By the Rivers of Babylon by Antonio Lobo Antunes

Author:Antonio Lobo Antunes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2023-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

29 March 2007

Now that he no longer wanted anything and everything was a matter of indifference to him, there was no village and no Lisbon, there was only a fly perched somewhere between his face and his hand rubbing its slender legs together, and he needed nothing at all apart from that fly, a companion, a colleague, he was afraid the fly might leave him, he felt like asking it

—Stay with me

because he wasn’t interested in his visitors, just as he wasn’t interested in what had been or what the future might hold, years in a provincial house collapsing stone by stone behind the ivy, the fly on one of his eyelids now and the fly’s presence consoled him as something that might at least stay with him

—He seems to sleep more and more

and he wasn’t sleeping, he was watching time, even though time didn’t move and his organs didn’t move, his brain was probably still working, though, because he could see himself running along beneath the April rain heading somewhere or other or writing to God at Christmas and God replying, although when it came to the electric train set, God delegated his words to his grandmother

—God thinks it’s very expensive

and he was amazed that God should know about prices and keep accounts like her in a school notebook with, on the cover, a little girl in braids playing with a hoop and, on the back, the multiplication table, the fly exchanged his eyelid for the washbasin, still energetically rubbing its legs together, and the little girl all night

—Bread, bread

underneath the balcony, stopping them from sleeping with her monotonous prayer until his grandmother finally handed her a piece of bread, which the girl continued to gaze at without accepting, she would hide among the fig trees and return at dusk, she wasn’t just underneath the balcony, she was in the chicken run, in the shed, in what had once been the winery, and beyond her were vestiges of other people, not the old ladies in their shawls but silhouettes moving noiselessly about in the bushes, his grandmother pointing to one of them

—My godfather

drinking water from the bucket at the well

—You never really took any notice of me, Ofélia

with the scar from a knife fight on his face and one eyetooth protruding from under his lip

—I am an eyetooth

while bits of storks’ nests dribbled down the chimney, when his grandfather died he was touched to see the objects he had kept on his bedside table, especially the rabbit’s foot, meant to bring luck to the bedroom, the mirror not knowing what to do

—Now what am I supposed to reflect?

and it was reflecting him, now fat now thin, depending on the quality of the glass, him examining himself

—Good afternoon, Antoninho

the rabbit’s foot on the key ring, him imagining what it might open and afraid of turning the key in the lock, his grandfather would probably be there behind the lock

—Haven’t you noticed, I’m not here anymore?

hiding a slipper under the chest

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