What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (29 page)

—You clowns

the nephew or cousin who never was a nephew or cousin or younger brother, the first time Soraia brought me he was looking at me without seeing me, the way people who are lying always try to convince us of what they’re convincing themselves

—My younger brother, Marlene

and then pretending not to understand I understood his son, who lived with a woman I don’t know where but not far from the sea because on certain nights she’d forget to zip up her dress and talk to me about marigolds and gulls, every so often the look that wasn’t seeing, her voice had forgotten how to talk scaring the words away, her useless gestures

—I can’t go on with you today Marlene

and she’d take the bus to the other side of the Tagus, I heard about a Gypsy settlement at Costa da Caparica or Fonte da Telha, the dim pine grove that made the beaches bigger, the past that the ebb tide always leaves on the sand

in my case my father who’d laid his forehead on his shotgun

a terrace, a bridge, huts that held off winter with a stubbornness of shrubbery, those skinny little branches with no roots or stalks coming out of the rocks with a drive for eternity, we discovered my father in the olive grove through a flight of hoopoes, my mother was still holding the grapes she was eating touching him with her foot, rejecting a grape, calling to me

—Marlene

not Marlene, a different name, you noticed how I looked at you without seeing you when I said

—Marlene

a different name obviously, a boy’s name and five years old at the time, it happened in February and my birthday is in May, a name that’s of no interest for you and that doesn’t exist for me, she picked a grape for herself and a grape for me drawing back her shoe

—Would you like a grape Marlene?

or make it

there’s that look again

—Would you like a grape Soandso?

we finished the bunch by twos, the hoopoes in the cork tree there, my father prone and no smell of gunpowder, the shotgun that we left by the door frame when we went out, the hoopoes had come back to the olive grove and we were happy because everything was the way it should have been and we enjoyed the peace

—They came back

I’m sure my father was satisfied too because he hated disorder in the world, a rug out of place and he’d straighten it, if the pitcher wasn’t where it should be he’d place it right, at dinnertime he’d arrange his plate so that the picture on it, a waterwheel and a girl with a flower in her hand, faced him, my mother would open the ironing board and while the iron was heating up

—Don’t let it burn

she telephoned the police, I didn’t think it was worth the trouble because everything was the way it should have been, the rug straight, the pitcher, the picture on the plate facing my father’s place, the coat and pants he would wear on the hanger by the window bar and there was no reason for any complaints about us, no reason for any complaints about anything next to an olive root two hundred feet from the house, hard to make out because of the night and impossible to make out when the Jeep got there, my mother

—Take care of the iron

and the policeman

—Good evening

at a time when it wasn’t necessary to wash the grapes because we didn’t spray them and the wine that year was grade twelve and cleaner, I tested the iron with spit on my finger and waited for my mother to send away the police and put it down again to iron a towel

—You can let me have it Marlene

did she notice my look?

—You can let me have it Soandso

I never could understand my name, it didn’t look like me, no name looks like me, if we repeat them over and over they don’t mean anything no matter what they might be just like the language foreigners talk that doesn’t mean anything, for a glass a collection of sounds that doesn’t look at all like a glass, if a glass isn’t called glass how can we use it, my mother Lurdes and if I say Lurdes Lurdes Lurdes for a minute she doesn’t exist anymore the way Soraia doesn’t exist, Vânia exists but she isn’t Vânia she’s Raul, and yet if I say

—Raul

nobody, Vânia taking care of her throat, Sissi amused, she arrived last week and only works in the chorus, she helps Dona Amélia with the candy and cigarettes, the manager sized her up maybe you can be Bárbara, she got mixed up with her eyelashes

—What’s that?

the manager thinking it over better Bárbara doesn’t go with brunettes, Samanta, Vânia said we had a Samanta in October and the manager you’re right let’s call her Dina, the one who’d arrived the week before

—Dina?

don’t argue you’re Dina, one of my wisdom teeth is aching, I can’t think, what I remember about my father is the coat hanger and the cartridge I found days later not where his body had been, more toward the front and crushed and burned, I covered it over with dirt and no more cartridge and since the coat hanger was put in a closet and we kept it for a bodice of mine I stopped remembering him, a few months later the plate with the picture full, a chicken leg hiding the waterwheel

one of the girl’s braids showing

the rug was crooked, my mother pointing out the braid to me

—He works unloading ships

and in the silence of the light bulb his boots still the same

did you notice the boots?

the house filled up with flags, spars, and that collection of things from inside a ship’s engines, a Greek oil tanker with its hull with letters around it that I wrote down on my breath on the windowpane before I knew how to write, ships you can see from here and that don’t remind me of the docks but of olive groves and hoopoes, a flight of hoopoes, the tip of my mother’s shoe examining I can’t remember what I’d wake up and the taste of grapes, the nephew or cousin or younger brother or son of Soraia there in her chair sitting up straight on the seat

—Grapes?

thinking of some way to leave without offending me as though I could be offended by him, Soraia and her son taking different buses, not knowing each other, to the other side of the river and I was noticing the gulls, noticing the pine groves, the terrace café with a fat man behind the bar

—If you won’t give me something I can’t sell you a bottle Judite and a pack of pups waiting, I said again

—Paulo?

I asked him again

—Don’t you want to come up with me Paulo?

not for me to do anything with him you understand, just so I wouldn’t be all alone because we were all alone for ten years in Alcântara my stepfather and me, deaf from the noise of the trains

—Sit down by my right side because I can’t hear out of this ear

I was on my way home to rehearse and he was missing the Greek tankers, shivering in a black shawl like a crow in a barroom, grumbling about the crane

—Tough luck

Soraia and her son each one on a different corner of the wall watching from the gate as the woman was leaving the café, older than I’d imagined with wrinkles on her throat and face, poking in among bottlenecks in a stone tub, and yet in spite of her ugliness, her frumpiness, her wrinkles, something about her hair or her lips brought back to me the idea of the picture on the plate and the girl in braids

I can see her now

playing next to the waterwheel and it was like mother and me, back in some impossible time, walking in the olive grove again, me five or six years old and she

—How about a grape Soandso?

examining my father with the tip of her shoe in the midst of a flight of hoopoes, as though we’d opened the ironing board and she was bringing in a basket of towels and pillowcases while the iron was heating up, something I can’t explain about the woman, nothing to do with her hair or her lips, where mimosas were calling and I have trouble saying what I want to say, my body stock still, what I took to be longing or being disconsolate or none of that, a kind of mood

not really a mood, you tell me you’ve studied these things

I who was never sad, not sadness, maybe a feeling to want to get away, for people not to talk to me and to leave me alone for an hour or so which later went away, it always goes away, it got to be late so slowly, without my realizing it, I go to the window, I don’t answer the phone, I don’t pay any attention to my stepfather and at night I go down to the club, I feel great, a rustle of olive trees, a pitcher out of place, one or two hoopoes at most but it doesn’t upset me, my father with me straddling rocks and fishing in the brook, see how I see him without seeing him and they’re not lies now, don’t touch me, wait, not a fishing pole, a broomstick with a string and a pin on the end, whole Saturdays like that listening to the trees, with him paying no attention to the broomstick and me pestering the ants with clods of dirt and stones, once I thought I heard partridges or maybe not partridges, a rustle of cloth, people hiding, someone who said

—Hurry up

maybe

—Don’t be afraid hurry up

certainly

—Watch out for Joaquim

not Joaquim

Quim

all right, that’s it, I’m Joaquim, I mean I was Joaquim through some mistake, Joaquim, how silly, that business of names, Joaquim Joaquim Joaquim and Joaquim doesn’t exist, Joaquim never existed, I made up Joaquim and I tricked myself, don’t think for a moment I’m Joaquim, I’m Marlene, but I did think I heard partridges and my mother, a man and my father’s shotgun aimed at us against the man’s shoulder, my father tying the pin onto the line, my mother seeing me, grabbing the barrel and saying

—No

the shotgun aimed away from me, the man

—Tough luck

the day by the olive tree, the bunch of grapes, and the hoopoes settling down into the cork tree there, it wasn’t the shotgun my father was carrying, it was the hoe, the shotgun was by the door frame with my mother grabbing it, letting go of it, asking me to

—Heat up the iron Marlene

not Joaquim

Quim

not So and so, Marlene, forget about my look

—Heat up the iron Marlene

and while the iron was heating up my mother taking out a cartridge from the dresser drawer as though she wasn’t taking any cartridge out of the dresser drawer, taking the shotgun into the yard and sitting on a board waiting, I heard the rustle of cloth from the day before, the partridges that walked with the sound of boots

—Tough luck

my father’s hoe into the ground once or twice

more than once or twice, several times into the ground and then nothing, then my mother mad at me

—Shut up

in spite of me shutting up

in spite of a girl shutting up

of me shutting up

Joaquim Joaquim Joaquim and that was the end of Joaquim, it doesn’t mean anything at all, I’m Marlene, my mother getting up because of the iron just when the birds

—Shut up Marlene

did you hear, not So and so, not Joaquim, Marlene

—Shut up Marlene

just with the flight of birds into the priest’s cork tree, my mother checking to see if there were any peaches but the peaches were green, straightening the rug wary of my father, realizing that she was straightening the rug, getting mad, making it all the more crooked, watching me with the suspicion I was guessing what I wasn’t supposed to know I tugged at her skirt

—What’s wrong mother?

and she didn’t hear me or didn’t want to hear me picking up a bunch of grapes from the fruit bowl, waiting for the rustle of cloth or the partridges nearby, what I figured to be a cough or maybe a rat in the woodpile, my mother holding me back from the window when I wanted to take a look

—It was a rat in the woodpile

in spite of its being Tuesday and not Sunday, the coat hanger by the window with his coat and pants, his shined shoes, his tie for processions on the ironing board along with his shirt, the wind was silent because the cork tree wasn’t moving, my mother was pointing toward the olive grove

—Go outside there Marlene

the picture on the bottom of the plate the next Thursday, an identical waterwheel, the same three clouds, the woman older than I’d supposed on the other side of the river, with the wrinkles of time on her neck and face, I was quite certain that a blind woman was pointing at the ceiling with her nose and was going over my features with her fingers

—Who’s she, Judite?

Paulo in the dressing room going through makeup and wigs

—A clown

every so often I get the idea I don’t know why, maybe because of the girl on the plate, of asking them to stop the music, getting rid of the jewelry, the makeup, the plumes, not caring about the audience, the manager

—Marlene

—You’re fired Marlene

—You can go beg on the street Marlene

and I was leaping about on the floor of the stage with my feet together following chalk marks that nobody but me uses, indifferent to my colleagues, the stagehands, the doorman who tries to grab me and me so light you understand, just like the mimosas impossible to grab, with only vegetable restlessness a sigh in the corner of my memory, some outlines by a brush on clay