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.
Old Gabriel came in and out of the bedroom repeatedly. He would come in and silently proceed to the last chair, walking past the silence of José and Salomão; then he would go out and stand like a quiet man among the men who talked. He came in and went out, marking time. And when the two wagons appeared at the top of the street, old Gabriel saw them arrive. The first was the funeral wagon, painted a shiny black, and it carried a small child’s coffin, white and trimmed with gold lines. The second was Pedro’s wagon, chosen because it was almost new and in perfect condition, and it carried the coffins of the blind prostitute and Master Rafael. Old Gabriel looked at the wagons approaching slowly. They came in a cool breeze brought by the late afternoon. They came in an ever-nearer, sadly clearer light. The birds flew in silence. The water gently trickled in distant fountains. At the house of Master Rafael they stopped. The men gathered around. The only sounds were of footsteps and meaningless noises. The funeral wagon was pulled by two men. Pedro’s wagon was pulled by a young, scrubbed donkey. The men brought the coffins into the bedroom. Salomão, José, and all the women stood up. First they brought the coffin for the baby. A little angel’s coffin. Salomão watched the baby girl being placed inside, and as they shut the lid to the coffin, her face was that of a living baby, a baby who was just sleeping, a beautiful baby. Next they brought the coffin for the blind prostitute. Two men hoisted her up, and her head fell slightly back, her hair touching the bedspread and then the bottom of the coffin. At last they brought the coffin for Master Rafael. It was made of good wood, as he would have wanted. Salomão stretched out his coat and trousers in the bottom of the coffin, and they hauled it away, no heavier than when they brought it. Salomão and José followed it out to the street. A crowd of gazing eyes and the sky. The coffins lay on the wagons, the baby girl in front, followed by her parents. And the procession began. Slowly. Salomão and the apprentice walked right behind the wagons. Down each and every street. Slowly. Past each and every house. Salomão kept walking, through each and every moment. Salomão kept walking and knew that the next day or the next week, or on some day yet to come, he would have to pass by the house of the blind prostitute and Master Rafael, and it would be an empty and abandoned house. Salomão kept walking. At the cemetery seven men carried the coffins: one man carried the baby girl, four men carried the blind prostitute, and two men carried Master Rafael. And the cemetery lay open before them. They wended through the tombstones, along the walkway of withered grass and earth. At the far end was a large grave, where they placed the three coffins, side by side.
~ ~ ~
HE LOOKED AT ME WITH A SERIOUS air. He ran his fingers through his beard, as if to disentangle it. It’s all right if you don’t go today, old Gabriel told me. He looked at me with a serious air. The sun was out and many men stood around the door of Master Rafael’s house. My mother, not understanding why we had stopped, pulled me by the arm. It’s all right if you don’t go today, he said, and he smiled at my mother as always. But I had to go. I sat my mother down in a shady spot in the yard, quickly gave her some soup, and then, as I always did, every other day, I took the road to the Mount of Olives, with a scarf on my head. I quickened my pace when I reached the gate. I turned the key and entered the rich people’s house. I passed through the empty rooms. The fireplaces all cold, the large empty chairs staring at me, the shadows of the furniture sprawling across the dim interior, darkness on darkness. I sat down in the main hallway and listened to the voice shut up inside a trunk. Its words echoed in the silence intermittently, as if spoken as they were remembered. At each pause, the previous sentence lingered on the walls, written on the whitewash with the color of whitewash. It said: it’s coming slowly, but it’s coming, and it will be an infinite day, an everlasting night, a frozen moment that won’t be a moment; and great matters will be smaller than the pettiest ones, and greater matters will be yet greater because they’ll be the only ones. I didn’t understand this saying from the voice shut up inside a trunk until today, when I woke up. Today, as the first and still-feeble light fell across my bed, I heard these words in my head. I heard these words, understanding each one, and I woke up. I slowly sat up under the sheet. I looked at my mother, I looked at Salomão. I lowered the sheet and looked at my belly, at my son who won’t be born. Death seemed to me a simple thing. In the morning light that deliberately deceived me, death seemed to me a suffering equal to that of living, gazing upon a new day, knowing everything I know.