avoidance as I.
I left them exclaiming in disgust as they more or less carried the now-reeking Yorkshireman towards his room, while a platoon of mop-wielders took up formation behind them.
I cast a despairing glance at my wrist-watch: It was not yet nine o’clock in the morning. We had been in Lisbon just under twenty-four hours.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SAMUEL: Permit me, I’ll explain in two words:
we propose to marry your daughters.
MAJOR-GENERAL: Dear me!
T HE PAVEMENTS OF Lisbon were a sea of cream-coloured stones with patterns picked out in black. The streets of Lisbon range from mildly sloping to positively vertiginous. The stones are invariably worn smooth. That morning, I wore shoes I’d purchased in London after Hale’s unwitting snub to my fashion sense—the sturdy pair I had worn the night before were steaming on the radiator.
Two steps outside the hotel door, my feet went out from under me. I was saved by the ready hand of a doorman, who was probably stationed there for that express purpose. After that I went more cautiously until I discovered that a sort of ice-skating gait best kept me upright. Other pedestrians seemed not to have a problem. Perhaps it was these shoes?
I skated along the rain-slick Avenida da Liberdade for a while, barely glancing at the fine boulevard with its statues, fountains, plantings, and black-and-cream mosaic pavement. Electric trams clattered past, Lisboans skipped merrily up the glassy footways, and I reached the remembered kink in the road before my foot came down on a sodden leaf and I went down again, this time catching myself on a lamp-post. After that, I tottered. A tiny, hunched-back, ninety-year-old woman with a walking stick tapped briskly past. Two chattering women bustled past balancing baskets of fish on their heads; one of them was barefoot.
The Maria Vitória theatre evicting us in the afternoons required that we get an early start in the morning. I expected that I would be the first one there, since I’d already got the clear impression that Lisbon’s clock was two or three hours canted from that of London: Here, 10:00 p.m. made for an early dinner.
To my surprise, the outer doors were unlocked and I could hear voices. I shook the rain from my coat and hat, following the sound.
Three hats occupied the centre of the second row of seats, looking like the set-up for some Vaudeville jest: The one on the left barely cleared the seat-back; that in the middle was exaggeratedly wide and battered even in outline; the one sticking up on the right bore the perfect shape of the best in British haberdashery.
Fflytte on the left, Hale on the right, and between them La Rocha. All three were intent on the man occupying the stage.
In the seat behind La Rocha, straight-backed and hatless, sat Fernando Pessoa.
I draped my outer garments on the seat at the beginning of the row and sidled along to sit next to our translator. He gave me an uncertain smile before returning his attention to the conversation in front of him which, although it was in English, gave indications that it might require his services at any moment.
“No,” Hale was saying, “we only need twelve pirates.”
“Have more,” La Rocha’s incongruous high-pitched voice urged. “I have many.”
Fflytte, his eyes on the stage, said in a distracted manner, “We only have thirteen daughters.”
La Rocha stared down at the small man. Then he turned to his lieutenant from the previous evening, whose big figure was planted on the edge of the stage. “Treze filhas! É mais homen que parece.”
Pessoa’s back went straighter and his mouth came open as he prepared to spring into action, but he paused at the pressure of my hand on his sleeve.
“There may be a slight misunderstanding,” I suggested: La Rocha’s meaning had been clear in his tone of voice, if not his words, and I did not think relations would be improved by a translation of “He’s more of a man than he looks.” I leant forward to explain.
I left them exclaiming in disgust as they more or less carried the now-reeking Yorkshireman towards his room, while a platoon of mop-wielders took up formation behind them.
I cast a despairing glance at my wrist-watch: It was not yet nine o’clock in the morning. We had been in Lisbon just under twenty-four hours.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SAMUEL: Permit me, I’ll explain in two words:
we propose to marry your daughters.
MAJOR-GENERAL: Dear me!
T HE PAVEMENTS OF Lisbon were a sea of cream-coloured stones with patterns picked out in black. The streets of Lisbon range from mildly sloping to positively vertiginous. The stones are invariably worn smooth. That morning, I wore shoes I’d purchased in London after Hale’s unwitting snub to my fashion sense—the sturdy pair I had worn the night before were steaming on the radiator.
Two steps outside the hotel door, my feet went out from under me. I was saved by the ready hand of a doorman, who was probably stationed there for that express purpose. After that I went more cautiously until I discovered that a sort of ice-skating gait best kept me upright. Other pedestrians seemed not to have a problem. Perhaps it was these shoes?
I skated along the rain-slick Avenida da Liberdade for a while, barely glancing at the fine boulevard with its statues, fountains, plantings, and black-and-cream mosaic pavement. Electric trams clattered past, Lisboans skipped merrily up the glassy footways, and I reached the remembered kink in the road before my foot came down on a sodden leaf and I went down again, this time catching myself on a lamp-post. After that, I tottered. A tiny, hunched-back, ninety-year-old woman with a walking stick tapped briskly past. Two chattering women bustled past balancing baskets of fish on their heads; one of them was barefoot.
The Maria Vitória theatre evicting us in the afternoons required that we get an early start in the morning. I expected that I would be the first one there, since I’d already got the clear impression that Lisbon’s clock was two or three hours canted from that of London: Here, 10:00 p.m. made for an early dinner.
To my surprise, the outer doors were unlocked and I could hear voices. I shook the rain from my coat and hat, following the sound.
Three hats occupied the centre of the second row of seats, looking like the set-up for some Vaudeville jest: The one on the left barely cleared the seat-back; that in the middle was exaggeratedly wide and battered even in outline; the one sticking up on the right bore the perfect shape of the best in British haberdashery.
Fflytte on the left, Hale on the right, and between them La Rocha. All three were intent on the man occupying the stage.
In the seat behind La Rocha, straight-backed and hatless, sat Fernando Pessoa.
I draped my outer garments on the seat at the beginning of the row and sidled along to sit next to our translator. He gave me an uncertain smile before returning his attention to the conversation in front of him which, although it was in English, gave indications that it might require his services at any moment.
“No,” Hale was saying, “we only need twelve pirates.”
“Have more,” La Rocha’s incongruous high-pitched voice urged. “I have many.”
Fflytte, his eyes on the stage, said in a distracted manner, “We only have thirteen daughters.”
La Rocha stared down at the small man. Then he turned to his lieutenant from the previous evening, whose big figure was planted on the edge of the stage. “Treze filhas! É mais homen que parece.”
Pessoa’s back went straighter and his mouth came open as he prepared to spring into action, but he paused at the pressure of my hand on his sleeve.
“There may be a slight misunderstanding,” I suggested: La Rocha’s meaning had been clear in his tone of voice, if not his words, and I did not think relations would be improved by a translation of “He’s more of a man than he looks.” I leant forward to explain.
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