Antonio Tabucchi - The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

“Certainly not on the phone,” said the voice.

“Certainly not on the phone,” said Firmino, “just tell me where and when.”

There was silence at the other end.

“Tomorrow morning?” asked Firmino, “would nine o’clock tomorrow morning be all right?”

“All right,” said the voice.

“Where?” asked Firmino.

“At San Lázaro,” said the voice.

“What is that?” asked Firmino, “I’m not from Oporto.”

“It’s a public garden,” came the reply.

“How will I recognize you?” asked Firmino.

“It’ll be me who’ll recognize you, choose a bench a bit out of the way and hold a copy of your paper on your knees, if there’s anyone else with you I won’t stop.”

The telephone went click .

ON THE TRIM LAWN IN FRONT OF HIM was a grey-haired man wearing a track suit and doing gymnastics. Every now and again he set off on a timid trot, scarcely lifting his feet from the ground, and then trotted back to where a Doberman lying on the grass bade him festive welcome at each homecoming. He seemed very pleased with himself, as if he were performing the greatest feat in the world.

Firmino looked down at the newspaper prominently displayed on his knees. It was Acontecimento , with the headline of the special edition. Firmino folded it so as to hide the headline and leave only the name of the paper showing. He took a sweet out of his pocket, and waited. He had no wish to smoke at this hour, but for some unknown reason he lit a cigarette. In front of him passed an old lady with a shopping bag and a mother leading her child by the hand. Firmino calmly gazed at the man doing his gymnastics. And he was trying to keep his cool when a young man sat down at the other end of the bench. Firmino shot him a furtive glance. He was a youth of about twenty-five years old, wearing a workman’s blue overalls and looking calmly straight ahead. The youth lit a cigarette, just as Firmino trod his out.

“He wanted to rip them off,” murmured the youth, “but they ripped him off instead.”

The young man said nothing more, and Firmino remained silent. A silence that seemed endless. The grey-haired man doing gymnastics passed them by with a self-assured trot.

“When did it happen?” asked Firmino.

“Six days ago,” replied the youth, “at night.”

“Come a bit closer,” said Firmino, “I can’t hear you all that well.”

The young man shuffled along the bench.

“Try to tell the story logically,” Firmino begged him, “and above all in the right order of events, understand that I know absolutely nothing about it, so start from scratch.”

On the lawn the grey-haired man had started doing his gymnastics again. The youth said nothing and lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. Firmino fished out another sweet.

“It was all because of the night watchman,” mumbled the youngster, “because he was in league with the Green Cricket.”

“Please,” repeated Firmino, “try to tell the story in order.”

Staring fixedly at the lawn, the youth began to speak in a low voice.

“At the Stones of Portugal, where Damasceno worked as an errand-boy, there was a night watchman, he died suddenly of a stroke, it was him who received the drugs in the containers and supplied them to the Green Cricket, and the Green Cricket sold them at the Butterfly, that is at the ‘Borboleta Nocturna,’ that was the circuit.”

“Who is the Green Cricket?” asked Firmino.

“He’s a sergeant in the Guardia Nacional,” replied the youth.

“And the ‘Borboleta Nocturna’?”

“Puccini’s Butterfly,’ it’s a discotheque down on the coast, the place is his though he’s registered it in the name of his sister-in-law, the Green Cricket’s a crafty one, and it’s from there that the drugs are peddled to all the seaside resorts near Oporto.”

“Go on,” said Firmino.

“The night watchman was in cahoots with some Chinese in Hong Kong who hid the drugs in containers of high-tech equipment. The firm knew nothing about it, only the night watchman knew and of course the Green Cricket, who used to come by at night once a month to pick up the packages. But Damasceno got to know about the racket too, I don’t know how. So when the night watchman had this stroke Damasceno came to my garage and said: it’s not fair that the Guardia Nacional takes all that dough, tonight we’ll get there first, and anyway the Green Cricket will only come by tomorrow, his day is tomorrow. I said to him: ‘Damasceno you’re out of your mind, you can’t screw that lot, they’ll get back at you, so count me out.’ He turned up at my house at eleven o’clock that night. He didn’t have a car so he asked me to drive him there, he was satisfied with that, for me to drive him there, and if I didn’t want even to go through the gate that was all right by him, he’d do everything on his own. And he appealed to me as a friend. So I brought him there. When we arrived he asked me if I really meant to leave him to go alone. So I followed him. He walked in as if he owned the place, as if it was the most natural thing to do. He had the keys to the office, he switched on the lights and everything. He rummaged in drawers to find the code for the containers. Each container has a code to open it with. It was dead easy, Damasceno went to open the container, he obviously knew exactly where the stuff was because he was back in five minutes. He was clutching three big plastic bags of white powder, I think it was pure heroin. And also two small electronic instruments. ‘Well, now that we’ve laid our hands on these,’ he said, ‘we might as well hang on to them, we’ll unload them on some private clinic in Estoril who need them?’ And at that moment we heard the sound of a car.”

The grey-haired man doing gymnastic exercises had met up with someone, a bob-haired woman who had greeted him as a friend, and together the two had crossed the lawn as far as the path right in front of Firmino’s bench. The mature woman with the bob hairdo was saying that the last thing she’d have expected was to find him doing gymnastics in the park, and the grey-haired man replied that running a bank like his was very bad for his cervical arthrosis. The youth had stopped speaking and was looking at the ground.

“Go on,” said Firmino.

“Too many people here,” replied the youth.

“Let’s find another bench,” suggested Firmino.

“I have to make myself scarce,” insisted the youth.

“Hurry up and tell me the rest then,” begged Firmino.

The young man started off again in a low voice and somethings Firmino understood and some he didn’t. He managed to understand that as soon as they heard a car coming the youth had slipped away into a little room. That it was a patrol of the Gardia Nacional led by the so-called Green Cricket. And that the Green Cricket had seized Damasceno by the throat and slapped his face four or five times, ordering him to go with them, and Damasceno had refused and said he’d give him away and denounce him as a drug dealer, and at that point the two other cops from the patrol had started in on him with their fists, had loaded him into the car and driven off

“I must go,” said the young man nervously, “I must go now.”

“Wait a moment longer please,” begged Firmino.

The young man waited.

“Are you prepared to testify?” asked Firmino cautiously.

The other thought this over.

“I’d like to,” he answered, “but who’d defend a person like me?

“A lawyer,” replied Firmino, “we’ve got a good lawyer.”

And to be more convincing he went on: “Plus the whole of the Portuguese Press, trust the Press.”

The young man turned his head and looked at Firmino for the first time. He had deep, dark eyes and a meek expression.