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

horse and trot along the beach far away, for them to cover my eyes, take a shot at me, the animal kneeled down and stopped thinking, the Gypsy kicked me up on the flank, when the tail stopped quivering the music got louder, the oval of light on the curtain with burn marks disappeared, I knew no performer had gone up to any microphone wearing a stole and a diamond tiara, the policeman
    no, the doctor to me
    I’ve already dreamed this dream, I’ve already dreamed this dre…
    —Do you know who he is do you know him?
    no, I didn’t dream this dream, four stakes and a cord surrounding the body, the dog barked at the waves, was hit with a stick, leaped to one side, came back, my father and Rui had another dog but it was run over by a truck, its back legs crushed the mouth still talking
    — You can go home tomorrow
    we took him home, we wrapped his back legs in a blanket to stop the blood, Rui was waving his arm to keep the flies away
    —Wave your arm keep the flies away
    starting in March on Príncipe Real, father, the flies, flies in the living room, in the bedroom, in the closet with the wash basin, the vet getting his syringe ready, my father cried and his eye makeup was dark wet streaks, he ran his handkerchief over them and more streaks and smudges
    —Be quiet father
    four stakes and a cord surrounding the body at the place where they always came in the summer, my father didn’t go into the water because of his wig, first drums, then music, then silence, then
    —It’s not my fault they unplugged it
    then music again
    —Sing father
    even though it was the music that was singing, not him, the voice from the loudspeakers and my father picking it up, toss a ball in the living room and the dog would go right and left, fooled by the echoes of the sound, the clowns
    the women
    the clowns who went on with my father, younger than he, with not so many feathers, moved their hips in the rear, adjusting the hooks on their dresses, one of them, without a wig, was shaving himself in a small pocket mirror, going after recalcitrant hairs with a tweezer, the policeman to me
    —Do you know who they are do you know them?
    no, the doctor
    —What’s your mother’s name?
    my mother Judite and my father Carlos they have practically no feeling it’s so hard to help them get to feel again
    I haven’t got a mother, I’ve got two mothers and Rui in the second coffin in the church, people on long benches, the little old man with the dog in his arms and me leaning on the brass handles laughing, an old suit of Dona Helena’s husband with cough drops in the pocket and an empty toothpick case
    no, a single toothpick tock-tocking
    which was small on me, they brushed my hair put on a drop of hair lotion, turned me around to see how I looked, satisfied, funeral aside, they’d really put me together
    —It’s not too big in the belly dress him
    they stood me in front of a dressing table, Dona Helena’s husband moved about studying me, avoiding him I asked silently
    —Wouldn’t you like being my father?
    they have practically no feeling it’s so hard to help them get to feel again and he was busy adjusting the shoulders, he knew the names of the trees in Latin, he’d stroke their trunks and the trees were thankful, I think
    —Mr. Couceiro
    he’d served in Timor where a bullet in the rump
    —The Japanese, lad, up to my neck in a rice paddy with buffaloes
    I don’t believe it
    when he came to get me at the station house because of the drugs and with my guts floating all by themselves I could hear his cane before he came in, I knew exactly the moment when he was going to dry the back of his neck with the handkerchief which, all twisted into knots, kept coming out of his pocket, the cane searching for me among the roots of hedges, horns, native corpses
    —The Japanese, lad
    he put the handkerchief away to help me keep my stomach intact, a lung, the arm I thought I was going to thank him with and it floated up to the ceiling, hiding under