He liked sedentary people, the kind who wait and watch others go by, people who guard lobbies or sit at reception desks, those who check passports at the airport all day or sit behind store counters just watching the streets.
He found public officials fascinating, but they also intimidated him, asking for paperwork, setting deadlines, pausing or accelerating the time of others; they sat behind their desks wearing dark suits or uniforms, and interrogated the prisoner, taking notes, mumbling and deciding months and years, his entire life contingent on those scribbled notes, those whispered words.
Now he lowered his head instinctively whenever he entered an office, and stood quietly, staring at the ground, until his presence was acknowledged and he was explicitly asked to sit down. In some stores a little bell would ring when the door opened.
He would gulp and clear his throat as he entered, adjusting the knot of his tie and feeling his hair; if possible he liked to check his reflection somewhere beforehand, or in the little mirror he still carried from his days in prison, and give his hair a quick comb. The man who sold him the rifle in Birmingham said he seemed very humble.
He approached a counter or desk and spoke so softly he was often asked to repeat himself, and cleared his throat each time to get the words out. Bureaucrats live sheltered lives in their offices like mollusks in their shells, allowing only the slightest opening; surrounded by small objects, the tools of their trade, rubber stamps, ink pads, staplers, plastic bottles with white fluid to correct typing errors, calendars filled with notes, a little toy next to the typewriter; so many things at their fingertips, pencils, sharpeners, ink, instruments for the tasks they repeat day after day for the same number of hours, nine to five, Monday to Friday, the same trajectory to work every day, the same routine at the end of business hours when they pack their things, put files away, cover their typewriters, and get on with their lives, oblivious to their power over the fate of others.
The woman at the travel agency in Toronto, Kennedy Travel, smiled as she handed him the passport, along with the round-trip ticket to London. “Safe travels, Mr. Sneyd,” she said. He was stunned by how easy it had been to get a passport, his first, and the ticket to another country.
The phone rang and the woman quickly forgot about him, unaware that she had just changed his fortunes. She greeted the caller and began asking questions, explaining travel options and itineraries, spinning a pen between her long, painted fingernails. He stood there watching her, so comfortable in her cubicle, surrounded by color posters of beaches and blue skies, castles nestled in forests, river cruises. He felt tired, temporarily acquitted, incredulous that his escape was going according to plan.
He stood there in his horn-rimmed glasses, making the same face he had in the passport photo, the photo that looked nothing like the one in the WANTED signs, the face that now belonged to a different name, a name that no one could associate with that of the fugitive, or any of his previous identities, John Larry Rayns, John Willard, Paul Edward Bridgman, Harvey Lowmeyer, Eric Starvo Galt. A few minutes later, the woman hung up the phone and saw the glass doors close behind the silhouette of the pale man. To her surprise, she had already forgotten his face.
* * *
Now he waited in another office, this time in Lisbon, and his life was once again in the hands of a bureaucrat. One of the officers at the Ministry of the Overseas saw him come into the office, opening the glass door slowly, timidly, one hand on the doorknob and the other holding a coat, an odd thing to carry during a hot month like May, much like the dark suit, the crocodile shoes, and the tie pressed tightly around his neck.
But if his gestures showed an excessive politeness, his eyes expressed something else. In the brief instant when he looked up from the floor, and the official caught the look in the light blue eyes, the expression betrayed was one of fear but also malice, obstinacy, and exhaustion—and something else, a hint of mockery, a silent sarcasm. He was signaled to sit on a bench and wait, and so he did, with his back straight and the coat neatly folded on his lap. He sat quietly, as if inside an urn, or behind a glass wall, isolated in his foreignness and inability to speak Portuguese.
* * *
The senior officer who would later give him information about visas for the colonies noticed the crocodile shoes as he made his way down the hall with a folder under his arm. He seemed very pleased with himself. A man strolling into the office after a mid-morning coffee, puffing his cigarette, proud of his place in the world, a veteran with his name and title inscribed on a frosted glass door and a plaque on a desk, a name he signed on all sorts of important documents with the golden fountain pen that protruded from his breast pocket above the honorary badge that reminded everyone of his many years of service.
He examined the world around him as methodically as he read every document that came for his signature. He scrutinized everything, from the cleanliness of the stone steps leading to the office, down to the smallest details in the uniforms of his subordinates. He expected every wall clock in the office to match the time on his watch. He was fluent in English and French and took it upon himself to personally attend to special cases like applications from foreigners.
Some of the most important letters he preferred to type himself instead of dictating to his secretary, and he used a stand-up typewriter, some said, because he did not like to wrinkle his pants. He enjoyed his reputation as a legendary seducer of married women and wealthy widows.
The typewriter sat on a lectern in front of a window overlooking a corner of the square, the river, and the stairway that descended into the water. Sometimes he stopped typing mid-sentence to watch a boat gliding over the river or a woman walking by the shore. He typed with his index fingers—nails well-groomed and nicotine yellow—and his glasses resting on the tip of his nose.
He had noticed with distaste the shoes of the man in the waiting area, the foreigner his assistant later mentioned as he opened the door for his superior and lowered his head. “He is Canadian,” said the assistant as he stood by the large desk, much bigger than his, solid wood instead of metal, decorated with a crucifix and a framed photo of the head of state with a personal dedication. “He wants to go to Angola for business, or to look for his brother who lives in Luanda. It’s hard to understand him. He doesn’t speak Portuguese.”
* * *
Foreigners are always in a hurry. But they must wait. A few minutes’ wait is a reminder of who is in control. They think their passports give them rights to whatever they want. They call and ask to speak to superiors, as if standard processing times did not apply to them. They think they can come, raise their voices, speak in their language, and others are supposed to understand and obey.
So he let a few minutes pass before pressing the bell that signaled his assistant to let the visitor come in. Phones ringing, typewriters clattering, the constant rustle of voices and hard steps on the wood floors combined with the squawking of the seagulls and the sounds of the church bells coming through the open windows. Every few minutes a siren marked the arrival or departure of a ferry.
Alone in his office, content in the knowledge that retirement was just around the corner, and in a good mood after the morning stroll, a coffee, and a cigarette, he leaned back in the chair, rubbed his hands, and waited for the foreigner to walk in. The assistant opened the door for the man and asked his senior officer if he was needed for anything else. After receiving a response in the negative, he mumbled “obrigado” and left as quietly as he had come, making sure the door barely made a sound.
Now that the foreigner was in front of him, the face seemed vaguely familiar. Like many foreigners, he had made the mistake of coming to Lisbon with a winter wardrobe. Dark-wool suit, coat, that tie so tight, and, worst of all, those absurd summer shoes.
He approached the desk with some hesitation. His voice was barely audible. Something about a brother or an in-law, who lived in Angola and had not written back to the family in many months, making them very worried. The accent made his English hard to understand. He was looking for something in his pockets and mumbling about how he had enlisted as a mercenary in the war or that his import/export business had something to do with mercenaries, when the senior officer leaned forward with a very serious expression. “Portugal does not have colonies. It has overseas provinces. And in the overseas provinces there is no war, much less mercenaries,” he said in English.
But the man did not hear him or, perhaps, he did not understand; he kept looking for something in his pant pockets and in his coat. He seemed nervous, his brow glistened with perspiration. The senior officer noticed a strong smell of sweat and deodorant. He was pulling things out of his pockets and placing them on the edge of the desk or in a different pocket. A folded map of Lisbon, a matchbox, a disposable razor, a coaster from a bar.
Finally, something fell to the floor. He picked it up and handed it to the senior officer with a sigh of relief. The passport, he said, and then he took out two more documents. The senior officer adjusted the glasses on the tip of his nose and looked at the documents for a few seconds before dismissing them with a quick gesture. Why would he need the holder of a Canadian passport to also produce a birth certificate and whatever that other card was, a vaccination certificate, perhaps. It was always one or the other, they either lacked the necessary document or brought extraneous ones that made the process more confusing. He felt the paper on the passport to check its authenticity. He had a slight suspicion; after all, the foreigner seemed too nervous and was offering things no one had asked for.
But his tactile expertise did not lie. This was a real passport. And the man in the photo was clearly the same one in his office, though the photo looked much older than the passport’s origination date, just one week ago, in Toronto.
The man in the photo, Ramon George Sneya, looked calm and confident, like someone leading a successful life; he sported a good haircut, glasses, and the hint of a smile, which tempered the dull suit; a university professor, perhaps, or whatever he was now saying he was—a businessman responsible for expanding a luxury yacht company, looking for new markets in Africa.
But the man in his office was not clean-shaven like the one in the picture, and he seemed dirty despite the smell of deodorant. He also looked older, though that could be lack of sleep, an illness, or perhaps some kind of tragedy. That could explain the nervous tics, the incessant blinking, the scratching of the neck, and the constant pinching of the right earlobe, which also seemed larger than the other one.
It was then that the senior officer realized why the man looked familiar. It was the pale face, the winter suit in May, the look of distrust and fear but also the imploring eyes, the contrast between the passport photo and the person in the flesh, the way he searched for documents in pockets that were filled with all sorts of things, the impatience, the cheek chewing, the blank stare at the passing ships and the steps of the pier. This foreigner reminded him of the refugees he had seen in that same office when he was much younger, almost at the beginning of his long and honorable administrative career—the year was 1940 and it was the beginning of summer. They were people who had fled the cold countries, some dressed in rags but also with a dignified expression, others with the latest fashion, men and women, worldly and haggard, women with long cigarettes and red lipstick, imperious men who were obviously used to giving orders wherever they came from, but here, in the waiting room, felt desperate and powerless. They kept producing useless documents, some authentic, some falsified, and kept talking about departure dates for flights and ships. They all wanted the same thing this man was asking for: a visa. They filled the waiting rooms and hallways. Some could be seen walking in circles on the square below, in the searing heat and humidity of May, while others waited outside the building for the postal service, eager to get the documents that would allow them to get as far away from Europe as possible.
At first glance, their expressions seemed identical despite the minor differences in origin and social class, and they continued coming day after day to wait, in the lobby, in the hallways, outside, under the arches, by the stairway to the water. And then, one day, suddenly, they would not be back, they would be gone forever and someone else would come to take their place, another face, another silhouette in the multitudes of that city which never changed, the city where he, now a senior officer, was just a young man then, at the beginning of his career, advancing on his own merits, his excellent handwriting, his impeccable typing; studying English at night while he listened to the BBC so he could practice his pronunciation; sticking to the same routine every day, industrious and sedentary, critical of everything in his path, ready to explain to whoever came for a visa that there were rules and processing times that had to be respected.
It brought him great pleasure to call his secretary and order him to help Mr. Sneyd fill out a visa application. He spoke slowly, not entirely sure the man could understand what he was saying in English, because he kept looking at the floor and nodding, but that could also be just one of his nervous tics. “When is that freighter leaving for Angola, is that what our visitor asked?” “In three days?” He raised three fingers to the man’s face and repeated “three.” He opened his hands in the air, feigning frustration at the slow pace of the colonial administration, the destination. No matter how hard he or his subordinates tried, the visa to Angola would take at least seven days. “Seven days,” he repeated. The man kept his head down, and then glanced at the sides as if trying to find an exit that was not the door.