A Small Death in Lisbon. Robert Thomas Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

      ‘Because I don’t need to go.’

      Her eyes narrowed.

      ‘Perhaps you’re here to work?’

      ‘On the contrary, I’m here to dance which I hope we can do again.’

      He bowed and she let him brush her dimples with his lips before returning to her seat.

      Felsen found Poser with his nose navigating the inside of a brandy glass.

      ‘You seem to have the measure of this place already,’ said Poser, leaning back from the fumes.

      ‘I don’t think so, Poser. It’s just that you and I see things differently. You’re a diplomat who wants to know what everybody’s thinking. I’m an opportunist who wants to know what everybody’s doing. Madame Branescu’s another. We recognized each other, that’s all.’

      ‘But what could you possibly do for each other?’

      ‘You’ll see, you’ll see,’ he said, and moved off.

      More people drifted into the casino – a mixed crowd, some happy and smiling in spectacular evening dress, others hunched and furtive in borrowed clothes. Felsen shouldered his way through to the cashier and made straight for the roulette table. Only fools played roulette.

      He came across the usual sights and smells of the inside of a casino but this time their distinction was sharper and more poignant. The tables were lit by the normal harsh glare of avarice – an unblinking, hard-swallowing need. But the air in between was layered with cigarette smoke and a fear, so pungent, it cut the back of Felsen’s throat like steaming vinegar. Occasionally carefree elation broke out of the canopy like tropical birds from the forest, but all the time, crouching lower and lower, a grim desperation sweated will into cheap shirts and shored-up evening dresses. The hopes riding on the clicking, chattering, hopping ivory ball were either nothing or everything. The backing for each milled chip on the green baize was either a banknote from the top of the next block or the last family jewel in the case. The faces closest to the table, the most avid, were ones that would either pale to translucence at a jaunty jump of the ball or, like the costive patient, would momentarily flood with relief at a perfect movement.

      Felsen stood back from the crowd on the roulette table, only his starched shirt-front picking up the edgy light. An American talked loudly over his shoulder at anyone who’d listen, while slapping down the maximum bet on a number he didn’t have to think about. He stopped only to glance at the ball and to cheer when he won and shrug when he lost. Next to him, seated and humped with age, bathing in the sunny warmth of his stacked chips, was an elderly, spectral, threadbare aristocrat, probably Russian, who gripped her minimum-stake chips with a tight, white-knuckled, sinewy hand. An Englishman, impeccable in his stiff wing collar, looked down his nose at the turning wheel and disdained all winning numbers until his collar was all the stiffness left in him. His mouth had already taken on the sneer of someone who’d have to face bread and horse mackerel for lunch until the next remittance. In front of Felsen a minute Portuguese woman, who wore the rosette of the Legion of Honour, was smoking cigarettes through a six-inch holder and wore gloves to her armpits. She played for amusement and gave cigarettes to a young woman sitting at her side who smoked them too quickly with her chest pressed against the wood of the table as if she might influence the turn of the wheel. The young woman had a single minimum-stake chip which had scored red marks on to the palm of her hand. It was a confused chip that could look confident on its own square right up until the call for last bets, when it would have to join other chips on nearby squares, before suffering the indignity of being taken back. It survived five turns of the wheel like that, until it found a home on number five, which had come up twice in ten minutes. The wheel turned, the ivory ball span and clicked, the white hand came out.

      ‘Madame,’ said the croupier severely, and the hand shot back.

      The ball settled in twenty-four and the hot chip was raked in. The young woman’s head dropped. The Portuguese lady’s hand found her back and patted it. She gave her another cigarette. The woman stood and turned and she found Felsen’s eyes on her. She smiled.

      ‘Mr Felsen, isn’t it?’

      ‘That’s right. Miss van Lennep,’ he said giving her a stack of chips. ‘Would you put these on red for me?’

      The transfusion had an instant effect. The anaemia was gone. Blood thumped again. Red came up. She turned.

      ‘Put them all on even,’ said Felsen.

      Even came up. He split the chips and gave her half.

      ‘Those are for you. If you have to play, play fifty/fifty but remember there’s a zero on the wheel which always tips the odds away from you, so . . .’

      She’d already turned back to the table before she realized that the last piece of advice was the most important.

      ‘So what?’ she said.

      ‘So don’t play when it matters, only for fun.’

      The Portuguese woman, who was the same size standing as the young woman was sitting, nodded agreement. Laura van Lennep put the chips in her handbag. Felsen offered her his arm. They went to the Wonderbar and drank whisky which she diluted with soda. They danced СКАЧАТЬ