Revenant Read Online Free PDF Page B

two closest wheels up on the edge of the curb where there weren’t any uprights and drive half up on the sidewalk, honking its horn like a frustrated goose before bolting back into traffic to a cacophony of other horns and outraged curses from some of thepedestrians. Not all the pedestrians seemed upset or even surprised, however, even as they scattered away from the pushy little car. Two older women wearing black dresses simply stepped aside, watched the disturbance, and shook their heads. Then they shrugged, and walked on, their shopping bags hanging limply off their arms as they chattered to each other, heads turned inward.
    I went into the sweater shop, buying time and hoping to get a better look at the area without being too conspicuous. The air-conditioning was on and I shivered in the sudden cool. An attractive middle-aged woman wished me bom dia and seemed to be offering assistance, but I wasn’t sure. She might have been asking if I liked cashmere socks for all I knew. I apologized for my lack of Portuguese, and she replied in unhalting English in the same not-quite-Spanish accent Rafa had.
    “Oh, are you American?”
    “I’m from Connecticut,” I replied, picking a state at random.
    She seemed puzzled. “That is in the United States?”
    “It’s on the East Coast, near New York.”
    “Oh! Yes, I know New York. You will have beautiful autumn leaves soon. Perhaps you’ll want a warm shawl to take home,” she said, turning her hand gracefully toward a rack hung with folded lengths of knitted silk and wool, some so intricate and fine that they looked like lace.
    “They’re lovely, but, in fact, I’m lost.”
    She seemed disappointed but rallied a smile anyhow. “Perhaps I can help you with that. What place were you looking for?”
    “The doll hospital.”
    Her smile broadened, showing teeth that were clean and white, but more crooked than most Americans’—I’d noticed that our dental fetish doesn’t extend much past Canada. “Ah! O Hospital deBonecas! It is on the north side, near the Nestlé kiosk—the blue ice-cream bar.” She walked me outside and pointed up the square to the small blue lump of a prefab vendor’s booth with a yellow post sticking out of its roof at an angle. I’d thought it was a newsstand, but I could just make out the word NESTLÉ on the post—which I supposed to be the stick of a blue-wrapped frozen dessert. The bright little building sat just inside the pedestrian bollards, almost daring cars or buses to swipe it. “The hospital’s door is just behind the kiosk,” the clerk said, “past A Coutada—the hunting shop—and next to the jeweler in the building with the tiles.”
    “Thank you,” I said, giving her a smile since I had nothing else.
    She returned a smile and a slight shrug. “ De nada . I hope you enjoy it.”
    I thanked her and walked up the arcade in the general direction she’d pointed, since it would have been suicidal to try to cross the street diagonally with the current traffic. In the empty center I could see the black shade of the now-gone market building hanging over the large shape of the older building, which seemed to heave and fall apart like a time-lapse film, over and over, accompanied by the rumbling and shrieking of destruction and the sobbing of mourners. Having grown up in Southern California, I knew the sound of an earthquake when I heard it, even at accelerated speed. I remembered Carlos saying that Lisbon had experienced a devastating quake in the mid-eighteenth century and it had been partially his doing. If this shadowy disaster film was part of that, it was far worse than what my imagination had originally conjured. The ancient building collapsed into rubble in minutes, crushing people inside and tumbling stones into the street to kill still more. Then great waves of seawater rolled over the wreckage and away again, leaving everything that remained to be engulfed in sudden flames that turned the water to steam.