If I Close My Eyes Now Read online

  ‘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.’

  ‘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.