by Suzumo Sakurai
translated by Justin Jesty
I’m not sure how many of the people reading this will have heard of the Smiths, a band that stirred up the pop scene (in the UK at least) in the mid-80s, but in one of their very early numbers called “Handsome Devil,” Morrissey, the lead singer, sings the following lines.
You ask me the time
But I sense something more
And Sandra began by asking me the time too. I think she said, “Excuse me, do you have the time?” She spoke really smooth English, and it’s too bad I can’t reproduce the sound precisely in written Japanese. It had a pure ring to it, miles away from the mood of the Lisbon street, which came to me at that moment like the whisper of the virgin mother. Really though, thinking back on it now, at the beginning of the 21 st century it seems like most of the hardcore crooks have a smooth command of English. But I don’t mean to give the impression that Sandra was a hardcore crook. You could say this at least though. When you hear someone with polished English outside the English-speaking world, you should watch yourself. But the guidebook didn’t say anything about that. “Handsome Devil,” has this other clever line.
There’s more to life than books you know
But not much more
* * *
“Excuse me, do you have the time?”
At the sudden sound of English out of thin air, I stopped and turned around. It was on the street connecting the Plaza Restauradores and Plaza Rossio, near the center of Lisbon’s old town . The question had come from a young woman with flaxen hair tied back in a bun. Wearing tight blue jeans and a dark blue cut-and-sewn knit, open at the neck. She was frowning between the eyebrows and beads of sweat had appeared on her forehead and nose. Anxiety and exhaustion oozed out of her hazel eyes reducing her attraction slightly, but there was no changing the fact that she was a beautiful woman. I experienced a slight fluttering in my chest as I held the watch on my left wrist out towards her.
The woman tilted her chin a bit, looked at the dial of the Citizen, then sighed and shook her head slightly. In the hollow at the base of her neck, the tiniest piece of pearl or imitation pearl shook. She muttered something but I couldn’t catch what it was. Just my luck, or something like that.
“What’s wrong?” I said in English. English is the only language I can get by in apart from Japanese so there was nothing else I could use.
“The banks are closed,” she said as if talking to herself, and once more, this time more slowly and emphatically, shook her head.
I checked my watch again. It was three minutes past five. I didn’t know when Portuguese banks closed, but presumed from what she said that they must close at five.
“I needed to change some money,” she continued.
Then why can’t you go to one of the combio , I thought, some suspicion suddenly pushing up inside me. There were plenty of combio around. I had just come from cashing travelers checks at one myself.
Perhaps sensing my suspicion, she bristled and explained everything in a rush. With my listening ability I couldn’t catch every word and phrase without missing some parts, but I got the general drift. It seems this was the story. The woman lived in the Republic of South Africa, and had arrived in Lisbon that morning on a flight through Paris. Her checked bag had got lost. Then her shoulder bag was snatched when she was on the way to the hotel. She didn’t have anything with her but some rand from South Africa. She went to a combio to change them to euros but they turned her down flat. It was apparent she was going to have to go to a bank. But the banks had already closed. Her bag was supposed to be arriving on the next flight from Paris and she had to go to the airport to collect it, but she couldn’t get there because she didn’t have any euros.
“Like getting kicked when you’re down,” she added with a shrug. A self-deprecating smile appeared on her slightly dusky, slender face.
I had a definite feeling that the story didn’t fit together properly, but assumed it was more likely because I couldn’t completely understand her English than that it was something about her. I showed her a sympathetic face.
“Hey…,” she said as if she had just now realized my face was Asian. “Are you from Japan?”
“Yeah,” I nodded and looked into her face again. It occurred to me that her dusky complexion might come from some black parentage, maybe one quarter or something.
“I’m Sandra.” She introduced herself and extended her right hand. “Good to meet you.”
I introduced myself too and shook her hand. “You too.”
We introduced ourselves a little further. Why we were in Lisbon. How long were going to stay. What we did back home.
We walked side by side as we talked, and found ourselves crossing Plaza Rossio in the direction of Plaza Figueira. I felt myself ever so slightly lifted. It wasn’t just because she was beautiful. I had the feeling that we could become close friends (or maybe something more?). If you were to take all the people on the globe and divide them up, not by skin color or nationality or religion, but by lifestyle, sense of value, beliefs and stance and such, I was sure that Sandra and I would end up being in the same group.
“Do you think you could lend me some money,” Sandra cut to the chase as we entered Plaza Figueira.
I stopped and looked at Sandra. Sandra stopped and looked at me. Her eyes pleaded, looking as if she were trying to cover over her emotions with reason. As if to say, I know this is asking a lot, but there’s no one apart from you I can turn to right now.
“There’s a credit card I put in my suitcase for backup. If I take some money out on it I can pay you right back. It’ll just be for two hours.”
Fighting back the persistent doubt that was popping up again like a gopher in one of those carnival games I said, “Okay. I can lend you some.” I took a fold of cash out of my jeans pocket, picked out a ?50 bill and handed it to Sandra.
“Thank you so much. Muito obrigada,” Sandra said meekly in both English and Portuguese and smiled slightly. It was a smile I had experienced before. The kind of thing everyone has seen once or twice in the movies even if they’ve never encountered the real thing. Yep, it was that smile that comes at the moment when two people’s meeting shifts from a thing of chance to the inevitable.
Sandra wrote her email address in my travel notebook, along with the name, address and room number of the hotel where she was staying. I returned to my own hotel not far from Plaza Figueira, to a dim room where the window opened out onto the wall of the adjacent building, and I lay myself down on the wobbly bed that creaked mightily like an old fishing vessel. As I gazed at Sandra’s writing, I thought about the chances of her showing up for our meeting, and the chances of her simply skipping out. The more I thought about it, the more I began to feel that this issue was a critical question, one that was becoming tied up in my whole understanding of the world. If Sandra didn’t appear, I would continue wandering the seas of disappointment from here on out, but if she did appear, I might just catch sight of that land of hope.
Just as I expected, Sandra showed up at the cafe we had agreed on. Not even five minutes past the time we had set, eight o’clock.
“For Christ’s sake,” Sandra sighed as she sat down in the chair. “My luggage didn’t arrive.”
I nodded without saying anything, just barely managing to keep a smile from spilling out. The fact that she’d actually shown up was much more important to me than what she’d just said.
“The person said it’d definitely be on the flight that lands tomorrow morning.” With a handkerchief that had changed color with dampness, she wiped the sweat on her forehead and cast her eyes down. The shadow of anxiety and exhaustion that fell across her face had deepened to the point that it was difficult to distinguish from an expression of acquiescence and despair. “You just can’t trust them. I mean they said this morning that it would come on the evening flight.”
“It’ll get here tomorrow,” I said. I felt energy coursing through my entire body. “It just wasn’t your day today. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Sandra was clearly irritated at hearing me say this. “Is this all just someone else’s problem to you?” She had an almost accusing tone. “I can’t pay back the money you lent me if my bag doesn’t arrive.”
“I know. I’ve come to put my trust in the world whatever happens.”
Sandra stared into my eyes as if looking for the real meaning of my words, and then gave a laugh of amazement. “You’re a strange one aren’t you.”
“Maybe so,” I changed the topic. “You must be hungry. Why don’t we go get some dinner.” Sandra’s expression clouded over, so I quickly added, “if you don’t like me taking you out you can pay me back tomorrow.”
Sandra started to say something, stopped, and then nodded as if making up her mind. “Okay, let’s go.”
We had dinner at a clean, cozy restaurant on the slope leading towards Bairro Alto. From our seats at a table out on the cobbled street, we could watch the dusk sink into darkness over the buildings of the Baixa district, and the Castle of Saint George rising up on the hill of Alfama beyond. It was two days since I’d come to Lisbon, and I felt myself now settling into the old city.
“There’s one question I have,” I said after we toasted with red wine. “It’s about your name.”
“My name?”
“Sandra is a Portuguese name isn’t it? But you’re from South Africa.”
Sandra asked if she could have a cigarette. She took the Camel Mild I pulled out of the pack and offered her, and laid it between her lips with a curious care almost like a clarinet reed. I lit it with my lighter. After exhaling a long breath of smoke, Sandra finally spoke. “I was born in Mozambique. My father was the descendant of Portuguese settlers. When I was six my parents divorced and my mother took me back to her home in South Africa.”
“I see.” I nodded, satisfied. “So does your coming to Portugal have something to do with that?”
“Something like that. My relationship with my father was completely cut off. There were a lot of complicated issues.”
“Right.”
“So you had some doubts about me?”
“Some, yeah.”
“But you still lent me the money.”
“It was a kind of gamble.”
“But the reckoning just got put off until tomorrow.”
“This is already as good as winning.”
Sandra raised her voice and laughed. I was pulled in and laughed too. A dog was barking somewhere. The lonely sound of an accordion drifted in. The night was moonless, the first night of autumn, and the stars seemed to flash especially bright in a sky inked deep in blue.
“I have something I was wondering about too,” said Sandra. “The reason you came to Portugal. You like travelling to the ends of the earth?”
“Exactly. I’m drawn to marginal places.”
“You and I both live at the ends of the earth you know.”
“Sure I guess that’s true. Most of the time you don’t think about it that way though.”
“So why are you drawn to marginal places?”
“Well. Maybe because I’m a marginal person.”
“That’s a little dramatic don’t you think?”
“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and the visions in a peasant’s head on a hillside.”
“What’s that about?”
“The words of James Joyce.”
“Really?” Sandra looked deep into my eyes once again. The light in her eyes was beginning to melt the dingy frozen lump inside me. “You really are weird. That’s about all I can say.”
After that we ate a Portuguese meal of salt-baked sardines, chicken and clam stew, and octopus risotto. Our conversation wandered through travel, our families, and food, but just as many tributaries meet to form a great river, it eventually converged into topics like music, books, film, that is to say, art. For having grown up and lived in countries seemingly so different as Japan and South Africa, we were surprised at discovering how many tastes we shared. And as the surprise settled, it turned into happiness. I said I wanted her to read my books and she said she wanted to too, but even with English, Portuguese, Spanish and a little French, Sandra still couldn’t read Japanese. I felt cursed to be writing books in ? I mean actually living in ? such an idiosyncratic language as Japanese.
Sandra was clearly tired, so after dinner we called it an evening and arranged to meet at noon the next day. As I was paying the bill Sandra asked to borrow another ?20 so she could call her mother in Pretoria, and I happily gave it to her. I offered to take her to her hotel, but she refused, saying it wasn’t necessary. In any event, I had enjoyed the time with Sandra deeply, and I think she felt the same way. When we parted in Plaza Rossio she actually hugged me and said, “ honestly, thank you, if I hadn’t met you this would have been the worst day of my life.” I was going to be staying in Lisbon for a while, so I thought our relationship might become more intimate. I convinced myself of it, and found it hard to fall asleep after I lay down in bed because my heart was so filled with emotion.
The next day, Sandra didn’t show up. I waited exactly one hour, before setting off towards the hotel where she was supposed to be staying. I found the hotel immediately, but the reception told me there was no woman staying there by that name. I was stunned, but showed the man at the desk the note Sandra had written in my book. The man had black framed glasses and looked like a graduate student. He pursed his narrow lips tight and said, I’m afraid. “I’m afraid this hotel doesn’t have a room 424.”
I ducked into the first internet cafe I could find and sent Sandra an email. <The following addresses had permanent fatal errors> came back immediately. I tried a few times and got the same result. It was difficult to believe, it was something I didn’t want to believe, but there was nothing to do but accept the clear fact of it. I’d been tricked quite nicely. Sandra was a con-artist. I drooped like a plastic doll without enough air, and couldn’t get up off my chair for some time.
I continued my stay in Lisbon after this. I visited the famous sights, guidebook in hand like a good tourist, but spent more of my time walking the city with no particular destination, or sitting in cafes watching the passers-by. Lisbon was filled with an air of desperation that went against the image I had had of it. The cafe waiter with the demoralized face, made to wear a uniform that didn’t fit. The waitress in a restaurant whose every movement was tinged with irritation. The black men waiting with dull eyes for a bus that never seemed to come. The old woman selling flowers whose clothes were so dirty they could have been a beggar’s. The disabled person with a cracked voice asking for donations. The sad-looking street clown who was drawing no crowds. The still-young boy giving kisses to customers in the cafes in exchange for coins. The drug dealers wandering under the September sun, their bodies thickened out by raincoats. Prostitutes under the streetlamps striking lurid, kitschy poses. … But then again, this alone doesn’t create a fair picture of Lisbon. The man in the cafeteria I went to most days showed me many kindnesses, and there were any number of heartwarming scenes, like the old woman sitting in her apron on the steps up to Alfama, humming a song to herself as she gazed out over the River Tejo. But the images that really dug into my heart were the other ones, formed in the desperation of the people on the fringes of society.
It was on the last day before I left Lisbon that I saw Sandra again. It was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to go down. I was writing steadily in my travel notebook and sipping on an espresso that was too bitter at an outdoor cafe table on Avenue Almirante Reis. At that moment, the earsplitting roar of an engine interrupted my thoughts and I lifted my eyes from the notebook. It was a motorbike with two passengers, which for all the tremendous noise of its engine, passed in front of me so slowly it could have been in slow motion. The bike looked like it was going to self-destruct and fall to pieces right there, so cheap, old, even droll, that it was amazing it was moving at all. A woman was riding with her hand wrapped around the waist of a bearded man with sunglasses who was driving, and it felt for a second like I made eye contact with her, but it was probably my imagination. The woman was utterly enjoying herself. Her face was shining with hope and joy as if she had just now set out on a long journey to land’s end, together with the lover she loved. Yes, the beautiful young woman was Sandra ? there was no mistake ? how could there be.
Of course I would be lying if I said that some anger didn’t rush up inside me. But the scurrilous anger of my heart faded in the blink of an instant in the Lisbon street. In its place, a sadness and regret that Sandra and I hadn’t got any closer became clearer with the passing time. I wanted to talk much more with Sandra. I wanted to know her much more. I wanted her to know much more about me. So Sandra was a con-artist. She was probably always tricking silly tourists out of their money like that. But still, in this crazy world that always drives you to the edge, I’m convinced that she and I belong to the same group, that we are living on the same side. It’s not for us to be against each another. We have to join hands. Because one day we might have a chance to confront our real enemies.
* * *
I just checked, and discovered that the Smiths number “Handsome Devil” that I quoted at the beginning was on the B-side of their debut single, “Hand in Glove.” I found a fitting phrase in “Hand in Glove” to end this little story. It’s a little pessimistic though, perfect for that sad faced Morrissey.
I know my luck too well
I’ll probably never see you again.