António Antunes - The Splendor of Portugal

like me

up the stairs with her head obscured by a sea of skirts, pausing on the way to kick the grandfather clock, which quickly responded with a hundred wounded clangs

“I can’t stand you all, I can’t stand you, I can’t stand you”

she slammed the door with such force that the hinges shuddered, Josélia terribly upset downstairs, her hands together in an attitude of prayer

“Child”

we could hear her breaking jewelry boxes and trinkets in her bedroom while my father, shuffling around in silence, headed toward the cupboard to clink the bottleneck against the rim of his glass

bottleneck against the glass bottleneck against the glass

and returned to the table as if his legs were stilts, holding the napkin to his mouth, Clarisse slamming the door to the kitchen in Ajuda with such great force that the pots fell from their hooks, Lena trying to get in

“Open up Clarisse”

Lena in such a state that it was readily apparent that she hated me

“Are you satisfied Carlos you’ve probably never been so satisfied in your life as you are now”

the hatred of the daughter of the Cuca-beer plant worker, who used to read the newspaper in his front porch garden on the outskirts of town, sitting in a canvas chair, harmless and tiny, the house full of provincials in coats freezing in the African heat, praying to plaster saints that failed to protect them from misery and the rain, the hatred of the slum-dweller humiliated by the rich guy from Malanje who was ashamed of her and pretended not to know her in front of his friends, Lena quick to take revenge calling my mother

“Carlos put Rui in a home in a hovel”

and me shoving her aside and hanging up the phone, on the off chance they’d fixed the phone lines

“Don’t even think about it”

Clarisse wrote letters to Angola

“You’ll see Carlos you’ll see”

she messed up, tore up the paper, threw it on the floor, started over, she waved an envelope right in front of my face with the wrong address on it, and I quieted down, even if the postal service were miraculously working the accusations and complaints wouldn’t reach Baixa de Cassanje, getting lost in one city then the next on an endless journey, covered in dust and stamps until one of the employees of a little isolated hut they call a branch office tosses it into the trash can out of exhaustion, or into the river where the wreckage of war floats by chaotically, calves, adolescents, baskets, Maria da Boa Morte cooking the last quail on the gas stove top and my mother cutting the cartilage from its bones with a rusty razor, if my father weren’t disintegrating in the Dondo cemetery he would be clinking the bottleneck against his glass, raising his silent eyes to us, my father who would like to be here in Ajuda with my brother and sister and I, I would tuck the blanket over his legs, give him the best cut of the turkey, buy him an art book, talk with him, my mother insisted that I didn’t like anyone except Maria da Boa Morte but maybe I’ve changed and I miss people, it’s hard to live here and see the hills of Almada, the Christ statue, the bridge, to nod off in front of the TV with Lena next to me, her ankles swollen, reading magazines, going to bed before me, abandoning me in this neighborhood with no streetlights, the window open onto the disorder of the leaves, the garbage truck comes at eleven, men in gloves and fluorescent vests, they dump me out into the back of the truck and take me with them, along with the scraps of food, duvet covers with no stuffing, detritus, I happen to think of Rui, very pleased with the blond actress

freckles forming constellations like the ones on the atlas at school Orion Cassiopeia Gemini the smell of sour milk from her nipples take a shower wash my body

in a bikini on the façade of the theater, thinking of Rui not out of remorse, but out of envy, and maybe out of envy

(it can only be envy)

for fifteen years I never went to see him at the home, one day after another given the gift of a free afternoon to go to the market or watch the gypsies, like he watched the sowing of the rice seeds with his pellet gun in hand, the tribal chief complained to my mother, my mother complained to the police chief, the police chief complained to the native soldiers, and the native soldiers stomping their cannabis plants, piglets, and chicks called for the women with children on their hips and beat the tribal chief right in front of them to teach them all to have manners, the tribal chief came to beg Rui’s forgiveness and give him a dozen eggs, Rui dropped the eggs on the ground

“I don’t want this shit no way”

little mottled eggs

freckles

from the African chickens, ones that the gledes, crucified, their wings outstretched and still in the immense still sky, spot from the air, all of a sudden descending with their talons extended, Clarisse

“No”

who in no time

(that’s how she is)

will be hugging me around the neck, grateful for the perfume, grateful for me putting Rui in a place where they understand him and care for him, when I stopped paying the monthly bills the owner of the home warned me sir, if you don’t pay what you owe I’ll have no choice but to give the bed to someone else, artificial and idiotic, exactly like a character out of the theater, didn’t say another word, imagine an actor with a mustache and gold chain entering stage right and reciting that at the front of the stage, his fingers spread out between the buttons of his vest, sir, if you don’t pay what you owe I’ll have no choice but to give the bed to someone else, I almost wanted to applaud, give him flowers, beg for an autograph, visit him in his dressing room bravo, once more bravo, encore, sir, if you don’t pay what you owe I’ll have no choice but to give the bed to someone else, and then me to the great actor, admiring his dramatic pauses

“Go ahead”

the fake mustache, the gold chain, his restless eyes, frowning lips, the way he conveyed emotion through gestures, haughty with his awesome threat that I would stand in line all night at the ticket booth to hear

“And a suit in civil court in order to recoup my losses”

speaking to the judge in cuff links seated on high, identifying me with a dramatic flourish of his sleeve to an audience of bailiffs who are fascinated

“Behold the villain who threw his brother into the gutter”

such a stirring performance everyone searching for their handkerchiefs, the lawyers overcome, the judge himself, that unfeeling thing, sobbing at each paragraph and preposition, and I, the villain of the piece, cackling like an ogre

ha ha ha

the audience wanted to jump up on stage and beat me

“It’s true”

and so did Lena and Clarisse, my mother too if the news ever made it to Africa there’s no danger of that, it wouldn’t make it there, me trying to play my part with the gentleman, although of course never attaining the dramatic perfection of this genius

“It’s true”

I was even worried for a little while that this mustachioed actor would show up on my doorstep some day with Rui and his suitcase, I called the home, disguising my voice, and asked the receptionist who answered the phone to connect me to my brother, saying he was just a friend of a friend, the sounds of screams, arguments, furniture being dragged along the floor, the receptionist

“Just a moment”

the phone was set down, the receptionist in the distance

“Quiet down Mr. Teodoro”

in the midst of this Rui breathing through his mouth, the whishing sound of pieces of gravel rubbing against each other that I’ve heard ever since he was born

“Yes?”

relieved, I hung up the phone, feeling kindness toward the actor, even capable of hugging him, being his friend, inviting him to lunch at a reasonably priced restaurant, not an expensive one, but reasonable, almost even trying to send him an occasional small payment by wire transfer, but I finally thought better of it and refrained from sending anything, I reminded myself that I wasn’t the one who brought Rui into being nor was I under any obligation to financially support shirkers, I make a pittance as a pharmaceutical sales rep enduring the whims of the doctors at the hospitals with a briefcase full of samples, a few months later I put a piece of cloth in my mouth and called on behalf of the Angolan Embassy to get information about Rui, switching the verb tenses just like the blacks who think they’re white or