The Surcharge

The decree arrived on a Thursday. By Friday it had been read, copied, argued over, and carried to Castres, who read it with the expression of a man who has been expecting bad news and has received it in a form slightly worse than anticipated. By Saturday morning Croft had a draft protest on his desk, written in his own hand, in the formal Portuguese of a diplomatic communication.

Four percent. On all British imports, applied from the first of March, held in a special account administered by the Secretary's office, designated for the reconstruction fund. The decree had the authority of an emergency measure — it did not require consultation, and the Factory's objection had no procedural ground to stand on. Croft had drafted protests before. He knew what they could do and what they could not. This one would be received, acknowledged, and filed.

He sent it anyway. It was the Factory's position that mattered, not the outcome.

He had asked to meet Figueiredo at the Secretary's offices near the Rossio, which was the most intact administrative district in the upper city, and where Pombal's reconstruction operation was now headquartered in a building that had belonged, until November, to a noble family whose name Croft did not know and had not asked. The appointment was for the eleventh of February, at two in the afternoon. Croft arrived on time. He was shown in immediately, which was, Croft noted, a position in itself — the Factory's visit expected, its brevity already planned for.

Figueiredo received him in a room with maps on every wall. Not decorative maps: working maps, pinned and annotated, with coloured marks that Croft read at a glance as property designations and did not read further because reading further would have been noticed. He took the chair he was offered and set the protest document on the table.

Figueiredo was, again, neatly dressed. He had the quality of a man who has recently been promoted to a position that requires him to meet people who consider themselves his superiors, and who has decided the most effective response to this is to be entirely comfortable. He read the protest document without haste. He turned the pages. He set it down.

He said: The Factory's position is noted.

Croft said: I would be grateful if it could be communicated to the Secretary directly.

Figueiredo said: The Secretary is aware of the Factory's concerns in general terms.

He said this in the manner of someone closing a door politely but firmly. Croft had expected this and did not press it. He said: The four percent will fall hardest on merchants operating on thin margins. Several of our members are already extending credit at levels that are, in normal circumstances, imprudent. These are not normal circumstances.

Figueiredo said: The Secretary is aware of that also.

A pause. Outside, from somewhere in the direction of the Rossio, came the sound of clearance work — the dull percussion of rubble being broken and shifted, men's voices carrying up to the window. The city was loud in places now, and quiet in others, and the distribution of noise and silence told you, if you were paying attention, exactly where Pombal's priorities lay.

Figueiredo said: The surcharge is temporary. The fund will be administered transparently and the accounts published at the conclusion of the reconstruction. He paused, and then said, with a quality that Croft could only describe as pleasantness: I should say — the paperwork on the Baixa acquisitions has moved faster than anyone expected. The properties already in hand for the new plan are properly documented, the titles clear. It has been a rather large operation, which I mention only because I know there has been some uncertainty in the merchant community about the legal basis for the expropriations.

Croft said: There has.

Figueiredo said: It is all in order. He said this in the tone of a man sharing good news, which was the most unsettling thing about it. The records are excellent. The crown's position in each case was established well in advance of the disaster — which makes the administrative position quite straightforward.

He smiled. It was not a threatening smile, which made it more so.

Croft said: That is useful to know.

He meant it. He wrote nothing down — this was not the kind of meeting in which you wrote things down — but when he left the building and turned into the Rua do Ouro, heading south toward the Baixa, the phrase was already fixed in his mind with the precision he applied to figures: well in advance of the disaster.

The Rua do Ouro opened, after two blocks, into the upper edge of the ruined district. The street itself was passable; the clearance teams had been through here. The buildings on either side were a mixed condition — some standing to their upper storeys with their windows empty, some reduced to the first floor, some gone entirely. He walked south, keeping to the cleared centre of the street.

He heard them before he saw them. Not the usual sound of clearance work — the random crashing of material brought down and carted away — but something slower and more deliberate. He turned into a side street, the Travessa do Almada, following the sound, and found them there: eight men working on a building that was, by any ordinary assessment, still standing. One wall had collapsed and the roof was gone, but the other three walls were sound — he could see the stonework, dressed and tight, no significant cracking. The men were not clearing rubble. They were dismantling: working systematically from the upper section of the standing wall downward, removing the stones in courses, setting each one aside in an organised stack. Someone was directing them. He was not a labourer; he stood at a distance with a piece of paper and watched the work proceed.

Croft stopped and looked at the building, then at the men, then at the man with the paper. The man with the paper looked back at him briefly and then returned to his document.

He looked at the building again. Its position in the street, its footprint, the way it occupied the corner of the block — there was nothing remarkable about it. He did not recognise it. He had walked this street perhaps twice before the earthquake; the building had been a warehouse of some kind, he thought, or a merchant's store. He was not certain. He had no reason to be certain.

He noted the street name and the position of the building — third from the north corner of the block, east side — and then he walked on.

In the Rua do Ouro again, heading for the waterfront, he turned the phrase over once more: well in advance of the disaster. Figueiredo had said it in the manner of a reassurance. He had said the crown's position in each case was established well in advance — which was a different thing from saying the expropriations were legitimate, though it sounded like the same thing, and which was a different thing again from saying when, precisely, well in advance meant.

Three weeks before the earthquake was well in advance.

Six months was also well in advance.

He filed the distinction and walked on.