What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel Read Free

there
    and in the house
    —Did you hear a creak from the front door?
    the other home, the one on the deserted square of Príncipe Real, Rui’s coffin to the left of my father’s, a necktie, a shirt with no lace, and a vest all quite identical he didn’t die like the clown
    both their shoes, coming out their pants legs, pointing to the ceiling
    they’d found him on the beach with the dog with a bow sniffing him or barking at the waves
    not sniffing not barking at the waves, running in circles, all excited by a stick or the neck of a bottle, in my father’s apartment it was the designs on the rug that interested him, hours on end contemplating diamond shapes
    —Get lost the police asked
    —Do you know who he is do you know him?
    four stakes and a rope surrounding Rui’s body, the headlights of the cars lighting things up the way they do in a theater, any minute now first drums, then music, then silence because the music broke up, then some invisible running about, then
    —You’ll never learn, you idiot
    then
    —It’s not my fault they unplugged it
    then loud music, an oval of light on the curtain marked by burns, my father with his legs relaxed and a tiara tilted to one side singing with his arms crossed in forgiveness of sins, my mother turning over and over the tiara that was short on diamonds
    —Do you wear this, Carlos?
    if I lived in Bico da Areia I’d run through the pine grove or along the beach where there were tents, wagons, a trailer with no tires, the Gypsies would blindfold me the way they do horses before they shoot them with me on my knees, me laid out, me in a coffin in a church, when we went to the village my blind grandmother would run her fingers over my features with the motions of a potter, making adjustments to my nose, my cheekbones, my jaw, I’m changed, I don’t recognize myself in the mirror
    —Your grandson, Mama
    my grandmother in the darkness of the small sitting room surrounded by images and candles lengthening my ears and giving me more teeth, she’s going to eat me up and spread me over the land the way pigs do, her fingers suddenly stop short, caught around my neck, a dark question was making its way out through her kerchief dressed in mourning right down to her soul
    —What do you mean grandson, daughter?
    speaking not to my mother but to a chicken that was preening itself under its wings on a jumbled pile of trash, her hands pushing the shadows aside and she stopped
    —What do you mean grandson, daughter?
    while she put my features back in place with quick movements, if I lived in Bico da Areia I’d run faster than the orderlies, than the horses, my grandmother was searching out my mother, she was taking stock of her face with her thumbs
    —You’ve gotten thinner Judite
    one time or another I went to visit her in the village under the elm trees, avoiding the nettles, the mice, her eyes sensing my steps without her hearing them, her fingers kneading the emptiness intrigued, they said my dead grandfather would come in during the night with his hoe in his hand
    —Camélia
    uncovering pots and pans with that hunger the dead have, their musty breathing too, we wanted to live, we didn’t get to run away and everything was quiet all around, the schoolteacher was strolling along the road to the cemetery with school over, bees and more bees on the trunks of the poplars, my grandmother to the hoe
    —You’re not coming to rob me are you?
    I’m not coming to rob you, grandmother, I’m coming to ask you to touch me, to watch while you work in the garden, draw buckets from the well, change the afternoon with your hands, if you’d been at the church you’d have been quick to shape a decent face for my father and I wouldn’t be ashamed anymore, a man, not a clown with feathers and spangles and a wig, on the afternoon when he visited me in masquerade at the hospital
    one of the orderlies whistling or coughing, the maids making faces from the laundry, I wanted so much to be a