What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (40 page)

 

a hem while I sat on the sofa, legs out, tapping one shoe against the other, looking at the ceiling and waiting for something interesting to happen because down below here nothing of interest was happening and right then and there I got the idea that the chandelier was finally beginning to come unglued and at least there would be a feast of broken glass on the floor, my father’s face was looking for mine and I was pretending I wasn’t noticing, and I said to the chandelier

—Will it be today or when? with hopes that the quivering of the prisms would turn into a cascade, I stopped knocking my ankles against each other to pound on the floor and bring about the collapse at the same time that my father was puckering his features around his nose, all in my direction

—Paulo

while the prisms came to rest because it had only been a bus on the street and the bus was long gone now, if we’d opened the window I would have got the notion that the chandelier was a tree too, except planted upside down with its fruit of hollow bulbs waving along with the other treetops, a transparent tree

except for the brass trunk and the branches of bolts whose name Mr. Couceiro knew in Latin, he would write bolts in the air with his cane and explain to me, explain to me now the reason for my not being able to shake your hand and say good morning, I mumble, I disappear, I shut myself up in the laundry room angry at shutting myself up in the laundry room, if only I could, if only I could manage it, if only I weren’t ashamed

and I can’t, I can’t manage it, I’m ashamed to go into the living room and keep him company, I don’t want to

can it be that I don’t want to?

I don’t want Dona Helena, lifting her happy gratitude from her knitting, I don’t want them to grow old, to die, to scare me with your medicines at table with your small fingers meditating

the capsule or the pill?

deciding on the capsule but picking up the pill, helping it down with water, the urge to get involved, afraid of the answer

—What did the doctor say?

because I could swear more hunched over, slower, when they brought me with them Dona Helena didn’t have liver spots

she never slopped her food

no need to lean on her chair, I was annoyed with that little bit of theater

—Don’t pretend, you have trouble walking

along with a desire to hit them and along with an urge to hug them

no urge to hug them, only the desire to hit them, a couple of fakers thinking they could move me with their stumbling as if in matters of clowning my father wasn’t enough, in the middle of the night they would walk to the kitchen, bumping into corners and waking up the building with pretexts of being thirsty, not slippers scratching on the floor, chalk that scraped a blackboard and made my hair stand on end in the depths of sleep, pulling off the adhesive from my skin which was also me, the dishwasher in a frenzy of uncountable objects we’d never had, hundreds of pots, silverware, cups, strainers knocking against each other, falling, rolling, walking up to me with metallic rumbles and then, in the silence, the thread of water in the glass

a glass with no bottom that never stopped filling up

a deafening thread, a cascade of lead entering their throats which I never imagined could be so wide with an immense gurgling, the slippers back to the bedroom in spite of the pillow over my head and my being adhesive tape, and my being skin, or then a hope that lasted for infinite seconds, taking the pillow off my head, adjusting my ears in growing apprehension, a body lying across the bread bag, features in a mask of horror, the sleeve drooping onto a cluster of dead fingernails

don’t die

the suspicion, the probability, the certainty that maybe they’d fainted, getting up out of bed, getting tangled up in the sheet

seeing that they might just have have died

getting myself untangled from the sheet

don’t die

pulling up my pajama bottom loose at the waist, which falls down to my knees because in spite of mentioning it three months ago Dona Helena with a pat on the head

—You’re right, son

don’t call me son

she didn’t replace the elastic

they might die again

stumbling, holding up my pants toward the kitchen, bumping into the same corners as they did except I was barefoot, a nail and infection, tetanus, delirium, fever, pains

—There’s nothing to be done ma’am, the vaccine didn’t take

I went on to the bathroom with its smell of perpetual tide where even in the dark the mirror gleamed, calling me, worried as I was

—Hurry up

the bedroom where Dona Helena or Mr. Couceiro

I didn’t know which one would survive the other

was coughing in time to the alarm clock along with the enigma of a fly inside the glass which the minute hand would try to harpoon every half hour and in the kitchen that was enlarged by the streetlights

don’t forget the way the streetlights would enlarge the apartment when you got home up the lightless stairs, when you would have one step to go and your leg would sink into an unexpected landing, don’t forget that before the key was in the lock you’d light a match, the flame from the match would fall onto the doormat

don’t forget the flame from the match falling onto the doormat

and the building just like you would cease to exist but, still, the key was turning all by itself, the lights enlarging the living room into other living rooms, revealing to you shadows of sofas that weren’t there and you were questioning strangers

don’t forget

who didn’t exist and still were talking to you in the emptiness of the silence, the lights on rainy Fridays crossed the street with crooked lines, even though there was no wind, your reflection in every drop on the glass, dozens of you in the window frame looking at you with no interest because it’s this, only this, you don’t know who you are and who you’ll be, only this that frightens and intrigues you, you go up to the curtain and nobody there

not even you

in the reflection it’s useless to question yourself, assume anything, feel afraid, the evidence of your life is before you, don’t forget thinking

—
Who am I?

even though you won’t get an answer and you don’t get an answer, there’s nobody with you. nobody can simulate you, you simulate yourself and your heart has stopped, you drop the curtain because you found the future, not your future, that of others, your future is finished

don’t forget

if you tried to speak where would you find the words, don’t think that by turning on the light you’ll get back what you’ve been, what you imagined that they’re waiting for you

don’t say that they’re waiting for you

they’re not waiting for you

don’t be upset, put away your handkerchief, stop, maybe if you put away your handkerchief you’ll discover some apple seeds, in your pocket a pencil stub, a lost jackknife that will help you reconstruct an archaeology of voices, your father, your mother, your blind grandmother making a mistake

—
Is it my grandson, Judite?

and the smell of the mimosas that you never got to catch so get on with your story, don’t forget that you went to the bathroom, the hallway, the bedroom, and in the kitchen enlarged by the streetlights

and in the kitchen enlarged by the streetlights

don’t forget

in the kitchen enlarged by the streetlights neither one of them slipping away from the refrigerator with a tear of margarine hanging from the package, waiting for me to get really sad, the Anjos church worshipping misfortunes

—Too late, Paulinho

and

it’s obvious

a lie, what do you mean too late, Mr. Couceiro on the stool from which he’d feed me when I was small, that is Dona Helena would feed me and Mr. Couceiro would count the spoonfuls, eight to go, seven to go, six to go, five and a half to go and after five and a half, since you couldn’t see the bottom of the plate, Dona Helena would give a signal and Mr. Couceiro, while Dona Helena was scraping the edges, five and a quarter to go, five to go, four and three quarters to go, four and a half to go, going from four and a half to zero so that

Dona Helena

—All done

or maybe he would happen to speed up his count, dividing the unit into smaller and smaller snippets, three quarters to go, half to go, a quarter to go, half a quarter to go, half of half a quarter to go, almost nothing to go, half of almost nothing to go, Dona Helena with the spoon in suspense and me with a bib around my neck fascinated by the elasticity of that endless arithmetic, even today it occurs to me to count the forkfuls when they serve me lunch

—Seventeen to go, Paulinho

increasing or decreasing the asparagus in order to hit zero, the cane pounding against the tiles inside my head, popping my eyes out in the restaurant because I’m sure Dona Helena’s with me, I got to zero Dona Helena

—I got to zero Dona Helena

because I’m sure that Mr. Couceiro’s with me

—Did you hear me get to zero Mr. Couceiro?

Mr. Couceiro standing by the stove

don’t forget that either

seeing me come in as if I hadn’t come in, following me without following me, pointing at the box for me

a basket of clothes on top of it

not pointing at the box for me because none of us used it because of the basket, the church telling me a lie that was immediately noted

the Anjos church, if you think about it, not too late, I was wrong, the margarine clown hiding his eye in the eyelid of the package, we planted parsley in tin cans on the windowsill, they let me water the parsley with the port-wine glass with gilt decorations, they would lift me up by the waist and I would empty the glass into the cans

—The parsley belongs to me doesn’t it, Dona Helena?

parsley or rosemary?

in the afternoon the sun on the pots and pans, on the cloths, Dona Helena didn’t dare season the rice if I was nearby, on one occasion I caught her chopping a leaf

—Don’t hurt my parsley

rosemary?

and Dona Helena letting go of the knife as she would a living thing, the bicycle even with flat tires you could have said had just come back from the park, if it had had cheeks they would have been flushed from the wind, at dinner the little pearl of the porgy’s eye was wheezing with a goiter, Mr. Couceiro and I in the center of the world and when we got back, along the way Ghana, Alaska, China the poster with palm trees

V
ISIT THE
B
AHAMAS

in the travel agency, at the end of the month the Bahamas were wrinkled, the clerk substituted a black woman in earrings offering pineapples, papayas

V
ISIT
C
URAÇAO

I was madly in love with that black woman for a whole year and also with the Bahamas and Curaçao on our return, I was going to say there was a bird scratching on the window of the laundry room and yet from its electrocardiogram flight it was a bat, I think, just so long as you don’t call me son don’t squeeze my shoulde

don’t squeeze my shoulder

I feel fine this way, we could spend hours without looking at anything, if only the hand of the alarm clock, in its fury to harpoon the fly, didn’t bring us day, the first buses came down the Avenida Almirante Reis making it stretch from intersection to intersection all along the traffic lights and all of a sudden faucets, people, sparrows, the world off center

don’t forget the night when a girl danced without paying attention to you

you were nobody, you were nobody

on a lighted balcony, Noémia disappearing from the picture frame and in Noémia’s place the girl who grabbed a pitcher and danced with it, Mr. Couceiro changed the order of things on the wardrobe and Noémia again, don’t forget that you were doing the same thing with the comic book and the schoolbook, as soon as you heard their steps the schoolbook on top of it