Antonio Tabucchi - The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

He arrived at the Lumiar and skirted the buildings of the Holiday Inn. A horrible monster. Middle-class Americans disembarked there looking for picturesque Old Lisbon and found themselves on the contrary plumb in the middle of a neighborhood ravaged by new buildings plus the flyover to the airport and the outer beltway. Finding a parking space was always a problem. He pulled in facing a block of flats with an electronic gate, doing his best not to obstruct the entrance. His car stuck out a good half-meter, but to hell with it. If they towed it away his fine-quota would go up by at least two per cent, which meant that he would be unable to buy the last volume of the Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana , an essential tool for the study of Vittorini. Oh well!

A few meters away loomed the newspaper building, a hideous, vulgar cement edifice built in the 1970s and completely devoid of feature. Most floors were occupied by work-a-day people with jobs in the center, who used their apartments only as dormitories. To give a touch of color to the dismal balconies some of the tenants had installed a sun-umbrella and plastic garden chairs. On the topmost balcony, quite in contrast with such bourgeois embellishments, was an eye-catching placard announcing in vermilion lettering: O ACONTECIMENTO: “What every citizen needs to know.”

This was his paper, and he made his way there in buoyant spirits. He was aware that he had to face the bosomy and paralyzed telephonist who from her wheelchair directed all the sections of the newspaper, that before reaching his cubbyhole he had to get past the desk of Dr. Silva, head of the editorial staff, who used his mothers surname, Huppert, because a French name was more stylish, and that even when he had gained his own desk he would feel the usual intolerable claustrophobia he always felt, because the cubicle with fake walls in which they had confined him had no window. Firmino knew all this, yet he pressed on with buoyant heart.

The paralytic lady had fallen asleep in her wheelchair. Before her abundant breast was a small, empty tinfoil container with greasy edges. It had been her lunch, delivered by the fast-food at the corner. Firmino walked past her with some relief and entered the elevator. It didn’t have any doors, like a freight elevator. Beneath the buttons was a metal plaque engraved with the words “Use of this elevator is forbidden to unaccompanied minors.” Beside this, in felt pen, someone had scrawled: Fuck you. By way of compensation the architect who had dreamt up this peerless building had sought to cheer the occupants of the elevator with music piped through a miniature loudspeaker. It was always the same tune: “Strangers in the Night.” At the third floor the elevator came to a halt. There entered an elderly lady with a dyed perm which suffused a horrendous perfume.

“Going down?” asked the lady without so much as a nod.

“Going up,” replied Firmino.

“I’m going down,” said the lady curtly. And she pressed the down button.

Firmino resigned himself and down he went, the lady walked off without so much as a good-day and he went up. When he reached the fourth floor he stood for one disconcerted moment on the landing. What to do? he wondered. What if he had gone to the airport and got on a flight to Paris? Paris, the great magazines, the special correspondents, all those trips the world over. Like a complete cosmopolitan journalist. Notions like this sometimes came to him, the urge to change his life once and for all, a radical choice, a sudden impulse. But the problem was that he didn’t have a bean and air tickets run into money. So does Paris. Firmino pushed open the door and went in.

The office premises were what is called open-plan. But originally, of course, they had not been designed as such. They had been converted by knocking down the dividing walls of the apartment, easy enough to demolish since they were made of hollow bricks. This had all been thought up by the firm previously occupying the premises, exporting tinned tuna-fish, and having inherited them in that condition the Editor had made the best of a bad job.

There was no one sitting at the two desks facing the entrance. The first was usually occupied by a mature spinster who acted as secretary, the other by a journalist who worked at the only computer the paper possessed. The third desk was that of Senhor Silva, or rather Huppert, as he signed his articles for the paper.

“Good afternoon, Senhor Silva,” said Firmino amiably.

Senhor Silva eyed him with some severity.

“The Editor is furious,” he said between his teeth.

“Why is that?” asked Firmino.

“Because he didn’t know how to contact you.”

“But I was at the sea,” explained Firmino.

“You can’t go to the sea in times like these,” said Senhor Silva acidly. He then pronounced his pet phrase: mala tempora currunt .

“That’s all very well,” returned Firmino, “but I was only supposed to be back tomorrow.”

Senhor Silva made no answer, but motioned towards the frosted-glass door of the Editor’s little office.

Firmino knocked and breezed straight in. The Editor was on the telephone and gestured to him to wait. Firmino closed the door and remained standing. It was stiflingly hot in that little room and the air conditioner was turned off. Yet the Editor was dressed in an impeccable grey jacket and wearing a tie. Also a white shirt. He hung up and raked Firmino from stem to stern.

“Where were you holing out?” he demanded irritably.

“Alentejo,” answered Firmino.

“What were you doing in Alentejo?” demanded the Editor more irritably still.

“I am on holiday,” pointed out Firmino, “and my holiday doesn’t end until tomorrow, I’ve called in at the paper simply to know if there’s anything new, and whether I can make myself useful.”

“You’re not useful,” snapped the Editor, “you’re indispensable, and you’re leaving on the six o’clock train.”

It occurred to Firmino that it might be better to sit down. He did so, and lit a cigarette.

“Where to?” he asked imperturbably.

“To Oporto of course,” replied the Editor in a neutral voice.

“Why of course?” asked Firmino, attempting to adopt the same neutral tone.

“Because there’s been a bit of dirty work up there,” said the Editor, “the sort of thing that’s going to cause rivers of ink to flow.”

“Can’t our man in Oporto cope with it?” asked Firmino.

“No he can’t, this is big stuff,” stated the Editor.

“Then send Senhor Silva,” replied Firmino calmly, “he likes traveling, and moreover he’ll be able to sign the thing with his French name.”

“He runs Editorial,” said the Editor, “his job is to edit the rubbish sent in by the various correspondents. The special correspondent is you.”

“But I’ve only just finished with the woman stabbed by her husband in Coimbra,” protested Firmino, “and that was only ten days ago, just before my holiday. I spent a whole afternoon in the morgue in Coimbra listening to the police surgeon’s evidence.”

“Too bad,” snapped the Editor, “our special correspondent is you and nobody else. Apart from that, it’s already arranged, I’ve booked you into a pension in Oporto for a week, and that’s just to start with, because this case is going to drag on.”

Firmino took a little time off to marshal his thoughts. He would have dearly liked to say that he had no love for the city of Oporto, that in Oporto they ate almost nothing but tripe à la mode d’Oporto and that tripe made him sick, that Oporto was cursed by sweltering damp heat, that the pension he had been booked in to was doubtless a frightful dump with a bathroom on the landing and that he would die of sheer melancholy. But instead of all this he said: