António Antunes - The Splendor of Portugal

“I won’t let you kill my brother you hear me?”

the chains from which hung the counterweights of the clock got tangled up, the pendulum banged against the back wood panel, swung forward, then back again, tried to recover, gave up

“I won’t let you kill my brother”

it started to shake its round little rump once again, incoherently and without any real authority, if it keeps ticking we’re all going to die, if it keeps ticking I’ll grow up, if it keeps ticking I’ll grow a beard and my hair will become white and I’ll wear glasses, if it keeps ticking, if it still keeps ticking I’ll grow to like soup and pureed spinach and talking about money, Rui’s face turned into rows of teeth gnashing and swallowing themselves in a frenzy, Maria da Boa Morte knelt down in the kitchen, my father with no one looking at him kept fidgeting with plates and teacups, if it keeps ticking I’ll have dinner at the Belgians’ and the governor’s palace, when we traveled by car at night the owls submissively let themselves be run over on the backwoods roads, the chrome shine of their eyes, the soft thud on the bumper and that was it, there were rocks and shrubs on the narrow trail, they looked hollow at night in the shadows that you never noticed during the day, and there were rabbits, which looked like rabbits, and a colorless world whose sudden cruelty frightened me, Rui’s body writhed and then went slack, like someone who’s fainted, his teeth slowly shrank back to their normal size, his face was once more his face, the face of the person who helped me build towers out of mud and chase chickens, the clock on the wall, vengeful, rang out thirteen or fourteen or fifteen clangs driving my mother crazy, my mother in the morning who wiped Rui’s forehead with a damp cloth napkin

“Take pity on me and please shut that clock up”

or sixteen or seventeen or eighteen haughty, stupid clangs on the landing where the stairs, with their threadbare carpet runner, turned toward the bedrooms and the bag of rocks rattling up there, the hands of the clock spun around and around from one number to the next, accumulating hours, weeks, months, years, systole diastole systole diastole systole diastole, Lena, who at least today in order to greet my family here with the appearance of prosperity

I guess

traded her lace shirt for a respectable blouse, traded her gaudy costume jewelry for a normal ring, not a gem to swoon over, but a normal one

“What’s the matter Carlos?”

the construction cranes above the roofs of the buildings, the hills of Almada and the lights from the shipyard on the opposite side of the Tagus River, the table all set, the champagne, the decorative balls on the Christmas tree, the presents tied with fine ribbons and I’d like to see if my mother could get up the nerve to accuse me, to my face, of not caring about my brother and sister, of not doing all I can, of not getting along with them, I’d like to see her tell me, to my face, who cares about the family and who doesn’t, who had the idea of getting us all together, who just up and decided to pay for this dinner, who got dressed to the nines as if going to a cocktail party or an evening reception at the embassy and wasted a fortune at the store on silvery stars and ridiculous wreaths so that his family would feel good, content, comfortable, happy, my mother with her paranoid idea that I don’t like other people and yet I’m the one tracking them down, I called, sent telegrams, invited them, I put up with them in Ajuda without a complaint for three years straight tolerating the craziness of the one and the whims of the other, testing the limits of my patience, him flailing around on the carpet and her sleeping with the entire population of Lisbon, she never really went behind my back because I was never there, I had to earn a living, I’d come home exhausted from work and find Clarisse stretched out comfortably on the couch smoking cigarettes with gold-colored filters that stunk like crazy, cheap knockoff of Turkish tobacco, sipping my anisette liqueur with some mustachioed wise guy

“Haven’t you met Francisco?”

or Gustavo or João or Feliciano or Manuel, indifferent to Rui writhing like a lizard on the floor in front of her groaning and biting his own lips and tongue, I’d like to see my mother tell me, to my face, that the best option wasn’t to put him somewhere where they can take care of him and other nutcases like him twenty-four hours a day, pills, nurses, hot meals, medical examinations of his head with screws or something like that to see what’s wrong with his brain, and I helped him out in spite of the protests from Lena, whose practical sense of things

excuse me for saying so

is practically nonexistent, what do you expect from the daughter of a poor wretch from the Cuca-beer plant who read the newspaper in shorts in his tiny front-porch garden that had much more dust than chrysanthemums, right next to the misery of the slums, Lena lacking good sense and brains grabbing me by my shirt, certain that I was just trying to get rid of my brother

“I’ve never known someone so inhumane”

the same way she thought that I wanted to get rid of Clarisse so that I wouldn’t have to put up with her shamelessness in my house, I’d like to see my mother swear to me, to my face, if she has the nerve to do it, that she would put up with Clarisse, insulting her over and over, coming home at any hour she pleased, staying out all night long, getting up at one in the afternoon staggering out of her room as if she’d just awoken from a coma, us

“Clarisse”

and her with her eyes closed and traces of lipstick on her face, looking for a chair, slumping down into the seat, waving away our questions to her

“Be quiet my head hurts don’t say a single word to me”

drinking a whole mug of coffee, asking for more coffee, spilling some on her chest when she opened her eyelids just a bit and then immediately closed them again because the sun hurt her eyes, Clarisse recovering little by little, with the voice of a little girl

“What time is it?”

a way of speaking that my father could never resist, he gave her money, let her borrow the car, argued with my mother, who disciplined Clarisse, to get her out of her punishments, my father who treated her the way a boyfriend would, following her around in a state of ecstatic worship, an alcoholic with even less sense than her if that’s possible, thinking that everything she does is charming, that everything she does is sensible, that everything she does is intelligent, even the basest things, around the time that he was practically on the verge of death, as skinny as a dog, without his dentures, lying on the mattress with his cheeks caved in, with the majestic profile of a corpse, he let out a breath, and I thought

“He’s gone”

my mother went over to examine him, he’s gone he’s not gone, he’s breathing he’s not breathing, a pause, a hesitation, my father’s chest motionless and the stupid clock on the wall that I’ll never trust again belying his motionlessness, how could I have ever thought that pendulum was the heart of our house, my mother with her lips up to my father’s ear

(“If you don’t respond we’re just going to call the funeral home and make the arrangements we’ll save money on the doctor’s bill and the medication and spend it on fertilizer since it’ll at least help the sunflowers grow”)

my mother in doubt with her little hand on the phone ready to call the men dressed in black

“Amadeu”

another breath, another pause, a twitch of his thumb, a movement of his cheeks, the tip of his tongue between his gums

“Clarisse”

Clarisse nowhere near us, far away at some dance in Malanje, laughing, eating hors d’oeuvres, talking with friends, and my father, so naïve, certain that she was there with us and was helping him across a bridge that didn’t exist to the bank on the other side that didn’t exist either