The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

  Firmino glanced at his watch and walked on. It was nearly midday. Acontecimento should be on the newsstands of Oporto by now, it arrived by the morning flight. He came into a square which he didn’t bother to look up in the guidebook. He made for a kiosk and bought the paper. He sat on a bench. Acontecimento gave the whole front page to it, with an illustration in violet ink showing the silhouette of a headless body and above it a knife dripping with blood. The headline read: STILL NO NAME FOR HEADLESS CORPSE. His article was on the inside pages. Firmino read it carefully through and saw that there were no substantial changes. He noticed, however, that his description of the blue T-shirt had been tinkered with, and this riled him. He made for a telephone booth and called the paper. He was answered, of course, by Senhora Odette, who started nattering away at once, poor thing, sitting there in her wheelchair, the telephone was her only contact with the world. She wanted to know if they ate as much tripe in Oporto as people said they did, and Firmino replied that so far he had managed to avoid it. Then she asked if it was more beautiful than Lisbon, and Firmino replied that it was different, but had its charm which he was in the process of discovering. Finally she congratulated him on his article, which she had found “gripping,” and gave him to understand how lucky he was in life to have such exciting adventures. At long last she put him through to the Editor.

  “Hullo,” said Firmino, “I see that you are being cagey.”

  The Editor chuckled. “Its a question of strategy,” he said.

  “I don’t see the point,” said Firmino.

  “Listen here Firmino,” explained the Editor, “you claim that Manolo the Gypsy gave the police an exact description of the T-shirt, but in their official communiqué the police have said that the body was naked from the waist up.”

  “Exactly,” said Firmino impatiently, “and so?”

  “And so there must be a reason,” insisted the Editor, “and we won’t be the ones to contradict the police. I think it better for us to say that we’ve heard rumors that the corpse was wearing a T-shirt printed with the words Stones of Portugal, imagine if Manolo invented the whole thing.”

  “But we’ll lose the scoop if we don’t say that the police kept quiet about the T-shirt,” protested Firmino.

  “There must be a reason for that,” repeated the Editor, “and it would be great if you managed to find out.”

  Firmino could scarcely hold his tongue. What grandiose notions came into the Editor’s head! The police wouldn’t even receive him, imagine them answering questions from a journalist.

  “And what the hell would you do?” asked Firmino.

  “Rack your brains,” said the Editor, “you’re young and have plenty of imagination.”

  “Who is the examining magistrate on the case?” asked Firmino.

  “Dr. Quartim, as you know, but you won’t get a thing from him because all his information comes from the police.”

  “It looks like a real vicious circle,” commented Firmino.

  “Rack your brains,” repeated the Editor, “it's precisely to find out these things that I’ve sent you to Oporto.”

  Firmino left the booth streaming with sweat. Now he felt more irritable than ever. He made for the little fountain in the square and bathed his face. “Damn it,” he thought, “what next?” There was a bus stop at the corner. Firmino managed to jump aboard a bus that took him into the center of town. He was rather pleased with himself because he now knew the chief landmarks in a city which had at first seemed hostile. He asked the driver to drop him off when they came to some shopping center. At the driver's signal he got off, and only then realized that he had not even paid his fare. He entered the shopping center, a colossal area which some intelligent architect, a rare species nowadays, had created out of many old buildings without ruining their façades. Oporto was a well-organized city: in the entrance, a spacious foyer with numerous escalators leading to the basement or to the upper floors, was a counter from behind which a pretty girl in blue was distributing leaflets indicating all the shops in the center and exactly where to find them. Firmino studied this leaflet and set off resolutely for corridor B on the first floor. The shop was called “T-shirt International.” It was full of mirrors and had cubicles for changing and shelves overflowing with goods. Several youths were there trying on T-shirts and checking themselves out in the mirror. Firmino applied to the assistant, a girl with long fair hair.

  “I’d like a T-shirt,” he said, “a particular T-shirt.”

  “We cater for all tastes sir,” replied the girl.

  “Made in Portugal?” asked Firmino.

  “Both here and abroad,” replied the girl, “we import from France, Italy, England and especially the United States.”

  “Fine,” said Firmino, “the color is probably blue, but it might come in other colors, the important thing is the words on it.”

  “What are they?” she asked.

  “Stones of Portugal,” said Firmino.

  The girl looked thoughtful for a moment. She twisted her mouth slightly as if the words meant nothing to her, opened a large typewritten catalogue and ran her index finger down the lists of names.

  “I’m sorry sir,” she said, “we don’t carry that line.”

  “All the same,” said Firmino, “I’ve seen it, I passed a chap in the street who was wearing one.”

  The girl did some more thinking.

  “Perhaps it’s an advertisement,” she suggested, “we don’t carry publicity T-shirts, only ones on the open market.”

  Firmino did some thinking too. Publicity. Maybe it was a publicity stunt.

  “Yes,” he said, “but an advertisement for what, what do you think Stones of Portugal could mean?”

  “Well,” said the girl, “it could be a new rock group that’s given a concert, when there’s a concert they usually sell advertising T-shirts at the entrance, why not try a record shop? They sell T-shirts along with the records.”

  Firmino said thank you and looked in the leaflet for the record shop. Classical music or modern music? Naturally he opted for modern music. It was in the same corridor. The youth at the counter had a headset on and was listening in an enraptured way. Firmino waited patiently until he came out of his trance.

  “Do you know a group called Stones of Portugal?” he asked.

  The assistant looked at him and assumed a thoughtful air. “I don’t think so,” he replied, “is it a new group?”

  “Could be,” said Firmino.

  “Very new?”

  “Could be.”

  “We’re pretty up to date with new events,” the youth assured him, “and the most recent groups are the Novos Ricos and the Lisbon Ravens, but the group you mention frankly doesn’t ring a bell, though it could be an amateur group, of course.”

  “Do you think an amateur group would be able to produce publicity T-shirts?” asked Firmino, fast losing hope.

  “Not on your life,” replied the assistant, “most times even the pro’s can’t afford it, we live in Portugal you know, not in the United States.”

  Firmino thanked him and left. It was nearly two in the afternoon. He wasn’t in the mood to look for a restaurant. Maybe he’d find a bite to eat at Dona Rosa’s. Just as long as the plat du jour wasn’t tripe.

  Six

  NO, DONA ROSA’S plat du jour that day was rojoes à la mode de Minho. Perhaps it was not a dish particularly suited to the heat of Oporto, but Firmino was crazy about those hunks of pork fillet sautéed with potatoes.

  There he was in the dining-room for the first time since his arrival at the pension. Three tables were occupied. Dona Rosa came in and wanted to introduce him to the other guests, she was determined on it. Firmino followed. The first, one Senhor Paulo, was a man of about fifty, who imported meat into the Setabal district. He was bald and robust. The second, Signor Bianchi, was an Italian who spoke no Portuguese but expressed himself in halting French. He owned a firm which bought boletus mushrooms, both fresh and dried, for export to Italy, because the
Portuguese cared very little about mushrooms. He declared with a smile that trade was flourishing and that he hoped that the Portuguese would continue to care very little about boletus mushrooms. Finally there was a couple from Aveiro who were celebrating their silver wedding anniversary and making a second honeymoon of it. Firmino wondered why they had chosen this pension.

  Dona Rosa then told him that the Editor had been trying to reach him and wanted him to call back urgently. Firmino decided to keep the Editor waiting for a while, otherwise all those goodies doing the rounds of the table would get cold. He ate slowly and with relish, because the pork was absolutely exquisite. He ordered coffee and only when he had drunk it did he resign himself to calling up the paper.

  The telephone was in the lounge, for the bedrooms only had house phones connected with the reception desk. Firmino put in his money and dialed. The Editor was out. Senhora Odette put him through to Senhor Silva, whom Firmino immediately called Huppert, to put him in a good mood. Silva was solicitous and paternal.

  “We’ve had an anonymous call,” he said, “he won’t talk to us, he wants to talk directly to the special correspondent, which is you, we’ve given him the number of the pension and he’s going to ring at four o’clock, in my opinion he was calling from Oporto.”

  Silva paused.

  “Are you enjoying your nice tripe?” he asked perfidiously.

  Firmino replied that he had just finished eating a dish that he, Silva, could not have imagined in his wildest dreams.

  “Don’t leave the pension,” entreated Silva, “it could be a mythomaniac, but he didn’t give me that impression, treat him well, he may have important information for you.”

  Firmino glanced at his watch and took a seat on the sofa. Dammit, he thought, now even that ass Silva took the liberty of giving him advice. He picked a magazine out of a wicker basket. It was called Vultos, and was devoted to the Portuguese and international jet-set. He settled down to read with interest an article about the claimant to the throne of Portugal, Don Duarte de Braganca, who had just become the father of a son. The claimant, wearing a mustache in the nineteenth-century manner, was sitting bolt upright in a high-backed leather chair and holding the hand of his consort, who was buried so deep in a low chair that only her shins and neck were visible, as if she had been sawn in half. Firmino concluded that the photographer was totally incompetent, but he had no time to finish the article because the telephone rang. He waited for Dona Rosa to answer it.

  “It’s for you, Senhor Firmino,” said Dona Rosa amiably.

  “Hullo,” said Firmino into the instrument.

  “Look in the yellow pages,” murmured the voice at the other end of the wire.

  “Look for what?” asked Firmino.

  “For Stones of Portugal,” said the voice, “under Import-Export.”

  “Who are you?” asked Firmino.

  “It doesn’t matter,” answered the voice.

  “Why don’t you telephone the police instead of me?” inquired Firmino.

  “Because I know the police better than you do,” replied the voice. And the line went dead.

  Firmino set himself to thinking. It was a young voice with a strong Northern accent. Not an educated person, that was plain from his pronunciation. And so? And so what? The North of Portugal was full of uneducated young men with strong Northern accents. He picked up the telephone directory from the little table and looked through the Yellow Pages for the section Import-Export. It said: Stones of Portugal, Vila Nova de Gaia, Avenida Heróis do Mar, 123. He looked in his guidebook but it wasn’t any help to him. There was nothing to do but ask Dona Rosa. Dona Rosa very patiently unfolded the map of Oporto once more and showed him the place. It certainly wasn’t just round the corner, it was right on the other side of town and practically not in Oporto at all. In fact Vila Nova was a town of its own, with a town hall and everything else. He was in a hurry? Well in that case the only thing was to take a taxi, because by public transport he wouldn’t get there until dinner-time, and how much a taxi would cost him she simply couldn’t say, she’d never been to Vila Nova by taxi, but of course luxuries have to be paid for.

  “And now goodbye young man,” she said, she was going to have a short siesta, yes, that’s just what she needed.

  AVENIDA HERÓIS DO MAR was a long street on the outskirts lined with a few stunted trees and small building sites, half-finished buildings, warehouses and brand-new little villas with gardens full of effigies of Snow White and ceramic swallows on the walls of the verandas. Number 123 was a white, single-story building with an undulating wall in the Mexican style. In its rear rose a large warehouse with a corrugated-iron roof. On the wall a brass plaque read: Stones of Portugal. Firmino pressed the electronic button and the gate clicked open. The building itself had a little portico along the front, like the other villas in the street, and on one of the columns was a sign saying “Administration.” Firmino went in. It was a little office equipped with modern furniture, but not devoid of good taste. At a glass-topped table cluttered with documents sat an elderly, bald, bespectacled gentleman tapping away at a typewriter.

  “Good afternoon,” said Firmino.

  The old chap stopped typing and looked up. He returned the greeting.

  “The reason for your visit?” he asked.

  Firmino felt caught unprepared. He had really been an idiot, he thought, because all through the long taxi-ride he had thought about Manolo, and then his fiancée whom he was already missing, and thereafter how Lukács would have reacted if instead of being confronted by a text of Balzac’s he had had to face the naked reality of things, as he himself was doing at the moment. He had thought of all this, but had neglected to think of how he should explain his presence.

  “I was looking for the boss,” he mumbled.

  “The boss is in Hong Kong,” said the old boy, “he’ll be away till the end of the month.”

  “Who can I talk to then?” asked Firmino.

  “The secretary has taken a week’s holiday,” was the answer, “so there’s just the warehouseman and me, I’m responsible for the accounting, is it a matter of urgency?”

  “Yes and no,” replied Firmino, “but as I’m passing through Oporto I wanted to make a proposal to your boss.”

  Then, as if to make his presence a little more convincing, he added: “I’m in the business myself, I have a small firm in Lisbon.”

  “Ah,” replied the employee without the least vestige of interest.

  “May I sit down for a moment?” asked Firmino.

  The man waved a hand at the chair facing the desk. It was a buff-colored canvas chair with arms to it, such as film directors use. It struck Firmino again that whoever had furnished Stones of Portugal had pretty good taste.

  “What is your exact line of business?” he enquired with the most charming smile at his disposal.

  The old man at last raised his eyes from the papers on his desk. He lit a Gauloise from a packet on the table beside him and inhaled an avid puff.

  “Curse it,” he said, “these Chinese accounts are hell on earth, they send their statements in Hong Kong dollars and I have to turn them into Portuguese escudos, and the hitch is that the Hong Kong dollar never fluctuates a red cent one way or the other whereas our currency goes up and down like a yo-yo, I don’t know whether you follow the Lisbon stock exchange.”

  Firmino nodded and spread his arms as if to say: ah yes, I know it only too well.

  “We began with marble,” said the old man, “seven years ago it was just the boss and me, an Alsatian dog and a tin shack.”

  “Ah yes,” said Firmino to urge him to further confidences, “marble really goes, here in this country.”

  “If it goes,” returned the old man, “if it goes. But you have to find the right market. The boss has an extraordinary flair for these things, maybe he’s had a bit of luck as well, but I can’t deny he’s got a real business sense, and that’s why he thought of Italy.”

  Firmino’s face took on an expre
ssion of wonderment.

  “It seems to me a pretty queer notion, exporting marble to Italy,” he said, “the Italians are up to their eyeballs in marble.”

  “So you think, my dear sir,” exclaimed the old man, “and so I thought myself, but this means that we don’t have a flair for these things and don’t know the laws of the market. I’ll say one thing: do you know which is the most highly prized marble in Italy? That’s easy enough, it’s the marble from Carrara. And what does the Italian market demand? Easy again: marble from Carrara. But it so happens that Carrara is no longer able to satisfy the demands, my dear sir, I don’t know the exact reasons, let’s say because labor is too expensive, the quarrymen are anarchists and have very demanding trade unions, that the environmentalists are making life hell for the government because the Apuan Alps have been riddled with holes, things of that sort.”

  The old fellow drew greedily at his cigarette.

  “Well then my dear sir,” he resumed, “do you by any chance know anything about the marble of Estremoz?”

  Firmino gave a vague nod.

  “Same characteristics as Carrara marble,” said the old man complacently, “same porosity, same veining, same reaction to machine polishing, the same in every way as Carrara marble.” And the old man heaved a sigh as if he had revealed the secret of the century.

  “Do I make myself dear?” he asked.

  “Perfectly,” said Firmino.

  “Please explain,” said Firmino.