The Night in Lisbon

A Novel

Erich Maria Remarque, Ralph Manheim (translator)

During World War Two, Portugal claimed neutrality. It became a playground for spies and a last-chance destination for refugees — millions of people, many of them Jewish, desperately hoping to board a ship to the US or the UK.

The nearby beach town of Estoril was the more glamorous escape for anyone hoping to ride out the war without too much disruption to their lives. Even while the battles raged in other parts of Europe, the music played, and the drinks flowed at Casino Estoril.

In contrast to the sunshine and gentle breezes of the Lisbon shore, this elegiac World War II story captures the frantic despair and debauchery that hovered over Lisbon at the start of the war.

The author Erich Maria Remarque is best known for his 1928 anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, based on his experience in the German army during WWI. In 1933, his book was declared ‘unpatriotic’ and banned by the Nazis. But that didn’t stop him. He continued to write about war and the plight of refugees. In 1962, he published his last complete work, The Night in Lisbon.

This is a quiet book that centers on two main characters, both German refugees who fled to Lisbon in the early days of World War II, hoping to save their lives — and those of their wives — with passage to America.

The plot is simple, although the story is not. The two men pass one long night, sitting in the city’s dimly lit neighborhood bars and swapping war stories.

The unnamed narrator is frantic to escape Lisbon with his wife Ruth. The two can see salvation in the form of a ship right there at anchor on the Tagus River. ‘The ship was being made ready for a voyage — like the ark in the days of the flood. It was an ark. Every ship that left Europe in those months of the year 1942 was an ark. Mount Ararat was America, and the flood waters were rising higher by the day.’

But he and his wife have no tickets and no visas. In desperation, he even gambles at the Casino Estoril. ‘I still owned a good suit,’ he says, ‘and they had let me in. It was a last effort to blackmail fate… I had lost fifty-six of the sixty-two dollars we still had left.’

But as he gazes at the ship that’s an ark that he can’t board, a man emerges from the shadows. He offers the narrator a visa, a passport, and two tickets on the ship if he will fulfill one request: Spend the night with the man and listen to his story.

From the dark until the first blush of dawn, the men walk the city, building an unusual intimacy, while searching for bars that stay open ‘til morning. They wander through the Praça do Comercio and past St. George Castle, they listen to fado music, they eat with the urgency of people familiar with hunger, and they steep in the unfairness of their fate.

This slim book punches above its weight. Although only a small part of the action takes place in Lisbon, it vividly captures the city’s atmosphere: the lights, the shimmering streets, the ambient noise of the bars, and the vast expanse of river leading to the sea. It’s a testament to fortitude, bruised hearts, unshakable hope, and the fragments of humanity we cling to during our darkest hours.

We stepped out into a glorious night. The stars were still shining, but on the horizon the sea and the morning met in a first blue embrace. The sky was higher than before, and the smell of salt and flowers still stronger. The day was going to be clear. By day Lisbon has a naïve theatrical quality that enchants and captivates, but by night it is a fairy-tale city, descending over lighted terraces to the sea, like a woman in festive garments going down to meet her dark lover. We stood for a while in silence. “Isn’t this the way we used to think of life?” said Schwarz finally. ‘A thousand lights and streets leading into the infinite…’ — Erich Maria Remarque

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