He looked at the letter on the table, the envelope beside it, he needed a free weekend, he thought.
“No, it’s nothing to do with Fabiane, it’s just I’ve got some problems at work, I’m going to have to travel.”
“If it isn’t Fabiane, who is it, then?”
“I’ve got some problems at work. That’s all it is, nothing to do with Fabiane or any other woman.”
“I know you too well for that, Marcos, I know it’s some woman, if it isn’t Fabiane it’s someone else.”
It was always the same, he thought, after a few minutes of truce the argument would always begin again.
“I’m telling you there’s no woman, would you stop that? I hate how you always insist on thinking you know everything about me.”
“Of course I don’t, I haven’t known anything about you for ages. You became a stranger to me a long time ago.”
He got up off the sofa, walked over to the window, it was a sunny day, already pretty hot for that time of the morning. He thought it was the first time since he’d moved to the apartment that he’d had a proper look out of the window.
“So, can you have Manuela this weekend? I’ll take her some other time, to make up for it.”
After a brief hesitation:
“Okay, I’ll do this for you as a favor, but don’t get used to it.”
They talked a little more, on his part almost out of a sense of obligation, since for some reason his ex-wife bothered him. His ex-wife who barely knew him, that was what she thought. Ever since Manuela was born, they had become strangers, and he was unable to explain what was going on.
He hung up the phone feeling guilty. He didn’t call Fabiane back. He didn’t return the movies. He didn’t go to the office; he’d called in first thing in the morning, a terrible flu, he said, without much conviction. He hadn’t gone into the office. Instead there had been the call to his ex-wife.
He felt the anxiety of the previous days when he was leaving the apartment. He called the elevator, but instead of going down to the garage he got out on the first floor, headed for the lobby. This time he wouldn’t take the car, this time he’d go out on foot. He greeted the doorman, who responded with a suspicious look. The letter was in his pants pocket, again; he felt strange and naked without the car to protect him from the street, from the people. And it was only at that moment he realized that with the exception of a quick trip to the grocery store or the drugstore, he rarely left home on foot like this.
He looked around him. There was something familiar about the neighborhood, the familiarity of ordinary people, everything there was so ordinary, so normal, it felt like almost a different place, not the one beyond the car window, which was distant, unattainable, the neighborhood he had barely seen since arriving. Since the move. The suitcases and boxes heaped up, many of which he still had not opened, the shelves empty, the whole apartment still unfinished, as though there were something missing, something that would allow him to inhabit the apartment, that would make it finally his. You need some time to arrive anywhere, he thought.
Sometimes, when he was filling in a form, he automatically gave his previous address, the address of the home he’d lived in for so many years with his ex-wife. Separations were always crazy things, his ex-wife felt so distant on the phone, as did his daughter, who would be turning four next Wednesday and for whom he didn’t need to buy a present because he had never known how to buy a present for a one-, two- or three-year-old girl, for any birthday. The girl looked at him with the expression of someone complaining, just like his ex-wife, he thought, like Fabiane, he thought, imagining that all women were like this, demanding attention, security, and the expectation of some mysterious thing; he had this feeling of having failed and failing each new woman again.
How about feeling something new, without demands, a woman ready to give a bit of herself, too, ready to understand that it isn’t always possible to be somebody you are not. A woman ready to surrender something of herself, even if that something undoes her, transforms her.
He walked on, no longer thinking about any destination in particular, just wandering around the neighborhood. So different from the neighborhood where he used to live with his ex-wife and daughter in a large, airy apartment, with the countless requirements of a good life.
In this neighborhood, there were old people sitting at the table of a bar, a restaurant, and the roasted chicken from the bakery, those simple things, familiar ones, that had existed in his life and then were lost, he thought as he wandered aimlessly. He walked on until, on an impulse, he went into one of the many shopping galleries whose entrances it was barely possible to make out, a dark gallery of stores selling knickknacks and children’s clothes, a hair salon, down at the end an antiques shop, a thrift store, he thought, not quite sure what a thrift store was. A secondhand clothes store, a green dress, maybe a hat. Isn’t that what he was looking for? He continued down the street, going into each gallery, the same stores each time, the same barbers waiting in the doorway, manicurists, people dressed in black or white. He considered asking someone, Where is there a secondhand clothes store, a green dress, but he said nothing, he kept walking. Until something caught his eye.
He walked in very cautiously, as though entering a church, a museum, or some other place he didn’t know, and in which he didn’t know how to behave. He asked himself the same question he’d been asking himself all those days: Why this obsession? And anyway, what was he looking for?
He was asked this by the salesgirl of the shop he had just walked into, a very fair girl with short hair and a slender, delicate face. He smiled coolly, as if she had always known him and was judging him. She stood there, looking at him as though she knew, he thought. But what could she possibly know? He felt uneasy, unable to bear that look, that demand. She reminded him of other girls, not his ex-wife, not Fabiane, but rather girls from an even more distant past. He left without saying a thing, almost ashamed at having gone in. What was he looking for, anyway?—that was the question he was asking himself, too. Something special? An old hat, some dress, a person running into the middle of the street, there was something special he was looking for, yes, something so close, there, maybe in his own life. He went on walking; it had been ages since he’d taken such a long walk, maybe three, four years; it was ages since the city hadn’t been merely a landscape seen through the window of the car.
He was trying to summon up the courage, he thought, he was gradually summoning up the courage. But the courage to do what? To face what was to come? To await the next letter? Yes, because he felt there was something in those letters that was approaching. And he was scared, scared to discover it was him, something that he was hiding. You need courage, he thought, to go out like this again, unprotected, unprepared, in the middle of the street. Something was approaching.
It was hot, sweat trickled down his temples, the heat had always bothered him, without the protection of air-conditioning, the heat was becoming a part of himself, part of his own body. He was walking fast, nervously, with anxiety. With a trembling that had been forming over the past days and which was increasing in intensity. Or something that had been there for a long time, many years, it had been there already for a long time. You need a lot of courage, he thought, a lot of courage, because what would it be like, what would it be like if there was nobody to hold out a hand to him?
His thoughts seemed strange to him, it had already been a few days that his thoughts had seemed strange to him, as though they weren’t his, and, at the same time, they had been his forever, he thought. He was walking fast. And he could feel, at last, that something was approaching.
JANUARY 26
My darling,
Each time I close the envelope, passing my tongue along the edge of the envelope, it feels so ancient. Have I already told you I get nostalgic for an envelope that is closed with saliva, something so intimate, a secretion, a final signature? Now I think it mig
ht be the only reason for these letters, not the words, not what I say to you, what I make up, what I hide and everything else I might have said to you, not the words, but only the saliva and tongue sliding over the envelope and the taste that remains for a long time afterward. Just that, I now think. So I say: This is the penultimate letter I shall write you. A farewell? Perhaps. Something completely new, anyway.
The last day. We came back from the rental place and you were silent, then later I was wandering around the house in my pearl necklace. Then I was sitting in front of you, in a chair in front of you, my eyes red, my makeup smudged, the straps of my tank top falling off my shoulders, my hair loose, the way you liked it, remember? I wore those sandals with the really high heels, the pearl necklace, my legs on display; I was thinking about something that would make you smile and suffer, but you weren’t suffering. You were there the whole time, sitting on the sofa with a glass of vodka, or maybe it was a glass of whiskey, or of water, I don’t know, transformed into something distant, unknown. I didn’t know what to say, how to act. And I thought: say something, go sit beside you and take your hand, a casual caress and all would be well, everything would be working again. I sought you out, but your eyes reproached me, and however close I came, there was no way to reach you. And what there was, was this: you sitting on the sofa, the silence spreading and a look in your eyes. I could hear my breathing, the noise of my breathing and the effort in that improvised cadence.
That was how we stayed, you in silence and me breathing—for long minutes the only noise was me breathing. Until my moment of courage: not a full step toward you, but just an attempt, just an infinitesimal movement, an imperceptible suggestion of my approach. At a moment of courage, an imperceptible suggestion, and your immediate response. For the first time that afternoon, you looked me in the eye, a dry look, of hatred? Of rage? How was that possible? You looked at me and said, your voice harsh, your voice changed: Stand up and take off your clothes. An order, remember? Sitting on the sofa, you ordered: Stand up and take off your clothes. Just that: Stand up and take off your clothes. I didn’t move, looking at you, my eyes darting away every moment, as though looking at you were a transgression, an arrogance. I was afraid, for the first time, I really was afraid, not like in the morning, not like on the street, your fingers digging into my arm, but a different kind of fear, something much sharper, much more intense.
I stayed there, unmoving, thinking, Why did I go on, why didn’t I do anything, why didn’t I send you away, or laugh, or shout, or run off. It was as though there were something holding me, as if some voice, some power were holding me and keeping me on that chair, caught, unmoving. For how long? Minutes, hours? Until those same words once again, the same order, and perhaps a forewarning, a threat: Stand up and take off your clothes. How much time had passed, I wonder, before that repetition. Your voice sounded so strange. Tears ran down my face, again, my crying didn’t move you, again, but now it was different, now everything was different, even my tears were not so much actual crying, just a prolonged agitation. I felt you looking at me from far away, and with each movement, each detail, the words kept on echoing: Stand up and take off your clothes. My eyes darted away. Your voice hoarse and low, your voice changed. And the whole strength of your absence, of your distance.
I stood up slowly, pushed the chair to one side, so that I remained where I was, and began to take off my clothes. Not with the languor with which you undress for a lover, but as though it were cold and your body was drawing back. My clothes added up to no more than the underwear, the tank top, the sandals with the very high heels and the pearl necklace. I took the top off first, black, tight, the straps falling off my shoulders, did I tell you that already? I moved extremely slowly, and my fingers got all tangled up.
Sometimes I looked over at you, trying to identify what you wanted. But you stayed there, sitting there, unmoving. Looking at me not as a lover sitting across from a woman undressing, but as though someone very heavily clothed were exposing a naked body on a cold day, a naked body to the icy wind, a naked body in the snow.
I took off the top and stood there, unmoving, for a few moments, feeling my breasts as they moved with my breathing, my breasts revealed themselves sensitive and unsettled, decorated with the pearl necklace. I thought that my breasts had never been as naked as they were at that moment, there, in front of you. But there was nothing in your look at all. I was shivering. I stood there, in front of you, the sandals, the underwear, the pearl necklace. My whole body alert. Now you didn’t take your eyes off me. Were you angry? I thought, What if it was all just rage? All that was left. Your silence during the day, since we got back from the rental place, since the movie we didn’t watch and that character or actor who was so like you, the whole day. And now, this rage, this hatred?
I was standing there, almost naked. You sat on the sofa with your glass of vodka or whiskey, distant, and your voice ordered again: Take everything off, you said, take everything off. You said. But not with expectation or desire, as one might say those words to a half-naked woman, the expectation of the final piece of clothing removed. No. Rather more cutting, more distant. Take everything off, you said. And so I removed the pearl necklace, and as I took off the pearl necklace, it was as though I were losing an important, essential piece, an amulet that would protect and save me, from you, from me, from us. I put it carefully down on the floor, next to me. I was giving up an amulet, a sign, an omen. You sat there saying nothing. I would never say anything again.
Then I took off my underwear slowly, my fingers getting confused. I took off my underwear and left the sandals, the ones with the really high heels, the ones whose straps were tight on my feet, pain spreading up my legs. Now that I come to think about it, I didn’t take off the sandals, I didn’t take them off and you didn’t ask me to. I could have taken them off, I should have, and avoided the extreme nakedness that was a naked body balancing on something unsteady, that uncomfortable position, the straps tight on my feet. A sense of fragility reared up and showed itself. At last, it showed itself.
And when you said, Take everything off, you weren’t referring to the sandals, I knew that, and strangely, I obeyed that unspoken order. I could have taken them off, but I didn’t, and the underwear ended up as the final piece to go, the one that was left, the underwear thrown down beside me, next to the pearl necklace and the top, a composition on the living room floor, a lure among the floorboards.
I closed my eyes and felt my naked body, my breathing, the rhythm of my breathing giving my body away, and I felt your existence, aggravated. I think now: Being naked wasn’t merely not wearing any clothes, being naked was much more arduous, being naked was above all a confrontation, a battle. The nakedness of someone who disposes of an amulet, the nakedness bestowed on me by the high heels, the nakedness bestowed on me by your look, and also the nakedness that brushed against your clothed body, sitting there on the sofa. And I thought that nakedness faced with a clothed body is an unreasonable kind of encounter, an extreme gesture.
Turn to face the other way, you said. The arrogance in your voice. When I turned to face the other way, that was the most intense part, the summit. The height of doubt, of surrender, the height of nakedness, but the highest height was yet to come, we know that, don’t we? And I obeyed, once again, I obeyed. And as I turned away, the fear that was new became an ancient fear, my back turned, blind. I would never see you again, I thought, my back was turned and you could do anything: a knife in my back, a gunshot in my back or even just walk away. I was afraid of your staying; I was afraid of your leaving.
I could turn around at any moment, that constant possibility of freedom, but you knew, didn’t you? You sat there, on the sofa, in the distance. And I felt from that distance, your eyes running over my body, your rough, insistent caress. Hours, minutes, on my naked back. My hips. The outlines of my legs. The inside of my legs. Could I be beautiful enough to be like that, naked like that? Could I be stro
ng enough? Could I be coarse enough? Or was it merely fear that kept me like that, as though captive, as though quarry?
Walk over to the table, you said. Remember? The table was right in front of me, the dining table with a jug of flowers on it, a jug of blue flowers. And it was as if I’d forgotten how to walk, moving slowly, one step after another, like somebody taking their first steps, the uncertain steps of a doll, the simple mechanism of a doll. Everything about me was new. And so, naked, I approached the table and the flowers and their jug with the uncertain steps of a doll, until I had come very close, as close as I could, feeling the wood on the skin of my belly, my thigh. I stood there looking at the blue flowers, blue flowers, I didn’t remember having bought them, at the same time there was something so familiar about them, I thought, as my belly felt the caress of the table, and you: a knife, a dagger, some sharp thing in my back.
And then the moment came. Your voice in the distance, your voice changed, your voice commanded me to bend over, you were now only this, an order. My body on the table. My torso stretched out on the table, arms behind me. As if they were tied up, though they weren’t. The wood, the jug of flowers. That bending over the table was something that demanded perfect surrender, I thought, and there, surrendered, untouchable, what would we say afterward? When I turned and we faced each other again. I could refuse, my naked body, blind, fragile, tottering on my high heels, I could refuse, but no, I obeyed, and bent over, and felt my breasts adjusting themselves to the wood and to the temperature of the wood, and rested the right side of my face on it carefully, as though I were listening to the sounds of an internal organ, an organ I did not know.
At that moment I still had some hope that you would stop, that you would laugh and say it was all a lie, all a joke, had been all along, ever since the rental place and the movie and the actor, all of it, since breakfast, since everything, a joke, a whim. I still hoped you’d call to me, stroke my face, your words soft and disarmed, a truce, an embrace. And I would be happy, relieved, my head on your chest; I’d tell you that it’s okay, it doesn’t matter.
Blue Flowers Page 10
