Alentejo Blue (10 page)

Bruno pushed up his cap and grunted. Bruno is not a great thinker.

‘English, my friend,’ Vasco informed him. ‘With an American accent.’

Vasco sighs a long, wheezing sigh. Oh, he says to himself, what do I know? Not as much as Bruno, even. His grandchildren and their grandchildren will speak Portuguese. Such a beautiful language will never die. His eyes begin to fill. He is so tired he feels hollow. There is nothing inside him, nothing. Why does he say all these things? Such a beautiful language. Even when he said it he didn’t believe it. Why must he talk and talk and invent all these things? America this and America that. Twenty-two years since he’s been there. He does not give a rotten acorn’s worth for that place.

What a fool I am
. Vasco focuses on the flame, which is beginning to burn low.
Stripped to the core, this is what I am
. Yet he holds himself apart, as if there are two Vascos, one passing judgement on the other.

‘Talk to me,’ Lili would say, propped up in the hospital bed, three pillows behind her back, two more beneath her knees. ‘Tell me things. Tell me about Mamarrosa.’

She swelled up like one of those magic beans you drop in a bowl of water. Her hands, her feet, her legs, her face. She was just into her third trimester.

The hospital chair was so low he had to reach up to hold her hand. Every time he stopped speaking she said, ‘Don’t just sit there. Talk to me.’

‘Everything will be all right,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

She rolled her good eye. ‘I know that, you dope. Tell me something interesting.’

Out in the corridor, the doctor had said, ‘The only cure for pre-eclampsia is delivery. Bed rest. That’s the best we can do.’

Vasco hunted him down and held him by the shoulder. ‘Take it out,’ he said. ‘Take the baby out.’

The doctor looked at Vasco, considering, it seemed, whether to press charges. Then he laughed and clapped him on the back. ‘Can’t do that, buddy. It ain’t cooked yet. Another coupla weeks.’

‘I’m bored,’ said Lili. She wore a nightdress printed with teddy bears. She said the baby would like it. Her face was all stretched and shiny. The way her cheeks puffed out she looked like a kid with a birthday cake. ‘What’s a girl got to do to get a cigarette? Start talking fast or I’m going to roll down off this perch and bounce right out of here.’

He told her about his grandmother and how, many years ago, Senhor Pinheiro had paid to have two windows put into her house and how she, unable to get used to it, boarded them back up again. Mãe told Vasco about it, shaking her head to show how far she herself had come into the light. It was the same day she told him about Pedro Gomes getting an inside toilet. ‘What could he be thinking of? To bring it inside! A dirty thing like that.’ Mãe always stood a certain way, with her hand on her hip, to let everyone know she wasn’t falling for it, whatever it was. She spread her hair once a week to dry in the sun and said, ‘I’ll give you five escudos if you find a grey one and pull it out.’

‘Do you think she’s going to like me?’ said Lili.

‘No,’ said Vasco, mock-sad. ‘I don’t think so.’

Lili pulled her hand away.

‘I was making a joke,’ said Vasco.

‘My chest,’ said Lili. ‘It burns.’

They put her on an IV drip and listened for the baby’s heartbeat. Every time he heard the baby’s heart beating Vasco felt sick. Lili woke from a nap the next day and said, ‘What are all those little black things floating around the room?’ She had the worst headache. By evening she couldn’t feel her face.

Vasco prayed. He knelt down in a toilet cubicle and clasped his hands in front of his chin. ‘Please, God. Please.’ There was a wet patch under one knee. He tried to ignore it. ‘Help me.’ He was kneeling in urine. ‘
Hail Mary, full of grace
.’ The tiles were freezing. ‘
The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women
.’ On the door someone had written ‘Springsteen sucks’. ‘
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
.’ Another pen has added ‘cock’. ‘
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners
.’ Cigarette ash on the tissue dispenser.
‘Now and at the hour of our death. Amen
.’

The candle has burned itself out. Vasco looks across to the big window but there is no reflection now. He picks up the spoon and the fork and puts them on the side of the plate. It is time to go to bed.

‘Lili,’ he whispers. ‘I’m sorry.’ How rarely he remembers. He thought his love would stay pure, the silver lining. But what remains? Disappointment maybe; a little guilt.

A man can decide to do this, and not do that. But feelings, thinks Vasco, are not in his control. I want to feel happy! This is the new madness. Everyone wanting to be happy. In Vasco’s opinion they are crazy.

He breaks off a small piece of pastry and puts it in his mouth. He does not feel happy and he does not feel sad. These things he has lost. Belief he never had. It always eluded him. And what does he know? Not much. When he adds it all up it does not amount to much. All I have, thinks Vasco, is my bloody opinion.

‘God,’ he says, and bites on his fist. There is a throbbing behind his eyes. He gnaws his hand and stares at the table. Somewhere in the night a fox screeches. A mosquito whines close to his ear. The lantana brushes the window. For a long time he sits and thinks of nothing at all.

When he stirs it is because he must shift his legs. The table shakes and the fork and spoon slide off the plate.

Well, of course a man must have opinions. What is a man without opinions? He’s Bruno, that’s what.

Customers, Vasco knows, want conversation. They want jokes. They want comment. They want to be entertained. Eduardo, the old goat, will be in tomorrow, picking a fight and picking his nose. ‘Eduardo,’ Vasco will say, slapping the counter, ‘we’ve missed you. Though it’s been cooler in here, without all that hot air you blow around.’

Yes, that’s what he’ll do and that’s what he’ll say. Vasco smiles, his lips slightly parted. It is very fine, it is, to sit alone and contemplate.

The mind is a marvellous thing; no end to it at all.

He should get one of those jukeboxes. The cigarette machine has been jammed for two days. He needs to order more serviettes and the butter is running low. In the morning he will make a list.

Now it is time to go up but first he will have a taste of that cake. Because – why not? Why shouldn’t he? He will have just a taste and leave the rest. He thinks that is what he will do.

4

THE GATE WAS OPEN SO HE ZOOMED RIGHT ON IN. HE
eased one leg over the crossbar, waited for the bike to slow a little, then jumped and ran along holding on between the bell and the knotted Benfica scarf. Perfect. He allowed himself a glance towards the bench, a quick one so it didn’t seem like he was showing off. Pedro, Fernando and
o treinador
. This was bad. Last week there had been six of them and all they got was a lecture and sent away. It was the ones that didn’t show up needed the bollocking.

He dropped the bike on its side just off the pitch and jogged over.

Pedro said, ‘Well, that’s gone and done it.’

‘Yeah,’ said Fernando, ‘it’s finished. No one’s going to turn up.’

‘Kiss of death,’ said Pedro. He was two years older than Jay and attempting to grow a moustache. His father was a local hero. You saw posters of him all over, as far away as Santiago do Cacém and Colos:
Nelson Paulo Cavaco
–
Acordeonista e Vocalista
. In his pictures he was always resting his chin on clasped hands and raising one very thick eyebrow.

Jay gazed out over the tarmac. It looked fit to melt. He kicked a pebble and bent down to pick up a discarded box of matches.

The coach got to his feet and threw the ball to Jay who slipped the matches into his pocket and did thirteen keepy-uppies straight off.

‘See that,’ said the coach to Pedro. Pedro raised an eyebrow, just like his dad. ‘Right,’ said the coach and looked at his watch, ‘when you see your
friends,
tell them that this team has one more chance to pull itself together. Now get lost.’

Fernando tilted his head like he was going to say something but changed his mind. He had a big spot on the end of his nose, all charged up with pus. Ruby said you should never squeeze your spots but this one looked ready to explode at a single touch.

Jay threw the ball high and straight. When he looked up to find his target the sun burned everything out and he thought he might as well die right here and now, there was no way he was going to head it. He got a foot to the ball though and sent it out across the pitch into the penalty box.

Running over to fetch it he thought maybe the boys would play with him anyway. Only so they could go on his bike. He wasn’t about to kid himself.

They passed him on his way back to the bench but Jay knew he would catch them up. Pedro’s trainers were white as prayer and his shirt as red as sin. ‘You know what’s happened to this team?’ he said to Fernando. ‘Yeah,’ said Fernando. ‘I know.’

The coach took the ball and tucked it under his armpit. Jay waited to be sent away. The coach put one foot up on the bench and squinted at Jay. He looked puzzled or worried or something. The coach was called Senhor Santos. He was pretty old and his gums bled. When he spat – in football you always have to spit – you could see the red blood in the white spittle. You’d think it would mix up and turn pink but that didn’t happen. His hair had grey bits in it and he had a small round belly that sat high up under his nipples. He could still run fast and not get out of breath.

Jay looked down. The tarmac was breaking up. There were little holes in it. It smelled like something fresh out of the oven, when it’s been in there too long. Jay rattled the matches in his pocket.

The coach sighed and leaned closer to Jay. He’s going to tell me a secret, thought Jay. Something he’s never told before. Senhor Santos drove an expensive car, a big jeep called an UMM that looked like a posh tank. When he wasn’t being a coach he wore leather trousers in the winter and linen slacks in the summer. But everyone knew that Senhor Santos was sad because he had no children.

He was definitely going to tell Jay something but Jay wished he would hurry up because Pedro and Fernando were heading back along the outside of the chicken-wire fence towards the village.

The coach shook his head and sighed again. He was still leaning in close to Jay and there was nothing to do but wait.

It was worse for Senhor Santos’s wife. Not having children made her crazy. She talked to imaginary people and set places for them at the table. That’s what everyone said. She was called Maria Sequeira de Fatima da Gama. At the
escola primária
they learned about her grandmother, Ervanaria Guerreiro Sequeira de Fatima, who in 1936 walked on her knees all the way to the shrine at Fátima where the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, appeared to three shepherd children. Senhor Santos took his wife to Fatima as well, so that she could be blessed with babies, but Jay guessed it wasn’t the same if you drove there in an UMM.

The coach blew on his fingers. He smelled of coffee and Trident gum. ‘We need a better pitch. You think so?’

‘Maybe,’ said Jay. ‘Do you?’

‘There’s someone coming to Mamarrosa,’ said Senhor Santos. ‘Someone who used to live here. He’s a very rich man now.’

‘Richer than you?’

Senhor Santos laughed. ‘I thought I would ask him to pay for improvements. Be a sponsor for the team.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jay. ‘Good idea.’

‘But first we need a team.’

‘Senhor Santos?’ Jay worked the heel of his trainer into the ground.

‘Go ahead. Speak.’

‘Nothing. I mean . . . why . . . what . . .’ Jay shook his head. ‘No, nothing.’

O treinador
set the ball down and clapped Jay on the shoulders. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Get lost.’

The old man with one eye went past pushing a black bicycle up the road. He didn’t have his patch on and Jay got a good stare. It was cool the way there was just a hole there. The bike looked heavy, like it was made of lead. The old man kept stopping every ten steps or so. Pedro and Fernando were long gone. Jay didn’t care. That Pedro was a
filho da puta
anyway.

Jay cycled out of the village. He thought about jumping off at the building site where two new houses were said to be going up, though they seemed not to be going in any direction at all. A worker in a lumberjack shirt appeared from behind a bunker of concrete bricks and wiped his brow. Jay tucked his head down and pedalled so hard his legs felt watery. At the top of the hill he balanced in the saddle with his toes just touching the ground. Sweet. The moment before you let go was always the best.

He kicked off and let everything happen. The air flooded his nose and mouth and eyes. His T-shirt whipped up a storm. His ears sang. A stone beneath the front tyre set him free and he wheeled through the high scent of pine and the low sound in his chest and landed on his knees in the ditch.

The bike was all right. One spoke a bit bent but that was nothing. His knees were cut. That was nothing as well. He took his T-shirt off and wiped his knees and put it back on. He wondered if he should go home. What day was it? Saturday. Dad would still be in bed whatever day it was. When he got up he would light a spliff, a joint, a jay. In England he used to say, ‘That’s how come he’s called it. Jay, like, know what I mean?’ He might say for Jay to take the goats out. Jay didn’t feel like taking the goats out. What did Mum do on a Saturday? Go to the shops, sit on the porch, drag a broom over the floor, sit on the porch, throw grain at the chickens. Same as every day really. If he went back she’d say, ‘For God’s sake, Jay,’ or something like that.

The pickup was there on the gravel so Jay knew Stanton was in. On the slate-top table on the terrace was a glass half full of beer. Jay sat on the step and whistled. He shielded his eyes and saw out to the hills where they were black from the fires. They looked prickly. They made him want to scratch. He heard a hundred people died, but you can’t believe everything you hear. There were only about six houses over that way. A flaming branch fell off a massive eucalyptus on to a
bombeiros,
skewered him to the ground. That’s what they said. And a baby was found alive inside a ring of fire, just lying there on a white sheet that didn’t have so much as a smudge. That was a great story. Jay didn’t care if it was true or not. He thought the baby should have its own shrine and people should walk to Mamarrosa from all over Portugal, on their knees.