The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

  “Wow!” exclaimed Firmino, “what a name!”

  “But if you call him that no one will know who you’re talking about,” added Dona Rosa, “you have to say Attorney Loton, that’s how he’s known to everyone in Oporto.”

  “Is that a nickname?” asked Firmino.

  “It’s a nickname,” replied Dona Rosa, “because he looks very like that fat English actor who often played lawyer parts.”

  “Do you mean Charles Laughton?” asked Firmino.

  “In Oporto we pronounce it Loton,” said Dona Rosa. Then she added: “He comes of an old aristocratic family which in centuries past owned almost the whole region, but has now lost nearly everything. He’s a genius. To judge by how he dresses you wouldn’t give two cents for him, but he’s a genius, he studied abroad.”

  “Excuse me, Dona Rosa,” said Firmino, “but why should he agree to defend the interests of Damasceno Monteiro’s patents?”

  “Because he’s the lawyer of the down-and-outs,” answered Dona Rosa, “in the whole of his life he has defended no one but the really poor, it’s his vocation in life.”

  “Well if that’s how it is,” said Firmino, “where can I find him?”

  Dona Rosa took a sheet of paper and scribbled an address.

  “Don’t worry about the appointment,” she said, “I’ll see to that, you just go and see him at midday.”

  At that moment the telephone rang. Dona Rosa went to answer it, looked across at Firmino, and beckoned to him in her usual way.

  “Hullo,” said Firmino.

  “The head has been recognized,” said the voice, “so you see I was right.”

  “Listen,” said Firmino, seizing his chance, “don’t hang up, you need to talk to someone, I feel it in my bones, you have important things to say and you want to say them to me, and I would like you to do so.”

  “Certainly not on the phone,” said the voice.

  “Certainly not on the phone,” said Firmino, “just tell me where and when.”

  There was silence at the other end.

  “Tomorrow morning?” asked Firmino, “would nine o’clock tomorrow morning be all right?”

  “All right,” said the voice.

  “Where?” asked Firmino.

  “At San Lázaro,” said the voice.

  “What is that?” asked Firmino, “I’m not from Oporto.”

  “It’s a public garden,” came the reply.

  “How will I recognize you?” asked Firmino.

  “It’ll be me who’ll recognize you, choose a bench a bit out of the way and hold a copy of your paper on your knees, if there’s anyone else with you I won’t stop.”

  The telephone went click.

  Ten

  ON THE TRIM LAWN IN FRONT OF HIM was a grey-haired man wearing a track suit and doing gymnastics. Every now and again he set off on a timid trot, scarcely lifting his feet from the ground, and then trotted back to where a Doberman lying on the grass bade him festive welcome at each homecoming. He seemed very pleased with himself, as if he were performing the greatest feat in the world.

  Firmino looked down at the newspaper prominently displayed on his knees. It was Acontecimento, with the headline of the special edition. Firmino folded it so as to hide the headline and leave only the name of the paper showing. He took a sweet out of his pocket, and waited. He had no wish to smoke at this hour, but for some unknown reason he lit a cigarette. In front of him passed an old lady with a shopping bag and a mother leading her child by the hand. Firmino calmly gazed at the man doing his gymnastics. And he was trying to keep his cool when a young man sat down at the other end of the bench. Firmino shot him a furtive glance. He was a youth of about twenty-five years old, wearing a workman’s blue overalls and looking calmly straight ahead. The youth lit a cigarette, just as Firmino trod his out.

  “He wanted to rip them off,” murmured the youth, “but they ripped him off instead.”

  The young man said nothing more, and Firmino remained silent. A silence that seemed endless. The grey-haired man doing gymnastics passed them by with a self-assured trot.

  “When did it happen?” asked Firmino.

  “Six days ago,” replied the youth, “at night.”

  “Come a bit closer,” said Firmino, “I can’t hear you all that well.”

  The young man shuffled along the bench.

  “Try to tell the story logically,” Firmino begged him, “and above all in the right order of events, understand that I know absolutely nothing about it, so start from scratch.”

  On the lawn the grey-haired man had started doing his gymnastics again. The youth said nothing and lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. Firmino fished out another sweet.

  “It was all because of the night watchman,” mumbled the youngster, “because he was in league with the Green Cricket.”

  “Please,” repeated Firmino, “try to tell the story in order.”

  Staring fixedly at the lawn, the youth began to speak in a low voice.

  “At the Stones of Portugal, where Damasceno worked as an errand-boy, there was a night watchman, he died suddenly of a stroke, it was him who received the drugs in the containers and supplied them to the Green Cricket, and the Green Cricket sold them at the Butterfly, that is at the ‘Borboleta Nocturna,’ that was the circuit.”

  “Who is the Green Cricket?” asked Firmino.

  “He’s a sergeant in the Guardia Nacional,” replied the youth.

  “And the ‘Borboleta Nocturna’?”

  “Puccini’s Butterfly,’ it’s a discotheque down on the coast, the place is his though he’s registered it in the name of his sister-in-law, the Green Cricket’s a crafty one, and it’s from there that the drugs are peddled to all the seaside resorts near Oporto.”

  “Go on,” said Firmino.

  “The night watchman was in cahoots with some Chinese in Hong Kong who hid the drugs in containers of high-tech equipment. The firm knew nothing about it, only the night watchman knew and of course the Green Cricket, who used to come by at night once a month to pick up the packages. But Damasceno got to know about the racket too, I don’t know how. So when the night watchman had this stroke Damasceno came to my garage and said: it’s not fair that the Guardia Nacional takes all that dough, tonight we’ll get there first, and anyway the Green Cricket will only come by tomorrow, his day is tomorrow. I said to him: ‘Damasceno you’re out of your mind, you can’t screw that lot, they’ll get back at you, so count me out.’ He turned up at my house at eleven o’clock that night. He didn’t have a car so he asked me to drive him there, he was satisfied with that, for me to drive him there, and if I didn’t want even to go through the gate that was all right by him, he’d do everything on his own. And he appealed to me as a friend. So I brought him there. When we arrived he asked me if I really meant to leave him to go alone. So I followed him. He walked in as if he owned the place, as if it was the most natural thing to do. He had the keys to the office, he switched on the lights and everything. He rummaged in drawers to find the code for the containers. Each container has a code to open it with. It was dead easy, Damasceno went to open the container, he obviously knew exactly where the stuff was because he was back in five minutes. He was clutching three big plastic bags of white powder, I think it was pure heroin. And also two small electronic instruments. ‘Well, now that we’ve laid our hands on these,’ he said, ‘we might as well hang on to them, we’ll unload them on some private clinic in Estoril who need them?’ And at that moment we heard the sound of a car.”

  The grey-haired man doing gymnastic exercises had met up with someone, a bob-haired woman who had greeted him as a friend, and together the two had crossed the lawn as far as the path right in front of Firmino’s bench. The mature woman with the bob hairdo was saying that the last thing she’d have expected was to find him doing gymnastics in the park, and the grey-haired man replied that running a bank like his was very bad for his cervical arthrosis. The youth had stopped speaking and was looking at the gro
und.

  “Go on,” said Firmino.

  “Too many people here,” replied the youth.

  “Let’s find another bench,” suggested Firmino.

  “I have to make myself scarce,” insisted the youth.

  “Hurry up and tell me the rest then,” begged Firmino.

  The young man started off again in a low voice and somethings Firmino understood and some he didn’t. He managed to understand that as soon as they heard a car coming the youth had slipped away into a little room. That it was a patrol of the Gardia Nacional led by the so-called Green Cricket. And that the Green Cricket had seized Damasceno by the throat and slapped his face four or five times, ordering him to go with them, and Damasceno had refused and said he’d give him away and denounce him as a drug dealer, and at that point the two other cops from the patrol had started in on him with their fists, had loaded him into the car and driven off

  “I must go,” said the young man nervously, “I must go now.”

  “Wait a moment longer please,” begged Firmino.

  The young man waited.

  “Are you prepared to testify?” asked Firmino cautiously.

  The other thought this over.

  “I’d like to,” he answered, “but who’d defend a person like me?

  “A lawyer,” replied Firmino, “we’ve got a good lawyer.”

  And to be more convincing he went on: “Plus the whole of the Portuguese Press, trust the Press.”

  The young man turned his head and looked at Firmino for the first time. He had deep, dark eyes and a meek expression.

  “Where can I contact you?” asked Firmino.

  “Ring the Faisca garage, electrical car repairs,” said the youth, “and ask to speak to Leonel.”

  “Leonel who?”

  “Leonel Torres,” said the lad, “but I’ve told you those things to get it off my conscience, because I know they’re the ones who killed him, but don’t write that for the moment, later we might come to some agreement.”

  He said goodbye and left. Firmino watched him go. He was a little short, with a body too long for his too short legs. Who knows why another Torres came into Firmino’s mind. But that one he’d never met, he had only seen him on a few black-and-white film clips on television. He was a positive beanpole of a Torres, who’d been his father’s idol, Torres who played center forward for Benfica in the 1960s. He couldn’t play football at all, his father told him, but he only had to raise his head and bang! the ball shot into the goal as if by miracle.

  Eleven

  IT WAS A QUARTER PAST MIDDAY. Better so, thought Firmino, who did not wish to seem anxiously over-punctual. He was walking down Rua das Flores. It was a fine street, both elegant and smacking of the common people. The note of the common people was supplied by the windowboxes blooming with geraniums, which may have been why it was called “The Street of Flowers,” and the elegance by the smart jewelers’ shops, their windows glittering with gems. Firmino had forgotten to bring along his guidebook, which annoyed him not a little. But never mind, he’d read up on it later.

  The main door was a massive thing made of studded oak, but it had certainly seen better days. Maybe it dated from the eighteenth century. It was opened wide to allow cars in, for there was parking space at the end of the courtyard. Firmino scanned the brass plates for the name of the lawyer Mello There was a concierge. She sat in a glass box and was knitting. She was a concierge such as may be found in Oporto, or still perhaps even in Paris, but only in a few parts of town. She was fat, with a ballooning bosom, she had a suspicious look, she was neatly dressed after her fashion and wore slippers with pompons.

  “I’m looking for Attorney Mello Sequeira,” said Firmino.

  “Are you the journalist?” asked the concierge.

  Firmino said yes.

  “The Attorney is expecting you, ground floor. There are four doors, knock at whichever you like, they’re all his,” said the concierge.

  Firmino set off down the corridors of the old palace and knocked at the first door he came to. There was no light in the corridor, the door opened with a click, Firmino entered and closed it behind him. He found himself in a vast apartment with vaulted ceilings, though in semi-darkness. The walls were lined with books, but even the floor was cluttered with books, great tottering piles of them, along with bundles of newspapers and documents of all sorts. Firmino tried to get his eyes used to the semi-darkness. On the other side of the room, ensconced in a sofa, was a man. He was a fat man, indeed obese, of such corpulence that he filled half the sofa. At first glance he looked about sixty, perhaps a bit more. He was bald, clean-shaven, with sagging jowls and fleshy lips. His head was thrown back and he was staring at the ceiling. He really did look like Charles Laughton.

  “How d’you do?” said Firmino, “I am the journalist from Lisbon.”

  The fat man made a vague gesture towards an armchair and Firmino sat down. On the sofa at the man’s side was the latest edition of Acontecimento.

  “Are you the author of this piece of prose?” he asked in a neutral voice.

  “Yes,” replied Firmino with some embarrassment, “but it’s not exactly my style, I have to adapt to the style of my newspaper.”

  “And may I ask what is your style?” enquired the obese man in the same neutral tone.

  “I try to have a style of my own,” said Firmino with mounting embarrassment, “but as you know one’s style is also formed by reading the books of others.”

  “What others, for example, if I may make so bold?” asked the obese man.

  Firmino didn’t know what to say. Then he replied: “Lukács for example, Geörgy Lukács.”

  The fat man gave a gentle cough. He at last removed his gaze from the ceiling and looked at Firmino.

  “Interesting,” he said, “why? does Lukács have a style?”

  “Well,” said Firmino, “I think so, at least in his own way.”

  “And what way that be?” asked the fat man in the same neutral tone.

  “Dialectical materialism,” returned Firmino hastily, “let’s say criticism.”

  The bloated figure gave another little cough, and Firmino got the feeling that those little coughs were really a kind of stifled laughter.

  “Is this because, in your opinion, dialectical materialism is in itself a style?” asked the obese man, still impassive.

  Firmino found himself almost at a loss. But he also felt faintly riled. This obese lawyer, unknown to him, was grilling him as if he were sitting for a university exam. Really, it was a bit much!

  “What I meant,” he explained, “was that Lukács’s methodology is useful for the studies I am involved in, that is to say a paper I want to write.”

  “Have you read History and Class Consciousness?” enquired the obese lawyer.

  “Of course,” replied Firmino, “it’s a fundamental text.”

  “It dates from 1923,” commented the lawyer, “have you any notion of what was going on in Europe around that time?”

  “More or less,” said Firmino briefly.

  “The Vienna Circle,” murmured the obese man, “Carnap, the fundamentals of formal logic, the impossibility of non-contradiction within a system, trifles of that sort. As for Lukác’s style, seeing that you are concerned with style, the less said the better, don’t you think? Personally I think it the style of a Hungarian peasant best acquainted with horses in the Puszta.”

  Firmino had the urge to say that he was not there to talk about style, but he let it go.

  “I need it for the study of Portuguese neo-Realism,” he specified.

  “Oh,” yawned the obese man, “Portuguese neo-Realism, eh? Really worth studying its style, I must say.”

  “Not the earlier neo-Realism,” Firmino went on to explain, “not the 1940s, what interests me is the second period, the 1950s, after the belated Surrealist period, I call it neo-Realism for reasons of convention, but it certainly is a different thing.”

  “That strikes me as more interesting,” mu
rmured the obese man, “certainly more interesting to me, but as a basis for research I would scarcely choose Lukács.”

  The obese man gave him a stare and proffered a wooden box. He asked if he wanted a cigar and Firmino declined. The obese man lit an enormous one. It looked like a Havana and was certainly very aromatic. He kept silent and started smoking calmly. With a lost air Firmino looked around him at that enormous room crammed with books, books everywhere, on the walls, on the chairs, on the floor, along with bundles of documents and newspapers.

  “Don’t you feel you are in a scene from Kafka?” said the obese man as if he had read his thoughts, “you surely must have read Kafka, or have seen the film The Trial with Orson Welles. Not that I’m Orson Welles, even if this den of mine is loaded with old papers, even if I am obese and smoking a fat cigar, do not muddle up your film stars, here in Oporto they call me Loton.”

  “So I have been told,” replied Firmino.

  “Let us get down to practical matters,” said the lawyer, “so tell me exactly what you want from me.”

  “I thought that Dona Rosa had already told you everything,” complained Firmino.

  “Partly so,” murmured the obese man.

  “Well then,” said Firmino, “the case is the one you have read about in my paper, even if it isn’t written in a style that you like, and my paper wishes to make you a proposition: Damasceno Monteiro’s family haven’t got the money to pay a lawyer, so my paper has stepped in, we need a lawyer and we thought of you.”

  “I’m not sure,” grumbled the obese man, “the fact is I’m busy over Angela, you must have heard of the case, it’s in all the local press.”

  Firmino looked at him perplexed and confessed: “No, frankly no.”

  “The prostitute who was raped and tortured and practically killed,” said the obese man, “the case is in the Oporto papers, I represent her. It’s a pity that you of the Press follow the papers so little. Angela is a prostitute in Oporto, she was contacted for an evening of ‘fun’ in the provinces, she was taken by her pimp to a villa near Guimarães where a wealthy young man had her bound hand and foot by two thugs and used physical violence on her person, because this was a fancy he wanted to get off his chest but didn’t know who to try it out on, so he tried it out on Angela, after all she was only a prostitute.”