If I Close My Eyes Now Read Online Free PDF Page A

still-drowsy wives would awaken them, and they would leave beneath a sky as dark as the one they had left the evening before, their stomachs lined with the coffee and bread and margarine they had eaten standing up in the kitchen, taking with them their thermos and tin lunch boxes prepared the night before, walking along paved streets damp from the morning mist that formed bright haloes round the still-lit iron street lamps, even before the night-workers in the textile factory had finished their shift.
    Paulo waited, leaning on his bike handlebars, next to the low wall outside one of these houses, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was growing impatient, staring at the window of Eduardo’s bedroom. Minutes went by without any indication that he had managed to wake his friend.
    He repeated their secret sign, louder this time. A long whistle, then four calls. No luck again.
    The thin mist of April dawns drifted down from the dark mountains encircling the town. The wispy veil shifted above his head, occasionally clearing to show patches of starry sky.
    He propped his bike up and climbed over the wall, avoiding the gate that might creak and wake the adults. He crossed the garden in a few strides. The flowerbeds, planted in between narrow paths decorated with fragments of coloured tiles, were enclosed by cement borders whitewashed to keep off ants. The only tall plant, a rose bush that twined its way round an iron support like the spokes of a parasol, was probably left behind by the railway-worker’s family who had lived here before. In the two years she had been in the house,Eduardo’s mother had planted only small plants with feminine names that Paulo did not recognize, each one in a bed of similar colours and shapes, creating delicate clusters.
    The same careful organizing hand was obvious inside the house. Shiny furniture smelling of peroba oil, decorated with crocheted squares she herself had made. In the oven there was always something for Eduardo to eat, whenever he felt a pang of hunger. Curtains on the windows. Doors with proper latches. Lengths of cloth, paper patterns striped with chalk and unfinished outfits for clients folded and stacked on the Formica table beside the always oiled sewing machine. The smell of sweet sedge in the bedlinen. Floors waxed and polished every Saturday. A feeling of solidity and order that Paulo could sense but not properly define, as happened with so much all around him.
    He often thought he would like to live in a place like this: somewhere that was always clean, where someone would be waiting when he came home from school with a freshly cooked, still-hot meal, that he would eat sitting at the table while his mother or someone else asked him about what he had been taught that morning. In the afternoon, between attending to her customers, his mother would bring a piece of freshly baked cake to his bedroom, with a glass of milk. What would the smell of cake baked at home be like? What would warm cake baked at home taste like?
    Rubbish. He didn’t even like cake. He was free to eat or not to eat whatever food the cook left in the pans on their stove. He did his schoolwork and homework out of interest, and to learn new things. He had a bath whenever he felt like it: oftenin hot weather, rarely when it was cold. He changed or kept clothes on as he wished. If his mother were alive like Eduardo’s, he wouldn’t have the same freedom. Still less to come and go as he pleased. At any time. Or almost any time: he was not allowed to stay out late at night. But when his father and Antonio were sleeping at the brothel, he didn’t have to worry. Like tonight.
    Standing directly beneath the window he whistled and imitated the bird call once more. Once. Twice. As he was repeating the call for a third time, Eduardo appeared, in his blue-and-grey-striped pyjamas, done up to the neck.
    ‘What’s going on, Paulo? What time is it?’
    ‘After midnight.’
    ‘What’s the matter with your