If I Close My Eyes Now by Edney Silvestre Read Free Book Online Page A

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 maimedin 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.
    ‘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