port story (1)…

[ I am reasonably certain I will never go to Lisbon again, the only aspect of Portugal that will come into my life now are humans who have migrated here for social-political-economic reasons, which is the only reason anyone moves anywhere] I had never been to the city before and was intending to spend a few days there before traveling north. The hotel was a nice business hotel, the room anonymous and comfortable. I wandered around the city and was going to a restaurant in one of the nice squares, neither of the names, the restaurant or the square matter, forgotten as they are, obscured by passing time. The restaurant I remember had comfortable chairs, mirrors on the walls, wooden tables, round, square and a few triangular tables, the cuisine was mix of international and local Portuguese. Some of the international dishes were served with a delicate local reinterpretation, a few clams added, a red wine sauce reimagined with local fortified wine. Either way I have fond memories of the place. I think I took a bus from the square the hotel was in, or perhaps I walked, I am unsure. Let’s say it was a bus with aluminum poles wrapped in yellow reinforced plastic tape that took me to the district, the square. Which was full of people, adults and children. It was early evening, before seven. I was early as the table was booked for eight. We had agreed to meet in the restaurant at eight, she would be on time, she was always on time, arriving in the district early and meandering slowly so that she would arrive ontime. I had an hour to use so I went to an old cafe on the east side of the square, the sunlight poured like liquid gold onto the front of the cafe, crawling under the old sun-bleached awnings. The cafe served a vast array of different drinks, it had various types of billiard tables and a pinball machine with images celebrating yuri gagarian’s test flights and a trip around the moon. i ordered a glass of Marsala and an espresso, and started watching a game of bar billiards being played between two old grey haired men, one of the old men was using a walking stick to support his weaker left leg, clear blue eyes, his hair cut short and he was evenly matched with his friend, he was hitting the pins and sinking balls with the sharp eyes of a professional billiards predator. Do you want a game ? He asked. No I replied, I cannot play bar billiards, though if you like and can tell me the rules as we play, honestly, we could play for who pays for the glass of port? He smiled at me, where are you from? Overseas? A bit, I admitted carefully. Where from, Catus Minor, I said. I don’t know where that is, he said. The south end of the Haydes. That’s strange, still never heard of it, but there are so many new countries these days. He said scratching his head and then polishing his cure. So what’s your name? Petr, I said in english with the purely english home counties accent. Petr is the short version that friends and people call me. So you are baptised, a christian he said. Oh no, we are all atheists in my family and culture. There are lots of deities here, but on Catus Minor there are none, nobody knows why. It’s said that gods only exist here in the entire galaxy… Really? he waved the waiter over and ordered drinks. I know what you need, a beautiful african, good price, about 19 or 20 from Mozambique, just arrived. No thanks my partner would be upset, and besides I have to meet some people at the restaurant over the square, I said paused, so I have no time for girls or boys either. So what are you doing here then? I am meeting a woman and perhaps her husband in the restaurant. I thought about lighting a cigarette, <cigarettes in those days were harmless again> but decided not to, i am looking for a man and they may be able to help me. I am just here killing time. Just a second, why are you looking for the man? What for? he asked intensely. Maybe nothing, I simply lost track of him and need to connect with him again. I have come all this way from Catus Minor just to look for him, i would like to speak to him again, its pretty urgent. So i have this appointment in the restaurant, its full of mirrors and memories. I have never been, it has triangular tables, i hope we will sit at such a table. I have never been before. Sounds quite exciting, he said, are you paying? no we’ll be splitting the bill, they have money i believe. Is it a place for fascists? He asked. Probably as its expensive, though they aren’t. I left him with the port and walked around the edges of the square to the restaurant…[We met when we were young whilst working in a decorating chain store that sold paint and wallpaper and the usual tools, paint brushes, poisons chemicals and so on. I think we were both about 20 or 21, he had recently got married to his deeply neurotic girlfriend, how could he be married at such a young age you might think, people simply did that in that place at that time. Later though, not that much later he became a near-legendary troublemaker primarily in the micro-political realm. At that time to be political, to be a socialist meant that you were focused on the micro-political as the enemy had almost filled the macro-political realm with lessor variants of themselves. Before that he’d originated from the mid-west, in a German high school there, to be in that private school meant you would probably be taught by anti-capitalist teachers and going to the German High school meant you knew of the world, that you’d go on trips across the Atlantic to Berlin, New York and Paris. Whereas people like me going to a Secondary Modern school on the outskirts of London were going to a terrible anti-intellectual school staffed by imbeciles who hated us and themselves — — in this place we were taught about the history of the local monarchs, the great men of history discourses that the imbeciles liked. Now that I think of it in those days there were still teachers who left to travel to the colonies and ex-colonies to preach and convert. Others who were ex-colonials explaining how good the empire was for everyone. A few years later, i remember it well, in a cafe in north London, their children were still explaining that American, French and Belgium colonialism was worse, they were children and couldn’t count. Not long after that these same people decided to start murdering people again. Eventually I took the line of flight as far away as I could travel, whilst he continued to drift around europe. When we finally separated we still spent a few summer vacations in various cities and seaside towns, Italy, south western France, the Balkans. He dreamed of painting, his output consisting mostly of windows with shutters, still lives, iron bars, plastic frames and occasionally lace curtains that hinted at humans hiding, mostly from themselves behind the lace. When he stopped painting or drawing we would go for a walk. It was on the last of these walks, the last time we were together that he said, someday if I kill myself, I’ll do it slowly, as if I have a terminal illness over a six month or year long period, saying delirious goodbyes from the hospital bed. Did he do that, is my search in vain?]

When I arrived at the restaurant they were already sitting at a triangular table with a small crystal pitcher full with vodka martini, slices of lemon floating, there were three martini glasses on the table, theirs not quite full, mine empty. She poured some of the perfect liquid into my glass. Hello, I said, how ae you? They looked neutrally at my face, you look younger than we expected she said. Its the relativity effect. Time passes more slowly during space travel, even now. A friend is always a friend, he said philosophically. We exchanged small talk, briefly touching on the stories of our lives. The events, music, images and stories, the politics, communities and cultures we had passed through in the recent past. I told them about the media at home, they told me about how their local right-wing discourse had become dominant by allowing itself to be subculturized, falsified and socialized. They were, (I remember sitting there sipping the drink,) database animals… their social values and standards were always dysfunctional, which is why they felt a pressing need to construct alternative values and standards. Eventually this faded away and it had become clearer who we were. Only then, when it may have become impossible, we began to talk about the reason why I wanted to meet them… Eventually after they explained about the suicide, the leap from the 22nd floor onto the plaza in the middle of the night. Wait, I said, where was he buried? where are his remains I asked. But most of all I wanted to know what were his motives ? why ? We don’t know his personal motives, he never told us about his personal motives for anything. You must have known something, was he depressed, mad, pregnant, you had eyes to see the state of things? He stroked his beard and eyebrows, a strangely neutral and yet erotic gesture directed I thought at her. He poured some more martini into his glass, ordered some more liquor. But they couldn’t say anymore. They couldn’t say where he was buried, nor even how his body was dealt with, did someone inherit his kidney, heart, eyes, liver? Cremated, buried, frozen… I ate pan fried fish, fried sweet potato chips, some forgotten vegetables, an unmemorable desert. They disappeared into Brasil. Days later as I prepared to leave Lisbon the doubts crept in, I thought, that perhaps, I should confirm he was dead by speaking to some other people, perhaps their were some family members still living in the house in S.Ware, I couldn’t remember the number, the street must look the same though. Perhaps he is still alive. That’s all there is…. I had six months after all before the ship was leaving for home and needed to fill my time with something… [for Armando]