What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (32 page)

—It looks to me like he’s taken a beating, Vivaldo

without my noticing the horsewhip marks on my chest, on my kidneys, my mother opened the gate and stayed by the gate, at intervals during the whipping of the gentian by the wall, one of the branches bent over onto the chimney, wavered, surrounded by wasps, my father at Príncipe Real

—The gentian Paulo

me at Príncipe Real

—The gentian father

and from the way my son looked at me I understood that he didn’t remember either the gentian or his mother, I was sure that in all those years he hadn’t found her again, on Saturdays I’d go to pick him up in the laundry room where the old lady was ironing and he was there with a basket, I’d take him along with me out of pity, if I happened to be busy

because my life isn’t all that simple

I’d ask him to wait a bit by the cedar tree while I handled a problem with a friend and I’d look at him through the curtains, quiet in the park, the café had its lights on, the buildings were changing color at that moment while the streetlights went on, I told my friends with an agitation I couldn’t understand

—I’ve got my son there

no, I told my friends, pointing to the curtain

—I’ve got my nephew outside

the ambassador, the economist, the partner from ready-to-wear that the manager and Dona Amélia sent me

—Kid gloves because they’re respectable people, Soraia

mistrustful, tense, they asked me immediately if there were any photographic devices, of course not, they insisted that it was the first time, they were sweating, livening up with a bit of cognac

—Doll

they would settle down on the sofa, my nephew saw us I was sure, and it was then

my stopping listening the same way that Paulo stops listening to the rain

that the gentian appeared, I was not with them, I was with the watering can in the afternoon with no horses now or herons on the beach, the customers were ambling out of the living room, looking at the posters, promising tips and I couldn’t hear them, even if I was interested I couldn’t, given the fact that I was so far back in time with my wife

I was just fooling, I never had a wife, a woman, what for, since I’m a woman aren’t I

I was working at the jeweler’s, I’d just met you Judite, I was in the schoolyard with a bouquet of hydrangeas, putting on a smile, if I can get rid of the smile I’ll be serious and you tug at the bouquet and I hold it tight, the important people on the sofa beside me

—Nobody will find out I came here, will they?

the shoulder strap falling all by itself, my knee

—I’m a discreet girl, don’t worry

I didn’t recognize the knee

—I don’t know you, knee

getting my face in order so I could build a smile and handing you the hydrangeas, the amount of rubbish I had to take care of, eyebrows, jaws, ears, the teeth I don’t know if I should show you because one of the front ones is brownish, how could I do all that, how could I get all that together, I managed to get the right eye looking friendly, but maybe not so friendly, because Judite looking through the bouquet, alarmed

—Don’t you feel well Carlos?

my nephew in Príncipe Real, I’d swear he saw us, incredulous with the lifting of the dress strap, the knee, the cognac

—It’s the first time, doll, I swear to you, I never

jackets on the body that resisted, collars impossible to open, thinking about the gentian on that summer afternoon, asking my wife for the clothes sprinkler for the sick branches, when the vine gets all the way around the house I’ll be able to be with you Judite and be the father of my son, isn’t it true that I’m the father of my son, the one five or six years old

no, older, nine

by the cedar tree outside, the lampshade was knocked over in an anxious movement

if I managed to feel sorry, maybe feeling sorry didn’t matter to me

and they were on their hands and knees picking up the pieces

—Don’t get mad, I’ll pay for it don’t get mad, I’ll

kid gloves because they’re important people, holding out the pieces in the palm of their hands Soraia, take this bottle of plum brandy, this one of Jamaica rum

—Where’s Jamaica?

not interested, who cares where Jamaica is, this bottle of French sparkling wine as long as you don’t notice the scratch on the label, which even if you add water to it, makes for an expensive drink

pulling out the cork with his teeth because his other arm is where I don’t want to remember

—
Open your mouth, spook
you must have some drinking glasses in the place, everybody has drinking glasses in his house

—Did your lover pawn the glasses, Soraia?

Dona Amélia asks the bartender to wrap up half a dozen glasses for her, the green ones that went out of style and luckily are cheap in case the boyfriend pawns them again

the gentian I planted was tiny, two stalks that were like nothing

what a crummy bunch you all make, I need your wristwatch, where’s the wristwatch, an urgent debt, next week I’m getting a late payment, I’ll get it out of hock and everything’ll be fine, the important people were lingering over my glass-bead stars, my image of the saint, the silence of someone who can’t believe, the hesitation

—I’m leaving

stopping

—I’m not leaving

so while my mouth fawned on them, the barefoot saint in a plaster cloud, the conch-shell caravel, their curiosity appalled

at what?

—Did you buy this stuff, doll?

the collar easier now that we’re friends isn’t that so, the topcoat over the shoulders while a little finger picking up courage poking me in the belly, a whisper letting me know

—I don’t want it to get wrinkled, catch?

the green glass on the nickel tray

—Fine fine

the vine growing toward the sun in August, the Tagus was washing the wave towels back and forth on the beach and they were talking to nobody, not to me, I don’t know their names, I never knew their names, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get to see them from this bank of the river, don’t leave any makeup on my throat, doll, don’t get upset, your nephew can take it, he must be used to it, isn’t he, the gentian spreading out from the wall rounding out its clusters

—It’s good you’ve come back, Carlinhos

if I open the window at Príncipe Real I’m sure I’m going to see the terrace, the horses, my son in our bed laughing, my wife to him birdy birdy what a beak let me have a little peek, the first front tooth at four and a half months, the second at six, the manager they phoned me to complain that they’re not paying you to lie on the bed talking about front teeth, making fun of them with kiddy songs birdy birdy what a beak and I said don’t you like the vine Judite, I had the watering can in my hand

—What customers, sir?

since one root was having a hard time in the bricks of the flower bed, give it some phosphate, fix my eyeliner to make my eyes wider

—What customers, sir?

what customers, sir, because I’ve been here the whole time with the plant that was muted by the tide of the Tagus and the folds of tar on the beach that I forgot to cover with powder to disguise their age, the one who knocked over the lampshade, intrigued

—Tell me the truth, don’t lie, haven’t you seen the last of thirty, doll?

the gulls fleeing, the horses retreating shaking their manes, last October

or December, close to Christmas, at the time when my son started walking, we set up a barrier of boards and stones and a few hours later, in the middle of the night, the marigolds drowned, I peeked out from the kitchen and an albatross croaking at us imitating the bats, me, with my eyelid all fixed now, spinning on the stool abandoning my reflection which was still fixing itself up

—Birdy birdy what a beak, sir?

are you saying customers, a nickel tray with a couple of empty glasses and some bills on it, sir, a cigarette lighter that they left behind on the table, a voice or footsteps

not Rui’s, not Paulo’s, not mine

afraid they’d be noticed, asking

—Don’t come out I know the way

hoping that the landing is deserted, the stairs empty and thank God their landing deserted, the stairs empty, the kiosk closed, nobody except for the boy coming over from the cedar tree

his nephew, his younger brother, maybe his son what do I care, Soraia not seeing me maybe she did get to see me, I asked her something and she said

—I beg your pardon?

—I’m sorry?

—What?

or maybe words that seemed to me to be coming from a jingle back when I was little, the girl cousin who took care of me birdy birdy, as soon as she stopped me

—More

there are times with my wife when I come out with birdy birdy what a beak let me have a little peek, my wife

—What’s that, Henrique?

and me of course

—Nothing

with the birdy birdy tormenting my mind, but it must have been some confusion on my part, how could the wretch have known my cousin, I was in the street now with the birdy birdy and the old lady pounding on me, angry at her for having died on me, raising my hand and Soraia on the ground floor plucking at the curtain as if she was pulling the leaves off one of those vines that peasants and riffraff in the outskirts adore, arranging bunches, supporting branches with a twist of wire, asking what I took to be a woman on a step

—Do you like the gentian, Judite?

not a bougainvillea, not a young vine, a gentian she said

—Do you like the gentian, Judite?

in a flower bed made with bricks painted blue, I tried to touch the vine and my cousin

—Hands off

changing me from my parents’ bed to mine, tucking me in, leaving the hall light on, ordering me

—Go to sleep

coming back to give me a kiss, disappearing upstairs into the piano room and from there nothing, a polka or maybe there wasn’t any music and only the rain outside, the rain outside certainly, my wife what’s the reason for your eyes looking like that when you hear rain outside, Henrique, not understanding birdy birdy on the windowpanes, and complaining that she doesn’t exist for me, never existed for me and you smell of cognac, Henrique, you smell of cheap perfume, your cousin’s or from that strange singer at Príncipe Real the one that I’ve been given hints you’re seeing, you smell of gentian, such poor taste, don’t pretend, don’t call me doll

I just can’t believe it, Henrique

above all don’t call me doll while you hug my knees asking me to forgive you, offering me money, picking up the pieces of a lampshade from the carpet and holding yourself as though you were a stem with a wire brace around you.

—You have one more patient, doctor

one of those young nurses who seem to have been mass-produced in some high-class ceramics shop, it’s hard to get mad at them or say no, not a wrinkle on her glass-smooth skin, a small defect on one tooth that maybe makes me feel sorry for her, something about her waist that makes me feel old and superfluous, like a piece of antique furniture, a sideboard or dresser, looked at without interest, capable maybe of seducing her aunt, not her, the girl didn’t understand that the crooked tooth that almost bit into her lip caught me and made me feel happy, I smoothed my hair with my hand and she didn’t notice my hair, which made me look through the folders slowly and grumble

—I can’t see any name here

underneath it all I was glad to find myself close to a body that was getting the better of me even before it started conquering me, the back of her neck where there was some fuzz that curled out and if it was touched there was no fear, no rejection, only sincere surprise

—Are you crazy?

Elisa, three or four years younger, even though she’d been ground down by unemployment and the problem with her foot and even so she was uneasy at the movies and on the street, pulling her elbow away and pretending not to be pulling her elbow away, looking embarrassed at someone who wasn’t looking at us, asking me in a low voice

—Don’t take my arm Luciano

walking a step in front or a step behind, exaggerating her limp with an unworried expression so as not to offend me, hoping that strangers would think she was walking alone, I was supporting her and her parents, I would go into the laundry room and her mother had her back to me

—Don’t you even dream of losing that gold mine of a doctor, and you a cripple on top of it all

not catching the signals from her daughter’s eyebrows, her flippant father laying a piece of paper on the table

—I pawned my wedding ring, friend

in the beginning it was doctor sir, then doctor, now friend, any day now it’ll be Luciano, pawning my paintings, borrowing my car, occupying my armchair

—I pawned my wedding ring, Lucianinho

Elisa on the phone with her cousin or prancing about among us, bored, irritated, settling down in a corner of the sofa within reach of my hand, opening a magazine without reading it, staring at me out of the corner of her eye

thinking I didn’t notice

wishing me dead, Elisa shrugging her shoulders and her mother taking the remote from me to raise the volume on the TV where some idiot was singing

—What do you mean dead, doctor, she’s looking at something else

when the only thing she was really seeing was the idiot blowing kisses to her from the screen and Elisa not pulling her elbow away, fluffing up her dress, sometimes I wonder why I don’t come to my senses and go back home, stop dyeing my hair, let out my belt a couple of notches, breathe freely without stiffening my muscles like when the nurse at the hospital straightens her cap and as she straightens her cap I melt away with feeling

you could pour me into a chalice

shuffling through X-rays

—It’s not here, your colleague in the lab asked for it on the phone you could pour me into a chalice or dump my ashes into a pail, when I shave in the morning it’s not me I’m shaving, I’m invisible and with no white hairs lathering a gray chin that doesn’t belong to me, in front of our window in Reguengos in the summer Mr. Dimas was taking the chair out of his shop, setting it up on the square, tying the towel around his customers’ necks

the wild doves were rising out of the fields

and he’d give them a close shave in the sunlight, I remember the smell of the aftershave as they got out of the chair and the proud Mr. Dimas wipping his razor and patting them on the cheek

—Like a baby’s behind like a baby’s behind

Reguengos, a row of warblers along the balcony of the co-op, the traveling bullring they would set up at the edge of town with the bulls shut up in a truck that reeked of lye, the owner would take care of their wounds from the last fight’s banderillas with clover salve, we’d peep inside and there was unhappy lowing, if I were to go to Reguengos the barber’s been in the cemetery for ages and not a warbler to be seen, if the nurse or Elisa could only guess that when I was their age, if they could only believe me, just when I was going to tell them where the warblers slept, one of them the nurse, I think, because Elisa and her cousin

—Also, I don’t really know if it’s a female or a male patient, he looks like a man to me, but he has a husband with him

the bulls in the truck scratching themselves on the nails and the sole matador drinking beer with the divorcee from the boardinghouse. Elisa, who was getting fat in the hips, waiting for me, holding up her funny ankle, one of my colleagues calling in the corridor

—Bernardino

and a faucet turning on and off, quick footsteps

sometimes the warblers would circle around the square like drunken sailors, in every consultation room were prints of French paintings stained with grease and funguses

—Wait a minute Bernardino

taking the chairs from the medical office out onto the square and shaving his colleagues in the sun while the bulls, which looked to me like a single one with different heads, were rubbing up against the planks, Bernardino must have been waiting because

—I thought you’d gone deaf

the cleaning woman’s stepladder on the floor outside and at that moment the fireworks from Évora with a handful of salutes and my saying let me set one off Mr. Borges, it’s hard to be fifty-eight years old since September, lumbago, high blood pressure and still having a liking for firecrackers, the nurse was in a hurry to leave me

everything’s leaving me these days

—Shall I send them in, doctor?

another one who’d started with doctor sir, now she’s on doctor and any day now

that’s the way the wheels go round

slipping a piece of paper onto my desk, taking a quick look around, like an accomplice, amused, let old Methuselah pay

—I pawned my wedding ring, friend

and I went for my glasses and wrote the check because that tooth, Mr. Borges handed me a bunch

—How time passes, lad, fifty-eight really?

he was just the same because I never saw him again, me with this damned spine and the masseur guaranteeing me, with pity, that I’m in very good shape for my age, when he asked me about it I lied, I’m sorry I lied, I explained that I always get my figures mixed up, his pen changed the two to a seven, the humiliation of cops and cabinet ministers younger than I was, when my father reached seventy he showed me a news item, unfortunate seventy-year-old run over by a train and in the last sentence they removed the old man’s corpse to the morgue, the nurse, the nurse studying my remains on the railroad tracks, no problem with her foot, her flesh firm, glowing, kissing Bernardino, her arms, my God, a smile if she would only give me one

—Shall I send them in, doctor?

lumbago nonexistent and my cholesterol that of a child, only in homage to that smile while firecrackers were exploding with little clouds and the pigeons of Cardal Florido huddled in fear

—Show them in, Risoleta

the name on a badge at chest level, in Cardal Florido my grandfather’s farmhouse a stone’s throw away and my grandfather speaking to me from inside his mustache

—Scratch this shoulder for me Luciano I can’t reach it with my nails

the yellow mustache between his nose and his lip

—Tobacco, lad

underneath the yellow some exceedingly yellow gums from which he’d extract a damp cigarette, his skull showing and his face two hollows as he dragged on the tobacco, a hot coal rose up out of the ashes and glowed for an instant, the farm here in the hospital, the tractor gobbling up rocks, Bernardino running into Elisa in the coffee shop and straightening his jacket

—Hello there

the cleaning woman passed me at the door on her hands and knees with a brush and a cake of soap, there were metallic sounds coming from the bandage closet, I went to medical school because the doctor in Reguengos served the water crackers at mass and men took their hats off to him without his saying hello to anyone, if you were interested in fireworks all that was needed was one little word and Mr. Borges haughtily

—They’re yours

while as for what concerned me

—Use good judgment, boy

the little cloud and the explosion not in the sky, here below, echoing off the walls of the church and the orange trees on the square dropping their fruit onto the ground, Risoleta led that woman and her husband in

—This way this way

fifty-eight years old and possibly the prostate

certainly the prostate

realizing that one of the temples on my glasses was wobbling on its screw, catching sight of a dress and a pair of pants floating about, pointing out the barber chairs in the sun as its rays bounced off the walls of the church onto them, if my grandfather had his beard trimmed he would fall asleep under the towel, the barber would extract the cigarette from the grip of his canines and his skull all startled sucking on nothing

—What’s going on?

my skull begins to appear, I swear, see where the bones are joined together, if you see me fall asleep cover me with a handkerchief

—He’s dead

just like my grandfather’s corpse sleeping stretched out in the parlor under a linen napkin, Risoleta’s bracelets from India growing quiet in the hallway

—Good-bye

the dress and the pair of pants took shape on the bench and changed into faces, a blonde wig, earrings on a skull similar to mine and the skull of a young fellow next to it, both silent, no tongues, no skin, inanimate skeletons handing me the lab report, the frayed blouse where the arm was, through the window an attendant in coveralls came out of the administration building, opened the lock on the storage room, five or six tanks shaded by an elm tree, a sign

no fires or flames

began shaking on the grillwork of the gate, the doctor gave out the water crackers at mass and didn’t say hello to anyone, he took the stethoscope out of his bag, ordered me to cough, and would go off in silence, during the mating season the doves cooed all day in the oat field, Dona Isaura in her bathrobe on the Dutchman’s terrace and my mother, I don’t know why

—Idiot

the two skulls were watching, looking at me, arriving at the hospital on consultation mornings dozens of dead people like these, umbrellas, do you want me to scratch your shoulder grandfather where your nails can’t reach, I to the blonde wig

—What’s your name ma’am?

a pause in the cooing of the doves, the attendant in coveralls closing the gate and the sound of the lock coming after him, just one firecracker Mr. Borges, the other skull, the young fellow’s

—Soraia

a small bag of gunpowder tied to the stick, a lighted match, the match touching the wick, you don’t have to show me Mr. Borges, the blonde wig pulling off an earring massaging the ear

the piece of ear that skulls sometimes

contradicting the young man

—My name is Carlos

when I put my glasses on a piece of ear, really, pieces of jaundice that lipstick and creams no longer hid, the kind of glow that enshrouds the dying, my mother for example, they’d bring her some chicken soup and she was searching for the spoon without finding it

—Do you find me different?

so I wrote Carlos

the barber lathering up my grandfather before they hid him in his shirt, his suit, lathering up my father

not thinking about Elisa, about my wife by herself in the living room, about my empty armchair

I made a mistake and wrote Luciano, I erased it and wrote Carlos, and the young man doubling over as if he had colic

—Her name is Soraia I’m her husband

looking for something or other in his pocket, leaving the pocket alone, no doctor sir or doctor or friend, I should have said to the nurse

—I can’t

have said, forgetting about the defect in her tooth and that business about her waist making me feel old

—Tomorrow

tomorrow because fifty-eight years old, cholesterol, prostate and a row of warblers waiting for me in Reguengos, one or two before, now dozens, hundreds, I look at the balcony and there they are, I look again and the railing is deserted, Elisa pulling up the quilt

—What’s the matter now?

and even without turning on the light I knew that the warblers again, inside her face, pecking me, the skulls huddling and as they huddled a creak of ribs, vertebrae, I’m sick aren’t I

or maybe the clouds from the fireworks and me spelling out the clouds before the blonde wig