Jose Peixoto - The Implacable Order of Things

OLD GABRIEL TOOK A STEP toward Salomão. The distant sun cast its first ray of light between them, separating or uniting them. Salomão knew what old Gabriel was going to say to him, and one could see in his face that he merely waited to hear it for it to become irreparably real. Old Gabriel, without disturbing the silence, used the same words the man had used, for in his one hundred and fifty years he had learned no words to say things besides the words that say them. Salomão looked up. The sky on that young morning was much bluer than he would ever have imagined. The heat was starting to set in. The day was starting off old and weary. Together Salomão and old Gabriel walked into the town. The first women, bent over, were sweeping the square of shade in front of their houses with small straw brooms, and they stopped when the men passed but did not look at them. The birds watched them in respectful silence. A slight breeze went with them. They walked for a long time that was no time and reached Master Rafael’s house. The door was open. People were going in and out. Salomão and old Gabriel entered. The blind prostitute and the baby lay on the bed that was made up with a borrowed bedspread. Women had washed their bodies with a damp cloth. Their skin was smooth and peaceful. The blind prostitute had on her simple wedding dress and the white apron embroidered with the word dishes. The baby was wrapped in the shawl. Salomão, holding his hat in his two hands, looked at them from the doorway. The women had placed chairs along the wall around the bed early in the morning. The chairs all came from four neighboring houses. There were some empty seats among the women’s black clothes and staring faces, and old Gabriel sat down in the chair at the end. Salomão kept looking at the blind prostitute and the baby, and only stopped looking to look nowhere and to walk without a word to where Master Rafael’s suit was kept. He returned to the bedroom with the suit folded over his stretched-out arms and laid it on the bed next to the baby, as if Master Rafael were there in that empty suit. The trousers were brown and with the right leg folded and secured with a safety pin; the coat was gray and with the right sleeve folded and secured with a safety pin. Salomão removed the pins and pulled down the trouser leg, which was a darker brown, and extended the coat sleeve, which was a darker gray.

I DON’T KNOW FOR SURE if it’s morning that’s passing, afternoon that’s passing, or all of life that’s passing in this morning, in this afternoon. The sun’s coming through the window we built on a Saturday when Master Rafael’s eyes shone with even more light than can come through this window. The apprentice has already arrived. The boy’s clever, Master Rafael had told me not long after he was hired, in a low voice so that the apprentice wouldn’t hear. When he began he didn’t know how to drive a nail, but he’s clever, he’ll learn. The apprentice arrived by himself, in his work clothes. He passed by all the people, and looked at me the same way he looked at Master Rafael’s suit. I never asked his age, and I suspect that not even master Rafael knew it exactly. He’s probably eleven or twelve. The boy’s clever. I’d rather be sitting by him, but I sat down in the chair I was shown, next to these old women who sometimes try to talk with me, as if I could hear them. They say things like he was a good man, or she was a good girl, or the poor innocent baby, and they expect a response, which I don’t make, and among themselves they whisper Salomão is so tight-lipped. The sun’s coming through the window we built on a Saturday. A woman in black sees me looking at the window, gets up, and slowly closes the shutters, as if she were doing me a favor. Her friendly-looking face is a smile I forget. And I realize we’re now shut up inside a frozen time. There is no more morning or afternoon or life beyond this dusky room. Only the dim light that comes through the front door, the kitchen, and finally into this bedroom lets us know that we exist here. We’re the place where death resides. I’m the place where death resides. And yet when I remember Master Rafael, I can only remember him alive: looking at me, talking, telling me things. I remember him, but his invisible death weighs like a certainty over the place where all of this still happens, where Master Rafael looks at me, talks, tells me things. My memory of him is wrapped in fire. The carpenter’s shop on fire. Master Rafael looking at me from the flames. Master Rafael working at his bench on fire with tools on fire. Master Rafael hobbling on his crutch through the shop on fire.

The shadow of my wife arrives, leading the shadow of the widowed cook by the hand. They walk past me as if they didn’t know me or as if I were no one. Old Gabriel stands up to offer his seat, greets them at some length, and goes out to where the men are, standing around the door. Lots of men. Sometimes I hear the chorus of their voices saying good day to someone who enters or who’s passing by. But the harmony they make is neutral, a sound of silence entering this bedroom like something that’s already here. My pregnant wife looks at the blind prostitute. Both have the same peaceful skin. The widowed cook moves her lips, and although I know she’s repeating her same old story, for the first time I don’t hear her. I hear only a silence more silent than the breeze passing through the leaves of the cork trees, than the birds flying high up in the sky. An endless, relentless silence. I look at the lips of the baby who died before being born, and it seems like all the silence comes from her small and thin closed lips. A baby’s small lips that know death.

I see Master Rafael in the places where he isn’t, places that look sad without him. Sometimes we’d leave for lunch at the same time. We’d walk together down the street. I hear the thumping of his crutch. Before he got married, I’d hear his crutch at night going faster. He was going to visit the blind prostitute. And I’d stop what I was doing and go to the door just to tell him good evening, just to say see you tomorrow. In the late afternoon, early evening, when the light of summer turned the color of honey and settled on the plains, or when, in winter, the darkness of a starless night would fall over the town, I’d say see you tomorrow. And I’ll never again say to him see you tomorrow. Never again so many things. Never again anything. He walks alone down the streets where we walked together. I stand still and watch him walk. He goes slowly, slowly, and disappears. I’m left alone, on a deserted street.

A COOL SHADOWINESS BLEW through the bedroom, grazing Master Rafael’s suit, the baby’s face, and the blind prostitute’s white wrists. Outside, the hottest hour had pushed the men into a narrow strip of shade along the wall. The sweat from their bodies dampened the whitewash. And as if they were in Judas’s general store, the men talked about the pastures and planted fields, about the properties of Doctor Mateus, and sometimes, if one of them remembered, they said a couple of words about Master Rafael, they said Master Rafael, followed by a vague, listless silence flowing from their eyes. At lunchtime some of the women left in the company of their husbands. Shortly before the hour when she habitually set out for the Mount of Olives, Salomão’s wife also left, pulling along her mother and without saying goodbye. Salomão still remembered or saw her shadow vanishing at the threshold when José entered with a solemn air. His firm boots stopped in front of Salomão, who was finally able to cry, like an anxious child who had been waiting for his father or mother, and he started pouring everything out to José. José sat next to him and tried to calm him down. The widows looked on with wide eyes. When Salomão finally regained his composure, when his tears dried on his cheeks and his lips stopped moving, the afternoon returned, long and slow, like an afternoon that harbored death.