Like a Fading Shadow Read online

  In the Ministry of the Overseas, the functionary was looking at his passport, not noticing that the cigarette he had put down was beginning to burn the edge of the table. Nothing puts them in a hurry. He remained standing behind the counter, getting more nervous, worried by how long the functionary was looking through his passport, a small pencil behind his ear, saying things in that indecipherable language, then in his strange English. Return tomorrow, he finally heard him say, pointing at the clock with his nicotine-stained finger. He turned around, already in a panic, as was often the case when he felt people were holding him up on purpose. But he had his escape route. He never went inside a building without observing all the possible exits. He left, cursing at the man in English. He was walking down a hallway lined with metal cabinets, when he heard someone calling him from behind. He stopped. The functionary wanted to give him something. It took him a while to realize what it was: Senhor, or seu passaporte.

  * * *

  The ship cruised slowly from right to left, from one corner of the square to the other. The vast square extended all the way to the water, where the bronze king was looking. He could see a few sailors on the deck. One of them was leaning on the railing, looking at the city he was leaving behind. The sailor held something in his hands: binoculars. He had left his pair inside the bundle of old clothes he used to wrap the rifle after the shot. And later he had dropped the bag with the clothes without thinking, feeling his hand unclench the handle, realizing his mistake as it was happening, but already too late to take it back.

  With some effort, he discerned that the man on the deck was actually an officer. He had a flat black cap with golden embroidery, and was wearing a white shirt. Perhaps the look on his face was one of arrogance, pitying those who stayed in that dull, ruinous city. Perhaps he could see, through his binoculars, the pale man in the black suit, tie, and sunglasses, standing very close to the water, on the first step of the marble staircase where waves were splashing.

  In the rush to escape, he had dropped the bag with the rifle and the clothes, after firing the one shot, after running down the hallway that smelled of urine and bleach, down the stairs, and out the door to the street where dusk was already setting. He remembered his right shoulder recoiling but he could not remember the sound of the explosion. It was as if it all had happened in silence, devoid of reality, that’s how he remembered it.

  He did not remember much else about that moment, except that it was like looking at it from outside. From outside and far away, from the safe distance that the binoculars transformed into a secret proximity. The salesman had assured him that the rifle could bring down a deer from a distance of three hundred meters. A deer or even a charging rhinoceros.

  Like watching a movie or squinting to look into one of those machines at the fair: he saw the man step out of his room onto the balcony, stroking his face as if he had just shaved, the same black face from the photographs and TV programs, the wide cheekbones and slanted eyes, the skin shining with sweat.

  It was strange to see him in person for the first time, to study his every feature. A breeze blew the curtain behind him like the sail of a boat. The contrast with the white flapping curtain defined the figure of the man even better. He ran his hand over his face and leaned on the rail. He was saying something, smiling. His lips moved silently. He had an unlit cigarette. The white cuffs and the gold ring and watch were bright against the black skin.

  Across the street and the parking lot, in that disgusting boardinghouse, in that bathroom covered in shit—him, balancing in the tub, trying to get steady. The footprints would get on the grimy surface. Grease, metal, the smell of the rifle pressed against his face, combined with the stench of the place, urine and vomit fermenting in the heat.

  Someone was knocking on the door and shaking the handle. Probably one of the halfwits or alcoholics who resided in that place. In a nearby room, the sound of a television combined with the noise of a couple yelling, two drunks arguing about something. After her fourth or fifth kid was born, his mother began drinking so much she would often pass out on the floor after falling from her rocking chair. She breathed heavily against the dirt floor; the floorboards were long gone, burned in the woodstove. She had four more kids after that. Had she lived to see him now, she would not recognize him. Dark suit and tie, sunglasses, alligator shoes, good manners. This was the new him. She died of cirrhosis at the age of fifty-one. Being in prison was the perfect excuse to miss the funeral.

  * * *

  No one could possibly know where he is right now. They assure the public that they are on his tracks, that there is no way he could have left the country. They lie. Thousands of federal agents analyzing every clue, fingerprint, hair caught in a comb, a signed receipt for the hunting rifle, the binoculars, several boxes with bullets, even empty beer cans and tags from the dry cleaner. The bullets were not sharp enough to pierce through the tissue and bone and leave a clean wound. Whatever they say, any clue they have is no more useful than the old skin of a snake long gone into a muddy riverbank. The rifle, the bullets, the car, the transistor radio, the suit he left at the Laundromat under his old name. The transistor is the only thing he actually misses. He had kept it tight between his legs as he hugged his knees inside the bread cart. The smell of the fresh rolls reminded him that it would be long before he ate again.

  If only he had the radio now, perhaps he could listen to a program in English. If they gave him the visa to Angola, he would leave in the boat that looked like the Jakarta and was still moored in the harbor.

  Angola, what an exciting word, like Rhodesia or Mozambique. On the covers of Man’s Life magazine, men with tanned, athletic bodies saved beautiful women from danger: natives wearing feathers, leopards with huge fangs, snakes coiling around their thighs. In the dark backstreets by the harbor, the bars where you could find prostitutes and sailors were named after distant countries or states in America. There were daily lists with the names of all the arriving and departing ships, other ports and destinations, names that unleashed his imagination like the old maps in the schoolhouse, exotic names like Mozambique, India, Beira, Sofala, Angola, Luanda, Patria, Veracruz.

  Some of the alleys never saw the light of day and their neon signs blinked at all times. The sign for the Texas Bar featured a cactus and a cowboy hat. There was also a bar called Alabama. How strange to find that name here. As soon as he was back in the hotel, he would look for the two Portuguese colonies in Africa. He kept buying maps and newspapers, even though he was running out of money. He had taken the steps down to the water, lost in a vision of the passing ship and the silhouette of the officer on the foredeck holding a pair of binoculars. Beyond the marble steps, there was a stone ramp covered in slippery algae. The tide had risen and the water now washed over his shoes. Two columns flanked the stairway. A seagull was perched on each one.

  * * *

  The receptionist at the Hotel Portugal tried to look him in the eyes as he gave him the room keys, but he looked away, mumbling what could have been a greeting. The eyes convey the unique identity of a face. The photo on the passport showed the Canadian traveler wearing glasses like those of a professor or a lawyer, the same glasses he wore the night he checked in at the hotel. Sometimes he wore the other pair, his sunglasses. When he returned and took them off, after many hours under the sun, his eyes were bloodshot.

  There was something asymmetrical about his eyes, similar to the ears. One ear was larger and hung lower than the other. The receptionist tried to practice his English but the new guest could not understand or maybe he could not hear well. He nodded or shook his head, always looking down or to the side, biting the corners of his mouth as if he were in pain. What little he said was incomprehensible, except when he needed to know something, like how to get to the South African embassy and also the Canadian one and the port and where to buy newspapers in English.

  The newspapers under the arm added to his dubious professorial look, especially the night he checked in, the one so evident in his p
assport photo but less so in person as the days went by. An impostor who falsified his diploma or was caught having an affair with a student. A funeral director whose breath reeked of alcohol. Those who saw him in Atlanta on April 5, early that morning, more than twelve hours after the shooting, said he looked like an insurance agent or a preacher.

  He locked himself in the hotel room and read all the newspapers in bed. On the bedside table: a hypnosis manual, the spy novel Tangier Assignment; a study guide for the correspondence course on locksmithing; a book with a large title across the cover, Psycho-Cybernetics. On the floor: scattered British and American newspapers and a page from a Portuguese paper with the list of all the ships coming into and out of the port. In a drawer of the little table by the window: travel brochures for South Africa with the names of cities underlined and the margins filled with calculations for expenses, always small amounts, and currency conversions from dollars to escudos. On a sheet of hotel stationery, he had practiced several signatures: Ramon Sneyd, Ramon George Sneyd, R. Sneyd, R. G. Sneyd, Ramon G. Sneyd. Not a single call or visit in ten days, not one letter or postcard sent. He received a letter from the Rhodesian mission in Lisbon, his name and the hotel address neatly typed on the envelope. The next morning, the envelope and the letter, a brief, official notice, were in the trash can.

  * * *

  One night, one of the first, the receptionist was dozing off when a loud laugh came through the revolving door. A young woman walked in, wearing heavy makeup, a tight, low-cut dress, and high heels. She staggered, walking on the old carpet. The pale-faced guest followed her, with a serious expression, wearing professorial glasses, a dark suit, cigarette in hand. The woman, somewhat taller than him, took his arm and whispered something in his ear. He nodded. She took the cigarette from his hand. He had been holding it while she retouched her lipstick. He broke away from her and straightened his posture before approaching the reception desk to ask for his key. He briefly looked the receptionist in the eyes before looking down, as usual. His eyes seemed smaller, very blue, almost colorless, clouded with alcohol. He displayed the oscillating confidence of a drunk who is about to fall. A very pale drunk, one ear bigger than the other, a pointy nose with a reddened tip, the tie crooked but very tight, a prominent cleft chin. A professor who was caught coming out of a peep show or a sex shop, a perverted mortician.

  The receptionist gulped and said in English that guests were not allowed to bring women to their rooms. For a moment the guest looked him straight in the eyes, with a gesture of surprise or maybe a slight smile, like someone who is not fully in control of his facial muscles. There he stood, baffled, as the woman cursed at the receptionist in Portuguese. She pulled him by the arm, telling him in English that she knew a much better place. Out they went, the guest glancing at the receptionist through the glass door, his face livid, his small eyes lacking any expression.

  3

  The first time I went to Lisbon was 1987. It was early in January. I was writing a novel and part of it took place there. I did not realize just how young I was. I thought youth was behind me, my life more or less set on a path, my fate already decided: thirty years old, almost thirty-one, married, a father of two, a government job, a deed in my name and a mortgage that extended into the next century. Beneath the calm surface of my daily routine was a juxtaposition of fragmented lives without rhyme or reason, unfulfilled desires, scattered pieces that did not fit together. Much of what I did felt alien to me. Who I really was and what I really cared about remained hidden from most of those around me. Laziness and the sheer inertia of all my obligations had kept me living for years in conformity and frustration, inhabiting transient worlds that had little to do with each other, none truly my own. I was a government employee because I had found no other way to make a living, and I was also a writer, although I would have never used that word spontaneously when introducing myself, the way I had heard others do in Granada and Madrid. Writer was too serious of a word, too solemn, too definitive. To hear someone call him- or herself a writer seemed embarrassing, like hearing someone claim the title of poet. How could anyone claim that with certainty? I was a government employee but had no sense of belonging in the world of my colleagues. I was one of them only because most of my daily life took place in that office. They were affectionate toward me, but also saw me as the odd one out. I had written articles for newspapers, published a novel, and my job involved dealing with foreigners for the most part, the eccentric lot—artists, musicians, actors—intruders in the municipal offices where I received them. It was also clear that to those artists, who rarely knew about my dedication to literature, I was odd as well, a government employee sitting behind a metallic desk, a bureaucrat.

  * * *

  My life outside the office was just as fragmented. I was married but my wife worked in a different city. We only saw each other on weekends. A husband and a parent from Friday afternoon to Sunday night; the rest of the week, I was alone. On Fridays, I would take the bus to my other life. It took just over an hour. If, for a change, my wife drove to Granada with the boy, my two lives would overlap on Monday morning. My apartment was that of a solitary man. On Fridays, if it was her turn to come, I would spend one or two hours cleaning up the mess of the previous five days. Like a whirlwind from one world to the other, from solitude to company, from ghosts to real people. The same house became another. The boy in my arms, holding on to me like a tree trunk, his round face pressed against mine, his legs trapping me.

  * * *

  The city would also change during those two or three days: it became bright and serene, and night fell earlier; its topography no longer one of bars but of playgrounds, supermarkets, and bakeries. Mornings smelled like baby powder, sweat, and perfume, instead of alcohol and tobacco; kids’ cartoons replaced Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, and Tete Montoliu. During those weekends, literature was almost nonexistent.

  * * *

  These two worlds remained segregated. Their respective inhabitants would hardly meet and in many cases were ignorant of each other’s existence. I was able to immerse myself into any of those lives with ease, and the others would just disappear in the background, or pause, it seemed to me, waiting for my return, like a house that remains undisturbed in its owner’s absence. I rarely felt the internal tension of an impostor, but I also never felt like I belonged. The title of a novel by Patricia Highsmith summed up my life: Tremors of Falsification. Sometimes while walking on the street with my wife and son, I would spot an inhabitant from my Monday-to-Friday world or my nightlife, and switch to the opposite sidewalk to avoid the encounter. I would often stay out until three or four in the morning, drinking and smoking with writers or musicians, then be punching my time card at five past eight, pretending to pay attention to my colleagues’ chitchat before the office opened to the public. I was bored by the predictability of life in Granada, but whenever I was in Madrid, I felt fear, vertigo, and then unspeakable relief when I took the return train. When I was alone, I would go to bars almost every night. It was the eighties and it felt like something amazing and definitive could happen any night, an encounter, a revelation, an adventure that could change your life forever. But you had to hang in there and drink, take hashish, snort cocaine, smoke cigarettes until your lungs hurt. Even then, there was a part of me that stayed alert, distant, inhibiting me from fully abandoning myself to those moments, to the stupefying bliss of cannabis and alcohol; like an edge of skepticism to everything I experienced, as if I was seeing myself from outside. Glancing at the clock, calculating the number of hours before the morning alarm went off at seven; feeling the pounding in my head, the nausea, the taste of alcohol that will still be there hours later when you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror. I liked the dark glow of those flamenco nights when one doesn’t know the time and everything seems reflected or submerged in a murky glass or the turbulent clarity of oil, when the stomping and clapping echoes in your temples and the voices of the singers seem to be on the verge of breaking; a claustrophobi
a of bars, brandy, and cognac.

  But at a certain point I just wanted to go home, step out onto the dark street and breathe the air, fresh and cold, feel the silence. I remember a night, one late September, still warm from summer, after a flamenco recital in Bibrrambla Square. I had started my weekly routine, once again living alone after a long vacation with my family. The singer had a serious face, aquiline, a mix of Roma and Sioux. We were friends. I had helped organize the concert and had brought him an envelope with his payment in cash, which he accepted without counting. Twenty-five thousand pesetas. He spent it all that night, inviting a band of friends, relatives, fellow musicians, acquaintances, and parasites, myself included, to bar after bar along the alleys and squares of Realejo and then Albaicín, secret dark taverns that required passwords to get in. An inexhaustible supply of hashish flowed from the expert hands of the flamenco musicians and their friends, who swiftly rolled the fragrant leaves with blond tobacco into cigarettes.

  As I followed them into Albaicín, stumbling over the cobblestone, the thought that I might lose them and never find a way out of that labyrinth made me anxious. I was very attracted to one or two of the women in the group, but in the fog of intoxication, the blurry thought that there was something insufficient or shameful about me forbade me from acting on my desires. I let myself get carried away by the laughter and the music, but there was a part of me that remained removed from the scene, distant, disloyal. There was an art or antiques dealer in the group that night, who had one of those booming voices darkened by tobacco. The man ordered everyone around, calling new rounds of drinks and deciding what the next bar would be. He had the weathered skin of a sailor, blue eyes, and a mane of graying blond curls like an Irishman. He supported himself on a pair of crutches. Inside the bars, he placed the stiff leg on a stool and used his crutches to threaten anyone who contradicted him. The drunker he got, the more he stumbled down the alleyways, always on the verge of falling. In the thick of the revelry, his little blue eyes would fix on me with suspicion. In one of the last stops, he put his big hand on my shoulder as he was getting up. With his chin against his chest, he looked me in the eye and drawled: