Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

Joaquim Abrantes stood in the dark in front of the open window, it was late, close to midnight. His wife, Pica, lay on the chaise longue playing with the dial of the radio, trying to find some entertainment that didn't drive her husband into a frenzy. She'd almost lost the radio to the street below once already when she'd come across some foreign station and picked up the Rolling Stones singing 'Angie' at a sudden full volume.

'Turn it off!' he'd yelled. 'I hear music like that… and I think it's the end of the world.'

'What are we doing here, anyway?' she'd asked, annoyed. 'Why don't we go home and relax in Lapa. You're always like this when you're on top of your work.'

'I'm worried,' he'd said, but didn't take it any further.

She settled for a local station called Rádio Renascença. She recognized the voice of José Vasconcelos whom she'd met several times when she'd been in the business. Abrantes grumbled again. He didn't like music. It offended his inner workings. He smoked from one of four cigarettes he had going in various ashtrays around the room.

'And now,' introduced the quiet voice on the radio, 'Zeca Afonso sings Grândola, vila morena…'

'I don't know what you have to worry about.'

'I'm worried,' said Abrantes, crushing a butt out into another ashtray and picking up a lit cigarette from it, 'because something is happening.'

'Something's happening?' said Pica, with mock astonishment. 'Nothing's happening. Nothing ever happens.'

'Manuel told me he thought something was going to happen.'

'What does he know?' said Pica, who'd never liked Manuel.

'He's an Inspector with PIDE. If he doesn't know, nobody knows. I'm going to call him.'

'It's after midnight, Joaquim.'

'Turn that radio off,' said Abrantes, hearing the lyrics now. 'That Zeca Afonso is a communist.'

He dialled Manuel's number. Pica toyed with the volume, turning it lower.

'He's a communist,' said Abrantes, to the ceiling, 'and I won't have him in the house. Now turn it off.'

He listened on the phone. It rang continuously. Pica turned the radio off.

He's in bed and that's where I'm going,' she said.

Abrantes ignored her. He walked to the window with the phone in his hand. He disconnected and dialled another number but couldn't get a line.

Four men sat in a car just off the Eduardo VII Park in the centre of Lisbon. They were a major, two captains and a lieutenant. The captain in the front seat had a radio on his knees which they all stared at, hardly hearing it. The major leaned back in his seat to look at his watch in the street lighting. The lieutenant yawned with nerves.

'And now,' said the quiet voice of José Vasconcelos from the radio, 'Zeca Afonso sings Grândola, vila morena…'

The four men held their breath for a moment until Zeca Afonso began to sing. The captain turned in his seat to face the major.

'It's started, sir,' he said, and the major nodded.

They drove two blocks to a four-storey building and parked up. The four men got out and each took a pistol from his pocket. They walked into the building which had a small plaque outside: Rádio Clube Português.

Manuel Abrantes was sleeping at the wheel of his Peugeot 504 saloon. The front right-hand tyre thumped into a pothole and he came awake to find grass scudding under the front of the car. He threw the wheel to the left and the car latched back on to the tarmac. He stopped and breathed in quick, short breaths until the scare subsided. He wound down the window and sucked in the chill air. He felt for the passenger seat and found his briefcase. He undipped it and pulled out a file, his own personnel file from the PIDE/DGS headquarters on Rua António Maria Cardoso. He fed it back in. Everything was as it should be. The little anxiety dream he'd just had at the wheel was only that. He loosened his trousers which were cutting into his belly and startled himself with a loud, uncalled-for fart. His stomach still upset. He put the car in gear and started moving again, calmer now.

'Where am I?' he asked, out loud as if a passenger in the back might lean forward and tell him.

A sign loomed at the end of a long straight piece of road. He gripped the steering wheel and blinked the sleep away. Madrid 120 km.

An eighteen-year-old Zé Coelho was drinking cheap bagaço in a white-tiled tasca in the middle of the Bairro Alto with three of his schoolfriends when the owner came thundering down the stairs from his apartment above.

'Something's happening,' he said, breathless and shocked. 'I was listening to the radio… some army officers busted in on the programme. Now they're just playing music continuously.'

'If you want to go to bed,' said Zé, 'you don't have to invent a coup.'

'I'm serious.'

The seven people in the bar looked at the man for several seconds until they'd all seen his seriousness. They got up as one and went out into the street. Zé Coelho flicked his shoulder-length hair over the wolfskin collar of his floor-length woollen capote Alentejano and they started running down the narrow cobbled alleyway towards the square below.

They were not alone. A crowd was gathering in the Praça de Luis de Camões and the words 'coup' and 'revolution' ricocheted off the statue in the middle of the square. After fifteen minutes the crescendo of excitement hit its top note with a shout to march on the PIDE/DGS headquarters in Rua António Maria Cardoso. They entered the street from the Largo do Chiado and found another gang of people coming up from Rua Vitor Cordon.

Behind the arched gateway and high walls the doors to the building were shut and the front dark, but the faint glimmer in the windows told the crowd that there were lights on in the building somewhere. They hammered on the gates yelling incoherently. Zé stood in the middle of the street, punching the air with his fist and shouting 'Revolution!' and, inclined to go one step too far, 'Off with their heads.'

Windows opened at the top of the building and dark figures leaned out over the street. Four shots shattered the night air. The crowd split both ways down the street with screams and shouts. More shots followed them. Their boots thundered on the cobbles. Zé ran back up the hill and fell in a confusion of legs around him. He rolled over on the cobbles and, further down the street from in front of the PIDE building, he heard terrible noises coming from a man's throat. He checked the top of the building again but could see nothing. He crouched and ran back down the street, grabbed the man by his coat collar and hauled him up the hill. When he was safe he fell back and reached down to the choking man. His fingers found the slippery warmth of a neck wound.

Joaquim Abrantes had slept very badly. He woke up at six o'clock feeling groggy and bad-tempered, as if he'd spent the day before drinking. He tried to call his sons, but still couldn't get a line. He opened the window and looked out into the empty street. Something was wrong. The street should not have been empty. He sniffed the air, it was different, like the first whiff of spring after a long winter except that they were in the middle of spring already. A wild-eyed young man burst into the street from the direction of the elevador up to the Chiado. He raised his fist in the air and shouted to the empty street:

'IT'S OVER!'

He ran up the street towards the Rossio.

There were horns blaring and a faint seethe of chatter and singing. Abrantes leaned further out of the window. He wasn't wrong. People were singing in the street.

'This is bad,' he said to himself, and strode back to the telephone.

'What's bad?' asked Pica, standing by the bedroom door in her red silk dressing gown.