AS I SAT DOWN under the big old cork tree and the sheep, knowing we’d arrived, scattered across the pasture, I remembered Salomão’s voice. When we were kids I was already bringing the sheep here, and sometimes, when the sun was at its hottest, he would show up by himself, having escaped his mother, so that for an afternoon he ran free with me. We’d catch crickets. I taught him to distinguish between male and female crickets by the number of tails, and I said don’t ever take a female cricket home, because they attract snakes. He was scared to death of snakes, but my warning was useless, because he was just as scared of crickets, male or female. He would never touch one, and to take one home was unthinkable. We’d gather acorns. I taught him the difference between those from cork trees and those from oak trees, explaining that the latter were very bitter and could only be eaten by boars. He nodded and said yes, as if he’d understood, and then he ate both kinds of acorns, with his same rabbit’s teeth and his same naïve and childish expression. At day’s end, we’d sit and look at the sheep, as if looking at a stream, while I chewed on a stalk of sorrel. And each time I yanked a stalk for him, he shook his head as if I’d offered him a red-hot iron. He said that sorrel was bitter and that his mother had told him it was poisonous. Offended, I wouldn’t look at him, and in a harsh voice I’d say good, that leaves more for me, as if it were almost gone, as if the fields around us weren’t full of those tiny yellow flowers.
But the truth that at the time I wouldn’t even confess to myself was that those afternoons filled me with excitement. Neither I nor Salomão played with other children. I didn’t play with other children because there weren’t any at the farmstead, and I never went into town except with my mother to visit the cemetery. He didn’t play with the other children in the town because his mother wouldn’t let him and because the only time he snuck out to play with them, they played a trick on him with nettles: they surrounded him, took off his long johns, and covered him with nettles, and for a week he had to douse his privates with vinegar to relieve the itching and burning. We only played with each other. And we never lost the excitement we shared, I in secret, he without knowing how to hide it. Although I realized that those afternoons were now impossible, I still felt that excitement the last time I saw him, beneath all my sorrow and regret. A repressed, unspoken excitement, sunny like on those distant afternoons, black like on my afternoons today. And I feel like shouting Salomão, Salomão, the way I used to shout, seeing him turn around with his dependable smile. I miss him and I know we can never play again. And all I’d like to do is play. All I’d like is to take him through the fields and explain things to him, while the sheepdog wags her tail, because he’s my cousin and my friend. I feel like shouting Salomão, Salomão, but this has also become impossible, like the earth, like the sun. And those afternoons, so long and so special, are now long and make me die over and over, moment by moment. Like me, my staff leans against the trunk of the big old cork tree. Dropping my jackknife from one hand and the branch I was whittling from the other hand, I look straight at the sun. I think: if the punishment that’s my lot can be contained in me, if I can accept it and somehow hold it inside me, perhaps I’ll be spared further judgments, perhaps I can rest. And all the trees between me and the sky suddenly disappeared, so that it looked perfectly clear and distant. And the sun’s burning slowed into a steady, dull heat. And the world’s voices: the voices of stones, breezes, trees: all the world’s voices fell silent. And where the earth ends in my field of vision, I see a figure slowly take shape. It’s a very large man, walking toward me. He’s a man the size of a house or a haystack. He’s a very large man, looking straight at me and walking very fast. And like a galloping breeze, he’s already near me. He stops. I make out his face. He looks at me. We look at each other. I can’t bear the force of his enormous gaze and instantly, instinctively, turn my head away. Slowly turning back to look, I see he has disappeared. In his place there’s just the swift flight of birds under the sun’s flames, just the agony of the stones and the burning breeze and the trees enduring the day’s fire. I stand up, stick my fingers in the corners of my mouth, press them against my folded tongue, whistle, and say come on dog, and I whistle again. I’ve got to go see Salomão. The sheepdog rounds up the flock, running on both sides of it at the same time. I’ve got to go see Salomão. On the way to the Mount of Olives, I prod the lagging sheep with my staff. I’ve got to go see Salomão.
THE HAMMER IN SALOMÃO’S HAND began to tremble. On the street the devil, almost leaning against the wall, kept smiling. And Salomão struck the wall with the hammer half a dozen times, since that was how many times it took to make the right-sized hole for the window. And not one piece of rubble hit the devil, nor did one speck of dust disrupt the perfect harmony of his clean shirt, his pleated trousers, and his smile. Standing there balancing the hammer, with his left hand grasping the handle and his right hand near the head, Salomão gazed at the devil. With the visor of his cap sticking out from between the dull tips of his horns, casting a shadow so small it didn’t cover his eyes, the devil smiled and gazed at Salomão. And everything he said, and that Salomão understood, wasn’t in words. Everything he said was in that steady gaze, in that tempting smile. That fixed gaze full of hazy shapes, ripping through Salomão and rummaging inside him. That smile telling him, through vaguely curved lips, through an imperceptible and obvious grimace, your wife is cheating on you; when you look and think you know what she’s thinking, you don’t know what she’s thinking, you don’t know who you’re looking at; your wife is cheating on you and you’re alone, deceived, and everyone’s laughing at you. Salomão lowered his eyes and saw his wife walking through the kitchen, he remembered and envisioned his wife walking through the kitchen, he looking at her and she being different. When Salomão raised his head, he saw the devil going away, but his smile and gaze were still in front of him, inside him. Master Rafael and the apprentice arrived with the window. As if he were still in a daze, Salomão held the chisel and hit it with the carpenter’s hammer to make the hole match the lines. Master Rafael and the apprentice began to anchor the window in the wall. Salomão apologized and said he had to leave. Master Rafael told him to have a glass of red wine and called the blind prostitute. Salomão no longer heard. The blind prostitute entered the kitchen without knowing or guessing why they’d called her. Master Rafael leaned out the window and saw Salomão disappearing down the street.