What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (38 page)

my husband looking through the drawers

—
Are these the only clothes your niece has, ma’am?

a mystery of mud, the water black at first and then brown and then invisible, or, rather, you could hear the sound, you felt it in your flesh, pouring into bowls and the varnished tomatoes, red, the eucalyptus trees

—Pzgtslm

while the shadow of a knee was splitting the knee I didn’t have, while a breath of wind the weathervane couldn’t hold with its beak of a rusty rooster, open, on what had been my neck, probably talking to me but I couldn’t hear because I have no ears, I pushed my hair back and

just as I’d imagined

no ear really, I probably could have talked to him if the ants and the crows or the fox we kill in the trap

he was caught by the thigh and then the hoe, the pruning shears, a knife

—Son of a bitch

going in and out, hitting a bone, missing the bones, the lungs pffff, I remember my aunt

—Don’t ruin the pelt

and they ruined the pelt that stank of woods and blood and entrails, if they’d left me

and they hadn’t left me

a tongue, I would have asked

—What about me what do I stink of?

the shadow where my neck must have been you stink of mud, the water black at first and then brown and then invisible, of eucalyptus leaves and berries, of woods, of blood, of entrails

my husband

—
Are these the only clothes your niece has, ma’am?

my aunt to my uncle, to the others, to an arm of shadow that was straightening its hat, grew smaller on me, picked

—Don’t ruin the pelt

up the forked branch and the forked branch was a shadow too

you stink of water

my husband never told me I stank of water, my husband ne
…

saying that I stank of water and went off with her, in the place on the outskirts where I worked, my shadow gone, I was all alone, men whose knuckles were like ramrods and whose lives instead of going forward went backward, really, something due to the fact that there was no shadow for them, not even a shadow for them, nothing for them, at the very most, voices

—Let me get dressed in peace go away

face down on the mattress picking himself up thinking he was picking up his clothes

—
Are these the only clothes your niece has, ma’am?

until taking shape as an adult with the picture of a dead child inside, I would help them the same way that I helped my husband

—Wait a minute, you have the buttons wrong

I would help them

—Wait a minute, you have the buttons wrong, sir

the same way that I helped the girls, Marlene, Micaela, Vânia, Sissi, Soraia, poor thing, before she got sick and who I can’t say came every day but at least once a week she’d visit us in the little flat that belonged to my mother-in-law, almost stuck up against the castle, with a different lover on each visit

—I want you to meet my boyfriend, Dona Amélia

until a certain time only her younger brother and Rui, Soraia on the balcony trying to make out the other bank of the river

—You can’t see the other bank, what a pity

and when I asked her why the other bank, she answered me marigolds, I showed her one of the backyards where there didn’t happen to be any dead gulls, you have marigolds there, Soraia, those aren’t the marigolds, Dona Amélia, without my understanding what marigolds she was talking about, flowers that she must have lost years ago just the way that I’d lost my shadow and the hares running away, there are times when I think I’ve found them in the club when the lights are turned on and a shape flutters on the wall, I think it’s the dowser but it’s Sissi singing, my husband asked my aunt who was packing my bags, one almost empty little bag, that is, nothing but glass eggs and the smell of hares

—Her shadow, ma’am?

my husband was trying to find the marigolds because he, too, when he was small

—I can still remember, Amélia

and his eyes turned inward where I could make out a cradle in an empty room and right away my husband

—You couldn’t understand

only the frame of the cradle, a string of seashells crumbling in a rusty curlicue and a little lullaby music box with its music gone, I felt sorry for his orphan look

—Did you see my cradle, Amélia?

showing me an empty room much smaller than when I’d left it, a tiny window opening onto some stalks that weren’t even marigolds and in what was left of the iron skeleton the little music box covered in a spiral of rust that my husband hadn’t been able to clean off

—I haven’t been able to clean it off, Amélia

in spite of having taken it apart to study the mechanism in hopes of a slow jingle spelling out hey Mr. Bogeyman get off our roof and in spite of all my efforts not a note, Amélia, all I ask for is one little note that will give me back my mother when she was eighteen, wrapped in perfume on a March day with swallows and the six o’clock light that I thought came out of a basin of lye, not this old woman I barely know and who shows no sign of knowing me and passes me by the way she would a stranger, ordering

—You’re blocking the hallway

hanging out my dead father’s shirts and annoying the peacocks, my husband in a voice that he was taking out of the trunk along with the pictures and I was holding fear in my hand the way I’d hold those old ribbons that tear if you touch them

—Help me find the person I was, Amélia

a room I don’t know, in what neighborhood, on what street, in what building, and he would swear to me sometimes it was big sometimes small according to the whims of his memory and he would repeat you don’t lose the six o’clock light the way you lose a key Amélia, Soraia, the six o’clock light Mr. Osório, do you think the six o’clock light, Rui wondering if he could sell it to the Cape Verdeans in Chelas, heat it up in a spoon, cut it with lemon, inject it into his veins, you’re the six o’clock light Rui, lifting the lid of the trunk and nothing but papers, mildew, the six o’clock light, what happened to the six o’clock light, my husband smiling at a cradle with its new music box that was asking Mr. Bogeyman to get off that roof, my husband, while my mother-in-law stopped blocking the hallway

—Where was home, mother?

a liar who called himself my son as though I didn’t know my own son, as though my son wasn’t with me peacefully playing with a string of shells, a worn-out man accompanied by a woman without a shadow almost as worn out as he is, a creature with a lot of earrings and rings and two skinny young fellows who open my drawers and rummage in my pots and pans

—Where was home, mother?

if he really was my son he’d know where home was, he’d pick it out without any hesitation, the Travessa de São Bernardino and the second door on the left, he wouldn’t have to ask, threaten the peacocks with a shotgun saying bang-bang with his mouth and killing the gulls, the Travessa de São Bernardino just before the convent, every so often a novice would pick up tangerines from the ground, at four in the morning prayers in the chapel and the door knocker echoing prayers all over the place, the creature with the rings intrigued, all you have to do is look at her and you can understand that a cradle just like but more modest than ours and not made of painted iron, cheap wood where I’d be ashamed to put my son to bed

—What’s the matter Mr. Osório?

the perfume ahead of her, you caught the perfume before there was anyone on the stairs, the perfume in the living room asking permission

—May I come in?

and the worn-out woman to the one who wasn’t my son

—Hurry and get yourself fixed up, here comes Soraia

with me feeling like a tangerine too, and, catching sight of the cradle, because with children you never know if they’re hungry or have angina, the worn-out woman as though my duties as a mother

—She’s been in her own world for a long time now, don’t pay any heed

I say to Soraia she’s been in her own world for a long time now, don’t pay any attention to her, she doesn’t talk, she doesn’t care about us, now and then she gets the notion, not fussing around anybody’s body because nobody’s that small but that can’t be the reason, it must be rheumatism, some spring in her brain that vibrates for no reason, little threads of memory that will float up and disappear and go away, in my case

it’s an example

it was the dowser with his broken forked branch and the pruning shears stuck in his back, missing half a head because of the ants and the crows and a shadow of blood covering the shadow, what seems to me a kind of peace in my uncle as he looks down at him, my aunt looking for neighbors, left and right, washing the shears, praying into the palm of her hand for the wind not to carry her words toward the vineyard after ours

—Don’t you want the shovel, Alberto?

a single boot, fingers hoping that they can still hold me, you smell of the woods Amélia, you smell of water first black, then brown, then invisible, I pour it into bowls for you, the varnished tomatoes, red, you smell of mud and roots, the smell of woods, of entrails, the dowser breathing pffff in the fox trap and then the hoe

of course

the poker from the kitchen, as we got closer he looked at us, covering the metal teeth, his hat on his head, concerned about a hole in his stocking

—I didn’t know there were any foxes around here

the iron teeth where the bait, a piece of lard, and the weathervane on the barn were spying on us, my aunt worried about the weathervane

—Alberto

why worry about a rooster who can’t crow, an aluminum comb, a yellow tail

you smell of berries Amélia, don’t worry, wait, let me smell the berries, you smell the way oxen smell when they smell of earth, the way hares smell in the barley, those quick noses eternal for an instant

the dowser asking

—Lend a hand over here, Alberto

the dowser asking for a leg massage

—Lend a hand over here, Alberto

noticing the shears with which we cut branches, falling silent, the shadow denser now, the two arms just one arm only drawing back, retreating, the forked branch pointing at my uncle before falling into the leaves and ceasing to be a shadow of the forked branch to be only the forked branch, a piece of apple bough shiny from use that my uncle stepped on, the hatless head two ears, that is, which were growing larger, the shadow of the free boot stamping on the ground, reaching my uncle and moving away from him because of the pruning shears, what must have been a mouth

the shadow of a mouth

what was a mouth, what I found out later was a mouth

—We’re friends aren’t we Alberto?

the hat close to me, not the shadow of a hat, a hat, green with a hatband and in the hatband a cigarette

a match was lighted while they were digging the well, the flame made no shadow, when the dovecote burned down I can remember the shadow on the wall of the chicken coop, the shadow of the flames and the shadow of the smoke, of the buckets that the neighbors came running with, the mixed shadows of the pigs, one single pig with a lot of snouts, a lot of tails, the fallen washtub, the shadows of the neighbors mixed in too

you smell of eucalyptus trees Amélia, you smell of berries, you smell of woods, entrails, of what animals smell like and me face down on the ground

Mount Caramulo was visible

remembering the mulberries on the road in the pine grove, my aunt if you eat mulberries you’ll get sick in the liver, my uncle against the doctor’s orders, serving himself from the bottle in the cupboard, I was waking up and his bare feet, drinking, not all my uncle, his bare feet, I could hear the sound of the bottle as he put it back, the doctor

—
You’re not going to last even six months Alberto and he didn’t

my uncle buttoning up his jacket after the examination, his belly bloated, his nose so white

—
Just as long as I have time to get rid of a fox I know about

the shadow of the dowser fox crouching in the trap, the shadow of his hat that my aunt squashed with her shoe, Soraia in the little flat almost stuck up against the castle

—I don’t want to see, Dona Amélia, I can’t see

in each of the fox’s hands five fingers and every finger separate from the rest

—If it’s because of your niece she’s still a virgin, Alberto

before the first time with the shears, and when it was the second time with the shears