Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'No, she did,' said Abrantes.

'She was a girl in a club…' Felsen faltered as a huge chunk of complex history broke off the glacier of his memory and crashed into his mind.

'Those kind of girls know everybody,' said Abrantes.

'What?' said Felsen, still mid-avalanche.

'She seems to have done well over there. She owns a beachside club on an estate outside'são Paulo… place called Guarujá.'

'You covered some ground,' said Felsen, cooling to him now.

'They're different to us, the Brazilians. They like to talk, have fun, they always look ahead. The Portuguese, well, you know the Portuguese,' he said, flapping his hand at the squally weather, the dark street, the stain blooming across the ceiling to the size of Russia.

Felsen sat back, not wanting to give Abrantes any more sport. His partner saw it was over.

'I said you'd meet her for lunch… in Estoril… Hotel Palácio.'

Felsen sat in the dining room of the Hotel Palácio. He was wearing a powder-blue suit and a yellow silk tie. The light outside darkened and brightened as clouds crashed across the clearing sky, bringing showers which dashed through the gardens and wrestled with the palm trees in the square. He was feeling sick, then hungry, then sick again. His life came back to him in waves, in big, thumping Atlantic rollers. He gulped back another glass of white wine and reached for the bottle in the ice bucket, already three-quarters gone. He ordered another.

Felsen watched the diners arrive, watched all the women settle into their chairs until he found one who just kept coming and coming at him. She was taller than he remembered. Her youth had gone-the long black, shiny hair was cut short, the whippy slenderness of a girl in her late teens had filled out but had been replaced by what an American would have called 'class'. She wore a figure-hugging, crisp, white square-necked dress which looked as if it had some material in it, and her nyloned thighs swished like a mating call. Male heads strained to keep their eyes from drifting over to her.

Susana knew the effect she was having. She'd designed it. But there was only so much time she'd allow a man to get his slack jaw working.

'Well?' she said, and cutlery resumed on china.

Felsen got to his feet. The waiter appeared with another bottle of wine. They danced around each other, kissed, sat, manoeuvred closer.

'How long's it been?' asked Felsen, at a loss for a moment.

'Fifteen years…'

'No, no, sixteen, I think,' he said, and was annoyed at himself for being so German about it.

He held up his glass. They chinked and drank without taking their eyes off each other.

'My partner says you're a big success,' he said.

'That's only what I told him.'

'You look successful.'

'I've just been to Paris and bought some clothes.'

'That proves something.'

'I've been lucky,' she said. 'I've had good friends. Rich men who wanted somewhere to go…'

'…to get away from their wives?'

'I learnt a lot in Berlin,' she said. 'From Eva. Eva taught me everything I needed to know. Do you still see her?'

The name shot past him like a wild animal in the night, leaving him stunned, shaky. The dining room darkened. Rain raked the windows, turning heads in the room.

'She died in the war,' he said, blurting it a little, sinking his face into the wine. Susana shook her head.

'We heard about the bombing.'

'You got out just in time,' said Felsen.

The waiter laid a bread roll on her side plate with a pair of silver tongs.

'So what did you learn from Eva?'

'What men want,' she said, and left it at that, so that Felsen began to think that she'd learnt other things from Eva, like leaving things unsaid. It excited him.

The waiter gave them the menus. They ordered instantly.

'You lost your Brazilian accent,' said Susana.

'I've been in Africa.'

'Doing what?'

'The bank. Minerals. Logging.'

'You should come to Brazil. You're not in Brazil yet, are you?'

'We're thinking about it.'

'Well, I'll be there… if you need any help.'

'With your friends,' he said, and she smiled at him without volunteering what he wanted to know.

The soup arrived. A crab bisque. They sipped through it. The wind shuddered against the dining room windows and the rain thrashed the petals off the roses in the gardens.

'I wanted to ask you,' he said, 'if you ever came across someone called Lehrer, in Berlin? Oswald Lehrer.'

She put her glass down. The waiter removed the soup plates.

'I didn't like him,' she said, looking above his head. 'He had very unpleasant tastes.'

'He gave me a job down here in the war. He knew I spoke Portuguese.'

'That was Lehrer's way,' she said. 'He always liked to know everything.'

A piece of turbot in a white sauce appeared in front of her, a swordfish steak before Felsen. Felsen found himself wanting to smoke, drink, eat and everything else humanly possible. Susana opened up her fish. Felsen tore a roll apart. They'd touched on all their history. Each point with its pain and pleasure. He felt welded to her in spots.

'You're looking good, Susana,' he said, confirming his notion out loud.

'Even after two children,' she said, looking to see how he took it.

'A mother,' he said.

'But not a wife,' she said. 'And you?'

He laid down his cutlery and opened his hands.

'I didn't think so,' she said.

'And why not?'

'A powder-blue suit and a yellow tie doesn't say "Daddy" to me.'

He smiled. She laughed. The sun came up in the room like theatre lights zoomed to the maximum. They ordered more wine and talked about her two children who were with her mother in'são Paulo. She didn't elaborate on the absent father.

They took coffee in another part of the hotel and Felsen smoked one of the slim tan-coloured cheroots which Susana preferred. They went wordlessly up to her room. She unlocked the door. They kissed. Her hand went to the front of his trousers, firm, expert, gripping.

Felsen stripped and was naked before she'd stepped out of her underwear. He fell on her. Her suspendered thighs rasped on his. They made love with only marginally less urgency than they had done sixteen years ago. The only difference-after Felsen had come shuddering to a halt-she pushed his head down into her lap and drew him to her. He wasn't sure about it. He hadn't done that before. He didn't like it. But she held him there until he felt her trembling in his hands.

Susana had a week left of her stay. She'd wanted to go to Berlin but couldn't get a visa and that had left her with spare time in Lisbon. They spent most of the week together. Felsen moved into her room at the Hotel Palácio for the duration. They spent the time driving out to his house, the westernmost house on mainland Europe-only heather, gorse, the cliffs and the lighthouse at Cabo da Roca between it and the ocean. They walked through the empty rooms which still smelled of paint and the musty humidity of drying plaster. They bought two chairs and sat in the enclosed terrace on the roof and drank brandy and watched the storms out at sea, the deranged clouds and the blood-orange sunsets. They talked. They renamed the house-Casa ao Fim do Mundo-House at the End of the World. Together they furnished the house from the contents sale of an old palácio on the Serra da Sintra, Susana bidding wildly for a pair of old rose-coloured divans which they 'christened' the next afternoon and lay under rough blankets telling each other their own plans and then, eventually, making one together.

Felsen bought a ticket on the same plane to'são Paulo. He spent an afternoon talking things through with Abrantes about the opening of the'são Paulo branch, how Susana would introduce him to her friends, get the business started. The three of them had lunch the next day, Abrantes on one side of the table, impressed by Susana and nearly jealous of Felsen.