The hut was situated in the middle of the clearing that separated the cottage from the forest. It was a spacious round hut made of straw reeds, like those of the Negroes, but more robust in appearance. On the inside the reeds were whitened with lime. In the center was a little platform with a reading-desk, and leaning against the wall a modest bench. There was nothing else. Wilfred Cotton invited me to sit down, went up on the platform, opened a book which he had held under his arm, and said, “William Shakespeare. King Lear. Act One. Scene One. A state room in King Lear’s palace.”
He read, or better still, he recited, with a surprising intensity, all the first act and half of the second. He was a Lear devastated by a mortal melancholy, but also a Fool sparkling with cynical, burning genius. Toward the middle of the second act, his voice seemed to betray his fatigue, and the conversation between Lear and Regan went slowly, perhaps a bit awkwardly. I thought of getting up, of saying to him, Enough now, Sir Wilfred, please sit down. It’s been lovely, but perhaps you’re tired. You look a little pale, too, you’re sweating. But at that moment the Duke of Cornwall spoke. He had a deep, troubled voice, full of foreboding. “Let us withdraw, ’twill be a storm!” And so the tragedy regained momentum, the voices got livelier, Gloucester leapt forward to say that the king was in a towering rage, that night was approaching and the winds becoming furious. And at that point the deep voice of Cornwall, as if thundering from the spacious room of a palace with very high ceilings, shouted to bolt the doors, in that tempestuous night, to protect themselves from the hurricane.
It’s intermission, said Wilfred Cotton. Shall we go to the foyer for something to drink?
The servant was waiting for us on the veranda of the cottage, where drinks were ready. We drank a cognac standing up, leaning on the wooden railing, gazing at the night before us. The monkeys, which all through twilight had made a frightening uproar, were now sleeping quietly in the trees. From the forest there were only rustling, stifled noises, a cry of a bird. Sir Wilfred asked me if the tragedy was to my liking. Yes, I admitted. And the interpretation, what did I think of that? Did I prefer King Lear or the Fool? I confessed that I felt the interpretation of the Fool was fascinating, so aggressive and passionate, almost demented. But to tell the truth, I had been overcome by the interpretation of Lear. There was something unhealthy, vile, about him, a metaphysical weakness, a condemnation. He agreed. For this reason the recitation of the Fool had been too hysterical, hallucinatory, feverish, because a strong “comic relief” was necessary in order to underline Lear’s obscure weakness. That Lear, he said, that evening rendered homage to Sir Henry Irving. I did not know him? It was normal — when he died perhaps I had not yet come into the world. Henry Irving, 1838–1905, the greatest Shakespearean actor of all time. He had the gestures of a king and the voice of a harp. Lear was his sublime role. No one had ever been able to equal it. His sadness was as deep as hell, and his torment was unbearable in the third scene of Act Five when he held his hands to his temples as if he wanted to protect them from an interior explosion and murmured, “She’s gone for ever. I know when one is dead, and when one lives. She’s dead as earth.”
But perhaps we can continue our conversation on another occasion, Wilfred Cotton said without a pause. The third act is about to begin.
For six months, until the end of 1934, every Thursday I went to the theatre with Wilfred Cotton. He was, from time to time, an awkward Hamlet, clumsy and cowardly, but also a kind Laertes; a mad Othello, but also a wicked Iago; a Brutus tormented and bitter, but also a presumptuous, scornful Anthony; and still many other characters in the pretense of joy and pain, of victories and defeat, on the shabby platform of the hut. Our evening conversations, at supper as in the foyer, were always polite without ever being friendly, cordial without ever being confidential, affable without ever being intimate. We talked very much about the theatre, and then about the climate, and the food, and the music. We thought highly of each other without ever admitting it, united by a complicity that expression would have irreparably compromised.
The night before my departure, as an added attraction — it was a Saturday evening — Wilfred Colton invited me for a good-bye supper. That evening, in honor of the happiness that shone in my face notwithstanding my careful control, he put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because he said that that comedy, written to celebrate a noble marriage, was also well suited to celebrate my divorce from a part of the terrestrial globe which perhaps I had not particularly loved.
We said good-bye at the theatre. I told him not to come to the truck with me, I preferred that we leave each other in that strange place which had been the scene of our curious relationship. I never saw him again.
In October of 1939, in my study in Lourenço Marques, a dispatch passed across my desk. It was a request from the British Consulate in Mozambique for the recovery of the body of a subject of His British Majesty, deceased in Portuguese territory. The subject was named Wilfred Cotton, sixty-two years of age, born in London, died in the district of Kaniemba. Only then, when the tacit understanding that I had stipulated at another time had no more reason to be, human curiosity got the better of me and I rushed to the British Consulate.
I was received by the consul, a good friend of mine. He seemed surprised when I revealed to him my old acquaintanceship with Wilfred Cotton, and even appeared slightly amazed that I did not know he had been a great Shakespearean actor, much loved by the English public, who had disappeared from the civilized world years before without anyone ever succeeding in tracing him. With confidentiality that was not usual with him, the consul also wanted to reveal to me the reasons that had induced Sir Wilfred Cotton to go off to die in that remote corner of the world. I believe that to report them would add little to this story. The reasons were generous, noble, perhaps pathetic. They would have suited not at all badly a play by Shakespeare.
THE BACKWARDS GAME
When Maria do Carmo Meneses de Sequeira died, I was gazing at The Young Ladies in Waiting by Velásquez in the Prado Museum. It was a July noon and I did not know that she was dying. I remained looking at the picture until quarter past twelve, then I left slowly, trying to carry away in my memory the expression of the figure in the background. I remember that I thought of Maria do Carmo’s words: “The key to the picture is in the figure in the background — it’s a backwards game.” I crossed the garden and took the bus as far as the Puerta del Sol, had dinner in the hotel — a well-chilled gazpacho and fruit — and went to lie down in the dimness of my room in order to escape the midday heat.
The telephone woke me around five, or perhaps it didn’t wake me. I found myself in a strange drowsiness. Outside hummed the city traffic and inside hummed the air conditioner, which in my consciousness, however, was the motor of a little blue tugboat that crossed the mouth of the Tagus at twilight while Maria do Carmo and I watched it. “There’s a call from Lisbon,” the voice of the telephone operator told me. Then I heard the little electric discharge of the switch and a masculine voice, indifferent and low. He asked my name and then said, “I am Nuno Meneses de Sequeira. Maria do Carmo died at noon. The funeral will be tomorrow at five. It was her express wish that I call you.” The telephone made a click and I said, “Hello, hello.” “They hung up, sir,” said the operator. “The connection is broken.”