NO VACANCYA literary mystery set in Lisbon during the lockdown of 2020.
Lisbon, 2020. Lockdown has plunged the city into an unprecedented silence. In The Pessoa, a small guesthouse near Carmo Square where Fernando Pessoa once lived for a time, Martinho, the manager, spends his days alone among empty rooms and relics from another era.One object stands out: an old wooden wall telephone, kept only as a decorative piece. Disconnected from the network for decades, it is a relic of a forgotten age.One night, the telephone rings.Martinho freezes. The sound echoes through the empty corridor.Slowly, he approaches and, unable to understand how such a thing is possible, lifts the receiver.“Do you have any rooms available?” a man's voice asks, calm, almost whispering.
Martinho opens his mouth to answer.
The line goes dead.
The next morning, a guest arrives—someone who should not exist.
The Phone
Trim… trim…
The sound cut through the silence of the guesthouse hallway, where even time seemed to have stopped counting the days.
For a moment, nothing else could be heard.
Only the distant hum of an old line, as if the call had traveled a long way before reaching its destination.
I woke with a start in the guesthouse lounge.
The blanket had fallen to the floor.
The television was on, with no sound.
The empty glass on the table.
Outside, through the window, the ruins of Carmo stood out against the darkness.
— Trim… trim…
What if a disconnected telephone could still receive calls from the past?
About the Author
The story is inspired by The Pessoa, a guesthouse in Largo do Carmo, Lisbon, where Fernando Pessoa once lived for a period of his life.
Martinho runs The Pessoa, a small Lisbon guesthouse built as a tribute to Fernando Pessoa. When the 2020 lockdown empties the city and the guesthouse alike, he spends long stretches there almost entirely alone, watching the business — and the memory it was built to honor — slip away. Pragmatic and skeptical by instinct, he reaches for a rational explanation before he reaches for anything else. What he discovers instead is that the past never truly left the building he calls home.