No, she was not alone. Eyes frowning in disbelief at the far end of her street, inside the mist, she saw two men. Two young men approaching. She looked around as if she could have had the wrong street or city. But her timing was off by minutes: she’d left home before the star and the two men had time to vanish. Her heart took fright.
Her initial impulse, when realizing her mistake, was to retrace her steps and go back home until they had passed: “they’re going to look at me, I know it, there’s no one else for them to look at and they’re going to stare at me!” But how could she turn back and flee, if she had been born for adversity. Since all her slow preparation had an unknown destiny that she, out of devotion, must obey. How could she retreat, and then never again forget the shame of having waited miserably behind a door?
And anyway maybe there wasn’t any danger. They wouldn’t have the nerve to say anything because she’d stride firmly past, jaw set, with her Spanish rhythm.
Legs heroic, she kept walking. The closer she got, the closer they got too — so that they were all getting closer, the street shrinking bit by bit. The shoes of the two young men mingled with the sound of her own, it was awful to hear. It was relentless to hear. Either their shoes were hollow or the sidewalk was hollow. The paving stones sounded a warning. All was echo and she heard, unable to prevent it, the silence of the siege being broadcast through the neighborhood streets, and she saw, unable to prevent it, that the front doors were shut even tighter. Even the star had retreated. In the newly arisen pallor of the dark, the street left to those three. She walked, listened to the men, since she couldn’t look at them yet needed to know about them. She listened to them and was surprised by her own nerve in pressing on. But it wasn’t nerve. It was her gift. And the great vocation for a destiny. She kept on, suffering in obedience. If she managed to think about something else she wouldn’t hear their shoes. Nor whatever they might say. Nor the silence with which their paths would cross.
With abrupt rigidity she looked at them. When she least expected to, betraying her vow of secrecy, she glimpsed them. Were they smiling? No, they were somber.
She shouldn’t have seen. Because, by seeing, she for an instant risked becoming an individual, and so did they. That’s what it seemed she’d been warned against: as long as she operated in a classical world, as long as she was impersonal, she’d be a daughter of the gods, aided by whatever must be done. Yet, having seen whatever it is that eyes, upon seeing, diminish, she risked being a she-herself that tradition couldn’t support. For an instant she hesitated completely, having lost her way. But it was too late to retreat. The only way it wouldn’t be too late was if she ran. But running would be like going astray at every step, and losing the rhythm that still sustained her, the rhythm that was her sole talisman, which had been delivered unto her at the edge of the world where one must be alone — at the edge of the world where all memories were wiped out, and all that remained as an incomprehensible souvenir was the blind talisman, a rhythm she was destined to copy, performing it for the consummation of the world. Not her own. If she ran, this order would be altered. And she’d never be forgiven the worst thing of all: haste. And even when you flee they give chase, these are things everyone knows.
Rigid, catechistic, not altering for a second the slow pace at which she advanced, she advanced. “They’re going to look at me, I know it!” But she struggled, out of some instinct from a past life, not to signal her fear to them. She sensed that fear unleashed things. It would be swift, painless. For just a fraction of a second they’d cross paths, swiftly, instantaneously, thanks to her advantage that she was moving ahead while they approached in an opposite movement, reducing the instant to its bare essence — to revealing the first of the seven mysteries that were so secret that only one thing was known about them: the number seven. Make them not say anything, make them just think, I’ll let them think. It would be swift, and a second after the transposition she’d declare in wonder, dashing down streets further and further on: it barely hurt at all. But what happened next had no explanation.
What happened next were four difficult hands, four hands that didn’t know what they wanted, four errant hands belonging to people who lacked the vocation, four hands that touched her so unexpectedly that she did the best thing she could have in the realm of movement: she got paralyzed. They, whose predestined role consisted only of passing near the darkness of her fear, and then the first of the seven mysteries would be revealed; they who represented only the horizon of a single approaching footstep, they hadn’t understood their designated function and, with the individuality of the fearful, had attacked. It was less than a fraction of a second on the tranquil street. In a fraction of a second they touched her as if entitled to all the seven mysteries. All of which she preserved, and she became more larval, and seven years further behind.
She didn’t look at them because her face was turned serenely toward the nothing.
But from the haste with which they hurt her she could tell they were more scared than she was. So scared that they weren’t even there anymore. They were running. “They were scared she would scream and the front doors would open one by one,” she reasoned, they didn’t know you don’t scream.
She stood there, listening in tranquil madness to their fleeing shoes. Either the sidewalk was hollow or their shoes were hollow or she herself was hollow. In the hollow sound of their shoes she listened intently to their fear. The sound rang distinctly off the paving stones as if they were banging on the door incessantly and she was waiting for them to go away. So distinctly on the bareness of the stone that the tap dance didn’t seem to be fading into the distance: it was right there at her feet, like a victory dance. Standing there, she had nothing to hold her up except her ears.
The sonority wasn’t fading, their distance was conveyed to her by the ever-more-precise hurrying of heels. Their heels no longer echoed off the stone, they echoed in the air like ever-more-delicate castanets. Then she realized she hadn’t heard a noise in a while.
And, brought back by the breeze, silence and an empty street.
Until that instant she’d kept quiet, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Then, as if passing through several stages of the same immobility, she stood still. After a while, she sighed. And in another stage, she stayed still. Next she moved her head, and then stood even more deeply still.
Then she retreated slowly over to a wall, hunched, very slowly, as if her arm were broken, until all her weight slumped against the wall, where she became inscribed. And then she stayed still. The important thing is not to move, she thought distantly, not to move. After a while, she had probably told herself this: now move your legs a little but very slowly. Since, very slowly, she moved her legs. After which, she sighed and kept quiet while glancing around. It was still dark.
Then morning came.
Slowly she gathered her books strewn on the ground. Further off lay her open notebook. When she crouched to retrieve it, she saw the large, curved handwriting that until this morning had been hers.
Then she left. Without knowing how she had filled the time, except with footsteps and footsteps, she got to school over two hours late. Since she hadn’t been thinking about anything, she didn’t know how much time had passed. The presence of her Latin teacher made her realize with polite surprise that third period had already begun.
“What happened to you?” whispered the girl at the next desk.
“Why?”
“You’re pale. Are you getting sick?”
“No,” she said so loudly that several classmates looked at her. She got up and said very loudly:
“Excuse me.”
She went to the restroom. Where, facing the great silence of the tiles, she shrieked piercingly, supersonically: “I’m alone in the world! Nobody’s ever going to help me, nobody’s ever going to love me! I’m alone in the world!”
There she was missing her third class too, sitting on the
long bench in the restroom, across from several sinks. “It’s okay, later I’ll just copy the main points, I’ll borrow someone’s notes to copy at home — I’m alone in the world!” she interrupted herself pounding her fist several times on the bench. The sound of those four shoes suddenly started up again like a light swift rain. A blind sound, nothing bouncing off the gleaming tiles. Just the distinctness of each shoe that never got entangled with the other shoe. Like nuts falling. All she could do was wait the way you wait for someone to stop banging on the door. Then they stopped.
When she went to the mirror to wet her hair, she was so ugly.
She possessed so little, and they had touched it.
She was so ugly and precious.
She was pale, her features grown delicate. Her hands, dampening her hair, still stained with yesterday’s ink. “I need to take better care of myself,” she thought. She didn’t know how. The truth is that more and more she knew how even less. Her nose stuck out like a snout poking through the fence.
She returned to the bench and sat there quietly, with a snout. “A person is nothing.” “No,” she shot back in mild protest, “don’t say that,” she thought with kindness and melancholy. “A person is something,” she said just to be nice.
But at dinner life took an urgent and hysterical turn:
“I need new shoes! mine make too much noise, a woman can’t walk in wooden heels, they attract too much attention! Nobody ever gets me anything! Nobody ever gets me anything!” — and she was so frantic and sputtering that no one had the nerve to tell her she wouldn’t be getting them. All they said was:
“You aren’t a woman and all heels are made of wood.”
Until, just as a person gets fat, she stopped, without knowing how it happened, being precious. There’s an obscure law that makes one protect the egg until the chick is born, a firebird.
And she got the new shoes.
Family Ties
(“Os laços de família”)
The woman and her mother finally squeezed into the taxi that was taking them to the station. The mother kept counting and recounting the two suitcases trying to convince herself that both were in the car. The daughter, with her dark eyes, whose slightly cross-eyed quality gave them a constant glimmer of derision and detachment — watched.
“I haven’t forgotten anything?” the mother was asking for the third time.
“No, no, you haven’t forgotten anything,” the daughter answered in amusement, patiently.
That somewhat comic scene between her mother and her husband still lingered in her mind, when it came time to say goodbye. For the entire two weeks of the old woman’s visit, the two could barely stand each other; their good-mornings and good-afternoons constantly struck a note of cautious tact that made her want to laugh. But right when saying goodbye, before getting into the taxi, her mother had transformed into a model mother-in-law and her husband had become the good son-in-law. “Forgive any misspoken words,” the old lady had said, and Catarina, taking some joy in it, had seen Antônio fumble with the suitcases in his hands, stammering — flustered at being the good son-in-law. “If I laugh, they’ll think I’m mad,” Catarina had thought, frowning. “Whoever marries off a son loses a son, whoever marries off a daughter gains a son,” her mother had added, and Antônio took advantage of having the flu to cough. Catarina, standing there, had mischievously observed her husband whose self-assurance gave way to a diminutive, dark-haired man, forced to be a son to that tiny graying woman . . . Just then her urge to laugh intensified. Luckily she never actually had to laugh whenever she got the urge: her eyes took on a sly, restrained look, went even more cross-eyed — and her laughter came out through her eyes. Being able to laugh always hurt a little. But she couldn’t help it: ever since she was little she’d laughed through her eyes, she’d always been cross-eyed.
“I’ll say it again, that boy is too skinny,” her mother declared while bracing herself against the jolting of the car. And though Antônio wasn’t there, she adopted the same combative, accusatory tone she used with him. So much that one night Antônio had lost his temper: “It’s not my fault, Severina!” He called his mother-in-law Severina, since before the wedding he’d envisioned them as a modern mother- and son-in-law. Starting from her mother’s first visit to the couple, the word Severina had turned leaden in her husband’s mouth, and so, now, the fact that he used her first name hadn’t stopped . . . — Catarina would look at them and laugh.
“The boy’s always been skinny, Mama,” she replied.
The taxi drove on monotonously.
“Skinny and anxious,” added the old lady decisively.
“Skinny and anxious,” Catarina agreed patiently.
He was an anxious, distracted boy. During his grandmother’s visit he’d become even more remote, slept poorly, was upset by the old woman’s excessive affection and loving pinches. Antônio, who’d never been particularly worried about his son’s sensitivity, had begun dropping hints to his mother-in-law, “to protect a child” . . .
“I haven’t forgotten anything . . .” her mother started up again, when the car suddenly braked, launching them into each other and sending their suitcases flying. Oh! oh!, shouted her mother as if faced with some irremediable disaster, “oh!” she said shaking her head in surprise, suddenly older and pitiable. And Catarina?
Catarina looked at her mother, and mother looked at daughter, and had some disaster also befallen Catarina? her eyes blinked in surprise, she quickly righted the suitcases and her purse, trying to remedy the catastrophe as fast as possible. Because something had indeed happened, there was no point hiding it: Catarina had been launched into Severina, into a long forgotten bodily intimacy, going back to the age when one has a father and mother. Though they’d never really hugged or kissed. With her father, yes, Catarina had always been more of a friend. Whenever her mother would fill their plates making them overeat, the two would wink at each other conspiratorially and her mother never even noticed. But after colliding in the taxi and after regaining their composure, they had nothing to talk about — why weren’t they already at the station?
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” her mother asked in a resigned voice.
Catarina no longer wished to look at her or answer.
“Take your gloves!” she said as she picked them up off the ground.
“Oh! oh! my gloves!” her mother exclaimed, flustered.
They only really looked at each other once the suitcases were deposited on the train, after they’d exchanged kisses: her mother’s head appeared at the window.
Catarina then saw that her mother had aged and that her eyes were glistening.
The train wasn’t leaving and they waited with nothing to say. The mother pulled a mirror from her purse and studied herself in her new hat, bought at the same milliner’s where her daughter went. She gazed at herself while making an excessively severe expression that didn’t lack in self-admiration. Her daughter watched in amusement. No one but me can love you, thought the woman laughing through her eyes; and the weight of that responsibility left the taste of blood in her mouth. As if “mother and daughter” were life and abhorrence. No, you couldn’t say she loved her mother. Her mother pained her, that was all. The old woman had slipped the mirror back into her purse, and was smiling steadily at her. Her worn and still quite clever face looked like it was struggling to make a certain impression on the people around her, in which her hat played a role. The station bell suddenly rang, there was a general movement of anxiousness, several people broke into a run thinking the train was already leaving: Mama! the woman said. Catarina! the old woman said. They gaped at each other, the suitcase on a porter’s head blocked their view and a young man rushing past grabbed Catarina’s arm in passing, jerking the collar of her dress off-kilter. When they could see each other again, Catarina was on the verge of asking if she’d forgotten anything . . .
“. . . I h
aven’t forgotten anything?” her mother asked.
Catarina also had the feeling they’d forgotten something, and they looked at each other at a loss — for if they really had forgotten something, it was too late now. A woman dragged a child along, the child wailed, the station bell resounded again . . . Mama, said the woman. What was it they’d forgotten to say to each other? and now it was too late. It struck her that one day they should have said something like: “I am your mother, Catarina.” And she should have answered: “And I am your daughter.”
“Don’t sit in the draft!” Catarina called.
“Come now, girl, I’m not a child,” said her mother, never taking her attention off her own appearance. Her freckled hand, slightly tremulous, was delicately arranging the brim of her hat and Catarina suddenly wanted to ask whether she’d been happy with her father:
“Give my best to Auntie!” she shouted.
“Yes, of course!”
“Mama,” said Catarina because a lengthy whistle was heard and the wheels were already turning amid the smoke.
“Catarina!” the old woman called, her mouth open and her eyes astonished, and at the first lurch her daughter saw her raise her hands to her hat: it had fallen over her nose, covering everything but her new dentures. The train was already moving and Catarina waved. Her mother’s face disappeared for an instant and immediately reappeared hatless, her loosened bun spilling in white locks over her shoulders like the hair of a maiden — her face was downcast and unsmiling, perhaps no longer even seeing her daughter in the distance.
Amid the smoke Catarina began heading back, frowning, with that mischievous look of the cross-eyed. Without her mother’s company, she had regained her firm stride: it was easier alone. A few men looked at her, she was sweet, a little heavyset. She walked serenely, dressed in a modern style, her short hair dyed “mahogany.” And things had worked out in such a way that painful love seemed like happiness to her — everything around her was so alive and tender, the dirty street, the old trams, orange peels — strength flowed back and forth through her heart in weighty abundance. She was very pretty just then, so elegant; in step with her time and the city where she’d been born as if she had chosen it. In her cross-eyed look anyone could sense the enjoyment this woman took in the things of the world. She stared at other people boldly, trying to fasten onto those mutable figures her pleasure that was still damp with tears for her mother. She veered out of the way of oncoming cars, managed to sidestep the line for the bus, glancing around ironically; nothing could stop this little woman whose hips swayed as she walked from climbing one more mysterious step in her days.
Complete Stories Page 19
