When Vítor came down to breakfast the next day at eleven o’clock, his Uncle Timóteo was in the living room, in his armchair by the window which stood open to the luminous morning; he was reading the papers, with one leg curled beneath him, oriental fashion, and the other, which was made of wood, resting on the window sill.
They lived in a third-floor apartment in Rua de São Francisco, a little way down from the Writers’ Guild. It was early December and the winter had so far been very dry, the air clean and clear, the skies intensely blue and with plenty of good sun for old men.
Uncle Timóteo was sixty years old; he was small and thin, talkative and enthusiastic. He had dark, mobile features, prominent cheekbones and sparkling eyes, a white mane of hair and bold white sideburns which stopped half-way across his cheeks. He was a retired judge and had spent all his working life abroad; he had lived longest in India, where he had lost his leg while out hunting birds, which annoyed him, because – according to him – he should, at the very least, have left his leg in the jaws of a tiger. He had always been more of a soldier than a judge. As a student at Coimbra University, he had been a troublemaker and a fighter, and, later on, in his courtroom, he had often thumped so hard on the table that the dark-skinned native lawyers had turned pale. Wherever he went, he was in permanent conflict with the authorities; he had even given a beating to a secretary-general of India, a peace-loving fellow who wrote odes and suffered with his digestion. But people respected his severe brand of honesty because, beneath that impetuous exterior, he was also extremely kind and compassionate and even susceptible to certain finer feelings.
He was a great supporter of the underdog and would ride to the rescue as boldly as any paladin. A nursemaid shaking a child in the street, a carter tyrannizing an ox, a boy scalding a cat would immediately find Uncle Timóteo bearing down upon them, with his thunderous voice and his silver-tipped cane.
His wife, an excellent lady from Macau, had left him eighty contos, which, he said, meant that he could afford to keep both a carriage and a nephew. He gave all his love to Vítor and all his admiration to England; he subscribed to The Times and read it from cover to cover. His main companion was a dog, an English retriever called Dick. Timóteo was an early riser, a believer in cold baths, as well as an inveterate smoker of pipes and drinker of grog. He hated priests and said that any young man of twenty-five who had neither a wife nor a mistress was not to be trusted.
‘Who’s this Princess of Breppo, then?’ he asked irritably when Vítor came into the room; he was peering severely at the local paper through his horn-rimmed pince-nez.
‘Why? What do they say about her?’
Timóteo read:
“‘We have just returned from the Teatro da Trindade, where the benefit performance, etc. etc.” … here we are … “In one particular box was a very beautiful foreign lady, whom some declared to be the Princess of Breppo.”’
‘No, that’s what people were saying, but it wasn’t true. She’s a French lady, Madame de Molineux.”
‘These papers are nothing but gossip-sheets,’ complained Timóteo.
Vítor went over to the window, yawning. He had slept badly. He had left the Malta at two o’clock, and with his mind troubled and his belly still full of food, he had dreamed all night of Madame de Molineux, but mixing her with characters from Michelet’s History of the French Revolution, which he was reading at the time, and snatches of Tennyson’s poetry. He was in a street in the Bairro Alto, and someone was trying to introduce him to Madame de Molineux, but just as they were about to shake hands, something would push roughly past, separating them. First, it was Sir Galahad of the Round Table in his silver armour, a white feather in his helmet and a lily on his shield, who passed by saying: ‘I am strong because I am pure: I am searching for the Holy Grail and I destroy all shameful loves.’
Then it was a flock of very white sheep with fleecy backs, crushed together and bleating sadly, smelling of the meadow. And he and she stretched out their arms over the sheep, but their hands did not meet. Then, again, they were just about to embrace when a cart came trotting loudly down the narrow street; people were crowding round it, shouting, and, jolting about in the cart were three men, their heads held high; one was Camille Desmoulins, who kept crying out: ‘Lucile! Lucile!’; another was Danton, smiling proudly; and the third was his father, whom he knew only from the portrait in the dining room: a conventionally dressed man with a sepulchral look in his eyes and a lock of a woman’s dark hair clutched to his chest.
Vítor stretched, worn out by his dreams. A canary in a cage hanging in the window, started singing stridently.
‘Be quiet!’ bawled Timóteo.
The canary fell silent. And Timóteo, got to his feet, his wooden leg dragging on the floor.
‘Honestly, the poor creature has no millet and no water. Clorinda!’ he yelled.
A brisk, chubby woman appeared.
‘It’s eleven o’clock and these birds have had no fresh water and no food. Sort it out at once, Clorinda. And bring us some food.’
Going over to the table, leaning on his stick, with the newspaper still in his hand, he said:
‘So she wasn’t a princess, eh? As if she would be. What do they know!’ And he glanced at the paper again, shaking it. ‘This is supposed to be a newspaper. It’s got articles, reports, reviews: Special Tari? No.1 has been approved. A boarding school boy, Master someone-or-other, was dismissed from school. It seems that so-and-so wants to stand in Mirandela as a conservative. Someone else is auctioning off his pawnbroking business. A proposal put forward by the cattle-dealer Fernandes João was accepted by the council of Vila Nova de Famalicão, etc. etc. It’s extraordinary. Everything is there, including two columns listing ‘arrivals and departures’: he died for love … Idiots! And I haven’t had a copy of The Times for three whole days. Call this a country! Clorinda, surely those eggs have boiled by now!’
He had placed his stick between his knees, tied his napkin round his neck and was feeding toast to Dick, who was sitting beside him, staring longingly up at him, his tail beating against the floor. Then Uncle Timóteo, looking at Vítor, said:
‘What the devil’s up with you, man? You look positively yellow! What time did you get in last night? What time did you hear him come in, Clorinda?’
The excellent woman smiled and said:
‘He came in at two o’clock, sir, and then he sat up reading.’
‘He’ll ruin his health!’ exclaimed Uncle Timóteo, banging his knife on the edge of his plate. ‘You’ll be a hunched old man before your time! You’ll wear yourself out, man. By thirty-five, you’ll have crow’s feet, a hunchback, problems with your kidneys and you’ll just gaze at women from afar, having completely lost all interest.’
Vítor laughed: ‘I was reading about what your friends, the feudal lords, abbots and bishops used to do to the serfs before the revolution: beatings, torture, hangings, terrible.’
‘That was quite wrong,’ growled Timóteo. ‘The serf, the worker, is a man like us and deserves respect. Now, if they were Blacks or Indians …’
Vítor protested, scandalised. The Indians were a noble race!
‘Rubbish! Anyone who calls an Indian a man, has either never seen a man or never seen an Indian! I was there at the Goa rebellion, leading regiments … It’s odd, you know, I could have taken the whole of India with just two men each armed with a stick! Look at the English. A handful of police against millions of men. It’s a question of nutrition, my dear boy. What can people who live on watery rice do against hulking great soldiers who dine on roast beef? Why, bend the knee!’
Vítor had only very vague political beliefs. He hated the Spaniards crushing Cuba and the rebels in Managua, the Tsar whipping Poland into submission and the English punishing Ireland, that Celtic land of bards. He shrugged and said:
‘Tyrants!’
‘Tyrants!’ exclaimed Timóteo, his eyes flashing. ‘Do you know, sir,’ (whenever he got into any heated discussion about colonial politics with Vítor, he always addressed him as ‘sir’), ‘do you know what they’ve achieved in India? They created everything! Cities, railways, bridges, docks, navigable rivers, plantations. Before, when there was famine in India, they would die in their millions! And now they never lack for rice because the Englishman is there to give it to them.’
But Vítor considered the Indians to be more poetic than the English. He talked about idealism, about their architecture, their marvellous poetry.
‘Poetry? Rubbish! You should go and see the cotton business in Calcutta and Bombay! Now that’s real poetry! When all they had were their poems, they lived in the fields and went around naked. And now they’re well housed and well fed. When the English first went there, they found the people covered in lice, and the Indian louse, my boy, is a creature this size.’
He indicated the tip of his finger.
‘Uncle please!’ exclaimed Vítor, pushing his plate away with a grimace of disgust.
‘What’s wrong, man? Nothing in nature is disgusting. A man should be able to talk about anything and eat anything. I’ll tell you something. Between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-five, I breakfasted every morning on snake soup. Excellent stuff. For a whole year … when I had pleurisy.’
Vítor looked at him, fascinated:
‘You had pleurisy?’
Timóteo mumbled, looking down at his plate:
‘Yes, I did succumb … once … when I was in love.’
Vítor laughed out loud.
‘Even better! But who with, Uncle?’
‘Bring the coffee, Clorinda. And my tobacco.’ Then slowly removing his napkin, he went on: ‘When I say ‘in love’, I mean ‘infatuated’. It wasn’t love. I was over it in two months. But it was the one great romance of my life – I’ve had nothing more to do with romance since, not even in books.’
‘But who were you infatuated with, Uncle?’ asked Vítor, interested, his elbows on the table, a vague smile on his lips.
‘With your mother.’
Vítor was astonished. Timóteo dropped his last bit of meat into Dick’s eager mouth.
‘Your mother was fourteen then. But she was so tall and strong, and with such long, long, hair, she looked more like twenty-two. She was damnably beautiful! You wouldn’t know, since there’s no portrait of her. But, God, she was lovely. She lived next door.’ He smiled. ‘How time passes! She kept two blackbirds in a cage at her window. And there was a song we used to sing then:
A pretty blonde girl sits at her window
Tending her two little birds.
The moment I’d see her at the window, I’d start singing that song. I think that’s why she took against me.’
Clorinda came in with the coffee. Uncle Timóteo spent a long time stirring in his sugar and then lighting his pipe. Finally, he leaned back and said:
‘I’d get annoyed, she’d get annoyed, I started to fall in love with her and she couldn’t stand the sight of me. And that is when my infatuation began. She did everything she could to dissuade me. Slammed the window on me, turned her back, hid from me behind her sunshade. She was an insolent, cruel little devil! One night, I’ll never forget it, I had the ill-fated idea of serenading her in Spanish. There was a Spanish song that was popular at the time:
Señorita, usted que tiene
Amarilla la cola …
I stood underneath her window with my guitar, I used to play the guitar then, quite well actually, because one thing I’ve never lacked, thank God, is confidence … and I started strumming away and singing:
Señorita, usted que tiene
Amarilla la cola. …
The window opened and a little voice said: “Is that Senhor Timóteo?” You can imagine how I felt. I immediately started working out how I would climb up to her balcony. It was dark, in the middle of winter, and very cold. “Is that you, sir?” “Yes, my love, it’s me!” “Here you are, then!” And she emptied a bucket of dirty water over me. Can you believe it? “That’ll cool you off!” shouted the voice from above, the voice of that shame … of your mother, Joaquina.’
‘And did it cool you off, Uncle?’ asked Vítor, engrossed and surprised, his eyes fixed on the old man.
‘It certainly did, I caught pleurisy! I spent two months in bed getting over it. That’s where the snake soup came in. It was considered a sovereign remedy for tuberculosis in my day, and I think it still is in Trás-os-Montes. As soon as I recovered, I applied to go abroad and I embarked on the Santa Quitéria. The captain was from Tondela, a short, red-haired chap, but very brave. No sooner had we crossed the bar, than a storm hit us! I thought we were lost. The waves! I can see him now, in his oilskin hat, boots up to his knees, slithering about on the deck, shouting, and the waves pounding the boat. I was clinging on to one of the masts. He saw me and bawled out: “Get away from there, you pathetic devil!” After that, we were the best of friends. And within a month, I was cured and hauling in the jib with the best of them. I’d forgotten all about my infatuation. But that’s the way we were then. Not like men nowadays.’
‘And what happened then?’ asked Vítor.
‘Then? Nothing. After that, your father went to Coimbra, saw her, as I had, at the window, feeding her birds, and he sang her the same song. I don’t know if he tried serenading her too, but he didn’t get a bucket of water thrown over him, he got her father’s blessing instead, and they were married … and then you made your appearance in this vale of tears, a real vale of tears as it turns out …,’ he added solemnly, falling silent.
‘And my mother died a year later.’
Timóteo studied his pipe for a moment, then said slowly:
‘Yes, a year after you were born, she fell ill. She went to the Pyrenees with your father and … never came back.’
Then, after clearing his throat loudly, he got up, leaning on his stick, mumbling:
‘That’s the way things are in this hellhole of a world!’
The clock in the living room struck midday.
‘Oh no, I promised I’d be in the office by eleven!’ said Vítor. He got up and stretched. ‘Well, I’ve certainly learned a few things this morning. There’s so much I don’t know about our family.’
And after lighting another cigarette, he went out, adjusting the buckle at the back of his waistcoat, while Timóteo, slumped in his armchair, was muttering:
‘Yes, there’s a lot you don’t know.’
Timóteo stayed sadly smoking his pipe, glancing up now and then at the portrait in oils of Vítor’s father that hung on the wall. He had a long, pale face, a high, white forehead, long hair, a long, black moustache covering the corners of his mouth, and he was wearing a black satin cravat. It was painted in 1846 or 1847, years of great civil unrest in Portugal and the time of his unfortunate marriage. What a shock for Timóteo when he got the news in Angola that his brother Pedro had married Joaquina. ‘The fool!’ he had exclaimed, screwing up the letter and thumping the table. Timóteo had the greatest respect for his brother: he was so intelligent, so brave, such a gentleman. And he was going to marry Joaquina, Maria Silvéria’s daughter, to whom he, Timóteo, had said: ‘If you come to Oporto with me, I’ll set you up in a house and give you an allowance of two meias-moedas a month.’
It’s true she had thrown a bucket of water over him, but there were people in Guarda, Telmo Santeiro amongst them, who had seen a second lieutenant in the cavalry climb up to her window one snowy night. And his brother was marrying her! Stupid fool! Such a fine lad too; he had written that lovely short poem, Night in the Cemetery. And then, one morning, a year and a half later, when Timóteo was breakfasting on his usual beef stew, the black servant announced: ‘There’s a gentleman to see you, sir.’
The ‘gentleman’ was his brother Pedro, all dressed in black. ‘Has Joaquina died?’ Timóteo had exclaimed. ‘No, she ran away,’ said Pedro, without so much as a tremor. Two Africans came in carrying two trunks. Pedro drank a large cup of coffee and told Timóteo his story. After he and Joaquina were married, they went to Lisbon. In Guarda, she would always be Maria Silvéria’s daughter; in Lisbon, no one would know her. They lived in Rua do Crucifixo, and opposite them lived a young man, a Spanish emigré. One morning, two months after the baby was born, even before he had been baptised, Pedro had gone off hunting alone and when he came back, he found a note in Joaquina’s large handwriting: ‘Goodbye. Forget me; my destiny is carrying me far away.’ And that was all. The servant and nursemaid said their mistress had left at midday with a small bundle of clothes. ‘During those first rather bitter moments,’ he went on, ‘I made all the necessary arrangements. I took the baby to Aunt Doroteia’s house; poor thing, how she cried when I told her what had happened, how she clung to the “little angel” who bestowed a period of unexpected motherhood on her old age. I had him baptised. His mother had wanted to call him Caetano, but I called him Vítor. It was our father’s name. To the maid – an emptyheaded girl from the Algarve – I gave a bit of money which she tied up in a handkerchief and took to her husband in Olhão. She never knew what had really happened; the nursemaid stayed with the baby and, a few days later, I left for Madrid. This wasn’t some kind of hunt, of course. I spent a few gloomy days and hours in Madrid, in a gloomy room in La Fonda de la Nobleza. Every Spanish cape that brushed my shoulder, every “caramba” I heard, made my pulse beat faster. From Madrid, I wrote to a few friends in Guarda – the Magalhães and the Vaz family – to tell them I was leaving for the Pyrenees with my wife, who was ill, poor thing … And I went to the Pyrenees, where I spent eight months fishing for trout in the Gave river; odd, eh? At last, I wrote again to the Vaz family and to the Magalhães, etc. to tell them my wife had died. In fact, for me, she was dead. I doubt they gave the matter much thought, what with the political upheavals at the time. They probably said: “Lucky Ega!” I went back to Lisbon. The little boy had one tooth by then and was weaned. The nursemaid, a sweet girl, silent and strong as a tree, had died. But I began to grow bored with the city; I got on a ship bound for Africa and here I am.’ ‘To do what?’ Timóteo had asked. ‘Anything. Perhaps just to catch a fever.’ ‘He still loves her,’ Timóteo had thought then.
Pedro had brought some money with him, but he got into some unprofitable business deals; he spent his time studying plants, he learned how to stuff birds and he began drinking spirits. The doctor, who lived in Luanda, restless as a caged cat, warned him: ‘My friend, once you start drinking spirits, that’s it, you’ll be buried in this godforsaken place.’ One night, Pedro and Timóteo had gone for a walk outside the city. Timóteo had never forgotten that night; the huge African stars, innumerable as dust; the silent sea gleaming phosphorescent in the dark; gusts of woodsmoke in the air and the smell of hot, humid lands … ‘Listen,’ Pedro said suddenly. ‘I don’t want my son to know what his mother did. It’s quite enough that I should bear that shame. As far as he and everyone else is concerned, she’s buried in a cemetery in Barèges. Aunt Doroteia, the dear woman, certainly won’t tell him, and his nursemaid is dead. The other maid is too stupid and, besides, she’s living somewhere in the back of beyond in the Algarve. Give me your word of honour you won’t tell him.’
Timóteo had given his word of honour. ‘Another thing,’ said Pedro, ‘I don’t want him to bear the same name as his mother. She’s known as Joaquina da Ega, and she can keep the name; it’s an easy name for foreigners to pronounce; it’s her name and a good one. But for myself and my son, the name Ega doesn’t exist. It’s a dirty name. Joaquina never knew this, but I baptised him with our other family name, one we never use: da Silva. Vítor da Silva, son of Pedro da Silva.’ He stopped, placed his hand on Timóteo’s shoulder and said in a low, hesitant voice: ‘Will you call yourself Timóteo da Silva?’
Timóteo had cleared his throat. ‘Ega is my father’s name!’ he muttered. ‘Look, Timóteo,’ Pedro had said, ‘I’m not going to live much longer. Do it for me.’
Timóteo had struck the trunk of a coconut palm with his walking stick so hard it set the whole tree swaying. ‘Damn that Joaquina woman!’ he said. ‘All right, Timóteo da Silva it is.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Pedro, ‘now we’d better get back, I’m starting to feel cold.’
And within a matter of days, he was dead from a fever. His body was taken to the old São Jacinto cemetery. A smooth stone and a cross marked his grave. He was thirty-three. That night, a windy night, Timóteo went to visit his grave; he walked around it, spitting and cracking his knuckles; then, looking down at the gravestone, he said out loud in the silence: ‘Damn the woman!’
He went back to Lisbon. Vítor was four by then and already a proper person. His Aunt Doroteia would watch him running about and she would weep. That winter was a hard one, and Aunt Doroteia died of a cold. ‘God, they’re all leaving me!’ exclaimed Timóteo angrily. ‘What a life!’
Since he had to go to India as a judge, he had left the lad with his friend, Gouveia Teles, an old widower, who lived in Almada where he did good works and read Horace.
It was at that time, when they were selling off Aunt Doroteia’s furniture, that he received a letter from Spain, addressed to Senhor Pedro Ega, c/o Dona Doroteia de Ataíde, Rua da Oliveira, 50 or 60. He opened it and found two lines written on blue paper: ‘Your wife is dead and was buried this morning in the cemetery in Oviedo.’
‘And a good job too. So that’s one episode over and done with. Time to start afresh.’
And he had embarked for India on the Trafalgar.
By the time he came back, Vítor had finished school. Timóteo had got married in India, been widowed and lost his leg on a tiger hunt. ‘I was shooting birds really,’ he told Teles, ‘but I say “tiger hunt” to impress the boy.’ The boy went to live with him, much to old Gouveia Teles’ distress, who muttered: ‘Honestly, Timóteo, you give me the boy one minute, then just take him away the next.’ But old Teles was very old, and he died a year later, suddenly, as he was sitting by the window reading ‘Ode to Célia’.
At around that time, when Vítor was at university in Coimbra, Timóteo saw a most unusual announcement in the paper: ‘Anyone knowing anything about Pedro da Ega is asked to leave their name and address at the Hotel da Europa, as well as a time when they can be contacted. Ask for Mr A. Fornier.’
Surprised, Timóteo sent a visiting card to the Hotel da Europa and the following day, at the appointed hour, Mr Fornier came into his living room. He was a large, plump man with prosperous, rosy skin, a fringe of blonde beard and two ringlets of hair over his ears; he wore gaiters made of yellow drill and minced about on tiny feet shod in shoes polished to such enamel perfection you could see the furniture reflected in them. He placed his tall white hat, with a very curly brim, on a chair and bending slightly at the hips, said in an odd, garbled Portuguese: ‘Have I the pleasure of meeting Senhor da Silva?’
Timóteo conceived an immediate hatred for this person. He cleared his throat and growled: ‘Yes, I’m Timóteo da Silva.’
The plump gentleman smiled and slowly rubbed his hands. ‘Perfect. Could the gentleman inform me about …,’ he rummaged in his pockets, pulled out a notebook, perched a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez on his nose and read, ‘about Pedro da Ega, of Guarda, married and since widowed.’
Timóteo fixed him with a glittering eye. ‘Who wants to know and why?’
The plump gentleman bowed and, with one hand on his chest, said: ‘I am not authorised …’
‘Right then, you’d better leave this instant, my friend.’
With his eyebrows arched, his lower lip stuck out, the man stared down at his own polished shoes, and muttered: ‘Really, really …’ He went to pick up his hat. ‘Listen, my French friend,’ Timóteo said, ‘Senhor Pedro da Ega died in Luanda. If you need a death certificate, write to the parish of São Jacinto.’
The man was scribbling rapidly, joyfully, in his notebook. ‘Perfect, perfect! Could you, sir, also inform me about a small child …’
Timóteo, who was looking at him, arms folded, exclaimed: ‘The small child died too. The whole bloody family kicked the bucket!’
‘Most unfortunate, most unfortunate!’
‘But, since I’m answering your questions,’ said Timóteo, ‘I think the least you could do is tell me who sent you, who wants to know …’
The man methodically put his glasses away and said that Timóteo was most kind. He was a buyer of antique china and Gothic furniture. And when his friend, his very good friend Lord Lovaine, had learned he was coming to Portugal, he had charged him with finding out about Pedro da Ega. As far as he could tell, Lord Lovaine had met him, probably while he was travelling. ‘Yes, they must have met in the Pyrenees,’ mumbled Timóteo. Then out loud: ‘I thought the interested party might be Joaquina dos Melros.’
The well-fed gentleman opened wide, astonished eyes. ‘No, Lord Lovaine, Lord Lovaine!’ he said, smiling. ‘Right, then, if you require nothing further …,’ said Timóteo.
The man gave two tugs on the lapels of his blue suit and recited, in one breath, in a rather more practised Portuguese: ‘If you have any vases from India, porcelain from China or Japan, leather chairs, Arabian chests of drawers, carved bedsteads, ivory, Renaissance cribs, chests, satin bedspreads, tapestries, which you would be interested in converting into cash …’
Timóteo interrupted him: ‘All I have is this walking stick, now, goodbye.’
The plump gentleman stopped dead, scratched his beard in various places with one finger, then picked up his hat, and left, muttering: ‘Really, really …!’
That was the last time Timóteo had heard Pedro da Ega’s name. But why should he remember all that today?
‘What’s done is done,’ he murmured, filling his pipe again and stroking the dog’s muzzle.