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186 PAGES

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By Marion Lignana Rosenberg

Jan. 5, 2000 | "What does it mean to be against death?"

A heady question, that, and not the kind you would expect to find at the climax of a murder mystery. But Antonio Tabucchi's "The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro" is not your typical murder mystery. In fact, it's not much of a mystery at all. Starting with the discovery of a headless corpse near a gypsy camp, its plot, which centers on drug trafficking and state corruption in contemporary Portugal, unravels with surprising ease and inevitability; most of the puzzle pieces are simply handed to Firmino, the young journalist who chronicles the novel's events, by a series of remarkably obliging witnesses.

No, enigmas of an altogether more vexing type permeate this brainy page turner. Like the Italian novelist's much admired "Pereira Declares" (1994), "The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro" pits a motley crew of bohemian characters -- intellectuals, transvestites, members of the economic underclass, as well as actual Gypsies -- against apologists for "military valor, devotion to the flag, lofty patriotism, the defense of true values, the struggle against crime [and] perfect trust in the State and Nation."

If the background has changed -- the seaport city of Oporto instead of Lisbon, neo-liberal democracy instead of the Salazar regime -- the underlying moral rot remains the same, and the people on the margins, like victims of some Kafkaesque machine, bear the consequences of official abuse and neglect in their flesh. Manolo the Gypsy, for example, once a proud craftsman, must now pick his way through lots littered with condoms and syringes to attend to his humblest needs; and Damasceno Monteiro himself, a hapless devil who steals a cache of heroin meant for a more powerfully connected dealer, pays for his miscalculation with torture, death and decapitation with an electric carving knife.

Kafka, in fact, is invoked repeatedly in this novel, as are Lukács, Camus and Austrian legal philosopher Hans Kelsen, whose theory of the "basic norm" the lawyer for the Monteiro family accuses of concealing a "vampire," ungeheuer (monstrous) like the vermin in "The Metamorphosis." It's all a bit much at times and may well prove baffling to readers who aren't conversant with Continental philosophy. Fortunately, Tabucchi's lush and evocative prose also conjures up a vivid sense of old town Oporto's sweltering, labyrinthine streets and paints mouthwatering pictures of the local cuisine, such as tripe ŕ la mode d'Oporto and rice with red beans and fried bass, described in loving, lingering detail.

And Tabucchi often manages to make his points through less abstruse and didactic means -- the lurid dispatches Firmino dutifully grinds out for his scandal sheet, O Acontecimento (whose motto is "What every citizen needs to know"), and wryly surreal exchanges such as this one between Firmino and a waiter on a late-night train whose stock has run dry:

     "So what's to be done?" asked Firmino.
     "You cannot stay here without ordering something," repeated the waiter, "but you cannot order anything."
     "I don't follow the logic," retorted Firmino.
     "It's Company regulations," explained the waiter placidly.

Though sometimes preachy, "The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro" is a gripping read: Lithe, elegantly plotted and, with its unblinking scrutiny of the measures deployed against "people aiming to subvert our culture," disconcertingly timely for readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Patrick Creagh's translation is on the clunky side, far from the apparent artlessness of the original. Still, "The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro" is a bracing, clearheaded look at the not-so-inextricable crimes that are passed off as justice in our supposedly evolved, transparent democracies.
salon.com | Jan. 5, 2000

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