Pereira Maintains (1994) by Antonio Tabucchi
Good Reads meta-data is 196 pages, rated 4.18 by 27,893 litizens.
Genre: Fiction.
DNA: Portugal.
Verdict: Pereira maintains.
Tagline: What did Pereira do? What will Pereira do?
It is the high summer in the Lisbon of 1938 Dr Pereira, editor of a minor literary page on a minor weekly newspaper, plods though life, obese, a widower, inward-looking, and slowly repeating each day the day before when by accident he comes across two young idealists out to save the world.
Surprising himself, Pereira helps them with some small change, and then a few escudos, then a few more, and then shelters one of them, well two, because, from the shadows, a third emerges. Little by little he does more and more for them.
It is neither a good time nor a good place to take even little chances. Salazar’s regime is determined not to offend the great powers, starting with neighbour frenemy Spain then tearing itself apart in a savage civil war, nor the distant giant Germany still less Portugal’s historic ally Great Britain. To walk a fine line among these traps, the regime has given free rein to the Polícia Internacional e de Defies do Estado (PIDE), which encourages denunciations of anyone and everyone, and sure enough and soon enough Pereira is reported by a concierge who found his last Christmas tip inadequate, perhaps, thinking a new tenant would tip more. Those young people hiding in his flat are exposed.
The situation goes from bad to worse, but unlike most others, Pereira has a life boat. His night job has been translating French literature into Portuguese and this means he speaks French and has connections in France, so he packs a bag and scoots. Yes, we know this haven will not long be safe, but it is enough at the time.
Pereira’s lonely and morbid day-to-day life in the scorching heat of day and the suffocating heat of night is well portrayed in short chapters with limpid prose. It brings to life something of the Lisbon we visited a few years ago.
It is written almost as the confession of a crime: Intriguing, kind of a reverse krimi, as Pereira confesses how he came gradually to commit the crimes he did against the regime without ever quite intending to do so.
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