Portuguese, he believed, had protected Goa from the tragic fate of India. Their cottage functioned as a community library of French, Spanish and Portuguese texts and their back lawn, between monsoons, had been outfitted with a modest stage and commercial lighting. Connie and her brothers used to sit at their father’s feet in the tropical, sea-breezy evenings, citronella candles sputtering, while he read passages from French and Spanish classics and asked his children to act out the same scenes in Portuguese. Despite her profession and current residence — book editor in New York — Portuguese remained her comfort language; it provides the music she plays, the wisdom she quotes and the pork and fish vindaloos that she cooks for private celebrations. Back in her London years she’d known exiled Indonesian writers, some of whom had been imprisoned and tortured by the colonial regime, who still — in the evening, over tumblers of Scotch — reverted to Dutch among themselves.
