The Night Watchman (17 page)

I want to think that Dad later realized he went way too far on this occasion, and that he regretted what he did, but I’m pretty sure that’s only because I want him to be like other people – and to be a person I’m not ashamed to love.

Ernie’s eyes were terrified. But he wasn’t moaning or trying to shout. That scared me the most – his silence. He was just four years old and already he’d learned it was best not to make a peep, even if he was about to have a thumb cut off.

I try not to visualize Ernie squatting in Dad’s cabinet too often. Most of all, I try not to put myself in his place. Despite what the talk-show psychologists say on television, recovering certain memories does you no good at all.

Ernie had squeezed both his thumbs inside his fists. I caught his attention by waving at him and tried to tell him with my eyes that I’d make our father get so angry with me that he’d forget about him.

‘Ernie’s real scared, Dad!’ I said, to buy some time.

‘Yeah, son, he sure is!’ he replied in the voice of a man gratified by his own success.

Did he really admire his own handiwork, or was that just the way his voice sounded to a kid who was learning how to hate?

‘He’s got to be hungry for breakfast, too,’ I said.

I took a step towards my brother, and then another, and when Dad didn’t stop me, I went straight up to Ernie and knelt down so that I could untie him. I prayed that if our father got so angry that he couldn’t stop himself from hurting one of us, that he’d grab me and not my brother. But I hoped he wouldn’t break my arm or leg, because then I’d be unable to play baseball all summer.

I started to undo the knot in the gag in Ernie’s mouth. It was made of the same nylon rope Dad used to tie up the beans and tomatoes in his vegetable garden.

‘I’m here, Ernie,’ I whispered, and I squeezed his arm once so he’d know I wasn’t going to go away.

But touching him turned out to be the wrong thing to do; he started to shiver and moan as though he’d fallen through the ice in a winter river.

‘Shit!’ Dad growled, and he grabbed me by my hair and yanked me back so hard that I crashed into the couch. I tasted blood on my lips as I got to my knees.

When Dad raised his hunting knife, the room seemed to grow dark around me.

‘Leave him alone!’ I yelled.

Did Mom hear me shout? She’d have had to. I suspect now that she was listening at her door, too afraid to make a sound and too high on Valium to come downstairs to help us, because a few minutes later, when I ran upstairs and told her we needed to get to the hospital right away, I found her sitting on her bed already dressed, and her eyes were so lifeless that I understood that she must have heard everything that had gone on.

About a year later, when I was home one day from school with a cold, she confessed that she was terrified of Dad, too. I’m not sure why she told me that. I guess I should have expected that she was afraid of him after all the lessons he’d taught her, but her words shocked me badly and then sat inside me like something rotten for weeks.

I can see now that I ought to have begged Dad to take me instead of Ernie. It might have made all the difference. But maybe the truth is that I was too terrified to substitute my brother. I’ve spent more than thirty years of my life ashamed of how I behaved that day.

Dad grabbed Ernie by the arm and dragged him to his feet. He cut off the gag and the bindings around his wrists. My brother started shrieking when Dad grabbed his arm and lifted him into the air, and he wriggled and kicked so hard that our father put him back down and whacked him on the back of the head.

As I stood up, a glint of metal flashed in my eyes like a spray of acid, and there was blood – way too much – running down the side of Ernie’s head and cheek.

Dad held up whatever he cut off and said, ‘You see what I had to do because of you, Hank! You see how far you made me go! There’s something evil in you, son!’

I awoke on Saturday morning at 6 a.m. Despite having slept only a few hours, I felt refreshed and strong, and eager for the solitary silence of the living room. Easing my notebook out of my underwear drawer, I crept downstairs through the fragile darkness. Our breakfast table welcomed me inside a universe far beyond the ticks of any clock. While sipping my coffee, I held tight to my favourite illusion that everyone I had ever loved was safe. And inside the tight warm halo made by my overhead lamp, I worked on my secret project:
Haiku from a Colorado Childhood.
Only Ernie knew about it.

Springtime hummingbird
Zooming between two brothers:
Ruby pendulum.

A man who knows he will not be watched can write what he wants – and risk seeming foolish. He can live in that part of his memory where good things have been stored and guarded, and write cryptic notes of exactly seventeen syllables to the boy he used to be.

When I heard the squeals of Ana turning on the tap in the shower, I took the stairs two at a time, crazy with my need to see her. She leaned away from me when I tried to kiss her, however. With the water pelting her back, she drew in her shoulders and said, ‘Are you going to be friendly now?’ Her eyes revealed such misery that I reached out for her, but she batted my hand away.

‘What did I do?’ I asked desperately.

‘Are you saying you don’t remember?’ she asked in disbelief.

‘I must have been half asleep. I had a long day yesterday and—’

‘I don’t want to hear it!’ she cut in. Her jaw was throbbing.

My heartbeat swayed me from side to side. Water pounded across her shoulders and glued her dark hair to her neck. I decided not to move; I’d outlast this quarrel, as I had so many times during the first years of our marriage, when G had tried to sabotage our relationship. At length, she turned back around to face me and took my hand. Her eyes were sad but forgiving.

‘You know how I am when I’m half asleep,’ I said. ‘I say and do things that I don’t recall in the morning. It’s a form of sleepwalking. My mom had it. Now tell me what I did, please.’

‘You were looking at photographs on your laptop. When I asked you what they were, you told me, “Mind your own fucking business!”’

After I apologized, she let me kiss her, and I explained about the victim’s flash drive and how this new case was playing havoc with my mind. She nodded so glumly that I stepped into the shower in my boxer shorts and T-shirt and hugged her.

‘Hank, what are you doing?’ she exclaimed, horrified.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, laughing.

The hot water soaking into me took away my inhibitions. I pressed my need into her hip and whispered what I wanted. Just after I’d entered her, Jorge called out to us. Through some deft contortions, Ana managed to poke her head around the shower curtain. ‘Just a minute!’ she yelled.

He stepped into the bathroom a moment later. ‘I’m hungry!’ he squealed.

‘Go take yourself some bran flakes, baby,’ she told him.

She wanted to say more but my unrelenting, slow persistence made her tremble. Lifting her up as quietly as I could, I drew her legs around me and pinned her back to the wall. She moaned, which seemed a triumph.

‘Mom?’ Jorge asked in a concerned voice.

Ana had closed her eyes by then and wasn’t about to reply.

‘Everything’s okay,’ I told my son. ‘Mom and I are just having a shower.’

Ana pulled me as deeply into her as I could go. The scent of her neck was like warm wool. No one I’d ever known smelled as good as Ana.

‘Dad?’ Jorge asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘As soon as we’re done here, I’ll make you breakfast.’

‘I want waffles!’

‘You got it! Now let us have a few minutes alone, baby.’

Grunting loudly, he stamped out of the bathroom. And yet the determined force of his surliness only served to fill me with admiration for him – and also to change the direction of my lovemaking; I wanted to come so powerfully inside Ana that we’d make another kid – right here, right now.

Afterwards, we checked on Jorge but he’d already fallen back to sleep. While leaning my chin on Ana’s shoulder, I gazed out the window, admiring the twittering exuberance of our Portuguese swallows and the pink haze that was painting the old houses of Santa Marinha Square with pastel colours. Lisbon was sacred at this hour, and its crumbling, emaciated charm made me feel as if I’d stepped into a fairy tale. ‘It would be such a shame if our economic troubles destroyed all this,’ I said, and for one slightly mad moment I thought that before conditions got any worse – and more people started emigrating – I ought to invite everyone who lived on the square over for tea.

I’d confessed to Ana that I might want to have another kid while we were getting dressed, and she said now, ‘It wouldn’t be fair to bring another baby into Portugal at a time like this. Besides, the world population is way too high.’

‘Except that Ernie’s not going to have any kids. We can have three and my family average will only be one and a half.’

She kissed my cheek as her way of saying no. ‘We couldn’t afford it,’ she told me.

I held both her hands. ‘Ernie’s taking care of two other gardens now, so he’s stopped using up our savings. We’re going to be all right from now on.’

Back downstairs, I sat cross-legged on the sofa, quiet and warm, daydreaming about a new baby in my arms. Eager to pass on my good feelings, I called Ernie and told him that the kids and I would be coming over in the afternoon – maybe even for lunch, if I could finish up my work in time.

‘Really – today?’ he asked excitedly.

My brother and I had once watched a squirrel dash sixty feet to the top of a maple tree with an almond we’d handed him, ecstatic with his good fortune but also worried that one of his rivals would steal it from him. That little grey fur-ball, swaying on a slender branch, keeping one eye out for a thief, was Ernie on receiving any form of good news.

‘Yeah, though Ana can’t come. She’s got too much work at her gallery – lots of tourists in the summer.’

‘Too bad. When will you guys get here?’ Then, regretting his inquisitiveness, he said, ‘Though I don’t want to force you into any specific time.’

‘I’m hoping we can leave about noon, and in that case we’ll be there around a quarter to two. And yes, I’ll send you a message when we leave.’

Silence. My brother was considering all he’d have to do before our arrival: hide his medications from the kids, test his door locks, pick vegetables . . . Rushing him would only fluster him, so I crossed the room to the window overlooking the square. Lisa, the little dark-haired girl who lived on the first floor of our building, was walking her family’s fluffy white Persian cat on a leash.

‘Rico, do you think Jorge and Nati would eat eggplant and rice, and maybe some salad?’

‘They’ll eat anything you decide to make. You’re an excellent cook.’

‘They’ll have to be a bit flexible.’

‘Ernie, don’t you think the kids have figured out what kind of meal to expect from you?’

‘Sorry. I’m nervous. You scared me yesterday. Can we start over?’

That was what Ernie and I asked whenever the other got irritated.

‘Done,’ I agreed.

It was Aunt Olivia who’d invented the technique of beginning conversations over. She hadn’t been prepared for an out-of-control fourteen-year-old and his morbidly quiet younger brother, and every time we overwhelmed her to tears, she learned to say,
Can we start over?
The amazing thing is that – after a year or two – Ernie and I developed the ability to rewind our emotions whenever she asked, as if she had spoken an incantation.

Maybe we all need at least one magician in our life. Aunt Olivia had been ours. What amazing luck we’d had that she was so eager to have us live with her!

‘Oh, I need something!’ Ernie exclaimed. ‘When you turn off towards Quinta da Vidigueira, you’ll see an abandoned farm with a few pomegranate trees. Pick me some flowers. If you don’t mind, I mean.’

‘Of course I don’t mind.

‘You know, Rico, pomegranate flowers are the
exact colour
of summer sunsets in Colorado!’ In a whisper, he added, ‘I hope Ana isn’t angry at me for stealing you from her for a night. If she is, you don’t have to stay over.’

Ernie needed me to know he was ambivalent about us staying the night. And he was testing me, too. Part of him wanted me to disappoint him – to prove to him the uselessness of wanting to be part of our family. ‘Ana is only too happy to get rid of us once a week,’ I told him.

He laughed. ‘Okay, then look both ways before you cross the street.’

After hanging up, I took myself more coffee and went back to the breakfast table. I was thinking what a couple of loons Ernie and I were when a radio journalist from TSF called. It was still only ten minutes to eight. ‘How did you get my number?’ I asked.

‘A friend.’

‘Which friend?’

He passed over my question and told me he wanted just five minutes of my time to discuss Coutinho’s murder. Startled, I replied in a ruder voice than I intended that our Public Relations department would give him a lot more than five and disconnected.

When Ana started down our staircase, I sat on my haiku notebook. At such times, I realized that I had more secrets than any one person should probably have.

While my wife was wolfing down her bran flakes and blueberries, Mesquita, the deputy head of the Judicial Police, phoned. ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector,’ he began. ‘Have you seen the newspapers yet?’ His tone was falsely cheerful.

‘No, sir, sorry. I’m afraid I just woke up.’

Ana made an ugly face on hearing that I was on the phone with a superior.

‘Tell me, have you ever been strung up by your balls?’ Mesquita asked.

‘No, but I’m guessing it might ruin my day.’

‘I was warned you might try to be amusing.’

‘It’s a personality flaw, sir. Besides, my wife is here with me, and I like to keep her entertained.’ I waved at her, and she waved back.

Ana mouthed:
Who is it?

Mesquita.

She picked up her cereal and rushed into the living room. She hated overhearing my work calls because she thought I gave in to even the most outrageous demands of my bosses.