If I Close My Eyes Now (28 page)

‘Renato isn’t …’

‘That’s him. Renato. No, he isn’t.’

‘He isn’t the mayor’s brother?’

‘He’s his son.’

The memory of water dripping in an empty corridor flashed through Ubiratan’s mind. Lights switched off. The greenish stain of a leak above his head. A changing room. The changing room at the sports ground where the five-a-side football game was taking place. The echoing sound of the bucket he knocked over. The whispers from one of the cubicles. The young man who leapt out of one of them and seized him by the wrists. His face with the high cheekbones. His fine nostrils.

‘Renato … the mayor’s son …’

‘Yes.’

The smell from his body. The mixture of sharp sweat and sweet perfume. The cubicle door opening. The girl emerging from the shadows. The fragrance she gave off.

‘Anita’s brother is the mayor’s son, but he doesn’t look like him. He’s much more like his grandfather.’

Lavender. When she left the cubicle where she had been with Renato, adjusting her bra, she had the fragrance of lavender. She had fair hair, tied up in a ponytail. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

‘Renato looks like the senator. Tall, broad-shouldered, thick lips
comme un indien
. A womanizer. Brutish. Just like his grandfather.
Il ressemble beaucoup à son grand-père
. More Indian than Negro. Renato comes here from time to time. One of my girls is crazy for him, she gives him money; I pretend not to notice. I can understand. Men like Renato know how to drive a woman wild.’

‘Renato is the mayor’s son … with Elza …’

‘Yes. He doesn’t know it. But Anita did.’

‘She knew …’

‘Of course.’

‘Elza …’ Ubiratan sighed, almost inaudibly. ‘Poor Elza …’

Hanna went on. Her voice remained neutral, as if she were telling a commonplace, everyday story.

‘What Anita only recently discovered was that Renato had become Isabel’s lover.’

A door opening on to the veranda of the mayor’s house. The fragrance reaching his nostrils even before he saw her. Lavender. The young girl with fair hair. Tall. With plump, arched lips like the wings of a bird in flight. Her small, dark eyes, constantly flicking back inside the house.

‘So Renato became the lover of the mayor’s daughter …’

‘Of Cecilia? No. Cecilia is only fourteen. Renato isn’t her lover. He’s Isabel’s lover. The mayor’s wife.’

The veranda suddenly flooded with light. The tall, slender woman wearing no make-up, behind the fair-haired young girl. The long eyelashes shading her almond-shaped eyes. Her condescending smile. The tone of authority in her voice.

‘She and Renato used to meet regularly in a house in a village outside the city. She bought the house for him. In his name. She also gives Renato money, just like the girl here. A man like him … I can understand it. He can drive a woman to madness. Any woman. His grandfather was the same. I can understand. Your cigarette ash is going to fall on the rug,’ she warned, holding the cut-glass ashtray out to him.

Ubiratan tapped the ash off, then nipped out the cigarette without even trying it once. He still held it between his fingers.

‘I’m sorry. I’m …’

‘Obviously, the mayor has no idea that his wife and his son,’ she paused to take another drag on her cigarette, ‘are lovers.’

‘What about Renato? Does he know that …’

‘That the mayor is his father? No, he doesn’t. And Anita decided—’

‘To put a stop to it,’ Ubiratan concluded.

‘No. Anita decided to make money out of it.’

‘DO YOU THINK
you could turn the music down?’ Eduardo asked the prostitute sitting beside the radio painting her toenails. ‘I can’t hear what they’re saying in there.’

The red-haired woman paid no attention to him, but went on applying the varnish, nodding her head and singing along quietly to the tune of the bolero.

No one belongs to anyone,
In life everything passes.
No one belongs to anyone,
Even those embracing us …

Eduardo decided he didn’t like the music. He didn’t like any music: it only muddled your thoughts. Irritated, he turned to Paulo.

‘What about you? Can you hear anything they’re saying in there?’

‘Nothing,’ said Paulo, who was closer to the door guarded by the bouncer. ‘Nothing at all.’

Ubiratan had been shut in the red-lined room with the brothel-keeper for a long time. Neither of the boys understood why they had been kept out of the conversation. And on top of that, they had to put up with this loud music:

I once lived in hope
Of having a great love.
Perhaps someone thought
Of the love of my dreams
That I also lost.

Two stocky women in gaudy frocks were dancing cheek to cheek next to the wooden staircase that led up to the second floor. In a nearby armchair, a thin, dark-complexioned woman was leafing through a weeks-old
O Cruzeiro
magazine. The cover picture was of a man dressed up as Harlequin at the feet of a woman with long, tanned legs. One of the headlines read:
Adolf Eichmann trial begins in Jerusalem
.

‘Who is Adolf Eichmann?’ asked Paulo.

‘But are they still talking?’ insisted Eduardo, ignoring Paulo’s question because he didn’t know the answer.

‘Yes, they are. I can hear that much, but not what they’re saying.’

‘It must be about those photographs.’

‘But we didn’t see any photos. Not anywhere.’

‘That must be the secret we’re not allowed to know. That’s what they must be talking about.’

‘But they’ve been in there for ages!’

… So I saw that in life
No one belongs to anyone.

The music came to an end. Eduardo breathed a sigh of relief. Then a jingle began to broadcast the benefits of Dr Ross’s Life Pills … Health and Happiness for Everyone, and how they cured liver problems. The red-haired prostitute began to varnish the nails on her other foot. Paulo tried again to put his ear to the door, but retreated at the threat of the bouncer’s raised fist. He looked round. The paint was flaking off the walls. The furniture was old, with the stuffing coming out. There were no naked women strolling around, sitting on men’s laps, drinking rum and giggling. None of them was pretty. The brothel was not the merry sort of place he had imagined.

‘What photo are they talking about?’

‘I don’t think it’s only one. I think he said photos in the plural. I’m sure he did. He ought to have told us. We were the ones who discovered the clue!’

‘You were the one who found it, Eduardo.’

‘We all did. It’s our investigation. All three of us. It’s not right to leave us out. I want to know!’

Another tear-jerking song came on the radio. The woman painting her toenails knew this one as well, and started singing along passionately:

Stay with me tonight
You won’t be sorry by my side,
It’s cold out in the moonlight
But so warm here inside.
You’ll have my loving kisses,
Stay with me tonight …

The door to the salon burst open. Ubiratan emerged, breathless. He glanced from side to side, apparently unsure of where he was. He was holding a stubbed-out cigarette between his fingers. Eduardo and Paulo ran over to him.

‘What’s going on?’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘Did she confess to killing Aparecida?’

‘Did she hand over the knife? Was it a knife or a dagger?’

Let me lie in your arms
To fall asleep and dream,
Forget we said goodbye
Without ever knowing why.
You will listen to me …

Ubiratan saw the boys over near the radio, and a redhead who was drying the varnish on her toenails with a paper fan as she sang along to the music. Further off, two women were dancing without much enthusiasm. Eduardo and Paulo were waiting for his answers.

‘What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go home?’

‘We’re waiting for you, of course!’

‘Why weren’t we allowed to listen to your conversation?’

‘Why did you throw us out?’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Did she confess?’

‘What do those photos you hid from us show?’

‘Are you going to have her arrested or not?’

Ubiratan took them by the shoulders.

‘There’s somewhere I have to go.’

‘Let’s go then!’

‘Yes, let’s go!’

‘No. I have to go on my own.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I can’t take you two.’

‘Who are you going to see?’

‘If you go, we’re coming along.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘You can’t go.’

His stern voice brooked no argument.

‘You can’t!’

‘Why?’ Eduardo insisted.

‘I have to go alone. You two stay here!’

Looking round again, Ubiratan finally realized where he was. The tenor voice on the radio was promising shelter and redemption. The red-haired prostitute stood up and started to dance on her own, echoing the music’s promise in her own high, out-of-tune voice:

I will listen to you
And we’ll be happy too …

‘No! Don’t stay here! Go home!’

‘What happened? Why are you so nervous?’

‘What went on in there with that old woman? What did she tell you that’s made you so nervous?’

‘Go home! Go home!’

‘You’ve found out something you don’t want to tell us!’

‘On your own in there, after you threw us out.’

‘Wherever you go, we’ll follow you.’

‘Promise you won’t follow me!’

‘Why?’

‘Promise!’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Eduardo, promise you won’t follow me. You too, Paulo! Come on, promise!’

‘I’m going wherever you go.’

‘We’re going with you!’

‘Together!’

‘No, Paulo.’

‘The three of us!’

‘Not this time, Eduardo.’

‘Yes, let’s go!’

‘It’s my bike, I can go wherever I want.’

‘No you can’t, Eduardo. Not this time!’

‘Eduardo’s going with you, and so am I.’

‘Both of us are going with you!’

‘Not where I’m going, Paulo. You can’t!’

‘You’ve no chance of stopping us. We’re going with you. Now!’

Ubiratan saw that he wasn’t going to get them to change their minds. He turned towards the bouncer still guarding the door to his mistress’s sanctuary.

‘Humberto!’

By the time the two boys realized what was happening, the bouncer had seized them by the arms and was dragging them off to the back of the room. He shut them in a narrow store cupboard. Paulo immediately ran to the only window. A mixture of steam and mist from the mountains clouded the glass pane. The streets were closing in as darkness fell. He caught a glimpse of Ubiratan disappearing round a corner on Eduardo’s bike.

He had no idea how long he had been pedalling, or even if he was going in the right direction. He was following the Polish madam’s directions, but this was the first time he had travelled outside the city. His legs were aching. Every so often, he stopped to get his breath back. He had seen tiny circles of light that could be from the village, but he could not always manage to head directly towards them: the contours of the dirt track appeared and then disappeared as lightning bolts flashed from the clouds. Thunder was rumbling ever closer, like a line of trucks from an approaching army.

There’s a snake about to leave its nest, he thought.

Sudden gusts of wind blew the dust in his face. A fine rain
that was barely more than a thin drizzle began to fall. He was utterly weary, but could not stop. He had to find Renato as quickly as possible. He had to try to break the vicious circle that had begun with the rape of a girl called Madalena. He had to tell Renato that the girl he was fooling with in the changing room was his sister. His other sister. He had to tell him that his lover’s husband was his own father. He didn’t know how he was going to do it. But he had to try. Several lives depended on it.

Far off to his left, two parallel lights sped through the countryside. They looked like car headlights. Ubiratan tried to use them to guide him, but they soon vanished.

The bike skidded on a thin film of mud produced by the rain. He lost his balance, almost fell off, steadied himself, then skidded again. Wiping the raindrops from his eyes, he thought the village must be close by, and decided to continue on foot, pushing the bike. It didn’t take long for him to realize his mistake. He was losing time. He grew even more anxious. He climbed back on the bike, then struggled to pedal on towards the lights.

The rain came down more insistently. His clothes were sticking to him. He felt cold. He heard his own voice, and realized he was talking to himself.

Now that he knew the details of the origins and the life that the blonde woman stabbed to death by the lake had led, he understood the strategy she had adopted without her masters even suspecting it: Aparecida stayed alive because she refused to accept her existence as Anita. She survived by being absent from herself, locked into silence, resolute in the negation of all desire. She was powerful thanks to the passive way she
accepted everything she was made to endure, free in her indifference to her own fate. What he would never know, Ubiratan concluded, was why those who owned her had decided to kill her, or to have her killed: this blonde doll they could use without any sense of guilt to satisfy the desires their respectable wives could not fulfil.