Antonio Tabucchi - The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

“What did they say?”

“I don’t know, impossible to understand.”

“Not even a word?” insisted Firmino.

“One word,” said Manolo, “I heard someone say cagarrão .”

“Prison?” asked Firmino.

“Yes, prison,” confirmed Manolo.

“What happened then?”

“I don’t know,” said Manolo, “but one of them had a great gateira .”

“What does gateira mean?” asked Firmino.

Manolo pointed to the bottle of wine.

“He had been drinking,” said Firmino, “is that what you mean, that he was drunk?”

Manolo nodded.

“How did you realize that?”

“He laughed like someone who is very drunk.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

Manolo shook his head.

“Think well,” Manolo, said Firmino, “because anything you can remember is very important to me.”

Manolo appeared to be thinking hard.

“How many of them do you think there were?” asked Firmino.

“Two or maybe three,” replied Manolo, “I can’t be sure.”

“Don’t you remember anything else that might be important?”

Manolo gave himself up to reflection and drank another glass of wine. The shopkeeper came to the back door and lounged there eyeing them with curiosity.

“Shittipants is what we call him,” said Manolo, “I owe him two thousand escudos for aqua vitae.”

“You’ll be able to pay him off with the money you’ll get from me,” Firmino reassured him.

“One of them spoke badly,” said Manolo.

“How do you mean?” asked Firmino.

“He spoke badly.”

“Do you mean he didn’t speak Portuguese?”

“No,” said Manolo, “he spoke like this: G-G-G-God d-dammit, G-G-G-God d-dammit.”

“I see,” said Firmino, “he stammered.”

“That’s it,” agreed Manolo.

“Is there anything else?” asked Firmino.

Manolo shook his head.

Firmino pulled out his wallet and handed over ten thousand escudos. They vanished into Manolo’s pocket with astonishing speed. Firmino got to his feet and held out his hand. Manolo shook it and touched his cap with two fingers.

“Go to Janas,” said Manolo, “it’s a fine place.”

“I’ll go, sooner or later,” promised Firmino while leaving. He went into the shop and asked the proprietor to call him a cab.

“Waste of time,” said the shopkeeper rudely, “cabs won’t come all the way out here for a phone-call.”

“I’ve got to get to town,” said Firmino.

The shopkeeper swatted away the flies with a dirty rag and said there was a bus.

“Where is the bus stop?”

“A kilometer away if you bear left.”

Firmino went out into the scorching sunlight. Damn you,

Shittipants, he thought. The heat was ferocious, that real humid heat that typifies Oporto. No one went by on the road, he couldn’t even thumb a lift. He thought that as soon as he got back to the Pension Rosa he would write the article and fax it off to the paper. It would be out in two days. He could already see the headline: THE MAN WHO FOUND THE HEADLESS CORPSE TELLS ALL. And immediately beneath: From Our Special Correspondent in Oporto. The entire story from beginning to end, just as Manolo had told it, including that mysterious car that stopped near his hut in the middle of the night. And the voices in the dark. Crimes and mysteries such as the readers of his paper wanted. But the fact that one of those unknown voices had a stammer he would not say. Firmino did not know why, but he would keep this detail to himself, he wouldn’t reveal it to his readers.

At a wider curve in the deserted road an enormous billboard for TAP Air Portugal, depicting a cobalt-blue sea, promised him a Dream Holiday in Madeira.

“HELL AND DAMMIT,” said Firmino, “how can I say I dislike a town when I don’t even know it? The thing’s illogical, it shows a real lack of proper dialectics. Lukács held that direct knowledge of the facts is the indispensable instrument for forming a critical opinion. No doubt about it.”

So he went into a big bookshop and sought a guidebook. His choice fell on a recent publication with a handsome blue cover and splendid colored photographs. The author’s name was Helder Pacheco, who apart from showing a high degree of competence also revealed a boundless love for the city of Oporto. Firmino detested those technical, impersonal, objective guidebooks that dish up information stone cold. He went for things done with enthusiasm, not least because he really needed enthusiasm in the position in which he found himself.

Armed with this book he began to walk about the city hunting happily in the guidebook for the places where his random footsteps led him. He found himself in Rua S. Bento da Vitória and at once took a liking to the spot, chiefly because even on such a scorching day it was a dark, cool street, where the sun seemed never to penetrate. He looked it up in the index, which was easy to consult, and found it straightaway on page 132. He discovered that it had once been called Rua S. Miguel, and that in 1600 a monk called Pereira de Novais, of whom he had never heard, had written a picturesque account of it in Spanish. He relished the monk’s pompous descriptions of the “ casas hermosas de algunos hidalgos ” ministers, chancellors and other notables of the city now lost in the mists of rime, but whose lives were attested to by architectural evidence: pediments and capitals in the Ionic style, recalling the noble and sumptuous days of that thoroughfare, before the inclemencies of history transformed it into the working-class street it was today. He pushed on with his inspection and arrived at a rather impressive mansion. The guidebook told him that it had once belonged to the Baroness da Regaleira, had been built at the end of the eighteenth century by one José Monteiro de Almeida, a Portuguese merchant in London, and had served in succession as the central post office, a Carmelite convent, and a state lycée, until being turned to its present use as the headquarters of the police crime squad. Firmino paused for a moment before its majestic doorway. The crime squad. Who knows if someone in there was not following the uncertain track of the headless corpse, as he was himself? Who knows if some austere magistrate, immersed in deciphering the reports of the forensic experts who had carried out the autopsy, was not even now attempting to put an identity to that mutilated body.

Firmino glanced at his watch and walked on. It was nearly midday. Acontecimento should be on the newsstands of Oporto by now, it arrived by the morning flight. He came into a square which he didn’t bother to look up in the guidebook. He made for a kiosk and bought the paper. He sat on a bench. Acontecimento gave the whole front page to it, with an illustration in violet ink showing the silhouette of a headless body and above it a knife dripping with blood. The headline read: STILL NO NAME FOR HEADLESS CORPSE. His article was on the inside pages. Firmino read it carefully through and saw that there were no substantial changes. He noticed, however, that his description of the blue T-shirt had been tinkered with, and this riled him. He made for a telephone booth and called the paper. He was answered, of course, by Senhora Odette, who started nattering away at once, poor thing, sitting there in her wheelchair, the telephone was her only contact with the world. She wanted to know if they ate as much tripe in Oporto as people said they did, and Firmino replied that so far he had managed to avoid it. Then she asked if it was more beautiful than Lisbon, and Firmino replied that it was different, but had its charm which he was in the process of discovering. Finally she congratulated him on his article, which she had found “gripping,” and gave him to understand how lucky he was in life to have such exciting adventures. At long last she put him through to the Editor.