by Inês Pedrosa
She’s singing. Don’t you hear her? She’s singing all through your house. You really can’t hear her?
Teresa was never able to distinguish between singing and sobbing—that’s why she loved me so accurately. She didn’t see me, as you did, rounding the closed loop of the roller coaster of my life. She saw me as she sees the world—perpetually being born, laughter and tears bound together in the courage of understanding. And you dance with Teresa in your dim living room, treading meringue clouds, locked in a virginal embrace, the ever-important aesthetic rules you erected as defenses now lowered. You used to bristle at me when I pointed out how intolerant you were: “Have you looked in the mirror lately? You’ve got that word written in red ink across your forehead, sweetheart.” Sure, you couldn’t stand external signs of degradation—uneducated voices, eccentric clothing, houses overrun with knickknacks, painted nails. But I was intolerant of signs of inner capitulation, and that intolerance had no cure. “Your standards are so high, one of these days you’re not even going to talk to me.”
Turns out you were right. And you, who talks to everybody—how many people have you talked to? The bird of jealousy flaps around the room where Teresa is dancing in your arms, singing instead of me, bathing the two of you in a purple, funereal light, which happens to be my color. I wanted to be in her place, yes, to laugh in your arms again—but it’s a weightless jealousy, just a hint of the memory of jealousy, almost a nostalgia for my human fallibility.
More and more I’ve been lingering on the good that so often flowed invisibly over our days. For example, the day when that student of the Lusitanian essence with whom you’d patriotically cheated on your absent girlfriend rescued that girlfriend, whom you’d meanwhile dumped, from despair and perhaps from unemployment. Your ex-girlfriend, who was studying law and working at a radio station, was at the end of her rope when your ex-lover, who hosted a beauty tips program on the station, found her sobbing convulsively. She was in the grip of the Blank Page Monster only an hour out from a special on a poet who’d just died. The editor, seeing her sunk in unproductive tears, had warned her that he had stacks of résumés on his desk from young journalists eager to take her job. Finding her in that state, your former student-for-a-night sat down next to her and asked, “Will you let me help you?” She took the newspaper clippings and calmly wrote the deceased poet’s biography for broadcast, including notes with suggestions for music to accompany the text.
A couple of months later, the two of them hosted a TV program that I knew to be one of your old projects: Childhoods, a set of stories about the early years of a number of celebrities. Mannequin Body ran into you one night in Bairro Alto and asked you if you’d seen the program and if you’d liked it. You put on your cherry-picker smile and told her the program had worked overall, but maybe they should switch out some of the illustrious grandmas and -pas for some emerging stock—the childhoods of young actors and actresses, young artists, young scientists. Young Mannequin Body tossed you that Comme des Garçons smile of hers and declared that youth was overvalued, given that we lived in a desert of genuine talent. Then she excused herself and went off to deliver the next installment of her Sahara theory to the head of a rival channel who was heading toward the dance floor.
And I fluttered off, laughing, on the scruffy back of the bird of jealousy. The devil’s bird, ever interposed between God and our human frailty, its exuberant plumage the color of deception. That night, for example, I could only call it disappointment. I was hurt by your kindness toward that woman who’d used you, but you laughed and said we all use one another; that’s the beauty of life.
In fact, on an upcoming time curve, Mannequin Body will be replaced, in the shop window of the TV screen, by another Mannequin Body. A publishing big shot decides to offer the replacement Body the chance to run a new publication called Health for Success. Mannequin Body Two accepts, eager to—as she read in Health Forever magazine and now repeats to the big shot—“develop her hidden leadership energies.”
But serving on the editorial board of Triunfo.com Publications is Original Mannequin Body, a woman who’d be about sixty if she weren’t waging battle against every wrinkle to remain in her forties, via periodical excursions to the magical chambers of her friend Surgeon-on-Demand. Original Mannequin Body’s memory has been weakened by all those anesthetics, but she never forgets her place in the world. Most of all, she remembers the day when they told her that Mannequin Body Two was going to replace her as the anchor during prime time.
So Original Mannequin Body now explains to the owner of Triunfo.com Publications, fleeting ex-lover and eternal friend, that Mannequin Body Two doesn’t have the skills to edit anything—not even a magazine that’s 70 percent translated from English, as would be the case here. She says Mannequin Body Two couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag; all the things she’s published, to a fawning audience, were actually written by a variety of good journalists in exchange for intimate favors. She adds that Mannequin Body Two misses deadlines, talks about people behind their backs, and has rudimentary English that doesn’t go much beyond “I love you.”
Triunfo.com Big Shot is taken aback by this. He recalls having seen Mannequin Body Two interviewing Michael Caine in unimpeachable English, and frowns. But Original Mannequin Body says, “Of course I don’t bear the girl any ill will. When she replaced me a few years ago, it was obvious that it was the station’s directive—our viewers get tired of us, want to see new faces. Anyway, as you know, I remained close friends with the station head. I even attended his wedding a few months back—it was practically a private ceremony, only a hundred and fifty guests.”
Triunfo.com Big Shot manages to get a word in edgewise: “Oh, he remarried, I didn’t realize.”
Original Mannequin Body sighs and notes that, sadly, the marriage fell apart—the bride had to be institutionalized because of some sort of mental illness, a serious one, can you imagine. Original Mannequin Body then philosophizes at length about the difficult art of marriage and her disappointment at having failed in that area—“Deep down, you know, I’m the sentimental type.” Triunfo.com Big Shot realizes that hiring Mannequin Body Two is out of the question. He tells the secretary that whenever she calls, he’s not in.
And so, on an upcoming time curve, Mannequin Body Two will be unemployed. She’ll turn to self-help books, where she’ll learn that every crisis presents a window of opportunity (which Triunfo.com Big Shot has also read in the economics magazines he consumes) and start auditioning for TV soap operas.
Four time curves later, she’ll be the one to send Original Mannequin Body to an obligatory and lonely retirement, as well as Mannequin Bodies Five and Seven (Six having been impaled on another, Portuguese-style curve, bereft of both metaphysics and Álvaro de Campos’s chocolate, and become paraplegic), who, two time curves later, will get their revenge on her.
45
If only you’d let me love your child. Push him out of the bowels of your death and let me keep him with me. Allow him perhaps to sample the warmth of Teresa’s breasts. Her hair that smells of fresh-mown grass—the grass that now covers you. A smell that has filled me with nostalgia for childhood ever since I was a boy.
Many returned from Africa with the heavy odor of the red soil pervading their veins. Others didn’t come back; they’d become addicted to that odor and sent for their families to join them. I dreamed of the scent of mown grass at my Portuguese high school. And the scent of youth, of beginning things—a scent that not even your chain-smoked cigarettes could smother in you. Hugging Teresa, I’m a miserable twerp weeping over the child who killed you. I swaddle that stern infant, show him your smiling face in the photo. I change his diapers, talk to him about women—ultimately, I’m capable of talking only about you.
I was your choice, the intermittent victory of your freedom over your body’s magnetic field, otherwise known as your friend. Allow me to enter your death.
Teresa is squeezing my fingers now. An airplane is crossing the twi
lit heavens above the twinkling city. You were here, just now, and you left. I talk to Teresa about how much I still miss you. We tear stories of you to shreds. We don’t turn on the lights, waiting for you in the dark. In the dark of the dark of the dark.
46
I’m not going to be getting revenge on anybody—the curves of my time ran out the minute I produced that misplaced child. All children are born in the wrong place, most likely. Jesus showed me that too—his adoptive father, a gentle carpenter, loved him with more clemency than his real father, who was God.
Aren’t all fathers God? The tyrannical ones, the indifferent ones, the obsessive ones, pulling us along by the bonds of blood, guilt, remorse. A God we kill when we fulfill his dreams. A God we murder slowly when we carry out his nightmares.
In the fiery red of fourteen years old, the age when parents are rejected and chosen, I no longer had parents to choose—only the noisy evidence of a couple of ghosts in the penumbra of my body.
Maybe you were the father I chose, my love on the cross—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. I didn’t love you any less or more for having chosen you late, my heart subdued by interrupted dreams. Every night of the life I invented with you, I prayed that an angel would kindle your soul, an angel who resembled—oh, the vanity of love—my own prime.
In that time curve where I no longer am, there’s a little girl slowly devouring me. It’s pure love, the books say, and sex doesn’t matter. So why does it feel like a reptile is crushing my body and my will? Why does the scent of damp earth make me weep and the seed of sadness devour my bones and split my skin open? The little girl is born, and you appear with a bouquet of white roses in your hand.
“May I love your child?”
“Love isn’t something where you ask permission. But what do you know about love? If you knew, you’d wipe your feet when you came in and never leave again. You’re a twerp.”
“Your son’s a twerp too. He’s got a crushed-strawberry mouth, like his father, and that’s without even knowing how to kiss yet. And his eyes too, the eyes of a sheep in a slaughterhouse. He’s going to be a lot of work. And he’s not going to love you better than I do.”
“Reproduction only makes love worse. Like with painting. It’s not good colors that make a good painter. You left me. You were my family, and you left me.”
“No, I wasn’t your family—I don’t lend you money or split inheritances with you. Plus, I came back, and we’re alive. Families only gather together for good in cemeteries. I’m your choice, the intermittent victory of your freedom over your body’s magnetic field. Your friend, if you even know what that word means anymore.”
“So change my son’s diaper—I’m still recovering from childbirth.”
And my child stops crying when you pull him onto your lap and kiss his forehead. And my son kisses your forehead, eleven time curves later, as you’re dying in another bed in this same hospital where I’ve never been. But your fingers, thanks to the alteration of the curves of time, now nestle in Teresa’s, whose nails are painted blue.
Teresa is squeezing your fingers as they will be squeezed by the immediate future that still seems immensely remote from you. An airplane crosses the twilit heavens, above the twinkling city, as it will in that moment when you take your last breath, your lungs battered by a deadly car that wasn’t aiming at you, cheered by that image of me smiling at you from your bedside table. I know I’ll be there, darling, to act as your God, to tell you we’re going to be able to start over from scratch, rewrite the smudged notebooks of our friendship.
The sight of that time curve made the bird of jealousy fly far away. That desertion of wings leaves me cold, as if, in carrying off my jealousy, it were also carrying off a warm piece of the flesh I no longer have. You and Teresa talk a long time, both lying on the hardwood floor, the curtains fluttering, darkening with the night that’s coming in through the open window. The two of you talk about how much you miss me, failing to hear the music of my tears, light, immaterial, music that is forgotten within everything that is being, like the love songs that made my life a gentler sort of thing.
46
I sometimes used to see you sitting in the armchair at the far end of the living room—your armchair. To prolong the illusion, I stopped turning on the light when I came in. When you disappeared, I’d close my eyes and realize you’d gone to the kitchen to get some ice for your whiskey. I could hear the cubes in the glass, your hand rattling the drink. Since Teresa’s started coming around more often, escorted by Pascoal, I don’t see you anymore. We talk about you a lot. Maybe for that reason, I’m starting to feel like you’re no longer with us.
47
You, Teresa, Pascoal—inseparable now, packing me away through your laughter. You talk about me a lot. I exist less and less outside of your deficient imaginations. You talk about me a lot, but you don’t remember my voice. When you say night, it’s your night that thrums in the crowded heat you’ve sketched around my death. You no longer have a hard time walking into your empty house and closing the door. You smile at my photo, the transfigured memory of what I ceased to be. You’re able to fall asleep without remembering the grave where my body is decaying. You live once more in mortals’ frivolous immortality.
I’m in your house waiting for you, but you don’t see me—a mother overcome by fatigue, spying on you from an armchair. I’m dead, but I still haven’t gotten used to the idea. I was so busy painting pictures of heavenly nightclubs for destitute children—yes, Mommy’s up in heaven dancing with Grandma, and now they’re playing cards—I got lost on the way to the epic, monotonous paradise depicted in stained-glass windows.
I ask God to prolong this earthly stage, to appoint me as your personal angel until you come up to this cloud-filled limbo and show me the way to the final casino. Or maybe he can negotiate with the Hindu gods and get me placed back on earth as your dog. Or cat. Or at least your canary. Gratitude is a way of life in which I’d be spared the howls of pain of those who die. I imagine God must be swamped with emergencies. I burrow into your walls. I say: clarity; and you repeat, dreaming: clarity. I say: blood of my breath; and you repeat: blood of my breath. I say: I’m here; and you reply with: absence.
47
I list the laws of the thermodynamics of your absence. Number one: acceleration. I can drive as fast as I want now, without your furious panic getting in my way. Few pleasures surpass this one, driving recklessly along the seashore on a summer night, with the windows down and the music turned all the way up (you did like that part, but it’s impossible to listen to loud music without stepping on the gas pedal).
Number two: energy moves from warmer zones to colder ones. Your David Bowie shouts at the heavens looking for life on Mars—I picture your good Lord with his hair standing on end, and then I see you, smiling at me, with hot-pink robes and two ribbons instead of wings, above a drunken convertible that’s zigzagging toward me. But you snatch up the car and hurl it over a wall; I hear it smash onto the rocks as you disappear in the moonlight. I dial emergency services, and I forgive you again.
48
I’m with you in the place of death, tracing the impetuous curves of the coast road. We’re being passed by flying motorcycles, David Bowie is on the car stereo asking whether there’s life on Mars, and you roll down the window and breathe in the smell of the sea air, the light spilling intermittently onto the waves. You turn up the volume on the stereo; the girl with the mousy hair looks for her invisible friend, and above a furious piano there’s a lawman beating up the wrong guy, Mars’s impossible life expanding and accelerating a bit more. Watch out—there’s a convertible careening across the road toward us, a drunk driver about to take you out as part of his suicide.
Please, God, don’t mix up the curves of time again. There’s a teenage girl up ahead who needs my friend’s life. The drunk sails over the wall and smashes onto the rocks alone; this God you don’t believe in sped up his crash to keep you on this side of life a little longer.
48
Incompetent murderer, where did you carry my dead friend off to? That drunk dickhead had a family, and I feel guilty for having escaped his fate. If he’d crashed into me, maybe he would have lived. I was almost free of you. And here I am, newly condemned to the dense weight of waiting. Lady Death is amusing herself by turning me into a mail carrier or, best-case scenario, a high-end spectator. Growing old consists of this miserable art of dodging: tallying one’s dead, sucking in one’s belly, and taking a deep breath.
49
I used to imagine you so much, once I stopped seeing you. I never wrote a bill without thinking about your ethical reservations. And about commas—your obsession with proper comma usage: “They sprinkle them around willy-nilly nowadays, like pearls. Pearls for swine, obviously. These turkeys don’t even go by ear. Totally ignorant. Whatever. I’m the ignorant one. People these days are proud of their ignorance.” You used to grumble a lot. You always stopped short at the door of the mythical “in my time” because I refused to let you enter the unwary claustrophobia of that hall of distorted mirrors. “Your time is now, dickhead,” I’d tell you, turning your vocabulary back on you. Your time is still now, dickhead—stop dwelling on the harsh things you said to me in the past. What I now see with absolute clarity isn’t words—I see that ageless day when we will once more start to live a story in which happiness isn’t a pretext for martyrdom.
History isn’t circular, my friend, as that ancient sect claims. If the curves of time didn’t take unpredictable paths, you would have ended up moving in with Teresa and later, encouraged and assisted by her, publishing an essay titled “The Premonition of Europe.” And you’d have dedicated to me what would have been the first of many books that we would no longer write together, and which would have made you a more useful and prominent figure than me.
