There was always a multinational crowd waiting for Alfonso to pull up his shutters, not only to grab the newsprints of their enemies, but also to sweep away any reading material they did not want their adversaries to see.
Once there was a lull in his customers, Alfonso pulled a stack of papers from beneath his register. She accepted the pile and hastily pushed them into her messenger bag, but not before catching sight of the newest edition of Das Reich stating “The Most Dangerous Enemy” in a headline across the top with a picture of Jews peacefully holding up a Star of David and what appeared to be the list of commandments. Disgust for the Nazis curdled in her stomach.
“Obrigada, Alfonso.” She passed over a wad of escudos, carefully precounted and folded neatly in half.
He put two fingers to his right eyebrow and offered her a mock salute as she strolled toward Rossio Square. As she walked, she jostled her messenger bag in an attempt to wriggle the pile in better. The thing was an inch too small, and nothing ever seemed to fit in correctly.
The owner of a kiosk beside the ever-popular Nicola’s café was a curmudgeon who scowled at every nationality and disposition, equal to all in his displeasure for humanity. But he had a knack for somehow procuring Der Angriff, a licentious German publication laden with anti-Semitism that ironically and sadistically claimed to be “for the oppressed against the exploiters.” Ava had stopped skimming that paper for possible war details and did not envy those whose jobs it was to scour the mendacious text for clues on Nazi war tactics.
She thanked the owner who grunted in return and strode back through the narrow doorway edged in lovely white and blue tile work that appeared to be from another century. Already café tables and chairs were pulled out into the warm sunshine where men and women lounged beneath a fine, opaque mist of cigarette smoke. Though she had only been in Lisbon for just under a month, it was easy to discern the refugees and guess what stage of their flight they were in.
The newly arrived were initially rigid, vigilant, their gazes darting this way and that. Then, caught in the pull of the waiting cyclone, they relaxed back into their seats, resigned to the interminable drag of time looming ahead of them. And then there were the agitated, lucky few whose fingers drummed with impatience, their visas in order and tickets for passage secured as they watched the calendar for the day creeping ever closer of a ship that may or may not arrive.
When she had grudgingly flown on the plane to Lisbon, she had not appreciated what a luxury it was. The prices to depart from Lisbon were so exorbitant that even some of the wealthy refugees could not afford them.
Regardless of which circle of hell they found themselves twisting through, the story of their struggles was written on every person. It was in the gauntness of their cheeks and the slender, frail appearance of their limbs. It was in how the children were too quiet, made solemn by the witness of images none should be subjected to regardless of age. It was in the clothes they wore, some too fine for the setting, others threadbare but clean, washed and worn daily without any other alternatives. And it was in the jewelry that adorned the women with ropes of necklaces dripping from their slender necks, bracelets layering their bony wrists and heavy jeweled ear bobs tugging at their lobes.
A few of those children perked up as Ava arrived, remembering her from her previous interactions with them. She pulled four books from her bag, purchased with her own money from Livraria. There was a Polish children’s story with brightly colored drawings of animals in a forest, a similar one in French and two larger texts in French and German for slightly older readers.
The gifts were received with a joy that was echoed in their mothers’ watery thankful smiles that superseded all language. Though small, Ava knew the importance of those stories. They were a friend in a foreign, lonely place, a liberation of one’s mind from the prison of circumstance, an escape from life’s most brutal blows. Losing herself in stories had gotten Ava through leaving her world behind to live with Daniel after her parents’ deaths, following Jo March’s lead with the example in Little Women of finding solace in the written word.
Her final stop was the Livraria Bertrand where she basked in the musty scent of old books that tickled the edges of her memories of the Rare Book Room. There were always treasures to unearth within the homey Portuguese shop—German manuals, a Hungarian map, a pamphlet of some kind in Japanese, all items she quickly purchased.