Only outside, when already halfway there, did I feel the cold shock of waking up and being real. The sudden awareness in me of myself. Of myself and of the world. The unspoken embarrassment of our being three men walking in silence, and the perhaps ridiculous hurry of our steps, and the ridiculous sound of our noses breathing. The faces of the men who had woken me up. Their solemn and unchanging expressions. The discomfort of cold clothes against my skin still warm from the sheets. A breeze entering through my shirt sleeves. And the deep dark night before dawn. The stars, likewise ridiculous, in the dull black sky. The three of us walking quickly, as if it were important. And then a halo of light swirling in the sky over the carpenter’s shop, as if the sun were trying to come up in the middle of the night, to rend the darkness. And as we got closer and closer I remembered, as if struck by an idea, the peaceful gaze of Master Rafael, the open gate of the lumberyard, the declining afternoons seen through the window of the carpenter’s shop, and I hurried my step even more. At last wide awake, by the time I reached the shop I was walking as if running, or running as if walking.
The rafters had given way and the roof, in two halves with the tiles intact, had caved in on the carpenter’s shop. The flames rose up where the roof had been. Streams of sparks flew upward and vanished into the sky. The night swallowed up thick black waves of smoke. The gate was a pile of fallen boards on fire. A long row of men and women shouted and passed buckets of water from hand to hand. And they uselessly threw the water against the fire, as if it weren’t water and the fire and night weren’t fire and night. As if they poured empty buckets into the air, as if they hurled buckets of nothing against an indifferent fire. I stood there all alone and watched. The flames warmed my face, my flesh, my blood. No one had told me, but I knew that Master Rafael was dead. I looked and that’s what I saw. And morning broke. With the first light of day the flames went out. The women went home. The men sat down on the ground next to me. I was the only one standing. The carpenter’s shop had burned to the ground. Every strip of wood, every pinewood log in the yard, every speck of sawdust, every board, every unfinished window, every carpenter’s bench, every tool. The walls, which no longer held anything up or protected anything within, were charcoal black. Amid the silence of the men and the morning, the embers crackled with a dim glow under the ashes, quickened now and then by an intermittent breeze. Old Gabriel loomed in the distance, coming toward us with his slow steps. He came up to me.
I DIDN’T SAY GOOD MORNING. I didn’t say anything. I looked at Salomão and each man there, and each man and Salomão looked at me with the clear gleam of grief in their eyes. I looked at the fire. The last ember died out in a sigh that ascended as a small swirl of smoke in the air. One by one, the men started to get up. The last one came to me and said in a whisper, as if behind a shielding cloak, that when they learned of the fire they went to Master Rafael’s house and found the blind prostitute dead from childbirth, with the child likewise dead; he said that Master Rafael was inside the carpenter’s shop; he said he was sure that Master Rafael was inside the shop; he said that Salomão didn’t know. He stopped speaking to hear what I had to say. There was a brief silence, and then I waved him along with my hand. A few men searched among the ashes for things of value. Perfectly still, as if he weren’t breathing, Salomão stood in the same place and in the same position, like a post, like a hill, like an unmoving tree. In his eyes the flames still raged.
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.