A Small Death in lisbon (43 page)

'Get them to bring up the Medinas girl,' said Manuel.

Jorge reached for the internal phone.

'Do you want to talk to her or...?'

'No, no, I'll watch this time,' said Manuel.

The girl stood in the interrogation room. Jorge moved her up close to the mirror. Manuel looked into her face, haggard now from lack of sleep. The blue eyes were dark and sunken. She blinked frequently in the harsh strip-lit room. Her hair was beginning to grease up. She was scared but keeping it to herself. Manuel felt pity and admiration. She stood with her shoulders square in a tight-fitting grey top with four buttons that started between her jutting breasts and finished at her neck. She wore a grey calf-length skirt and a pair of black pumps. She was neat and still looked clean, apart from her hair.

Jorge began with the same litany of questions. He wanted to know about the copies of the communist rag
Avante
which had been found in her possession as she'd tried to board a ferry in Cais do Sodré. Her answers were the same. She didn't know anything. She'd picked up the packet by mistake. They weren't given to her. She didn't know about any clandestine printing operations. She didn't know any names. She didn't know any addresses of safe houses.

Jorge grilled her for two hours. She stuck rigidly to her story. When Jorge's questions flagged and she began to drift into sleep he'd slap her awake and make her stand in the crucifix position and do knee-bends until she was sobbing. After the third hour Jorge had her sent back down to the cells.

The political side of the prison was overcrowded and they'd had to put the sleep deprivation equipment in one of the cells in the long-term block for criminals. The guard took her down, strapped her on to the hard wooden bench and clamped the earphones over her head. Felsen watched through a crack in the grille of his cell door, such comings and goings were interesting to a man to whom nothing had happened for two years. And to see a woman, too.

Jorge and Manuel went out to lunch. They ate fish, drank a bottle of white wine and two
bagaços
each. In the afternoon they interrogated a further four prisoners. At five o'clock Jorge went home.
Manuel went down to the sound room. He took the keys from the guard and let himself in to the narrow cell. Maria Antónia Medinas lay on the board, convulsing under the straps. The noise pounding through her head was faintly audible from the door. Manuel turned the machine off. Her body stilled. He leaned over her, hands clasped behind his back. The good doctor. She looked wild, confused and frightened, like a car-crash survivor staring up through a shattered windscreen. Muscles twitched. Her breasts heaved.

Manuel lifted off the earphones. She swallowed hard. He brushed the hank of hair off her forehead, which was clammy cold with sweat. He wiped his soft, dry palms together slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. He smiled without showing his teeth. The good fattier. The sick child.

'It's been hard,' he said, in the softest, most calming voice he could find. 'I know how it's been. But it's over now. You can go to sleep. A long deep sleep. Then we'll have a little talk and, you'll see, after that everything will be all right.'

He patted her cheek. Her lids dropped. Her mouth crinkled oddly and a tear crept down her cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb. Her eyes opened. He could see her gratitude.

'Don't say anything yet,' he said. 'You sleep first. We'll have time, plenty of time, later.'

Her eyes closed and her mouth slackened in her face. He replaced the silent headphones over her ears. He left her and instructed the guard that nobody was to go into the cell.

Manuel drove west to Estoril. He felt good. He felt happy. For once he wanted the company of family. They ate dinner together, his father, Pica and Pedro. There was a festive mood in the house with eve rybody finding their appetite again after the days of brutal swelter. They all agreed to go up to the cool of the mountains in the Beira for holidays in August.

Manuel slept until his alarm at 2.00 a.m. He woke up with a leap in his heart, a strangling excitement. He dressed and made a cheese sandwich with the best
Queijo da Serra
and drove back to the Caxias prison.

The guard was playing cards on a different floor and it took some time for Manuel to find him and get the keys. He let himself into the cell and relocked the door. He heard her rhythmical breathing. He undid the straps on the bed. The girl rolled on her side and
curled up. He sat and rested his hand on her hip. He shook her shoulder. She whimpered. He kept at it, jiggling her small shoulder-bone between his thumb and forefinger. She came awake with a desperate sigh. She rolled and her eyes snapped open, straight into fear.

'Don't be scared,' he said, holding up his hands, showing no weapons, no intent.

She pushed herself up the bed and sat with her back to the wall, her knees tucked up under her chin. One of her shoes was missing. He retrieved it from the floor. He put it next to her bare foot. She slipped into it. She remembered this man. The kind one. The one to watch.

'I have something for you,' he said, and gave her the cheese sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin.

'Water,' she said, hoarsely.

He found the guard's clay pitcher full of cool water. She drank heavily, the spout of the pitcher not once touching her lips. Water spilled over her lip and dripped down her chin darkening a patch on the top of her left breast. She checked the inside of the sandwich and ate it. Then she drank again, not knowing when the kindness was going to stop.

Manuel offered her a cigarette. She didn't smoke. He lit one himself and paced the room. He gave her the last
pastel de nata
he'd bought that morning. She wolfed it.

She rested the back of her head against the wall. He's strange this one, she thought, but they're all the same underneath. Manuel suddenly sat down, close to her, so that she inched back her feet. He crushed out the cigarette with his foot. He looked at her throat.

'What do you do in Reguengos?' he asked.

'I'm a loom operator. I make
mantas'
. Blankets.

'Is the factory closed for the summer?'

'No. They gave me time off to come and see my uncle.'

She tried to take it back once it was out. She'd never spoken about the uncle before. Manuel noted it, but ignored the obvious. It would all come out in the end. She clasped her fingers together around her knees as if that would stop other things leaking out. You have to watch this one.

'There's a big fair for
mantas
down south somewhere, isn't there?' asked Manuel.

'Castro Verde.'

'I've never been.'

'There's not much call for
mantas
from Lisboans,' she said, and he felt: a little stupid.

'It's true, it's true,' he said. 'I'm from the Beira myself.'

'I know.'

'How's that?'

'The cheese in the sandwich,' she said, to show him she was sharp again.

'My father has it brought down, and all the
chouriços, morcelas
and
presuntos.
The best in Portugal, without a doubt.'

'There's nothing wrong with a good
paio Alentejano.
"

'The heat. The heat's not good for it. It sharpens the meat.'

'We have ways of keeping things cool.'

'Of course, the cork.'

'And the cork oak produces acorns, which feed the pigs, which makes...'

'You could be right,' he said, enjoying himself talking like this with a woman. 'We only think of the heat when we talk of the Alentejo.'

And communists, she thought.

'And the wine,' she said.

'Yes, excellent
tinto,
but I prefer Dão.'

'You would, coming from up there.'

'When this is all over you should let me show you...' he let the sentence drift.

She stiffened inside and looked intensely at the man's ear. He was staring across the room, smiling. He turned. Their eyes connected.

'When what's all over?' she asked.

'This resistance.'

'Whose resistance ... to what?'

'Your resistance,' he said and looked down.

He ran a finger and thumb around her slim ankle and then drew them down her foot to the rim of her shoe. The touch shot panic up to her throat. She wanted to squeal. She pressed her head back into the wall, closed her eyes for a moment to gather herself. He smiled at her. When she reopened her eyes he was closer, his soft face moving closer, his full, red lips under the moustache, parted.

'Filho da puta
,' she said, under her breath, but they were so close her breath mingled with his, and he reared back as if she'd slapped him.

Things happened in the man's face. The softness went. The jaw
bunched. The eyes closed a fraction and walled over. His large soft hand reached over her knees and grabbed a twist of her blonde greasy hair. He yanked her head round so sharply her body was forced to follow.

She was kneeling on the edge of the bed, her neck stretched back. He pushed her face into the corner, his thick fist bunched in the back of her head. A hand reached round and wrenched the skirt out from under her knees. Her voice left her. Nothing would come up over her voice box. Her cheekbones hurt where he forced her face into the corner. She felt her skirt come up over her thighs. She lashed out with her fist behind her. He pulled her head back and thudded her face into the wall. Her skirt was around her waist. He tore at her underwear like a feral animal. It had gone green inside her head and she couldn't get things straight any more. There was only one moment when she managed the faintest cry of the smallest child in the night. Pain flashed between her legs. Her body jolted. Her forehead thumped into the wall.

It was over in less than a minute. She slid off the bed on to the floor. Her face cold against the rough concrete floor. She vomited the cheese sandwich and water. He tried to pull her up but she was a dead weight. He kicked her in the stomach, harder than he'd intended. Something like an organ seemed to break inside her. He grabbed hold of her leg and hair and pushed a knee into her belly and heaved her up on to the bed. The pain reached right up to the top of the inside of her head.

He rolled her over, strapped her down, replaced the earphones. Breathing heavily, he pinched his nose with thumb and forefinger and flicked a hank of sweat and snot on to the floor. He turned on the sound machine. Her body strained. He zipped up his fly with a short, sharp jerk. He picked up the pitcher and left the cell.

As he relocked the door the flesh at the back of his neck began to crawl. He heard his name whispered softly over and over. Manuel. Manuel. Manuel. The cell corridor was empty. He shuddered, picked up the pitcher and nearly ran back to the guard's empty chair.

He drove back to the house in Lapa needing to be quiet and alone. He drank heavily,
aguardente
directly from the bottle. He slept deeply and horribly until late. He was woken by the sun streaming through the undrawn curtains, the clap of the palm trees in a nearby
garden, the noise of children playing. His face was hot, swollen and sweaty. His insides felt black.

He showered and soaped himself until his body squeaked, but he couldn't get shot of the blackness in his gut. He drove to Belem and had a coffee but couldn't get a
pastel de nata
down his constricted throat. He was an hour and a half late getting to work. Jorge Raposo was waiting for him.

'We've got a problem,' he said, and Manuel's black guts ran cave-cold.

'Do we?'

'The Medinas girl. She's dead.'

'Dead?!' he said, the blood vacating his head so that he had to sit down.

'The guard found her this morning. Blood everywhere,' he said, waving a hand distastefully around the genital area.

'Has the doctor seen her?'

'That's how we know she's dead. She miscarried. Died of internal and, by the looks of it, external bleeding.'

'Miscarried? Did we know she was pregnant?'

'No, we didn't, and by the way, the boss wants to see you.'

'Narciso?'

Jorge shrugged and looked at Manuel's hands.

'No cakes today?'

Major Virgilio Duarte Narciso eased the phone back on to its cradle and smoked the last inch of his cigarette as if each drag was lacerating his lungs. Manuel had been trying to cross his legs but he was in such a sweat that the material stuck to every inch of his lower limbs and he just couldn't get one over the other. His boss, the major, rubbed the end of his large, brown nose, as thick as the thumb of a bo:dng glove with every pore visible, as if they'd been pricked there.

'You're being transferred,' he said.

'But...'

'In this matter there is no argument. The orders have come down from the Director himself. You are to head a team responsible for bringing that charlatan General Machedo to justice. We've had an intelligence report that he is over in Spain preparing another coup attempt. You are being promoted to
chefe de brigada
with immediate effect and you will be briefed by the Director himself this afternoon
in Lisbon. There. What do you think of that? You don't look very happy,
agente
Abrantes.'

Manuel still found himself staring into the cold crevasse of his own thoughts.

'I'm honoured,' he stammered. 'I thought I was too young for such a promotion.'

The major closed an eye and looked at him shrewdly.

'Caxias is no place for a man of your ability.'

'I thought you wanted to see me about the Medinas girl.'

'Who's she?'

'She died in her cell last night. Miscarried. Internal bleeding.'

The beat of silence was broken by the phone ringing. It jolted them both and the major yanked it to his ear. His secretary informed him that his son, Jaime, had been taken to hospital with a broken wrist after falling out of a tree. Major Narciso hung up, mesmerized by the space between himself and Manuel until he re-focused once more. Manuel tried and failed to swallow.

'Ah,' said Narciso, finally crushing out the cigarette, whose end was stinging his nail, 'one less communist for us to worry about.'