What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (21 page)

—Dona Judite Dona Judite

around the wall, the orange-colored clarity of autumn coming down from Trafaria where they were setting fire to the brush, the gentian that was losing its vigor, the curtain at the club suddenly opened a hat was visible on a hook and a broom in the rear

and my father walking on stage and waving to us, the woman with the candy back from the cemetery trying to kiss him

—Soraia

in a joy of weeping, Dona Helena who was scaling fish in the kitchen, Mr. Couceiro, the maid from the dining room

—It’s not your father Paulo how could it be your father

the little cross and the chain, her concern over the stockings, kissing me as I held the rubber band in my teeth, the policeman reduced to a flashlight

—Do you know this man?

pointing to Rui at Fonte da Telha laid bare by the headlights of the Jeeps, Rui stiff with pain messing about among knicknacks, bills, dried flowers, lilies, gardenias, roses in hiding places in the apartment, drawers he was pulling open without closing them, the towel rack, the pots and pans in the kitchen where there were ants and cold food

—Shit where’s the aquamarine ring?

coming upon the flattened medallion in the linen closet, the one with copper decorations that my mother used to wear and I thought was pretty, a horrible imitation Pilar, one of those things cleaning women wear, seamstresses, poor people, you don’t understand the pleasure they get out of bad taste, my mother would put the medallion on the side of her neck and her body would become more harmonious, taller, one of those things cleaning women wear God knows why they think they’re more important that way, one of the maids we had for example got herself a rabbit stole and stopped talking to us, the swans at Campo de Santana, sir, it’s all right by me and you can put the swans there, I don’t care if they

—What are you going to do Paulo?

I don’t care if they

—What about tomorrow Paulo?

just limit yourself to putting them there so I won’t run into my mother, let’s not keep coming back

and coming back and coming back

from a lunch years ago in Cova do Vapor, even though it was several lunches it’s always the same, the only one, my grandparents, my uncle

I mean I would have liked it to have been my grandparents and my uncle instead of strangers in the restaurant, if I remember right on one occasion a teacher from the school where my mother taught, on another the brother-in-law or a cousin who as soon as he caught sight of my father pretended not to see us, I understood that he was talking about us because he was hiding secrets behind his hand and I don’t know how many squints of his eyes as they lighted on us, a swan who’ll defend us from them and stop me from hearing them talk about it from then on, about the effeminate man, he dresses up as a woman, he left his wife and child for a young drug addict and don’t bring along the swans no, don’t help me with the swans, the medallion that I’d thought was lost, my mother covering her shame with the napkin, more harmonious, taller, my father disappearing in the glass, give me what’s left in the syringe Rui, that little bit left over in the syringe that might help me and is no use at all to you, looking at the swans’ question marks or those from Dona Helena one afternoon, her nose rising from the crocheting needle, a glimmer on her glasses as if from sorrow

what nonsense

or fear

fear and nonsense both, I’ve grown up, convince yourself of that, don’t upset me when I’m reading the newspaper, me who never read the newspaper

—What’s going to become of you Paulo?

and her nose sorry?

blending into the doily, the crochet needle working intensely, actually I don’t need the swans, leave them in Campo de Santana, all I need is to pick up the newspaper, Mr. Couceiro scolding her without a word, the cane flourishing a touch and me extremely interested in an article that’s hard to read

why in hell do they write articles that are hard to read?

please don’t try to protect me, don’t imagine that I love you not even for a second, you can be sure that I don’t love you, when Rui with the medallion my father

—Rui

not angry, pleading, already so thin in the bed, a more comical clown than when he’d had his health, a true clown at least, now that he’s going to die I recognize his talent, I appreciate his art, I applaud you father, plead again

—Rui

please, not angry, a perfect sigh, the

—Rui

almost not spoken, an entreaty that gives up and I was admiring you father, tossing candy on stage for you, perfume, a pack of cigarettes, congratulations to the head on the pillow, the tiny bones of your fingers, the lock of hair on your bald head sticking to your skin, the hand that shakes a little and doesn’t grab Rui, congratulations for having thought about Bico da Areia and my mother and me

—Paulo

or maybe if you take a close look you can decipher that it’s

—Paulo

and nothing but a tunic against the draft from the window whispering good-bye to him, or the concave mirror where he fixed his lashes, or hearing the pups throwing pine cones at the house, or

for one last time

the herons coming from the bridge attracted by what the ebb tide has left on the beach your lipstick that is, your rouge, a piece of a poster where my father was throwing us a kiss

an actress, an actress, I swear to you an actress

the herons wiping off his kiss with their feet, their bills, I don’t know who I don’t know where, maybe the dwarf on the refrigerator or the few lamps that didn’t have broken bulbs

—Why Carlos?

and when they go along great ruts of shadow on the rooftops, gentian stalks, you at Príncipe Real

—Do you think you’re going to die or don’t you?

far removed from me, from my mother as she comes out of the closet to go to Cova do Vapor and her hesitant vanity, all that childishness in her gestures

—Do you love me Carlos?

answer that you love me even though you might be lying and you are lying, you never stopped lying, I love you, a lie, I missed you, a lie, and I want to get married, a lie, you don’t love her, you didn’t miss her, you don’t want to get married, you crossed your fingers on us while you lied mister, what the hell difference does it make to you

—I do love you

look at the electrician, the pups, the café owner, not

—Rui

Judite, try Judite, you never speak her name, never chat with her, you remember the swans don’t you, questions that have no answer moving along the pond, do you want me to stop Rui from making off with the medallion, do you want me to put it back in the linen closet, how much more time on the pillow until the leaves in the cemetery swirl up into a whirlwind and devour your face, what are they going to write on your tombstone, what are they going to call you

—What are they going to write on your tombstone father what are they going to call you?

the maid from the dining room with me at Príncipe Real, the park and so forth, the cedar and so forth, what’s the use of details, tree trunks with names in Latin that Mr. Couceiro knows, the mastiff with a bow discovering the lemon in my pocket and licking the lemon, how do you say lemon, how do you say Noémia in Latin Mr. Couceiro, how do you say Soraia, how do you say clown, dresses on the carpet, on the telephone stand, a fork in a bowl and inside the bowl seeds, gloves with missing mates, hair, a workman in the cellar pounding day and night, you go down and the workman looking at us from among beams and buckets, as soon as we close the door the hammer starts again, the landlord to my father

—What hammering is that friend I have no workmen here

he kept on denying it on the dark stairs, what hammering is that friend, where’s the hammer, on every step a match that flickers and goes out and before it goes out caverns of tile, the door

how strange

closed, but matches until he finds the key in a bunch on his ring and as we lighted more matches a washroom, a china doll, the atmosphere of a tunnel, the workman among beams and buckets and the landlord

—What workman?

the manager to the sound man

—A hammer dammit

a hammer dammit, open a peephole in the curtain dammit so the worker does and through the curtain the park and so forth, boxwood trees that bow to us

—Good morning

what are they going to write on your tombstone father what are they going to call you, the leaves in the cemetery swirl up into a whirlwind and devour the stone where Soraia, where only the dates and Dona Helena

—Poor fellow

my mother with the bent medallion and the manager to my mother

—Hang onto the bottle

on the cemetery paths trying to find him, they met at a dance, in a coffee shop, at a bus stop, an umbrella and so much water miss, don’t think badly of me miss, you’d better get under cover miss and the warnings at home about strangers you know him quite well, a clerk in a jewelry store, me a schoolteacher, the wind was puffing out the umbrella and twisting its ribs, gray building fronts that were taking away our color, noticing an ink stain and blushing because of the ink, the smock over my arm, the briefcase with the books, repeating like a little girl, I’m a schoolteacher and he was nodding not listening to me, telling him I lived in Seixal because Bico da Areia was so rundown, so ugly and beggars too, Gypsies, and the garbage from the river, the pups and the pine cones were there already then, the café owner already there

—Judite

the side glance and me naked in the store, the owner’s wife washing glasses and cups

who’s going to write on my tombstone, the electrician, my son, my mother running her fingers over the letters

—Judite

my daughter Judite, my girl, she would repeat to me, smell the mimosas mother, she doesn’t notice the mimosas, she was holding her son in her arms you don’t smell the mimosas, her husband all alone in Lisbon and then

it was to be expected

the wine, when he left she’d rattle the bottles and the empties, I woke up because of the mimosas and even though I won’t swear to it men

—Judite

in her room sometimes but maybe it was the chicken coop, the bustle in the dovecote, who’s going to write on her tombstone, the electrician, my grandson, the pups, on my husband’s they wrote for me when the ulcerous memory of we miss you husband, we miss you father and he was bubbling up underground so that when we got close we could hear him evaporating, in his last years nothing but cigarettes and insomnia, his mouth muttering

—Oh if you only knew how heavy life weighs on you

he asked us to leave him in the rose garden with a blanket over his kidneys, the beloved husband with his cigarette out giving his despondency to us, the beloved father spitting up blood into his handkerchief before he bubbled up in peace and became a quiet liquid mingling in with the water of the irrigation wheel, I left the bench in the bower and the blanket on the bench and I looked at my daughter playing hopscotch on the tombstone, dividing her loving father into chalk squares without noticing the boiling until the doctor in Bragança

—You have a cloud in your eye, auntie

the doctor hazy, my daughter hazy

—Can you smell the mimosas mother?

the beloved husband hazy, the insomnia hazy, a mist in each eye auntie until they stole the bench and the blanket on me, his beret must be there on a hook in the kitchen or on the scythe handle, there must be a vest, a box of cigarette papers, we never argued, what was the good of arguing, almost at the start of our marriage he came back from a fair to me with a medallion trimmed in copper, he didn’t give it to me, he laid it on the table, soldered a pin onto it

beloved husband, beloved father

so I could pin it to my dress and he went off into the garden, I put on the medallion and he was coughing by the fireplace, so many roosters crowing at the same time hurting me outside there, I found him among the mimosas where a patient, monotonous hammer, in a square I don’t know where a cedar, a park, where my grandson to the maid from the dining room take it easy I’m going to introduce you to the actress, she’s waiting for us in her room, what she thought was an actress in spite of her fellow workers, the waiter, the orderly

—You call that an actress?

when she visited her nephew in the hospital and those pigeons my God so skittish, so angry the actress calling

—Rui

not angry, requesting, make a note that she was requesting, she wasn’t mad at him, she was angry with her companions because of a mantilla or a customer, actresses are such special people, so picky about unimportant things, just like us, so sensitive right? and poor people’s ground floor, the bathtub used as a trunk, the dining room where we never dined, they say my father’s very sick, they say he’s going to die but don’t pay any attention to them, my father stayed on in Bico da Areia rumpling and smoothing the mattress

no, my father’s having lunch in Cova do Vapor with my mother who’s come out of the wardrobe mirror with the mother-of-pearl medallion, better groomed, taller