Boys from Brazil

9

DARKNESS RINGED THE ROOM. A doorknob glinted, a mirror, tips of ski poles. Dark bed shape, dark chair shape. Metal rim of a cage; a treadmill inside it spinning, stopping, spinning. Rocket models. Wings of a small silver plane slowly turning.

At the room’s center, flat whiteness lay tabled under a low-bent lamp. A hand dipped a brush, thinned it, black-inked over penciled lines. Making a stadium: vast, transparent-domed, circular.

The boy worked carefully, bending his sharp nose close to the paper. He began putting in some people, rows of little head-curves focused on the platform in the middle. He dipped the brush, thinned it, backhanded his forelock aside, brushed in more heads, more people.

A piano played: a Strauss waltz.

The boy looked up and listened. Smiled.

He bent to the drawing and made more heads, humming along with the melody.

Great with Dad gone. Just he and Mom. No fighting, no door thrown open and “Put that away and do your homework or so help me God—”

Well, not great, he hadn’t meant great; just—easier, more comfortable. Even Grandma used to say Dad was a real dictator. Bossy, big-mouthed, prejudiced; always acting like the most important man in the world… So it was easier now. But that didn’t mean he’d hated him, had wanted him dead. He’d loved Dad a lot really. Hadn’t he cried at the funeral?

He got into the drawing, where everything was nicer. Gave himself to the platform, and the man standing on it. Small from so far away. Brush, brush, brush. Lift up his arms: brush, brush.

Who would he be, this man on the platform? Someone great, that’s for sure, with all these people coming to see him. Not just a singer or comedian; someone fantastic, a really good person that they loved and respected. They paid fortunes to get in, and if they couldn’t pay, he let them in free. Someone that nice…

He put a little television camera up at the top of the dome; aimed a few more spotlights at the man.

He thinned the brush to a real fine point and gave little dot-mouths to the nearer bigger people, so they were cheering, telling him—the man, that is—how good he was, how much they loved him.

He bent his sharp nose closer to the paper and gave dot-mouths to the smaller people. His forelock fell. He bit his lip, squinted his deep blue eyes. Dot, dot, dot. He could hear the people cheering, roaring; a beautiful growing love-thunder that built and built, and then pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded.

Sort of like in those old Hitler movies.