A Small Death in Lisbon

‘You don’t need to tell him anything,’ said Poser, of the concierge. ‘He knows it before you do. Isn’t that right?’

The concierge didn’t say anything but Felsen could tell from his attentive stillness that he was a man of some hotel experience.

‘Install yourself in your rooms, Felsen, and I’ll show you around,’ said Poser, and laughed looking at the concierge. ‘Don’t talk to the flowers. Or use the phone. Isn’t that right?’

The concierge blinked once, slowly.

Felsen rejoined Poser in the bar. They left the boorish company of the other members of the legation and walked up the gardens in the balmy night to the Casino.

‘The concierge knows when we talk like that it’s what we want everybody to hear.’

‘Is that why the bar’s empty?’

‘You’ll see, it’ll fill up as the night wears on.’

‘Maybe they should make themselves more interesting – invite some women across, they all seem to be going in here.’

They entered the lobby of the Casino at the same time as a small, dark-haired, highly-manicured woman who slid out of a fur coat and an expensive hat before being escorted to the bar by two men, younger and firmer than herself. She wore nylons and more than half the room turned as she came in.

‘Is she the Queen of somewhere?’ asked Felsen.

‘That’s the Queen of Lisbon,’ said Poser.

‘The daughter of the Arab whore?’ asked Felsen, and Poser roared.

‘Her name is Madame Branescu. She runs the guichet of the visa office at the American consulate. You saw all those people who wanted to get on the Nyassa this evening?’

‘She took a percentage off every one of them.’

‘You wouldn’t have recognized her eighteen months ago. She was half the size and you could read a newspaper through her clothes but . . . she speaks fourteen languages and, I don’t know whether you walked past the American consulate, but she needs those fourteen languages and a few more besides.’

They went into the bar. The waiter was already standing at her table as the woman and her blonde escorts sat down. Despite the clothes, the coiffure and the make-up she was not an attractive woman. Felsen saw her in a previous life, in the office of an important lawyer. A short, plain woman in grey clothes, ignored by all but, like the Hotel Parque’s concierge, she missed nothing and had learned everything – the languages, the control, the art of power. And here she was, an improbable, little person conferring life or despair on the thousands atticked in Lisbon’s pensions. Men and women approached her and spoke small obsequious words, bowing from the waist. Some were allowed to brush their lips across the dimpled knuckles of her puffy hand, others scuttled back to their seats blanched and quivering.

Felsen excused himself from Poser and presented himself at her table. The escorts’ eyes bored into him. He asked her in perfect English if she wanted to dance. Her eyes roved over his face trying to work out if she knew him, then glanced down at his clothes and footwear, expert on quality.

‘I’ve heard Madame Branescu is an excellent dancer. I am too. I think we should lead the way.’

She tried to give him her steely look but he seemed like a man who had access to one himself. She smiled and gave him her hand.

‘You’re not English, are you?’ she said, as they made their way to the dance floor, everybody watching. ‘And you limp.’

‘You won’t be disappointed.’

‘Are you Swiss, or maybe an Austrian? I can hear something in your accent.’

‘I’m German.’

‘I don’t like Germans,’ she said, switching to his language.

‘We haven’t arrived in Bucharest yet.’

‘If what the Germans do to countries is “arrive”, then you must be the arrivistes of the century.’

‘Perhaps that is why you’re here?’

‘Because the Germans who aren’t murderers are brutes. That’s why I’m here.’

‘I don’t know what calibre of German you’ve been meeting.’

‘Austrian Germans. I used to live in Vienna.’

‘But you are Rumanian, aren’t you?’ asked Felsen.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Allow me to show you our less brutal side.’

She looked at the Swabian ploughboy with some doubt in her mind but he whisked her into a swing number that left her breathless and amazed. Felsen had been a little worried when he’d heard the swing, he didn’t know whether Madame Branescu’s hips could cope, but the woman knew how to move her pork. They danced three numbers and left the floor to some light applause.

‘I didn’t think Hitler approved of swing,’ said Madame Branescu.

‘He’s afraid it will unhinge our goose step.’

‘You should be careful talking like that,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be the first German to be taken off the streets. Did you know that the PVDE are Gestapo-trained?’

‘The PVDE?’

‘Polícia de Vigilância e de Defesa do Estado – Salazar’s security police,’ she said. ‘And their jails are not so nice unless you can afford a good one.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything that anybody can tell the Germans about jails.’

She excused herself to the powder room. Felsen calculated an extra inch of swing in her hips. Poser drew alongside.

‘Most surprising, Felsen,’ said Poser in his ear.

‘An American taught me before the war.’

‘I meant your taste . . . your choice of partner.’

‘That’s my agricultural background, Poser,’ said Felsen. ‘It comes from chasing piglets round the yard.’

Poser smiled and moved off. Madame Branescu reappeared having brought the flush down in her cheeks. He walked her back to her table. The escorts stood. She flapped them back into their seats.

‘You’re new in Lisbon, aren’t you Herr . . .?’

‘Felsen. Klaus Felsen. And yes, I’m fresh in today.’

‘You don’t talk like somebody who needs to get to America.’