What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (62 page)

putting the handkerchief away before I could say

—Let me see

and a small lead heart, it looked to me like the mares and yet the mare on the beach was a different horse from the one I told

—Faster

Sissi or Marlene or the woman with me, orchids, bashful, I’m not what I seem to be, Mr. Paulo, next month I’m going to be in the theater in Morocco, the manager, dusting off my lapel, the best chick of all, congratulations, just right, respectful, my father

Soraia

ordering more champagne, so many rings and so coarse, father, seriously, did you need all that jewelry?

—Very interesting, Mr. Paulo

bolero after bolero, Dona Amélia worried

—That lover there?

and how about a little perfume, a gardenia, Alcides’s finger telling her to hurry up and yet I said to the woman who went with the finger

—Where to?

without touching the champagne, because the champagne was beer, the lipstick smeared around her mouth

—I’m not Soraia, I’m Dina

you’re not Soraia, you’re Dina, and yet there’s a wig, falsies, the woman was offended, holding out strands of her hair to me in a boardinghouse in São Bento

—A wig?

the three poorly lighted floors that I expected, certain that I was being watched without seeing anybody, I was careful to see that Dona Aurorinha gave her lungs a rest along with her shopping bag

—I know it’s you, Dona Aurorinha, answer me, ma’am

and, finally, a faucet breaking up the wall and dripping down to the floor, every drop

—Poor devil

hide them in your handkerchief, mother, don’t let me hear, doors to the right and to the left, the washbasin in the rear where a Mulatto woman says to Dina

—Hello Teresa

not really Mulatto, Pakistani, Timorese, drying her hands farther down the hallway without realizing that she was getting us wet, she opened a door to where a fellow was sitting on the bed and tying his shoes, for a moment his eyes

no, the eyes of the manager, always careful with me, pointing out the second room, the balcony over a warehouse, the aluminum sunshade

—Is it all right, Mr. Paulo?

or Sissi feeling for the catches on the dress she’d inherited from my father and tightening it on her hips where the stitches were giving way

—Is it all right, Paulinho?

something’s got to happen before tomorrow morning, I can’t believe it’s all going to end this way, I mean this woman, the shade, the warehouse, my hesitation about getting undressed, I don’t get undressed, what else can I do, getting undressed, on the edge of the bed with my mouth on the pillow, avoiding her or unable to avoid her, the bedsprings warning me, I won’t let them see my face and in my face the doves, the bath, this scorn for not for you, not for you

—
I’m not capable, Judite

the fear that you’ll stroke me and wanting you to stroke me and if I want you to stroke me, the gentian

not my uncle, the gentian

—
Carlos

not the gentian, my mother stealing me away from my uncle’s wife

—
Carlos

and then the pulley on the well, the bucket touching bottom in the darkness and bringing me up, the afternoon by the chestnut tree outside the kitchen or at Bico da Areia or on the sheets on which my son is getting undressed now, every button on his shirt a great effort, the belt on his pants, which refuses to loosen, Dina

or Teresa

impatient, fed up

—
You’ve got twenty minutes left

or not even twenty minutes, your time’s run out, you understand, your time’s run out, you don’t have any left, I knew from when I was a child, I lost it when I was a boy, I don’t know it as a man, the orderly referring to him or to me

to him because I’m fine, I’m alive

—
He doesn’t have anything left anymore

with Paulo thinking not even an ending, just a postponement, a pause, an absurd misunderstanding, my son Paulo thinking an absurd misunderstanding and no misunderstanding, if I could only make him listen to me, tell him that even though there were steps in the hallway and loud laughing and orders

and along with the footsteps, the laughter, the orders to the Mulatto woman, or Pakistani or Timorese

—Good-bye, Teresa

outside, the woman asks

Sissi?

helping me with the belt, fooling with my socks and leaving the socks alone, asking me, listlessly

—What’s your name?

without bothering about an answer, from the balcony the herons, the bridge, the waves are stopping me from falling asleep, Gabriela giving her arm to Carmindo

—What did you expect, Paulo, you went away, didn’t you?

and the woman, in the tone of someone recalling an episode that fades away and has no connection to me

—Paulo?

not me, a lover, a cousin, one of those relatives who come back sometimes because of, how should I know, what goes on in a dream and follows us, annoyed with us

—What are you doing here?

looking for objects whose places we’ve changed, always farther back on the shelves, a baptismal ladle, rosaries, tin ashtrays, my father to my mother, picking me up

—I’d rather have had a daughter, Judite

a daughter wouldn’t have to go through what I’ve gone through, women are capable of what I’m not, they adjust themselves to what’s happened, they live in it, they breathe in it, they can tell from the direction of the wind the tombs they’ll inhabit, a daughter wouldn’t feel what I feel, those hands that pull me, tug at me, grab me, women drink in their suffering like plants or mares or the ground or the trees, women are mares and they keep up a secret dialogue with death, they know the dark places of their bodies where I wander blindly and where peace is to be found, a daughter could have done what I can’t

could have decided what I can’t

a daughter nev…

so that Sissi or Marlene

Sissi

Dina, Teresa in the tone of someone who remembers a fading episode that has no connection to me

—Paulo?

only the letters of my name, I’m all alone, the doctor, not looking at me

—His heart, obviously

while I slid across the mattress, I said to the Mulatto girl

not Mulatto, Oriental, Pakistani, Timorese

—
I can’t do it, Judite

escaping from out of the wardrobe mirror, taking refuge in the gentian and it wasn’t the gentian, wasn’t the waves, Rui, holding me by the shoulders

—
Soraia

I mean, not Rui, father, leave me, the woman

—Your hour is up

slippers or shoes in the hallway, a door that hits a corner of the sideboard or the back of a bed, windowpanes shaking, a plea

—No

louder, closer

—No

farther away

—No

somebody falling or I think had fallen, a voice outside

—Joana

again

—Open up, Joana

and again

(a second voice)

—What’s going on, Joana?

the second voice pushing on something because there was the sound of something on wood, telling the rooms

—The party’s over, ladies and gentlemen taking out a knife or what looked like a knife

to a man who was looking at us, astonished, the legs of another man on the floor, the Mulatto girl

the Oriental girl, the Pakistani girl, the Timorese girl drying her hands by waving them

and it wasn’t water, not water

wetting my chest, not noticing that she was wetting me

not water

as if she didn’t realize she was waving them until the first voice pushed her toward the room

—Joana

I mean, he wasn’t pushing the Mulatto girl

or Pakistani or Timorese, what difference does it make

he was moving a cardboard figure, a silhouette, a doll, he closed the door, turned the key

—The party’s over, ladies and gentlemen

suggesting

not ordering

suggesting to the man who was looking at us astonished

—Beat it, Marçal

and in April I sensed something strange for the first time, she didn’t tell me and it was the child, I found her hugging her knees and I didn’t understand, I thought she wasn’t feeling well, an upset, one of those letters her mother dictated to the woman in the post office asking for the sky

—
Did you put in everything I said?

while her fingers sketched figures in the air

instead of leaving, the man was quieter, empty rooms, bedcovers thrown back, balconies just like mine and on the balconies there was silence

not even night, night hadn’t been noticed, what had been noticed was the breathing silence as a substitute for night and I said to myself something has to happen by tomorrow morning, I can’t believe that all this

these people, these years, my life

is ending this way, a postponement, a pause, an absurd misunderstanding, Joana was in the locked room, the second voice was sending the man away, first with the hilt of his knife, then waving his arm

—Beat it, Marçal

making him go down onto the street as he picked up speed landing by landing, almost running now and no longer looking at us, he emerged into the light of the street lamp and was lost, I was sure Joana was shaking off what wasn’t water from her hands, that they brought up a van and there was a long shape in it that they tossed into the river with the help of a rock or some bricks and that was that, the rock or the bricks released near Vila Franca along with factory waste or the keel of some ship, nothing but a bundle of clothes, a spongy piece of something that the fish rejected and that fell apart into rags on its way to the sea, a month or two later the Mulatto woman

or the Oriental woman or etc.

was drying her hands by shaking them and there was water again, the man was waiting for her below, not worried, why should he be worried about us

my wife wasn’t getting annoyed with me, she’d look herself over, take stock of herself, go back to looking herself over, lunch was untouched on the table, dinner was still to be made, the year the marigolds bloomed twice, in April and in July, the woman at the post office read the letter to the blind woman, your daughter says the marigolds bloomed twice this year, and the blind woman, looking at the ceiling, it’s a mistake, it can’t be, it’s a mistake, and then becoming alarmed she said

—
Repeat that

not loud, in a low voice and

—
Wait a minute

and in an even lower voice

—
Maybe

gathering up her skirts, looking beyond the scale, the messages no one else noticed, this is my son, the car with wooden wheels, the electrician leaning on a crutch, turning his head, the doctor, without coming in

—
His heart, obviously

Judite’s mother

—
Maybe

finding the sidewalk that led to the square without any help, guided by the drowsiness of the goats, during the time I knew her she was still working in the garden, she could sense the gleam of the onions but was beginning to get confused in the darkness just like us, but at midday, if we lighted a lamp she wouldn’t blink or squint, there was a cloud over her eyes, a touch of winter, making a mistake this time because