Requiem by Antonio Tabucchi
* * *
1 António Botto (1897—1959), aesthete and poet. He was the author of the poems Canções (Songs) (1921), which caused a scandal in Portugal because of their blatantly homosexual content.
2 A philosophical-political movement, mystical and nationalistic in character, founded by the poet Teixeira de Pascoaes in the first decade of the twentieth century. Its name comes from the word saudade, which describes the melancholic nostalgia one feels for people, things, pleasures and times now lost.
3 See Note on Recipes, page 109
A NOTE ON RECIPES IN THIS BOOK
page 27 Feijoada is a bean soup or stew — each region of Portugal has its own variety — embodying a lavish selection of meats (pork being obligatory), sausage and vegetables.
36 Reguengos de Monsaraz is a well-known red wine from the region of that name in the Lower Alentejo.
37—8 Sarrabulho à moda do Douro, a rich dish from the North, which requires no description as Senhor Casimiro’s Wife provides the recipe.
40 Papos de anjos de Mirandela (angels’ double chins) are little confections of egg and almond, originating in the convents.
47 Migas, açorda and sargalheta are specialities of the Alentejo region. Migas, as the plural form of the word suggests, come in many forms: the basis is always constituted by homebaked bread allowed to go stale, then cooked over the fire with a little fat until it is reduced to a fried and dried sort of pulp which can serve as an accompaniment to meat or fish.
Açorda is a pulp made out of homebaked bread allowed to go stale and generally flavoured with garlic and coentros (fresh coriander leaves). It may serve to accompany meat or fish, or as the basis of more complicated recipes. The best-known variation is açorda de mariscos as mentioned on page 78, in which the pulp is flavoured with shrimp and other seafood and bound with fresh egg.
Sargalheta is a winter soup made of bacon, sausage, egg, potato and onion.
55 Pineapple (or orange) sumol is a fizzy drink flavoured with the fruit in question and very sweet.
59 “Janelas Verdes’ Dream”, the creation of the Barman at the Museum of Ancient Art (and thus of the author), derives its name from the Museum’s also being known as the Museum “das Janelas Verdes” (of the Green Windows), from the name of the street in which it is located.
78 Arroz de tamboril is rice cooked with monkfish, tomato, garlic and coriander leaves, served on the boil at the table in the pot in which it is cooked.
78 Açorda de mariscos is described in the note to page 47.
78 The sopa alentejana here discussed is supposed to be the simplest cuisine of the region — a cuisine based, like all the recipes of the poor, on few and simple ingredients (in this case, boiling salted water, toasted garlic bread, fresh coriander leaves and raw eggs), but abundant in soups of all kinds.
83 Ensopada de borreguinho à moda de Borba, an Alentejo speciality, is a stew of lamb’s flesh and offal flavoured with vinegar and served on thin slices of bread that thus turn into broth.
83 Poejada is a soup of stale bread, garlic, onion and fresh cheese, flavoured with poejos (a sort of wild mint).
100 Colares, near Sintra, is famous for its exquisite white wine.
102 As with every menu of “creative cookery” or nouvelle cuisine, that of Mariazinha — who has worked in a pousada, a State-run luxury hotel, often a converted castle, villa or convent, like the Spanish paradores — is entirely the product of fantasy. But as it is a “literary” menu it is worth clarifying the references:
Amor de Perdição is the title of the most famous novel (1863) by Camilo Castelo Branco, a great writer of the Romantic era. Fernão Mendes Pinto (c. 1510—83), navigator and adventurer, lived mostly in the Far East and wrote the Peregrinação, a sort of grandiose epic poem in prose. Still in the area of seaborne adventure is the História trágico-marítima, a miscellany ascribed to various authors, giving the accounts of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century shipwreck-survivors. “Interseccionismo” was an artistic movement founded by Fernando Pessoa in 1914 with the publication of his poem “Chuva oblíqua” (“Slanting rain”). The “Cantigas de escárnio e mal-dizer” (“Lays of slander and disdain”), are the satirical, comic-realistic form of the Galician-Portuguese lyric tradition between the late twelfth and early fourteenth centuries. As for the lake at Gafeira, it is a fantasy location in which José Cardoso Pires sets his novel 0 Delfim (1968). The recipe for enguias da Gafeira à moda do “Delfim” happily coincides with the traditional recipe for enguias à moda da Murtosa and is described in the text.
SERGIO VECCHIO
ALSO BY ANTONIO TABUCCHI
Letter from Casablanca
(Translated by Janice M. Thresher)
Little Misunderstandings of No Importance
(Translated by Frances Frenaye)
Indian Nocturne
(Translated by Tim Parks)
The Edge of the Horizon
(Translated by Tim Parks)
Pereira Declares
(Translated by J. C. Patrick)
The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro
(Translated by J. C. Patrick)
Copyright © 1994 by New Directions Publishing Corporation
Copyright © 1994 by HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright © 1994 by Antonio Tabucchi
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Originally published as Requiem by Quetzal Editores, Lisbon, in 1991. This translation is published by arrangement with Harvill, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Ltd., London. The “Note on Recipes” at the end of the book is reprinted by courtesy of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, © Feltrinelli 1992.
First published clothbound by New Directions in 1994 and as NDPaperbook 944 in 2002
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tabucchi, Antonio, 1943—
Requiem: a hallucination / Antonio Tabucchi ; translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8112-2249-5 (e-book)
I. Title.
PQ4880.A24R46165 1994
869.3’42—dc20 93-46672
CIP
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
Antonio Tabucchi, Requiem