What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (39 page)

—Don’t bring any trouble down on me and tell your uncle you’re still a virgin, Amélia

Looking at me I imagine and yet who can tell where shadows look, the third time with the shears the fox silent and its tongue dark in its mouth

the shadow of its dark tongue in the shadow of its mouth

or a clump of earth then, or a stone then, or my aunt then because her shadow was on top of him covering his throat with a piece of cloth to stop him from speaking, black water on the cloth and then brown and then transparent, the empty lips in the leaves, the empty clothes

you smell the way oxen smell when they smell the ground

I wasn’t the one who smelled of berries and woods, of mud, of roots, of water, he was the one, I had the impression that

—Alberto

and it wasn’t my aunt

—Alberto

it was the rooster on the weathervane, it was he, I can’t be sure, I think it was he

—If it’s because of your niece she’s still a virgin, Alberto cleaning the shears on his shirt

or on his pant leg, Soraia running out onto the balcony where a peahen

which one?

was sobbing

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

the lemon trees in the yards breathing outside and my mother-in-law in her own world for a long time with her deafness and her trunks of rubbish winding up what she imagined was a music box

and now throwing the body into the well and covering the well

—There wasn’t any water, it was a mistake

in spite of the reflection down below, my aunt, my uncle, me, three heads with one cloud above

no cloud, a ripple of water

no ripple of water, a bag of quicklime on top of the hat and the forked branch

you smell of eucalyptus leaves, you smell of branches, if it’s because of your niece she’s still a virgin, Alberto

we erased the marks with branches, we hoped that the underbrush would grow over the spot where he

where his shadow or a flock of herons from the dam at the lake, how many nights, I wonder, am I sure of finding Soraia on the landing waiting for me

—I have to talk to you, Dona Amélia

and reaching the doormat

God knows how hard it is for me to reach the doormat at seventy-three

seventy-three, not sixteen not thirty, seventy-three years old putting the key in the lock, inviting her to

—Come in

I see that I’m all alone thinking about the peacocks, I wouldn’t say that she came every day but at least once a week she would visit us my husband and me in the little flat where we live almost stuck up against the castle and even though she had no money and pawned her hairpiece always a nice gift, a little package of tea, a ceramic piece that might not have been expensive but that caught your attention, Micaela told me that before leaving with the customer from table nine for the hotel or the boardinghouse

se habla español
english spoken

where she reserved rooms

a counter with small flags

even from the Ivory Coast, Dona Amélia

a little old man on the roof chatting with the pigeons

she would go into the kitchen and ask for leftover sandwiches that my gentleman, the dog

a mastiff with a bow

adores and it wasn’t my gentleman it was the dog that ate them on getting home, it was she, the manager bawled her out for going with an important man carrying a bundle under her arm, there are customers who don’t like that Soraia, you look like some poor woman scavenging leftovers, her gentleman, the dog that appeared later at Fonte da Telha muttering its displeasure around Rui’s corpse and was carried off by some wave, the policeman noticing he was missing

—Where’s the mastiff?

as if the mastiff could tell them that on Tuesday the twenty-first of September nineteen ninety-eight we got to Fonte da Telha by bus, the deceased and I, we walked along the dunes where there were necks of bottles and filth and cans, we spread out the blanket on the sand, we lay down where we always lie down, past the shacks, where the larks laid eggs on an outcropping with weeping willows, looking at the sea, as it so happened that time more green than blue, caused

I think

by a bunch of algae from last night’s tide, which brought about a movement of gulls toward Costa da Caparica, to be exact, or even farther down on Santo António da Caparica, that is, São João da Caparica, Bico da Areia, Alto do Galo, or even Trafaria, those death-trap shacks where

except I was wrong about Bico da Areia, I needed additional information to back me up better, what I’m declaring is

where, however, and with reservations, a woman between forty-seven and fifty-three years of age was using her apron to wipe the tables of a café not far away

seventy feet?

from a house

from a shack from a rundown house with a gentian

of this I’m sure

fading all around, and picking up again, after this brief and perhaps unnecessary digression the declarations that I shall read, find accurate, and sign, we spread out the blanket and got undressed looking at the sea, making sure that the syringe was in our pocket along with the spoon, the lighter, and the equivalent of eleven heroin fixes picked up in Chelas during the week immediately preceding the day I mentioned above from people whose name, domicile, and profession

in addition to marital status, nationality, and any specific information

we swear on our honor we don’t know, after which we raised our elbows over our eyes to obviate the excessive solar light that the empyrean

devoid of clouds

was making uncomfortable for us, with sight already made fragile by the regular administration, according to all probabilities, every other day of stupefacients with an elevated degree of impurities, some of which are hepatotoxic and at least one nephrotoxic

for further elucidation of what we state, consult appendix 2

(two)

of the autopsy report

with our sight already made fragile by the regular administration of stupefacients in addition to the unquestionable existence of congenital glaucoma

appendix 4

(four)

of the same report

with a probable reduction of fields of vision especially the left, lying in dorsal decumbency on the blanket listening to the

(marginal note without the initials of the deponent although accepted by the presiding judge after a telephone consultation with the Port Captain of Lisbon where they kept me waiting for an eternity in spite of their having been informed of my status of magistrate, motivating on my part a strong protest, still without a reply which, judging from the delay on the telephone, I do not believe will be forthcoming, marginal note, low tide at twelve thirty-three, adding, if it was not twelve thirty-three, it was sixteen four because on the captain’s desk there is such a jumble of papers that your honor can’t imagine)

we, as I was saying, were on the blanket, listening to the monotonous succession of the waves, basically the same as on winter Sundays, I was writing on the typewriter while my helpmate feeds our son suggesting, couldn’t you put that aside for a bit and help me with this messy mush the child keeps getting me dirty with, which brought on two mistakes that I corrected by hand at the bottom of the page, hoping that the section chief

—The day you make a proper report I’ll send up a rocket doesn’t make me pound it out all over again, we, consequently, were in dorsal decumbency on the blanket, until

approximately

at eighteen thirty according to testimony of doubtful fidelity in light of the notorious intoxication of the person questioned and, however, the only person it was for us to detain, in accordance with Chapter 4

(four)

Discussion and Conclusions

of this report, and the only one possible for us to detain in view of the hostility

and mistrust

shown by the inhabitants of Fonte da Telha

with the exception of the friendly alcoholic

with regard to the efforts, goodwill, and legitimate desire for accuracy on the part of the police and the ingrates, avoiding the truth and involvement in legal procedures

in which they had been, on several occasions, involved

repeating I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything, I’m not talking to you, release my brother-in-law first and then we can have a chat, and thus it is only correct for us to imagine that Rui

that I

indifferent to the mastiff because I never liked him and the Cape Verdeans didn’t want to buy him, with a bow on his neck

so stupid, gentlemen

trotting on the tar and barking at the reeds, every time he came over to me I’d push him away with my knee

—Don’t bother me

and the boob, instead of understanding, filled with even more loving, convinced that I was Soraia calling him lovey and sharing the leftovers from the club with him, at six o’clock, when the sun stopped bothering me, I was heating up one of the packets maybe too dark but what did that matter if you didn’t want to fly, if at nine o’clock in the morning

(nine-eleven, the words of the deponent Maria Alice Nunes Garcia, nurse 2nd class

second class who’d come on duty a bit late to the annoyance of the head nurse, about fifty minutes before)

they’d called me from the hospital to inform me that Soraia, I was staring at the phone as if the phone

putting it back in the cradle, pulling the cord out of the socket as though the telephone

banging it on the corner of the kitchen table until the Bakelite broke, I smashed the ball, destroyed the insulation, undid the coils, threw away all that stuff that had lied to me

not Soraia

on the rug drying at the rear of Príncipe Real where no one saw me from the business with offices on the other side of the street where a stenographer would smile at me sometimes

or I would pretend that she smiled at me sometimes, a skinny little blonde, who knows why so sad, and blondes bring on more pity than brunettes because they don’t cry, don’t fall apart, nurse 2nd

(second)

class Maria Alice Nunes Garcia having heard that uniform and monotonous sound

not monotonous like the waves that break off and start again

the monotonous and continuous sound of broken connections, in view of which, my obligation of reporting the demise of the patient and keeping in mind the bed that urgently needed changing and the forthcoming bureaucracy of death that fell to me to fulfill, calling the doctor, the stretcher-bearers, informing the business office, marking the corpse with the obligatory tag and the unit stamp on the head, I hung up, having on the following morning received news of the fatal end of the patient’s living companion, who had appeared, abusively declaring himself to be the husband, referring to said patient as a person of the female sex, of which, as has been proven, he was not, having received knowledge of the fatal outcome in the newspaper, and now that we are here and in order for it to be clear in this thick head here

pardon me if I offend you

I don’t have the time or the wish to have lunch with you, mister detective, especially since you’re wearing a wedding ring, tell me where to sign because I have to get on with my life

I threw away all that stuff that had lied to me

not Soraia

on the rug drying, I can barely remember lifting up the brick where I hid the heroin, I don’t remember whistling to the mastiff although I just might have done it because Soraia, loving as she was and wanting us to get along with each other

—You’ll take care of the beasty won’t you promise me that you’ll take care of the beasty

she would have liked, I know her that well, for the animal to be with me, I have a hazy image of the bus to Fonte da Telha, especially of an elderly lady sitting next to me who asked

—May I pet him?

at the same time as she got bogged down in a tale all full of ramifications and details about a basset hound that had disappeared on her in São Domingo church, stolen by some martyr or other I presume, perched on the altar with an innocent little look among candles and flowers and the lady, running her fingers through the mastiff’s hair, let me hug him around the neck and bring back memories even if just for five minutes, with my finding a certain happiness in the fact that there are people even more alone than I am, a happiness that no doubt gave me the courage to lay out the blanket on the sand, heat up the heroin fixes in the spoon

not eleven, correct the eleven, ten gathering them up one by one into the syringe without its mattering to me that people were watching me and I can’t guarantee that the fishermen and the people living in the shacks weren’t watching me because maybe I had some money, maybe my shirt or my loafers or some ring that the druggie maybe wore and that they could certainly sell in Barreiro or in Almada, I could feel their hope and their hope helped me almost not to notice the rubber band on my arm, the needle, nothing understand, almost noticing nothing that wasn’t the sea.