SALAZAR WAS FINALLY DEAD. Officially dead at last. For two years he’d been very little more than a vegetable, hadn’t even known he’d been replaced by Caetano during the coma following his brain hemorrhage. When he came to, his doctors had believed the news that he was no longer Premier would kill him. So for two years the charade was carried on. His advisers and cabinet ministers would appear regularly in his bedchamber, nod their heads at his rambling orders, go away. He was not allowed to have newspapers, radios or television. He was dead, but he didn’t know it.
On April 28, 1970, he made his last address to the people of Portugal on the occasion of his eighty-first birthday. Alves, almost seventy-four himself, watched the speech at his son’s house on the new television set. Maria found the Premier an awful bore and had gone instead to the country estate of a friend. Then, in late May, Salazar had gone to the zoo in Lisbon, God only knew why. In mid-July he was stricken with a kidney infection that finally carried him off on the twenty-seventh.
Alves Reis might have been expected to feel a certain satisfaction, but it didn’t amount to much. Oh, surely, he’d outlived another of his enemies, another relic from the old days, but at seventy-three it cannot be counted a major triumph. Salazar had had a good run for his money. And you had to give him credit for saying what he meant, standing by it. “The Portuguese must be treated as children,” he was fond of saying. And “The business of government is simply too important to be left to the governed”—that was another favorite. Dean Acheson, the American, had once said of Salazar: “This remarkable man is the nearest approach in our time to Plato’s philosopher-king.” That sort of thing was a little hard to swallow. What the man had been was an intellectually rigorous, mean-minded little Jesuit who stayed a bachelor all his life and believed that the key to ruling was simply to keep the people dumb and poor. He had not trusted the twentieth century. He’d done as much as anyone to deny its existence.
Such were the thoughts of Alves Reis, white-haired now, dapper in a white suit sitting in the bar of the Avenida Palace, looking out at the crowds in Lisbon’s Rossio Square. The bar was dim and quiet, a friendly spot where he dropped in almost every day for a glass or two of port. He’d gone forty years without a drink of anything alcoholic, but his physician had suggested a couple of years before that a port or two would be wonderfully restorative.
The funeral service that morning, which he had attended through the intercession of an enormously wealthy friend, had been held in the very grand sixteenth-century Jeronimos Monastery, where Vasco da Gama is buried. Vasco da Gama. Alves couldn’t but smile at Da Gama. He always pictured Da Gama as the face on the five-hundred-escudo banknote that had not been in use for years. Fortunately Salazar was being buried at Santa Comba Dao, his hometown. The thought of him resting near the great explorer was too much.
Caetano led the mourners, of course. Members of the armed forces carried the coffin, draped with the red, green and gold flag, to a special train. Caetano and four hundred dignitaries accompanied the body on its five-hour ride. It was a very hot day, the poor devils. Brazil had sent Augusto Rademaker, the Vice President. Germany had sent Karl Schmidt, also a Vice President. Thank God the Americans hadn’t sent the Agnew fellow. They did send a person named Maurice Stans, Secretary of Commerce, obviously not an important figure.
The eulogy he’d sat through had been ridiculous, but then if you couldn’t say ridiculous things about a man when he died, when could you? Monsignor Moreira das Neves had actually compared Salazar to Henry the Navigator.
Alves sipped his port, looked up, caught his reflection in the large gilt-framed mirror over the bar. Here I am, he thought, just an elderly old fellow having a drink, waiting for my son, reflecting on the death of a dictator. Portugal must be full of us this afternoon. But none quite like me, he thought. How many men have been called the cause of Salazar’s rise to power? Not many, he supposed. None, actually, that he could remember, other than himself.
The crowds in Rossio Square were milling about as if they didn’t quite know how to top off the day of the funeral itself. There was a haze of dust hanging over the square. In the dim bar the shapes of men grew like toadstools, out of the sun’s blast. Fans rotated slowly. The bartender came over and stood beside the polished table. He was carrying a small glass of port for himself.
“It’s a good day for a toast, Senhor Reis,” he said softly, leaning over and replacing the ashtray with a clean one.
Alves nodded, smiling crookedly.
“To you, sir,” the bartender said. “The man who stole Portugal. …” It was said quietly, an almost silent toast between the two of them. Alves mimed a demurral.
“Sit down, Marco,” he said. He removed his dark horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped away the day’s dust with his handkerchief. The bartender sat down. The bar was very quiet. It was the middle of the afternoon.
“The last of Salazar,” Marco remarked blandly. There was no visible emotion. In all probability he was a Communist, and so far as Alves was concerned, that was Marco’s business. Alves had never really gotten involved in politics. Politics was a waste of time in Portugal. He had learned a very long time ago that money was what made the difference, not politics.
“The last of Salazar,” Alves repeated. “The mighty Salazar.”
“You knew him, didn’t you? In the old days? People say that you and Salazar were great friends at one time. …” The bartender’s eyes flickered with rare curiosity.
“Marco, history teaches us one great lesson—namely, that history cannot be trusted. You know me. And you should know you mustn’t believe too much of what you hear about me. I am the most lied-about man in the long, noble history of our troubled land. As for my friendship with Salazar … let me say that it has been widely misinterpreted. And exaggerated.”
Marco winked at him. People who knew him, or met him and realized who he was, were always winking at him.
“Has my son been here yet?”
“Not yet, Senhor Reis.”
“Well, he’ll be here soon. We’re on our way, you know. Brazil. Three months in Brazil … a new adventure.” He smiled.
“A long way,” Marco reflected.
“Indeed. But what are time and distance? Only dimensions, infinite, forever. Not of much consequence to a man my age. …”
The bartender went to answer a call. Alves watched the doorway for a few minutes. Brazil, he thought. Brazil, of all places. You’d have thought a man of his age, who’d seen what he had, would have walked away from any more adventures. But the inclination never died. It reminded him of his grandmother. She had always said something to the effect that a dog couldn’t change his nature. It seemed quite reasonable at the time, and time hadn’t done it much damage.
“Alves Reis …”
He heard the scrap of conversation in the dim stillness. He couldn’t see who had spoken. It didn’t matter. It happened from time to time. You could hardly blame people. Curiosity wasn’t a crime. He smiled slowly to himself, knowing he was being watched. He took a cigar from a leather case in his suit pocket, fished a lighter from another pocket. Solid gold, a Dunhill, cost the earth at today’s prices. It was, however, almost half a century old, softly burnished. The inscription engraved on the side was almost obliterated, but it didn’t matter; there wasn’t much chance he’d ever forget it. It had been given to him by the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, had marked the most remarkably romantic moment of his life.
He was smoking and staring at the chunk of gold, slowly revolving it in his hand, watching it catch the faint light from the window, when he felt his son’s hand on his shoulder.
“Papa, the taxi is waiting.” My son Virgilio, he thought, is fifty. Good Lord, what next? “The bags are all packed. Mama is going to see us off at the airport. I have the tickets. …” He is a nervous fellow, Alves Reis reflected, but he has always had to live with the shadow of his father. A good boy.
He nipped his hand jauntily at the bartender.
Marco said, “Give my regards to Brazil.”
Alves nodded. He hated goodbyes.