A King up Hitler’S Sleeve

By José Goulão

A fiction novel based in real facts in the years 193740 when Adolph Hitler tried to obtain the cooperation of the ex-British king Edward VIII, then Duke of Windsor, to return back to the British throne after the Nazi occupation. Action following the movements of the Duke and Mrs. Wallis Simpson through German, France, Spain, and Portugal, during the Nazi regime, occupied France, and the Salazar and Franco fascist regimes. Details about the period when the Duke was hosted in Cascais, near Lisbon, in a villa of a Portuguese banker with deep relationships with Hitler regime; the role of Winston Churchill in the resistance to the German ambitions and the behavior of the Duke; the collaboration between the diplomatic and uncovered British resistance in Portugal, and the uncovered Portuguese resistanceeverything under an environment of espionage and conspiracy, and of love, in war times.



A journalist and writer, sixty-three years old, and a professional career for over forty years. A journalist of investigation and an expert on international and diplomatic affairs. He covered a lot of the main world facts in the last quarter of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first century: wars and peace processes in Middle East, North and South of Africa, Balkans, and Eastern Europe. A director of Portuguese newspapers and magazines, an invited analyst on international and diplomatic affairs in Portuguese TV and radio networksRadio France International and BBC World (Portuguese Section). An author of a few books about the War on Lebanon (1982), investigation about Mafia, and the fall of Ambrosian Bank in connection with Vatican Bank (1986), and the crises of 2011. This is his first novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496988522

José Goulão

Journalist and writer, 63 years old, a professional career over 40 years. Journalist of investigation and expert on international and diplomatic affairs. He covered a lot of the main world facts in the last quarter of the XX century and first decade of the XXI century: wars and peace processes in Middle East, North and South of Africa, Balkans and Eastern Europe. Director of Portuguese newspapers and magazines; invited analyst on international and diplomatic affairs in Portuguese TV and radio networks, Radio France International and BBC World (Portuguese Section). Author of a few books about the War non Lebanon (1982), investigation about Mafia and the fall of Ambrosian Bank in connection with Vatican Bank (1986), the crises of 2011. This is his first novel.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

SUMMER OF 1940. ENGLAND was resisting the Nazi aviation barrage fire. Portugal was living the so-called neutrality of Salazar, in which the dictatorship’s elite was seeking to profit from the misfortune of others.

In a Portuguese banker’s villa, in Boca do Inferno (Hell’s Mouth), in Cascais, Hilter was keeping an eye on his English Pétain, the ex-king Edward VIII of England, then Duke of Windsor, who was conflicted between pressures and hesitations: follow the path of treason, of his personal and political sympathies, capable of leading towards a return to the throne under orders from the Reich; or take the ocean liner to the Bahamas and assume the role of governor bestowed by his brother and successor, king George VI.

On the one hand, Hitler, Ribbentrop and Franco, who at the time was outlining his plan to invade Portugal, while Salazar awarded him the highest Portuguese decoration. Marshal Pétain had just risen to the throne in France, under German orders, and Berlin sought to duplicate the solution in England, with the former king. Afterwards he could turn, much sooner, to attack the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, Churchill and the Allies fighting the hitlerian temptation of the Duke of Windsor and his wife, the American citizen Wallis Simpson, for whom he had abdicated the throne two years earlier. The final argument of the English prime-minister against the dissident ex-monarch was the threat of trial for high treason.

Also on the Allied side of the barricade, a group of Portuguese, English, Spanish and a German, of diverse ideologies but united by the same political selfless aim, was moving in the shadows, under the threat of a constellation of several political police, including the Portuguese PVDE, to abort the conspiracy. Their efforts were victorious on August 1st 1940.

In a mansion on Avenida Elias Garcia, in Lisbon, a manuscript emerged from a drawer, where it lay buried for half a century, and reveals, several decades after the global conflict, the secrets and intrigue of this secret battle, fought between Lisbon, Peniche and the neighbouring Tejo, with its epicentre in Boca do Inferno, in Cascais.

It was Hitler’s first defeat.

Without it, the course of the global conflict would have been another, quite different, eventually even more tragic.

Without it, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco would continue to have the conditions to implement his project of attacking Portugal…

I

KURT SURRENDERED EARLIER THAN usual. He was only on his eighth glass of French cognac when his head collapsed heavily on the table top of glazed red and white squares. He threw aside cups, glasses and chalices, toppled the already empty whisky bottle and fell numb on his right cheek, which dove into a mishmash of coffee, lemon tea, cigarette butts, capilé¹, beer, absinthe and other alcoholic variants, all congealing into a paste of molasses around an overturned sugar bowl. The cavernous sound and, mainly, the disquieting agitated noise of plates and silverware awoke Mr. Serafim from his daily slumber when doing his accounts, just at that moment when he was snoozing, his head laying on his wrists, sustained by his elbows grounded on the stone counter, a recent improvement he was so proud of.

– Today he drank less than two hundred escudos, he couldn’t take as much. He also hardly ate, he came in with a funereal frown and right away started throwing back shot after shot, finished the rest of yesterday’s whisky and then grabbed the cognac – Mr. Serafim explained slowly, while laying an expert eye to evaluate any damage and burying his pencil behind his ear, a sign that there was no harmful occurrence to register.

As was normal at supper time, it was shortly after eleven, our table was the only one occupied in the Império das Limonadas, Lemonade Empire, also probably the only lighted establishment in the Rua do Crucifixo (Crucifix Street). If it were up to him, Mr. Serafim would have closed the door. However, in these hard times, he wouldn’t do anything to startle that extravagant German, who had chosen his humble yet dignified and honest establishment because one of those days God has his eye on you he had served him genuine French cognac. Since that happy hour, last December, when the heavens poured weeks on end, Mr. Serafim never stopped going to every corner of Lisbon, where the magic of the black market was practiced, to guarantee reserves of the sacred drink. Some fellow townsfolk from Figueiró dos Vinhos had always paid off and never let him down, and he is not a man to forget those who help him. They knew the port of Lisbon like the back of their hand and knew very well how to answer their needs and those of others, if the payoff justified it, as is natural in this world where everything has a price.

Mr. Serafim hadn’t even noticed that bottle, hastily stowed in the highest shelf, property of the old owner, who had sold him the place precisely four year ago, in 1936 – he remembered it well – saying he needed to breath some air, that the city was asphyxiating him more and more. Even today Mr. Serafim attributes the outburst to the position in the Rua do Crucifixo, somewhat set aside from the Baixa, downtown Lisbon, hidden away, as if cast aside, darker that the more noble streets with direct access to the Terreiro do Paço and Rossio². But not him. He feels well there. I have other explanations for Mr. Tito’s desertion. I hardly knew him and understood him quickly, but those, as these, were not times for grand explanations, so Mr. Serafim was quite well off with his, in the peace of the Lord.

The Império das Limonadas was not a very profitable business, but Mr. Serafim, being a fearful man, knew that he should thank God for the attacks of shortness of breath that led his predecessor to quit. Not that he bore any ill will to anyone and, as he was not self–interested, he knew that, someway, the Lord would compensate him for the zeal with which he had served Father Sebastião from his home parish, a town lost in the outskirts of Coimbra. He served devotedly as sexton, his legs were never heavy when climbing the steep spiral staircase so as to religiously play the three daily Ave-Marias, plus the extras to call the faithful to Sunday and holy day services. And he was lucky to learn from the priest how to distinguish, without a doubt, right from wrong and count alms, a wise practice that came to prove very useful in order to keep the accounts up to date in the bar of his little empire on the Rua do Crucifixo.

I don’t complain about life, he would often repeat while closing the brown and greasy ledger, throwing over his shoulder the chequered cloth with which he wiped the tables, the counter and knives he used to open bread, slice the proscuito, sausages, cheese and spread the several fillings he served his satisfied customers. Mr. Ramos, a lottery ticket seller, born and bred on the other side of the Baixa, in Mouraria, would let out, without ceremony and with tedium, airless sounds mixed with undecipherable murmurs when, leaning over the counter looking for a glass of bagaço³, he would listen to that daily exclamation. Visibly he had no special appreciation for that successful country man. Not out of envy, but because he never bought a lottery ticket from him, a thing of the devil. Mr Ramos had often insisted, there are happy times, followed afterwards, in desperation, by the argument that the lottery helps the poor and unfortunate and there is nothing more Christian than charity. Well, he could very well hone his shoddy, cynically pious argumentation.

– God will look out for them! The poor and unfortunate don’t need vices – counter-attacked Mr. Serafim.

– You talk all high and mighty because your lucky ticket was that German over there… – and Mr. Ramos stretched out his arm in the direction where, invariably, we would sit.

The altercation would usually end with some politeness from the man behind the counter, who would grab the bottle and serve yet another dose of bagaço and reply:

– This one is not for your tab, it’s on the house so you khow I hold no grudges.

And the lottery seller was out of the fight. The offer was not the be wasted and the mention of his tab advised a prudent silence. Sometimes, however, Mr. Ramos still had a moment of resistance and repeated the gesture towards the table, sticking a finger in my direction:

– And you’ll never be able to rightly thank Jaime there. If it weren’t for him you wouldn’t know you had French cognac when the German came through that door. Some lucky hour…

Serafim would make some rapid gestures to shoo away the talkative client, turn his back and store away something for which there was never room, on the shelf behind the tap. Treating the matter this way embarrassed him. It was a sort of tie that recommended silence, interrupted because the lottery seller never hesitated in drinking to the last drop, then banging the thick glass against the stone counter, and clicking his tongue, a sound of appreciation and also farewell, until next time.

That rainy night on December 1939 had really affected all the members of the heterogeneous tertúlia⁴ of the Império das Limonadas. It was already well past ten – I remember it well because Mr. Serafim had assumed his accounting position on the counter and, wetting the point of his pencil in his mouth in a sort of tick, he would draw blurred, twisted, oversized numbers on the thick paper of his book of secrets.

Then, someone, awkwardly and with a hollow crackle, pushed the curtain of coloured wooded straws hanging on the door to announce clients and hinder the entry of undesirable critters, and walked heavily but with possible urgency towards the counter, as if it were a safe haven. That someone was tall, imposing, wearing Gulliver pants that contributed to discompose his already uncoordinated movements. In compensation, the jacket, rumpled and sloppy, must have served as a straight jacket to some Lilliputian back in the ancient times of those stories. Anxiously, he laid down his brown hat, full of stains, in front of Mr. Serafim, who stood up straight, surprised, and jerked his elbow sending the ashtray flying away to the other end of the counter. Before the usual yes, please was heard, before the solicitous owner of the imperial establishment grabbed the cloth on his shoulder to clean the inconvenient trail of ashes, the visitor said:

– Please, I really need a French cognac.

The voice was sonorous, a little guttural, all the Rs in the phrase came out after having scratched the throat that expelled them, and then a silence, interrupted only by the panting and hissing of the stranger. Beside me, Arnaldo stopped his dissertation on the controversial episode of the German pirate cruiser Graf Spee, harboured in the port of Montevideo, in Uruguay, damaged after the unequal battle with British warships, in the Rio de la Plata. We were hanging on the events at the counter.

Mr. Serafim hastily withdrew the pencil from his ear, not to record anything in the ledger, but rather to scratch his head with it, a clumsy gesture that besides leaving unusual graphite marks on his already unprotected scalp, illustrated the confusion into which the owner, usually so nimble, had fallen.

– So you’re asking for a French cognac… – he stuttered to buy time while looking for help in all directions. Something told him that the usual gesture of grabbing the usual bottle to serve the regular slop whenever he was asked for brandy, aguardente⁵ or whatever the genre, this time, would not result. And the prospective client, besides being huge and manifesting impatience, was foreign, that nobody doubted, and who knows what might happen if he were served well… or not well. Mr. Serafim had no idea how these cogitations would prove prophetic.

Suddenly, I remembered that one day, lost in my thoughts while drinking a beer, waiting for Arnaldo and anyone else who felt like chatting, when my eyes had fixed on the top shelf behind the counter of Império das Limonadas, a sort of storage place that Mr. Serafim visited sporadically, perched on a ladder, to remove the active beverage bottles he could no longer foist, not even upon the lottery ticket seller willing to ingest anything that smelled or tasted alcoholic. Lost in that forgotten and dusty exhibition of last resort, upon which no one laid an eye except when following a fly drifting around, I registered insensibly into my memory the existence of a bottle of French Delamain cognac, a famed thing I had never seen much less tasted. At the time, I remembered Victor Hugo and his noted admiration for this nectar of the gods, but as fellow members of the tertúlia arrived, I forgot to broach the subject with Mr. Serafim.

I gathered these reflections in much less time than it took to write them and, when I decided to break the silence, the newcomer had anticipated me. With good manners, but vehement and demanding, the visitor had interpolated the owner once more.

– Please, at least tell me if you can serve me a French brandy or not, so I won’t waste my time, and try to find another tavern that’s still open.

I don’t know if it was just my sensation, but the emphasis and tone of impatience of his question made his R’s even more loaded and guttural. I decided.

– Oh Serafim, how about that Delamain you have for occasions and special guests that you keep on the top shelf so there are no confusions and temptations?

Serafim looked at me with the eyes of a dead fish and the silent and open mouth of a seabream from Madam Herminia’s fish stand, which he visited in the Praça da Figueira less often than the meagre menu of the establishment should demand, being as it were always around steak with a fried egg on top, where the best thing were the potato chips dripping with olive oil. He desperately rested his elbows on the counter and, when a little bit of life reappeared in his eyes, pressed by the circumstances, the message was not difficult to interpret: dear man, what I need is help and not you telling me difficult things like you talk with your friends.

Mr. Serafim hated most of our conversations at the table, he felt lost among them, excluded, and thought we were doing it on purpose, which sometimes was right. Not so much on his account, but because of the loyal customer at the corner table, who never took his hat off and rarely turned the pages of his newspaper, sometimes it was the same one for weeks. If he was reading anything it was with his ears.

– Dear man, what is wrong with you today? – I interrupted abruptly. – Did you not sleep well or has the lack of work turned you soft? What’s the point of having that bottle up there, that you said you’re keeping for a grand day because it’s a French cognac, if those days never come?

Given the ineffectiveness of the lunatic figure behind the counter, for big evils big remedies. I myself went to fetch the ladder, partially devoured by woodworm, took hold of the man by his waist to balance him on the first step and stood below with my finger in the air, motionless as a statue of a great conqueror, until he lay hands on the bottle as he looked to seek approval in my eyes.

– You see? For months I haven’t taken my eyes off it and now here is someone who deserves it because he knows what to ask for, knows what he wants. Don’t you remember having told me you were saving it for a big occasion?

How could he remember if he never said it? And his face showed no glimmer of understanding, as a result of the opportunity and my theatrical intervention’s ability to communicate.

The prospective client, finally about to reach this condition, looked at me with a grateful serenity through bluish gray eyes, which soon turned into beacons of full brightness, when he confirmed, by the bottle label, the authenticity of my manoeuvre, which for Serafim remained a mystery.

– Delamain? – the visitor asked rhetorically. – But that’s a rarity these days, much better than I expected. Please, you are my guests.

The R’s were less aggressive, his shoulders had relaxed, making the jacket a little less girdled. His eyes were already satiated, foretasting the promised nectar that, due to the vagaries of fortune, had waited a few decades for an unpredictable event in the small empire on Rua do Crucifixo.

Serafim was bewildered and relieved, but still clouded by astonishment, awkwardly showing the bottle while cleaning the dust off his other hand with the shoulder cloth.

– Open the bottle, man, can’t you see that this is what the customer wants? – interrupted my companion Arnaldo, now even more impatient, suddenly peckish given the celebrity of a product he had never heard of until about five minutes ago. If they were going to change from bagaço, let it be for something worthwhile.

Serafim lined up three chalices on the counter.

– One more, please – said the visitor. – You are also my guest, you don’t know nor will you ever know how you’ve helped me today, but I’m not one to forget.

The man behind the counter was astonished, the genuine expression did not deceive. The visitor who had come in like a hurricane was now tranquil, affable, polite. He carefully poured the liquid into the four cups, as if dealing with a treasure, and an awkward silence befell us.

The stranger took the initiative from atop his magnificence.

– My name is Kurt, Kurt Hoffmann, with two Ns at the end. I’m German and I drink to the health of all of us and for peace in the world, may what we most fear from this war not become a reality.

Serafim looked instinctively towards the corner table, empty for some hours, and finally seemed calmer before capsizing in one gulp the content of the glass, and making the usual click of the tongue and exhaling a long exclamation of appreciation which he also used when consoling himself with the bagaço destined for the lottery seller Ramos and other customers he considers of the same ilk.

Then I made the presentations:

– Jaime Simão, at your service, and my conversation partner is Arnaldo Assunção. Over there is Mr. Serafim, the owner of this nice gathering house and who does us the favour of putting up with us even if the evenings are longer.

Serafim seemed pleased with what he heard, but had not understood yet very well what had happened in those tumultuous minutes that agitated a routine winter evening.

Kurt gently lifted the glass to his lips and tasted the cognac, as if from a container of fine crystal in a refined environment, where such nectars stream among those familiar with them, recognizing the grape variety and the year of the double distillation in the obligatory copper coils.

– Very good ! – he exclaimed looking around, in passing halting his eyes upon our table with signs of being occupied and gently making known, with a softened look, that he would enjoy tasting the drink with the occasion’s companions. I adjusted a chair so he could fit his bulky body, which he did with a sublime delicacy after having rested the glass as if manoeuvring a delicate product, so he wouldn’t notice Arnaldo’s hands, who solicitous but precipitated, had held the back of the chair, fearing the worst.

– Pardon my indiscretion, but you were speaking of the Graf Spee when I arrived. Being German I could hardly not be attracted by the theme, but I want you to know that I am discreet and I do not have the habit of listening to the conversations of others, though this is very much in practice these days.

We were silent for a moment, which was uncommon at that table, our table as we would say when talking among us, as long as we were careful with the slippery figure, now absent, from the corner of the room.

Serafim returned to his position at the counter behind the ledger and, although the pencil was back in its resting place, sleep did not come. He kept his eyes on the visitor and his ears on the conversation.

– We were talking about the Graf Spee, yes – I said – because we know how difficult Uruguay’s position is at the moment.

I approached the subject cautiously. For me, the Graf Spee was a pirate ship dedicated to sinking British merchant ships in the South Atlantic at the behest of Hitler and it got what it deserved when three English ships seriously damaged it in the Rio de la Plata. It wasn’t safe, or polite, to put it in these terms to a German, whom I didn’t know.

– A pirate ship, my friends, let’s be honest. It is the only way to deal with this issue. What is happening is an embarrassment for Germans like myself, and the government of Uruguay only has to comply with the Hague Conventions, prevent it from re-arming and send it away after 24 hours, even knowing it will go out towards a losing battle.

That said, Kurt fell silent and tried to measure the intensity of the reactions through our expressions.

– That was exactly what I was telling Jaime when you entered – added Arnaldo, exposing himself too much before a stranger in Lisbon in the year of 1939, despite the meaning of his previous words.

Kurt turned to me and carefully used a neutral tone, as if he wished to avoid influencing the answer by any subjective element:

– Are you of the same opinion?

I looked into his eyes and, by simple intuition, felt safe to accept the challenge, validating the sincerity of the toast’s tone just moments before.

– What the Graf Spee has done is not war, it is a crime, because it attacked civilians, unarmed or with minimal weaponry. I know of no other word for it other than piracy and, furthermore, we know it’s a warship equipped with the most advanced weapons that exist, which means a lot of cowardice. Therefore, what the three British battleships did to it in the Rio de la Plata is fair and I have to admit, a legitimate act of war.

– It is difficult for a German, especially in a land that is not his own, to listen to what you just said, but as the right-minded person I consider myself to be I have no objection with your words. I’m very sorry, as a German who loves his homeland, that this buccaneer ship ordered by Hitler has the name of a man who was for us a war hero, Admiral Graf Spee, and that it is commanded by a patriot such as Admiral Hans Langsdorff, who follows orders. But do not confuse Germany with the Nazi Party.

Again I hesitated before making any comments. Kurt was obviously informed of things that were not known to common people, such as the political opinions of the commander of the Graf Spee, and, in a time of mistrust, when such frankness is used it is either naivety – which did not seem to be the case, despite his alcohol level – or it is a provocation. We had come to this point.

Arnaldo was more impulsive, not because he was younger, I believe, perhaps because he never had to pass the trials that already marked my life and which at that moment were not called for. I reflected and hesitated, he spoke.

– I hope the English give it a deserved beating and that, if they can, catch it still in port. After what that German ship did to so many English ships, sinking it falls short.

The Portuguese-English spoke. I even called him the man of the alliance for his commitment and, sometimes, the risky dedication with which he played the role of chauffeur to the British Embassy. And when I realized that the following dissertation would include the full disclosure of his duties, I kicked his shins, which made him slurp an exaggerated gulp of the fabulous Gallic nectar and made him cough convulsively instead of talking. All for the best.

– Man, you’re unaccustomed to things of quality, you don’t get along with them, maybe you’d better drink Serafim’s questionable bagaço – I burst out, trying to divert the course of the conversation.

Serafim did not budge. He had fallen asleep, finally pacified and comforted by the profit from the unexpected bottle, even without having deciphered all the evening’s confusions. Arnaldo coughed and Kurt, for the first time, let a smile appear across his thick lips while he put his hand on my arm, a gesture whose complicity he did nothing to hide.

– Don’t worry, my dear man – and the gentleness in his eyes seemed sincere even in those days when sincerity had become a danger in a country where informing was a virtue and a world that depended upon espionage – I came in here by accident. I’m not an agent of the German government. I’ve lived a long time in Portugal, as you can tell by my language, and I don’t sympathize with the cordiality of your government towards mine. This is easy to say, but maybe one day something might prove that I am frank and am grateful to you.

Something drove me to believe him. Perhaps his direct penetrating gaze, albeit with red streaks from the effects of the alcohol – Serafim’s treasure was about done – perhaps the power of his words, probably the relaxed calm of someone who unexpectedly felt in a domestic atmosphere.

I learned, a few hours after this meeting, that the Graf Spee had left Montevideo for a losing battle and, before the British ships Achilles, Ajax and Exeter – supported at a distance by a well-supplied fleet of five aircraft carriers, two of them French, four battleships and 11 cruisers – did what they had to do, the German model ship exploded at the entrance of the harbour. Fearing that the outcome was in the hands of the enemy fleet, Langsdorff rashly provoked the explosion in shallow water and eventually allowed the discovery, in the above water parts of the vessel, of the secret the Graf Spee was carrying, with some possible guise, since the time it patrolled the Spanish territorial waters and simultaneously guarded the rear of the Franco’s fascists: the secret of radar, an innovative device that the revolutionary war vessel premiered and that the British experts, using the occasion, called a fig.

A few days later, Hans Langsdorff, the commander, locked himself in a hotel room in Buenos Aires and, knowing what awaited him with Hitler, wrapped himself in a German flag and committed suicide.

This event, which I would have faced with the detachment of yet another telegraphic news like those that appear on the news boards in Rossio and over which, evening after evening, we gladiate arguments at the table of Império das Limonadas longing for the end of the nightmare, caught my special attention. I had Kurt’s words recorded in my memory and it became clear that the man knew more than ordinary mortals, even though he was a German, a citizen of the country who wanted to dominate the world.

These were the things that I had deduced. In an instant, reality took me far beyond what would be possible to predict by the relentless flow of the imagination.

On the night that Kurt’s head fell on the table upon the eighth glass of cognac and while Mr. Serafim took account of the damages of such a premature surrender, Arnaldo quickly grabbed his shoulder cloth and cleaned the face of our friend while I hoisted his head trying to balance that dead weight with both hands.

I became restless. I had seen our German partner, who by then had become a habitual member of that tertúlia, collapse dead drunk. It happened almost every night, but I had never felt him in that fainted state, showing only narrow and dead grey streaks beneath his eyelids, the unusual effects of the mix of transpiration with molasses dripping from his bald head and the few tufts of sticky blond and white hair, distributed anarchically, his breathing almost extinguished, his arms inert and falling along his dead weight, invertebrate and ready to crumble if I let go his head and Arnaldo withdrew his vigorous hands from his shoulders.

Serafim brought the flask used previously on similar occasions, on this and other customers, but hesitated and retreated scared when he concentrated on Kurt’s aspect.

– Jesus, the man is at the end of his rope… And now where am I gonna to find a priest for the last rites?

– Don’t be silly, man – snapped Arnaldo ripping the flask from his hands before the lemonade emperor disappeared out the door in search of a curate for cases without cure.

Arnaldo pulled the cork from the bottle with his teeth and placed the opening to Kurt’s nose, who reacted as if he had suffered an electric shock, stomping his feet, bending his body in an arch upon the back of the chair and spraying droplets of liquid in all directions when he shook his head at cat-like speed. I straightened his body while the chair crackled, ready to give, and the table rocked tinkling, leaving Serafim between a syncope and action, deciding upon the latter: he hastily gathered the dishes into the apron, which became a laundry duffle.

– It’s just ammonia – Arnaldo explained, revealing sudden and surprising faculties to understand the German after our victim followed the feline head gesture with an inquisitive guttural imprecation, delivered in his mother tongue.

– The guy seemed like Hitler just now – Serafim commented as he placed the dishes safely in the sink behind the counter.

– Hitler be struck by lightning! – Kurt retorted changing from his native language to the Lusitanian vernacular.

We have our man Arnaldo whispered to me as he wiped his mouth, nose, whole face, his bald head and the tufts of hair, with Serafim’s cloth, before returning it to its proper place and original function of cleaning the counter and the accoutrements, which the owner now washed with great care, while sparingly using the block of soap, because these things disappear now and leave no trace.

Rationing and hygiene want nothing to do with one another, I thought for no reason, as one who slightly opens the valve of the last minute’s tension.

Kurt, however, pulled me back to reality and also in his own direction and, like a drowning man, held in despair onto my jacket sleeve to hoist his bulk and try to free himself from that sort of cage made of tavern furniture, no offense to Mr. Serafim, who didn’t like this term when applied to his establishment.

Kurt’s breathing, which threatened to expire even before Serafim managed to get someone to commission the poor sinner’s soul to the heavenly heights, had now become a sonorous panting, snorting, tossing spit and indecipherable words.

The worst was over. At this stage, Arnaldo and I functioned as a well trained team. My friend placed the German’s right arm around his shoulders, I did the same with the left arm. The first steps were painful because he dragged his feet and whatever was on route while Serafim opened the way muttering concerns and invocations. A few meters later, the bags containing Kurt Hoffmann’s legs began to move regularly, one after another, and we were off towards Rua Nova do Almada.

As usual, Kurt managed to turn his head vaguely towards Serafim to wish him good night.

– Don’t forget to register my tab – he recommended at the end of every evening.

– Why, already done – the owner of the empire would reply, while fanning the cloth in rows over the tables and chairs, picking up the remaining cigarette butts off the ground and hoping we managed to cross the curtain of colourful straws so he could close the door, turn out the lights and turn in to the basement to say his prayers and lay back on the cot between his blankets, which he had brought from his hometown.

He needn’t worry about Kurt’s bill. At the end of each month, the best customer of the house honoured the astronomical sums accumulated in whiskey, beer and French cognac, and, on that day, Serafim’s frown blossomed in a smile of celestial candour, and offered up a round on the house, and from his best mulch nonetheless. Ramos, the lottery ticket seller, revealed a remarkable intuition in guessing that moment, much better than the numbers he recommended, and it was not for less: Kurt yielded him his cup and would even buy a full lottery ticket.

We gained a good pace walking through Rua do Cricifixo, where a single lamp shone and the smell of urine and other excretions blew mercilessly from the ruins of a construction site long embargoed, almost on the corner with Rua da Conceição. Now we only needed to climb a few meters before turning left and descending towards Kurt’s house. Luckily he lived closer to Rua de S. Julião and, with that weight on our backs, all the saints would help, not minding in this case that it was almost dark. The aromas coming from the trees of the Largo da Boa Hora, tempered with the cool night air, renewed our courage and washed our nostrils of the stench from the previous corner.

Everything would be within possible normality were it not for Kurt’s tomb-like and unusual silence at that stage of the effects of alcoholic libations. Generally, he would resume interrupted conversations whenever we got up from the table and during that short and numbed walk he would let himself be carried away by optimistic, sometimes euphoric, predictions about the future of the war.

That night, nothing. A silence that gave me a bad omen.

Arnaldo read my thoughts. We looked at each other and, as often happened, he spoke.

– Kurt, Serafim said you walked in looking like you had come from a funeral and seemed very upset when you asked for the usual whiskey to start off the evening…

Pause… and nothing.

– Come on, Kurt, I’m getting worried and you know that’s not easy – I reinforced.

From the mouth of our German friend some sounds finally emerged, which was a start. But none of us could decipher those hieroglyphic sounds.

We reached the door of the building, between Chico Beirão’s tinshop and the Galician Pepe’s charcoal store. Giving out a sign of lucidity, which made his oblivious and dumb behaviour even more disturbing, Kurt was about to clap his hands when the night watchman Orlando, knowing by heart the habits of his community, came closer with a key in hand and, despite the unmistakable bad breath blown meters before, he was right on target on his first try.

– He doesn’t seem too good today – Orlando intuited between the vapours that made him wobble from one side to the other, keeping the key pointed.

We abstained from commenting, said see you later and we hastened to hold Kurt who, in the lobby, was already leaning starboard to seek Juliana the cat and her three kittens in a nest of rags stuffed behind the door.

We made him move on while he agitated his arms and briskly rolled his neck. We assured him that all was well – Juliana awoke startled and purred while covering the kittens – and we started the last and difficult phase: the climb up to the second floor with that gigantic German sustained on our shoulders, burdened with the additional weight added by the unusual abatement of that night.

The climb was not silent, though sparse in words. Kurt snorted, Arnaldo huffed with each step and I felt my heart coming out of my mouth and throbbing all over my body while trying to preserve the balance of the group and avoid crushing against the banister, groping in the darkness.

– Every night the same thing. It’s shameless! The guard Orlando does nothing, he tells me that it’s not necessary to call the police, and then it’s this fine scene: three drunks stumbling up the stairs making such a racket like it was noon, and there isn’t a charitable angel that would cast you into the depths of hell.

D. Ofélia was tossing insults and plagues. Half portress, half tenant of an attic cubicle among rags, rats, crucifixes, prayer cards of saints glued on her always open windows turned to the stairs and serving as the only passage for air to circulate – she was also, inherently, the fierce guardian of Christian morals within the parish boundaries.

Dishevelled, hideous, with a terrifying mane sprouting from her forehead and shoulders, breathing through pieces of yellow and black teeth when she barked, she threw her closed fists in our direction and, indeed, if her plagues and curses worked, this calm yet talkative bohemian trio would have been scorched in purifying fire long ago.

– God will deal with you and He’s already late – Ms. Ofélia promised and recriminated with the authority gained by her familiarity with Father Jerónimo, who was to the parish as the President of the Council was to the motherland.

– God is not called for here – Kurt complained, forced to break the silence to restore some sort of Calvinist order in a dispute that unduly mixed earthly vices and heavenly virtues, which for him are separated into very well-defined levels.

Ofélia hesitated. The guttural voice and accent with heretical resonance always intimidated her. That foreigner seemed to be in close contact with Beelzebub, which probably made him immune to most recommended plagues and curses.

I signalled to Arnaldo to contain himself. Experience told me that his turn was next and that would only further mess things up. I was on time. A tragic word, witch, was already surfacing on his lips, and, with difficulty and against his will, he managed to swallow it. The first – and last – time that was pronounced, a broom fell upon us like a thunderbolt, and so we tasted from divine punishment, brokered by that devout and militant soul. Then, Arnaldo, with a coldness that surprised me given the state he was in and knowing his impulsive character, affectionately took the object, brushed it gently on the railing, lightly climbed the stairs and when he arrived at the window, before a suspicious and defensive Ofélia, crossing himself with devout look, pitched his voice with a sweet tone and said:

– Would you mind teaching me how to fly on it?

Thunder struck him well before Arnaldo completed his strategic retreat. The whining of the wounded angel Ofélia was probably heard in the dens of sin of Cais do Sodré and the broom swept the back of the possessed, who crashed down the stairs while we recoiled, as pesky and playful kids, into Kurt’s den.

That night was different. The scene stopped there, there was no intermezzo for amusement. I laid my hand on the doorknob, opened the door without needing the key and, after turning on a sad light from a lamp surrounded by books, we placed our friend in his bed wedged between the window and the wall. Kurt collapsed, sat down and buried his head in his hands, and rested, stunned, inert.

I pulled out a short stool, covered by a cloth with scarlet and celestial blue ruffles, which was at hand, and sat face to face with the homeowner. His empty eyes gained some life, not in my direction, but behind me.

I had forgotten. I got back up, went to the next room, crammed senseless with furniture, some lacking any perceptible usefulness, and groping around, but without difficulty, found the phonograph – force of habit. From the shelf under the counter I removed the record that is always on top, brought it to the light and cleaned it with a velvet cloth, which seemed to be the only unscathed object in that mess. Once again I beheld the curious look of the dog listening to His Master’s Voice, pulled a needle at random from the small round container that hadn’t seen a new one in some time, swapped it with the one on the articulated arm, cranked it up, the plate started to rotate seemingly somewhat warped, I poised the record, opened the sound doors and Kurt’s favourite aria blossomed with a delicacy and strange sensibility for that environment, taming him and ordering him, as if someone somewhere had done a magic trick.

The laments of Condessa de Almaviva about her husband’s infidelities wove a veil of emotion that gently fell upon that environment of sadness, restlessness and surrender. I sat back on the stool and gazed at Kurt, thereby trying to bring life to those eyes who never lacked life, even in the times of desperation I had shared with him during those few months of conviviality. In those times, it is true, a day held many days and each one could be the last.

Tears streamed free, loose and in streaks down Kurt’s rotund and reddish face while he listened to that excerpt from the Marriage of Figaro. I knew, because he had explained to me in a night of mutual confessions, that this aria from Mozart, which he first heard at the Vienna Opera some ten years ago, in the voice of the soprano Miliza Korjus, Polish of Estonian origin, also known as the Berlin nightingale, had marked him at a very special moment of his life, which he kept to himself. He did tell me that he cried that day with the lyricism, sensitivity, crystal voice and expressiveness of the diva and that, thereafter, every time he listened to the recording, he gained an inspiring force to struggle against the hardships of emigration and an unwanted job, which he avoided talking to me about.

That sad night he cried again. The incantatory power of that piece of music that helped him, whenever he needed, to make peace with the recent past, it seemed to return him to the world after a terrifying journey through mental dungeons, known only to him and that kept him tied to dumbness.

After drifting in an orderless environment and halting, at half height, in that imaginary veil of peace that the Countess Almaviva’s lamentations had brought down on the room, my German friend’s grey eyes, washed by regenerating tears, recovered a bit of life in bluish tones and stared at me. But still, always silent and with a disturbing expression, as if he were afraid to finally move his pupils. Arnaldo moved adrift in the limited space available, with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his samarra, a sheepskin coat from Alentejo, a work of art made by his tailor from Serpa. He had hunted the fox, provided the tail for the collar and, together with a generous batch of sausages that his mother had given him, struck a deal with Master Nicolau without resorting to money.

When Kurt’s eyes communicated, I tried not to miss the opportunity.

– My friend, you have already realized that we are worried. We don’t want you to say anything you can’t – I knew there were restricted areas in our conversations – but talk to us because we don’t like seeing you this way and perhaps we can help you.

Arnaldo, silent since he had swallowed the word witch , felt encouraged to speak.

– We know it’s not the half a dozen glasses of brandy that brought you down. What’s tormenting you, man?

Kurt seemed to give way, finally. The first sounds were bumbled and unintelligible. Something very enunciated and ending in the very vulgar German berg. A kind of schhhh berg …. that gave us no clue.

We insisted.

– We don’t know if we can help – I said – but if you share this pain, perhaps you’ll feel more relieved and can have a few hours rest.

Kurt placed his hand on my shoulder signalling he understood the seriousness of our concern. In the room next door, the Countess Almaviva had returned on stage in the following act, to regret that "e Susanna non vien". Either because the needle was blunt or because the record was a little warped, or simply because all magic has an end, it seemed that the voice, originally crystalline and heavenly, had become prosaically earthy, distorted even.

Upstairs, in the cubicle on the fourth floor, the rustle continued, warning us, incorrigible sinners, that the exorcising operations of the indignant Ms. Ofélia continued, certainly up to our departure, most likely until the end of our days.

I looked at Arnaldo, instinctively asking for help because the hour was already late and we didn’t want to leave our companion in an agony we had never seen.

I ignore whether Kurt noticed my discrete gesture. He looked at me profoundly for the first time during the last hours, gestured to Arnaldo to approach, the other hand on his shoulder in an unequivocal sign of wanting to share and uttered the only understandable words, but unfortunately indecipherable, of that long night’s odyssey.

- They want to kidnap the king…

II

A FREELANCE JOURNALIST IN Portugal is a euphemism with an elegant international sonority to be used occasionally instead of the prosaic and worn phrase long-term unemployed. The victim has the mechanisms and instruments to be considered an established self-employed worker. With a little patience but justified pride he may enter the distinguished business class, even if only as a uninominal company. He may fulfil the noble obligations before the State at the zealous local tax office and fill out the appropriately coloured receipts, on paper or over the internet – if he had the raw material to do so. When asked his profession, he answers as he should and with inherent conviction: lying.

Reflections like this, and others of similar depth, come from the anarchic stream of thought that occupy the seconds at a traffic light and vanish without a trace at the sound of the drivers’ horns, which luckily for them are always in a hurry or have things to do.

I repressed the gesture with which I was tempted to thank the out-of-tune momentary musicians. Life teaches us the futility of some reactions, I think this could also be called experience, and soon after I took the first available spot to feed the parking meter. Having fulfilled the routine of putting the ticket in sight next to the steering wheel, ensuring that a puff of wind would not mask a citizen’s proper behaviour, I let myself be carried by that inexplicable aroma that is capable of dissipating all scepticism, of averting evil instincts, of reconciling us with optimism through a deep inhalation, preferably with semi-closed eyes to get the most out of a soft, captivating, ethereal perfume, a gift of nature all the more precious because it is so ephemeral.

The jacaranda trees had flowered.

The delicate lilac and sweet veil fell lightly on the Avenida 5 de Outubro⁶, from Picoas to Entrecampos, and it was no longer as during the rest of the year. Some say the jacaranda flowers announce the coming of summer but, allow me the heresy, I think in Lisbon spring does not begin before the fragile lilac chalices open, to me like small amphorae and to others, quite rightly, like trumpets. So that Lisbon avenue, which is still call new even though several decades of existence weigh upon her, renews itself in authentic spring garb, through the delicate workings of an unknown and invisible weaver – patient as Penelope and, like her, able of undoing in three weeks what takes months to weave – whose exhibits occur, more or less, in the first fortnight of May, year after year.

We know by experience, books and now also by electronic means that rules have their exceptions and that neither the jacaranda trees, or at least their sensitive weaver, escape such judgment. So it was in the autumn of 2009 and, inasmuch as I can easily recall the episode and the date, it is because the circumstances were relevantly confounded that they grabbed the attention of a journalist that could very well by out of practice as a consequence of his prolonged unemployment.

I said that flowering jacaranda trees have the power to blow scepticisms far away, but allow me a trace of irony, also by force of circumstance. The thoughts with which I begin these writings were motivated by the more unprofitable diligence at trying to sell an article in one of the newspapers considered to be of record, although it is difficult, a sin of mine surely, to identify the record in question and what distinguishes it from other publications that failed to anoint themselves with such virtue.

The morning had not started off well. I punched a number on my cell phone and, after a good deal of so-called library music, no disrespect to libraries, an efficiently robotic female voice came on:

– Good morning, Dália speaking, how can I help you?

– Good morning, I wanted to speak with the director…

– What about?

– I’m a journalist, I turned in an article for consideration two weeks ago and was asked me to call today.

– One moment.

The music returned to a point where I could already hum the following chords by anticipation. It is a healthy exercise, at least it allows one to forget the flurry of cents that in the meantime flow into the cell phone bill.

The Dália robot returned a few minutes later.

– Thank you for waiting, I’ll transfer your call.

Another musical interval, interrupted by new female voice.

– Good morning, Sílvia speaking, how can I help you?

– I told your colleague I wanted to speak to the director…

– What about?

– An article I turned in two weeks ago for consideration. They told me to call today…

– Your name?

– Filipe Leite.

– The director is busy and can’t take calls. One moment.

Having memorized the music, repetition became boring, numbing. Perhaps its deterrent objective is, after all, why it’s used.

Sílvia came back, also already in a mechanical register.

– Thank you for waiting. The editor Carlos Silveira can meet you this morning.

– At what time?

– This morning. Anything else I can help you with?

I don’t know if she heard the answer, nor do I remember what it was. I remember stammering a moment, impressed with the results of current professional formatting methods, essential for the profitable life of goddess productivity.

I was on the way, losing no time given such a generous opportunity.

At reception, a uniformed gentleman, behind a desk, asked me why I had come.

I explained. He asked me for identification, took five minutes to fill out a form, put my ID card in a drawer and handed me a card saying visitor with a clasp to latch on to my lapel or wherever. It wound up in my coat pocket.

– You should wear it at all times and return it so I can give you back your ID… – he explained while looking at the revolving door, where the next client was already shuffling in, looking for the best possible coordination between his briefcase, legs and the relentless pace of the mechanism.

– …And wait a minute, they’ll come get you.

Eight minutes later, counted on the clock behind the uniformed gentleman, who continued to fill out forms and collect cards, a stylish young woman arrived, with a gray skirt and jacket over a loud pink shirt, her long blonde hair carefully let down, discrete earrings, her hand outstretched and her mouth posing a smile as soon as she opened the elevator door.

– Mr. Leite?

– That’s me.

The extended arm with the open hand turned in my direction. I answered the greeting. Mechanic.

– Dália Pereira, we just spoke, please follow me.

We took the elevator, crossed several corridors with Dália leading the way, a bouncy walk, always facing three-quarters in my direction. We exchanged some trivialities that I’ll spare you, and we passed through an open space, architected in the form of a barn with two parallel troughs that extended the entire length of the room, each divided by a central divider and, on each side, defined by opaque bays, successive individual stations with a chair and a computer terminal, some vacant, other filled by other curved humans, fingering anthracite