Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'And don't forget General Machedo. He's still out there.'

'In Brazil, a few thousand kilometres away.'

'There's a man with popular support,' said Abrantes, ignoring Felsen. 'There's a man who would do anything to get into power… and if he couldn't get the top military on his side he'd even talk to those people.'

'Those people?' asked Felsen.

Abrantes wound his hand round and round, slapping the rail each time to show there was more and more, the two businessmen acting at each other as if they were performing some brand of formal theatre.

'These people are drawing attention to themselves. They took that cruise liner, the Santa Maria. They hijacked that TAP aircraft. They…'

'Who are they ? Who are those people or these people… which people?'

'The communists ,' said Abrantes, his eyes widening in what Felsen assumed was mock fear, but was, in fact, astonishment. 'These are people to be feared. You, of all people, should know that. Look what they've done to Berlin.'

'The wall? That won't last.'

'It's a wall,' said Abrantes. 'You don't build a wall unless you expect it to last. Believe me. And they're gathering strength here too. I know.'

'How?'

'I have friends,' said Abrantes, '…in PIDE.'

And PIDE talk like that about Salazar?'

'You don't understand, my friend. You've spent a lot of time out of the country. I am here in Lisbon all the time. The PIDE,' he said, stretching out an evangelical hand, 'the PIDE aren't just the police, they're a state within the New State. They see how things really are. They understand the dangers. They see the African wars. They see trouble at home. They see dissent. They see communism. All these things are a threat to the stability of the… Do you know what communists do to banks?'

Felsen said nothing. He knew Abrantes as a lot of animals-the shrewd business partner, the ruthless practitioner of brutal labour relations, the cost-cutter, the deal-maker-but never, not to his knowledge, the political animal.

'They nationalize them,' said Abrantes, throwing his hand out as if there was a bible in it.

Felsen ran his hand over his grey fuzz. Abrantes was irritated by his apparent lack of concern.

'That means we own nothing, ' he reiterated the horror.

'I know what nationalization is,' said Felsen. 'I know what communism is. I'm scared of it. I don't need any convincing. But what are you proposing? That we sell up and get out? I'm not going to Brazil.'

'Manuel is joining PIDE,' said Abrantes and Felsen bit back his instinct to shout with laughter- that was a solution?

'What about his university education?' he asked, automatically.

'He didn't get the grades,' said Abrantes, tapping his temple with his cigar end. 'I look at Pedro, I look at Manuel… I can't believe they have the same parents. But don't misunderstand me… I think Manuel will do very well in PIDE. I've made the introductions. They like him. The boy has a structure to his life now. And he doesn't like communists either. They won't have to teach him anything about that. You'll see. We will benefit. If there are communists working in our factories he'll root them out and run them up to Caxias prison. And they know what to do with communists in the Caxias prison.'

Felsen murmured, tired now, the man's fanaticism giving the aguardente a rough edge that it didn't have before. Abrantes sat back, plugged the cigar into his mouth, and straightened his tie over his belly.

Manuel's fuzzy head slipped back into the darkness of the enclosed terrace behind the veranda.

Abrantes left at dinnertime with his family and Patricia, who claimed she wasn't feeling well, but it was because Felsen was powerfully drunk. Drunk to the point where it took several tentative stabs to get a cigarette between his lips.

He managed to put 'Jailhouse Rock' on the record player and somehow got himself up on to the veranda where he took extravagant nosefuls of the still slack sea air and looked out into the black night.

'When the music finished, and he was left with static and the rhythmical click of the needle, he blundered downstairs and drank water until he was gasping.

A short aeon slipped by and he found himself miraculously in his bedroom, wrenching the windows open, tearing his shirt-tails out of his waistband and treading his dropped trousers into the floor. He felt: hot and had a great need to be naked under cool sheets, unconscious.

He ripped the bedclothes off, jerked himself straight, and took two startled steps back.

In the middle of the bed was a huge lizard. A live lizard. It bobbed its head, braced itself against the white sheet. Felsen careered out of the room, grabbed tools and came back with a rolling pin and a hammer. His first strike was wildly off the mark and bounced the lizard on to the floor. They fought for ten minutes, wrecking the bedroom, until Felsen managed to stun the animal with the rolling pin, hurled in frustration. He beat the lizard with the hammer and only stopped when an incident on a hot, dusty road in the Beira leaked into his mind. He picked the lizard up by the tail. It was surprisingly heavy. He threw it into the courtyard.

In the morning he was woken up by his heart thumping into his chest wall. He was still drunk. He knew it because his head didn't hurt and he wasn't disturbed by the sight of blood across both pillows and the sheets. Weak grey light, and an open sea chill came through the windows. There was cloud in the room. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The house was buried in dense fog.

Felsen had an encrusted gash on his forehead. He cleaned it in the bathroom and showered some sense into his body. He went out to the car wearing a suit under a wool coat. He skirted the lizard, backing towards the garage, amazed at it, a huge thing, half a metre with its tail. He went back and rolled it with his foot. Not an indigenous beast, he thought.

He opened the garage and looked straight down at his feet as if instructed. At the back of the car on the floor below the bumper a pair of crossed rusty horseshoes had been arranged. He dropped to his haunches. Other horseshoes had been placed behind each rear wheel. He gathered them up and hurled them over the wall with exaggerated force. One bounced back at him and he gave it special treatment.

He was panting as he reversed out. When he went back to shut the garage he saw two other horseshoes which had been under the front wheels. He ran at them and launched them into the scrub outside with crazed strength. He drove down to Estoril with a pounding just beginning behind his eyes.

Less than a kilometre from the house he emerged into brilliant sunshine. He arrived in Estoril in sweat and took a coffee in the main square which seemed to damage the part of his brain controlling his breathing. His heart raced as if pumping ether instead of thick, strong blood. He left his coat in the car and walked up to Abrantes' house with his suit jacket over his shoulder. He arrived with his eyebrows full of sweat and dark African states on the front and back of his shirt. The maid nearly shut him out. She sat him in the living room with a glass of water but Felsen was too agitated to sit and paced the room like a caged panther.

Joaquim Abrantes rolled in full of energy and purpose until he saw Felsen in his patched shirt, his head gashed and wearing his hangover on the outside.

'What happened?'

He told him.

'A lizard?' said Abrantes.

'I wouldn't mind knowing who put it there.'

Manuel was called, and the accusation of a practical joke levelled. It stunned the boy who was standing like a soldier at ease. He denied it vehemently and was dismissed.

'I wonder about that boy,' said Abrantes. 'He's always snooping around people's houses.'