What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (7 page)

—Your mother’s a

I’m covering my ears

It doesn’t interest me

my mother is Dona Helena, my father is Mr. Couceiro, not Judite and Carlos, not a clown and a

covering my ears

It doesn’t interest me

the pups weren’t throwing pine cones at me or tossing me to the ground, the electrician with his tail up searching for a track that was slipping away from him

—What became of that character, the fat guy too?

if I could die in the sea my bones would rise to the surface floating weightlessly, bits of chalk, Mr. Couceiro might worry about me, my mother

—It must be a mistake, I don’t know who he is

my blind grandmother reading the bones with her fingers

—I don’t have any grandchildren, gentlemen

she didn’t turn on the light, she was breathing in the dark with the whistle of a teakettle, when we got to the wall the dogs up on the edge with the small one running around them, so comical

Rui to me, when I stopped him from pawning a necklace that wasn’t worth anything

—
You’re really ridiculous you know you’re ridiculous you and your old man really ridiculous if I ask him he’ll give it to me

we went into pawnshops and the pawnbrokers acted like they didn’t see it on the counter

—
Are you pulling my leg?

If they only could have seen it on stage with the lights and the music, they would have taken it, called over the clerks with the pride of someone getting a relic

—
Do you see what we’ve got here?

not just one fix from the Cape Verdeans, five or six fixes, what do you mean five or six fixes, ten fixes, twenty fixes, fifty fixes at least

the one with the jackknife

—
Gentlemen

he didn’t hit us, he didn’t send us away, he respected us

—
Gentlemen

he cleaned off the broken-down wall for us with a deferential whisk broom

the small dog stopping Rui from taking the necklace, not the necklace, it’s not worth anything, and Rui to me

—You’re really ridiculous you know you’re ridiculous you and your old man really ridiculous if I ask him he’ll give it to me

the owner of the café on the steps handing my mother a bottle, a flock of herons crossed the Cova do Vapor woods on their way to Caparica, one of them fell like a napkin and the electrician galloped over to pick it up in his mouth, the clown would hide his rings at Príncipe Real, he would lift up a corner of the rug, unfasten a floorboard and a small bag of jewels that the ambassador

—My tribute Soraia

the strands brought out one by one, starting at the ear

—
Draw your family, a street, a tree

—
They’ve forgotten their families they don’t feel anything it’s no use talking to them

they disguised the lack of hair and made it even more evident, he squeezed my father’s hands with slow intensity

—He isn’t Soraia, he’s Carlos, he’s a clown can’t you see?

my father introducing Rui

—A friend

introducing me

—My nephew

a carnival masker you understand, a comical merrymaker, he was adjusting his wig, but he’d been in the army, he made me, the owner of the café chased the pups away, in the space between his undershirt and pants a portion of his belly was strangled by his belt

—Riffraff

the electrician dragged the heron up to the gate of the yard, they built their nests among the bridge beams, anyone who tried their eggs would get sick in the lungs, a couple of my mother’s cousins

she swore to me

they died that way, she went to wake them up in the morning because it was time for school and they were dead, you can’t imagine what dead people go through Paulo, try looking at them and me leaning on my father’s coffin laughing, the electrician vanished on the beach with half the heron, the half that was left over there dirty with earth, the pups stopped throwing pine cones at the roof and threw them at me, one of them hit me on the shoulder, another on the behind, maybe if I could run away through the hole in the pieces of tile and a pine cone on the thigh

—
They don’t feel anything we don’t exist for them they can’t draw your family tree in case you’ve got a family

I haven’t got a family

—
They never have a family draw a street a tree

the bench where nobody was sitting, your father hasn’t died yet and even so your sorrow, crawling on the wet cement of the shower stall, you’re not even a heron

—
Don’t scare him, Jaime, you’ve scared him

half a heron, its beak, a shred of a wing

—
He drew a bird, look how instead of his family he drew a bird

and the pups attracted by some kind of call

a dying horse of the Gypsies, a mouse that the flood

trying all along the waves and the heroin needle feeling around and getting off course, I tightened the tube on my arm and cold, heat, cold, an upper tooth moaning, insignificant and moaning, they would moan and right away they would stop bothering me, they were all jumbled up, Rui

—Not that vein that vein there’s dried up

Rui a friend of my father’s, after all, since my father said to the ambassador

—A friend

a friend mother, a friend creeping along the desk or maybe the pen, the wedding ring

—I’m going to discharge you tomorrow

I was confused, the doctor or the plane tree, the plane tree

—I’m going to discharge you tomorrow

but how can I be discharged tomorrow if I’m standing in Bico da Areia, by the back of the house, marigolds in the flower bed

me to the psychologist, correcting a petal, rounding it out better, showing him the notebook

—
The marigolds

marigolds and a gentian propped up by wires and nails, the stems just like my veins

—
That vein’s dried up

today nothing but wires and nails, a small branch at best

me standing in Bico da Areia behind the house trampling the marigolds that I’d drawn, the door with no padlock swung open and hello how goes it, before going to work at the disco at night my father

—Hello

my father

—How goes it?

having fun with the pups with the pine cones, running away with them along the sea, I closed the door

the psychologist isn’t believing the notebook

—
I asked you to draw your family and you’re drawing dogs for me are your family dogs?

my family are dogs, I’m an adult dog today with the Cape Verdeans in Chelas, farms, workshops, the cookie factory with the broken windows, the one who gave orders to the one with the jackknife, with straightened kinky hair

—Are you still there, dog?

his jacket had a bulge from the butt of his pistol, besides the chimneys there were only little lemon trees, a group of Chinese hunched over instead of talking and cooking owls on a spit, the day your father breaks up with me

my father’s not breaking up with you, he’s not breaking up with anyone, you’re the ones who are breaking up

—Bye-bye faggy

and the clown having forgotten to cover his bald head with the kerchief

I’m picking up my bundle and heading for the cookie factory, Paulo

the clown tripping over a shoe and caressing the shoe, then catching sight of me

behave yourself father

his eyes changed

—
What doll is that now?

—
A clown with a shoe

—
A clown with a shoe did you hear that listen to that, his inner world is falling apart, you never know what they’re thinking

until I find a new friend with him in the small parlor, the lipstick is redder, the blouses tighter, the eyebrows thinner, nothing but lashes and arched pinkies giggling merrily, thank God I’m happy Paulo now, you can’t feel how happy I am, he’d enlarged his hips and breasts with a thick liquid, he’d rounded out his cheeks, the ambassador

—Soraia

just one syllable, Soraia just one syllable, my father gave thanks in church for his luck, wearing coral earrings, until the sexton put him out with whispered indignation, you couldn’t catch the words, you caught the cassock billowing in a buzz of scandal and the forefinger pointing to the exit, I arrived at Bico da Areia, and the lower hinge of the door, a small voice inside the hinge

—Paulo

I always felt that the hinge was in pain, I tried again and the hinge was silent

—It’s a joke I was wrong you’re not in pain

the cistern had been soldered twice and there were still drops or maybe the same drop I don’t know falling eternally and going all the way back to the beginning, slow, dark, fatigued from the trip, in the hospital we bathed on Saturdays, no towel to dry with, the sheet, matchboxes used as ashtrays, they fixed up a patient in a wheelchair on a tripod under the shower and the orderlies

—Hurry up

going in so fast at Bico da Areia that there was no time for the hinge to say

—Paulo

and the owner of the café buttoning up his shirt, looking at the dwarf

—Your mother’s asleep don’t wake her up

a bottle on the pillow, not hers

—Is it morning yet Carlos?

the hand coming out from under the pillow looking for nobody, I think maybe the smell of the mimosas in my grandmother’s yard

—If only you could have lived with that smell of mimosas Paulo

when we went north I’d pause at the edge of the village, just after the station, where all I could see was coal and dust, she’d squeeze my fingers asking

—Can’t you catch it Paulo?

all I caught was locomotive smoke, sleepiness, fatigue, eucalyptus berries on the ground and I didn’t see any eucalyptus trees, only a single solitary plane tree and the silence of things, I think that maybe even today it’s the mimosas that matter to her, not the men, not the sea, not the wine, not me

I don’t matter to her

the mimosas

—Can’t you catch it Paulo?

she’d go searching in the pine grove, where the Gypsies were, the horses coming from who knows where, I watched her come back indifferent to the pups, to the electrician, to the thorns on the century plants that would catch her skirt, the owner of the café lingered a moment looking, straightened the dwarf, left, his wife was setting the tables without getting mad at us, I stayed in the bedroom by the bed and then the idea of the mimosas came to me, I tapped her on the shoulders

—Get up mother, the mimosas

I’m sure it was the mimosas or maybe my fear of being all alone at home, in the hospital, up above the Anjos church and its changed hours, the clock proclaiming eight o’clock when it’s five, proclaiming seven o’clock and it’s three, Dona Helena

—Where are you going son?

—
I’m not your son

Rui with the Cape Verdeans in Chelas

—I’ve got some dough from your father here

we were climbing up the hill through broomweeds, no mimosas, oaks, what might once have been a chalet or a convent

a house?

the first pains, the first cabins, the bottle on the pillow

—Is it morning yet Carlos?

I’m not your husband, mother, I’m not your faggot, it’s not morning it’s night, around this time, if he were alive, the clown would be making up, putting on perfume

not from mimosas, from a French vial

changing the blonde wig for a redheaded one, sewing the dress that was torn in the armpit, but keep in mind that my father didn’t die, Rui didn’t commit suicide, no cop pointing at the body