by José Lins Do
Rego Translated
By David Mallinson
Chapter 1
I was four years old when my mother died. I was asleep in my bedroom
when, in the early hours of the morning, I was woken up by an enormous uproar
throughout the house. There was shouting and yelling and people running
everywhere. My father's bedroom was full of people I had never seen before. I
ran in there and I saw my mother stretched out on the floor and my father lying
on top of her wailing like a madman. People were standing there watching
the scene as if they were watching some kind of show. I saw that my mother was
covered in blood, and I ran to kiss her, but someone grabbed my arm and held me
back. I began to cry and did what I could to set myself free. But they would
not let go of me. A man arrived with some policemen and ordered everyone to get
out. Only the policemen were allowed to stay, nobody else.
They took me downstairs where people were making all sorts of comments
about what had happened. My father's servant, white as a sheet, told everyone
how he had been asleep when he had heard the sound of gunshots from the first
floor. Running upstairs he had seen my father, still with the gun in his hand,
and my mother covered in blood. 'The boss killed Dona Clarisse!' he said.
Nobody could understand it.
I felt a desperate desire to be with my parents, to go and hug and kiss
my mother. But her bedroom door was shut, and the serious looking man who gave
the orders would not allow anyone in. The servant and the nurse, they said, were
in there being interrogated. Whatever happened next I can hardly remember.
That evening the servant read the newspapers to the people gathered in
the kitchen. On the front page were big pictures of my mother and my father. I
listened to him reading as if he were reading a fairy story. Already the events
of the morning seemed far away, and the story interested me like any other
story, as if the protagonists were others, and not my parents. But when I saw a
picture in one of the papers of my mother stretched out on the floor, with her
hair loose and her mouth wide open, I cried my heart out. They took me out to
the square near our house where there were other little boys and I played with
them the whole evening. The maids carried on with their talk about my parents
but I no longer paid them any attention, distracted by my toys and my friends.
It was at bed-time that I really missed my mother. The house was empty
and the door to her room was shut. One policeman had stayed behind to keep an
eye on things. Other maids from the neighbourhood wanted to come to our house
and get the gossip, but the policeman sent them on their way. They put me to
bed, alone, but I could not sleep. I shut my eyes, but I was missing something.
My mind churned over the events of the day. Then I began to weep softly into my
pillow, the stifled cry of a little boy who was afraid to cry.
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