The Tuner of Silences (33 page)

—
Is that what he did?
—Noci was astonished.—
He took you to visit the people's journalist?

—
And we left flowers, all . . .

—
Well then, tomorrow you're going to take this teacher some papers. Plus a little letter I'm going to write . . .

I didn't know what was going through her head, but the girl didn't need any encouragement. At her command, I kept watch down the hall while she rummaged through Aproximado's drawers. She gathered together some documents, scribbled a short note and put everything in an envelope.

It was this envelope that I delivered to the teacher the following morning. By now, it was clear how ill our gentle master was. And he grew thinner and thinner until the merest clothing seemed too big on him. Eventually, he stopped coming and it wasn't long before we were told he had died. They later told us he had been suffering from the “sickness of the century.”
That he had been the victim of the “pandemic.” But they never mentioned the name of the illness.

Silvestre went with me to the teacher's funeral. In the cemetery, he passed Dordalma's grave. And he sat down with the weight of one who was never going to get up again. He remained there silent and unmoving, with only his feet brushing the sand, this way and that, like the continuous swing of a pendulum. I gave him a little time and then urged him:

—
Shall we go home, Father?

There would be no going home. At that moment, I realized: Silvestre Vitalício had lost all contact with the world. Before, he almost never spoke. Now, he had stopped even seeing people. They were mere shadows. And he never spoke again. My old man was blind to himself. He didn't even have a home inside his own body.

That night, I thought about the deceased teacher. And I came to the conclusion that the “sickness of the century” was some sort of calcification of the past, an intermittent fever made of time. This illness ran in our family. The following day, I announced at school:

—
My father suffers from it too . . .

—
What?

—
The sickness of the century.

They looked at me with pity and repulsion, as if I were the bearer of some perilous contagion. Friends avoided me, neighbours kept their distance. This exclusion by all, I have to admit, gave me a certain satisfaction, as if deep down I wanted to return to my solitude. And over time, I allowed myself to go astray. After the teacher's death, I lost interest in school. I would leave home in the morning, all dressed up for it, but I would stick around in the yard, scribbling down memories in the notebook I kept as a diary. When everything around had become darkness, my pages still preserved the light of day.
When I got home, I began to greet my father in the old way, in accordance with the rules of Jezoosalem:

—
I can go to bed now, Father. I've hugged the earth.

Perhaps, deep down, I yearned for the immense hush of my sad past.

And then there was Noci, an additional reason for skipping school. Aproximado's girlfriend offered to help me with my homework. Even if I didn't have any, I invented it just to have her leaning over me, her huge dark eyes spearing mine. And then there was the bead of sweat running down between her breasts that I followed, doused and aroused by that drop, descending into her bosom until I sank into tremors and sighs.

Early in the morning, Noci would go around the house almost in a state of undress. I began to have erotic dreams. It wasn't new to me: female classmates, women teachers and neighbours had all made appearances in my daydreams. But this was the first time the gentle presence of a woman had placed the entire house under her spell. I found one thing out later: in the heat of the night, I wasn't the only one to have such dreams.

I don't know how much love Noci still gave to Aproximado. The truth is that we sometimes heard groans coming from their room. My father would toss and turn in his bed. He who had closed his ears to everything still had ears for this. On one occasion, I noticed that he was crying. It then became clear: Silvestre Vitalício would weep on the nights when the house was aglow with love.

Love is addictive even before it has happened. That's what I learnt, just as I learnt that dreams grow more intense the more they are repeated. The more I clamoured for Noci in my nightly ravings, the more real her presence became.
Until one night, I could have sworn that it was she, in the flesh, who furtively entered my room. Her figure slipped between my sheets and, during the moments that ensued, I sprawled across the intermittent frontier between our bodies. I don't know whether it was really she who visited me. I know that after she left, my father wept in the bed next to mine.

My uncle never tired of going on about how he hadn't been paid for his services to the family. But from what we could see, Silvestre's debts didn't leave Aproximado in any state of need. Our Uncle boasted of the money he made from the business of selling hunting permits. “But isn't that illegal?” Noci would ask. Well, what is illegal these days? One hand dirties the other and both imitate the gesture of Pontius Pilate, isn't that so? That's how Uncle responded. And not a day went by when he didn't return with fresh motives for rejoicing: he cancelled fines, turned a blind eye to infringements and conjured up complications for new investors.

—
Do you remember the truck I had during the war? Well nowadays, the apparatus of the State is my truck.

One Sunday, his vanity led him to open out the map of the game reserve on the floor of the living room, and to summon me, my father and Noci:

—
See your Jezoosalem, my dear Silvestre? Well now, it's all private property, and I'm the one who's deprived of it, do you understand?

My father's hollow look ranged over the floor, but failed to pause where his brother-in-law intended. Then suddenly Silvestre decided to get up and cross the room, dragging the map along with his feet so that it was ripped into large strips. Unable to contain herself, Noci laughed. Aproximado's breast unleashed a hitherto controlled anger:

—
As for you, my dear, you're going to stay away from here.

—
Is this your house?

—
From now on, I'm the one who'll pay you visits in your house.

From then on, Noci appeared like the moon. Visible only at certain periods of the month. As for me, I became subject to the tides, periodically flooded by a woman.

Once, Noci turned up at the house mid-morning. She slipped furtively through the rooms. She asked after Aproximado.

—
At this hour, Miss Noci?
— I answered. —
At this hour, you know only too well, Uncle is at work.

The girl went to the bathroom and, without closing the door, threw her clothes on the floor. I was suddenly smitten with a type of blindness and shook my head fearing I would never be able to see properly again. Then, I listened to the water from the shower, and imagined her wet body, caressed by her own hands.

—
Are you there, Mwanito?

Embarrassment prevented me from answering. She guessed that I would be stuck in the doorway, incapable of peeping in, but without the strength to move away.

—
Come in.

—
What?

—
I want you to find a box that's in my bag. I brought the box for you.

I went in bashfully. Noci was drying herself with the towel and I was able to catch glimpses of her breasts and her long legs. I pulled out a metal box and brandished it, trembling. She responded to my gesture.

—
That's it. There's money inside. It's all yours.

Then she explained the origins of that little treasure trove. Noci belonged to a women's association that cam-paigned
against domestic violence. Some months before, Silvestre interrupted one of their meetings and crossed the room in silence.

—
It was very strange what he did
—Noci recalled.

—
Don't take it too badly
— I rejoined. —
My father always had a negative attitude towards women, please forgive him . . .

—
On the contrary. I . . . in fact all of us were very grateful.

What had happened was this: Silvestre had crossed the room and had left a box with money in it on the table. It was his contribution to the campaign of those women.

In the meantime, the association had closed. A number of threats had sown fear among its members. What Noci was now doing was returning my father's gesture of solidarity.

—
Now, make sure you hide this cash from Aproximado, do you hear? This money's yours, yours alone.

—
Only mine, Miss Noci?

—
Yes. Like me, at this moment, I'm yours alone.

Her towel fell to the floor. Once again, just like that first time in Jezoosalem, the presence of a woman took the ground away, and the two of us plunged into the abyss together. Afterwards, as we lay, exhausted on the tiled floor, our legs entangled, she passed her fingers over my face and murmured:

—
You're crying . . .

I denied it fiercely. Noci seemed moved by my vulnerability and looking deep into my eyes, asked:

—
Who taught you to love women?

I should have answered: it was lack of love. But no words occurred to me. Disarmed, I watched Noci buttoning up her dress, preparing to leave. When she got to the last button, she paused and said:

—
When he handed us the box of money, your father wasn't aware that among the notes, there was a bit of paper with instructions on it.

—
Instructions? From whom?

—
Your mother.

My father had never realized this, but his deceased spouse had left a note explaining the origin and purpose for this money. It was Dordalma's savings and she was leaving this inheritance so that her sons should lack for nothing.

—
It was your mother. It was she who taught you how to love. Dordalma has always been here.

And she placed the palm of her hand on my chest.