you never saw , but only heard : the sound of their every movement , every groan , every smashed glass , every bowel . The centrifugal pull of the city , the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together was compounded by the intimacy and enclosure of the apartment block , piling us magnificently one on top of the other until the end ... ‘ Saramago ! Saramago !’ My vest stuck to my back . I hadn ’ t changed it in three days and I stank . I should have taken a shower that morning , but I was running late so I just ran , ran , ran through the streets of Liberdade in my trainers , trailing my bag of tools and paints behind me . I went to the open window to breathe in the air , thick air that poured slowly into the hollows of my cheeks , touching the back of my throat and my lungs and gathering in the dip of my belly button , drowned in my own sweat , and the sweating air and the steam coming from beneath the bathroom door . Hanging outside the window , suspended high above the streets below was a green canary in a cage . Scattered over the window ledge were all kinds of nuts : little emerald pistachios hidden inside their shells , huge polished Brazil nuts and the dry husks of monkey nuts . On the pavement twenty-three floors below , there were empty shells and sometimes whole nuts , lapped up by stray dogs and pink vultures with labial heads . My ears popped as I let in the sound from outside . There was a moment of relief as the shower stopped and at last out came Saramago . He wore a towel wrapped around his waist underneath a brown belly which was papery and thin . He left a trail of water around his feet . ‘ What do you need doing ? I ’ m sorry for coming in like this ,’ I asked , gesturing towards the closed door . ‘ It is ok . It is time I got this done . There is , how to say ? Mould . Please paint over it . I have wanted this done for a long time . This was a long time coming , my friend .’ He spoke to me in broken English that betrayed his paulistino origins . He liked to talk in English . He liked the exotic sound of his voice as it fell off his tongue , and he felt as though it was no longer he , Saramago , talking but another who had taken over his body until he could no longer hear himself . He could speak with freedom . He sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter . His shoulders drooped around his chest as he slowly turned his fragile neck to observe me . I took out a tin of white paint from my bag , and opened it in just the same way as I had done the day before . The rust flaked into the pool of paint inside . The steam from the bathroom had lifted the plaster from the wall which fell away with each paint stroke . I spent the afternoon painting over the growing blooms of damp and spiralling , downy white mildew . Saramago disappeared into the bathroom , and came out wearing a white shirt and trousers cropped much too high above his ankles . He went to the window and fed a nut through the bars of the cage to his canary . Years ago he had worked on a cashew farm in the vast lands of the north . One day he left and never went back . Now he wrote songs , jingles for the radio station down the road . (‘ It was a dream and nothing more !’) He went there twice a month to record songs that would be played over and over to the 200 listeners of 84.5 FM Radio Amor Sem Fim , at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon . After he would come home , take a shower and feed his canary . ‘ Have you ever seen the woman who lives in number 573 ?’ he asked me . ‘ No , I can ’ t say I have .’ ‘ She is a real beauty .’ He had passed her in the hall six months before , and followed her closely . He recognised her dark eyes , her slight reserved frame . ‘ Would you do something for me ? Take this package up to her room when you are done . It would make me happy to know she got it .’ His voice was filled with saudade , a slow and carefully reasoned longing . Such a feeling often occurs for someone in the present for whom you feel some kind of irreparable loss for the past or for the future . There is no real translation for it in English . It is inexpressible . Yet even his broken English could convey the sense , if not the word itself . I left at 5pm , taking with me the package , a thick envelope tied with string . Inside the lift stood a young Japanese couple , laughing at a video on a mobile phone . The numbers lit up for two floors , stopping for them to get out . Ting . The doors stayed open too long before closing again , eclipsing the couple before me as they disappeared down the long corridor . The lift rose once more and the door opened onto the twenty-sixth floor . Ting . The corridor was long and carpeted in pink . I knocked on room 573 as a teenage boy leaning against a low table eyed me carefully . A woman answered the door , with strong looking arms and a thick waist wrapped in a Japanese linen apron . She must have been in the middle of cooking because her hands were covered in dough , and she left a handprint of flour on the door handle . ‘ I have been asked to give you this . Saramago sent me .’ She put her hand to her cheek , smudging dough across her face . ‘ What is this ?’ She replied , surprised , taking the package and ushering me inside . She had the same kitchen counter with a metal stool as all the other flats . On the wall ticked a loud Coca-Cola clock . Tick . Tick . Tick . She hadn ’ t lived here long , and had taken the place of a girl who had moved into her boyfriend ’ s room next door six months earlier . She had left behind a large green plant in a pot , too heavy to move , sitting on a pile of damp newspapers , and a large glass coffee table scattered with out of date TV magazines , covered with the faces and breasts of soap opera stars . She began to make coffee , forgetting about the dough all over her hands and coating everything with flour . ‘ Where is he ?’ she said . ‘ He lives three floors down .’ Tick . Tick . Tick . The room was hot . ‘ Can I get you a cup of coffee ?’ ‘ Please .’ ‘ I saw him a few months ago , but thought it couldn ’ t have been him .’ She clattered some cups as the coffee bubbled and steam rushed out of the pot . She poured a little into a cup for me , and I took a sip . The coffee was hot . Hisako ; the long-lived child . Her name was Hisako and she made hot coffee . She told me how her grand-mother had moved here from Japan in 1928 . ‘ São Paulo needs more Japanese !’ ( she had read in the Osaka Mainichi Shinbun ), so she and thousands of others sailed happily into Rio de Janeiro ’ s Guanabara Bay with Sugarloaf gorgeously poised overhead . She had worked in the sushi restaurant downstairs for three months . The place was huge and red with coloured globes hung low from the ceiling over the tables . Flat fish tanks lined the walls filled with silver and orange coy carp and whiskered cat fish and grotesque shrimps crawling over pale blue stones and golden treasure chests . At night , it transformed into a karaoke bar and disco , when the lights and mirror balls would shine into the fish tanks , illuminating the red bodies of the lobsters as they pressed their faces to the glass . She worked late , and when she wasn ’ t working she could hear the people going in and out , their voices carried on the up-draught of the building to her window . Saramago heard these same voices . She sipped from her coffee , and sat on the arm of the chair in the sitting room . Taking the package , she untied the string from the paper . The cup fell out of her hands , splitting in two on the floor .
*
I knocked on the door before easily pushing it open . The floor was covered in wet foot prints . Beneath the window , Saramago lay slumped , nut shells scattered around his body . The birdcage flapped open outside . His face and throat were swollen , grotesquely distorting his features and grey , yet still warm , bathed in the sunlight from the window . Life had been a slow and sumptuous torture . Everywhere cyanide . In bowls lined up along bars in town . Inside little shells that contain the poison within . Growing slowly from the caju fruit that crushes in your hand . Traces on the salted , roasted breath of your lover . Laughter came through the vent in the kitchen .
Anya Cowley