The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

  He paused a while.

  “I don’t know why I’m pestering you with my memories of childhood,” he resumed, “but maybe it’s because I feel really sorry for the gypsies today, they’re reduced to poverty and what’s more everybody is against them.”

  “Is that the case?” said Firmino, “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s a nasty business around these parts,” added the waiter, “perhaps I’ll tell you about it some other time, I hope you’ve enjoyed our restaurant and will visit us again.”

  “The shrimp salad was delicious,” Firmino assured him.

  He too would have liked to stay on and chat, but he remembered that Dona Rosa wished to have a word with him, so he paid the bill and hurried back to the pension. He found her in the sitting-room reading a magazine. She patted the sofa beside her as an invitation to sit down and he did so. Dona Rosa asked if he had enjoyed his dinner and Firmino said he had, and also that the waiter, a very friendly fellow, was on excellent terms with the gypsies.

  “We too are on excellent terms with the gypsies,” replied Dona Rosa.

  “We who?”

  “The Pension Dona Rosa,” replied Dona Rosa.

  And giving him a broad grin she added: “Manolo the Gypsy is expecting you at midday tomorrow at the encampment, he has agreed to have a talk with you.”

  Firmino looked at her in astonishment.

  “Did you contact him through the police?” he asked.

  “Dona Rosa does not use police channels,” replied Dona Rosa levelly.

  “Then how did you manage it?” persisted Firmino.

  “All a good journalist needs is the contact, don’t you think?” said Dona Rosa with a wink.

  “Where is this encampment?” asked Firmino.

  Dona Rosa unfolded a map of the city which she had ready on the table.

  “As far as Matosinhos you can go by bus,” she explained, “but after that you have to take a taxi, the encampment is just here, you see? Where the green splodge is, it’s land belonging to the council. Manolo will be waiting for you at the general store on the edge of the encampment.”

  Dona Rosa refolded the map implying that that was all she had to tell him, but: “Do you carry a tape recorder?” she asked.

  Firmino nodded.

  “Keep it in your pocket,” said Dona Rosa, “the gypsies don’t like tape recorders.”

  She got up and started switching off the lights, making it plain that it was time for bed. Firmino also got up and was about to take his leave.

  “How old are you?” asked Dona Rosa.

  Firmino replied with a formula he used whenever he felt too embarrassed to confess that he was only twenty-seven. It was a clumsy formula, but he never managed to find anything better.

  “Close on thirty,” he said.

  “Too young for a filthy job like this,” grumbled Dona Rosa. Then she added: “See you tomorrow and, sleep well.”

  Four

  MANOLO THE GYPSY WAS SEATED at a little table under the shop’s pergola. He wore a black jacket and a broad-brimmed hat in the Spanish style. His whole air was that of lost nobility: his poverty could be read in every line of his face and in his tattered shirtfront.

  Firmino had entered the shop by the front door, which gave on to a pretty little street lined with modest but well-tended villas. But there behind the shop the prospect was quite a different matter. Beyond the sagging chicken-wire that marked the boundary of the shop premises lay the gypsy encampment: six or seven dilapidated caravans, a number of pasteboard shacks, two American cars dating from the 1960s, and half-naked children playing in a dusty clearing. Under a shelter of dry foliage a horse and a donkey were swishing their tails to keep the flies away.

  “Good morning,” said Firmino, “my name is Firmino.” And he held out his hand.

  Manolo touched his cap with two fingers and shook hands.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” said Firmino.

  Manolo made no reply, but pulled out his pipe and crumbled two yellowed cigarettes into the bowl. His face betrayed nothing whatever and his gaze was directed upwards at the pergola.

  Firmino put his notepad and pen on the table.

  “May I take notes?” he asked.

  Manolo gave no answer and continued to survey the pergola.

  Then he said: “How many baguines?”

  “Baguines?” queried Firmino.

  At last Manolo looked at him. He seemed annoyed.

  “Baguines, parné. Don’t you understand geringonça?”

  It occurred to Firmino that things were not taking the right turn. He felt a fool, and more of a fool still when he thought of the little Sony in his pocket that had cost him the earth.

  “I also speak Portuguese, but I prefer geringonça,” explained Manolo.

  Well, the truth was that Firmino was not able to understand the gypsy dialect, what Manolo called geringonça. He made an effort to solve the problem by finding a logical thread, beginning at the beginning.

  “May I write your name?”

  “Manolo El Rey does not end up in the cagarrão,” answered Manolo, crossing his wrists and then putting a finger to his lips. Firmino gathered that the cagarrão must mean prison or at least the police.

  “Very well,” he said, “no names, and now please repeat your request.”

  “How many baguines?” repeated Manolo, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together as if counting money.

  Firmino made a rapid calculation. For immediate expenses the Editor had given him forty thousand escudos. Ten thousand might be the right price for Manolo, after all he had agreed to talk to him, which was already extraordinary for a gypsy, and maybe he’d be able to worm something out of him that he hadn’t told the police. But what if Manolo knew nothing more than he had already said, and this appointment was just a trick to get his hands on a few baguines, as he would put it? Firmino tried to play for time.

  “It depends on what you tell me,” he said, “whether what you have to say is worth my while.”

  “How many baguines?” and again the rubbing of forefinger and thumb.

  Take it or leave it, thought Firmino, there was nothing else for it.

  “Ten thousand escudos,” he said, “no more and no less.”

  Manolo gave an imperceptible nod of acceptance.

  “A chavelho,” he murmured. And he brought his thumb to his mouth, tipping his head back.

  This time Firmino had no trouble in getting the message, so he went into the shop and returned with a liter of red wine. On the way he slipped a hand into his pocket and turned off the tape recorder. He couldn’t say why he did it. Perhaps because he had taken a liking to Manolo at first sight. He liked the expression on his face, stony and at the same time bewildered, in a way even desperate, and the voice of that old gypsy deserved a better fate than to be filched by some Japanese electronic gadget.

  “Tell me everything,” said Firmino, and put his elbows on the table with his fists against his temples as he did when he wanted to concentrate. He could even do without his notebook, his memory would suffice.

  Manolo approached the matter in a roundabout way. On the whole he explained himself pretty well, and as for the words in geringonça, Firmino could not decode them but managed to guess at the meaning by following the thread. The gypsy began by saying that he had trouble sleeping, that he often woke in the middle of the night because that’s the way it is with old people, because they wake up and think back over their whole lives, and this distresses them, because thinking of one’s past life is a source of regret, especially for those of the gypsy people, who at one time were noble but have now become beggars but he was old only in his mind and spirit, not in his body, because he still retained his virility, it was only that with his wife his virility was useless because she was an old woman, and so he got up and went to empty his bladder in order to relieve himself. And he went on to speak of Manolito, who was his son’s son, and said he had blue eyes and a sad future to look forward to, bec
ause what future could there be in a world like this for a gypsy boy? Then he began to go off at a tangent and asked Firmino if he knew a place called Janas. Firmino listened attentively. He liked the way Manolo talked, with those rounded periods sprinkled with words in dialect, so he asked with genuine interest: “Where is Janas?”

  Manolo explained that it was not far inland from Lisbon, in the vicinity of Mafra, where there was an ancient circular chapel dating from early Christian times during the Roman Empire, and that this place was sacred to the gypsies, because the gypsies have roamed the Iberian peninsula since very ancient times, and every year, on the fifteenth of August, the gypsies of Portugal used to gather at Janas for a great festival of singing and dancing, the guitars and accordions were never silent for a moment and the meals were prepared on great braziers at the foot of the hill, and then, at sunset, at the very moment the sun touched the horizon, when its rays reddened the whole plain down as far as the cliffs of Ericeira, the priest who had celebrated Mass would come out of the chapel to bless the gypsies’ livestock, the mules and the horses, the finest horses in the whole Iberian peninsula, which the gypsies then sold to the stables at Alter do Chão, where they were trained for the bullfights, but now, now that the gypsies no longer had horses but bought horrible motor cars what was there to bless? Could one bless a motor car, which is made of metal? Certainly with horses if you don’t give them hay and oats they die, whereas with cars, if you haven’t the money to put petrol in them they don’t die, and when you do put petrol in off they go again, and this was why those gypsies who had a bit of money bought cars, but what point would there be in blessing a motor car?

  Manolo gave him a questioning look, as if expecting him to come up with a solution, and the old man’s face wore an expression of profound unhappiness.

  Firmino lowered his eyes, almost as if he were personally responsible for what was happening to Manolo’s people, and he lacked the courage to urge him to go on. But Manolo continued without urging, including details that he probably considered of interest, about how he was pissing against the great oak when he had spotted the shoe protruding from the bushes. Then centimeter by centimeter he described what he had seen as he examined the body, and said that on the corpse’s T-shirt there were words in a foreign language, which he spelt out because he didn’t know how to pronounce them, and Firmino wrote them down on his notepad.

  “Like this?” asked Firmino, “was it written like this?”

  Manolo confirmed that that was it: Stones of Portugal.

  “But the police have stated that the body was naked from the waist up,” objected Firmino, “the newspapers say that it was naked from the waist up.”

  “No,” confirmed Manolo, “there were these words, these very words.”

  “Go on,” said Firmino.

  Manolo did so, but the rest of it Firmino already knew. It was what Manolo had told the shopkeeper and subsequently confirmed to the police. Firmino doubted he could gain anything more from the old gypsy, but something told him to press on.

  “You sleep badly Manolo,” he said, “did you hear anything that night?”

  Manolo held out his glass and Firmino refilled it. The gypsy knocked back the wine and murmured: “Manolo drinks, but his people are in need of alcide.”

  “What is alcide?” asked Firmino.

  Manolo consented to translate: “Bread.”

  “Did you hear anything during the night?” repeated Firmino.

  “An engine,” said Manolo promptly.

  “Do you mean a car?” asked Firmino.

  “A car and car doors slamming.”

  “Where?”

  “Near my hut.”

  “Can a car get all the way to your hut?”

  Manolo pointed to a dirt track that ran at an angle off the main road and along the edge of the encampment.

  “On that track you can reach the big oak and go on down the hill all the way to the river.”

  “Did you hear voices?”

  “Yes, voices,” said Manolo.

  “What did they say?”

  “I don’t know, impossible to understand.”

  “Not even a word?” insisted Firmino.

  “One word,” said Manolo, “I heard someone say cagarrão.”

  “Prison?” asked Firmino.

  “Yes, prison,” confirmed Manolo.

  “What happened then?”

  “I don’t know,” said Manolo, “but one of them had a great gateira.”

  “What does gateira mean?” asked Firmino.

  Manolo pointed to the bottle of wine.

  “He had been drinking,” said Firmino, “is that what you mean, that he was drunk?”

  Manolo nodded.

  “How did you realize that?”

  “He laughed like someone who is very drunk.”

  “Did you hear anything else?”

  Manolo shook his head.

  “Think well,” Manolo, said Firmino, “because anything you can remember is very important to me.”

  Manolo appeared to be thinking hard.

  “How many of them do you think there were?” asked Firmino.

  “Two or maybe three,” replied Manolo, “I can’t be sure.”

  “Don’t you remember anything else that might be important?”

  Manolo gave himself up to reflection and drank another glass of wine. The shopkeeper came to the back door and lounged there eyeing them with curiosity.

  “Shittipants is what we call him,” said Manolo, “I owe him two thousand escudos for aqua vitae.”

  “You’ll be able to pay him off with the money you’ll get from me,” Firmino reassured him.

  “One of them spoke badly,” said Manolo.

  “How do you mean?” asked Firmino.

  “He spoke badly.”

  “Do you mean he didn’t speak Portuguese?”

  “No,” said Manolo, “he spoke like this: G-G-G-God d-dammit, G-G-G-God d-dammit.”

  “I see,” said Firmino, “he stammered.”

  “That’s it,” agreed Manolo.

  “Is there anything else?” asked Firmino.

  Manolo shook his head.

  Firmino pulled out his wallet and handed over ten thousand escudos. They vanished into Manolo’s pocket with astonishing speed. Firmino got to his feet and held out his hand. Manolo shook it and touched his cap with two fingers.

  “Go to Janas,” said Manolo, “it’s a fine place.”

  “I’ll go, sooner or later,” promised Firmino while leaving. He went into the shop and asked the proprietor to call him a cab.

  “Waste of time,” said the shopkeeper rudely, “cabs won’t come all the way out here for a phone-call.”

  “I’ve got to get to town,” said Firmino.

  The shopkeeper swatted away the flies with a dirty rag and said there was a bus.

  “Where is the bus stop?”

  “A kilometer away if you bear left.”

  Firmino went out into the scorching sunlight. Damn you,

  Shittipants, he thought. The heat was ferocious, that real humid heat that typifies Oporto. No one went by on the road, he couldn’t even thumb a lift. He thought that as soon as he got back to the Pension Rosa he would write the article and fax it off to the paper. It would be out in two days. He could already see the headline: THE MAN WHO FOUND THE HEADLESS CORPSE TELLS ALL. And immediately beneath: From Our Special Correspondent in Oporto. The entire story from beginning to end, just as Manolo had told it, including that mysterious car that stopped near his hut in the middle of the night. And the voices in the dark. Crimes and mysteries such as the readers of his paper wanted. But the fact that one of those unknown voices had a stammer he would not say. Firmino did not know why, but he would keep this detail to himself, he wouldn’t reveal it to his readers.

  At a wider curve in the deserted road an enormous billboard for TAP Air Portugal, depicting a cobalt-blue sea, promised him a Dream Holiday in Madeira.

  Five

  “HELL AND DA
MMIT,” said Firmino, “how can I say I dislike a town when I don’t even know it? The thing’s illogical, it shows a real lack of proper dialectics. Lukács held that direct knowledge of the facts is the indispensable instrument for forming a critical opinion. No doubt about it.”

  So he went into a big bookshop and sought a guidebook. His choice fell on a recent publication with a handsome blue cover and splendid colored photographs. The author’s name was Helder Pacheco, who apart from showing a high degree of competence also revealed a boundless love for the city of Oporto. Firmino detested those technical, impersonal, objective guidebooks that dish up information stone cold. He went for things done with enthusiasm, not least because he really needed enthusiasm in the position in which he found himself.

  Armed with this book he began to walk about the city hunting happily in the guidebook for the places where his random footsteps led him. He found himself in Rua S. Bento da Vitória and at once took a liking to the spot, chiefly because even on such a scorching day it was a dark, cool street, where the sun seemed never to penetrate. He looked it up in the index, which was easy to consult, and found it straightaway on page 132. He discovered that it had once been called Rua S. Miguel, and that in 1600 a monk called Pereira de Novais, of whom he had never heard, had written a picturesque account of it in Spanish. He relished the monk’s pompous descriptions of the “casas hermosas de algunos hidalgos” ministers, chancellors and other notables of the city now lost in the mists of rime, but whose lives were attested to by architectural evidence: pediments and capitals in the Ionic style, recalling the noble and sumptuous days of that thoroughfare, before the inclemencies of history transformed it into the working-class street it was today. He pushed on with his inspection and arrived at a rather impressive mansion. The guidebook told him that it had once belonged to the Baroness da Regaleira, had been built at the end of the eighteenth century by one José Monteiro de Almeida, a Portuguese merchant in London, and had served in succession as the central post office, a Carmelite convent, and a state lycée, until being turned to its present use as the headquarters of the police crime squad. Firmino paused for a moment before its majestic doorway. The crime squad. Who knows if someone in there was not following the uncertain track of the headless corpse, as he was himself? Who knows if some austere magistrate, immersed in deciphering the reports of the forensic experts who had carried out the autopsy, was not even now attempting to put an identity to that mutilated body.