If I Close My Eyes Now Page 2

  ‘Please, sir, stay calm! Calm down, Paulo! We went to the lake to swim. That’s all, sir.’

  ‘How many stab wounds? Talk, monkey!’

  ‘I don’t know. We didn’t want to look.’

  ‘We didn’t count. Neither Paulo nor I counted.’

  ‘A penknife doesn’t make wounds like that. It was a dagger.’

  ‘How d’you know, monkey? Have you already sunk a dagger in someone?’

  ‘I’m not a monkey! And I haven’t done anything. I simply tripped over the dead body.’

  ‘How did you know she was dead?’

  ‘You two killed her.’

  ‘Why did you stab her so often?’

  ‘When I tripped she was already dead!’

  ‘We didn’t touch her, sir. We found her, and I told Paulo we had better come here to the station to tell you what we had found. The body.’

  ‘And I told you it would be better not to have anything to do with the police!’

  ‘We went back there with you, didn’t we? To show you. We only found her. That’s all.’

  ‘I told you the police wouldn’t believe us, Eduardo!’

  ‘We don’t believe you because you’re lying. What did you do to her?’

  ‘Nothing! She was already cold when I tripped over her.’

  ‘You’re lying, little monkey.’

  ‘Paulo and I went to the lake because our geography teacher threw us out of his class.’

  ‘He sent us to talk to the headmaster.’

  ‘Which of you pulled up her skirt?’

  ‘You, or you?’

  Paulo realized he was hungry. I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I want a pee, I haven’t had lunch, I haven’t eaten anything apart from that bit of bread with coffee, why did they push me and Eduardo into this stifling room, why do they keep on asking us about killing that woman, why, what for? Can’t they see we didn’t have anything to kill her with? We couldn’t have done it with my penknife. I didn’t pull her skirt up, it was already pulled up to her waist, or perhaps it was torn, who knows? No, it wasn’t torn, and if it was, I didn’t do it. Eduardo didn’t pull it up either. The guy shouting in my ear spits whenever he speaks, filthy bastard, it must be the one who talked to us first, the one with a rotten front tooth, the one who pushed us into this room at the back of the police station, when we came to tell them about the body we’d found. His breath is so bad you can smell it from yards away. Or it was the other one. My stomach’s rumbling: what time is it?

  ‘Was it you, monkey?’

  ‘We didn’t touch her. I only tripped. When I was running.’

  ‘We went to the lake because our teacher threw us out. And we couldn’t go home.’

  ‘We couldn’t go home until the end of the school day.’

  ‘Did he throw both of you out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Nothing bad, sir.’

  ‘We were looking at a magazine.’

  ‘In the class.’

  ‘What magazine?’

  ‘The teacher took it. He sent us to see the headmaster.’

  ‘What kind of magazine was it?’

  ‘A dirty magazine; I bet these little monkeys had a dirty magazine.’

  ‘Were you doing dirty things? Together? With each other?’

  ‘No! We were swimming!’

  ‘The headmaster wasn’t in his office, so we thought it was better to get out of there.’

  ‘We thought it was better to run away.’

  ‘You wanted to do dirty things to her!’

  ‘We didn’t see her! We don’t know her!’

  ‘I’ve never seen her, I swear. Nor has Paulo.’

  ‘You’re lying, monkey.’

  ‘Everybody knows that woman.’

  ‘We don’t.’

  ‘I’ve already told you, we never saw her before!’

  ‘Everybody knows that woman. Or knew her.’

  ‘But I don’t, sir.’

  ‘Of course you do. That woman was a whore.’

  ‘A whore?’

  ‘The dead woman was a whore?’

  ‘A whore. A tramp. You knew that.’

  ‘But we didn’t, sir. I’ve never been to one of those places. Nor has Paulo. His father goes, and so does his brother. He never does. We never do.’

  ‘Was she a whore from the red-light district?’

  ‘I’m the one asking the questions, monkey. What did you want with her?’

  ‘You wanted to force her to do dirty things, didn’t you?’

  ‘She refused, so you attacked her.’

  ‘With the penknife.’

  ‘You even took a dirty magazine with you.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘The geography teacher took it. Mr Lemos took it. You can ask him.’

  ‘You cleaned the knife on her tights. The blade is clean, and the stockings are covered in blood.’

  ‘No, sir. We took our bikes to the lake, that’s all.’

  ‘To swim.’

  ‘Until Paulo tipped over the inner tube and pulled my pants down, and I started running after him, and—’

  ‘So both of you were naked? In the midst of the bushes?’

  ‘You were doing dirty things to each other.’

  ‘No, no! It was a joke!’

  ‘A dirty joke.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘We’ve sent for your father. And yours.’

  ‘No, not my father!’

  ‘Calm down, Paulo. I’ll explain we haven’t done anything wrong. That we came to tell the police. That the blonde woman was already dead when you fell over her.’

  ‘How did you know she was dead?’

  ‘She was already stiff!’

  ‘The blood was already stiff!’

  ‘You mean congealed, Paulo.’

  ‘So you touched her body.’

  ‘You played with her body.’

  ‘No! We only touched it lightly.’

  ‘To see if she was still alive.’

  ‘But she wasn’t.’

  ‘How could she be? Stabbed to death like that!’

  ‘Stabbed by a penknife. Your penknife.’

  ‘It wasn’t my penknife! Those wounds were made by a dagger! I know they’re dagger wounds.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’

  ‘My father’s a butcher. There was no need to send for him.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘What did you do? You can tell us.’

  ‘I’m not scared.’

  ‘You’re a minor, nothing will happen to you.’

  ‘You didn’t need to send for him …’

  ‘Is my mother coming as well? Did you call my mother too?’

  ‘Do you often go there, to the lake?’

  ‘What do you do when you’re together?’

  ‘Do you swim naked? Do you go around naked?’

  ‘Where did you hide the dirty magazine?’

  ‘We didn’t do anything wrong. All we did was bunk off school.’

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed, monkey? Your mother’s outside, in tears.’

  ‘She’s my mother. Paulo’s mother died.’

  ‘Worse still. All that sacrifice to give children an education, and you two spend your time running around naked.’

  ‘But Mr Lemos threw us out of his class!’

  ‘Because you had a dirty magazine.’

  ‘Let me speak to my mother, sir. So that she won’t worry.’

  ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘In a little while.’

  ‘After you’ve given a proper explanation of why you pulled his pants down and what you were doing by the lake, why you pulled her knickers down, and about the penknife – everything.’

  ‘But we already told you. All three of you.’

  ‘So tell us again. From the beginning.’

  ‘Why are you so scared of your father?’

  ‘Not mine – he’s Paulo’s father.’

  ‘If you were my son, I’
d show you how to educate a good-for-nothing.’

  ‘I’m not a good-for-nothing.’

  A fourth adult voice interrupted them, opening the door and announcing:

  ‘The little mulatto’s father is here.’

  The first blow, with the back of the hand, caught Paulo on his right ear. He stumbled, a wave of pain flashing across his skull, and the only reason he didn’t fall was because another slap, this time with the palm of the hand, hit him on the left side of his head, knocking him against the dining table. He just had time to save himself from crashing into it, and watched in a daze as his father came closer, knowing he wanted to give him another one, two, as many blows as possible until he calmed down again. Tainted blood, shouted the fair-haired man looming over him, tainted blood, he repeated, narrowing his blue eyes between lashes that were so light-coloured they sometimes looked almost white, you’ve got tainted blood just like your mother and all her family, you monkey son of a bitch.

  Paulo said nothing. It wouldn’t help to say anything. His father wouldn’t hear – he never heard anything when he was in a rage like this. In a rage against him, usually. Or always. Paulo could try to wriggle his way out, squeeze under the table and then rush into the street, run to … where exactly? He had nowhere to go. And no one to take him in. And it would only make his father all the more furious. It would be worse. When he beat him, and sooner or later he would beat him, the thrashing would leave marks and pain for days, as it always used to until he learned that the best thing was to stay and face the punishment. Better to stay now, it would hurt less.

  Paulo saw the huge hand aiming for his face. He anticipated the stinging pain, knowing he would sleep and wake up with that throbbing ache, which was also the ache of shame and sadness he felt towards this man who could only call him a monkey.

  He felt his father’s vast paw strike him between his nose and ear. He stumbled again.

  He let himself fall on his side between the chairs, curling up under the table, instinctively pulling his legs up to his chest and lowering his head, hoping against hope the beating would end there and then, but prepared to take more blows on his neck, then lashes from the leather belt his father was busy removing from his trousers. But his father did not drag him out from under the table. He lashed out once, twice, three and four times between the chairs, but only struck glancing blows to Paulo’s head. He stopped, striking the furniture with the belt buckle several times, then tossed the belt down on to his son, ordering him: come out of there, you son of a bitch, come out of there.

  Paulo raised himself on all fours and crawled out. He stood with his back to his father and waited. Would the next blow be to his head? Another slap across the ears?

  He could hear his father’s heavy breathing, mixed with the curses he kept repeating, but he did not come any nearer. A good sign. When he didn’t move, his father usually stopped hitting him. Instead he almost always let loose another string of abuse, so perhaps the thrashing would end there. Paulo desperately hoped it would.

  His father simply said: ‘Pick up that crappy belt.’

  Paulo bent down and picked it up.

  ‘Give me that piece of crap.’

  Paulo gave it him.

  ‘You’re no good for anything, you little monkey, you’ve got their tainted blood in you, you brat, you’ve got their blood all right, you’re a good-for-nothing like all your mother’s family.’

  Paulo lowered his head. Yet again he felt a deep-seated pain, the same pain he was to feel so often in the future whenever he recalled those moments with his father, a pain he knew did not come from the blows he received, but which as yet he didn’t know where to situate or how to understand.

  His father slammed the door and left the room.

  Paulo was on his own. The pain was increasing, coursing through his legs, arms, his chest, until it reached his eyes and turned into tears. He bit his bottom lip harder and harder, trying to transform one pain into another. The tears fell anyway from the corners of his eyes, running down his face, which was already starting to swell. Paulo ran to the bathroom, shut the door as best he could, hoping that neither his father nor his brother would come in, took the face cloth and stuffed it in his mouth. Hidden in the bathroom, he secretly sobbed and moaned while from a nearby house a radio once again trumpeted the first flight of a man in space.

  When he went into the bedroom he shared with his brother, Antonio was doing exercises with dumb-bells in front of the wardrobe mirror. He was wearing a pair of shorts. Even though he was only sixteen, his large frame and hairy body made him look adult. Like his father and many descendants of people who came to Brazil from the north of Portugal, he had inherited the physique and pale skin of the Visigoths. His thick hair was slicked back with brilliantine apart from one quiff that fell artfully over his forehead. Beneath thick eyebrows, eyes as dark as his mother’s peered with pleasure at his own body. He was counting the repetitions out loud as he raised and lowered the iron weights.

  ‘What’s all this about a dead woman, golliwog?’ he asked, deliberately using the nickname that emphasized the difference in their skin colour, without pausing in his exercises or taking his eyes off his own body.

  Paulo didn’t reply. Making sure his brother did not see his still-red eyes, he went over to his bed, lined up beside the wardrobe. Keeping his back to his brother, he lifted the pillow in search of something. He didn’t find it.

  ‘And they kept you in, golliwog? All afternoon?’

  He pushed back the bedcover, the blanket; it wasn’t there either.

  ‘Talk, golliwog! What did you do this time?’

  Paulo lifted the mattress. Not there either.

  ‘They say she was naked. Nude. Is that true, golliwog?’

  Bending down, Paulo searched on the wooden floor. He straightened up, stood on the bed. He glanced at the top of the wardrobe, saw nothing, ran his hand over it. Nothing but dust.

  ‘That dentist’s wife was hot stuff. She looked like Brigitte Bardot. A cross between her and Sophia Loren.’

  Paulo had no idea who either of them were, and didn’t care. But something his brother had said took him by surprise.

  ‘The dentist’s wife? Wasn’t she a whore?’

  ‘The dentist’s wife.’

  ‘But at the station they said she was a whore.’

  ‘She went with everybody. She was a whore. A slut. A hot bitch who couldn’t get enough of it. But she was married to the dentist.’

  Paulo got down from the bed.

  ‘Did you see her in the nude, golliwog? She was really hot, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She was covered in blood. Filthy, full of mud …’

  ‘Bouncy tits. Bouncy arse. Big thighs. Really hot. I’d like to have had her. If I’d stuck my prick in her, she’d have been crazy for me.’

  As with his biceps and pectorals, Antonio was proud of the control he believed he exercised over any woman he penetrated. After his first visit to a prostitute three years earlier, he and their father went regularly to a brothel a Polish madam ran in a city centre street. Occasionally, they slept there. Paulo would sometimes run into them coming out of the Hotel Wizorek on his way to school.

  ‘Did they really cut her breasts off? And did she have no knickers on?’

  Paulo lifted the horsehair mattress again, looked carefully underneath, then pushed it up against the wall.

  ‘Did she have blonde hairs? A pink pussy?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know. I didn’t see.’

  ‘A real blonde has a pink pussy and blonde pubic hairs. I’ve seen lots of them. I’ve eaten lots of blonde pussy.’

  Paulo let the mattress drop back. There was only one dentist in the town, a frail-looking man with thinning hair whom Paulo had seen a few times, all on his own, always wearing a coat and tie. It couldn’t be him.

  ‘The dentist is old. She was young. She looked young.’

  ‘She was about twenty-four or -five. The dentist must be twice that. Or more
. She only liked old men. She only gave out to old men. She never looked at me.’

  Laying the weights on the floor, Antonio puffed out his cheeks and posed sideways on to the wardrobe. He breathed out, put his hands on his flat abdomen, and caressed the blond fuzz there. He turned to the other side, took a deep breath once more, flexed his arms. The pose confirmed it: his biceps were growing bigger and bigger. Picking up the dumbbells, he bent each arm in turn behind his head, breathing noisily in and out, now working on his triceps.

  Annoyed, Paulo pushed the blanket and cover to the bottom of the bed, but still found nothing.

  ‘Where’s the book I left here?’

  ‘How should I know? Did you see the husband arrested?’

  Paulo turned to his brother, surprised again.

  ‘The police arrested the husband? Why?’

  ‘He turned himself in. He confessed to killing her. How come you didn’t see the dentist at the police station, if you were there?’

  Paulo did the calculations: he had left the station more than two hours earlier, dragged away by his father. Together with Eduardo and his mother, they stopped off at the school, where the headmaster wanted to see them. They had to wait for twenty minutes or half an hour before he saw them, and then were given a long lecture. Night was falling by the time they came out. The street lamps were lit when they finally reached home. Paulo concluded that the dead woman’s husband must have given himself up during this interval. He went over to Antonio’s bed, almost certain he was hiding the book Eduardo had lent him there. He only needed to reach under the mattress for his fingers to close round it.

  He carefully pulled out the book. On its brightly coloured cover, his favourite hero was gazing from a clifftop into a deep valley through which ran a broad, powerful river, lined with the palaces of a civilization lost for centuries in the jungle.

  Paulo went back to his own bed, lay down, kicked off his shoes without looking where they fell, and opened the dog-eared copy of Tarzan and the City of Gold at the page marked with a piece of string. He began to read.

  ‘What are you reading, golliwog? A dirty book? I don’t like reading. Not even dirty books. It’s a waste of time. My thing is fucking. What I really like is sticking it in. Into cunts, arses, mouths: my thing is to fuck, to shove it in and enjoy myself. A lot. I’ve got lots of sperm, so …’