If I Close My Eyes Now (7 page)

‘In-coming what?’ Paulo was confused again by the big words.

‘Income,’ Eduardo corrected him. ‘Money. Pay.’

‘My pay, my money,’ the old man stressed. ‘My retirement pension. I don’t owe anyone any favours.’

‘But you broke into the crime scene too!’

‘I did no such thing. The old people in here only talk about the past. When they manage to talk about anything. The nuns are concerned about the kingdom of heaven, and nothing else. They lock the doors after supper. Everyone in bed by eight o’clock! I only discovered that a man had gone into space because I slipped out last night. The first in the history of mankind, and not a word from the nuns or this lot of gaga old men!’

‘Yuri Gagarin,’ Paulo remembered.

‘The Earth is blue!’ Eduardo quoted the astronaut.

‘A Russian,’ added Paulo.

‘I can’t stay a prisoner in here. Give me my rope.’

Paulo glanced at Eduardo, who nodded his head slightly, and then held the rope out to the old man.

He didn’t take it.

‘Put it behind that bush over there.’

Paulo and Eduardo walked over to the shrubbery next to the wall, searched for the thickest bush, and hid the rope behind it.

By the time they turned round, the old man was walking back inside the home, carrying the chessboard under his arm.

Sitting on the pavement outside the wall to the old people’s home, Eduardo was whistling a tune. He was doing so under
his breath, without thinking, waiting for Paulo. He was staring up at the sky, hoping to see a shooting star.

At first the sounds had no rhythm. A boy whistling in the middle of the night to keep himself amused. After a while, almost without him realizing it, the notes fell into place, each one harmonizing with the next, starting to form a melody. Softly, like footsteps on a smooth, cold floor. The notes flowed together until they became a tune he often heard before the films started at the Cine Theatro Universo, and when his mother hummed it as she bent over her sewing machine, the foot pedal marking the beat. A voice that was little more than a whisper, singing a sweet, melancholy song:

Poppy flower,
Lovely poppy flower,
My heart is yours, for ever.
I love you,
Little child of mine,
The way a flower is loved
by the sunshine.

Everything around him – the wall opposite, the stars above his head, the stones in the road beneath his feet – became blurred. It was exactly the same feeling that had occasionally come over him in the past. He’d never been able to understand it, or why his eyes filled with tears. Here it is again, he thought, again that … that what? It felt like something pressing on his whole body, something beating at him, burning. There it was again. Inside. A twinge. Not a pain: a
twinge. A slight, slight twinge. It hurt a little. And took time to go away. Or at least, to ease off. When it finally disappeared, it left him wanting to stay still, not to laugh or talk to anyone, not to play or go out.

Poppy flower,
Lovely poppy flower,
Don’t be so ungrateful
And love me,
Poppy flower,
Poppy flower,
How can you bear
To live so alone …

If Eduardo had been at home, he would have closed his bedroom door, lain down on his bed, and tried to recover from this uneasy feeling by mentally conjugating irregular verbs; reciting the names of every country in South, Central and North America, and their capitals; repeating declensions in Latin; then going over in turn – as he was doing now – first the tributaries on the right bank of the River Amazon: Javari, Juruá, Purus, Madeira, Tapajós and Xingu, then on the left-hand side: Iça, Japurá, Negro, Trombetas, Paru and Jari. If the images of these powerful rivers zigzagging through the jungle were not enough to calm him, he would try the names of the presidents of the republic, starting with the most recent: Jânio Quadros, Juscelino Kubitschek, Getúlio Vargas, Eurico Gaspar Dutra …

‘What are you doing?’

Paulo had just arrived, and was standing over him.

‘Reciting the presidents of Brazil. You’re late.’

‘My father and Antonio took their time leaving. Has the old man appeared yet?’

‘No. Where’s your bike?’

‘I left it at home. That way they’ll think I’m there.’

Eduardo held out two pieces of folded paper with something written on them. Even before he unfolded them, Paulo knew what they were: the meaning of the words the old man had said that afternoon: ‘misfortune’ and ‘metaphorically’. Eduardo had a dictionary. At school he was the only one who did, apart from the children of rich families. But they didn’t count: the volumes belonged to their parents.

Explaining words was part of a tacit pact of mutual assistance. In a fight or in class, a friend should always be ready to lend a helping hand. Paulo kept all the many scraps of paper hidden under his underpants and socks to one side of the wardrobe, so that Antonio wouldn’t find them. He would only laugh, make fun of him for it. Words! Synonyms! Hidden away like treasure … What nonsense, golliwog!

Paulo took a deep, pleasurable breath. The air was filled with the scent of ladies of the night. It felt as though the ardent smell was caressing him inside. It was a shame that the flowers were coming to an end. Winter was drawing near. When it grew cold, the flowers with their delicate, mother-of-pearl sepals would wilt and lose their perfume in the daytime, and fade from his life. The disappearance of their intense fragrance marked the end of summer.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

Eduardo stood up, stretched his neck upwards, but couldn’t see the clock on the right-hand cathedral tower.

‘Some time after ten, I think.’

Paulo kicked an imaginary stone. Then an imaginary football. Then an imaginary football in front of a stand full of open-mouthed spectators in a foreign stadium. He was wearing the Brazilian team shirt, alongside Zito, Didi, Pelé, Garrincha, Nilton Santos, Bellini, Orlando, Mazzola, De Sordi, Zagallo and Gilmar. On radios and loudspeakers, in the biggest cities and the most remote villages, the presenters shouted above the roar of crowds gathered in all the streets and avenues. The gre–aatest fooootba–ller of aa–ll time, dear listeners, a herooo for all the cou–ntries in the wooorld! Ladies and gentlemen, the gre–aatest goooooal scooorer ever!!!

Before his imaginary ball, propelled by the most powerful kick in the whole history of sport, could flash past the blond goalkeeper’s head into the opposition net, Paulo saw something moving among the foliage of the big tree inside the wall. He saw the rope, then the ladder, and then the white-haired man climbing down to the pavement.

‘What are you two doing here?’ he grumbled when he saw them.

The rope and the ladder had disappeared from sight. Paulo couldn’t contain himself:

‘How do you manage it?’

‘Physics, logic, and the desire for freedom,’ replied the old man, wiping his hands on a handkerchief.

Paulo smiled. The old man scowled.

‘It’s late. Time for kids to be in bed.’

‘I’m not a kid! Nor is Eduardo! We’ll soon be thirteen!’

Eduardo launched into the series of questions he had prepared and rehearsed with Paulo.

‘Did you find anything in the dentist’s house that—’

‘Go away!’ the man interrupted him.

‘We only wanted to—’ Paulo insisted.

‘Shoo! Shoo!’ The man waved his hands as if he were driving off chickens. ‘Get out of here!’

‘We think that whoever killed the blonde woman, it wasn’t—’ Eduardo tried again.

The man’s hands windmilled:

‘Shoo! Get out of here now!’

‘The dentist confessed, but we think that—’

‘Out! Go home! Shoo!’

‘But we think—’

‘Go away, go away!’

‘We—’

‘Be off with you!’

The boys glanced at each other.

‘Go away! Didn’t you hear me? Away! Shoo! Go home, go to bed! Go on, get moving!’

Eduardo and Paulo turned their backs on him and walked away. The old man waited until they had vanished from sight, then headed in the opposite direction.

As soon as he turned a corner, Paulo came out of the shadows. Eduardo soon followed suit.

It was not hard to follow the old man. As on the previous night, he walked down the middle of the empty streets. He
went unhurriedly past the textile factory. He slowly climbed the hill behind the cathedral. Walked round it. Stopped, turned and peered up at the big clock. He set off again. Small, frail-looking, he shuffled along the deserted, silent main street. To Eduardo he made a desolate sight.

‘I don’t want to grow old,’ he whispered.

Paulo didn’t seem to hear.

‘Old. It’s sad.’

‘Why?’

‘When I see an old man like that … it makes me feel … I can’t explain. There’s nothing more for him, is there?’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Finished, isn’t it?’

‘What’s finished?’

‘Everything. For him.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Let’s drop it.’

When he reached the main square, the white-haired man went towards the only place that was still open. A small bar. The two last customers were talking to the owner behind the counter. The old man joined them.

‘They’re his accomplices,’ said Paulo, fascinated by the word.

Eduardo didn’t agree. He didn’t think accomplices would dare to meet so openly. But he couldn’t explain the old man’s strange behaviour either. Paulo suggested a theory that had just occurred to him.

‘He’s the murderer. He went to the dentist’s house to
conceal the evidence. Criminals always return to the scene of the crime.’

‘But the crime took place near the lake.’

‘Didn’t the dentist tell the police he killed her in their house?’

‘But we know it can’t have been there.’

‘Isn’t it strange that the old man went there?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘If he’s not the dentist’s accomplice, then he’s off his head.’

‘He could be. My granddad was like that.’

‘The one you used to call
Nonno
?’

‘No,
Nonno
was the Italian, my father’s father. The crazy one was Portuguese, my mother’s father. He ran away from home, vanished for days on end, went on benders, sang in the street. My mother was ashamed of him.’

One of the customers staggered out of the bar. Shortly afterwards, so did the other one. The white-haired old man stayed at the counter. He was drinking a clear liquid that the bar owner served him in a small glass. Paulo thought it must be
cachaça
, white rum.

‘Did the crazy grandfather visit your house a lot?’

‘The Portuguese? He lived with us in São Paulo. When my father was transferred to the interior, my mother sent him to her sister’s house in Rio. He died there. I can’t recall exactly what of. I can’t remember his name either. I think it was Vicente, but I always called him Granddad. He took me to the district once.’

‘The red-light district?’

‘Yes. My mother was furious when she found out.’

‘Were they naked?’

‘The whores? I don’t remember. I was still a kid.’

‘You don’t remember whether the women were naked or not?’

‘No, I don’t think they were.’

‘Yeah,’ said Paulo with a sigh. ‘They can’t have been. If you’d seen a naked woman, you wouldn’t have forgotten it.’

The bar owner began closing the long wooden shutters. The old man came out. The boys got ready to follow him, but he simply walked over to one of the benches and sat down. He took a small notebook out of his inside jacket pocket. He read through a few pages, then wrote something down. He put the notebook away, and from another pocket took out a rolled-up cigarette and a box of matches. He lit it, inhaled deeply, blew out the smoke, drew on it again.

Paulo yawned. He felt very sleepy.

The tip of the pen closed the semicircle of the last letter, a consonant, descended slightly to the left, underlined part of the surname. Lifted from the paper, it crossed the letter ‘t’. Moving to the end of the signature, the pen made two dots on the right, one above the other. Finished.

‘The reason for you being absent from school, signed by your father,’ said Eduardo, holding out the school notebook to his friend. ‘You can go to class again tomorrow with no worries.’

Paulo examined the text and the signature. Perfect.