The Man from Lisbon, page 28
“Professor Salazar,” Antonia de Fonseca replied, her memory unimpaired by present difficulties.
“Damned nobody!” Rodrigues cried, handing her his coat. “I am beset by enemies, absolutely beset! Now see to this coat at once!”
Closing the door behind her, she returned to her desk with its single flower in a bud vase, its typewriter, its engagement book, its stack of newly delivered mail. The flower had been given her by her young and too virile lover while they were on their way to work that very morning, before she had kept her secret doctor’s appointment. Now, the sight of it brought tears to her eyes once again. She dropped the director’s coat on her desk, sat down and withdrew her lace handkerchief from the sleeve of her severe black dress. Face down on the desk top was a sheet of bank notepaper on which she had begun a letter to her lover explaining the morning’s unhappy turn of events. Her fountain pen lay across the paper, the ink bottle, uncapped, sat nearby. What to do first? Dabbing at her eyes, she picked up the stack of letters, began flipping through them. It was the customary day’s worth, with two interesting exceptions she would deliver unopened to the director: one from Professor Salazar and one from Waterlow in London, a firm with which she knew the bank had conducted some small business through its Lisbon agent. Both letters were marked Personal, and she set them aside near her own.
Sighing disconsolately, she swept up the director’s coat, and in so doing she knocked over the uncapped bottle of black ink. Frozen in horror, she watched the black stain spread like an explosion across her desk top, flooding her own letter, Professor Salazar’s letter and the Waterlow letter. … It happened too quickly. Then there was nothing to be done. The letters were ruined. Ink dripped from the edge of her desk. She sank into her chair, still holding the director’s coat.
The door to his office exploded open, like a gunshot, and like a wild animal his squat figure stormed through the anteroom and out into the hallway. The close escape brought Antonia de Fonseca to action. She dropped the blackened, wet items into her wastebasket, covered them with several crumpled sheets of scratch paper and summoned the janitor by telephone. He could clean up the mess. … Anyone could have an accident. Somehow things would all work out. The director’s stained coat over her arm, Antonia de Fonseca went in search of a cleaning establishment.
Alves was in the bath when the telephone rang. Leaving wet tracks across the Claridge’s fine carpet, he reached the telephone on the fifth ring, stood shivering and naked in the cold.
“Alves,” she said.
“Greta, my love,” he whispered, his relief obvious. “Where have you been? I was about to leave for Lisbon—”
“Please forgive me, Alves,” she said with audible feeling. “I thought you were returning straight to Lisbon. … And I have been in the country, what a shame! When can I see you, my sweet?”
“At once,” Alves said. “Sooner!”
“Tonight, then. I’ll be busy all day—rehearsing. The play, do you recall? We open at the Comédie Française in three more days.”
“Have you been rehearsing in the country?” Suspicion gnawed at his relief, happiness.
“Precisely. The director, Jean-Claude de Valoix, took us to his country home, a lovely chateau on the Loire, to work while the set was made ready. … Oh, we’ve had such trouble with the set! It requires a sphinx for one thing, and as of today we are on our third sphinx! And do you realize what this means, my little thunderbolt? You must stay for our opening night! It will be excessively grand, and my performance is really remarkably bad. I believe I told you that I am too old, too tall and a complete bust at looking like an Egyptian—but you must stay, you will enjoy it, the parties, excitement—and we will make such love. I cannot describe to you how much I have dreamt of closing myself around you again, feeling you within me!” Her voice dropped to a whisper, festooned with implications he was already envisioning.
“Come to me at eight. There will be a small supper. Does that suit you?”
The evening was all he had hoped. Greta met him in a robe, accepted the Vuitton bag with quiet pleasure, told him that she needed him immediately. Emerging from the bedroom two hours later, they shared the supper of bread and sausage and wine, with cheese and fruit from a cutting board, with coffee and Napoleon brandy. Shortly before midnight she took him outside for a walk, along the Boulevard St. Germain. They sat on a bench outside St. Germain des Pres: she told him it was the oldest church in Paris. “Can you imagine this. … It was built in 542 by King Childebert, the son of Clovis, and he is buried here, beside us, Alves!” There was wonder in her voice, a sense of the drama that had been almost fifteen centuries before, with the mists of darkness and destruction rising from the plains where now great cities stood. “He brought back a piece of the True Cross and some of St. Vincent’s tunic. … He’d come from Spain, and he built this church to house the relics. …”
“Some day I will take you to the Castle of San Jorge. You will like that, too, my love. It is very different from this. Older, even.”
Still later he stood in the beaded doorway of her bedroom. She lay naked on her belly, asleep, the sheet halfway up her thighs, her blond hair plastered wetly to the nape of her neck. He pulled the sheet and comforter up over her broad shoulders, went downstairs, past the dozing concierge. Outside his taxi waited.
The days between her return and the opening of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra at the Comédie Française left him more time to poke about the city, thinking of her in ornate fantasies while she went through final rehearsals. It had all come right again: walking in the Luxembourg Gardens, watching the old men playing at bowls, he found himself skipping on the path, like the child in Lisbon that Easter Sunday so long ago. He couldn’t stop smiling, even when people noticed and hurried past or stopped to return his smile. … He felt younger and altogether happier than he had in years. … The days were spent in wide-eyed enjoyment of the city, eagerness to spend the evening with her. And the evenings, though they began very late following dress rehearsals, were lush with her finely honed sense of the erotic, the flair for abandon and the slight intimation of violence she brought to her lovemaking. Her energy drove him to excesses he’d not have believed possible had he heard them as part of a braggart’s line. She never seemed to tire, though he would collapse, aching, half asleep in the taxi on the way back.
Opening night was enormously festive. He wore a hired suit of formal wear, white tie, top hat, a cape and arrived shortly before curtain time. He had dined alone at Fouquet’s across from Claridge’s: Beluga caviar and Mumm’s champagne, sweet tender veal and peas, a crème brûlée. He enjoyed the lonely dinner, the waiter hovering, pouring champagne, lighting his cigarettes. A man of mystery, he thought, a man of means and style. He made a mental note to order his own formal wear, to get the name of the best tailor in Paris and have his entire wardrobe made to measure. Such a difference, he reflected, how unlike the mere boy who had set out for Luanda, or the nerve-wracked entrepreneur who made use of the slow boats to the New York bank.
The foyer of the Comédie Française was shoulder to shoulder with the first-nighters, the men in black and white like dominoes, the women with bare shoulders, diamonds and gold and shingled hair and opera glasses. Houdon’s bust of Voltaire: Greta had told him to pay it his respects, as well as the very chair Moliére had been seated in when mortally stricken while performing in Le Malade Imaginaire in 1673. His head was swirling by the time he took his own seat, sixth row center.
His French was rudimentary at best, but the words being recited on stage were irrelevant: he barely heard them. His attention was fixed on Greta as Cleopatra, somehow seeming smaller, a worldly child full of her own immense power, made up to an appropriately Egyptian duskiness with the black ropes of hair seeming not in the least ridiculous. Poor Caesar, how could he resist this delicious creature? The audience, the play, the applause and laughter faded as he lost himself in thoughts of her, the passion and lust, but even more the love, the glow of her attention and the comfort of her touch. … He closed his eyes, saw her naked and vulnerable, heard the sound of her crying out as he filled her, tasted her tears as he overflowed within her and left her clinging, weeping—only he had known her this way, as only she had seen the man he became in her presence. It was the truth of what existed between them. It gave them life, transformed them.
He waited for the crush of well-wishers to subside, stood waiting at the end of the corridor. The flowers he had sent were in a vase on her dressing table, reflected in the mirror. The other countless vases were together on a table against the wall behind her. She sat with a wrap around her shoulders, applying cream to her face. She saw him in the mirror, turned smiling, reaching for his hand.
“I was horrid,” she said, mocking herself. “You needn’t tell me I was wonderful. …” She squeezed his hand, then wiped it off with a towel. “Was I all right? Really?”
“You were superb … such a transformation. I hardly recognized you, then I heard your voice. …” He made a gesture of futility, words proving inadequate.
“My critic!” she cried, laughing, turning back to her table, catching his eye in the mirror. He kissed her hair.
The next few hours were passed at a party, given by someone in a tuxedo whose name he missed. He met the gentleman who portrayed Caesar, a rather scholarly type, civil but remote; he met the director, several of the actors, patrons of the arts who came and went with metronome regularity, embracing Greta, kissing her cheek, paying court to the star. There were several Scandinavian dignitaries who wore medals and proclaimed her a national treasure.
He was watching the process, smoking, leaning against a doorway, when she came to him, held onto his arm.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I’ve been toasted and fondled and gushed over until I feel quite faint. … Come quickly before they catch us!”
He drove the Bentley through the deserted streets. She curled up beneath the mink coat, eyes closed. He knew the route.
“Stay the night, please. Please, I want you with me when I fall asleep and I want you beside me when I wake.”
In bed she kissed him briefly.
“Hold me while I go to sleep,” she whispered.
“Of course.” He brushed his lips against her hair. “You were wonderful.”
“I know,” she said. “I know that.” She was almost asleep. “I am always quite wonderful.”
The next day he told her he must return to Lisbon on the evening train. She nodded. They breakfasted quietly with a fire roaring. He hated the thought of leaving her.
In the afternoon they went for a walk that curled around St. Germain des Pres, up the Rue de Rennes, back along the Rue de Vaugirard to the Place de l’Odéon, where she impulsively held his face in her hands and kissed him. They were standing beneath the columned porch of the theater, across the Rue de Médicis from the Luxembourg Palace, in whose grounds he had had it out with José.
She took his hand and led him into the garden. By the side of a long flat pool she sat down and made room for him. The pool was littered with dead leaves like fairies’ rafts and reflected the plane trees all around; a huge cyclops glowered threateningly over an unhappy pair of lovers. She saw him looking at the fountain statuary.
“This is the Médici Fountain,” she said, her voice a monotone as if she were a tour guide whose mind was somewhere else. “The scary fellow about to leap on Acis and Galatea is Polyphemus … I think it is the most beautiful fountain in Paris.” She turned back to watch the people walking intently on the path. “You must go tonight, then?”
“Yes, I am afraid that I must. It is not that I want to. …”
“I know, I understand. … I shall miss you, you know that.”
“I must see Maria. …”
“Will she know about us? Will you tell her?” The broad brim of her slouch hat hid her eyes.
“No. She trusts me implicitly, of course. … And why would I want her to know? What would be served? Besides, she thinks you are the most wonderful creature she has ever met. … She thinks I’m much too hard on you, not sympathetic. She thinks you are beautiful, brave, a little sad. No. I won’t tell her. I wouldn’t know how to explain it, all that’s happened. …”
“I’m sure you’re right.” She paused, then rushed on: “I couldn’t explain what’s happened either. I don’t know what has happened between us.”
He put his arm around her, hugged her to him.
“And when will I see you again?” She wiped her eyes with a gloved hand.
“I’ll be back in Paris in February, just a few weeks.”
“Alone?”
“I hope so.”
“I will long for you, Alves,” she said, reaching toward him, brushing his cheek with the tips of her fingers.
“I love you,” he said, his voice small, shadowed by the scale of what he felt under the softness of her touch.
Finally they rose and went back to Rue Vaugirard, where he found a taxi, kissed her goodbye and left her standing on the curb. She was waving to him when he looked back a block away. He turned around and settled back, tired, missing her already. What was he going to do? What?
By the morning of a gray and blustery tenth of February, Sir William Waterlow had almost forgotten the fact that Camacho Rodrigues had never responded to his personal note of a month before. For that matter, it had not required a reply and he had not really expected one, though an increasingly personal relationship with the director could not but be helpful in the line of business. He was, however, somewhat disconcerted by a mix-up at the Scrutton Street plant, where the Portuguese banknotes were being printed. They had fallen behind schedule and had informed him of it only a few days before. And now here they were, all five of them snorting and pawing the turf and ready to collect their money. … There was, he observed with considerable wonderment, a most remarkable matched set of Vuitton cases that threatened to stretch, a river of brown, from Great Winchester Street to the outer reaches of Golders Green. They must have cost, he reflected, a treble fortune … and Smythe-Hancock had thought there was something not quite right about the deal! Fool!
“Gentlemen,” he said heartily, tearing his eyes away from the brass-fitted cases, “how excellent to see you on this momentous day! The fruition of the first in what we hope will be many such associations, what?”
“Undoubtedly, Sir William,” Marang said. “As you can see, our cases bear the orange diplomatic seals. We are ready to move. … And I have a check made out to Waterlow for payment in full.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Sir William said, circling behind his chair, turning to use it as a lectern or a first line of defense, depending. “But I must beg your forbearance in one matter. … Due to absolutely unavoidable mechanical delays with our presses in Scrutton Street, we are slightly behind the agreed upon schedule. …” For some reason Sir William was not quite able to grasp, Senhor Reis, who had previously orchestrated these meetings, was waiting leisurely in the background, leaning on the credenza, watching the traffic in the street.
“Not at all far, certainly nothing to worry about. …”
“How far, precisely?” Herr Hennies was not smiling.
“Today I am delivering fifty thousand notes—”
“One hundred and fifty thousand notes short,” Hennies said grimly. “What kind of business procedure is this, may I ask?”
“Unavoidable, I can only repeat it.” Sir William shook his great red face mournfully. Leave it to the bloody Hun to get prickly. “Believe me, this is not customary Waterlow procedure. … Any of our clients will be more than happy to vouch for our customary promptness. In any case, we can deliver the remainder of your order by the first of March. …” He spoke with a dying fall. Somewhere within the firm, namely at Scrutton Street, heads would roll.
“A month’s delay,” Marang mused. “And how are we to be recompensed for this inconvenience?”
“I propose you accept these notes now but withhold all payment until the remainder are delivered. You may continue to draw interest on your own money, you see. What could be fairer?”
“A reduction of, say, three percent could be fairer,” Hennies barked.
“You have me at a great disadvantage, I admit. But still …” Sir William had begun to perspire under this frontal barrage. He was playing for time when Reis stepped forward, smiling, gesturing for calm.
“Sir William,” he said, “we are all men of affairs, are we not? We have all faced situations where problems not of our own causing have been inevitable. …” He surveyed his colleagues. “I have stories from my days in Africa that would—well, that is neither here nor there. Naturally we are disappointed—it would be less than honest to deny that—but we are also men of principle and good will. In that spirit, there will be no delay in paying for the job. Marang, give him the check.”
“I say, Reis,” Sir William sputtered, “dashed decent of you!”
“Personal honesty and trust, the foundation of every successful business arrangement … my watchwords, Sir William.”
“Well, I like it, I like your style!”
“Now,” Reis said with an ease and command Sir William had to admire, “shall we fill these handsome cases?”
