Maria Domingos leaned back on the satin pillows and watched the man put on his clothes. He was the only one of her clients who affected silk underwear. The men of Vila, even the richest, wore wool in winter and cotton in summer. Never silk.

He slipped on an alpaca jacket in the capital's latest style. "What shall I bring you from Lisbon next time i come up Perfume Chocolates? Something to wear?"

The girl demurred. "None of those things. What I'm interested in are those books you sell."

"The encyclopedia?! I can always count on you to come up with something unexpected - in bed and out!" He paused to light a long Brazilian cigar. "But do you know how expensive those books are, my girl?"

"I don't mean the whole set. Just one volume would be enough for me."

The man drew her silver comb through his sleek black hair. "Where did this sudden interest in books come from, menina?"

"From curiosity, I guess. There weren't any books at home. And here, Dona Cremilda has a Bible and her midwife's manual, but she won't let anyone else touch them." She did not go on to say that his being a book salesman also had some influence on the matter.

"And what use will one volume out of thirty be to you, my girl?"

"I've never told you this, but they took me out of school after the second class. I can hardly read at all. So one of those big thick books would keep me busy for the rest of my life."

The man tweaked her under the chin. "Well, I might have an extra sample in the car. I'll step down and see."

When he returned, Maria Domingos was up and wrapped in her lace negligée. The garment revealed numerous surfaces of a flawless skin. Topaz-blonde hair fell to her waist, and a hint of mischief twinkled in the emerald- green eyes.

With a slapstick bow, the man handed her a folio volume bound in red leather. The gold lettering on the binding read:

UNIVERSAL ENCYCLOPEDIA

Volume 24

Metaphysics to Norway

 

"Muito prazer, menina!" he smiled when he kissed her goodbye. "Enjoy it, my girl!"

 

The book rapidly became the young woman's most prized belonging. She gave it pride of place in her room, in the drawer of her shrine, where it reposed just beneath plaster figures of the Blessed Virgin and St. Eufémia. Except for the client who had presented it to her, she kept it hidden from the eyes of all visitors to the house. Occasionally, she read short passages to the other girls, and they deliberated over them together.

 

One afternoon some three months after the presentation, and still hours before the first clients were due, Maria Domingos presided over a cosy tea hour in her second-floor bedroom.

 

Opening the book with solemnity, she footslogged into the passage she had selected for the occasion: "Metaphysics can be considered as an enquiry into what exists, or what really exists."

 

"I get it," glossed buxom Daniela. "Most of the things people talk about don't exist at all. They're just words. Phoney. Nobody knows that better than we do."

 

The hostess took a sip of tea and went on laboriously. "Or again, the science of reality as opposed to appearance."

"Clear as can be," piped young Dores. "When a man's stripped, then you see the reality. As long as he's got his clothes on, he's just appearance."

 

"Another view is that it is the study of the world as a whole."

 

"Good," agreed the earnest Ana, biting into a cream tart. "I think we learn something from all our clients. Especially those from outside. The world's a lot bigger than just Vila."

 

"Finally," Maria Domingos concluded, "it may be defmed as a theory of first principles."

 

Daniela chuckled. "And it's important to know what they are. When I started here fifteen years ago, Dona Cremilda told me about the first principles that make the world go round: self-interest, money, and sex - in that order."

 

Lovingly, Maria Domingos kissed the tome and laid it back in its drawer. Those two magic words on its cover now bounded the whole of her higher knowledge, such as it was. Alone in her room, she loved to repeat the words again and again, like a Litany: Metaphysics ... Metafisica ... Norway ... Noruega.. Thoughts of anything outside those bounds never troubled her. No more than the average ancient worried about what lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules or the Indus River.

 

In Dona Cremilda's establishment, pregnancies were frowned upon. But alas, the nature of the business transacted within its walls was such that they did occur from time to time. In a city under the special protection of St. Eufémia, and given the madam's genuine piety, recourse was never had to abortion. Nor were any of the children, once they arrived, ever put up for adoption.

 

When Maria Domingos's svelte waist began to expand, her patroness sighed over the coming loss of turnover and made the necessary preparations. It was the first time, after all, in almost ten years of good service. With any luck, it would be the last.

 

Every month or so, the encyclopedia salesman drove through Vila and stopped at Dona Cremilda's elegant old townhouse for the night. As her term approached, Maria Domingos could no longer perform the operations he normally required. Even so, the man insisted on her and no other, and on leaving he paid as though full service with all the extras had been rendered. The madam's offer of a substitute for the duration was courteously declined.

 

As for Maria Domingos, she knew by a curious feminine instinct that the salesman was the father of her child. That knowledge she kept to herself. It only enhanced the special tenderness that she had always felt for the dashing Lisboan.

When labor set in, Dona Cremilda took charge with a firm hand. Having been one of Vila's most sought-after courtesans in her youth, the majestic madam had since ventured into midwifery, investment, management and pious works. In all four fields she had achieved wonders.

 

Now she arranged her implements on the bedside table and her patient on the bed, murmuring reassuring words as she worked. Maria Domingos clutched her rosary in her left hand. Her right hand rested squarely on the book.

When the decisive moment came, the madam switched from comfort to command. "Push, my child," she ordered. "Push hard!"

"O Blessed Virginl" shrieked Maria Domingos.

 

As Ana, Daniela and Dores chanted prayers at breakneck speed, Dona Cremilda lifted a baby girl up to the light. "What a love," she cooed. "She's going to be a beauty, just like her mother."

 

The next morning young Father Amaro, with an armful of tracts just off the press, looked in at the kitchen door. Despite a solid year-long campaign by Dona Cremilda and her forces, the priest had not yielded to the temptations of the house. Nor had any of the campaigners succumbed to his more rarefied allurements.

 

On this radiant summer morning, the madam called a truce. Graciously accepting the bundle of tracts, and promising to read them aloud to the girls, she persuaded the curate to follow her upstairs and baptize the establishment's youngest member.

 

In the bedroom, sunbeams bathed mother and child in golden light. Clad in her negligée, her hair tied back with a red ribbon, Maria Domingos gazed with adoration at the baby she was nursing. At the sight of her bare perfect breast, the visitor reddened.

 

With visible effort, he kept his eyes focused on the young mother's face. "What name have you chosen for your little girl?" he asked in his pastoral voice.

 

"Metaphysics of Norway," she answered promptly.

"What?!" Maria Domingos repeated her words. "But ... holy St. Eufémia" cried the priest. "What do those words have to do with your baby?"

 

"Everything," the girl replied simply.

 

"Metaphysics is a philosophical term," the man protested. "It's not suitable for a person. And what on earth is the child's connection with Norway?"

 

The mother would not be moved.

 

"At least," argued the priest, seeking to avoid total defeat, "she should have a name from the Calendar of Saints as well."

 

"All right, Father."

 

The young man wiped his brow. "Suppose we let the holy images in your shrine inspire us?"

"That will be fine, Father."

 

The ceremony proceeded with dignity. Dona Cremilda stood godmother, while Daniela, by procuration, stood godfather on behalf of the salesman. After a quarter of an hour, during which the baby uttered not a peep, it was all over.

 

That was how the beauteous Dona Maria Eufémia Metafisica da Noruega, the grandest madam in the city's long history, acquired her name. And how the simple folk of Vila came to have strange ideas about philosophy.

 

THE END

 

---

CHARLES EDWARD BROOKS is a translator and writer of novels, novellas and short stories. He divides the year between Zurich and a village in the mountains of northern Portugal.

 

Return to Left Curve no. 23 Table of Contents

Home