Three Lives by João Tordo
translation by Stefan Tobler
A Beginning
Even today, whenever the world presents itself as a tiresome and wretched spectacle, I am unable to resist the temptation of remembering the time when, out of necessity, I was forced to learn the difficult art of tightrope-walking. Those years, which I consider to have been exceptional – and, occasionally, marked by dire events –, left me in a state of chronic melancholy into which, although I have attempted to escape it, I inevitably end up falling back. This melancholy, sometimes, slips into despair, but we need not revisit that; it is not the time to let myself be consumed by the past, contrasting my present life with what it was in other times. Suffice it to say that I do not remember a time when my life was particularly happy, but that I am incapable of forgetting each hour that I spent in the company of António Augusto Millhouse Pascal.
Two years ago a news item in the paper mentioned an auction which, among other objects, was to include the documents found in the house of the deceased gardener of this man, for whom I had worked over two decades ago. When I heard, I immediately became apprehensive, and, imagining the consequences, even furious – it is inevitable that the person who obtained the lot would, sooner or later, rummage through the archives that I compiled and maintained during that year in Time Manor and, if they are examined in some detail, the person will end up reaching conclusions which have nothing to do with what actually happened. Moreover, it surprises me that this has not occurred yet; that my former boss’ reputation has not been tarnished yet, his name used falsely, to the detriment of the truth.
There is a general ignorance regarding this man. It cannot be said that this state of affairs is surprising, given that, from a certain point onwards his only contact was with influential figures in private spheres. Those who knew him superficially and who recall his name will have a distorted image of him – by dint of having concealed the true nature of his work, he could one day become an object of scorn to those who prefer to damn, rather than display their own incomprehension. Millhouse Pascal, the son of an English mother and French father, was born in Portugal but spent much of his life on the move – he was in Spain during the Civil War, in England in Churchill’s time, lived in the United States after the fall of the Nazi regime. He seems to have been everywhere and nowhere, a shadowy figure on the edge of events, and yet, I can assure you, he played a determining role in them. If, in the coming years, fanciful accounts of his activities surface, this is because until now those activities have remained the secret of those who lived on intimate terms with him and who shared with him the dedication of ascetics. All others will call him a mystic, eccentric and perhaps even a charlatan.
I, too, knew nothing about him. My youth, however, allowed me to experience things that today I would refuse to believe, if I only heard tell of them. Admittedly, the price was the rest of my pathetic existence, but I had the opportunity to live in his house and with my own eyes to observe his methods and the extraordinary way in which he succeeded in transfiguring reality and influencing – I could almost say manipulating – those who during that time had recourse to his services.
A little after the auction, a journalist from the Daily News, researching a report on unsolved criminal investigations and interested in the secret story of this man, found me through sources that she did not wish to reveal, and approached me in that forward and flattering manner reporters have – a professional deformation that I cannot hold against her. Now that the man is dead, I told her, I see no reason not to tell you everything, and that is what I did. We talked for three hours, and I found myself unravelling the story of the last years of his life, which – I understood then – was indissolubly linked to my life, to his family’s, to Camila, to Gustavo, to Nina, to Artur, and to the trip that in 1982 confirmed what I had been suspecting for some time, namely our inaptitude to consider living an everyday life after certain things happened. I do not think that the journalist – who was a young woman, with an apprentice’s curiosity – believed most of the things that I told her. She kept asking me if I could furnish some evidence, but as you will discover, it was not possible to preserve any documents from those times – excepting those in unknown hands or places – and I told her that were the story to be published, she would have to take it in good faith. Two years passed, I bought the paper every day, and there was not a single line on the subject.
In the time that passed after the interview I came to realize that I needed to leave an account of my experiences. What was true and what has inevitably been fictionalized, due to the limits of memory, does not matter; in the final analysis, reality itself is an object of fiction. What is most important is to free myself from the ghosts, for as well as the spectres of so many other things, I carry around the spectre of not having had the courage to draw a line under it. Above all, this is reflected in my dreams: in contrast to common belief, it does not seem to me that dreams mirror our desires; for my part, I think that dreams mirror our terrors, our worst fears, the life that we could have had if, at some point or other, we had not been immeasurable cowards.
Artur and the Contract
Until then I had not lived, had known the life of the poor, marked by necessity. My father had a small construction company and, in Lisbon at the end of the seventies, things were not going his way. Yet even so, he was the only member of our family who worked. I was twenty when he died and, having finished school, was learning English and maths in my spare time and helping him whenever I could, but planning to study engineering. My sister, two years younger, divided her time between school and keeping our mother company. Our mother was a silent and apathetic soul, ground down by a life without any great significance. However, we lived in a large and spacious house and I cannot say that we lacked anything essential.
My father was suddenly taken ill in 1980. It all happened with great speed. On one day he rose, in a good mood, had his breakfast and left for work; on the following day an ambulance came to fetch his debilitated body, to take it to the hospital where he spent the last weeks of his life. At first the doctors thought it was appendicitis, but they soon discovered that the problem was more serious. First, as they explained to me, it was the liver that gave out. Then the illness spread to the other parts of his body, like a group of tiny workers ready to destroy everything in their way, the kidneys, the spleen, the pancreas, and in the end, in the last hours, I think it was my father who gave up. People die because they give up, I thought at the time, and this giving up needs an explanation, a clinical diagnosis that spares the poor souls, whom the others see leaving, from the martyrdom of ignorance, of not knowing why they were here or what fate awaits them.
We did not have much time to mourn his death. After arranging for his funeral and cremation, we quickly realized our situation: the money in the bank would last us six months at the most and, without other income, we were forced to look for another place to live. I was the only one of us in a position to find a job, and saw all the responsibilities fall on my shoulders. My sister offered to leave school and help the family, but I did not allow her to. People without an education are people without direction, and the memory of my father compelled me to keep our boat afloat.
So we moved to a small flat in Campolide, where we soon surrendered to an anonymous life. My mother lost the reference points she had had all her life and, at fifty, without the desire to form bonds of affection with her neighbours, with only my sister for company, became even glummer. While my father had been alive, there had always existed a mute hope, an invisible hand that carried us silently through the days. After he left us, I tried to fill his shoes and failed. In the spring of 1981 – after having tried without success to carry on my father’s company, having worked as a controller in a company that the tax authorities were auditing and that was closed down, and working as a tutor of English, earning only just enough to pay the rent and put food on the table – I found I had reached a dead end. At the end of the teaching year I let my students go, and the summer after this was baneful. In the violent heat of the sun I tramped through the city looking for odd jobs, without any success. My mother asked my uncle to loan us some money, he lived in Spain and sent us a cheque in pesetas, and I sat on our living room sofa until the beginning of October, suffering a fearful paralysis that hindered me from contemplating the future.
At the end of September, however, my sister showed me the classifieds of a paper. I later found out that for months she had been searching those pages for a solution to our problems. The ad was in the left-hand column in a minuscule font:
MP Agency. English absolutely essential. P.O. Box 808, Lisbon.
It was sufficiently intriguing to attract my attention. I did not have many options. At that time my mother spent her entire day in her room, sleeping or just lying on the bed, waiting for nothing, and when she did leave her room, then only to drink a cup of tea and exchange a few words with my sister on trivial matters. I felt I was trapped in a slow procession towards a premature Calvary and, although only to ease my boredom, I wrote a reply to the ad. Three days later I had an appointment for an interview.
I met a man called Artur in an office in the downtown Baixa district. It was the beginning of October and autumn had arrived early this year, an intermittent rain was falling on a grey city, passers-by were walking under their sheltering black umbrellas, their faces hidden or looking at the ground, the dirty rainwater was dripping slowly toward kerbs. I went up to the second floor of a silent building and entered a small room crammed full of files, one window looked out over an inner courtyard and on the desk there was a calculating machine and a pile of papers. A tall man had his back to me.
‘Sit down,’ he said, turning around.
Artur was of an indeterminate age. Very tall and slender, his hair was grey and his glassy eyes had a slant to them, he dressed like a businessman but talked as country folk do, with a strong drawl. I guessed he was about forty, maybe a little more. He looked at me for some time, seemingly busy with the papers he held in his hands.
‘Did you bring proof of your qualifications?’
I handed him two official documents: the school-leaving certificate and the one from the English course I had completed in 1979. He examined them and, still not sitting down, asked me various questions regarding my circumstances. I explained where I lived, told him about my mother and my sister, and lied a little about my recent jobs in an attempt to hide the fact that I found myself in a difficult financial situation.
‘There are many things I have to explain about this job, but that can wait for a convenient moment. I do, however, have to make sure that you understand the discreet nature of our activities. We are neither a public service nor available to all citizens; we offer services of a private and costly nature, and all our clients arrive from abroad. So it is of utmost importance that nothing we do be divulged, either to your family or friends.’
‘You need not worry,’ I said. Artur handed me a typewritten piece of paper. My salary and hours of work were stipulated on it.
‘Verbal guarantees are no use to us. In the past we worked with people who made the same promises and afterwards proved to be unsuited to the role. For this reason we have decided to instigate a residency regime in our agency,’ he emphasized that word, ‘in order to avoid disappointment. You will be able to visit the city, but only occasionally, and after having agreed the visit with me. In addition, you will be given a room, food, and full civil liberties. You will live in a pleasant location two hours from the city, a peaceful and isolated place. Your duties will not exceed those of any secretary. You will deal with the correspondence, organize our files and draw up weekly timetables. English is essential for contact with our clients. You will have access to office supplies and to an extensive library.’
‘My family lives here in Lisbon and depends on me,’ I declared, suddenly aware of what this job implied. ‘I don’t know if it would be wise to be away for long periods.’
‘We have people in Lisbon who can deal with pressing issues for you. If there were any emergency, of course you could come to the city,’ Artur hurried to add.
The man wanted an immediate decision. I looked at the paper held between my fingers. It was higher than I could have imagined – 150,000 escudos per month. I thought for a few seconds, feeling Artur’s gaze rest on me. I could not say whether he was scrutinizing me or just looking at me out of curiosity, perhaps because he had nothing else to look at.
I made my mind up in a brief moment. We close our eyes and there it is: we deliver ourselves into the hands of others. I was twenty-one when I signed the contract with that man, who – I later discovered – was the gardener of António Augusto Millhouse Pascal.