Unfriendly gazes walked alongside us. I saw them again in the face of a red-shirted, curly-haired man standing in front of a store that appeared to be the mix of a bakery and a liquor shop. A bicycle mechanic covered by grease inside a bike repair store. An old woman on a stool. I had a faint illusion that the same set of eyes were changing bodies along the way, for the people who carried them in their sockets were different, but the glazed eyeballs darting upon us were not.
I decided to look at the ground while I followed Renato.
He stopped in front of a building halfway across a long and tight staircase. Its walls had been sprinkled with cement, creating a coarse coat of grey. Beside its iron doors, the number seventeen had been written in white ink, and windows could only be seen starting on the second floor. It was like a heavy block of brick and cement with a couple of holes where people could enter or peer outside. It lacked any trace of comfort.
He knocked three times at the iron door, the sound produced by the rattling of the hinges higher than the one that escaped from his knuckles rapping on the iron.
After a couple of seconds, an old woman craned her neck outside the window on the second floor.
“This is a simple house, Emily, and my grandma is a simple, good-hearted woman. You will be safe inside this place.”
A whole minute past before the handle tilted down and the door opened. A hunchback elderly woman with a broad smile and white hair stood in front of us. She gave Renato a hug with only one of her arms, the other holding firmly to a crutch.
“Welcome,” she said, in a weak, sweet voice.
“Oh, thank you,” I said. The fragility of that woman assured me that no evil could come from this home. “Do you speak English?”
“Welcome, welcome,” she replied, gesturing me to go inside.
Renato laughed. “Grandma doesn’t get what you say. I’ve been trying to teach her English but, you know, she’s somewhat stuck to saying ‘welcome.’ Her name is Norma.”
“She’s a warm hostess,” I said, and stepped into the building.
The first floor was a sort of a garage, full of tools. Two rusty bicycles, a surfboard, old shoes, a heap of boxes, and a wooden table with many tools strewn on it. The whole extension of the floor was smaller than a regular living room in the US. We walked past it over to a new set of steps that would take us to the second floor.
It was then that I heard the din coming from outside. Pang, pang.
“What’s that sound?” I asked Renato.
“Gunshots,” he said. “We better keep away from the windows.”
Chapter 12
On the second floor of Norma’s sprinkled cement house was a living room attached to a small kitchen. A sofa, a television hack, and a dinner table brawled for supremacy in the same tight space. A rickety fan rotated its blades to even out the heat, squeaking on every bounce, and the staircase, compressed between the wall and the sofa, led to Norma’s bedroom on the third floor.
How strong did her elderly knees have to be to constantly endure so many steps? Renato helped his grandma climb up from the ground floor. She shoved her grandson away, and changing her mind, cursed in Portuguese, as only a lucid and independent elderly woman would.
I watched the scene unfold, terrified. That fragile hunchback juggled herself between stairs and a crutch, on the edge of collapsing.
Renato chuckled and winked at me. He paid so much respect for his grandma that not even a volley of curses would upset him. Based entirely on her voice intonation, I would bet she had just cussed lovely grandma curses, which are somewhat universal, regardless of the language. My grandma did that a lot in her latest years: “you better mind your own business, otherwise, bless your little heart,” and “stop acting like you are my doctor. He is a fine son of a biscuit, while you, my dear, are not,” or even “this damn syrup tastes like horse piss. Pour some liquor over it to make it bearable, cutie.”
Norma slouched on her sofa to watch TV, her stick propped up on her varicose legs, and I suddenly figured out that anywhere inside that room was just too close to the window. In front of Norma’s square building, across the narrow stair-street, stood a half finished home crowded with a big family that shielded us from any gunshot coming from behind it. But a bullet could still find us inside. It only had to be shot from a diagonal angle, either left or right. Had that been the case, the shot would lodge in the stairs on the third floor or, opposite to it across the room, in the kitchen sink.
I avoided walking around, but after a while no more gunshots were heard. They stopped after the seventh.
Once my breathing went back to normal, my mind raced: what was I doing inside this house? I had been carried around by a stranger due to some kind of body-numbness that made me unable to react. And that feeling was enlarged by the absense of colors that pervaded the house’s faulty walls.
I needed to take action. I wanted more answers. It was time to have them.
“You need to tell me what’s going on, Renato.” I said, after a long breath.
“We’re safe in here. Please, have seat.” Renato replied, then he offered me a cup of water.
I took it, gladly. We had spent so much time exposed to the heat
