If I Close My Eyes Now Page 4

  They went out. The torchlight guided them down the corridor and past the bathroom where they had climbed in. Up ahead was a small room lined with tiles. It contained only a dining table, two chairs, a stove and a gas canister.

  In the opposite direction, the corridor led to the front of the house, where the dentist’s consulting-room was. It was separated from the rest of the house by aluminium screens and recently installed milky-coloured plastic tiles. A few feet before this, two closed doors stood opposite each other.

  They tiptoed towards them.

  The left-hand door was ajar. They pushed it and went in. It was filled with X-ray plates and photographic negatives hanging from strings. To one side, on a sink, stood two rectangular metal box trays, half filled with liquid. A sheet of dark plastic was floating in one of them. Eduardo picked it up, examined it in the torchlight, then held it out to Paulo: images of a tooth with a long root. Paulo dropped it back into the liquid.

  At first the door to the room opposite seemed locked, but it yielded when Eduardo turned the porcelain doorknob and pushed hard. The torchlight fell on a dressing-table mirror, and they saw their own reflections: two young boys in a darkened house, searching for they had no idea what.

  Most of the room was taken up with a wide double bed, covered with a green woven bedspread. Against the wall next to it stood an inlaid wooden chiffonier with rounded edges and several drawers. There was nothing on its marble top. No pictures of saints on the walls. Or crucifix above the bed. No pillows either.

  Eduardo went over to the dressing table. He saw cosmetics, boxes of powder, sponges, bottles of nail polish. They were no different from the ones he knew from his mother’s dressing table, except for the colours: all the murdered woman’s lipsticks and polish were as bright red as a rotten guava.

  He opened the four drawers carefully, one by one. He found a comb here, hairpins there, a hairbrush in another one, a manicure set, a couple of buttons, a pincushion with needles and pins sticking in it, a pair of scissors, a few coins. No revealing note, letter or message.

  ‘Shine the light over here, Eduardo.’

  He turned, and pointed the torch. Paulo was holding several identical pieces of clothing he had just taken out of the bottom wardrobe drawer. He put one on his head. It looked like a double bonnet. He smiled, delighted with himself.

  ‘It’s a brassiere, Eduardo!’

  ‘Put it back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re a dead woman’s clothes.’

  ‘Have you ever seen so many of them?’

  ‘Don’t go messing around.’

  ‘But aren’t we looking for clues?’

  ‘A brassiere isn’t a—’

  He stopped. He raised his finger to his lips, urging Paulo to be quiet.

  ‘What?’

  Eduardo repeated his signal. He pointed towards the corridor. There was a new, irregular-shaped patch of brightness.

  The beam of light crossed the corridor ceiling, then the floor. Another torch. Someone else was in the house. He must be wearing rubber-soled shoes, because all they could hear was a creaking sound as the old floorboards were pressed down at regular intervals. Short, cautious steps.

  ‘Who—?’

  Eduardo clasped his hand round Paulo’s mouth. The sound of footsteps continued along the corridor. The light from the other torch turned towards the room they had left earlier. The corridor was plunged back into darkness.

  They heard the creak of the double wardrobe door, then the sound of coat-hangers being moved. Eduardo pointed his chin to indicate they should get out of there. He took the brassiere from Paulo and put it back in the drawer. As he was doing so, he spotted a rectangular box. He lifted it out, hesitating whether to open it or take it with them. Straightening up, Paulo knocked against it. The contents spilled on to the floor.

  ‘Condoms!’ exclaimed Paulo, recognizing the rubber sheaths his brother used. ‘Look how many there are!’

  He bent down to pick some up, but Eduardo tugged on his sleeve and dragged him out of the room. In the bathroom, Paulo helped Eduardo through the shutters. Then he stood on the edge of the lavatory bowl, put one foot on the window-sill, leaned out and pushed his left shoulder between one strip of glass and the next, then his left leg: he squeezed out and was soon standing next to Eduardo in the garden.

  They ran across the road and hid behind a rubbish bin.

  They heard the cathedral bell. It pealed once. A silence. A second time. Silence.

  ‘Two in the morning! If my mother finds I’m not in bed she’s going to be worried.’

  Paulo was hoping that the party with prostitutes, rum and laughter that he imagined his father and brother were enjoying would be even livelier than usual.

  ‘If my father gets back and finds I’m not at home, he’ll kill me.’

  ‘Why does he always beat you?’

  ‘It’s not always.’

  ‘But I’ve seen you so often with a swollen face …’

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I’m no good.’

  ‘What d’you mean, Paulo?’

  ‘I’m no good.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you do anything that—’

  ‘I think lots of bad things,’ Paulo interrupted him.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Things. Ugly thoughts.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Paulo fell silent.

  ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘There are times when I …’

  He fell silent again.

  ‘Go on, Paulo.’

  ‘No, it’s nothing.’

  ‘You can tell me.’

  Paulo wanted to say there were times when he longed to plunge a dagger into his father’s heart. To stab him. And twist the knife. To cut his throat and send all the blood spurting everywhere, like a pig. To stab him in the eye, to smash him on the head with a stone until everything was so destroyed that no one would know whose face it was; to sprinkle his bed with petrol and light a match, to set fire to the house and watch him and Antonio burn until they were no more than two chunks of blackened meat; to shoot him in the mouth, to shoot him in both hands and feet, to cut off each finger, one by one, to cut off his nose, ears, lips, tongue, to cut off his penis and his balls. I think all the things my father knows I think, and he knows I have these thoughts because I’ve got tainted blood, I was born with it. It’s not like his or Antonio’s blood, I’ve got tainted blood like my mother’s family and he knows, because I’m no good and if I can’t drive those thoughts out of my head I’m capable of doing all that because I … because I have …

  Perverse desires, he would have said if he had been able to understand the meaning of what he felt and what remained with him each time his father thrashed him. All he said was:

  ‘Things. Bad things. Angry thoughts.’

  Eduardo couldn’t understand.

  ‘Why does your father treat you like that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Doesn’t he like you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But if you solve this crime, he will like you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’ll be proud of you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you prove it wasn’t the dentist who killed his wife, he’ll treat you differently, won’t he?’

  Paulo said nothing. He was staring across the road, his attention focused on a figure who was opening the gate to leave the dentist’s house and walking off in the opposite direction to them.

  They followed.

  Possibly because the surface was uneven, or because of the upward slope, the man was walking slowly along the middle of the road. Each time he came to the circle of light beneath a street lamp, they could make him out more clearly. Short. Thin. Wearing a loose jacket. White or greying hair.

  If he looked back he would see two boys, one taller than the other, creeping along as close as possible to the walls of the century-old houses
, trying to hide as much as possible in the shadows, like the detectives in the films they had seen. But the thin, short man in the jacket with white or greying hair kept on going, unconcerned. Was he out for a stroll? At that time of the morning?

  He turned to the left, disappearing down an alley.

  Eduardo and Paulo ran so as not to lose sight of him. They had no need to: he was still walking slowly, steadily.

  He came out into the next paved street, which was also lined with solid houses from the mid-nineteenth century, built for the region’s coffee growers when they visited or came shopping in the city. When most of them were ruined by the freeing of the slaves, they had to sell their town houses, or their impoverished descendants turned them into their permanent homes, driven from their parents’ and grandparents’ estates by debts they owed to banks, or by newly arrived immigrants from Europe. Only a few of the original houses were still preserved. Most of them were disfigured by additions or changes: modern façades, rounded stones replaced by the straight lines of bricks and cement, Portuguese tiles giving way to mortar and paint, pinewood window frames supplanted by aluminium, bevelled French glass panes by corrugated plastic newly made in the factories now multiplying in São Paulo. Two of the houses had caved in. A third one next to them had been demolished, and a two-storey, vaguely art-deco cinema had been built on the land.

  The man came to a halt outside the cinema. He seemed to be reading the title written in capitals on the black wooden billboard that was hanging from a thick wire grille: Shoot the Pianist. The film shown the previous evening. As with many other cinemas in cities of the Brazilian interior in those days, the programming at the Cine Theatro Universo was changed daily, except at weekends. The films could be French, Italian, Mexican, Argentine, German, Japanese, American or locally made. The film to be shown the next night was advertised on a poster standing on an easel in the foyer behind the iron gates. It was a Brazilian film: Um Candango na Belacap, starring Ankito and Grande Otelo. Paulo thought the actors were really funny, though Eduardo preferred Oscarito. In the external showcases was a poster in red, with its title in English: West Side Story, and another one in black and white, in which the photo of a blonde woman in a fountain appeared beneath the name of Federico Fellini and three words: La Dolce Vita.

  Paulo was behind Eduardo, and could not make out the features of the man they were following. That did not stop him announcing:

  ‘He’s a suspect.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you say when somebody could be the killer?’

  ‘Yes, suspect is the word.’

  ‘Well, that’s what he is. Just look at him.’

  ‘He’s standing with his hands in his pockets, reading the film posters.’

  ‘If he’s not a suspect, what was he doing in the dentist’s house?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Hiding evidence of the crime! I bet he’s the real murderer.’

  ‘He’s as short as the dentist. And as thin.’

  ‘What if the two of them got together to murder her? While she was struggling with one, the other stabbed her.’

  ‘We didn’t see anything broken in the house. There was no sign of a struggle. We didn’t find any kind of evidence.’

  ‘Because the suspect turned up. We had to run off.’

  ‘If he’s a suspect, why is he so calm?’

  ‘So who is he then? And what was he doing in the dentist’s house?’

  Paulo’s suspect turned, walked a few steps, and entered the square bearing the name of a local hero who was killed at the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy during the Second World War, but which the local inhabitants still insisted on calling simply the Top Garden Square. In the centre stood a bandstand built like a Chinese pagoda. The man with white or greying hair climbed the four steps up to it and leaned on the wrought-iron balustrade which imitated bamboo. He looked all round the garden, came down the steps again and sat on a bench.

  ‘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.

  3

  Cowboys and Indians

  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.