A Small Death in Lisbon. Robert Thomas Wilson
they’d been especially selected to keep the soldiers’ ardour at bay. They were all tiny with no more than an inch of forehead between their dark eyebrows and the scarves around their heads. Their noses were sharp, their cheeks sunken and their teeth gone or rotten. He went to bed and slept badly on a flea-ridden mattress.
In the morning they began driving through some of the places they’d seen depicted on the blue and white azulejos in the station at Vilar Formoso. The drivers realized what had been missing from the designs, or perhaps bad roads, poverty and filth looked different in their own colours. They rounded the pine-forested, rock-strewn mountains of the Serra da Estrela on the northern boundary of the Beira Baixa which, as Felsen already knew, was going to be his home for the next years of his life. Where schist and granite meet was where the black, shiny crystalline wolfram occurred, and Felsen could see from the grey/brown block stone houses and slate roofs that this was the right country.
They crossed the Mondego and Dão rivers to Viseu and headed south to Coimbra and Leiria. The air changed. The dry cool of the mountains disappeared and a warm humidity took over. The sun was hot even in early March and they stripped off their coats. The drivers rolled up their shirt sleeves and looked as if they might sing. There were no refugees on the road. The representative from the German legation told them that Salazar was making sure that no more came into Lisbon – the city was already full. They spent a last night on the road at Vila Franca de Xira and got up early the next morning to deliver the gold to the Banco de Portugal before normal office hours.
It was first light as they turned away from the Tagus into the Terreiro do Paço and the trucks made their way behind the arcaded eighteenth-century façade into the grid system of the Baixa, purpose-built by the Marquês de Pombal after the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. They drove along Rua do Comércio, behind the massive triumphal arch at the head of the Rua Augusta, to the conglomeration of buildings including the church of São Julião that made up the Banco de Portugal. They waited for the gates to open in the Largo de São Julião and one by one the trucks reversed in to unload.
In the bank Felsen was met by the Director of Finance and another, more senior and taller, member of the German legation who greeted his offered hand with a spring-loaded salute and an incongruous ‘Heil Hitler’. This did not appear to disturb the bank’s finance director who, he found out later, was a member of the Portuguese Legion. It had confused Felsen who only managed a half-wave in return, like a bad attempt at getting a waiter’s attention, and the words ‘Ja, ja.’ He also missed the tall, Prussian-looking man’s name. It wasn’t until the gold had been unloaded and accounted for that Felsen saw the man signing the endless documentation with his left hand in the name of Fritz Poser. He noticed that the right hand was a gloved prosthesis.
By 11.00 a.m. the business was completed. The junior member of the legation had taken the drivers to an army barracks on the outskirts of the city and Poser and Felsen were sitting in the back of a flagged Mercedes driving down Rua do Ouro towards the river. The pavements were packed with people, mostly men in dark suits, white shirts, dark ties and hats a size too small for their heads who swerved past barefooted boys selling newspapers. The few women were smart and dressed in tweed suits with hats and furs even though it wasn’t cold. The faces flashed by as the car picked up speed in the empty street, one woman hatless and blonde stared at the car, the small swastika flapping on the bonnet, mesmerized. Then her head flicked away and she buried herself in the crowd. Felsen turned in his seat. A boy was running alongside the car waving the Diário de Notíçias in his face.
‘Lisbon is full,’ said Poser. ‘It’s as if the whole world is here.’
‘I saw them at the border.’
‘The Jews?’
Felsen nodded, tired now after the anxiety of the journey.
‘There’s a more eclectic mix down here. Lisbon can cater for all tastes. It’s one long party for some.’
‘So there’s no rationing.’
‘Not yet and not for us anyway. It will come though. The British are mounting their Economic Blockade and the Portuguese are beginning to suffer. Fuel could start to be a problem, they don’t have any of their own tankers and the Americans are being difficult. Of course you can eat well if you like seafood and drink their wine if your palate’s not too French. There’s still sugar at the moment and the coffee is good.’
They turned right out of the Praça do Comércio and followed the Tagus past the docks. At Santos there was a huge brawling mass of people, men, women and children fighting outside the offices of the shipping lines.
‘This is the more distasteful end of Lisbon,’ said Poser. ‘You see that ship, the Nyassa, in the docks there. They all want to get on the Nyassa but it’s full. It’s been full for weeks. In fact it’s been filled twice over but these morons think that because it’s there they can get on it. Most of them don’t have any money which means they don’t even have American visas. Ah well, the Guarda Nacional Republicana will be along in a moment and break them up. Last week it was the same with the Serpa Pinto, next week it will be the Guiné. Always the same.’
‘We seem to be leaving Lisbon,’ said Felsen, as the driver accelerated away towards the green outskirts of the city.
‘Not yet. This evening perhaps. We’re going to the Palácio do Conde dos Olivais in Lapa where we’ve installed the German legation. You’ll see we have the best location in Lisbon.’
They came into Lapa from Madragoa and drove up the Rua São Domingos à Lapa. Halfway up the Union Jack hung limply off a long pink building with tall white windows and a central pediment which made up about fifty metres of the street’s façade. The Mercedes thundered past on the cobbled street.
‘Our friends, the British,’ said Poser, waving his prosthetic hand.
The driver turned first left into Rua do Sacramento à Lapa and after a hundred metres a cuboid palace in its own grounds appeared on the left. Bougainvillea spilled over the iron railings, the leaves of the phoenix palms rattled in the light breeze and the three red, white and black swastika flags snapped gently. The gates were opened, the car swung away from a sea view and up a short gravel drive and stopped in front of the steps. A doorman opened the car.
‘Early lunch?’ asked Poser.
They sat in the dining room with the sun throwing short rectangles of light across the empty tables. They waited for soup. Felsen tried to remember a time when he’d felt such calm. It was before the war, before the Olympics, in his old apartment on . . . he couldn’t remember where his old apartment was . . . the windows open in summer, lying on the bed with Susana Lopes, the Brazilian girl.
‘You like it?’ asked Poser, erect as if his spine was in a brace.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Our legation. Our palácio.’
‘Magnificent.’
‘The Baixa,’ said Poser, wrinkling his nose, ‘all the refugees, you know, it’s very enervating. Lapa is so much more civilized. You can breathe.’
‘And the war seems such a long way away,’ said Felsen, stonily.
‘Quite so. Berlin, I believe has not been so much fun,’ said Poser trying to hit a more businesslike tone. ‘We’ll be having a small reception for you this evening and a dinner so that you can meet some of the people you’ll be working with. It will be formal. Do you . . .?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Afterwards I thought perhaps you’d like to go out of town to Estoril. There’s a room for you at the Hotel Parque. The casino’s out there and there’ll be some dancing. I think you’ll find it very agreeable.’
‘I’d like to have some sleep at some stage. I haven’t had much on the road this last week.’
‘Of course, I didn’t mean to be presumptuous. I just wanted you to be sure of some comfort and entertaining company after the more serious occasion.’