Free If I Close My Eyes Now by Edney Silvestre Page B

was!’
    ‘Appearances are deceptive. You’ll learn that sooner or later. Nothing in this country is what it seems. And this city is a microcosm of Brazil.’
    Paulo made a mental note: ‘microcosm’. Yet another word to look up in Eduardo’s dictionary.
    ‘Old men are capable of great atrocities,’ the man added.
    Another word to look up the next day: ‘atrocities’.
    ‘Have you ever heard of Getúlio Vargas? Josef Stalin?’
    ‘Of Getúlio, yes.’
    ‘Vargas, the man who created the labour laws.’
    ‘Getúlio Vargas’s henchmen tore out my fingernails. One by one. In cold blood. They tortured me. Killed my friends. That same heroic Vargas you study at school. The martyr of the republic. It was thanks to us that Getúlio came to power.We believed in him. The father of the poor. Vargas betrayed us. Like Stalin.’
    Then he went on talking about deaths, persecutions and massacres in the Soviet Union. Eduardo was curious, because history had always interested him, but Paulo was not so pleased: to him this was an unnecessary digression. He interrupted the old man.
    ‘Are you going to help us or not?’
    ‘Under duress.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘I’m being blackmailed. Either I collaborate or you give me away, is that right?’
    ‘But you yourself started an investigation,’ Eduardo argued.
    ‘Possibly.’
    ‘We know we’re not children. Neither Paulo nor me.’
    ‘We’re not.’
    ‘But you adults still think we are.’
    ‘You think that.’
    ‘Just now you called us kids.’
    ‘You did.’
    ‘It’s because you think Paulo and me are only kids that we can investigate lots of things about the dentist’s wife’s death, without attracting anyone’s attention.’
    ‘Because nobody is going to pay us any attention.’
    ‘That’s why I said we can go unnoticed, because of our age.’
    ‘But there are other things we can’t do, if you know what I mean.’
    The white-haired man waited for Paulo to go on. The twoboys were waiting for an answer. After a few moments’ silence, it was the old man who spoke.
    ‘So, what then … ?’
    ‘Well, then … you’re older, and have more experience … There are things you can do that we can’t.’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘For the moment, I don’t know. When they crop up, we’ll see.’
    ‘One for all and all for one?’ Paulo urged.
    ‘You and us. The three of us, you, Paulo and me, if we work together, we could find things out and—’
    ‘What exactly do you intend to do?’ the old man cut in.
    His question implied precise intentions the boys did not have. Instead, they were acting on a suspicion, nourished by countless films and melodramas they would soon not even remember the titles of, that the accepted version of who had killed the blonde woman was wrong. How could they admit this was all they suspected, and still manage to convince the old man to join them? Eduardo tried to find a good reason for him to do so, but couldn’t. Neither of them could. So Eduardo would have to think up a lie. Right now. On the spot. A convincing one. But to invent a lie that would convince someone to reject a series of lies backed up by the whole city left him nonplussed. He said nothing. He couldn’t find the words. Paulo stared at him anxiously. Once again, it was the old man who broke the silence.
    ‘Well … ?’
    ‘Just a minute,’ Eduardo pleaded, trying to gain time.
    ‘You two …’
    ‘He’s going to explain – aren’t you, Eduardo?’
    ‘We …’ Eduardo began, but could not go on. He flushed.
    ‘You want to go on investigating, just like you think you’ve been doing since the first night after the murder, when you broke into the dentist’s house.’
    Paulo tried to deny they had broken in, but the old man wouldn’t let him. Then he said in a single breath, as though reciting a lesson learned by heart:
    ‘You thought you could do everything on your own, but you’ve discovered that you can only make progress with my help, because you think