Xenocide

“I know.”

“I don't even know how to console him. Or even which, as his loving sister, to hope for– that she'll come back into his life, or leave him forever.”

Olhado shrugged. All the brittleness was back.

“Do you really not care?” asked Valentine. “Or have you decided not to care?”

“Maybe I decided long ago, and now I really don't.”

Part of being a good interviewer, too, is knowing when to be silent. Valentine waited.

But Olhado was also good at waiting. Valentine almost gave up and said something. She even toyed with the idea of confessing failure and leaving.

Then he spoke. "When they replaced my eyes, they also took out the tear ducts. Natural tears would interfere with the industrial lubricants they put in my eyes. "

“Industrial?”

“My little joke,” said Olhado. “I seem to be very dispassionate all the time, because my eyes never well up with tears. And people can't read my expressions. It's fu

“In other words,” said Valentine, “you do care.”

“I always cared,” he said. “Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn't know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn't have any personal ego on the line in the family quarrels, I could see more clearly than any of them. I saw the lines of power– Mother's absolute dominance even though Marcao beat her when he was angry or drunk. Miro, thinking it was Marcao he was rebelling against, when always it was Mother. Grego's mea

“You saw all this as a child?”

“I'm good at seeing things. We passive, unbelonging observers always see better. Don't you think?”

Valentine laughed. “Yes, we do. The same role, then, you think? You and I, both historians?”

“Till your brother came. From the moment he walked in the door, it was obvious that he saw and understood everything, just the way I saw it. It was exhilarating. Because of course I had never actually believed my own conclusions about my family. I never trusted my own judgments. Obviously no one saw things the way I did, so I must be wrong. I even thought that I saw things so peculiarly because of my eyes. That if I had real eyes I would have seen things Miro's way. Or Mother's.”

“So Andrew confirmed your judgments.”

“More than that. He acted on them. He did something about them.”

“Oh?”

“He was here as a speaker for the dead. But from the moment he walked in the door, he took– he took–”

“Over?”

“Took responsibility. For change. He saw all the sicknesses I saw, but he started healing them as best he could. I saw how he was with Grego, firm but kind. With Quara, responding to what she really wanted instead of what she claimed to want. With Quim, respecting the distance he wanted to keep. With Miro, with Ela, with Mother, with everybody.”

“With you?”

“Making me part of his life. Co

“I can guess.”

“Not the part about me. I was a hungry little kid, I'll admit; the first kind person could have co

“Your mother didn't let him, Andrew said.”

“That's right– and one must always do things Mother's way, mustn't one?”

“Novinha is a very imposing woman.”

“She thinks she's the only one in the world ever to suffer,” said Olhado. “I say that without rancor. I have simply observed that she is so full of pain, she's incapable of taking anyone else's pain seriously.”

“Try saying something rancorous next time. It might be more kind.”

Olhado looked surprised. “Oh, you're judging me? Is this motherhood solidarity or something? Children who speak ill of their mothers must be slapped down? But I assure you, Valentine, I meant it. No rancor. No grudges. I know my mother, that's all. You said you wanted me to tell you what I saw– that's what I see. That's what Andrew saw, too. All that pain. He's drawn to it. Pain sucks him like a magnet. And Mother had so much she almost sucked him dry. Except that maybe you can't suck Andrew dry. Maybe the well of compassion inside him is bottomless.”

His passionate speech about Andrew surprised her. And pleased her, too. “You say Quim turned to God for the perfect invisible father. Who did you turn to? Not someone invisible, I think.”

“No, not someone invisible.”

Valentine studied his face in silence.

“I see everything in bas-relief,” said Olhado. “My depth perception is very poor. If we'd put a lens in each eye instead of both in one, the binocularity would be much improved. But I wanted to have the jack. For the computer link. I wanted to be able to record the pictures, to be able to share them. So I see in bas-relief. As if everybody were a slightly rounded cardboard cutout, sliding across a flat painted background. In a way it makes everybody seem so much closer together. Sliding over each other like sheets of paper, rubbing on each other as they pass.”

She listened, but said nothing for a while longer.

"Not someone invisible," he said, echoing, remembering. "That's right. I saw what Andrew did in our family. I saw that he came in and listened and watched and understood who we were, each individual one of us. He tried to discover our need and then supply it. He took responsibility for other people and it didn't seem to matter to him how much it cost him. And in the end, while he could never make the Ribeira family normal, he gave us peace and pride and identity. Stability. He married Mother and was kind to her. He loved us all. He was always there when we wanted him, and seemed unhurt by it when we didn't. He was firm with us about expecting civilized behavior, but never indulged his whims at our expense. And I thought: This is so much more important than science. Or politics, either. Or any particular profession or accomplishment or thing you can make. I thought: If I could just make a good family, if I could just learn to be to other children, their whole lives, what Andrew was, coming so late into ours, then that would mean more in the long run, it would be a finer accomplishment than anything I could ever do with my mind or my hands.