What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel by António Lobo Antunes Read Free Book Online Page B

the Roman numerals
    and right after eight o’clock a rush of birds, Dona Helena saying
    —It’s five o’clock
    she and Mr. Couceiro came to pick me up at Bico da Areia I don’t remember the sea or the horses on that day, I remember the car with wooden wheels, pounding and pounding on the wardrobe, not out of hunger because I wasn’t hungry, because
    my mother offering them chairs, the two we had, that is, and the canvas couch held up by the stepladder because it was missing a leg, the house was looking more and more modest with their visit, the social worker, a strong woman, and a man with a cane waiting by the outside door and if they’d let him would have pounded on the sideboard like me, the terrace café, a wooden shack with tiles and bags of cement and a deserted bar, with spirals of scallops the waves had rejected, pounding on the wardrobe while my mother shaking a teacup with a fly inside and the fly
    enormous
    on the rug announcing
    —I’m a fly
    I don’t remember the sea or the horses
    none of them were gray, all of them chestnut, growing old
    on that day, I remember my mother with no quilt to rumple and smooth
    —Sit down, sit down
    covering the fly with her heel, pushing it under the stove and the fly
    —I’m not leaving
    if only December and its rain at least, if only we could die so we wouldn’t die of sickness at least, the social worker was signing papers on the oilcloth table cover, the strong woman was signing papers, my mother’s name came out of the bent-over head, the lips tightened as when threading a needle
    Judite Claudino Baptista
    my mother Judite my father Carlos me Paulo
    my mother is the strong woman, my father the man with the cane scratching marks on the flower bed and then erasing the marks, if I could have imagined the newspaper dolls, the Japanese, the trees
    the month of July and butterflies in the woods, I remember the butterflies, they’d alight on the wall with a single eyelid waving back and forth, the top of the wooden car a few strips of wood and some nails
    smash what’s left, step on the fly that’s accusing us under the stove
    —Weeks go by without their cleaning the place
    maybe a horse, the lame one that didn’t go along with the others but no, it was Mr. Couceiro on the step, the eyelid, the transparent mustache going back and forth, an instant later the mustache flying over the wall good-bye
    pounding on the wardrobe
    — What’s your mother’s name?
    — I don’t know
    — The poor devils lose every notion of things, some aren’t even capable of remembering their birthdate or where they are
    that’s not true I’m under the plane tree by the hospital, have you got some change for a cup of coffee, a butt, have you maybe got a butt you can spare, friend and keeping on pounding so that the hospital no, the social worker to my mother
    —What about the child’s vaccination booklet?
    Mr. Couceiro’s mustache as he stood on the step kept going off and coming back, give me a butt friend just when they were looking for the vaccination booklet in the sewing case, in the bread box, in the envelope with photographs, give me a butt friend where the social worker has just found the picture of my father with a coat on his knees rumpling the quilt
    —Don’t send me away
    and smoothing it out immediately after, my father at the bus stop for Lisbon, abandoned, orphaned, give me a butt, the doctor to the orderlies in the hospital
    —Tie him down
    stop the Gypsies from tying his arms and legs, tying the rope to the van and dragging him off with the wind to the pine grove, folding him like an accordion, dropping little pieces onto the floor, and a garland of people holding hands, some change for a cup of coffee friend, a butt, the man with the cane waiting for me on the step
    my father’s name isn’t Carlos because the clown’s name isn’t Carlos, it’s Soraia, my father up to his neck in the rice paddies of Timor, Dona Helena
    —Don’t scare him with your