Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'Waiting for the kids to come out of school.'

'Looks like it.'

'I'm going to talk to the barman at the Bella Italia now. Did you get anywhere with Xeta?'

'Nothing,' said Carlos. 'I spoke to the sergeant about Valentim…'

'I've just been talking to him.'

'Right. The sergeant said that a guy called Joào José Silva has been looking for you.'

'At the Polícia Judiciáriai "

'That's what he said.'

'Did he say anything?'

'He said he still hasn't heard from Lourenço Gonçalves. What does that mean?'

'I don't know if it means anything. It's just one of those names that keeps showing up.'

How come girls do this now? How come this girl is doing this now? How has it come this far? 'My God,' said Miguel, finally and out loud, but not so loud that who he was watching in the next room, through the back of the mirror, through the rough hole in the plaster, through the ragged edges of the lath, would hear the thick, blood-clotted lechery in his voice.

It had been a long slow slide to this latest little vice. He'd done with whoring now. It was surprising how boring it got and how quickly. Pornography was no more than biology. Whoring no more than practical dissection. He hadn't liked it. It hadn't been the point.

The pressure of names had finally got to him, too. All the Teresas, the Fátimas, the Marias. All those little saints, the santinhas he called them, with their eyes staring up at him. He didn't need it. He got enough of that at church on Sundays.

No more whores. No more santinhas. He thought he might be cured, except that he found himself still reaching for something, like an artist who's painted the same scene again and again, trying to find what it was he had to say.

He'd told Jorge not to send him any more girls and that had been that. But Jorge… Jorge had kept something back. He had something special, but Miguel would have to come to the Pensão to see it.

He'd come on a Friday lunchtime. When was that? Years ago now or not? Jorge had taken him up to the room, told him about the two-way mirror and left. A familiar constriction had come into his throat and he'd pinched the skin around it with his thumb and finger. He lifted the mirror away on his side of the wall and there, framed raggedly, was a leading Lisbon architect he knew by name for God's sake, with a girl, a young girl, her legs splayed, heels braced against the sink.

As he was watching he had a sudden jagged fear that this wasn't a mirror but a window. Then he realized the heavily made-up eyes of the girl were focused elsewhere. Of course they were. There'd have been uproar if they'd seen his bald head ducked into the alcove. He waved at them to test their reactions. They toiled on, oblivious. He sat back on the bed unblinking for the minutes it took the architect to finish his business.

He watched, fascinated, as they fell back on to the bed and the man tipped the girl off his lap into the pillows. He shuddered slightly as the man came to the mirror and inspected his face for telling defects and then set about some frantic washing of his peeled-prawn penis, jaw clenched, teeth bared. He found himself enclosed by the drama of this private screening. The architect dressing, tearing at his shirt, desperate to be clothed again. The throwing of money, too much, on to the bed, the girl still not moving. He found his heart thumping in his chest as the door closed and he heard the clattering feet on the wooden stairs. He ran his hands over his pate and into the hairline of his neatly clipped, brilliantined head to the fat of his neck and shoulders which he gripped.

The girl remained face-down in the pillows. She stretched a small hand behind her. He was touched to see a cheap puzzle ring on her third finger. She reached in between her legs with thumb and forefinger and, as if she was pulling a splinter, yanked out the used condom. The fat man sank to his knees with a low groan. This had satisfied something in him, turned some grey beaten crust of earth and found dark rich soil underneath.

Miguel admired history. He liked its weight, its huge, glacial, unstoppable movement onwards. He would have liked to have fashioned it. He had in a way. But not enough. He supposed that this was why he enjoyed this little scene so much-a shot of a man's secret history. His real story. The one that would never get published but would be known… had been observed.

Then he saw this girl.

Jorge had been right. She was different. She was 'something special'. Jorge remembered things that worried him.

She was naked now and looking across the room to the mirror. He liked to see her face. He liked to see her front-on facing the mirror across the bed. She never closed her eyes. Her big blue eyes stared out with terrible innocence and this is what joined him to her. In all these things she did she was looking for something. Like him. Turning things over and over. Reworking things over and over. Never quite getting to the source, not knowing what the source was.

He'd already made up his mind. He had to speak to her. He already knew where she went to school. He'd followed her. Today would be the day.

He sat on the edge of the bed and held his belly in both hands. Black hairs burst through a hole in his shirt where a button had come undone. He opened up his shirt and stood in front of the mirror. He sucked in his gut. Fatter than an acorn-fed black pig's arse. He rebuttoned the shirt, flicked the collar up and fed the tie round, the tie made for him by Sofia's friend, the Inspector's daughter. He humped on his jacket and from a pig's arse made a patrician banker.

He looked around the room as if for the last time. The cracked cornice, the concentric stains on the ceiling, the seasick floor, patched with shagged and pileless rugs, covering holes in the biscuit-brittle lino, the wardrobe with its door hanging open, permanently stupid. He put his hands in his pockets and buffed his leg with his credit cards. He left the room, down the weakly-lit wooden staircase with its strip of blue lino, past the neon-lit reception with no Jorge, down more stairs, and more stairs to the huge wooden front doors and into the dark and shade of the sunstroked street and the distant applause of traffic. He breathed. That was the last time. That was definitely the last time.

He sat outside the school on Avenida Duque de Ávila, in his wife's Mercedes with the engine running. She'd be coming out soon. There was something sharp sticking into him from his pocket. He put his hand in and… what was this? A tube of lubricant. How did that get in there? He didn't want to do that. And condoms. This was not what he had intended. He threw them in the glove compartment.

It's her. Who's she with? Who's she talking to? He's after her. The look in his eyes. He's been there. Anybody can tell. She's walking away now. This is not how it should be. Look at her walk. One foot in front of the other, just like the models do. He's not letting her get away. He's after her. He's grabbed her wrist now and she's turned and twisted it away from him. She doesn't want this. My God. He's hit her. That look on her face. What does that say?

Miguel swallowed hard. Everything happening quicker than he'd expected. More things happening than he'd expected. All these people in the street. He pulled out. She was on the move again… down the catwalk.

He pulled up at the traffic lights and buzzed the passenger window down.

'Excuse me,' he shouted.

She's turned to him. Those eyes are on him now. Can he get the words out?

'How do I get to the Monsanto park from here?' he said.

She's come off the pavement. She's rested an elbow on the window ledge. She's glanced into the back of the car. Why? What does she want suddenly? Her fingernails are bitten down to nothing.