by Frank Wynne
I laughed. ‘Yes, hunting for a house did it.’
‘I thought so,’ and she laughed again. Suddenly I felt my heart go heavy. A strange sleep was enfolding me.
‘Are you alone?’ she enquired.
‘Alone? No.’ I looked for something to sit on, and pulling up a stool that stood near by, I sat down. ‘No, I am not alone’.
‘Then bring her. But first satisfy yourself. In a few months you will get used to the house’. She handed me the keys to the house without bringing up the subject of rent.
So now I have a house. It has one rather large room, a gallery and a balcony. But I can’t understand how I have got the house for so little rent. I think she lives alone downstairs. I haven’t seen her for the last few days. For the present I have brought a bed, two chairs, and a table. Then there is my trunk and two sacks fdled with books which I have still not opened. You can arrange everything as you want when you arrive.
4
I have not asked you to come yet, nor have I come to fetch you. The reason is I want to satisfy myself about the house first. The surprising thing is that everything works in this house. The water supply and electricity are reliable, the meters work, the bills are accurate. Yet there is a strange sense of restlessness in this room. Whenever I enter the place everything seems to stare at me. Wherever I turn I feel I am under observation. My own chair, table, bed, even my toothbrush, stare at me. You are not laughing, are you? No? It is not loneliness that makes me feel this way, for I have always been alone, though never under scrutiny.
Ever since I have moved into these rooms I feel myself imprisoned, everywhere—on the open road, in the office, the hotel. I am not a free man anywhere. It is as though somebody is writing down every move that I make. A whole record is being kept on me.
I would have sent for you straightaway but the situation here is very strange. Yesterday, for the first time in the last four months the landlady came up. She was dressed in a shining black dress and was probably going out. She said, ‘If you don’t mind I’ll leave these in the gallery. There are too many cats these days.’
She left a basket full of dazzling white pigeons in my gallery. The birds had probably lived in the house for many years. Straightaway they began to strut about, perfectly at ease. As soon as she had left them she descended the stairs.
I have never had the chance to tell you that I have no interest in birds and animals. As a child I never kept pets. So, I was offended by her leaving the pigeons with me, and when she had left I began to think that it was just as well that I hadn’t sent for you. It’s four months now since she left those pigeons and she has still not come back to take them away. Nor do they show any inclination to leave their new roosting place. They stroll about in a leisurely fashion, and sometimes they go on a short flight after which they sit on the parapet or settle on the ventilators. It is an astonishing fact that in the last four months their number has doubled. They frequently land on my writing table, and mess up the gallery. I used to feel suffocated in the beginning, so one day I went and knocked at her door.
She came out. ‘What is it?’ she asked me. Her face showed great exhaustion and there were black circles round her eyes.
‘Excuse me, all those pigeons you…’
‘Oh, the pigeons? You needn’t worry. They are so happy with you, they never once returned to me. In any case they are birds of sacred descent. How can you be angry with them?’ and she banged the door shut.
I am certain you will not like this house. It is a house where I am surrounded by pigeons, like a man in a throng of humans. Sometimes they perch on my shoulders and sometimes they settle themselves in my lap. Even when I am reading or writing I have to put up with their cooing all around me. I would like to leave this house but where would I find another for so little rent? That is my dilemma. Do think of a solution. You did not answer my last letter. I ask her every day if there is mail for me (we share a letterbox), but she shakes her head. Have you really not written to me?
5
So many months, or perhaps years, have gone by. I kept thinking I should inform you of the situation, but now it has become impossible for me to write. In my last letter I wrote to you that she told me they were sacred birds and 1 should not be angry with them. Many days later when I returned from office, she arrived with a tray full of grain. As soon as the pigeons saw her, they flew to her and gathered round her. The sight had a peculiar effect on me. I was pained when I saw the empty roosting places of the pigeons among the ventilators and was reminded of the deserted and echoing houses I had seen. A strange anxiety and sadness turned into a lump in my throat and my eyes filled with tears. She laughed when she saw that. ‘No I won’t take them away,’ she said, ‘Their home is now this house.’ Then she left, leaving a large empty basket in one corner of my gallery, saying, ‘Your things have not arrived yet, so this can stay here. Don’t worry, I’ll take it away when she arrives.’
And then the white pigeons resumed their cooing and their sauntering around me. Once again some of them flew up to the ventilators and perched there, and it seemed to me that everything was back to normal. The world which had been suddenly abandoned was inhabited once more, the roads were galvanized, the lights had come on. It was a strange feeling. Suddenly I remembered that I had had the same feeling once before, when waking up from a deep sleep I had gone to the bathroom. There on the washbasin were your scented, coloured soap and your toothbrush, and not far from them lay your red glass bangles. So, today I had the same feeling and I thought that I will let these harmless birds stay here, if you permit me.
But then something extraordinary happened, something that really upset me. In fact I am still worried about it. The people at the office enquire everyday, but I don’t know what to tell them.
What happened was this: One day I came home from work and was climbing the stairs when I saw a strange scene. A row of fat, well-fed brown rats was charging up the stairs and scuttling towards my room. I held my stomach with revulsion and almost trampled on one of the rats. When I arrived upstairs they had scattered and were out of sight.
I could not touch food the whole of that day and simply rolled on the bed as though with fever. Over and over again I trembled with horror, the tremors running through my whole body. All through the following night I sat as though numbed. Finally I rose and went downstairs. I knocked at her door and as usual she opened it slightly.
‘Listen! Rats! Hordes of them! A whole row of them just went into my room. Is this a house? What kind of a house is this?’ My temples were throbbing with rage and my words came out muddled.
‘Rats? Maybe there are, but they are harmless. They come out in this weather. They’ll go away. Get a mousetrap.’
There weren’t one or two of them! I was amazed at her pigheadedness. But she had banged the door shut.
Now tell me, how can I bring you here? Birds swarm this place all day. Nights, it is the reign of the rats. They make a dreadful clatter. What happened one night was so horrible that I hesitate to tell you about it. That night I felt something jumping on my quilt. I threw off the quilt and turned on the light. Would you believe it, countless brown rats with red muzzles were scuttling all over my bed! That night they scampered away and disappeared as soon as the light was turned on. I retched and vomited all night, revolted by my own body, which had shared the bed with rodents. The vomiting left my throat a huge sore and I made up my mind that I would leave the house that very morning. But when morning came I reflected that nowhere in the city could I find a house for so little rent.
So now how should I address you? Listen, now they are not afraid of coming out even in the light. Frequently they are my bedfellows. Tell me, why are they drawn to my body? Isn’t it the same body that was with you for a few days? Or was that all fantasy? At least answer my letters! What am I to think of myself? If I leave this house where do I bring you? And if I keep it—it is hardly a suitable place for you. But as for that, now even I am perhaps… well anyway.
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sp; 6
I knocked at her door again and again. I pleaded with her, begged her to tell me how all those creatures have become my cohabitants. I know it was all plotted by her, why else would she ask for such little rent? She no longer asks me for the rent by the first of every month; I go and toss it into her doorway. All my books have turned to dust inside the sacks; each word in them is a speck of dust and has blown away. Those sacks that I had not even opened! What kind of a situation is this? It seems as though centuries have gone by. I am ashamed to send for you now, to address you. I could not even support a burden as pleasant as you! I wish I had brought you with me right in the beginning, and not fallen a prey to doubts about the meaning of sharing one’s life. I wish I had not detached myself from you and you from me. But it’s all done now.
Nowadays she comes upstairs frequently, stops by the door and asks me with her usual dark, haunted smile, ‘When are you bringing her?’
I feel like picking up something and flinging it at her head, but then my whole body becomes numb like a somnambulist’s. Even my mind is often inactive these days, like an old, worn-out, useless clock.
There is not a bit of space on the floor here, neither in this room nor in the gallery. Everywhere it’s either the rodents prancing about, or the birds fluttering their wings and their eggs rolling about. I am amazed at the fertility of these creatures. Is life so fertile? So, would I also…? Could it ever happen? You can hardly tell me.
I don’t even feel like asking you anymore. I have lost count of days, weeks, and months. An uninterrupted, nameless, time; inhaling and exhaling; the company of heterogeneous beings… I think I am due for retirement in a few days. Once that happens I doubt if I’ll feel the need to even leave this room. She says she will bring me my three meals a day. All for a minimal rent! I think she said it because when I returned from work yesterday, the empty basket she had placed in a corner of the gallery contained some puppies. I am not affected by anything anymore, so this time I didn’t query her about it. Of her own she arrived with a dish of biryani, and placing it on the table before me she said, ‘Eat. You must be hungry.’ Then, she pointed to the basket and continued, ‘They’re of very good stock. They’ll be useful when they are grown. Incidentally, they are quite harmless, but they have to be inoculated for rabies. One of these days I’ll take them to have it done. For the present there’s no danger of their catching the disease.’ Then she asked me with a smile, ‘When are you bringing her?’
I made no answer and she left. After she had gone I overturned the plate of biryani. In no time the biryani was gone and the plate licked clean.
It is astonishing how so many assorted creatures, of categories hostile to each other, are busy procreating and live peacefully together.
Now I would like to ask you one last question: Have you read the story of the female innkeeper who used to place a lamp on a cat’s head and in its light play dice with her guests? She always won. At the critical moment the cat would shake her head and put out the lamp. Without the light it would be pitch dark and the guest would lose the game no matter how close to winning he had been before that.
The occupants of the basket in the gallery, those puppies with the shining coats, have now grown, and resemble wolves. There is a spark of pure wildness in their eyes. Their black coats dazzle the eye, and the pointed teeth growing out of their dark pink jaws and encircling their red tongues, glow in the dark. They don’t bother me nor am I responsible for them. Now I have given up all intentions of moving to another place, for where could I find better accommodation? She brings me a plate of biryani covered with a flower-patterned handkerchief every day, and is happy to see me. As soon as she leaves I overturn the plate. The following day she takes away the plate without a word.
But a strange thing happened yesterday. After a long time she asked me, ‘When are you bringing her?’ After a long time too, a savage emotion rumbled inside me. It was an extraordinary rumbling. Controlling myself with difficulty I answered her question. But as soon as they heard my reply, those creatures with the shining black coats, sharp, pointed teeth, and red tongues gathered around me lovingly, and became engrossed in conversation with me. What more can I write?
BEFORE DARKNESS FALLS
António Lobo Antunes
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
António Lobo Antunes (1942–) is a Portuguese novelist and medical doctor. He was forced to serve with the Portuguese Army in the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974). He published his first two novels in 1979 and, since then, there have been twenty-one others, earning him a succession of European prizes. He has been named as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. After a long rivalry with José Saramago, when the New York Times called for a comment on Saramago’s Nobel Prize victory, he grumbled that the phone was out of order and abruptly hung up. In 2007, he underwent surgery for intestinal cancer, and, knowing how his body would look cut open, recorded the experience in a series of articles.
For reasons I won’t go into right now, the last few difficult weeks have forced me to think about the past and the present and to forget about the future. Especially the past: I have rediscovered the smell and the echo of hospitals, the atmosphere like soft white felt through which the nurses glide like swans and that so thrilled me when I was an intern, the silence of rubber, the gleam of metal, people speaking in hushed tones as if in church, the sad solidarity of waiting rooms, the interminable corridors, the terrifyingly solemn ritual that I watch wearing a tremulous smile that serves as my walking stick, a fake courage barely disguising my fear. Especially the past because the future is getting narrower and narrower and I say especially the past because the present has become the past too, memories that I thought were lost and that return without my realizing they were lost, the Sunday markets at Nelas, the squeals of the suckling pigs
(I remember the squeals of the suckling pigs so vividly now)
a ring bearing the emblem of Benfica that when I was five I thought was beautiful and that my parents thought hideous, and that at fifty I still think is beautiful even though I also think it’s hideous and feel that now is the right moment to start wearing it again given that I don’t have that much time left for large pleasures. I want the ring with the Benfica emblem, I want my grandmother alive, I want the house in Beira, I want everything that I allowed to slip away and that I need, I want Gija to scratch my back before I go to bed, I want Zé Rebelo’s pine woods, I want to play Ping-Pong with my brother João, I want to read Jules Verne, I want to go to the fair and ride on the figure-eight roller coaster, I want to see Costa Pereira save a penalty from Didi, I want to eat sweet eggy desserts. I want codfish cakes with tomato rice, I want to go to the school library and get a thrill from reading Fialho de Almeida’s racy The Redhead in secret, I want to fall in love all over again with the wife of the Pharaoh in The Ten Commandments as I did when I was twelve and to whom I remained staunchly faithful for one whole summer, I want my mother, I want my little brother Pedro, I want to buy ruled paper with thirty-five lines a page from the grocery store so that I can write poetry counting out the stresses on my fingers, I want to play ice hockey again, I want to be the tallest in the class, I want to blow on my marbles for luck
ox-blood cat’s eye rainbow and coral
I want Frias at Senhor André’s school to tell us about the films he’s seen, to talk about the Boy, the Girl and the Boy’s Friend, in films I only ever saw through Frias’s descriptions of them
(Manuel Maria Camarate Frias, where are you now?)
and his descriptions were much better than the films, Frias imitated the sound track, the noise of the horses, the gunfire, the brawl in the saloon, he imitated this so well it was as if we could see it all, and Norberto Noroeste Cavaleiro, the man who thought I was trying to break into his car and who boomed at me
—Dr. Cavaleiro to you, you young devil
the first time a grown-up had called me names and I felt like telling him that my father was a
doctor too, and that when I first went into the locker room at Futebol Benfica, Ferra-O-Bico explained to the others
—Blondie’s dad is a doctor
and a circle of respectful silence formed around me, Blondie’s dad is a doctor, I want to get a cab at the door of my house and hear the driver ask
—Is this where a guy called João lives, the hockey player?
and I want to feel the same amazement that he should talk about my dad like that, I want to break one of my arms and have a plaster cast on it, or, better still, my leg, and have to use crutches and amaze the girls the same age as me, a small boy on crutches
I thought then and I think now
there isn’t a girl who doesn’t want to fall in love with him, what’s more the cars stop to let you cross the road, I want my grandfather to draw me a horse, then get on that horse and ride away, I want to bounce up and down on the bed, I want to eat goose barnacles, I want to smoke a furtive cigarette, I want to read the World of Adventures, I want to be the Cisco Kid and Mozart at the same time, I want to eat Santini’s ice cream, I want a flashlight with batteries for Christmas, I want chocolate umbrellas, I want my Aunt Gogó to give me my lunch
—Open your mouth now, Toino
I want a plate of lupine seeds, I want to be Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, I want to wear long pants, I want to jump off trams while they’re still moving, I want to be a ticket collector, I want to play all the plastic trumpets in the world, I want a shoebox full of silkworms, I want my soccer cigarette cards, I want there to be no hospitals, no patients, no operations, I want to have time to get up the courage to tell my parents that I love them very much
(I don’t know if I can)
to tell my parents that I love them very much before darkness falls, ladies and gentlemen, before the final darkness falls.
