Antonio Tabucchi - The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

Back at his table the depressed fifty-year-old was still staring fixedly at his champagne bottle.

“You’ll have to wait a while yet,” Firmino whispered in his ear, “because the den is occupied.”

“You think so?” asked the other anxiously.

“I’m dead sure of it,” said Firmino, “there’s a fellow there who’s in the world of dreams.”

The depressed fifty-year-old's face sagged in desperation.

“But for me it wouldn’t take a minute, a couple of minutes at the most, maybe I ought to drop in on the manager right there in his office.”

“Ah, certainly,” said Firmino.

The man beckoned the maître d’, there was a brief confabulation, and off they went together round the side of the room and disappeared behind the velvet curtain. The lights were dimmed, the girl who had previously sung the blues reappeared on the platform, entertained the public with a couple of jokes and promised to sing a fado of the 1930s if they would just hang on for ten minutes because, she said, the viola-player had had a slight mishap. Firmino kept his eyes riveted on the curtain. The depressed fifty-year-old emerged and passed with sprightly step between the tables. As soon as he sat down he looked at Firmino. He was no longer depressed, his eyes were shining with the light of tremendous vitality. He gave the thumbs-up sign, like a pilot signaling “chocks away.”

“Feeling fit?” enquired Firmino.

“Twenty-five years younger than me, but she was a little whore,” mumbled the man, “except that it took a moment’s thought for me to realize it.”

“A rather expensive moment,” murmured Firmino.

“Two hundred dollars well spent,” said the bloke, “really cheap at the price, especially considering the secrecy.”

“As a matter of fact it’s not all that expensive,” said Firmino, “but worse luck I left my roll of dollars at home.”

“Senhor Titânio accepts nothing but dollars, friend,” said the fifty-year-old, “just think of his position and all the risks he has to run, would you accept Portuguese escudos if you were in his shoes?”

“Not on your life,” Firmino assured him.

“Well if you booked for La Bohème ,” said the man, “it’s tough luck on you.”

Firmino looked at his bill and counted out the exact amount. Luckily, payment was in escudos. He had an urge to walk the whole length of the seafront, he was sure that a breath of fresh air would do him a world of good.

FIRMINO ENTERED THE COURTYARD of the house in Rua das Flores and passed the concierge’s cubbyhole. The woman gave him a quick glance and plunged back into her knitting. Firmino crossed the corridor and rang the bell. As before, the door clicked open.

Don Fernando was seated at a green baize table, practically perched on a chair too small to contain his bulk, with a game of patience set out before him. His cigar was alight, but burning itself slowly out in an ashtray. The room smelt of mold and stale tobacco-smoke.

“I’m playing Spite and Malice,” said Don Fernando, “but it’s not coming out, I’m not on form. Do you know how to play Spite and Malice?”

Firmino stood stock-still before him with a sheaf of newspapers under his arm, watching the old lawyer in silence.

“They call them games of patience,” said Don Firmino, “but the definition is inexact, they require instinct and logic, as well as luck of course. This is a variant of Milligan, though perhaps you don’t know Milligan either.”

“Frankly no,” replied Firmino.

“Milligan,” explained Don Fernando, “is played with several players and two packs of fifty-two cards and stacks in sequence, the opening is made with the ace or the queen, with the ace the stack goes in ascending order, and in descending order if the queen opens, but that is not the best part, the beauty of it is in the obstacles.”

The lawyer picked up the cigar, which already had an inch of ash on it, and took a voluptuous puff. “You really ought to study these so-called games of patience,” he resumed, “some of them have mechanisms resembling the intolerable logic that conditions our life, and Milligan is one of them. But do sit down, young man, please take that chair.”

Firmino sat down and placed his sheaf of newspapers on the floor.

“This Milligan is very interesting,” said the lawyer, “based as it is on the moves each player makes to set traps and restrict the choices of the next player, and so on round the table, as at international conferences at Geneva.”

Firmino stared at him, his face taking on an expression of bewilderment. He made a rapid, fruitless attempt to decipher the lawyer’s meaning.

“Conferences at Geneva?” he queried.

“The fact is that a few years ago,” said the lawyer, “I asked to be an observer at the discussions on nuclear disarmament which regularly took place at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva. I struck up a friendship with a certain lady, the ambassadress of a country in favor of disarmament. So I came to learn that her country, at that time carrying out nuclear experiments, was also committed to worldwide abolition of atomic weapons, do you grasp the concept?”

“I grasp it,” said Firmino, “it’s a paradox.”

“Well then,” continued the lawyer, “this was a lady of considerable culture and knowledge, as you may suppose, but above all she was a passionate card-player. One day I asked her to explain to me the mechanism of those negotiations, since this eluded my sense of logic. Do you know what she answered?”

“I can’t imagine,” replied Firmino.

“That I should study Milligan,” said Don Fernando, “because the logic was the same, and that is that every player who pretends to be collaborating with another is in fact constructing a sequence of cards which will trap his opponent and limit his choices. What do you think of that?”

“Some game,” replied Firmino.

“You’ve said it,” agreed Don Fernando, “but that’s what the nuclear balance of our planet rests on — on Milligan.

He tapped the top of one of the stacks of cards.

“But I play it on my own, introducing the variant of Spite and Malice, it seems to me more appropriate.”

“Meaning what?” asked Firmino.

“That I play a game of patience in such a way as to be at the same time myself and my opponent, I think the situation requires it, being concerned with missiles to be launched and others to be avoided.”

“One missile we have got,” declared Firmino, evidently pleased with himself, “it hasn’t got a nuclear warhead but it’s better than nothing.”

Don Fernando broke up his game of patience and collected the cards one by one. “You interest me, young man,” he said.

“At ‘Puccini's Butterfly,’” said Firmino, “drugs are not only peddled but consumed on the premises. In the corridor at the back there are private rooms, complete with comfortable sofas and operatic music, I think it is mostly cocaine but there could be other stuff as well, a sniff costs two hundred dollars, and the man who runs the show is certainly Titânio Silva. Shall I shoot him down in our paper?”

The lawyer got to his feet and crossed the room unsteadily. He stopped near an Empire-style console on which stood a framed photograph which Firmino had not noticed before. He propped an elbow on the marble top of the console, assuming an attitude which to Firmino appeared theatrical and almost as if he were addressing a court of law.

“You are a good reporter, young man,” he exclaimed, “within certain limits of course, but don’t go doing a Don Quixote on me, because Sergeant Titânio Silva is a very dangerous windmill. And since we well know that our gallant Don Quixote got the worst of it when he was caught up in the sails of the windmill, and since I cannot and have no wish to be his Sancho Panza anointing his poor bruised body with balsamic oils, I will tell you one thing only, so listen carefully. Listen carefully because it’s of basic importance as a move in our game of Milligan. You will now proceed to draw up an exhaustive statement to send to a press agency, describing ‘Puccini's Butterfly’ in the minutest detail, with its little cozy dens, its operatic music, its packets of various substances and dollars accurately added up by the efficient cashier Titânio Silva, all this, I say, will be reported en bloc by the Portuguese press, all the papers possible or imaginable, that part of it which espouses the magnificent and progressive destinies of the human race and also the sector devoted to the sports cars owned by the petty manufacturers of the North, which after all just means another way of conceiving the magnificent and progressive destinies, in short, every paper in its own way will be forced to publish this story, some with savage rage, others scandalized, others again with reservations, but they will all have to write that probably, and I repeat probably, in the face of incontestable evidence, on those premises, with perfect impunity, on account of the curious forgetfulness of the Republican Guardia Nacional, which has never taken it into its head to search them, are peddled certain oneirizing powders, how’s that for a description? at the modest price of two hundred dollars a sniff, which is to say a third of the monthly wage of the average Portuguese worker. In this way we will bestow on ‘Puccini’s Butterfly,’ and obviously also on Senhor Titânio, the privilege of a search by the criminal investigation department.”