Gonçalo Tavares - The Neighborhood

15

The pieces of wood that formed the scaffolding had been assembled there for a few hours now. Cut into more or less homogeneous pieces, with a width and length that enabled any man who climbed up there not to be alone, but allowed him only, at most, one partner, that too a well chosen one in terms of weight and width. Walser, accepting the way the world worked, without a murmur of objection, observed them being placed in the backyard of his new house.

Zealous workers, whom Walser could only admire, had prepared a structure in a matter of hours so that it was possible to climb up the back of the house, undoubtedly in order to repair some detail or other, although he did not know exactly what. Walser, now standing outside his house, could not help but feel moved by the immense concern with which these men sought to repair his newly inaugurated house.

He then observed the structure of the assembled scaffolding for a few moments — those alternating objects that masked a certain subtle wisdom inherent to that mixture of metal and wood.

Metal in the form of apparently barren pipes — without water, gas, or other material with a clear economic effectiveness — but nonetheless pipes that, essentially, enabled the most difficult of tasks: climbing to the top of his house without danger, or at least without an excessive degree of danger.

Of course, the scaffolding bothered him, aesthetically speaking.

It was just that his house was new. New not just in the sense that it had been built recently — what the devil, it hadn’t even been a day — but also in the sense in which the youthfulness of an object is defined by a reasonable distance with regard to its demise. That house had a long career ahead of it, from that morning — the moment when it had been fully inaugurated. It was as though the scaffolding was heralding, or was itself, an external manifestation of a weakness, of something that wasn’t working, of the need for repairs.

His profession, however, was something quite different — certainly each one of those steps had a technical significance that he would never have dared to dispute — he had always respected the destiny and inclinations of each individual’s profession.

Finally, one of the men came over.

“What’s that for?” asked Walser, pointing to the scaffolding.

“It’s the roof,” answered the man.

“It has a hole in it.”

16

It was an apparently harmless crack in the attic.

Walser came back to the house and went upstairs to confirm this. It was his new house, dammit. And now there was a crack in the roof! “A small crack, infinitesimal,” they had said. Yes, but it was a crack. He was going to see it with his own eyes.

Upon reaching the attic he climbed up on a bench that two men, in consideration of his evident ineptness in such matters, amiably secured for him — one holding each side.

“See for yourself!” they had said to Walser, seemingly sorrowful about the fact.

Standing on the bench, Walser stretched his legs as far as he could, then his arms, and finally his fingers. A hole! In his new roof. It was a fact.

But of course the crack was not just that: something that wasn’t there. On the contrary, very much to the contrary: at that moment Walser felt that some element was coming out of there — some material that hit him on the head from on top. Like a mischievous child, it hit him once, then again, and hid in a trice.

Where? How was he to find out? Perhaps on top of the roof, at that blind angle that Walser would never be able to glimpse from there?

In the meanwhile, the hammering increased, so to speak, in intensity. What had first appeared merely to be the effect of an errant breeze, adrift from the sensible course of its community, was now, to Walser, an evident threat.

But what did he really feel — he who, until then, had been so serene, enjoying his first day in his new house? Just this: a fragile premonition popped into his head and an equally fragile proposal — or rather a temptation — coming from outside, making the most of precisely that unexpected crack in the roof of the attic, infiltrating into the house, touching him, pulling him, beckoning him to an action that Walser had not yet quite managed to define, but which he felt was located in that vast and, once finally inside, unending, field of evil.

He got down from the bench; and one of the men flashed a strange grin.

“Yes,” agreed Walser, “this has to be closed.”

17

The first man to request permission to sleep there in Walser’s house that night was one of the electricians. Subsequently, many other workmen repeated the request.

It had already grown dark and the agglomeration of houses down there, the closest neighborhood to the house, was still many kilometers away and was far from being the safest route to travel at night. Although Walser was already tired, he concentrated all his energy on being hospitable: he fetched blankets, found two mattresses, cushions — in short, he did his best to ensure that nobody felt uncomfortable in his house. At a certain point he even felt that the best thing to do was to leave the men to sort things out for themselves — each one finding his own corner to rest comfortably. Apart from which, they no longer asked his permission for anything. He tried not to pay too much heed to this fact. This was also because — owing to the tools, the bricks and various other objects scattered all over the floor, and the vast clouds of dust that made it difficult to see — it was hard to move around, and many of the men who were in the farthest rooms would have found it difficult to make their way to the room where he was.

The space no longer allowed much room for manners.

“Let them all sleep there,” thought Walser, without suppressing his characteristic sense of protectiveness. “It’s already dark outside!”

With a lit candle in his hand — since the electricity really had been disconnected — and carefully skirting the various human and material obstacles scattered all over the place (a snore or two could already be heard), Walser tried to find his way to his room and thus finally reach his bed. So that he could then sleep for the first time in his house, always a significant event.

After various attempts to find his room, Walser gave up. Both on account of the darkness, which his candle and some other candles scattered throughout the house were unable to dispel, as well as due to some concrete, physical changes — dismembered walls, new walls that had begun to be built in places that had earlier allowed passage.

At that point he was just too exhausted. He decided to lie down right there, in what appeared to be a corridor, although it was not very narrow. Not having foreseen this turn of events he had neglected to bring his coat from the hall. It was quite cold there owing to the fact that some windows had been removed from their frames and the cardboard covering these gaps was insufficient.

Attempting to overcome a certain embarrassment, Walser approached a man who was snoring a few meters away from him and with slow and careful movements pulled toward him the small blanket that (and this thought soothed his conscience) had slipped off the man’s feet, thus ceasing to serve its purpose.

Completely wrapped in the blanket and propped against one of the walls — from which, he noted, they had removed the baseboard — after such a long day, despite being parched with thirst, Walser finally fell asleep, serenely, thinking about the next day. He had great hopes for the future.