Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

The first months in Caxias were spent honing his interrogation skills, partly through practice but initially by watching more experienced men through a recently installed two-way mirror. The new mirror excited Manuel. It brought back memories of childhood. He liked to sit close to it, almost with his nose touching, and sometimes with the prisoner's face pressed right up against it on the other side. The pleasure was exquisite, almost sexual for him, to openly observe, without being seen, a man's shattered face as he was brought to the limits of his endurance.

This was another part of the training-the breaking-down of the prisoner. The preferred method was a combination of sleep deprivation and random beatings. They had installed sound equipment which, with little supervision, could keep a prisoner awake for days. They still used the old method, the statue, where the prisoner was made to lean against a wall, his bodyweight supported by his fingertips, but it was time-consuming and required regular beatings and therefore manpower.

Manuel parked up outside the fort. He put his jacket on, picked up his briefcase and the cakes and remembered with a thrill the reason why he'd bought the girl the night before, and why he'd particularly wanted one with an Alentejana accent. He showed his pass, which the guard ignored. He walked across the inner courtyard to the interrogation centre. Waiting for him in his office was Jorge Raposo, an overweight twenty-one-year-old from Caldas da Rainha who was an agente de 2° classe. He was talking to another agente about an English pop group called the Beatles and their new single called 'Can't Buy Me Love'. Jorge was translating the tide into Portuguese but he shut up when Manuel came in and the other agent slipped out after a hurried bom dia.

'What's his problem?' asked Manuel, laying his briefcase down and the packet of cakes. Jorge shrugged and eyed the cakes. 'We haven't got to the stage where we're reporting each other for listening to pop music.'

Jorge shrugged again, lit a cigarette and turned the box of matches over and over on his desk.

'So, you like the Beatles,' said Manuel.

'Sure,' said Jorge, sitting back and blowing smoke at the ceiling.

'She loves me yeah, yeah, yeah,' said Manuel in English, to show he was groovy, too.

'She loves you…' said Jorge.

'What?'

'She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah. Not "me".'

Manuel grunted and sat at his desk and laid his hands down flat. Jorge regretted correcting him now. He thought it might have an impact on the cake situation.

'What have we got today?' asked Manuel.

Jorge stuck his cigarette back into the corner of his mouth and looked down at his papers wondering how he could remedy the situation. The name sprang off the page.

'There's always that Maria Antónia Medinas girl,' said Jorge, who saw immediately that he'd hit the right button.

'Ah, yes,' said Manuel, frowning as if he'd forgotten her, 'the girl from Reguengos.'

'The one with the blonde hair… the blue eyes…'

'And I thought they were all Arabs out there,' said Manuel. 'You know… dusky… Moorish.'

'She certainly isn't,' said Jorge, licking his lips.

'Shut up, Jorge, and have a cake,' said Manuel quickly.

Jorge opened up the packet and took two.

'God, they're good,' he said. 'We should bring some cinnamon to the office.'

'Get them to bring up the Medinas girl,' said Manuel.

Jorge reached for the internal phone.

'Do you want to talk to her or…?'

'No, no, I'll watch this time,' said Manuel.

The girl stood in the interrogation room. Jorge moved her up close to the mirror. Manuel looked into her face, haggard now from lack of sleep. The blue eyes were dark and sunken. She blinked frequently in the harsh strip-lit room. Her hair was beginning to grease up. She was scared but keeping it to herself. Manuel felt pity and admiration. She stood with her shoulders square in a tight-fitting grey top with four buttons that started between her jutting breasts and finished at her neck. She wore a grey calf-length skirt and a pair of black pumps. She was neat and still looked clean, apart from her hair.

Jorge began with the same litany of questions. He wanted to know about the copies of the communist rag Avante which had been found in her possession as she'd tried to board a ferry in Cais do Sodré. Her answers were the same. She didn't know anything. She'd picked up the packet by mistake. They weren't given to her. She didn't know about any clandestine printing operations. She didn't know any names. She didn't know any addresses of safe houses.

Jorge grilled her for two hours. She stuck rigidly to her story. When Jorge's questions flagged and she began to drift into sleep he'd slap her awake and make her stand in the crucifix position and do knee-bends until she was sobbing. After the third hour Jorge had her sent back down to the cells.

The political side of the prison was overcrowded and they'd had to put the sleep deprivation equipment in one of the cells in the long-term block for criminals. The guard took her down, strapped her on to the hard wooden bench and clamped the earphones over her head. Felsen watched through a crack in the grille of his cell door, such comings and goings were interesting to a man to whom nothing had happened for two years. And to see a woman, too.

Jorge and Manuel went out to lunch. They ate fish, drank a bottle of white wine and two bagaços each. In the afternoon they interrogated a further four prisoners. At five o'clock Jorge went home. Manuel went down to the sound room. He took the keys from the guard and let himself in to the narrow cell. Maria Antónia Medinas lay on the board, convulsing under the straps. The noise pounding through her head was faintly audible from the door. Manuel turned the machine off. Her body stilled. He leaned over her, hands clasped behind his back. The good doctor. She looked wild, confused and frightened, like a car-crash survivor staring up through a shattered windscreen. Muscles twitched. Her breasts heaved.

Manuel lifted off the earphones. She swallowed hard. He brushed the hank of hair off her forehead, which was clammy cold with sweat. He wiped his soft, dry palms together slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. He smiled without showing his teeth. The good fattier. The sick child.

'It's been hard,' he said, in the softest, most calming voice he could find. 'I know how it's been. But it's over now. You can go to sleep. A long deep sleep. Then we'll have a little talk and, you'll see, after that everything will be all right.'

He patted her cheek. Her lids dropped. Her mouth crinkled oddly and a tear crept down her cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb. Her eyes opened. He could see her gratitude.

'Don't say anything yet,' he said. 'You sleep first. We'll have time, plenty of time, later.'

Her eyes closed and her mouth slackened in her face. He replaced the silent headphones over her ears. He left her and instructed the guard that nobody was to go into the cell.

Manuel drove west to Estoril. He felt good. He felt happy. For once he wanted the company of family. They ate dinner together, his father, Pica and Pedro. There was a festive mood in the house with eve rybody finding their appetite again after the days of brutal swelter. They all agreed to go up to the cool of the mountains in the Beira for holidays in August.

Manuel slept until his alarm at 2.00 a.m. He woke up with a leap in his heart, a strangling excitement. He dressed and made a cheese sandwich with the best Queijo da Serra and drove back to the Caxias prison.

The guard was playing cards on a different floor and it took some time for Manuel to find him and get the keys. He let himself into the cell and relocked the door. He heard her rhythmical breathing. He undid the straps on the bed. The girl rolled on her side and curled up. He sat and rested his hand on her hip. He shook her shoulder. She whimpered. He kept at it, jiggling her small shoulder-bone between his thumb and forefinger. She came awake with a desperate sigh. She rolled and her eyes snapped open, straight into fear.