Pereira Maintains

"This is a fascinating book. Antonio Tabucchi was Italian. He spent a lot of time in Lisbon and clearly loves Portugal and the Portuguese language. ‘Pereira maintains’ is an odd phrase. We quite quickly pick up that this is a police report. Pereira maintains ‘he met him one summer’s day…’ So we’re being told second hand something that Pereira has said. It’s a difficult way of writing because you’re at a distance from it. And you have to maintain the voice. And we see Pereira, this character, through a different pair of eyes. The character of Pereira, as viewed through this anonymous police investigator is not particularly spectacular. He’s an elderly man in his sixties; he’s overweight; he’s a widower; he loved his wife very dearly: he talks to a photograph of her which, in a sentimental kind of way, is his love life; and he’s a journalist. He runs a culture page on a new magazine called Lisboa and is quite proud of this position. Not very much goes into the culture page: obituaries, announcements of this or that, translations of nineteenth-century French short stories, which he does himself but doesn’t sign. It doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but it gives him a living, and he lives in a very steady way. He has a housekeeper who makes his breakfast. He strolls to work. He always eats in the same café—always an omelette aux fines herbes and a little glass of lemonade. So this is a steady, comfortable, quiet, very unprepossessing life. But we’re in Portugal, under Salazar, and there’s a civil war going on in Spain next door, and the looming European war is now becoming more and more obvious on the horizon. Into this comfortable life of Dr Pereira comes a young man called Monteiro Rossi, who is an Italian student who turns out to be a political activist—this was extremely dangerous in the Portugal at that time. Monteiro Rossi has a beautiful girlfriend called Marta. Pereira, of course, disapproves of them, but nevertheless can’t help being fascinated by them, and, in fact, falls in love with them a little bit because they’re both attractive characters. They’re young, they’ve got all the energy and the spirit and the verve that he looks back on with regret and misses. In a sense they become his children because he is childless. Little by little, he is drawn by his affection for these two into what looks like some sort of revolutionary movement or uprising. It doesn’t end well. I shouldn’t give out any spoilers for the story, because it’s a wonderfully well-told story. The danger gathers bit by bit very slowly, the screw tightens very, very slowly, but all the time, it’s getting worse and worse for everyone. It ends with a note of hope, because Pereira manages to escape, but ‘Pereira maintains…’, so who’s writing this report? When was it written? Was he captured? What’s going to happen to him? This is the wonderful thing about this book. It’s got great themes, loyalty, trust, aspiration towards truth, the verity of things in a very short book, just 194 pages long. You can read it in a day. I think it’s the most wonderful novel of the last 20 years. I can’t think of anything I admire more. It’s a miracle of storytelling. I haven’t read anything else by Tabucchi, but every time I’ve read this—and I’ve read it several times—I feel I must go out and read all of Tabucchi and make sure he’s published and translated properly. But certainly, this is a very important book. Politically it teaches us something about the value of loyalty, of hope, of trust, of things like that, even in a time that’s threatening, in a time of great danger. It’s done so gently, and so sweetly in a way. You really feel love for this chubby old man with his set routines, his omelettes and his lemonade. I just love it. I think it’s the most marvellous novel. He wants to keep politics at arm’s length. But he finds he can’t do that, because he’s drawn further and further in. It’s very interesting to see the other characters in the book, Doctor Cardoso from the thalassotherapeutic clinic, and the waiter who knows all the news before Pereira himself does. You get a picture of this old conservative set-in-its-ways society, which is on the verge of violent change. It’s done marvellously well. And, yes, there is a sort of nostalgia. This is summed up brilliantly by his conversations with his wife’s photograph. They were deeply in love, they had no children. She died and now all he has is a photograph, which he takes everywhere with him. When he leaves he takes the photograph, and he puts it in the case face up so that she can see around. You know, it’s silly, but people are silly and behave like that. It’s a wonderful portrait of a man. Yes, the ‘many different souls’ but with one superego. This is Freudian talk of the time, apart from anything else, but you have to make sure which of your souls is in charge. And, of course, that leads back to Pessoa’s heteronyms. Pessoa is referred to in the book several times, because he is such a towering figure in Portuguese literature and culture generally. Yes. His position as editor of the culture page, becomes more and more difficult to hold, because his editor is pressing him continually to big up Germany and do down France. Pereira is rather fond of France: he speaks French, he translates these French stories. But again, you can feel that his position as editor of the culture pages is a pretty precarious one, really. They’re not interested in culture. Not at all. The job is a kind of sinecure. One feels very deeply for Pereira and what’s going to happen to him, what we fear will happen. That’s right. And his final act, before he hits the horizon, as it were, is beautifully done. He does something very daring, and he will be punished for it. He’s set his cards on the table. He’s performed his acte gratuit, taken his step into the darkness. He’s committed himself finally. It’s an act of great courage and we see that and we applaud him."