of the Liceu.

  ‘There, at this window, he sat and because he already knew everything and was bored, he wrote me little notes on scraps of paper that he slipped to me at break. They weren’t … weren’t billets-doux. There wasn’t what I kept hoping for, in every note. They were his thoughts about something. About Teresa of Ávila and many other things. He made me into an inhabitant of his world of thought. “Only you live there, apart from me,” he said.

  ‘Nevertheless, what I grasped only very slowly and much later was true: He didn’t want me to be involved in his life. In a sense that’s very hard to explain; he wanted me to stay outside it. I waited for him to ask me to work in the blue office. In my dreams, I worked there, many times, and it was wonderful; we understood each other without words. But he didn’t ask, didn’t even hint at it.

  ‘He loved trains, they were a symbol of life for him. I would like to have travelled in his compartment. But he didn’t want me there. He wanted me on the platform. He wanted always to be able to open the window and ask me for advice. And he wanted the platform to move when the train started moving. Like an angel, I was to stand on the moving platform, on the angels’ platform moving at exactly the same speed.’

  They entered the Liceu. Maria João looked around.

  ‘Girls weren’t allowed in here, but he smuggled me in after classes and showed me everything. Father Bartolomeu caught us. He was furious. But because it was Amadeu he said nothing.’

  They were standing in Senhor Cortês’s office. Now Gregorius was apprehensive. Maria João burst out laughing. The laughter of a merry schoolgirl.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She went to the wall with the pictures of Isfahan and looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Isfahan, Persia. As a student, I wanted to go there. To the Morgenland.’

  ‘And now, since you have run away, you make up for it. Here.’

  He nodded. He hadn’t known that there were people who cottoned on so fast. You could open the train window and ask the angel.

  Then Maria João did something surprising. She came over to him and put her arm around his shoulders.

  ‘Amadeu would have understood that. And not only understood. He would have loved you for it. A imaginação, o nosso último santuário, he used to say. Imagination and intimacy, those were the only two sanctuaries he allowed, aside from language. And they have a lot to do with each other, a lot, he said.’

  Gregorius hesitated. Then he opened the desk drawer and showed Maria João the Hebrew Bible.

  ‘I bet that’s your sweater!’

  She sat down in a chair and put one of Silveira’s blankets over her legs.

  ‘Read to me from it, please. He did. Naturally I didn’t understand a thing, but it was wonderful.’

  Gregorius read the story of the Creation. He, Mundus, read the story of the Creation in a dilapidated Portuguese Gymnasium to an eighty-year-old woman he hadn’t known yesterday and who didn’t speak a word of Hebrew. It was the craziest thing he had ever done and he enjoyed it as he had never enjoyed anything before. It was as if he had cast off all his internal shackles to fight unimpeded just this one time, like someone who knows his end is near.

  ‘And now let’s go into the auditorium,’ said Maria João. ‘It was locked in those days.’

  They sat in the first row in front of the raised lectern.

  ‘So that’s where he gave his speech. His notorious speech. I loved it. It was so much from him. He was it. But there was something about it that scared me. Not in the version he presented – he took it out. You remember the conclusion, where he says that he needs both, the holiness of words and the hostility against everything cruel. Then comes: And no one may force me to choose. That was the last sentence he delivered. But originally, there was another sentence: Seria uma corrida atrás do vento. It would be reaching for the wind.

  ‘“What a wonderful image!” I shouted.

  ‘Then he picked up the Bible and read to me from Ecclesiastes: I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and reaching for the wind. I was afraid.

  ‘“You can’t do that!” I said. “The priests all know that quotation and will consider you a megalomaniac!”

  ‘What I didn’t say was that, at that moment, I was worried about his emotional health.

  ‘“But why?” he said in amazement. “It’s just poetry.”

  ‘“But you can’t speak biblical poetry! Biblical poetry! In your name!”

  ‘“Poetry trumps everything,” he said. “It annuls all rules.”

  ‘But he had become uncertain and deleted the sentence. He felt that I was worried, he always felt everything. We never talked about it again.’

  Gregorius told her of Prado’s discussion with O’Kelly about the dying word of God.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said and was silent for a while. She folded her hands, released them, folded them again.

  ‘Jorge. Jorge O’Kelly. I don’t know. I don’t know if he was good fortune or bad for Amadeu. A great misfortune disguised as great good fortune, there is that. Amadeu, he longed for Jorge’s strength, a coarse strength. He really longed for his coarseness, which could be seen in his rough, chapped hands, his unruly, tangled hair and the unfiltered cigarettes he smoked nonstop. I don’t want to do him an injustice, but I didn’t like Amadeu’s uncritical enthusiasm for him. I was a peasant girl, I know how peasant boys are. No reason for romanticism. When it came to the crunch, Jorge would put himself first.

  ‘What fascinated him about O’Kelly, and even intoxicated him, was that Jorge had no trouble keeping his distance from others. He just said no and grinned over his big nose. Amadeu, on the other hand, struggled for his boundaries as for his salvation.’

  Gregorius told her of the sentence in Amadeu’s letter to his father: Others are your court of justice.

  ‘Yes, exactly. It made him a profoundly insecure person, the thinnest-skinned person you can imagine. He had this overwhelming need to trust people and to be accepted by them. He felt he had to hide this uncertainty and much that looked like courage and boldness was simply a subterfuge. He demanded infinitely too much from himself, much too much, and he became self-righteous and judgemental about it.

  ‘Everyone who knew him closely talked of never feeling able to satisfy him and his expectations, of always falling short. That he didn’t think much of himself made everything even worse. You couldn’t even defend yourself with the accusation of complacency.

  ‘How intolerant he was of kitsch! Above all, in words and gestures. And what fear he had being kitsch himself! “You have to be able to accept the kitsch in yourself in order to be free,” I said. Then he breathed more calmly, more freely for a while. He had a phenomenal memory. These were things he quickly forgot, only for them to re-emerge and draw him back into its merciless grip.

  ‘He had fought against justice. My God, he fought! And he lost. Yes, I think you have to say that he lost.

  ‘In quiet times, when he simply practised medicine and people were grateful to him, he sometimes looked as if he had done it. But then the story with Mendes. The spit on his face haunted him; to the last he kept dreaming of it. An execution.

  ‘I was against him going into the Resistance. He wasn’t the man for it, didn’t have strong enough nerves, although he did have the mind. And I didn’t see that he had to make up for anything. But there was nothing I could do. When it has to do with the soul, there’s little we can do, he said. I’ve already told you these words.

  ‘And Jorge was also in the Resistance. Jorge, whom he finally lost because of it. Listless, he brooded over it in my kitchen and didn’t say a word.’

  They went upstairs and Gregorius showed her the school bench where he had seated Prado in his thoughts. It was the wrong floor, but otherwise almost ri
ght. Maria João stood at the window and looked over to her seat in the girls’ school.

  ‘Others are your court of justice. He had also experienced it when he cut open Adriana’s neck. The others sat at the table and looked at him as if he was a monster. And he did the only possible thing. When I lived in Paris, I attended a course in emergency medicine and they showed us that. Tracheotomy. You have to split the ligamentum conicum and keep the windpipe open with a trachea cannula. Otherwise the patient dies of bolus. I don’t know if I could have done it or if I would have thought of a pen as a substitute for the cannula. “If you want a job here …” the doctors who operated on Adriana said to him afterwards.

  ‘For Adriana, it had devastating consequences. When you’ve saved somebody’s life, especially then, you must have a quick and easy parting. Saving a life is a burden nobody can bear, neither the life-saver nor the one who is saved. Therefore, it should have been treated as a stroke of luck, something like a spontaneous cure. Something impersonal.

  ‘Adriana’s gratitude was difficult for Amadeu. There was something religious, almost fanatical about it. Sometimes he was disgusted by it, she could be as servile as a slave. But there was her unfortunate love affair, the abortion, the fear of loneliness. Sometimes I tried to persuade myself that he didn’t take me into his practice because of Adriana. But it’s not the truth.

  ‘With Mélodie, his sister Rita, it was completely different, light and easy. He had a photo of him wearing one of the Mao caps of her girls’ orchestra. He envied her flightiness. He didn’t hold it against her that, as the unplanned latecomer, she bore much less of the emotional burden of her parents than the older siblings. But he could also be furious when he thought of how much easier his life as a son might have been.

  ‘I was in the family home only once. When we were still at school. The invitation was a mistake. They were nice to me, but we all felt that I didn’t belong there, not in a rich, aristocratic house. Amadeu was unhappy about the afternoon.

  ‘“I hope …” he said, “I can’t …”

  ‘“It’s not important,” I said.

  ‘Much later, I had a meeting with the judge; he had requested it. He felt that Amadeu was offended that he worked for a government that had Tarrafal on its conscience. He loathes me, my own son loathes me, he blurted out. And then he talked of his pains and how his profession helped him to go on living. He accused Amadeu of a lack of empathy. I told him what Amadeu had said to me: I don’t want to see him as a sick man who is forgiven everything. It would be as if I didn’t have a father any more.

  ‘What I didn’t tell him was how unhappy Amadeu was in Coimbra. Because he had doubts about his future as a doctor. Because he wasn’t sure if he was only following his father’s wish rather than the dictates of his own will.

  ‘He shoplifted in the oldest department store in the city, was almost caught, and then suffered a nervous breakdown. I visited him in hospital.

  ‘“Do you know the reason?” I asked. He nodded.

  ‘He never explained it to me. But I think it was connected with his father, a court case he once witnessed. A kind of helpless, suppressed revolt. I ran into O’Kelly in the hospital corridor.

  ‘“If he had at least pinched something really valuable!” was all his father said. “Not this junk!”

  ‘I don’t know if I liked him at that moment, or the opposite. To this day I don’t know.

  ‘The accusation of a lack of empathy was anything but justified. How often in my presence had Amadeu assumed the position of a Bechterev sufferer and held it until he got back backache! And then remained bent over, his head stretched forward like a bird, his teeth gnashing.

  ‘“I don’t know how my father stands it,” he said. “Not only the pain. The humiliation!”

  ‘If his imagination failed anywhere, it was with his mother. His relationship with her remained a mystery to me. She was pretty, well-groomed, but a nondescript woman. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it. No one can understand it.” He blamed her for so much that it couldn’t possibly be true. His problem with boundaries; his passion for work; the excessive demands he made on himself; his inability to play and dance. Everything was supposed to be connected with her and her gentle dictatorship. But you couldn’t talk to him about it. “I don’t want to talk, I want to be furious! Just furious! Furioso! Raivoso! ”’

  Twilight fell. Maria João was driving with her headlights on.

  ‘Do you know Coimbra?’ she asked.

  Gregorius shook his head.

  ‘He loved the Biblioteca Joanina at the university. Not a week went by that he wasn’t there. And the Sala Grande dos Actos, where he received his certificate. He kept going back later to see the rooms.’

  When Gregorius got out, he became dizzy and had to hold on to the roof of the car.

  ‘Does that happen often?’ Maria João asked.

  He hesitated. Then he lied.

  ‘You shouldn’t take it lightly,’ she said. ‘Do you know a neurologist here?’

  He nodded.

  She drove off slowly as if she were considering coming back. Only at the intersection did she accelerate. The world was spinning and Gregorius had to hold on to the handle on the front door before he could unlock it. He drank a glass of milk from Silveira’s refrigerator and then went upstairs slowly, step by step.

  40

  I hate hotels. Why do I keep doing it? Can you tell me that, Julieta? At midday on Saturday, when Gregorius heard Silveira unlock the door, he thought of these words of his, which the maid had told him. Silveira’s actions fitted his words: he simply dropped his suitcase and coat, sat down in a chair in the hall and shut his eyes in exhaustion. When he saw Gregorius coming down the stairs, his face lit up.

  ‘Raimundo. You’re not in Isfahan?’ he asked laughing.

  He had a cold and was sniffling. The business deal in Biarritz hadn’t gone as expected; he had twice lost at chess to the sleeping-car waiter and Filipe, the chauffeur, hadn’t arrived at the railway station on time. Moreover, Julieta was also off today. Exhaustion was written on his face, an exhaustion greater and deeper than when they had met on the train. The problem is, Silveira had said when the train stopped at Valladolid station, that we have no overview of our life. Neither forward nor backward. If something goes well, we simply have good luck.

  They ate what Julieta had prepared yesterday and then drank coffee in the living room. Silveira saw Gregorius looking at the photos of the grand party.

  ‘Dammit,’ he said. ‘I completely forgot that. The party, the damn family party tonight.’

  He wasn’t going, he simply wasn’t going, he said, and banged the fork on the table. Something in Gregorius’s face made him stop.

  ‘Unless you’re coming along,’ he said. ‘A formal family party The very last one! But if you like …’

  It was close to eight when Filipe picked them up and he was amazed to find them standing in the hall and shaking with laughter. He had nothing suitable to wear, Gregorius had said an hour earlier. Then he had tried on Silveira’s things, which were all tight. And now he looked at himself in the big mirror: a pair of trousers that were too long, lying in folds on the unsuitable, thick shoes, a smoking jacket that didn’t close, a shirt whose collar choked him. He was shocked when he saw himself, but then was carried away by Silveira’s fit of laughter and now he began to enjoy the clowning. He couldn’t have explained it, but he had the feeling that he was taking revenge on Florence with this masquerade.

  Yet the obscure revenge didn’t really get going until they entered Silveira’s aunt’s villa. Silveira enjoyed introducing his snooty relatives to his friend from Switzerland, Raimundo Gregorio, a real scholar, who had mastered countless languages. When Gregorius heard the word erudito, he flinched like an impostor about to be exposed. But at the table, he suddenly felt an attack of mischief and, to prove his multilingualism, he spoke a wildly jumbled blend of Hebrew, Greek and Bernese German and got drunk on the abstruse combinations of words that beca
me crazier by the minute. He hadn’t known he was capable of so much wordplay; he seemed to be carried away by his imagination into a bold, broad loop in space, ever farther and higher. Dizziness gripped him, a pleasant dizziness of crazy words, red wine, smoke and background music; he wanted this dizziness and did everything to make it last. Silveira’s relatives seemed to welcome his presence and Gregorius was the star of the evening while Silveira chain-smoked and enjoyed the show. The women watched Gregorius in a way he wasn’t used to; he wasn’t sure whether their looks meant what they seemed to mean, but it didn’t matter.

  What did matter was that he, Mundus who, because of his love of ancient texts, was nicknamed ‘The Papyrus’, was attracting such ambiguous looks.

  Some time during the night he found himself in the kitchen. It was the kitchen of Silveira’s relatives, but it was also the von Muralts’ kitchen, and Eva watched what he was doing in horror. He had waited until the two maids had gone before slipping into the kitchen and now he was standing there, dizzy and swaying, leaning on the sink and washing the plates. He wanted the dizziness now, he wanted to enjoy the lunacy of the evening, the luxury of making up for what he had been unable to do at the school party forty years ago. Can you buy a title in Portugal, he had asked at dessert, but the question failed to provoke the expected embarrassment. To them, it was the mere stammering of someone who didn’t know the language. Silveira was the only one who smiled.

  The glasses were steamy with hot water. Gregorius groped in the washing-up bowl and a plate slipped out of his hand and shattered on the stone floor.

  ‘Espera, eu ajudo,’ said Silveira’s niece Aurora, who suddenly appeared in the kitchen. Together, they crouched down and gathered up the slivers of china. Gregorius accidentally bumped into Aurora, whose perfume, he thought later, was a perfect antidote to his dizziness.

  ‘Não faz mal.’ Never mind, she said when he apologized and he was amazed to feel her press a kiss on his forehead. What was he doing here? she asked when they were back on their feet and pointed, giggling, at the apron he was wearing. Washing dishes? He? The guest? The polyglot scholar? ‘Incrivel! ’ Unbelievable!