Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

Carlos had the search warrant. We drove out to Odivelas. It was getting late now but I had to see.

The tick opened the door and read the warrant through. He took it to Valentim's mother. She sat at the kitchen table, smoking, facing away from the television in the next room which showed fat people pretending to be rich and trying to be funny with no success. The tick sucked on a bottle of Sagres. She looked up, red-eyed, the sockets blackened by mascara, lipstick worn off. Her voice was thick with saliva, from drink and tears.

'Where do you want to start?' she asked.

'Just his room. Is it locked?'

She shrugged. The tick nodded.

'Key?'

The tick shook his head. The tick knew everything.

I turned the door handle down and leaned into it. It cracked open easily, the door too small for the frame. I started at one end of the room, Carlos at the other. He gave me a pair of surgical gloves and snapped into a pair himself. He was methodical, careful. I knew he would be. He went through every page of every book, treating each one as if it was his own. He did the same with the sheet music. I went through the bedside locker. There was nothing unusual in the drawer. The cupboard contained spiral-bound exercise books which were full of notes from academic books. I leafed through them. Carlos slid under the bed with a pen torch in his mouth. A few moments later he grunted and came out with a key with a plastic tag. It had '7D' written on it. We bagged it and left the room.

'Find what you want?' asked the mother.

I asked them if the key meant anything to them. The tick shook his head, but he knew. The woman looked down at the ashtray in front of her, the strap of her bra down her shoulder.

We sat in the car and held the key up to the street lighting.

'What do you think?' asked Carlos.

'Garage maybe.'

'The car?'

'Possibly. Or just somewhere to keep his things private.'

A face appeared at the window on Carlos' side. The tick out for more blood.

'You want to know which door that key opens?'

'You don't like him do you?' I said.

'Little piece of shit.'

'Get in.'

The tick took us on a short drive of less than two kilometres into a light industrial zone with small warehouses, workshops for panel-beating, car repairs, foam-rubber furniture makers and other low capital businesses. Unit 7D was the size of a double garage with a large door for shipping and delivery and a small door for the office. It was a cheap place, if you weren't a student and this was how you made your money. I tried the key. It fitted and turned. I pulled it out.

'You're not going in?' asked the tick.

'Not without a search warrant.'

' I'm not going to tell.'

'I don't give a shit,' I said. 'If there's something in there I don't want to risk not being able to use it. And I don't know what your game is either. Maybe you'll change sides.'

We dropped the tick at a bar close to the apartment block. He wen't in there and hooked his buttock up on a stool and flicked his finger for a beer. We drove back to Saldanha and did the paperwork for the key. Carlos was sulking so I took him across the road and bought him a beer in the only place open, the city dead on its feet around here after a long week and the heat. We sat in silence under the glare of neon and sipped Super Bock with our jackets hooked over the chair backs. The barman was watching football. I asked him the score, not that interested.

'Zero-zero,' he said, barely listening.

'You can watch that stuff all year round now,' I said.

No answer. I turned back to Carlos who was weighing things in his head.

'You speak English like an Englishman,' said Carlos.

'1 was there for four and half years, four and a quarter of them in the pub,' I said. 'I only spoke to my wife in English and I still use it with Olivia.'

'You didn't tell me why you were in England.'

I lit a cigarette and gave him a direct look.

'Aren't you tired?' I asked.

'Something's got to happen while I drink this beer.'

'You don't want to talk about football.'

'I don't know anything about football.'

'Shit!' said the barman.

We looked up in time to see the ball sailing into the stands.

'My father was in the army, you know that already. He was serving in Guinea fighting those good old colonial wars under General Spínola. Maybe you know this too…'

'Carry on.'

'They were unwinnable wars. Guys your age were getting killed every day for no very good reason other than that Salazar wanted to be an Emperor. General Spínola had a brilliant and unconventional idea. Rather than killing people in order to make them Portuguese citizens why not be nice to them. He decided to wage what was called a "hearts and minds" war. He improved medical care, education, supplied books, that kind of thing and suddenly the Africans loved him and the rebels lost their cause. It meant that my father's men didn't get killed any more, and it also made him a big Spínola fan.'

Carlos sat back, a little resistance building already. It made me feel tired.

'So after the revolution, after the euphoria had worn off, when Portugal was a seething mass of dozens of different political parties and agendas, with the communists cornering a fair amount of the functionary power, my father decided that his old pal Spínola's solution to the problem of this chaos was the right one.'

'A second coup,' said Carlos.

'Exactly. And as you know, it was uncovered and my father had to get out fast. He had friends in London so we moved there. That's it.'

'He should have been shot,' said Carlos, into his beer.

'What was that?'

'I said… your father… he should have been shot.'

'That's what I thought you said.'

'There'd been a revolution. The democratic process was in hand, chaotically in hand, I agree, but that's the process. What it didn't need was another coup and the installation of a military dictatorship. I think, without absolutely any doubt at all, that your father and all the rest of them, should have been shot.'

It had been a long day and a hot one. I'd had a beer on an empty stomach. I'd spent a day having my new, exposed face read by people who didn't know me. There were all sorts of reasons why hearing this kid calmly condemning my father, my dead father, to death… well, it brought something out in me that hadn't been aired for some time. To use an English expression-I lost it. I'd never been sure what the 'it' had been until then. Now I know. It's the control that makes us human. I lashed out claws exposed for once.

I slammed my fists down on the table, the two beers jumped and hit the deck, the barman braced himself against the steel counter.

'Who the fuck do you think you are!?' I roared. 'Are you the prosecutor, jury and judge rolled into one? You weren't even out of your nappies when all this happened. You didn't even have your own teeth. You didn't know my father. And you have no fucking idea what it's like to live under a fascist dictatorship, to see men getting killed, to see them saved by the ideas of one man, to see your country dropped in the shit by a bunch of power-seeking, self-aggrandizing bastards. So who the fuck do you think you are condemning men to death? You're the whole bloody reason this kind of shit happens in the first place.'

Carlos tipped back on his chair and saved himself on the front window, beer down his shirt and trousers, but his face calm, impassive, not cowed.

And you think that's part of the democratic process, do you? To get back into your tanks and drive down the Avenida da Liberdade. You think that's the proper way to address political differences in a modern world? Maybe they should have shot you as well.'

I went for him, crashed straight through the table, tripped over it, cut my hand on some broken glass, slipped on the beer, got back on to my feet, lunged at him and found myself connecting with the fat, porky shoulder of the barman, who must have seen this sort of thing happen before and had vaulted his hundred kilos over the bar faster than a Chinese gymnast. He grabbed my flailing arms.