women. Rahim fed them all, though not out of charity, for they were his bread and butter.
At the time he did identity papers, mostly. French work permits for the steady stream of Moroccans and Algerians heading north, and the occasional passport or student visa. Rahim was a stickler for secrecy, for keeping his work and personal lives separate; he’d rented a space out on the northwestern fringe of the city, a shabby little studio tacked on the back of a widow’s house, in the shadow of the old aqueduct. He told his landlady he was an artist.
When he had work, he would go there in the afternoons. Sometimes I would go with him. On a few occasions I even helped. But mainly, during the hours when he was gone, I just waited. I hadn’t really worked in months, hadn’t needed to.
Often I would walk around the city, up across the hills and through the ancient alleyways of the Alfama, or down the wide Avenida da Liberdade to the sprawling Parque Eduardo VII and the glittering glass dome of the Estufa Fria. Or I would take the train out to Belém and sit in the tower park and watch the mammoth container ships heading out to sea. Even this was part of the waiting, and the waiting itself was something I had become. Not myself but a perversion of myself, surrendered to the fetish of longing.
I saw John Valsamis as soon as I stepped out of Saudade, his silhouette like a clenched fist in the window of the café across the street. It was hardly a surprise, part of the game I’d known to expect. All the same, I hated the thought of being shadowed. I let him follow me down to the tram stop on the rua da Conceição, then slipped back out of the crowd just before the number 28’s doors banged shut.
A lie, I thought as I watched the tram start the long climb up the hill, and caught a passing taxi instead. I didn’t believe for a minute that Amadeo had been mistaken about having seen Rahim. And who was Gaspar protecting? Rahim? Himself? Or was it just instinct? I was an outsider now. Or was it Eduardo Morais whom Gaspar was trying to shield? Though neither of the brothers had confirmed my guess, it made sense that Amadeo would have been referring to the watchmaker.
Rahim and I had visited Morais many times, summoned for dinner or an afternoon of port and cards on his little back patio. Never business— Morais was a man who worked alone, an artist of the old school, meticulous in his skill— but as much as Morais preferred to work in solitude, he loathed the thought of drinking alone.
Morais lived not far from the Igreja de São Miguel, on a tiny alley in a honeycomb neighborhood at the bottom of the Beco de Santa Helena. It was a warren of streets far too narrow for a car, so I had the taxi driver let me off at the Largo das Portas do Sol. It was still drizzling when I stepped out of the cab, and beyond the rain-lacquered railings and dripping foliage of the old square, the Tagus was shrouded in mist.
Twelve years had all but erased the exact location of Morais’s house from my mind, and it took me a good hour of wrong turns and backtracking through the impossibly narrow lanes to find Morais’s distinct green door and the elaborate azulejo that topped it, a tile-work portrait of Saint Vincent.
The house lay at the very back of a dead-end street, squeezed in against its neighbors and a slender flight of stone stairs that connected to the alley above. It was an unassuming structure, two stories of badly flaking plaster, windows underscored by once-elegant wrought iron. A narrow loggia ran the length of the second floor, the sagging balcony crammed with potted palms and unruly tomato plants.
I knocked once on the peeling door, and the sound echoed in the quiet street. In the doorway of the house opposite, an old woman huddled against the day’s chill, grilling sardines on a makeshift brazier, impassively taking me in.
I knocked again, louder, and heard someone move inside. After a few seconds, the green door swung open and a
At the time he did identity papers, mostly. French work permits for the steady stream of Moroccans and Algerians heading north, and the occasional passport or student visa. Rahim was a stickler for secrecy, for keeping his work and personal lives separate; he’d rented a space out on the northwestern fringe of the city, a shabby little studio tacked on the back of a widow’s house, in the shadow of the old aqueduct. He told his landlady he was an artist.
When he had work, he would go there in the afternoons. Sometimes I would go with him. On a few occasions I even helped. But mainly, during the hours when he was gone, I just waited. I hadn’t really worked in months, hadn’t needed to.
Often I would walk around the city, up across the hills and through the ancient alleyways of the Alfama, or down the wide Avenida da Liberdade to the sprawling Parque Eduardo VII and the glittering glass dome of the Estufa Fria. Or I would take the train out to Belém and sit in the tower park and watch the mammoth container ships heading out to sea. Even this was part of the waiting, and the waiting itself was something I had become. Not myself but a perversion of myself, surrendered to the fetish of longing.
I saw John Valsamis as soon as I stepped out of Saudade, his silhouette like a clenched fist in the window of the café across the street. It was hardly a surprise, part of the game I’d known to expect. All the same, I hated the thought of being shadowed. I let him follow me down to the tram stop on the rua da Conceição, then slipped back out of the crowd just before the number 28’s doors banged shut.
A lie, I thought as I watched the tram start the long climb up the hill, and caught a passing taxi instead. I didn’t believe for a minute that Amadeo had been mistaken about having seen Rahim. And who was Gaspar protecting? Rahim? Himself? Or was it just instinct? I was an outsider now. Or was it Eduardo Morais whom Gaspar was trying to shield? Though neither of the brothers had confirmed my guess, it made sense that Amadeo would have been referring to the watchmaker.
Rahim and I had visited Morais many times, summoned for dinner or an afternoon of port and cards on his little back patio. Never business— Morais was a man who worked alone, an artist of the old school, meticulous in his skill— but as much as Morais preferred to work in solitude, he loathed the thought of drinking alone.
Morais lived not far from the Igreja de São Miguel, on a tiny alley in a honeycomb neighborhood at the bottom of the Beco de Santa Helena. It was a warren of streets far too narrow for a car, so I had the taxi driver let me off at the Largo das Portas do Sol. It was still drizzling when I stepped out of the cab, and beyond the rain-lacquered railings and dripping foliage of the old square, the Tagus was shrouded in mist.
Twelve years had all but erased the exact location of Morais’s house from my mind, and it took me a good hour of wrong turns and backtracking through the impossibly narrow lanes to find Morais’s distinct green door and the elaborate azulejo that topped it, a tile-work portrait of Saint Vincent.
The house lay at the very back of a dead-end street, squeezed in against its neighbors and a slender flight of stone stairs that connected to the alley above. It was an unassuming structure, two stories of badly flaking plaster, windows underscored by once-elegant wrought iron. A narrow loggia ran the length of the second floor, the sagging balcony crammed with potted palms and unruly tomato plants.
I knocked once on the peeling door, and the sound echoed in the quiet street. In the doorway of the house opposite, an old woman huddled against the day’s chill, grilling sardines on a makeshift brazier, impassively taking me in.
I knocked again, louder, and heard someone move inside. After a few seconds, the green door swung open and a
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