If I Close My Eyes Now (15 page)

‘I sell denim all over the world, even to the United States. My factory was founded in the last century. We brought the first machines over from England. With our own money. National capital. We transformed illiterate slaves who had been abandoned by their masters into trained workers, with wages and social security. We taught them skills, we paid for holidays, a dentist, a doctor. We kept people in the provinces who otherwise would have only gone to swell the numbers of those living on the margins of the big cities. That’s very different from this surrender to foreign capital. But you’re not from these parts.’

‘What was that?’

‘You have a north-eastern accent. You must be from Pernambuco or somewhere near there. If you were from here, you would know what goes on, and wouldn’t need to come looking for me. Everyone here knew what that tramp was like.’

‘You …’ The old man cast his words like someone with a fishing rod. ‘It seems that you … knew Dona Anita rather better than most.’

‘The only people who didn’t know that woman were those who didn’t want to.’

‘It seems she preferred—’

‘She didn’t prefer anything. She was a woman who was permanently open to the public.’

The old man felt sick.

‘Is that why her husband killed her?’ he asked, struggling to control his anger.

‘Francisco Andrade?’ he said scornfully. ‘Francisco Andrade killed her? By stabbing her to death?’

‘He’s under arrest.’

‘Does anyone really believe that Francisco Andrade is that woman’s killer?’

‘The police do: he’s—’

‘He confessed, so they had to arrest him. Any lawyer can get him out of there, whenever he likes. A first-time offender. A crime of honour. A well-respected citizen. A charitable man. Any poor person whose rotten teeth he pulled without charging a penny, or whom he gave dentures to, will testify on his behalf. A good man who was the victim of circumstance. With a wife without a shred of decency. Any jury will acquit him.’

‘But the savagery with which she was—’

‘No, but really! Some lunatic killed the whore and disappeared. Some stranger. With or without a confession, the whole city knows it wasn’t Dr Andrade who killed her. He’ll soon be back home. He wiped clean his honour. Using someone else.’

At this, the old man turned his head. It was only then he noticed it had started to rain. The wipers squeaked as they smeared the fat raindrops bouncing off the windscreen. Little was visible outside the car. They were climbing a hill the old man could not identify.

‘Do you think the husband hired someone?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Didn’t you just say that the dentist wiped clean his honour through somebody else’s work?’

‘I said that Dr Andrade took advantage of the crime to pretend he had finally grown tired of being the city cuckold.’

‘But why would a stranger kill her?’

‘She was found dead in some bushes, like a slaughtered pig. What difference does it make whether it was a lunatic, a beggar, a travelling salesman or a psychotic who did it?’

‘There’s a criminal on the loose.’

‘That woman was a social outcast. A whore. Cold, depraved, no background, no moral values. The life she led could only have ended that way. Tell me truthfully: what difference does the death of that woman make to our community?’

‘Dona Anita—’

‘None at all. No one will miss her. In fact, society will benefit from her death.’

‘She was savagely murdered.’

‘It’s a cleansing.’

‘Mutilated.’

‘Are you religious?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Darkness or light. We have to choose. Every religion says so. Free will. We are born with it. Rich or poor, black or white, men and women. Every human being is free to choose. There are women who choose to devote themselves to their family, to being loyal to the man who protects them, gives them children, shelter and his name. Those are the women helping to build a better world. They dignify their role in society. Then there are the others. Like Anita.’

‘You’ve known several of them.’

‘Like all men. That’s what her sort are for.’

A bitter, nauseous taste rose in the old man’s gorge.

‘Can you stop here, please?’

‘What about you? Do you mean to say you’ve never met scum like her?’

‘I have to get out. Stop, please.’

‘Have you never been with women like Anita?’

‘I want to get out.’

‘Wouldn’t you take advantage of Anita, if you still could at your age?’

‘Stop here. Stop!’

The car had not come to a complete halt when he opened the door and jumped out. The stream of vomit hit the kerb, mingling with the water flowing down the gutter.

In the deserted street, with the rain pouring down, the old
man watched the black car pull away until it disappeared behind a dense curtain of water. He couldn’t move. The cold drops on his head and chest seeped inside his collar, making him shiver.

A lightning bolt tore open the sky, followed by a crash that seemed to shake it. His knees were trembling from cold or rage. He tried to steady them, and finally managed to put one foot in front of the other and walk on, head down and forlorn.

He had no idea where he was.

ONE FOOT IN FRONT
of the other, Eduardo was measuring his room, trying to recall the size of Dona Madalena’s shack. He had been there only a short time, and it had been dark, but his memory of it was clear: his room was bigger than her entire hovel. Could it be? Yes. No, that was impossible.

He made a checklist of the furniture around him. Bed, bedside table, wardrobe, chest of drawers, desk, bookcase, chair. Three times as much as she had. Not counting the objects. Pencils, pen, inkwell, rubber, marker. A tumbler for the pen and pencils. A tube of glue, books, picture of his guardian angel, a first communion certificate. Crucifix. Carpet. Sheet, pillowcase, quilt, blanket. Bolster. Lampshade.

All he could remember from her hut was the pot on the stove. That was all he had seen. She must have had more things. She was bound to have. It wasn’t possible for anyone to live with so few possessions. What about the young boy? Where did he sleep, if there was only one bed and Dona
Madalena was in it? Did they sleep together? Or was there a banana-leaf mat for him that they spread on the floor? On the earthen floor. How cold that must be. Perhaps there was another mattress? Could there be? And a bolster? Could there be a pillow for the boy? A blanket? Dona Madalena didn’t have a blanket. Or yes, she did. It was cheap, and dirty grey, but there was one. Down at her feet. How could they live so wretchedly if her granddaughter, if Anita, or rather Aparecida, was married to a dentist? Couldn’t she have done something to help her grandmother? She could have given her money. Another bed. Another mattress. A sheet, pillowcase or blanket. Something. Anything. Couldn’t she have helped her grandmother? She could at least have given her a … a …

Another flash of lightning outside. Then thunder rattled the window pane. The noise of the incessant rain filled the night.

Perhaps Anita couldn’t help. Aparecida. She had nothing herself. Not even a ring. Perhaps the dentist wouldn’t allow Aparecida or Anita to help her grandmother. Perhaps Anita herself didn’t want to. Perhaps she was angry at her grandmother or something.

No. No one could be angry at a feeble old woman like her. Suffering. Stretched out on her bed. Or could they? Because she let her be taken away to an orphanage? Because she did nothing when the senator got Elza pregnant? Or was she angry because Madalena was black, and Anita wanted to be white? Was she the one pretending, or was it the others who preferred to see the mulatto Aparecida as white Anita? Which others? Was she prevented from seeing her grandmother?
From seeing her brother? Was she ashamed of them? Or ashamed of herself? Of having become the city’s tramp? Did Aparecida even know she had a grandmother and a brother? She must have known about her brother. Because if Renato knew about her, knew that Anita was his sister, no – that Aparecida was his sister – then Anita, or Aparecida, must have been aware she had a brother. And a grandmother. Mustn’t she?

Blast! He lost count of his steps. He would have to start all over again. One step, two steps, three steps…

Paulo was watching his brother in front of the mirror, combing his hair for the umpteenth time. He was trying, apparently unsuccessfully, to make sure all the brilliantined locks were smoothed down. One tuft at the back of his head stuck up stubbornly from the rest.

‘Are you going out, Antonio?’

‘I am.’

‘In this rain?’

‘Not far from here. Mauro, Zé Paulo and I are going to screw Mauro’s maid.’

‘The maid?’

‘Mauro already has. And he told her that if she doesn’t put it out for us as well, he’ll tell his parents she’s a whore.’

‘How much does she charge?’

‘What do you mean, charge, golliwog? They brought her from the countryside to look after the kids. She doesn’t have
anywhere else to go. I want to fuck her arse. I’ll stick it in her.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Fourteen, fifteen maybe. She’s still a virgin. She only lets you do it up her arse.’

The tuft finally gave way. Antonio carefully combed a lock of hair down over his forehead, imitating James Byron Dean, to give the impression he was a rebel without a cause who couldn’t give a damn about his appearance.

‘What if she doesn’t want to?’

Putting the comb away in the back pocket of his trousers, Antonio gazed lovingly at himself in the mirror.

‘Well, Antonio? What if she doesn’t want to?’

‘I already told you, she’s the maid.’

‘But she still might not want to.’

‘Then we force her to, and beat her up as well.’

He folded up the short shirtsleeves to show off his bulging biceps. Turning sideways to the mirror, he cupped his hand to adjust the bulge in his crotch. The whole world needed to see the power of what he had in there.

‘I’ve already got a hard-on,’ he said, anticipating the pleasure awaiting him.

The driving rain beating endlessly at the windows of the dormitory drowned out the snores, coughs and groans of the other old men.

He was exhausted, and yet he couldn’t get to sleep. He was shivering beneath the blankets. His eyes were stinging. His
joints, muscles and varicose veins all ached. His head was throbbing. He still had the bitter taste in his mouth, despite the number of times he had gone to the bathroom to rinse it out.

He wanted to sleep. He needed to sleep. He had to stop the whirligig of images that invaded his mind whenever he closed his eyes. Lips, tongues, mouths, arms, necks, breasts, thighs, arses, bellies, vulvas. His penis going in and out of them. In and out. In and out of anonymous fragments of bodies that had no faces or names, that made no sound apart from moans, sometimes protests, don’t do that, no, not behind, and all the time him pushing, tearing, penetrating flesh that had no will and no individuality, only vulvas and bellies and thighs and arses and lips and breasts and holes to be penetrated by his vengeance, that and only that. The same way that Helena had been penetrated by the police, the way the torturers of Vargas’s dictatorship had behaved with Helena in front of him, with their penises, their sticks, their truncheons, close to the perch he was being hung from, their enjoyment increased by raping her with him looking on, as they pleasured themselves with her breasts, her hands, her face, her mouth, while he was forced to watch, tied to the wooden perch.

He opened his eyes.

In the dormitory the other old men were sound asleep, at peace with their wheezing, their asthma, their bronchitis. For a split second a lightning flash gave their faces the ghastly, pallid look of bodies laid out in a morgue. In the sudden glare he saw his own hands, as white as the others’ skin. And his
own face, reflected in the nearby window. It was no different to that of Geraldo Bastos.