Pereira Maintains

Statement I

Onthematterofheat

Pereira maintains… the heat in Lisbon that August was unbearable, that he sweated through his shirt in the office of the Lisboa, and that at the Café Orquídea he ordered, as on every other day, an omelette aux fines herbes and a lemonade with a great deal of sugar.

The city was calm that week, and the front page of the Lisboa announced the most luxurious yacht in the world, sailing from New York.

It was not only the weather that made the air difficult to breathe.

Statement II

Onprofessionalduties

Pereira maintains… his duties were confined to the culture page of the Lisboa, which he edited alone, and that he had taken to preparing obituaries in advance, for writers who were still living, so that death would not catch the page unready.

The page was to carry translations and anniversaries, and no comment on the war across the border in Spain.

He did not ask himself whose deaths could not be printed at all.

Statement III

Ontheyoungman

Pereira maintains… he engaged a young man, Monteiro Rossi, to write these advance obituaries, and that everything the young man delivered proved unpublishable.

The piece on García Lorca was set aside, because it stated that the poet had been murdered at Granada, by men of the Falange.

The future had entered his office without permission.

Statement IV

Onagrowingunease

Pereira maintains… news began to reach him all the same — from Manuel, the waiter at the Café Orquídea, from his friend Father António — and that it troubled him, though none of it concerned the culture page.

It was said that in the Alentejo a carter, a socialist, had been shot dead on his cart, though no paper carried a line of it.

In Lisbon itself, in broad daylight, men were beaten in the streets by the political police.

What he could not publish began to weigh more than what he printed.

Statement V

Ontheconfederationofsouls

Pereira maintains… at the thalassotherapy clinic at Parede, Dr. Cardoso set out for him the theory of the confederation of souls: that the self is not one but many, governed by a hegemonic soul, and that in some men, after long quiet, a new soul rises to take command of the confederation.

He recognized the diagnosis. Something in him had already changed leaders.

Statement VI

Onwhatoccurredintheapartment

Pereira maintains… on the last evening three men came to his flat in the Rua da Saudade, that they said they were police, though they showed no papers, and that he was made to wait in the dining room. He maintains that what follows is difficult to set down.

Passage withheld — select to disclose

From the bedroom where they questioned the young man, Pereira heard the blows, and then nothing at all.

When the men had gone, Monteiro Rossi lay dead on the floor, and no ambulance and no police could be called.

There are events after which a man can no longer maintain anything but the truth.