I could sense my wife awake. I might have remembered that there were only a few days left to the date the doctor had given, but I remembered only the nights when the heat had stopped her sleeping. It was the beginning of September. She turned impatiently in bed. Each time she turned the world would be suspended in her movements, because it was all very slow, because it was difficult and, at times, it seemed impossible. Her body was too big. Her arms tried to grasp the sheets. She couldn’t settle into a position. The joints of the bed creaked. I was awake, asleep, awake, asleep. When I fell asleep, I remained half-awake. When I awoke, I was still half-asleep. In my vague thoughts I believed it was the heat that was stopping her from falling asleep completely.
Half-asleep, I opened my eyes when I felt my legs hot and wet, when she shook my shoulders, shouting and whispering:
‘Wake up! My waters have broken.’
I had trouble getting my feet into my trousers. I tried to get one foot in and hopped around on the other. She locked herself in the bathroom. When I knocked on the door she asked me to go and tell Marta. I went into our daughters’ bedroom in the dark. Marta awoke, startled. I waited for the silence, until all we could hear was the breathing tides of Maria sleeping. Then I said to her:
‘Your mother is about to have the child. We’re going to the maternity hospital now. Take care of your brother and sister when they wake up.’
In the gloom Marta’s eyes listened to me, very serious.
I left our daughters’ room. Marta was left sitting on the bed. Her eyes were worried and shining. I opened the door to Simão’s room. He was still so small, and he was sleeping. I closed the door gently. I looked for my wife. I walked down the corridor. The truck was less than a year old, and in the final months of my wife’s pregnancy we had kept it parked outside the front door. I helped my wife into the truck. I ran to the driver’s door. I started up in second gear.
The first times we stopped in traffic I wiped the sleep from my eyes with my index finger. I hadn’t paid much attention when that morning had started. Occasionally my wife’s complaining would get louder. Then I would speed up, jolting on the tram rails, overtaking honking cars and running red lights. Then there were motorcars in front of me and I couldn’t pass. I turned to my wife and asked her if she was all right. I looked at my watch — time was very fast. I asked her again if she was all right. I revved the engine and drew a roar without moving; I looked at my watch, time was very fast. I asked her again if she was all right and, when I was able to get going, accelerated again — jolting on the tram rails, overtaking motorcars, running red lights.
She said to me, in her suffering:
‘Take it easy.’
I was getting irritated:
‘How am I supposed to take it easy?’
She said to me:
‘Easy. .’
And we arrived at the maternity hospital. I ran to her and we went in with our arms linked together, me pulling her, her weighed down with her pains, and me pulling her. I made for a nurse and before I was able to say a word the nurse said to me:
‘Take it easy.’
And she took her away. My wife turned around to see me on my own, my arms and my eyes abandoned. And I waited. I looked at my watch. The morning. The morning the size of a summer. The whole morning. I looked at my watch. Time was very slow. The nurse passed by me; I followed her and before I was able to say a word she was the one who spoke, saying:
‘Take it easy. Go and eat something.’
And I gave up.
It was past lunchtime when the nurse came back into the waiting room and said to me:
‘So, don’t you want to go see your son?’
My feet slipped on the tiled floor, my body went through the grey-walled corridors with their lights nearly blown, blinking, flickering. My eyes couldn’t see a thing. And I went into the room. All at once — my wife lying in the bed holding our Francisco in her arms. Smiling at life. I walked dumbly, slowly to the bed. I couldn’t say anything. Later I would say that right then I had understood everything he would be capable of. Later I would say so many things. At that moment, I couldn’t say anything. I touched the boy’s cheek with the tips of my fingers. I touched my wife’s forehead with my lips. Time did not exist.
Without a moment to waste on questions that have no answers, my wife goes back into the bathroom with Íris in her arms, and when she opens the medicine cabinet she doesn’t want to think about who might be calling her.
Íris is already heavy. My wife sits on the end of the bidet and puts her down on the floor. In front of her, Íris is standing there, her hand open and stretched out towards her. A grandmother and a granddaughter. On her knees my wife balances cotton wool, tincture of iodine, sticky tape and a roll of bandage. Her voice is gentle because she doesn’t want Íris to cry any more. She tries to smile, and she tries to distract her.
‘So, now you’ve come to the hospital to be made all better. So tell me, madam, have you had an accident?’
Her lips pressed tight and her eyes wide, Íris murmurs injured moans, almost pretend, and holds her hand out further.
‘Oh, we’ll make that all better.’ And she pours tincture of iodine on to a ball of cotton wool that she brings towards the wound.
Íris makes as if to start crying, but my wife manages to distract her. She says to her:
‘There, there.’ And she rolls up her little hand in a strip of bandage that she fixes with sticky tape.
Then she finds a moment to run her fingers through Íris’s hair — tenderly — and slowly brings her lips to her forehead. She smiles at her:
‘All gone.’
Íris is on her tiptoes, holding her chin over the sink while my wife washes her face that’s still a mess from the crying. She feels her face. She feels her face through the towelling fabric, and it is only then, putting a hand on her shoulder, that she asks her how it was that the piece of furniture came to fall over.
‘It was the dolly,’ says Íris.
My wife understands that our granddaughter wanted to climb on to the cupboard to get the Nazarena doll that Maria kept to decorate one of the cupboard shelves. It’s a plastic doll Maria bought on a trip. It has the seven skirts of the fisherwomen of Nazaré and a black hat over a flowery kerchief. It has painted lashes over its painted eyes. It is barefoot on a round base which says ‘Souvenir of Nazaré’. No matter how many times her grandmother has scolded her, Íris still has an immoderate passion for that doll. As my wife is getting ready to scold her, the doorbell rings.
Her heart, again. It’s already past the time the postman might ring the doorbell, it’s early for our daughter’s lunchtime and there are not usually other visitors during the day. My wife leaves Íris waiting for her in the bathroom.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ she says to her, sharply.
And she makes her way along the hall runner. As though there were an idea also walking along the hallway, heading towards her, and passing her, she suddenly gets the thought that the person ringing the doorbell might be the same person who phoned minutes earlier. It might be someone who needs to tell her some dreadful piece of news that has already happened, that will floor her — death — that will destroy her — death — that will condemn her once again. She tries to push this black thought away. She presses down on the button that opens the street door down below, and that moment hears the electronic echo of the door opening into the building’s hallway. She waits. She tries to make out the steps that must now be coming into the building, or that must now be coming up the marble stairs, but instead, she hears three knocks on the upstairs door — close to her — three firm knocks on the wood. With a start, alarmed, she asks: