If I Close My Eyes Now (6 page)

‘Did you see his face?’ asked Paulo.

‘More or less.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t think I know him.’

‘You’ve never seen him?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Protected by the shadows under the cinema awning, they saw the man take something out of the inside pocket of his jacket, but couldn’t see what it was. They thought he was writing. He stopped, looked down, and seemed to write a few more words. Then he put it back in his pocket. He crossed his legs and sat there for a while. He stood up, looking around him as if to make sure which direction to go in. Then he left.

He walked down the slope where signs above unlit shop windows and iron shutters advertised the shops in the city’s main street. At the far end, another incline led up to the highest part of the city, occupied by the cathedral and its twin towers. Far too grandiose for its surroundings, it had been inaugurated in 1835 by a representative of the young emperor Pedro II in recognition of the religious feelings, prestige and economic power of the coffee barons.

The man passed by the cathedral, walked round it, and then set off along a road that descended sharply to the right. When it levelled off, he was still in the road, and crossed opposite a long red-brick building with slit windows. A concrete white-painted eagle on a globe holding in its mouth a bronze plaque declaring
Founded in 1890
and with cotton stems in its claws stood above the words:
Union & Progress Textile Factory
.
Paulo’s mother had once worked there as a weaver. That was where she had met her future husband, a worker in the dyeing section before he became a butcher.

‘Where do you think he’s going?’

‘I don’t know, Paulo. Home?’

‘He’s walking further and further away from the centre.’

The two boys were not familiar with the part of the city the man was venturing into now. There were fewer houses and more waste lots, some of them surrounded by brick walls or bamboo canes, many covered in tall grass and castor-oil bushes. Beyond one of these ran a long, high, moss-covered stone wall, dotted with clumps of ferns and weeds. Above it, beyond the streetlights, the wall was overhung by the thick branches of one of the trees growing on the other side.

The man came to a halt beneath the tree. Going as close as he could to the wall, he stretched out his arms, feeling for something. He found it: a rope. As he began laboriously to pull on it, the tips of two wooden posts appeared, joined by parallel bars. The rope was tied to one of them. A painter’s stepladder.

The man with grey or white hair lowered the ladder to the ground, then stood it against the stones. He carefully climbed each step, and sat on top of the wall. Precariously balanced, he tugged on the rope, pulling up the ladder. He let it down on the other side. Clinging to a branch, he put one foot on one of the steps, then the other. He let go of the branch, put both hands on the ladder support and disappeared among the foliage.

The boys ran to the wall. The rope was still swinging in
between the leaves. A glance at each other was enough for them to decide:

‘We’re going in there!’

Paulo cupped his hands and Eduardo stood on them and pulled, expecting to be able to climb the rope. To his surprise, he fell to the ground, with the rope between his legs. It wasn’t tied to the stepladder any more.

After a moment’s disappointment, they recovered their spirits. Paulo wound the rope round his chest, while Eduardo looked for another way in. He walked along the wall until he came to a big double gate, almost as high as the stone wall. It was locked. There was a plaque nailed to it, which read:
St Simon Old People’s Home
.

In the distance, the cathedral clock struck one, two, three times.

THE OLD MAN
lay sprawled in a canvas deck chair, fast asleep, protected from the afternoon sun by the foliage of a tree spreading its branches over the courtyard wall. A thin trail of saliva dribbled down from his open mouth to his chin and the collar of the old people’s home uniform he was wearing. Dark patches were visible on his scalp beneath thin strands of hair. Another old man, still in pyjamas, gave the two boys a toothless smile. Opposite him, two others were playing cards, and a third sat motionless at a chessboard, while a fourth was leafing through a magazine. On a bench by the wall, a red-headed old man with freckles was rocking back and forth, mumbling an inaudible song. Further on, a fat man on crutches sat down in the sun, pushing his one bandaged leg out in front of him. His face was a mass of purple bruises. Near him, in a wheelchair, a figure wrapped in blankets was moaning softly. There were more old men in other hammocks, deck chairs, on benches. Dozens of them.

Surrounded by all this human misery and bodies maimed
in ways they had never even imagined, Eduardo and Paulo did not know which way to turn. The fate of these old people was completely different to anything they knew, had seen, or heard of: in their experience, men lived out their final days protected by their families, breathing their last in their own beds, comforted by wives, children, grandchildren, or at the very least a friend.

‘He’s not here. None of them is the man who climbed the wall last night.’

‘He has to be here. We saw him come in,’ insisted Paulo, the rope still wrapped round his chest.

‘Just look at these old men, Paulo!’

They had never seen such decrepitude. The abandoned, the crazy, the sick and the frail, the wounded, the mutilated, the senile, the alcoholics, the weak, the poor, the illiterate, the beggars, the crippled, all abandoned to their fate. The nephews, grandfathers, fathers, uncles forgotten in sanatoriums or hospitals, turfed out of their houses or picked up from doorways, under bridges, from alleyways, rubbish dumps, squares, gardens or pavements, from roadsides in a country that was busy industrializing, growing at a gigantic pace, modernizing. The nation that, in a South America of banana republics, was steering a course out of the Third World by manufacturing lathes and cars, trucks, tractors, refrigerators, lamps, liquidizers, televisions, sound systems, shoes, soft drinks and washing machines. A country capable of advancing fifty years in only five of full democracy, a country that had no room for any of these men.

‘Nobody here would be able to get into the dentist’s house. Or to do that rope trick,’ said Eduardo.

‘Perhaps he’s hiding inside?’

‘They’re all out here. It’s the time of day for sunbathing. Only the very sick must still be inside.’

‘So … ?’

‘He can’t be from here. He came in here, but he lives somewhere else,’ Eduardo concluded, turning on his heel and heading for the exit. Paulo started to follow him.

‘What now?’

‘We’re leaving.’

‘But that means we let the suspect escape.’

‘What suspect, Paulo? Look at all these old wrecks.’

‘I’m looking.’

‘Can you see anyone who looks like the man we saw early this morning?’

‘No. No one. Wait …’

They came to a halt. Paulo pointed to a pair close by them: one seemed to be staring in their direction, while the other’s face was hidden behind a newspaper, as if he were reading it.

‘Those two.’

‘One of them’s bald. The other is tall. Our suspect is short, and has white hair or—’

He was interrupted by a voice behind him:

‘Do you play chess?’

It was the man sitting at the chessboard. He pointed to the empty chair opposite him:

‘Do you want to play?’

‘No, thanks, we’re just leaving.’

‘We doesn’t know how to play,’ added Paulo.

‘We don’t know, and we’re just leaving,’ Eduardo said rapidly, trying to cover his friend’s slip.

‘Neither of you plays chess?’

‘My father plays draughts with my brother. Is it the same?’

‘Do you know the game?’

‘I’ve seen it on television,’ said Eduardo.

‘So you’ve got a Tele-Vision set?’ the old man said wonderingly, pronouncing the two words separately. ‘I’ve never seen Tele-Vision. Is it as good as the cinema, like they say?’

‘No, it’s all in black and white. But in my house, we don’t—’

‘Your Tele-Vision isn’t in Technicolor?’

‘There is only black and white TV. And the image comes and goes. As if it were waves, if you follow me?’

‘Fluctuating?’

‘That’s right, fluctuating! The people on it look twisted. It has a small screen, inside a box. The box contains lots of wires and valves, which are like lamps, d’you understand? Only different.’

‘Your family must be well off. A Tele-Vision set costs a lot.’

‘We’re not at all rich. And we don’t have—’

‘Eduardo’s father is a mechanic on the Brazilian Central Railway,’ explained Paulo.

‘I watched television at my uncle’s house.’

‘In Rio de Janeiro,’ Paulo added.

‘Your uncle must be a man of means.’

‘I think so. Yes, he is.’

‘His uncle lives in a district called Tijuca. Everybody there has a car.’

‘My uncle has a Willys Aero, do you know them? It’s a big car: it can fit six people.’

‘His uncle is an aeronautical engineer.’

‘He works for Brazilian Panair.’

‘His uncle has been to Europe and the United States.’

‘Brazilian Panair is an airline. One of the biggest in the world. He’s my uncle because he’s married to my aunt. My mother’s sister.’

‘His uncle has been to Europe twice.’

‘And once to the United States. They both went. Him and my aunt. She says they’re going again, next year.’

‘That’s the uncle who has television at home. In Tijuca.’

‘My father said he’s going to buy one. As soon as he has the money.’

‘And when they’ve put up a mast here, for the reception.’

‘For the reception of the images. They’re transmitted through the air, just like radio.’

‘They don’t let us listen to the radio in here. It’s forbidden. The nuns don’t like it.’

‘They don’t like music?’

‘They don’t like noise. Loud music. A lot of the old men here are deaf, and can only hear the radio when it’s turned up loud. That’s why the nuns forbade it. But they don’t like anything. They even banned the news. We can’t even listen to the
Repórter Esso
programme. All the magazines here are out of date, the newspapers are from days ago. We’re isolated: we don’t know what is going on in the world. Is that my rope?’

Startled, Paulo didn’t know what to reply.

‘That rope round your shoulder, boy: is it mine?’ persisted the white-haired, slightly wall-eyed old man. His voice had a soft north-eastern twang.

‘What d’you mean, yours?’

‘Mine. Bought with my money. It was tied to the ladder.’

‘Ladder?’

‘What ladder?’ echoed Paulo.

‘The wooden ladder that was over there, leaning against the wall.’

‘I don’t know anything about a ladder.’

‘Yes, you do. Both of you do. That’s why you came here.’

‘I came to deliver an order from my father’s butcher’s shop.’

‘That’s a lie. You and your friend were nosing around the yard.’

‘His father sent him to deliver a package of meat, and I came with him.’

‘You didn’t have any package with you when you came in.’

‘I handed it in at the door.’

‘Give me that rope. It’s mine.’

‘It’s ours,’ Paulo insisted.

‘You were the ones who followed me.’

‘Us?’ Eduardo’s surprise was genuine.

‘You two. I saw you.’

‘You saw?’

‘No way. We never …’

‘You broke into the dentist’s house. Then you followed me here.’

‘We … did what?’ Eduardo tried to sound offended.

‘You followed me and took my rope.’

‘I didn’t leave home last night. And Paulo isn’t allowed out.’

‘If I went out at night, my father would kill me.’

‘My mother has a heart murmur. I can’t be roaming the streets in the early hours.’

‘You broke into a house that had been sealed by the police. You disturbed a crime scene.’

‘No we didn’t!’ protested Eduardo, without conviction.

‘We only looked from outside.’

‘Yes, that’s what we did. We kept an eye on the house from outside. To see if anything happened.’

‘You searched through everything. You rummaged through Dona Anita’s underwear.’

‘We stayed outside the whole time.’

‘You disturbed a crime scene. You got in through the kitchen or bathroom window. You went into the bedrooms and the darkroom; you opened the wardrobes and drawers. You took some evidence from the house. You may have hidden it.’

‘We’re not thieves!’

‘You stole my rope.’

‘We didn’t steal it.’

‘It fell when I pulled it.’

‘So give it back to me.’

‘How do we know it’s really yours?’

‘What were you doing in the dentist’s house?’

‘Nothing.’

‘My brother Antonio said that the dentist’s wife …’

‘What were you looking for?’

‘His brother said things about the dentist’s wife, so Paulo came to my house …’

‘We thought that he, the dentist … that he was small and old – no offence meant – but we were wondering how an old man like him could have killed such a—’

‘Give me that rope.’

‘We didn’t take anything from the dentist’s house, you must believe us,’ said Eduardo.

‘Tell your friend to give me the rope.’

‘Finders keepers.’

‘Do your parents know you spend the early hours out roaming the city streets?’

‘It was only that once!’

‘Please don’t tell my father.’

‘The game of chess is very interesting, you know. I’d say, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration, I’d say that playing chess – metaphorically speaking – prepares us for life’s misfortunes. Do you follow?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Eduardo lied, ready to concede anything to get out of this embarrassing situation.

‘What do “misfortunes” and “metaphorically” mean?’

‘I’ll explain later, Paulo.’

‘What were
you
doing in the dentist’s house anyway?’

‘Living in an old people’s home is very boring. I’m not here out of charity, you see: I pay to be here out of my retirement income.’