However long and hard he thought about it, he could never have pinpointed the exact day on which the wind deposited inside him that tiny grain of pollen. Nor had he noticed—he was convinced of this, although again he couldn’t be absolutely sure—when, precisely, germination began. Something, though, had slowly and gradually put down invisible but energetic, roots, which had grown and, with each passing day, taken an ever firmer hold. Meanwhile, he still couldn’t see the plant, or perhaps he simply wasn’t looking. Only when there was nothing else around him, and it stood silhouetted against the sky as tall as a tree, plunging everything into darkness (or, who knows, perhaps protecting everything with the guarantee of its shadow), only then did old Alves Firmino face it full on. And he felt neither surprise nor fear, only a certain bitterness. The bitterness of one who is allowed to take shelter somewhere, but does so because he has no alternative, since, outside, there is only either scalding sun or freezing cold.
None of this was his fault. At sixty-five, Alves Firmino was a robust old man, his skin coarsened by fair weather and foul, especially the latter, because, for some people, the winter always lasts longer than the summer. He dreaded the bad weather but was able to withstand it nonetheless. His wife, however, had been an invalid for six years and would now never be able to leave her bed. This was the most important thing. Indeed, it went from being important to disastrous on the day he had his first heart attack, which left him poised between life and death.
“Be careful, my friend; these are treacherous illnesses,” the doctor told him when he declared him out of danger. And he had clapped him on the back with that phoney air of human sympathy, a kind of superficial vertical closeness that always keeps a safe distance, a useful way of disguising the gulf between your two situations. “Don’t tire yourself; that’s the best treatment. And come and see me again in a month.”
Don’t tire yourself. Firmino felt like laughing or possibly crying, a desire to turn his back on life and carry on regardless. But he couldn’t carry on regardless. He had to keep looking back at his bedridden wife endlessly making the crocheted lace that the seamstress who lived upstairs bought from her by the yard; gazing at him with those sad, meek eyes of hers, so terribly fearful and sometimes downright terrified. She had been like that for six years now. With her right leg bent, her left leg straight, and her upper body supported by two pillows. She was small and frail and as wrinkled as a dry, frightened leaf, her eyes fixed on the clock if he was even a quarter of an hour late arriving home from the shop where he worked as an accounts clerk in the afternoons. When he came through the door feeling tired (lately, he did get very tired), the home help would immediately stop work, leaving him to serve supper to the patient, get her ready for the night, and wash the dishes. He also had to talk to her, although that was rather a pleasant task, a kind of diary in which he gave her an account of the day’s events. She would listen with the troubling intensity of someone cut off from the world, eager to know everything, seizing hold of the most insignificant details, like the physical description of some person he had spoken to, their age, or the exact time something happened.
How could he, Firmino, rest? How could he take good care of himself if he had to care for her? And what if he were to die first, leaving her alone? What would happen then?
When he went to see the doctor a month later and explained his situation, the doctor listened to him first attentively, then wearily, and finally with evident irritation. Firmino had no family; he and his wife were quite alone, with no siblings and no children. The doctor nodded, occasionally saying “yes, yes,” or interrupting him—one moment, my friend—to answer the phone. “Go on, go on, but I am in a bit of a hurry, you know. Carry on though…” And he made a great show of looking at his watch. His waiting room was full of other patients, and he wanted to have an early supper so that he could get to the cinema in time to watch a documentary he was excited to see. His wife had called a short time before to remind him, “You’ve done it before, haven’t you? I mean, frankly, you do have a right to a private life. It’s really too much.” She was right, poor thing; it really was too much. They never went anywhere together… The case of the man sitting opposite him, eyes downcast, was indeed very sad, but what could he do? He was only a doctor… He could put in a word with a colleague to see if the wife could be moved into a residential home? “Ah, you don’t want that…have you never considered it?” Sorry, he had misunderstood; he thought this was precisely what he did want. In that case…
Firmino’s monotonous voice droned on, listing all his woes, all his worries. It seemed to him that there must be some solution, quite what he didn’t know, but surely the doctor must know…
“I’m afraid I don’t understand… I mentioned the possibility of putting your wife in a home—which won’t be easy, of course, but we could try—and you tell me you don’t want that. In that case, there’s nothing more I can do for you. I’m genuinely sorry, but I can’t. My job is to prescribe, not to get involved in the lives of my patients. Keep taking the pills and watching your diet… And I hope you feel better soon. Alda, send in the next patient!”
“Goodbye, Doctor, and forgive me…”
But the doctor didn’t hear him. He had closed the door.
Firmino made his slow, grim way back down the stairs. He had probably explained himself badly. Because there must be a solution. Put her in a home, the doctor had said. Put her in a home?
It was perhaps on that day or on one of the following days that the grain of pollen began to germinate. Meanwhile, he said he was feeling much better and studied every other possible solution, apart from that one. No, he didn’t study them, he looked for them, but found none, which was quite a different matter. He systematically set that solution to one side. He didn’t want to think about it. Perhaps because he knew it was the only one available and felt afraid. Yes, perhaps that was why.
If he were to die suddenly—and the doctor hadn’t held out much hope, especially given the life he led—what would become of his wife, alone in bed, with her only source of income her crocheted lace? There had to be a solution, there must be. There were plenty of other men and women around them… People who, years before, had called themselves their friends… “Look, my friend, if I can ever be of any help, just let me know…” But when he went looking for them, as he had on several occasions, none of them were there. Time was tight, life was hard, their children, their grandchildren, sickness…the usual spiel. And then total silence. “Senhor A is away… Senhor B has just this minute gone out… Senhor C won’t be here for supper…” A city so full of people, people who issue orders and others who receive orders and issue them in turn; people he knew and others he had never seen; people who go to mass and are good people; people who don’t go to church because they, too, are good people, the ones who don’t go at all; so many identical men, his brothers. His brothers! Was it really possible that no one would make an effort to understand, that no one would lend him a hand? “Lie down and die, old man, and do so safe in the knowledge that she won’t starve, won’t be left alone, won’t be sent to a home…” That was all he wanted, so little, but no one would come to him and say this, and he knew it. People walked along, eyes front, never looking to right or left, colliding with other people also walking straight ahead. They bumped into each other, became squashed together, but they never paused to look. This was what life was like. Life as people understood it. They all had somewhere to go and that was where they were going, striding down the street at top speed. Only he felt lost, only he couldn’t find the way home to his street, only he didn’t know which street it was, only he had no street.
A sudden, unexpected thought occurred to him: Why didn’t they leave together, side by side? That was the solution, the only one, and so easy too. The tree was beginning to cast its shadow, and, from a distance, that shadow looked like an irresistible patch of peace and coolness.
He continued to resist though. He kept postponing it. Next week, it was always next week. There’s time; there was always time. Why rush things? Now that he had looked it in the eye, it felt to him like a close, quiet, almost friendly presence. It wouldn’t avoid him, it wouldn’t offer any excuses, it wouldn’t walk straight past him. It was standing there, waiting for him.
His wife thought he seemed somehow different. She was so accustomed to seeing him and only him that she immediately noticed any change. What was wrong? Was he feeling worse? And he knew she was worried, terrified of being left alone; of him being the first to leave; of her missing the train and being left at the station, with no one to help her, alone and abandoned like an old, forgotten suitcase.
That morning, Firmino woke to find his feet badly swollen and his heartbeat irregular. He could wait no longer; it had to be today. He was a simple man, ill-prepared for such desperate measures, and yet life was obliging him to take such measures without giving him time to prepare himself and get used to the idea. It had to be today. Tomorrow it might be too late.
He stayed at home that day, claiming he had a headache. Now and then, he would press his hand to his forehead to show he was telling the truth, but she kept eyeing him suspiciously. “You swear that’s all it is?” “Of course, what else would it be?”
He spent the afternoon slouching around in his slippers, tidying drawers, trying to bring a little order to everything. Then he warmed up the evening soup, made a dish of tomato rice, poured his wife a little more wine than usual. She said, “That’s too much, my dear, you’ll get me tipsy…” “Just a drop more to cheer you up…” He was sure that, after supper, she would fall into a deep sleep, as she usually did. When he saw her eyelids droop, her scrawny chin sinking onto her chest, he sat and looked at her. Poor old thing. She would forgive him, wouldn’t she? This was the only way out, there was no other…
He stood up and went into the kitchen to fetch the portable stove he had just filled with coal. Then he closed the bedroom door, sealed it as best he could, and waited.
It was eight in the morning when the seamstress from upstairs rang the doorbell. She had some urgent work for his wife to do and needed to give it to her before she went shopping. When no one answered, she rang again, and again. She found this odd, because both husband and wife were light sleepers and usually awake by seven. She then phoned the police.
Firmino and his wife were taken to hospital.
The old man was dead on arrival. His heart had given out. The tree had cast too brief a shadow, only long enough to reach him. His invalid wife survived.