27
I hadn’t seen Ana yet when I turned in (her taking refuge in the chapel upon learning of my return was easily understood), nor my youngest brother, since I had not dared break my silence to ask after his whereabouts. As I entered the bedroom, although I found it somewhat strange, I was not exactly surprised to see Lula in his bed, lying on his side facing the wall, covered by a white sheet from head to toe. The bedroom slept in peaceful penumbra, the clarity from outside the house was diluted, seemed even more calm, diffused as it was by the slats of the Venetian blinds; I didn’t turn on the light since I knew my way around the bedroom without difficulty, besides, I had been wearing my pyjamas since my bath, so there wasn’t much left for me to do: close the door behind me, set my bags over in the corner, kick off my slippers, and slip into bed: weary of scaling mountains, I wanted only to imagine a great grassy plain, to lose myself in drowsiness, to fall sleepily into my dreams, and nightmares, and to wake up the following day with clear eyes, perhaps, as my grandfather used to say, even able ‘to distinguish a strand of white thread from a strand of black thread in the early dawn light’.
Having taken care of the baggage, I immediately noticed that the box I had brought along was missing; still, I didn’t give it much thought, even though its contents were so bizarre, the very items I had exposed to Pedro’s abashed eyes during that extremely tense encounter back in the distant boarding-house room; the hemp string had been tossed on to the floor, making me wonder about the hasty hands that had torn open the box without bothering to untie the string (an unheard-of technique in our household) and carried it away only after its contents had been hurriedly studied; sitting there on the bed, I was wrapping the string around my fingers mechanically to save it, using them as a spool in my father’s manner, when it crossed my mind that perhaps the box had been stolen to satisfy Lula’s pubescent longings; looking over my shoulder to the other bed, I noticed not only was Lula feigning sleep but, with his insolent movements, he was very definitely letting me know that he was not asleep at all, and was merely showing me his full disregard by lying there facing the wall, ostentatiously turning his back on me; I sat there for a good few minutes sounding out his ingenuous, inexhaustible reserve of theatrics while he occasionally kicked away at his sheet, until finally I got up, and walking around my bed, went and sat on his: by then, the sheet was completely still; instead, all of a sudden, I began to hear someone snoring thunderously; slightly surprised at how distracted all of this was making me feel, I put my hand on his shoulder.
‘Lula! Lula!’
He took a while to uncover his head and then looked up at me without turning around, grumbling something angrily as if I had just woken him up, and yet, unable to disguise his pleasure.
‘Were you asleep?’
‘Of course! Couldn’t you tell?’
‘It’s just that I wanted to have a little chat with you, that’s all, that’s why I woke you up.’
‘Chat about what?’
‘Lula, I’ve just come home.’
‘So what?’
‘I thought you’d be happy.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know, I just thought so.’
‘Well, you thought wrong.’
‘If that’s how you’re going to talk, then we’d better just forget it.’
‘You shouldn’t have even started, good-night,’ and Lula pulled the sheet up over his head again, protecting his pride, but he had quit snoring, and had stopped kicking, most certainly expecting me to make another gesture, he seemed anxious to talk with me, he, who had always watched my every move (something I had not known), and for whom I had been a bad example, according to Pedro.
‘What’s wrong with you, Lula?’ I asked, suddenly feeling kind. ‘I just wanted to talk with you like a friend.’
‘What’s wrong … what’s wrong … and you have the nerve to ask,’ he said, without uncovering his head. ‘I’ve been here for over an hour, if you must know. An hour! Now you feed me this line about “friends”.’
‘I didn’t know, Lula.’
‘You didn’t know … didn’t know … where else would I be, if you hadn’t seen me yet? I wasn’t out in the pasture, with the sheep …’ He tried to mollify his refusal, but wouldn’t give in.
‘OK, Lula, OK. Good-night, then,’ I said, and had barely stood up when he turned around unexpectedly, jerking his sheet, sitting up and leaning his bare chest against the headboard, and delving passionately into the revelation of his bold secret:
‘I’m leaving home, André, tomorrow in the middle of your party, but you’re the only one that knows.’
‘Don’t talk so loud, Lula.’
‘I can’t stand this prison any more, I can’t stand Father’s sermons, nor the work they make me do, nor Pedro’s watching over my every move, I want to take charge of my own life; I wasn’t born to live here, our herds make me sick to my stomach, I don’t like to work the land, not in the sunshine, and much less in the rain, I can’t stand the boring life on this filthy fazenda any more …’
‘I said not to talk so loud.’
‘As soon as you left, André, I started spending all my time sitting up on the gate, dreaming of the open road, looking out as far as my eyes could see, I couldn’t take my mind off adventure … I want to see lots of different cities, travel all over the world, I want to exchange my nosebag for a backpack, become a wanderer, travelling from place to place like a vagabond; I also want to see all the forbidden places, thieves’ dens, where money rules the game and wine is drunk by the gallon, where vice runs rampant and criminals plot their schemes; I’m going to have women, I want to be known in the brothels and in the alleys where tramps sleep, I want to do lots of different things, be generous with my own body, experience things I’ve never experienced; and when I’m left exhausted in the late hours of the night, I’m going to wander the dark streets, feel the early morning dew on my body, watch the day break while stretched out on a park bench; I want to live all this, André, I’m leaving home to take on the world, I’m leaving never to return, I’m not giving in to any pleading, I’m brave, André, I’m not going to fail like you …’
A rush of dammed-up water (what a current! how frantic!) gushed forth from that adolescent imagination, anxious to spread its poetry and lyricism; most likely, after he had finished describing the plans for his adventures he was hoping for my approval, and while I was listening to all of those fantasies — blown up to useless proportions — I was thinking about lowering his heavily lashed lids and telling him tenderly, ‘Go to sleep, little boy,’ but it wasn’t to close his eyes that I reached out, running my hand over his smooth chest: I found warm, soft skin, textured like lilies; my imponderable gesture gradually got out of control in that warm resting place, lapsed into unusual searching, making Lula interrupt his speech abruptly, meanwhile, his colt-like legs made up for the silence, reverting to their remarkable stirring under the sheets; and when I reached up to run the back of my hand over his beardless face, his apple cheeks were already feverish; his eyes were a blend of daring and cunning, in one moment advancing, in the next, withdrawing, like a certain other pair of eyes from the past, without any doubt, they were Ana’s primitive eyes!