.:. The Glass Eye ‘Mom! Mom!’ the boy yelled. ‘My eye’s fallen out!’ Not quite understanding the unexpected call, Old Zica makes her way to the living-room in a fright. It was a grotesque scene: on his feet, the boy held his right eyeball with one hand, and on the tip of his toes, hopped at each cry for help. ‘My eye, mom! Oh, dear! I sneezed and my eye popped out. Please, mom, help me!’ Pedro insisted, in a state of devastation. ‘Easy, son.’ The teenager, with his palm turned upwards, as if making a plea, and holding his eye hanging loose out of its socket, consummated a new stage of suffering in that family – since the accident at school, when a friend had hit him with castanets during the break, they had been fighting the prognosis of partial invalidity. With time, however, the mother noticed her short, skinny son, the couple’s youngest, was gradually losing his sight. ‘The impact of the castanets, mam, has damaged the anterior pole of the eye, altering the internal pressure, staining the cornea; the iris is damaged and the lens of the eye has been dislocated.’ Old Zica had reprised, countless times, the explanation the duty doctor had given the day after the accident. The doctors said they had taken too long to take the boy to a specialist, and besides the natural suffering the fatality had caused, the poor mother still felt, deep inside her, certain regret for taking so long before seeking medical assistance... Out of the trance, of the temporary reality-shutdown and trying not to fall apart, the mother instinctively realised the severity of the misfortune. In an attitude between desperation and over protection, maybe too late, the mother gently protects her son’s eye with the gauze and takes him to the hospital, accompanied by her husband and her other son. At the hospital, the doctors tried to rebuild his eyeball structures, but the damaged eye didn’t resist, had collapsed. The gradual loss of sight, observed since the day of the accident, triggered a serious physical defect. The traumatic, invasive surgery, although expected, was only the closure of atonement, for the singularity of the ocular lesion, as if the natural limitations were not enough, gave the boy the terrible nick-name of ‘Cross-eyes’ – an epithet that dogged him since the first day after the irreversibility of his visual acuity was confirmed, when he was obliged to wear the eyepatch. At that moment, however, motionlessly gazing at the ceiling of the operating theatre, Pedro, awaiting the operation that would remove the dead part of his body, worthy of funereal honours, stood still and, holding Old Zica’s hand, found strength to remain unperturbed and confident. The eye was removed. On Pedro’s face remained a hollow; his mind, beside the uncertainties, the need to bury the organ removed. The family gathers and decides to bury the boy’s eye in the one place they have some land for the dead – next to the graves of their other loved ones: Pedro’s grandfather, grandmother, one uncle and two cousins. They provide for the cleaning of the mausoleum, settle the charges due, paint the walls and file in a procession towards the funeral. In the cemetry, the hired priest celebrates the funeral Mass. Next, they open the family’s deposit. Clear the graves of their dead relatives and prepare for the burial. The patriarch’s coffin appears; by its side, two other coffins adorn the mausoleum. Cross-eyes takes his eyeball from his pocket and places it in the grave, above his grandfather’s coffin. The grandmothers rumble some litanies. Fabbio makes the sign of the cross thrice, and Old Zica, consoled on her husband’s arm, comments to everyone: ‘My dream of seeing my son become an army officer is over!’ Many other dreams ceased there. The ceremony buried the matter, but the duality is complemented by the incorporeal. One by one, they disappeared. Cross-eyed decided to stay. Inside the sepulchre, guarded now by the layer of concrete, the eye remained open, turned upward, making out, in the blackness of death, the plenitude of the interrupted life. Until that instant, Cross-eyes hadn’t reflected on life. Nevertheless, the moments of affliction he was and would still be going through, due to the fatality, made him lose confidence and his days, once grafted with delights galore, seemed inexpressive, powerless. Joy seemed to him a distant thing – despite the notoriety caused by the eyepatch, turning him into the pirate of the neighbourhood and at school, he yearned for the ocular prosthesis which would minimally re-establish his lost looks. The delay proved worthlike. With state-of-the-art prosthesis, in a more subtle shape, the results were surprising – no one unaware of the boy’s circumstances at a glance would realise Pedro’s physical limitation. Nonetheless, life, in its most imponderable days of punctual persecution, reserved new surprises for that family. Monday. Eight in the morning. Two police cars pull up outside Pupilas de Outono Street, number 33. Old Zica answers the bell: ‘Good morning, madam! Does this belong to your son, by any chance?’ ‘Oh, lord, that’s wonderful! It’s his! We’ve been desperate since Friday. Thank you! My son took off the prosthesis to take a shower at school, after playing soccer with some friends; when he got back, someone had taken his eye, as a prank. ‘I see,’ the police officer answered. Not paying attention to the officer’s comment, Old Zica went on: ‘They called from school saying where his friends had left the prosthesis. The principal was informed by an anonymous call and contacted me. We went to the school, searched all over the place, but we didn’t find it. He was beside himself with sadness. I’m so glad you have found it...’ ‘We are sorry to inform you, madam, but we have also found, aside from the eye, the body of a girl in the bathroom, all bloody and dead. And your son’s eye is the only clue we’ve got. We need to take him for questioning. He’s the prime suspect.’ ‘No! My son hasn’t killed anyone...’ the mother reacted. ‘We have a warrant, madam, and we need to come in.’ ‘He is still asleep. Please, don’t do this...’ The officers come into the house and take Cross-eyes to the police station. The rumours in the vicinity showed pleasure depicted on the faces of unknown people and a few neighbours. On the other hand, Pedro’s friends and relatives, informed of the situation, proved surprised and conspicuously displeased, for they believed in the boy’s good character. Pedro was taken for questioning, amidst curious stares, but he wasn’t alone – an entourage followed him to the Police Station in the neighbourhood. At the police station, the questioning got under way: ‘Is this truly yours, boy?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why did you leave the prosthesis at school, then? You do often leave your glass eye around?’ ‘I didn’t leave it around, inspector! They hid it from me. Could you give it back, please? I need to use my prosthesis.’ ‘Who killed the girl?’ asked another policeman. At the same moment he hands the prosthesis to his superior. Cross-eyes takes his eye in hand. He looks back at the inspector and asks him permission to go and wash it in the toilet. The man roughly interrupts: ‘Wash it here, boy. Officer!’ he says. ‘Bring some water in a bowl. Let’s help the lad. Is it alright with that, buddy?’ he asks, looking at Pedro. The boy unquestioningly stares into the officer’s eyes and answers: ‘Yes, sir.’ The other policeman leaves the room. A few minutes later, he returns with a bowl of water. Pedro, unperturbed by the inspector’s presence, pours some water on the lens, takes a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes the prosthesis and places it in his eye socket. When the replacement is done, everyone looks astonished: the eye is connected differently, seeming to have recorded some information. Cross-eyes shuts his right eye, the healthy one, and from the left eyeball, emerging from the lens, in front of him and the police officers, projected on the wall, the crime scene appears. (Nijair Araújo Pinto) .:. Prática de Tradução de Textos Literários Professor: Mark David Ridd Thiago Casimiro Maia - 10/0129242 Vitor F. P Silva - 09/0135296
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 02:51:01 +0000
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