Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'Don't be scared,' he said, holding up his hands, showing no weapons, no intent.

She pushed herself up the bed and sat with her back to the wall, her knees tucked up under her chin. One of her shoes was missing. He retrieved it from the floor. He put it next to her bare foot. She slipped into it. She remembered this man. The kind one. The one to watch.

'I have something for you,' he said, and gave her the cheese sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin.

'Water,' she said, hoarsely.

He found the guard's clay pitcher full of cool water. She drank heavily, the spout of the pitcher not once touching her lips. Water spilled over her lip and dripped down her chin darkening a patch on the top of her left breast. She checked the inside of the sandwich and ate it. Then she drank again, not knowing when the kindness was going to stop.

Manuel offered her a cigarette. She didn't smoke. He lit one himself and paced the room. He gave her the last pastel de nata he'd bought that morning. She wolfed it.

She rested the back of her head against the wall. He's strange this one, she thought, but they're all the same underneath. Manuel suddenly sat down, close to her, so that she inched back her feet. He crushed out the cigarette with his foot. He looked at her throat.

'What do you do in Reguengos?' he asked.

'I'm a loom operator. I make mantas' . Blankets.

'Is the factory closed for the summer?'

'No. They gave me time off to come and see my uncle.'

She tried to take it back once it was out. She'd never spoken about the uncle before. Manuel noted it, but ignored the obvious. It would all come out in the end. She clasped her fingers together around her knees as if that would stop other things leaking out. You have to watch this one.

'There's a big fair for mantas down south somewhere, isn't there?' asked Manuel.

'Castro Verde.'

'I've never been.'

'There's not much call for mantas from Lisboans,' she said, and he felt: a little stupid.

'It's true, it's true,' he said. 'I'm from the Beira myself.'

'I know.'

'How's that?'

'The cheese in the sandwich,' she said, to show him she was sharp again.

'My father has it brought down, and all the chouriços, morcelas and presuntos. The best in Portugal, without a doubt.'

'There's nothing wrong with a good paio Alentejano. "

'The heat. The heat's not good for it. It sharpens the meat.'

'We have ways of keeping things cool.'

'Of course, the cork.'

'And the cork oak produces acorns, which feed the pigs, which makes…'

'You could be right,' he said, enjoying himself talking like this with a woman. 'We only think of the heat when we talk of the Alentejo.'

And communists, she thought.

'And the wine,' she said.

'Yes, excellent tinto, but I prefer Dão.'

'You would, coming from up there.'

'When this is all over you should let me show you…' he let the sentence drift.

She stiffened inside and looked intensely at the man's ear. He was staring across the room, smiling. He turned. Their eyes connected.

'When what's all over?' she asked.

'This resistance.'

'Whose resistance… to what?'

'Your resistance,' he said and looked down.

He ran a finger and thumb around her slim ankle and then drew them down her foot to the rim of her shoe. The touch shot panic up to her throat. She wanted to squeal. She pressed her head back into the wall, closed her eyes for a moment to gather herself. He smiled at her. When she reopened her eyes he was closer, his soft face moving closer, his full, red lips under the moustache, parted.

'Filho da puta ,' she said, under her breath, but they were so close her breath mingled with his, and he reared back as if she'd slapped him.

Things happened in the man's face. The softness went. The jaw bunched. The eyes closed a fraction and walled over. His large soft hand reached over her knees and grabbed a twist of her blonde greasy hair. He yanked her head round so sharply her body was forced to follow.

She was kneeling on the edge of the bed, her neck stretched back. He pushed her face into the corner, his thick fist bunched in the back of her head. A hand reached round and wrenched the skirt out from under her knees. Her voice left her. Nothing would come up over her voice box. Her cheekbones hurt where he forced her face into the corner. She felt her skirt come up over her thighs. She lashed out with her fist behind her. He pulled her head back and thudded her face into the wall. Her skirt was around her waist. He tore at her underwear like a feral animal. It had gone green inside her head and she couldn't get things straight any more. There was only one moment when she managed the faintest cry of the smallest child in the night. Pain flashed between her legs. Her body jolted. Her forehead thumped into the wall.

It was over in less than a minute. She slid off the bed on to the floor. Her face cold against the rough concrete floor. She vomited the cheese sandwich and water. He tried to pull her up but she was a dead weight. He kicked her in the stomach, harder than he'd intended. Something like an organ seemed to break inside her. He grabbed hold of her leg and hair and pushed a knee into her belly and heaved her up on to the bed. The pain reached right up to the top of the inside of her head.

He rolled her over, strapped her down, replaced the earphones. Breathing heavily, he pinched his nose with thumb and forefinger and flicked a hank of sweat and snot on to the floor. He turned on the sound machine. Her body strained. He zipped up his fly with a short, sharp jerk. He picked up the pitcher and left the cell.

As he relocked the door the flesh at the back of his neck began to crawl. He heard his name whispered softly over and over. Manuel. Manuel. Manuel. The cell corridor was empty. He shuddered, picked up the pitcher and nearly ran back to the guard's empty chair.

He drove back to the house in Lapa needing to be quiet and alone. He drank heavily, aguardente directly from the bottle. He slept deeply and horribly until late. He was woken by the sun streaming through the undrawn curtains, the clap of the palm trees in a nearby garden, the noise of children playing. His face was hot, swollen and sweaty. His insides felt black.

He showered and soaped himself until his body squeaked, but he couldn't get shot of the blackness in his gut. He drove to Belem and had a coffee but couldn't get a pastel de nata down his constricted throat. He was an hour and a half late getting to work. Jorge Raposo was waiting for him.

'We've got a problem,' he said, and Manuel's black guts ran cave-cold.

'Do we?'

'The Medinas girl. She's dead.'

'Dead?!' he said, the blood vacating his head so that he had to sit down.

'The guard found her this morning. Blood everywhere,' he said, waving a hand distastefully around the genital area.

'Has the doctor seen her?'

'That's how we know she's dead. She miscarried. Died of internal and, by the looks of it, external bleeding.'

'Miscarried? Did we know she was pregnant?'

'No, we didn't, and by the way, the boss wants to see you.'

'Narciso?'

Jorge shrugged and looked at Manuel's hands.

'No cakes today?'

Major Virgilio Duarte Narciso eased the phone back on to its cradle and smoked the last inch of his cigarette as if each drag was lacerating his lungs. Manuel had been trying to cross his legs but he was in such a sweat that the material stuck to every inch of his lower limbs and he just couldn't get one over the other. His boss, the major, rubbed the end of his large, brown nose, as thick as the thumb of a bo:dng glove with every pore visible, as if they'd been pricked there.

'You're being transferred,' he said.