If I Close My Eyes Now (9 page)

Normally Eduardo would have obeyed, because he was a reasonable sort, and because that was how he had been brought up. Paulo would probably have done the same, not because it was in his nature, but because this was how he had learned to behave, like a wary creature that had the memory of his father’s brutality imprinted on his mind. But together,
treated with what they saw as disdainful arrogance, the anger of one complemented the other’s bitterness. This gave them the strength to openly defy an adult for the first time in their lives. They continued shouting.

A light went on in a nearby house. A dog started to bark in the distance.

‘Sshh! Be quiet!’ the man ordered them.

They shouted louder and louder, calling him a decrepit old man, a lunatic, a crazy fugitive, an idiotic escapee, anything and everything they could think of to insult him.

‘Shut up! That’s enough!’

His imperious tone only made Eduardo and Paulo the more indignant. The words they were shouting no longer made any sense. They were nothing more than abusive roars.

‘Silence! Shut your mouths! You’ll wake everyone up!’

The barking intensified. Now there were at least two dogs, then a third joined in. A veranda light came on at the end of the street. The old man came towards them with surprising agility, fists clenched. When he was close, Paulo took a step towards him, still shouting defiantly.

‘
Old maaan! Escaped from the home!
’

‘Be quiet now! Both of you!’

Before Eduardo and Paulo could redouble their efforts, he added in a low voice:

‘Please.’

The kids glanced at each other.

‘Please,’ the old man repeated. ‘Don’t shout.’

Their gesture of revolt had been justified. It had made them feel good, and they weren’t ready to make peace yet. They
started shrieking again. But not for long. The old man’s next words and the sincerity behind them made them pause.

‘The nuns mustn’t know I climb out every night,’ he begged them.

He spread his hands and arms, in a clear sign of surrender.

‘Please. They’d throw me out.’

Eduardo had never known an adult plead with him in this way. Paulo, who was more practical, asked the old man defiantly:

‘What do we get if we stop?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Help,’ Eduardo was quick to say.

‘To solve the crime,’ added Paulo.

‘To prove the dentist isn’t the killer.’

‘The dentist. It wasn’t him.’

The old man gestured for them to be quiet. He pointed all round him.

‘I mustn’t be seen. Let’s get out of the middle of the street.’

They went back close to the wall.

‘You’re just a couple of kids.’

‘We isn’t …’ Paulo corrected himself. ‘We’re not kids.’

‘We’ll soon be thirteen.’

‘I’m a retired teacher, not a detective.’

‘But you went to the dentist’s house to investigate.’

‘We saw you.’

‘I only want to get out of this home occasionally. To have a quiet drink and a chat. I’m not sleepy. We old folk don’t sleep a lot.’

‘Paulo and I found the body. By the lake.’

‘It was covered in blood! Filthy! Stab wounds all over!’

‘It can’t have been the dentist.’

‘He scalped her breast!’

‘He scalped what?’

‘Don’t you watch cowboy films?’

‘I never go to Hollywood films,’ said the old man, pronouncing ‘Oliwud’ with a strong north-eastern accent. ‘They’re Manichaeist.’

‘What does a “Manichaeist” mean?’

‘I’ll look it up in the dictionary, Paulo. We want to prove the dentist is innocent.’

‘But the husband confessed to the murder, boys.’

‘He couldn’t have done it! He’s old! You can’t imagine how big she was!’

‘Appearances are deceptive. You’ll learn that sooner or later. Nothing in this country is what it seems. And this city is a microcosm of Brazil.’

Paulo made a mental note: ‘microcosm’. Yet another word to look up in Eduardo’s dictionary.

‘Old men are capable of great atrocities,’ the man added.

Another word to look up the next day: ‘atrocities’.

‘Have you ever heard of Getúlio Vargas? Josef Stalin?’

‘Of Getúlio, yes.’

‘Vargas, the man who created the labour laws.’

‘Getúlio Vargas’s henchmen tore out my fingernails. One by one. In cold blood. They tortured me. Killed my friends. That same heroic Vargas you study at school. The martyr of the republic. It was thanks to us that Getúlio came to power.
We believed in him. The father of the poor. Vargas betrayed us. Like Stalin.’

Then he went on talking about deaths, persecutions and massacres in the Soviet Union. Eduardo was curious, because history had always interested him, but Paulo was not so pleased: to him this was an unnecessary digression. He interrupted the old man.

‘Are you going to help us or not?’

‘Under duress.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m being blackmailed. Either I collaborate or you give me away, is that right?’

‘But you yourself started an investigation,’ Eduardo argued.

‘Possibly.’

‘We know we’re not children. Neither Paulo nor me.’

‘We’re not.’

‘But you adults still think we are.’

‘You think that.’

‘Just now you called us kids.’

‘You did.’

‘It’s because you think Paulo and me are only kids that we can investigate lots of things about the dentist’s wife’s death, without attracting anyone’s attention.’

‘Because nobody is going to pay us any attention.’

‘That’s why I said we can go unnoticed, because of our age.’

‘But there are other things we can’t do, if you know what I mean.’

The white-haired man waited for Paulo to go on. The two
boys were waiting for an answer. After a few moments’ silence, it was the old man who spoke.

‘So, what then … ?’

‘Well, then … you’re older, and have more experience … There are things you can do that we can’t.’

‘Such as?’

‘For the moment, I don’t know. When they crop up, we’ll see.’

‘One for all and all for one?’ Paulo urged.

‘You and us. The three of us, you, Paulo and me, if we work together, we could find things out and—’

‘What exactly do you intend to do?’ the old man cut in.

His question implied precise intentions the boys did not have. Instead, they were acting on a suspicion, nourished by countless films and melodramas they would soon not even remember the titles of, that the accepted version of who had killed the blonde woman was wrong. How could they admit this was all they suspected, and still manage to convince the old man to join them? Eduardo tried to find a good reason for him to do so, but couldn’t. Neither of them could. So Eduardo would have to think up a lie. Right now. On the spot. A convincing one. But to invent a lie that would convince someone to reject a series of lies backed up by the whole city left him nonplussed. He said nothing. He couldn’t find the words. Paulo stared at him anxiously. Once again, it was the old man who broke the silence.

‘Well … ?’

‘Just a minute,’ Eduardo pleaded, trying to gain time.

‘You two …’

‘He’s going to explain – aren’t you, Eduardo?’

‘We …’ Eduardo began, but could not go on. He flushed.

‘You want to go on investigating, just like you think you’ve been doing since the first night after the murder, when you broke into the dentist’s house.’

Paulo tried to deny they had broken in, but the old man wouldn’t let him. Then he said in a single breath, as though reciting a lesson learned by heart:

‘You thought you could do everything on your own, but you’ve discovered that you can only make progress with my help, because you think you’ve found a lead, a clue that may or may not be important, which could be crucial in solving the murder, but which so far has not got you anywhere, because you don’t know what to do with it. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

‘Yes …’ Eduardo said grudgingly.

‘You came to me, even though you think I’m a crazy old man, because you don’t know who else to turn to.’

Neither of the boys knew what to say.

‘Is that right, then? You two want to carry on investigating?’

‘Yes, we want to!’ said Eduardo, emboldened.

‘We want to!’ Paulo echoed him.

‘Even if no one else is interested in finding out who the real murderer is?’

‘So you don’t think it was the dentist either?’ asked Eduardo, almost shouting.

The old man stuffed his hands in his coat pockets, stared first at one of them, then the other, and asked:

‘Do you know where birth certificates are kept?’

‘In the city hall,’ Paulo quickly replied.

‘Inside the city hall, in the municipal archive,’ Eduardo specified.

‘Can you two get in there?’

‘Of course,’ said Paulo.

‘Could you do it now?’

‘At this time of night?’ Eduardo said doubtfully. ‘The archive is shut.’

‘That’s why I asked if you can get in.’

‘Of course we can,’ said Paulo.

‘We can try.’

‘We can get in anywhere! At any time of the day or night!’

The old man drew closer to them and whispered:

‘OK, so let’s get organized and share out the tasks.’

Paulo was the first to climb down. With the rope wrapped round his left foot, he let himself down bit by bit, steadying himself with his hands. His body swayed slightly from side to side, like a pendulum. He reached the floor with his right foot, and released the other one. When he was firmly on the ground, he looked around him.

The light from a streetlamp came in through two high sash windows and dusty blinds. Apart from a tall table and a roll-top desk, the entire room was taken up with metal shelves that ran round the walls, and stood in two rows in the centre. They were filled with big bound volumes. Numbers and dates were written in Roman numerals on their spines.

Paulo opened the nearest one. A quick glance was enough. He gave a thumbs-up in the direction of the wooden roof, where an open rectangle gave access to the basement. This was the room they were looking for.

Eduardo grasped the rope, wrapped it round one foot, and began his descent. He felt himself swaying more than he had expected. He carried on down. He reached the top of the shelves. The soft skin on the palms of his hands was stinging. He lost his balance: his foot came out of the rope, and his body started to turn. He saw the room spin and ended up head first. He fell to the floor, groaning. Paulo ran over to him.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘No, no,’ replied Eduardo, more annoyed than injured.

‘Did you break anything?’

‘It was nothing. I slipped, that’s all,’ he insisted, beating the dust off his clothes. ‘We’re in the right place, aren’t we?’

‘I think so.’

Eduardo got hold of one of the volumes. He opened it.

‘Yes, this is it. This is a register of births. Wedding and obituary certificates must be here too.’

‘Obituary?’

‘Death.’

‘Ah … and what’s this writing with the letter “m” then an “x”, another “m” and …’

‘It’s a date. In Latin. We learned them in class.’

‘Oh, yes. I didn’t think they wrote things in Latin in Brazil.’

By examining the spines and the labels stuck on the shelves, it didn’t take long for Eduardo to realize they would have to look elsewhere.

‘These books are all from the last century.’

‘Which one are we looking for?’

‘The one for 1937. If Dona Anita was twenty-four when she died, she must have been born in 1937.’

‘The old man said she got married very young.’

‘At fifteen. If that’s the case, it must be in the 1952 register. We need that too.’

They found the row for the 1930s, then the book with the birth registers for 1937. Between them, they took it over to one of the windows, laid it on the floor, and started to go through it. They reached the last page without finding any certificate in the name of Anita. They went back, page by page. Paulo thought they should have brought a torch. Eduardo ran his finger over the handwritten entries, shaking his head.

‘No, no … no. No. There’s no Anita. There’s Angela, Antonia, Aparecida, Apolonia, Almerinda …’

Paulo suggested they look at the wedding certificates for 1952. Eduardo agreed, but did not take his eyes from the yellowing pages he had in front of him. He read out, in a low voice:

‘Adelina, Adriana, Alfredina, Amarílis, Ana Beatriz, Ana Cristina, Ana Elisa, Ana Helena, Ana Isabel, Ana Lúcia, Ana Maria, Ana Olívia, Ana Paula, Ana Rita, Andralina … Ane … Anemona …’

Paulo soon returned.

‘So?’

‘There’s no register of the birth of any Anita in 1937.’

‘Let me see,’ said Paulo, pushing the 1952 volume towards Eduardo.

The room smelt of dust and mildew. It couldn’t have been cleaned in a long time. The damp was beginning to upset Eduardo. He could feel a sneeze coming on. He covered his nose with both hands, held his breath, stared at the streetlamp outside. None of these tricks worked: he sneezed anyway. Dazzled by the bright light outside, for a few moments he couldn’t read anything at all. He asked Paulo:

‘Take a look here. See if you can find the dentist’s name among the wedding certificates.’