The Glass Eye
.:.
‘Mom! Mom.’ The boy yelled. ‘My eye’s fallen!’
Quite uncertain regarding the unexpected call, Mrs. Zica, scared, made way till the living room. It was a grotesque scene: upstanding, the boy held his right eyeball with one hand, and on the tip of his toes, hopped by each cry for help. ‘My eye, mom! Oh, God! I sneezed and the eye popped out. Please, mom, help me!’ Pedro insisted, devastated.
‘Ease, my son.’ The teenager, with his hand palmed upwards, as making plea, and holding the eye loose out of its socket, consummated a new stage of the suffering in that family – since the accident at school, when a friend had hit him with some castanets during the class break, they fought the prognosis of the partial invalidity. With time, however, the mother noticed the short, skinny son, the couple’s youngest, gradually losing sight.
‘The castanets impact, mam, has damaged the anterior pole of the eye, altering the interior pressure, staining the cornea; the iris is damaged and the eye lens have been dislocated.’
Mrs. Zica had reprised, uncountable times, the explanation given by the doctor on duty the day after the lesion. The doctors said they took too long to take the boy to a specialist, and beside the natural suffering brought by the fatality, the poor mother still felt, deep inside of her, certain regret for taking so long before seeking medical attendance... Out of the trance, of the temporary reality-shutdown and trying not to break apart, the mother instinctively realised the severity of the misfortune. In an attitude between desperation and excessive 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, collapsing.
The gradual loss of sight, observed since the day of the accident, triggered a big physical defect. The traumatic, invasive surgery, despite expected, was only the atonement close-up, for the singularity of the ocular lesion gave the boy, as if the natural limitations were not enough, the terrible nick-name of ‘Cross-eyed’ – issue that followed him since the first day after his visual acuity irreversibility was confirmed, when he was bid to wear the eyepatch. On that moment, however, motionlessly gazing at the ceiling of the operating theatre, Pedro, awaiting the surgery that would remove the dead part of his body, befit for worthy funereal honours, stood still and, holding Mrs. Zica’s hand, found strength to keep undisturbed and confident.
The eye was removed. On Pedro’s face rested a hollow; in his mind, beside uncertainties, the necessity for burying the removed organ.
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 other loved ones: Pedro’s grandfather, grandmother, one uncle and two cousins. They provide the cleaning of the edification, settle tax debts, paint the walls and parade towards the funeral.
At the graveyard, 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 garnish the mausoleum. Cross-eyed picks his eyeball from his pocket and places it in the grave, over his grandfather’s coffin. The grandmothers rehear some litanies. Fabbio makes the sign of the cross thrice, and Mrs. Zica, consoled by her husband’s arms, comments among everyone: ‘my dream of watching my son become an army officer is over!’
Many other dreams ceased there. The ceremony buried the matter, but the duality complements itself in the immaterial.
One by one, they disappeared. Cross-eyed decided to stay. Inside the sepulchre, now guarded by the layer of concrete, the eye remained open, turned upside, making out, in the blackness of death, the plenitude of the interrupted life.
Until that instant, Cross-eyed hadn’t reflected about life. Nevertheless, the affliction moments he was and would still be going through, due to the fatality, made him lose confidence and his days, once grafted with many delights, 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 school, he yearned for the ocular prosthesis which would re-establish minimally his lost aesthetic.
The lingering proved its value. With prosthesis on real models, in a more subtle shape, the results were surprising – who didn’t knew the boy’s reality would, by an non-investigative look, 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 come to Pupilas de Outono Street, number 33. Mrs. Zica answers the bell ring: ‘Good morning, lady! Does this belong to you son, by chance?’
‘Oh, lord, that’s wonderful! It’s his! We were 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 was back, someone took his eye, for some prank. ‘I see.’ The police officer answered.
Not paying attention to the officer’s comment, Mrs. Zica kept on: ‘They called from the school saying where his friends 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 crazy with sadness. It’s so good you have found it...’
‘We are sorry to inform, lady, but we 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 main suspect.’
‘No! My son didn’t kill anyone...’ The mother reacted. ‘We have a warrant, lady, and we need to come in.’
‘He is still asleep, please, don’t do this...’
The officers come into the house and take Cross-eyed 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 side, Pedro’s friends and relatives, informed of the situation, revealed themselves surprised and conspicuously displeased, for they believed on 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 District of the neighbourhood.
In the police station, the questioning took place: ‘Is this truly yours, boy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you leave the prosthesis at school, then? Is it common, leaving 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-eyed takes his eye in hand. He looks back to the inspector and asks him permission to go wash it in the bathroom. 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 this way, buddy?’ He asks, looking at Pedro. The little one, unquestioning, stares into the eyes of the officer and answers: ‘Yes, sir.’
The other policeman leaves the room. A few minutes later, he returns with a bowl of water. Pedro, carelessly of the inspector’s presence, pours some water on the lens, picks a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes the prosthesis and places it in the ocular globe. When the placement is done, everyone looks astonished: the eye is connected differently, seeming to have recorded some information. Cross-eyed 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.
Créditos:
Desde já, meus agradecimentos aos amigos Thiago e Vitor, pela gentileza da tradução.
Prática de Tradução de Textos Literários
(Universidade de Brasília - UnB)
Professor: Mark David Ridd
Thiago Casimiro Maia - 10/0129242
Vitor F. P Silva - 09/0135296
.:.