Free What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel by António Lobo Antunes Page B

is thirty-five thousand square miles in area and is called Portugal, sandals, a shoe, those boots with a pad to correct her walk or just a reflection from the bulb if we change its position it disappears or maybe it’s nothing, you don’t exist and not having been anything, you’re nothing, the doctor to Mr. Couceiro
    —He says he has a girlfriend named Noémia do you know her?
    Mr. Couceiro’s fingers looking for his handkerchief as if the handkerchief were more of a cane than his cane itself, going into his pockets, his own fingers a second handkerchief, also made of cloth, lost on his forehead too, Mr. Couceiro not a corporal in Timor, a neck without a body looking at a picture
    —I asked you if you didn’t think her color is better this afternoon?
    settled in the easy chair with a happy little smile, Composition: To My Daughter, contrary to what I expected my daughter arrived, Rui hold it, I’m all mixed up in the head you’re going with a dead girl who died before you were born Paulo, I was changing the needle in the syringe if I could only stop being a damned jackass, if I could only get to feel sorry for Mr. Couceiro and I can’t just like I can’t get to suffer, I can get to break saucers and repeat the table of sevens, I can’t get to suffer, the cane, diabetes and Rui, forgetting to tighten the rubber hose, three feet nine you say, eleven years old you say, the jackdaw there all the while without our seeing it, maybe its tail or its beak in the fig tree, Rui throw a stone at it Paulo
    we thought it had gone away and its little chirps were making fun of us, Rui loosening the hose and no vein, a constellation of small scars, throw a stone at it Paulo, a piece of brick, a clod, a piece of shit, anything because the damned thing is getting on my nerves, my room at Anjos next to the dead girl’s room, almost every night I’d wake up thinking I’d heard her, I’d sit up in bed listening until I realized it was Dona Helena and the next day fresh roses in the vase, bought at the market along with the meat, the tomatoes, the oregano, not scarlet closer to pink, looking for the gouaches and painting them blue, painting the sun on the wall and waves, not the waves at Bico da Areia, serious waves, large, how many times coming back from Chelas did I find Dona Helena on the couch with Mr. Couceiro holding her hand and since I’m incapable of doing things any differently I hurt them because I worry about them, getting mad at myself for hurting them and punishing myself by hurting them some more
    —I’m all you’ve got since your daughter’s dead
    or
    —I’m all you have and I detest you
    or
    —I’ll bet you’d like to have me die the way the other one died
    two old boobs
    I hate you
    I don’t hate you
    I hate you
    hugging each other in a corner of the living room, they were drinking tea, they weren’t eating dinner, they were consoling each other with the picture of their daughter, two frightened boobs examining the bangs that were disappearing under the glass, don’t you think she’s got better color this afternoon, they don’t console each other, don’t have any illusions, don’t make up things there aren’t any colors, there aren’t any features, be quiet, tomorrow they’re taking me out of the hospital and it’ll be an end to the plane trees, the doctor
    —I’ve got no time for chitchat today let me go
    and me with so many things to tell him if he’d only ask me
    —What is it?
    I remained mute, overflowing with words the same as when they operated on my father, they removed his breasts and in place of his breasts two
    if I can put it that way
    dark scars, a face where the features could barely be made out, eyes where maybe eyes and the maybe eyes
    —Rui?
    no
    —Paulo?
    I never stole anything from you, I never made fun of you and what was left of him
    —Rui?
    the joints of the bones in his bald head, do you want your wig, father, your lipstick, your creams, do you want me to put the