If I Close My Eyes Now (16 page)

Thirteen steps long, nineteen wide. Multiplied by the length of his foot, twenty-seven centimetres: Eduardo discovered that he possessed a room measuring two metres seventy centimetres by three, almost four metres. An ordinary enough room. But one that could contain all of Dona Madalena’s hovel.

He switched the light off and lay down.

Thinking over the day’s events, he concluded it had been a failure. Going out to the estate had been a complete waste of time. All that way for nothing. They hadn’t got any information they didn’t already know or suspect. No leads. The more people they discovered linked to Anita or Aparecida’s life, the less they knew about her.

He turned to the wall, ready to sleep.

The thunder rumbled in the distance as the rain eased off over the city.

What could it be like in that hovel when it rained? Did it leak? Was it cold? Were there draughts? The wind must get in through the gap between the walls and the unlined roof. How did they get warm on a night like tonight? Would that cheap blanket be enough? Was it the only one they had? They probably wouldn’t have a hot soup with macaroni, meat, kale and beans before going to bed, like the one his mother gave him. Or woollen socks like the ones he was wearing. Or flannel pyjamas.

He sighed. As he was arranging the thick wool blanket over his feet, he thought he heard a groan, but paid no attention to it, his thoughts still on the miserable hut he had visited that afternoon. How horrible it was to be poor, he thought, how horrible. The groan came again. He listened more carefully. For a while he heard nothing more.

How many people could there be like Dona Madalena and the boy with the ants? Here, close to us? In the city? In the state? In the other states of Brazil? Do they go to the doctor when they feel a pain? To the dentist? Do they take medicine when they need it? Do they have money to buy medicine? If Dona Madalena died, who would look after the boy? Or did he look after her? Who is he? Why was he there? What did he tell us? Did he tell us his name? Did we even ask him what his name was?

He heard the creak of bed-springs from his parents’ bedroom. Then a second time. And again. Then more, one after the other in quick succession. He recognized his father’s voice, but it was too hoarse for him to make out what he was saying. Rhythmic, whispered. Short, rapid pants, increasingly rapid. And more moans.

Eduardo got out of bed.

He tiptoed over to the wall separating the two rooms and pressed his ear to it.

The groans were coming from his mother.

‘… There are seventy million Brazilians, sixty per cent of
whom live in rural areas,’ the young teacher Wilson Pinto dictated to the class. He wore thick glasses and his face was pockmarked with acne. ‘In spite of the gains in education since the 1940s, thanks to the creation of effective literacy programmes during the presidency of Getúlio Vargas, there are still many illiterates in Brazil, almost half the inhabitants of our country: forty-six point seven per cent, according to last year’s census. Are you writing all this down? Am I going too quickly? Forty-six point seven per cent, that’s right.’

Paulo was trying in vain to attract Eduardo’s attention, but his friend was writing with his head down, and refused to look up. He had been silent ever since they had reached school.

‘For the first time in the history of our fragile democracy,’ the civic studies teacher went on, ‘a civilian government, directly elected, has taken over from another civilian government, also elected by universal suffrage.’

All the pupils copied down what he was saying, word for word. They would be examined on the percentages and dates, and had to repeat exactly what they had heard. Paulo deduced that ‘universal suffrage’ and ‘directly elected’ were the same thing.

‘Another unprecedented fact is that, since the proclamation of the republic in … In what year? Exactly, Miss Maria da Conceição Pentagna: 1889. In the seventy-two years of the republic, also for the first time in our history, we directly elected an opposition candidate …’

Interrupting a dictation to question a pupil was one of the young teacher’s ruses to keep the class’s attention. Paulo was interested in the topic, but the continuous string of numbers
wearied and confused him. He had to make a huge effort to follow.

‘Five million, six hundred and thirty-six thousand, six hundred and twenty-three voters gave victory at the polls to the Right Honourable Jânio da Silva Quadros, a teacher, born in Mato Grosso, who was the governor of which state? Which one? Who can tell me? That’s right, Mr Mauro Dolinsky. Jânio Quadros was the governor of the state of São Paulo. He was elected in a massive, historic vote because …’

There was a knock at the classroom door. The teacher continued with the dictation as he walked over to it.

‘… he received two million votes more than the second-place candidate, Marshal Henrique Duffles Teixeira Lott, the widest margin obtained by—’

He interrupted the dictation when he saw the headmaster’s secretary in the doorway. She handed him a folded piece of paper, which he took without any great interest. She stood waiting. He unfolded the paper, and read it.

‘Eduardo José Massaíni!’ he called out, looking for the boy among the dozens in front of him. ‘Is he here?’

‘Massaranni, sir,’ Eduardo corrected him, standing and holding up his hand. ‘That’s me. Eduardo Massaranni.’

‘And who is Paulo Roberto Antunes?’ asked the teacher, glancing down again at the piece of paper in his hands.

Without raising his eyes from the papers he was signing, Jaime Leonel Miranda de Macedo signalled for them to enter.

‘And close the door, if you would.’

His voice reminded Eduardo of someone else’s. Whose? Where? Paulo was looking at the two framed portraits on the wall above the headmaster of the Colegio Municipal Maria Beatriz Marques Torres’s desk. He recognized the one of Senator Marques Torres as being the same stern-looking, retouched photograph as in the bus station and on the obelisk marking the beginning of the new highway to the capital. The wall-eyed man wearing the presidential sash in the right-hand photograph was Jânio Quadros.

‘Come in. Come over.’

It wasn’t the voice which sounded familiar to Eduardo. It was the tone. The way he addressed them. Warm. Polite. But distant. It reminded him of someone. Or some situation. A voice in an echoing place. Cold.

‘Come closer, gentlemen.’

The headmaster talked like someone …

‘Well now …’ he said, his eyes puffy behind his reading glasses. ‘How are your studies going?’

His voice was like …

‘Hmmm?’

At mass! That was it, it was like the voice of the priest at mass. The voice droning on, swirling round the marble walls of the cathedral in the same way as the draughty currents of air stirring the fringes of the white linen altar cloths.

‘Good,’ Paulo replied curtly.

‘Very well, headmaster sir,’ said Eduardo.

‘Please, don’t call me headmaster. It’s not necessary. I’m only temporarily in charge of this educational establishment.
It’s a transitory thing, a title, an honour which quite frankly I don’t deserve, but which I accept like a soldier going out to do battle for his ideal, the ideal from which he derives his strength: to sow culture. That is my ideal. To sow the light of knowledge. To plant the future. Headmaster? No, no. A teacher. Talk to me as if I were simply a teacher. Or Mr Macedo. It’s up to you.’

He took off his glasses and laid them on the desk.

‘And it’s as a teacher that I called you in here.’

He shuffled the papers in front of him.

‘Because a teacher’s duties are not confined to the classroom.’

He screwed on the gold top of his fountain pen, imported from the United States.

‘A teacher should also be a guide, a tutor, a second father.
Quod habeo tibi do
. “I give you all that I have.” I want to—’

‘If it’s about the dirty magazine,’ Paulo interrupted him, ‘that was my fault.’

‘No, mine!’ Ediardo protested. ‘I brought it into the classroom!’

Macedo swivelled his chair to the left, then right, then left again. He stopped, straightened up, peered at the two boys. He put his elbows on the desk, folded his hands, rested his chin on them. He was staring directly at Eduardo.

‘The Portuguese teacher was full of praise for your compositions. Dona Odete Silveira tells me you write well …’ Out of the corner of his eye he checked the name of the tall, skinny boy on the report. ‘… Eduardo.’

Then he turned to Paulo, as if searching for something to say.

‘Yours too …’ He glanced at the two reports once more, so
as not to confuse their names. ‘Your compositions too, Paulo … Paulo Roberto. Your compositions, Paulo Roberto. Dona Odete finds them surprising. They contain lots of grammatical mistakes. But the Portuguese teacher says she finds them surprising. “Original”, is how Dona Odete Silveira described them to me in this very office, only a few moments ago. The maths teacher has no complaints about either of you. Nor your English teacher. Mademoiselle Célia even complimented you on your accent when you read sentences in French …’ he checked again, ‘Eduardo. Although several of the teachers spoke of a certain lack of attention, a certain rebelliousness, especially from you …’ another glance, ‘Paulo Roberto. But they agree unanimously that you … and you … have bright futures. If you study more, with more dedication. With more attention to grammar, for example. Greater care over lexical and syntactical analysis.’

‘Yes, headmaster.’

‘Teacher.’

‘Yes, teacher,’ said Paulo grudgingly.

The headmaster raised his head from his hands, and tilted his chair backwards.

‘Do you see how closely I follow your progress? I’m interested in every one of my four hundred and twenty-six pupils. I share their achievements. I’m aware of their difficulties. I know their names. I know who their parents are. I know where they live and what they do. Your father, Eduardo, is called Rodolfo Mazaini, isn’t he?’

‘Massaranni, sir. With two “s”s and two “n”s. It’s an Italian name.’

‘Yes, I know – the son of immigrants. From the contingent brought over to work on the coffee plantations following the emancipation of the slaves, but who ended up moving to the city, where life was pleasanter. Your father’s a railway worker, isn’t he? An employee of the Brazil Central Railway.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘And your mother, Dona Rosangela, is a seamstress.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And your father, Paulo Roberto, owns a butcher’s shop.’

‘Yes.’

‘You lost your mother when you were very young: at the age of four. Her name was Maria José, wasn’t it? Before she fell ill she worked in the textile factory.’

This was the first time Eduardo had heard his friend’s mother given a name. Like a living person. Maria José. He added it to his fantasy of an unseen, small black-and-white image of a thin, dark-skinned woman with slightly buck teeth, kept in the wallet of a man who never called his son by his name.

‘Just imagine! A butcher. A railway worker. A seamstress. And a textile factory worker … how proud your parents must be! How proud your mother, Dona Maria José, would have been were she alive today, Paulo Roberto! To have their children at school, seeing them learn like … like the children of prominent people. Back in the days when your parents were your age, that would have been unthinkable. Youngsters like you, with your backgrounds, in a school like this, getting a secondary education. What splendid progress! You two with a range of choices that your father the butcher never
had, Paulo Roberto. Nor your railway worker father, Eduardo.’

‘If you’re saying this because I fell asleep in a Latin class …’ Paulo suggested.

‘
Quaerentibus bona vix obveniunt; mala autem etiam non quaerentibus
. “Good is granted with difficulty to those seeking it; but evil happens even to those not seeking it.” To err is human, Paulo Roberto. Yet it’s by recognizing our mistakes that we learn to avoid repeating them, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘At your age, your parents were already working, having hardly learned to read. Now they’re making huge sacrifices, saving what little money they earn, choosing not to buy clothes and shoes for themselves, doing far beyond what’s reasonable and necessary just so that you two can study and, who knows, perhaps one day become part of the elite of our country. Isn’t that so? And that possibility only arose because of the existence of this school you study in. Without having to pay. A state school. The only free secondary education establishment in the entire region. Conceived and built thanks to the generous vision and democratic spirit of our founder, Dr Diógenes de Almeida Marques Torres.’