António Antunes - The Splendor of Portugal

“Clarisse”

when she got back from Malanje she found him wearing the suit he wore to his wedding, the tie he wore to his wedding, a silk shirt, a white flower on his lapel, clean-shaven, his shoes

(I’ve never seen such pointy shoes)

shined, ready to accompany her to some bar or nightclub if they would let him leave the coffin, thinking that everything she does is charming, that everything she does is sensible, that everything she does is intelligent, even the basest things, emptying his wallet before my sister even had a chance to open her mouth

“How much do you need honey?”

for the first time in years he wasn’t reaching for the bottle, his hands weren’t shaking, his nose wasn’t running, a version of my father from back when he used to play chess against a German in Biswaden

I think it was Biswaden

and waited every day for a letter to arrive with his next move and we also waited for it because we liked the stamps until one or both of them lost interest and the chessboard sat there for centuries with a variation of the King’s Indian Defense on it, back when he could still walk and took us on picnics with egg-salad sandwiches to the Duque de Bragança waterfalls, back when he used to talk to us and let us take a little peek through his telescope, which was just like looking at the sky without any lenses, just more out of focus and dimmer, little bright specks overlapped with gauzy nebulae, a version of my father from back in the old days, perfected by death, watched over by my mother who used her fan to shoo away the blowflies, men smoking in the garden, women blowing their noses in the living room, Damião hung funereal crape drapes in the window and the murmuring of the sunflowers was silenced, the peacocks ran off into the grove of sequoias, Josélia looking after the setters keeping them from barking tightening their muzzles, the setters whimpering, restrained in their muzzles and Josélia hitting them on the napes of their necks

“Be quiet”

Damião opened the glass case of the clock and immobilized the pendulum out of respect for the dead, the heart of the house was dead too, the house was dead, Baixa de Cassanje was dead, Angola was dead, the workers locked in their huts by the foreman, forbidden from picking cotton, Rui and I wearing black felt armbands, one of us on either side of my mother afraid of all the strangers and the smell of the candles, Clarisse

that slut

dressed in red, running in through the door, stopping short at the foot of the bed without paying any attention to my father, looking at my mother, looking at all of us, looking at the women with handkerchiefs who, in turn, looked back at her in indignant outrage and although it might seem impossible I could swear that my father, with a crucifix around his neck, called out

“Clarisse”

turned his body toward her and called out

“Clarisse”

with the same hope, apprehension, and pride of a boyfriend with his girlfriend that was always in his voice when he called her name, not Rui’s, not mine, hers

“Clarisse”

the first to get a peek through the telescope, to eat dessert, to trot from the stable to the rice field on our only horse, an emaciated mare with saddle sores

“Clarisse”

it might seem impossible but nevertheless I could swear that my deceased father, dressed like a groom, ignored the house, the plantation, my mother, the men smoking in the garden, even his whiskey, everything but Clarisse who most of the time wouldn’t even give him a kiss, she’d come into the room in a whirlwind of perfume and leave in a second whirlwind having emptied his pockets in the meantime, Clarisse at the foot of the bed without a tear, without a look of sorrow on her face, walking down the patio stairs, we could hear her outside and we could hear a car speeding away on the gravel, honking its horn, scaring off the quails, a convertible heading towards Malanje, some military official in uniform who rested his ribbons and medals on her shoulder, their heads leaning against each other, disappearing in the distance, honking when they reach the dogs, Lena, who at least today, in order to greet my family here with the appearance of prosperity, traded her frilly slum-dweller clothes for a respectable blouse, traded her gaudy costume jewelry for a normal ring with a fake diamond on it, Lena who worries about me since, as she says over and over, as if discovering this fact with renewed incredulity every morning, we’re no longer twenty years old, stirring the foam with her spoon poking at an open wound

“Did you sleep Carlos?”

me returning from the plantation to watch over Ajuda, the hills of Almada, the shipyard, the bridge, the decorative balls on the Christmas tree, me reduced to two wood-floor rooms with a tiny kitchen and a bathroom with a clogged-up drain and walls stained with soap scum

“I didn’t sleep at all I was thinking about Africa”

Lena certain that people our age, meaning people who through no one’s fault but their own are no longer twenty years old, usually fall asleep when it’s just starting to get dark, no matter where they are, at the table, at church, at the movie theater, and when they’re not sleeping they sit on benches in little city parks getting some sun and wearing checkered hats, if I were to take her advice all I’d do is fill my pockets with bread crusts to feed the swans and spend my afternoons playing dominoes with the high-school kids, me who’s going to turn forty-three in May, I can still spot a mosquito on the opposite bank of the river and I’ve never grown a single gray hair, the telephone operator at work who plugs and unplugs the switch jacks at a blinding speed without ever looking up from the comic strips she’s always reading told me without any kind of double meaning because first of all she’s married and her husband weighs a menacing two hundred pounds and second of all because she has a daughter who has some esophageal medical condition, that I didn’t look a day over thirty-five

“Thirty-five or thirty-four Mr. Albuquerque you’ve still got a lot to learn”

Lena who I saved from the wretchedness of the Cuca neighborhood looking at me as if I were a centenarian with rheumatoid arthritis and bone spurs encircling my spine

“Did you sleep Carlos?”

as if I could ever fall asleep with my brother and sister about to arrive by taxi at any minute, the headlights shining through at the edges of the window frame, the car doors slamming shut, three short knocks at the door from Clarisse, I always remember her three short knocks, the hubbub in the doorway, me quickly turning down the volume on the TV and jumping out of my armchair

“Where the hell have you been?”

three quick knocks, her contented voice, Lena criticizing me without even opening her mouth

of course

not my sister, but me who had spent the evening at home without hurting a fly, boring myself to death with the movie on TV, looking at the clock and tapping the tips of my fingers on the edge of the side table, eleven o’clock, midnight, half past midnight, one o’clock, Lena who thought I was acting like a school principal or a criminal, looking at me out of the corner of her eye, Clarisse, that princess, wouldn’t even respond to me, would go into the kitchen and light the stove, take out a frying pan, look for butter in the fridge, opening up the package, cutting off a chunk of it with a knife, my hand wrapped around her wrist in a flash, my nose at her neck sniffing her perfume which smelled like a cabaret on the island in Luanda Bay, about to smack her in the face, to teach her to respect me

“I asked where you’ve been”

the kitchen with its crooked hooks for the dish towels and the dull metal cans of beans and pasta, the faucet that didn’t shut off all the way, the mold growing on the ceiling, the mop and pail, and a pair of sandals that I never knew who they belonged to, Lena