If I Close My Eyes Now (25 page)

They were standing next to each other. Geraldo Bastos smiled slightly.

‘But I think it will be better if I keep them.’

His level voice did not alter, but Ubiratan thought he saw a fresh glint in his eyes.

‘Our mayor is an impulsive man, but he has a valuable
legacy: the name of Marques Torres and the memory it evokes of his closeness to Getúlio Vargas. A partnership that was responsible for so much progress in this region. So many industries. So many jobs. So many votes for his party. With proper support, in the next elections Adriano Marques Torres could be the congressional deputy who wins most votes. He could become a party leader, the head of commissions, even the minister for industry. After that, who knows: perhaps even state governor. Or a national senator, like his father and grandfather before him. Dr Marques Torres’s potential is limitless. With proper guidance, our city mayor can be very useful to our country.’

‘You’re going to use the photos to keep him under control.’

‘Don’t jump to hasty conclusions. I’m not going to use anything. It won’t be necessary. In this new Brazil of ours, new industry and new politics will go hand in hand. We’re going to establish links that are increasingly fertile and long-lasting. Which will not be undermined by a few dozen or hundreds of poor-quality photographs.’

‘But very clear ones.’

‘Yes, really very clear. It would be a shame to destroy them. They contain a considerable part of the history of our city over the past eight years. The next time you dare trespass on my workplace, I’ll have you kicked out immediately.’

Ubiratan left the office. He had taken only a couple of steps when he turned to face the textile factory owner once more. He still had the slight smile on his thin lips.

‘Do you know the photo of Josef Stalin with his daughter on his lap?’

‘No.’

‘Stalin is holding the girl, with his face next to hers as if he is about to kiss her. Svetlana Alliluyeva is smiling, arms round his chest. He’s smiling too. It’s a happy photo, a domestic scene with a loving father. It was taken at the same time as Stalin was ordering one of the most obscene campaigns of mass extermination humanity has ever seen.’

Ubiratan turned on his heel and left.

‘So finally I’m going to get a hundred per cent in science!’ crowed Paulo, at the end of lessons that Wednesday as they walked to the wall where they had left their bikes propped up.

‘No you’re not,’ Eduardo warned him.

‘What do you mean? You were the one who answered all the questions for me.’

‘I gave some wrong answers.’

‘Wrong answers?’

‘On purpose.’

‘Why did you do that? Aren’t you my friend?’

‘Precisely because I am.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘The person copying can’t get everything right, Paulo. It looks suspicious. To look real, it has to have mistakes in it.’

Paulo didn’t have time to reply, because he was surprised to see the old man waiting for them.

‘We have to go and check something straight away,’ said Ubiratan, getting hold of Paulo’s bike. ‘Come with me!’

‘Where? To check what?’ Eduardo wanted to know.

‘Which of you can take me on the handlebars?’

‘Take you where, Ubiratan?’

‘Is your bike the one that got smashed?’

‘No, that’s Paulo’s.’

‘Is it strong enough to ride on?’

‘I rode it here from my house, but it’s a bit wobbly. I don’t know if it will take two people.’

‘Where do you want to go? What for?’

Ubiratan was still talking to Paulo.

‘Do you think it can take us far?’

‘That depends. How far?’

‘Where to?’

Ubiratan turned to Eduardo.

‘Your bike’s not damaged. You take me. Come on!’

‘Where to? It’s lunchtime and my mother—’

‘On second thoughts, it’s better if I pedal and you ride on the crossbar.’

‘Do you know how to ride a bike?’

‘Get on!’ the old man ordered him, climbing on the bike and leaning on his left leg with an agility that took the boys by surprise. But Eduardo was reluctant for other reasons:

‘My mother will be worried if—’

‘Let’s go! Get on!’

‘But—’

‘Come on, Eduardo. We’re wasting time.’

‘You’ve discovered something!’ Paulo exclaimed, beaming.

‘Not yet. I’m not sure. It’s just a feeling. Come on, Eduardo!’

After a moment’s hesitation, Eduardo put his school bag in the bike basket and clambered on to the crossbar.

‘How am I going to explain this to my mother?’ he grumbled to himself.

There were no reflections in the muddy water. The banks and all the surrounding area were burned, ash grey, stripped of vegetation. He took a few steps away from the bamboo grove. The smell of scorched earth was stronger with each step. Mosquitoes buzzed past his face. So this was the paradise they talked so much about, he thought sadly. A banal lake in the midst of a not particularly beautiful landscape. The unremarkable scene of the end of an orphaned girl who had never been in charge of her own destiny.

A distant bird call, the shrill cry of an ani bird, broke the silence. Ubiratan saw that Eduardo was staring at him intently.

‘Where did it happen?’ he asked the boy.

‘Over there, more or less,’ said Eduardo, pointing. ‘Over towards the mango trees. That was where we found the body.’

Paulo tugged at his coat sleeve.

‘Come and I’ll show you.’

They went in the direction he indicated, with Paulo in the lead. Eduardo was still sulking over having to abandon the routine that meant so much to him.

‘Why have we come here? Everything’s been burned. I’m hungry. My mother’s going to be really angry. She’ll have made lunch
for me, and I haven’t been home. You can see how it’s all been destroyed. I don’t think we’ll find anything here.’

‘Who said we needed to find something?’

‘Oh, Ubiratan,’ sighed Paulo. ‘There you go again with your mania for answering questions with more questions!’

‘Why did you want to come here? What lead are you looking for?’

‘I’ll only know if I find it.’

‘So you don’t know what you’re looking for?’

‘Is it the knife we’re trying to find, Ubiratan?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Eduardo, drawing out every syllable. ‘Unless the murderer was stupid enough to leave the weapon exactly where the police were bound to look for it. And besides, with the way they set fire to everything here, it’s obvious there’s nothing left to give us a lead.’

Paulo thought the opposite.

‘I think he could have dropped it. When he ran away from us. When he saw we were getting close.’

‘But we weren’t at the lake yet, Paulo! The crime took place an hour or two, roughly, before we arrived. We must still have been in the classroom, looking at that magazine, when she was killed.’

‘How can we be sure?’

‘Wasn’t the blood all congealed?’

‘More or less.’

‘Well then, that’s a sign that—’

Ubiratan came to a sudden stop. Eduardo almost bumped into him.

‘It’s further on,’ said Paulo, tugging at him again. ‘It was further down there that …’

Ubiratan was looking at an opening hidden by the mango trees and beyond the undergrowth, that was only visible from the angle they were at now.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s the other path down to the lake.’

‘The entrance is further on than the one we took,’ Eduardo added. ‘But the track to reach it is very bumpy.’

‘You can only use it if you have a car,’ Paulo said.

‘You mean it’s possible to get down here in a vehicle?’

‘Yes, it’s possible,’ Eduardo agreed. ‘But it’s better to come the way we did.’

‘It’s quicker to leave the car up by the road and cut down through the bamboos. That’s what everyone with a car does in the summertime.’

‘Except for someone who doesn’t want to be seen,’ Ubiratan mused out loud.

‘Who?’ asked Paulo.

‘Is that the lead you were looking for?’

‘The person who brought Anita?’

‘Aparecida. No, a hidden car isn’t a lead. But it shows she and he came here in secret.’

‘Who is “he”?’

‘Did they come here to make love?’

‘I don’t know, Eduardo. Show me where you found the body.’

Paulo ran to the spot where, a week earlier, he had stumbled over the body of a blonde young woman, covered in blood,
before she even had a name, before she became Anita de Andrade Gomes and then Aparecida dos Santos.

‘Here! Right here!’

Ubiratan did not move. He was busy calculating the distance between the opening in the mango trees and the point where the two boys were standing, observing him closely.

‘Was there blood around the body?’

‘Lots of it!’ said Eduardo.

‘On her clothes, on the grass, the mud, all round here, it was covered in blood!’

It was as he thought. Aparecida was not killed somewhere else and then brought here.

‘Then close by, over here,’ Eduardo pointed, ‘there was one of her red shoes, with the heel snapped off.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘I remember it well,’ said Eduardo, taking three steps and showing the spot. ‘Right here.’

Ubiratan went up to him.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘And the body was on the ground over where Paulo is standing?’

‘Yes, there.’

‘That’s a fair distance. Was one foot without a shoe?’

‘Yes. And the shoe with the broken heel was over here. It was a high heel, much higher than the ones my mother wears. Tall and narrow. In the middle of the grass, stuck in the mud. Because there had been a downpour the night before. Do you remember, Paulo?’

‘I remember the rain. And I remember the foot without a shoe.’

She must have stumbled, thought Ubiratan. The heel snapped off and she fell. But why come out here, in the midst of the clearing, if she was making love with someone in the car? And fully dressed. What kind of encounter could it have been?

‘Her blouse was torn off.’

Paulo was talking to himself. He must have been thinking out loud without realizing it.

‘And her bra was cut in the middle,’ Eduardo added.

‘And her breast … you know.’

‘OK,’ Ubiratan muttered, kneeling down to examine the ground around them. ‘She could have stumbled because she was running. Trying to escape from the man who brought her to the mango plantation.’

But escaping from what? If she came out here, she must have trusted him. She must have known him well. She preferred to meet him here rather than in the sessions her husband organized with other men. Was he someone special to her? A secret lover for a woman everybody thought was public property? What happened between the two of them? A crisis of jealousy?

‘Could he have started to stab Aparecida inside the car?’ wondered Eduardo.

Absorbed in his search among the cindered trees, Ubiratan did not reply. Eduardo and Paulo glanced at each other. They fell silent for a few moments.

‘Why didn’t he use a revolver?’ Paulo suddenly asked, intrigued.

‘A knife makes less noise,’ Eduardo argued.

‘Who was going to hear? Nobody ever comes out here at this time of year. And we hadn’t arrived yet. It was only him and her.’

‘Unless, that is …’ A possibility had struck Eduardo.

‘Unless what?’

‘No, nothing, forget it. I was just thinking he might have used a knife because he didn’t have a revolver. But all the men here have got one. Even my father. Do you remember I told you, it’s in the same drawer where he keeps the condoms. It’s locked. But I discovered where he keeps the key, so I opened it and saw. It’s a black Colt …’

Ubiratan straightened up.

‘That’s it!’ he shouted. ‘That’s it!’

‘That’s what?’

‘What have you found, Ubiratan?’

‘You found it! The pair of you!’

‘We …’

‘What did we find?’

‘The lead! You found the lead!’

‘We didn’t find anything.’

‘Yes, you did! That’s the lead. All the men in this city have guns! It’s as clear as daylight!’

‘But Aparecida was stabbed to death!’ Eduardo reminded him.

‘Exactly.’

‘Exactly, what?’ asked Paulo.

Ubiratan turned and started walking off hurriedly towards the bamboo grove where they had first come from.