Durval looked stealthily out the window. The cockatoo was outside, walking back and forth on the porch floor and occasionally letting out a shrill scream. It climbed onto the wicker chair and jumped to the wall with its wings spread. Then it stared at Durval in silence, fixing its gaze with its head tilted, using only one eye. It was as if the bird wanted to say something. To warn of danger.
Durval walked back to the sofa and sat down, leaving his cane resting on the coffee table and stretching out his casted leg.
Heitor and Melinda had disappeared from the room, but he could hear them in some other part of the house, perhaps in the bedroom, searching for the blessed cigar box that Heitor had lost in the chaos with the crazed bird.
Durval looked for a clock around the room but found none. He imagined it was getting dark and it would be better to go home. He was worried about Dolores. But he needed to know what the hell had happened with that horned man who was locked up in the army lab. Was Heitor going senile? Was he making all that up?
Durval could doubt the man’s sanity, but he couldn’t doubt his own eyes. He had seen the photograph of the monster. That wasn’t a hoax. And he had seen the skull with horns. Moreover, there was no reason for the former army captain to make up that story, was there?
Durval racked his brain and found no plausible explanation other than the fact that the truth was indeed frightening and fantastic.
His friend Botelho had conducted experiments on a man with horns. Yes, Durval knew very well that there were more absurdities in the world than fiction stories report. But the lies of those we consider friends are hard to swallow. Durval considered Botelho his true friend. The only friend he actually had.
How could the biology professor have lied and hidden all that from Durval for so many years? And deceived him when he claimed that the red stain on Durval’s living room carpet was blood. He already knew it was blood. But what did he have to do with the corpse that was in his kitchen? Durval shuddered at the memory of when he had been pushed off the cliff inside his Corcel by a Ford F-1000 truck identical to Botelho’s. The bastard had tried to kill him. But why? After all, Durval knew nothing about the corpse in the kitchen. On the contrary, he just wanted to return to the peaceful and quiet life of retirement, playing cards with his beloved Dolores, reading his cheap romantic books, and solving puzzles of European landscapes on the living room table. But how to solve the puzzle that now lay before him? He tried to recap to see which pieces were missing. He needed paper and a pen. He wanted to start making a scheme of things up to that moment. He would make a table, organize each item, each clue, collect the important pieces, and solve that mystery. He got up and called Heitor.
Episode LI continues in the next edition.
JOSÉ GASPAR
Filmmaker and writer
www.historiasdooutromundo.com