Herve Le Tellier - Electrico W

In the morning I bought the Diário . The front page showed Mexico City in ruins, buildings collapsed like houses of cards, rows of bodies, and the dust-caked faces of survivors. There too, churches had caved in onto the faithful. On an inside page was the report on the Pinheiro case. The journalist who had covered it had some literary background. In Pinheiro’s incoherent outburst he had recognized Petrarch’s criticism of astrologers and their predictions. So he didn’t like horoscopes then. What to make of that? You tell me.

I hadn’t envisaged the Pinheiro case like this. I had hoped — and the general public had hoped to an even greater extent — there would be confessions, or better, revelations. Diabolical machinations revealed for all to see. I’d pictured a sect, a clandestine criminal hierarchy with esoteric rites. But everything was still dark and vague, and I was almost ashamed of sending the newspaper my daily chatty report of this obscurity.

It was not until eleven o’clock that I made up my mind to go to LisboPrint, Soares & Filhos printers, with the excuse of photocopying and faxing my article. I felt, with a hint of superstition, that fate would repay me for my efforts to curb my eagerness. I was hoping to see Duck, but the premises went back a long way, and a wide set of shelves housing files blocked my view of the presses and any employees. The only person at the till was a tall man of about forty with an overly purple tie. He was a bit slow and clumsy: the photocopier wasn’t self-service, neither was the fax, and it took him nearly ten minutes to complete these tasks.

I tried to find an excuse to stay a little longer, to get a chance to see her. I thought about business cards, which people kept asking me for. The tall guy shouted Constantino! in a loud high-pitched voice, several times, until a pudgy little man built like Ubu appeared. He took out three large files filled with samples of hundreds of different styles.

“You’ve certainly come to the right place for business cards: what with the size, choice of paper, font, layout, and inking techniques, we can give you the choice of, guess how many combinations. Guess.”

“I–I don’t know.”

“Okay, ten sizes, twenty types of paper, fifteen fonts, ten basic formats, and six different inking methods, that gives us … a hundred and eighty thousand different business cards! And that’s not counting logos and colored ink,” he concluded triumphantly.

“And can you give me a recommendation?”

He pointed to the first card on the first page of the first file.

“Take the standard one. It’s sensible and professional, it’s simple without being boring. How many do you need? I would recommend two hundred. It’s not much more expensive to print than one hundred, and with five hundred you never use them all. If you did need more, don’t worry, we keep the offset plates for a year.”

“All right then, two hundred of the standard style.”

“Perfect. It’s our best seller. You’ll be very pleased with it.”

I paid for the photocopying and the cards. It was no giveaway. I’d now run out of ideas so I just came out and asked, “Forgive me, but I came by a few days ago and was served by a dark-haired young woman who—”

“Oh, are you also picking up a rebound book? You should have said. When did you leave it with us? If it was last week and it was being leather-bound, it’s a bit too soon. They haven’t been delivered.”

I immediately thought of the Contos aquosos that I had in my pocket.

“No, it’s something I want to have done, I have the book with me.”

The man called Constantino cried Cátia! two or three times, with the same energy and the same high-pitched voice as the photocopying man. It must have been the exact intonation and volume needed for a voice to carry over the noise of the machines.

Cátia … so this wasn’t Duck. I was disappointed, but it was logical: old Custódia saw so little of his daughter that he probably didn’t know where she now worked. I would have to start all over again. At least I would have some business cards to hand out.

But a young woman appeared and there she was. She had changed very little, perhaps her features had hollowed slightly. Her straight hair was cut shorter, under her work smock she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She was a modern young woman, ordinarily pretty and prettily ordinary. I thought I would be disconcerted, bowled over when my secret heroine of the last few days turned up. But I felt the tension in me subside, I was finally liberated by the very simplicity of her incarnation.

I must have looked slightly dazed. She peered at me probingly, tilting her head. I had forgotten what I was doing there.

“This is for a book binding, isn’t it?” she asked.

She had a slightly hoarse, deep, but very sensual voice that I would never have suspected from her. I showed her my copy of the Contos . She opened it and examined the inner pages. She was a professional.

“Apart from the cover, it’s in good condition. It’s got, let me see, twelve signatures. I’ll redo all the stitching and put a double lining on the spine. Will these be all right, this marbled paper for the cover, and this green for the cloth-bound spine and the corners?”

“Green, yes, that would be great.”

“That’s good then. I’ll be able to slip it in with another order right away today. Not only will it cost you less, but you’ll have it back in under forty-eight hours, perhaps even tomorrow. Glue dries quickly at the moment. Would you like the bookmark in red, blue, or gold?”

“Whatever you like.”

“Let’s say gold. It’ll look very nice with the green cloth binding.”

She handed me her card: Cátia Moniz. I smiled — hers was also the standard style, Constantino’s best seller.

“Call me tomorrow morning then, Mr.…”

“Balmer. Vincent Balmer. I’ve given all my contact details … for my cards.”

Before taking the book she looked at its cover.

“Jaime Montestrela …”

“Do you know him? You’re definitely the first.”

“He wrote a beautiful book, Cidade de lama , about the loneliness of exile. I haven’t read it, but the phrase ‘exile is an endless insomnia’ is from him.”

CÁTIA MONIZ. CÁTIA Moniz. Nothing of the Duck I had imagined could be filed under that completely new name.

When I reached Rossio Square it started pouring rain. I sheltered and watched the slow pirouette of taxis describing a wide circle around Dom Pedro IV’s column. It was 1985 but the Peugeot 403 was already looking ancient. It was closely followed by a Datsun with a crumpled front wing, then a Mercedes with battered chrome that was spewing as much soot as smoke.

A young couple were waiting at the head of the queue, more mismatched than a pelican and a chickadee. He was tall and bulky but trussed up in a tight raincoat, his neck squeezed by a too-thin tie, she was short and slim, wearing a soaked multicolored dress. From that far away, hidden as she was by a straw hat ravaged by the rain shower, she could have been Aurora, Manuela, or even Duck. Watching them, I succumbed to the all-encompassing amazement I always feel about lives that are not my own. The boy talked the whole time while she gazed into the distance. When the 403 stopped beside them, she opened the rear door, climbed in quickly, and leaned toward the driver. Her movements suggested relief, she was in a hurry for the date to be over. She closed the door and the young man stayed outside, mouth agape, his words hanging in the air. He leaned forward, almost kneeling, and gesticulated for her to lower the window, to exchange a last few words or perhaps a kiss. She looked away and the Peugeot plowed its tires into an oily puddle as it set off. The young man in the tie watched the Peugeot move away before climbing into the Datsun behind. He closed the door on his raincoat, a big flap of it hung down to the ground and was spattered with mud as the taxi pulled away. The city displayed two or three hundred shows like this in parallel, comedies and tragedies, and I didn’t know what to make of this gift of fate.