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

breathing like a hare
    —What was it Carlos?
    the terror of the chickens when my mother would grab them by the legs and hold them in the air facing the knife, I wanted so much to save them the way I want to save you even though their throats grow smaller in my hand
    —What was it Carlos?
    defenseless, small, me huge, my hair standing on end, the small bones a child’s running away which affected me all the more, explaining I haven’t got my knife see and the throat so quick, the breast so quick, my name
    —Judite
    a refusal or a request
    a refusal
    a request
    your solitary heel and your clothes on the floor affected me, cooking for you, taking care of you, your shirts, your dinner, your colds, you’d come by to me pick me up at school, you’d wait on the sidewalk, awkward, cigarettes and you didn’t know how to smoke, you’d run from tree trunk to tree trunk so they wouldn’t see you, the other teachers
    —It was funny
    I’m going to write him a letter Cristina, I was furious and at that time yes, the knife, you’re not leaving
    —It was funny
    without the courage to write you, what I mean is I’d start writing to you but that’s not the way it was, there was more than that, and I blushed, and I stopped, Cristina
    —What’s this?
    snatching the paper, showing it to the other women and the other women
    my darling Carlos
    and the other women laughing
    my love
    I was furious, the dull knife missed and wounded, my mother feeling sorry for the chickens
    —Go get the big knife Judite
    dumping your guts into the pail, throwing your heads away, pulling out your feathers
    —Let go of my letter
    not blushing, pale, make them feel small, hit them, complain to the supervisor who hung around at recess and stole chalk, you were going to pick me up at school with a flurry of matches, burned-out matches scratched for hours on end on the box, you’d go with me on the bus to Bico da Areia not looking at me, not talking to me, maybe Cristina wrote to him because she knows how to write and I don’t, because it wasn’t the way that I, there was more than that, I wanted to talk to you about the almond trees and the blood of the Lamb and I never said anything, talk to you about us in the boardinghouse and about my name gasped out
    —Judite
    making things clear isn’t important, I’m not worried, we’ll get married won’t we, we’ll be happy won’t we, I copied a poem from a book written by a man so I changed everything to make it female and it didn’t come out that way either, maybe Cristina wrote to you and I ask
    —Do you love Cristina, Carlos?
    —What’s wrong with me Carlos?
    —Why not with me Carlos?
    hating her, hating you, hating both of you, grabbing them by the legs and holding them up in the air as my mother helped, no cataracts yet, no hand on my face yet
    —What happened child?
    as we got farther away from Almada the campground, the Jehovah’s Witnesses temple and my father wearing a necktie
    —You sinned you sinned
    I sneaked off with the blood of the Lamb I got from my father, the pine trees
    not pine trees yet, fir trees, pines later
    the river, only the smell of the river that is, just like the smell of an animal lying down and sand quarries and dunes, Santo António da Caparica, São João da Caparica, two-story buildings, houses with outside lights, the bakery where the clerk wouldn’t let me pay
    the words weren’t coming out of his mouth but from around his mouth slugs that I shook off
    —We’ve got plenty of time to settle our accounts, girl
    the Gypsies’ horses snorting in the dark
    if we turn off the lamp in the room at the boardinghouse will you let me kiss you Carlos?
    and you changing places with me and protecting yourself from the mares, the backyards at Bico da Areia, marigolds, pups, if you’d let me take care of you, if you’d marry me, my father appearing from behind the trunk of the walnut tree hanging from his necktie with the twisted face of a hanged man
    —What kind of