If I Close My Eyes Now (26 page)

‘We have to get back to the city at once!’

Eduardo was astonished. Paulo didn’t move.

‘I’m not leaving here until you tell me: how, exactly?’

‘Where are you going, Ubiratan? Why the sudden hurry?’

The old man continued striding out in front of them. Eduardo ran to catch him up.

‘What lead did we find? What lead are you talking about?’

Paulo had no choice but to follow them.

‘Wait for me, Ubiratan. Why are you in such a hurry?’

‘Didn’t you say that all the men in this city have got a revolver?’ he replied, without looking back.

‘Eduardo said that.’

‘I did. I said that even my father …’

‘Aparecida was stabbed to death.’

‘That’s right.’

‘More than fifteen times,’ Paulo recalled.

‘Seventeen,’ said Ubiratan. ‘If she was stabbed to death, and if all the men in this city have got guns, what can we conclude?’

‘That she was killed by a woman?’ Paulo’s voice was a high-pitched squeal.

‘This was a crime full of hate, of an almost biblical anger. Any man who hated her so much would have emptied his revolver at her face. Or strangled her, if it was a crime of passion. Instead … the stab wounds were made by a woman who envied her, who was jealous of her beauty and her youth. And the most obvious proof of that was what you two call the trophy: the one the other woman cut off Aparecida’s body. The mutilation. The scalped breast. Not both of them, just
one. A savage proof of one woman’s triumph over a rival.’

They reached the bikes.

Without fully understanding what Ubiratan had told them, Eduardo and Paulo’s minds were flooded with previously unimagined possibilities. A woman, that almost abstract being composed of images of their mothers, statues of the Virgin Mary, seductive smiles from movie actresses and the imprecise lines of drawings in erotic comics, was capable of crimes as repugnant as those committed by men.

THE TENOR’S THUNDEROUS
vow of revenge on the gramophone echoed round the red-lined room.

Ah, Tosca, pagherai
Ben cara la tua vita!

The blonde Polish woman rose from the sofa. She was in tears. The salon of this brothel in a city hidden among the mountains where she had been brought twenty-six years earlier by the then parliamentary deputy Diógenes Marques Torres, had been transformed. She was in Rome, in the aftermath of Napoleon’s victory, and once more she was Floria Tosca, torn apart by the death of the man she loved, arrested after stabbing the police chief who had tried to rape her and send her beloved to the firing squad. One of Baron Scarpia’s men tells her she will pay for the murder with her life. Tosca pushes him aside. Hanna pushes him. She struggles free, but is cornered on the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo. Every exit is
blocked: there is no way she can escape. She resolves that she will not give these traitors the final victory. She goes over to the battlements. If she is to lose her life, it will be by her own hand.

Colla mia!

Before plunging to her death, she heaps one last curse on the aristocrat who has committed so many despicable acts. Scarpia, you will be judged before God!

O Scarpia, Avanti a Dio!

Slowly, Hanna Wizorek lifted her head, closing her eyes and raising her clenched right hand to her heaving breast, as the voices of Scarpia’s followers and soldiers confirm the tragic end of Puccini’s heroine.

At that moment Hanna heard a noise behind her. She turned round.

Through the tears rolling down her heavily made-up cheeks she could make out a shape slightly smaller than her, and two even smaller ones. Startled at this invasion of her sanctuary, where no one was allowed to enter when she was listening to opera, she quickly wiped her eyes, hearing as she did so a rasping voice in Portuguese saying something that sounded like ‘More and more like Tosca’ or ‘A murderer like Tosca’. She immediately recognized the thin, white-haired man standing in front of her.

‘Ah … the lunatic from the cemetery.’

Two boys in school uniform flanked the old man. The shorter of the two was dark-skinned, with flap ears, broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and built like an adult in miniature. The other, taller one had a melancholy look in his eyes that reminded her of the consumptive poets who had been in love with her in her youth.

‘Who are these children?’

A crackling sound warned her that the needle had reached the end of the record. She went over to the gramophone, lifted the arm and replaced it on its cradle. She switched it off. The old man came over, picked up the record and waved it in her face.

‘When Tosca stabbed Scarpia, she was defending her honour and her love for Mario Cavaradossi. Neither of those excuses applies in your case, Madame Wizorek.’

‘Be careful,
vieux dingue
!’ she warned him, in the language she had learned enough of to pass herself off as French to the naïve clients and impress the bumpkins who frequented her hotel. ‘That’s a rare recording, which can’t be found in Brazil!
Il m’a pris plus d’un an pour l’obtenir!
It took me a year and a half to get someone to bring it here for me!’

Disdainfully, Ubiratan tossed the record on to the pile scattered on the table next to the ancient phonograph.

‘We’ve been out to the lake.’

Checking the disc had not been damaged, Hanna put it in its box together with the other three that made up the set, and closed it.

‘It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened there.’

Hanna saw that the trio had left a trail of mud from the
window they had climbed through over to the rug near her. Their trousers were splashed with dirt. The dark-skinned boy’s clothes looked badly crumpled.

‘This is no place for children,’ she said imperiously, pointing to the dirtier boy.

‘But you’ve had girls their age in here!’ said the old man.

‘Look at the mess you’ve made of my rugs!’ said Hanna, hands on hips. ‘You can clear out, and take those kids with you. You have no right to invade my salon. I want to listen to my music in peace.’

‘Adolf Hitler liked opera too.’

‘Nonsense.
Il aimait Wagner, il n’aimait pas la vraie opéra
. Get out! And take those boys with you!’

Seeing they did not move, she threatened:

‘Are you going to leave, or am I going to have to have you thrown out?’

‘We’re going to leave here and go straight to the prison, Madame Wizorek.’

‘That’s right,
vieux dingue
! That’s exactly where I’m going to send you.’

‘We’ll go together. But first I want to hear you confess to your crime.’

She walked over towards the door.

‘Humberto! Humberto, come in here!’

Paulo and Eduardo stepped in front of her, preventing her from going any further.

‘What is this? Are you mad? Humberto!’ she shouted. ‘Humberto, can’t you hear me?’ She turned to Ubiratan: ‘Tell those brats to get out of my way.’

Ubiratan ignored this order, spoken in an accent full of rolled ‘r’s.

‘Aparecida was killed by a woman. A woman who could only have committed the crime if she was as tall, big and strong as she was.’

‘Humberto! Humberto! Come here!’

‘A woman she knew well. And who called her to say they needed to have an important conversation far from anyone else’s prying eyes. Outside the city.’

‘Humberto! I’m calling you!’

‘A woman she didn’t fear.’

‘Humberto! Humberto!’ she shouted, trying to push her way past the boys.

Paulo leaned back against the door. Eduardo locked it, took the key from the keyhole and slipped it into his pocket.

‘What are your kids doing now?’

‘Aparecida was killed by a woman she trusted.’

‘Get those boys out of my way! Tell them to open this door!’

‘You fooled Aparecida. You tricked her. You betrayed Aparecida.’

‘Humberto!’

‘You met somewhere where nobody could see you, then you took Aparecida down to the lake. You parked in among the mango trees, where the car couldn’t be spotted. Aparecida had no inkling of your murderous intentions. Until you—’

The door burst open, flinging the two boys away from it. Eduardo fell next to the high-backed armchair. Paulo rolled as far as Ubiratan’s feet, almost knocking over the table bearing the gramophone and records.

‘Humberto!’ sighed Hanna, relieved to see her watchdog finally arrive. ‘Throw these intruders out!’

The hulking brute made straight for Ubiratan.

‘You knew about everything,’ he shouted, as he was gripped round the waist and lifted effortlessly into the air.

‘Throw that old lunatic into the street.’

Carried like a light parcel, Ubiratan struggled to free himself.

‘You knew about the humiliation they forced Aparecida to suffer! You knew it and agreed to it! You allowed the orgies, the photographs, you allowed her to be penetrated by all those objects!’

‘Let go of him,’ shouted Paulo. No one paid him any attention.

‘You allied yourself with them! You betrayed Aparecida!’ roared Ubiratan, flailing arms and legs. ‘You allowed Aparecida to be used like a sewer! When you, you yourself had suffered the same abuses as her! When you had been humiliated and penetrated just like she was! By anyone who wanted to! Anyone who paid!’

‘Get him out of here quickly, Humberto!’

‘Why did you kill Aparecida? Did they tell you to do it?’

Paulo was trying to make himself heard above all this shouting. He was holding a record aloft in one hand.

‘Let go of him. Let go of Ubiratan!’

‘Did they want to get rid of Aparecida? Why? What had she done? What did she know? Did she know too much? Or did you kill her out of jealousy?’

The brothel strongman was finding it difficult to carry his struggling captive, who was now clinging on to the side of the
sofa, pulling it with them. He stopped when it became entangled with one of the rugs.

‘Even if they gave the order to kill her, you stabbed her out of jealousy! You were jealous because she was young! And beautiful! You killed her out of jealousy. The chopped-off breast is the clearest proof of that! You mutilated her out of spite, jealousy, envy!’

‘Let go of Ubiratan or I’ll break it!’

‘Go on, Humberto! Throw him out of here!’

‘Aparecida was young, she still had hopes! You’re old! You have shut your life away in this brothel, and this city is your burial mound! Was Aparecida going to leave? Might she have revealed secrets that would ruin people’s careers? Was that what signed her death warrant?’

‘Let go of Ubiratan! Let go of him, or I’ll smash the record!’

Paulo finally managed to make himself heard above all the commotion. Hanna turned towards him and stared at him in horror. She leapt towards him, trying to snatch the record he was waving in the air.

‘Stop!’ Paulo ordered. ‘Stop where you are!’

Hanna came to a halt.

Eduardo picked up the whole set of
Tosca
records.

‘I’ll smash them all if you go any further!’

The brothel-owner turned to her bouncer, uncertain what to tell him to do. He shook Ubiratan so hard that the old man let go of the sofa.

‘Nobody move!’ shouted Eduardo.

Hanna Wizorek took a step closer to the boys, her arms outstretched.

‘We’ll break all of them!’ Paulo threatened, getting ready to throw the record he was holding to the floor.

‘No!’ shrieked Hanna, aghast. She came to a halt again. ‘Don’t do that to my records! Don’t do it!’

‘Tell your man to let him go, then.’

Hanna Wizorek hesitated. She realized that these little monkeys had no idea of the value of the records they were clutching. If they had, the dark-skinned idiot and the pale-faced lanky one would never use
Tosca
, and especially that version of
Tosca
, to threaten her with. It was
Tosca
conducted by Victor de Sabata and the orchestra and chorus of La Scala, Milan. A masterpiece that had cost her a small fortune, not to mention all her enquiries, frustrated requests, letters to shops in Rio and São Paulo, appeals to salesmen, a disappointing series of orders, reams of carbon copies, interminable import bureaucracy, a long and apparently endless wait for international airmail, all of which added up to nineteen months of seemingly useless efforts, until the four black records reached her in this far-flung corner of the earth. And this, her only consolation in her everlasting exile, could be smashed to bits in the blink of an eye by these two savages. The exquisite 1953 recording of the opera made in London with Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas, that she had heard many years before on this same radiogram, transmitted directly from the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, could be destroyed. By a skinny little boy and that wild half-breed, who even now was demanding:

‘I want him freed now. Right now!’

She glanced towards Humberto, who had almost reached
the door. Ubiratan grabbed hold of the doorknob. He was still shouting his defiant questions.

‘What story did you invent to entice Aparecida? That you were going to present her to the same organization that protected you when you got to Brazil? The Jewish pimps who turned you into a high-class prostitute? Or the Jewish Communists who tried to save you from that fate?’

Taking Hanna’s silence to mean she refused to accept the threats from the boy clutching the records, Humberto tugged at Ubiratan so hard that his hands slipped off the doorknob. He was about to leave the room with his wriggling burden when Paulo swung the record violently towards the table corner. Hanna shrieked at him:

‘No!’

Humberto stopped in his tracks. Hanna lifted her hand to her mouth.

‘Please, my boy … don’t do that.’

It was only at that moment, still dangling from the bouncer’s waist, that Ubiratan clearly saw the situation: queen threatened by pawn.

Nobody moved.

The impasse lasted only a few seconds. Hanna admitted defeat.

‘You can let the old man go,’ she accepted finally.

Humberto dropped Ubiratan to the floor.

‘Now tell him to leave,’ ordered Paulo.

Hanna was confused about which of them the boy meant. Paulo realized this, and made it clear: