The curve of the hill was sometimes so steep that you expected everything to slide and go clattering and tinkling down to the bottom; why did it move me? Of course; it made me think of the curve of the earth…
I was so absorbed I forgot about Alex. It was ages since I’d managed to do that; I no longer felt safe enough to forget her, but briefly, there, I did escape. I was following my nose, fascinated, criss-crossing between the narrow aisles, nodding to the thin stall-holders, who smiled at me with a flash of filling, patient faces burnt black by the sun, crouching beside their empire of rubbish. ‘English,’ I said, apologetically, when they started a sales patter in fast Portuguese. ‘Take dollar,’ they said, and I moved on. ‘Take traveller cheque…’ I waved, placating.
The most disturbing things were the most personal; false teeth, outmoded hearing aids, glasses — broken glasses, lensless glasses, an optical nightmare of useless glasses — and not far away, with the bereft false teeth, what looked like an array of children’s dental braces, what use was another child’s dental brace?
All of a sudden I thought of Isaac. As if all the lost things in his absent-minded life had been reassembled here, but he was forgotten. His glasses, his wallet, the dental brace that had made his smile so sad, in his teens…
I stood in the blazing sun and felt cold. It was like looking at a pile of bones, and suddenly the whole landscape shivered and swam in the sun like a field of bones, blinding white, the dreadful remains of some final earthquake.
The sun went in. The moment passed. Nothing had happened, the salesman smiled, he had a daisy in the brim of his hat, the glasses were only glasses again. I realised Alex wasn’t there.
I stared around me in stupid panic, the Feira da Ladre was covered in shadows, flitting silently from blanket to blanket, shadowy people with solemn eyes, poor Portuguese I had failed to notice, the salesmen were skeletons, leering at me, broken bicycles, a fork, a clock, had my whole life been as random as this?
Then I spotted her coming down the hill above me, the sun came out, her hair lit up, but I was noticing her haughty walk, every bone and ligament discontented; she wore dark glasses but her mouth was set.
‘Can we leave this ridiculous place?’
It was not like her to ask permission. ‘Of course. I thought perhaps you’d already gone…’
That snapped a cord; she was suddenly raving. ‘How the hell can I leave? You’ve got the fucking money! And the fucking keys! And the fucking map!’
‘But — you didn’t want to bring a jacket, or a handbag. I’m carrying them because you asked me to —’
‘Precisely, so you have to think about me! You can’t go footling off on your own! You can’t just act as if I don’t exist! I was lost, and then I was watching you, you were like a little dog going after a scent, you never looked for me, not once!’
And then I realised it wasn’t just anger, the big tears rolled down from under her glasses, her narrow black glasses, so hard, so smart, and her painted lips collapsed, shivering, a small dark animal dying in the desert. She was wringing her hands and weeping, steadily. I was deeply moved; I was horrified. I had never seen her like this before. I put my arms round her shoulders and guided her away, stepping hastily over the crouching vendors who didn’t look up, we were irrelevant to them, we had spent no money, we were going away.
I stopped a taxi; she huddled against me, no longer accusing but crying quietly. Her warm tears on my cheek and my neck, the wonderful wetness of my shirt, we were close again, we were close at last, for the first time since we’d landed in Europe.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’ I felt it was, as long as she leaned on me like that.
‘I hated that place. It was like death.’
‘I’m sorry, it was my idea…’
‘Didn’t you hate it?’
‘Well… I was fascinated, actually.’
‘But everything was dirty and broken and useless…’
‘That was what I liked, in a funny way.’
‘I don’t understand you, Christopher.’
Later, in bed, where she clung to me, where we made love, where we made friends, I tried to explain to myself and her.
‘It was like an enormous museum. About human life, or human artefacts. But all set up by alien beings, who didn’t understand how to classify things… I liked the randomness.’
‘It wasn’t all random. There were those tins —’
‘OK, and the comic stall, and all those glasses —’
‘The dolls. That was what finished me off. They were so pathetic — disgusting, I mean. No one could ever want dolls like that.’
I’d seen the dolls, a field-hospital of dolls, lacking a leg, an arm, an eye, half their hair, a blouse, a skirt, yet each laid out lovingly by the vendor on its own small patch of blanket, so his goods might be seen to best advantage.
‘The way they were laid out. Like little dead bodies. Nobody would want them. They would lie there for ever.’
Extraordinary. Her eyes were full of tears again.
‘Alex… what is the matter? You sneered at the Portuguese for being sentimental about pigeons, now you’re getting weepy about a few dolls!’
‘Nonsense, I hated them, I can’t explain, it was the end of the world, that place. Nothing but the past. Everything — ugly. Neglected, broken, useless.’
She was still crying as she talked. I was missing something, not understanding.
‘Never mind, we’ll be in Sagres tomorrow.’
‘I’m… overtired. I’m going to sleep.’
On the train to the south next day we sat close together; she wanted me to look after her, it was as if she were convalescing from something, no longer impatient or independent. I loved to look after her, I always had. I felt perfectly hot and perfectly happy.
— She was human, after all. I had started to think she was inhumanly strong, indifferent, unchanging, doing her exercises morning after morning no matter how hot or humid it was, walking and dancing when mere mortals like myself were stretched on the bed with a long cool drink, never ill except for her headaches, and those were more often a sign of rage…
Outside the window the terrain got brighter, harsher, sharper, more desert-like. Grey spiny agave was the only vegetation. The occasional human figure was bowed and ant-like, tightly contracted against the light. The houses crouched, flat-roofed and shuttered, white and blind in the punishing sun. I thought of South America, where I’d travelled as a very young man, but never with Alex, that was not for her.