“Take me,” I demanded, starting to fall into a profound sleep.
“I’ll take you, my friend. I already said I’d take you…” As he spoke his voice was drifting, drifting away, and I wondered if I was dying, if this could be the end.
But a second before Sebastião’s voice had fled and everything went dark, I had a slight shock, an unexpected spark of consciousness. I don’t know what it was that nearly had the power to bring me back.
It was like cresting on a wave, then toppling under.
When I woke it was night—the light in the room was off, but I could see Sebastião’s white uniform sitting near me.
“I gave you a bath,” he said, “because I gave you such a big dose of sedative this morning—you were almost a goner.”
“I have the impression that I remember almost dying,” I murmured.
Sebastião sat at my side, holding me by the hand. He said he’d take me with him. We’d be on the highway with spring in bloom.
“Right, Sebastião. Bring me a glass of water, my mouth is dry.”
He brought me a glass of water. And he told me that, just after I fell asleep, before he realized he’d given me an excessive dose, he’d deflowered Dr. Carlos’s daughter.
“She came in the room right after you fell asleep. She started telling me there was a strange patient in the chapel. He was refusing to leave. When she took the key out of her dress, I figured: well here’s another hot blonde coming around wanting to get fucked by a big black guy. Only I didn’t expect her to be a virgin.”
I told Sebastião I’d only sucked her breasts, things didn’t go any further than that.
Sebastião turned on the light. He straightened my blanket, said his shift was starting; it promised to be a busy night. And he left.
I woke the next morning to Dr. Carlos pressing on the stump I now had instead of a leg.
There were some young residents around him. One of them asked how this would affect my bone structure.
Dr. Carlos responded: “We live in a world of structures. As in any other, when one part is removed from the skeleton, the whole structure is affected.”
The students took notes on his words. Only one young man never pulled out a pen. He gazed at me, transfixed. He seemed to need a sign from me so he could come tell me something that for him, in that moment, was almost life itself. He didn’t stop staring, and didn’t disguise it.
Dr. Carlos said that was it for today, they could go—they’d see each other again on Thursday. Only then did the young man lower his gaze. He left the room with his colleagues.
As soon as the residents withdrew, Dr. Carlos began to enumerate a bunch of different walks I should do on my crutches, as well as some other exercises, because my release from the hospital was approaching.
Where will I go? I thought. And Sebastião…was he serious when he said he’d take me with him?
And Dr. Carlos, with his indifferent air, was clearly realizing that my reputation—despite the fame I still had among strange girls like his daughter—had been a flash in the pan, and my washed-up career didn’t energize the sort of voters he needed.
Since I could tell that my life at the hospital was reaching an end, I began to exercise daily on my crutches. I went to the courtyard, sat on a bench near the chapel.
I made friends with a reddish dog. A short-haired mutt that immediately fell in love with me. I’d walk along the courtyard, and he’d come along at my side or sometimes behind me, always at the same pace, never hurried. Occasionally, when I lagged behind, he would stop, turn to me, his tail wagging, and wait.
When I sat on the bench, he’d lie down next to my foot. I was thinking of ways to take the dog when I left the hospital. People in my situation, with incomplete bodies, they need a dog.
One afternoon I heard someone playing the organ in the chapel. I later found out it was a young guy who’d been studying government in Germany. He’d learned he had a terminal cancer and came to die in Arraiol, his native land.
I stayed. Seated on a bench in the courtyard, listening to the organ with the dog against my foot. I stared at my missing leg, massaging the stump as though I still couldn’t believe it, and watched a couple of convalescents walking with difficulties like mine. I found the world rather sad. Sometimes Sebastião waved to me from the door that led out to the courtyard. I waved back, the red dog curling snugly around my foot.
Such were my walks outside the hospital building. When I got up the dog would follow me. He wasn’t too bold a creature, never daring to cross the threshold into the building.
They put me in a ward with a whole bunch of invalids. When I went to the ward I had to traverse a long aisle between the beds, hearing moans as I passed, cavernous breathing, sometimes delirium.
My bed was the last one—it took a few minutes to cross the ward all the way to the very end. As I went by, some of the invalids greeted me. Two or three seemed eager for conversation.
I’d lean my crutches against the wall and lie down, feeling tired out by so many short steps.
Sebastião was still my nurse, but he couldn’t stay with me for very long. In a ward with so many invalids, he couldn’t devote himself to just one.
Our conversations had more of an objective now: we were seriously planning to leave Arraiol together. Sebastião had a car. Trusting blindly in him, I believed that he carried me in his heart, that I’d be able to be useful to him in some way.
He had just fifteen more days to work at the hospital. It was more or less the period Dr. Carlos had estimated before I was to be released. Things were coinciding, and the two of us had to muffle our laughter on the ward. Usually Sebastião was the first to remember that we’d better quiet down.
“A few days from now, out there, we can laugh until we explode,” he’d tell me.
The night before the date we’d selected, I left all my clothes in order on top of my nightstand. I remembered to fold the right pant leg a few times and fasten it with two safety pins. I didn’t understand the utility of those folds, but it’s what I’d seen other stumped men do.
The next day I woke as day was breaking. I dressed myself unhurriedly. A songbird was singing deep notes nearby.
Even with their rubber tips the crutches made a repetitive noise on the sidewalk.
Three blocks from the hospital I found Sebastião’s rather old blue Volkswagen. Everything like we planned: that corner, out of view of the hospital.
When he saw me he gave a little toot on the horn. He got out of the car and opened the door for me. I wedged the crutches at a crooked angle between the floor and the back seat. They didn’t really fit in a VW.
As I closed the car door I saw the red-haired dog looking at me from the other side of the street. I opened the window and made like I was going to stick my head out, say something, give him a signal. But I couldn’t think of anything to save that friendship.
And the dog was already heading back, slowly, sure to resume his post in the hospital courtyard.
Sebastião got into the car, scratched his head and said, “I think it would be great if we went to Porto Alegre.”
“I don’t know anybody there anymore,” I said.
“I know, you already told me, but my grandmother lives there and I’ve been meaning to see her for ages,” he said.
“Porto Alegre…” I said, “It’s been years since I’ve been back.”
“So then let’s go?” Sebastião sighed.
“Of course, Sebastião, let’s take advantage of this lovely morning for a road trip.”
We stopped at a gas station as we were leaving Arraiol. There was a line of three or four cars. While we waited, I remarked that I didn’t want to think about what I’d do when my money ran out.
In no time at all, after crossing out of Arraiol, the car was on a highway that cut through the hills, each one greener than the next. Sebastião was whistling.
“Look at that flock of sheep over there,” he pointed.
On some stretches, the
sides of the highway bloomed with flowers, mostly daisies. Sebastião told me he liked driving on the highway.
It was after noon when we stopped for the first time, in front of a restaurant on the side of the road. The restaurant was behind a gas station. When we got out of the car the smell of oil was hanging in the air.
The entrance to the bathroom was outside the restaurant. We both made for it, Sebastião shortening his gait the way people do when they accompany a cripple.
We pissed standing next to each other. Sebastião took one of the crutches. With my free hand I leaned against the wall. As I urinated I thought about what a chore this would be from now on.
But on that morning of my liberation from Dr. Carlos’s empire, everything seemed less heavy—even the worst things were providential signs.
Sebastião ordered Cornish hen with polenta. I had chicken soup. It was the first time since losing my leg that I’d had any appetite for a meal. I slopped some broth onto the saucer and glanced at Sebastião. He was looking at me with admiration.
“We’ll get to Porto Alegre around four in the afternoon,” he said.
“That’s a good time,” I responded, returning to my bowl of soup.
As we were leaving the restaurant I noticed that Sebastião sometimes grew distracted and got ahead of me, then realized it, stopped, and turned to say something, like: “I think the trip will go quickly from here on. The weather’s nice.”
To get to the car we needed to pass the gas pumps and through the strong stench of oil. On the ground I saw some forgotten metal object, with fibrous pieces, which seemed like the thing most affected by the gas station’s oil. The object was blacker than black, and whatever its prior function had been, it was now a thing like my amputated leg: lost forever.
Sebastião opened the door for me from inside the car. When I sat down I noticed he’d switched on the radio, low volume, barely audible. The car got on the highway.
Sometimes a heavy truck was in front of us for a while, getting in our way. After passing it, if he could, Sebastião would look over at me, as if he’d just pulled off a remarkable feat.
“I just got the car—I could only afford to buy it recently,” he told me.
Suddenly I felt very tired. Sebastião stopped on the shoulder to help me move to the back seat so I could sleep more comfortably. The crutches were standing almost upright, propped in the front against the seat.
I curled up and lay down. Sebastião turned off the radio and continued down the highway.
I slept. I had a strange dream in which I was a woman again. Only now, in accord with my waking life, I was a woman who was missing a leg. I, this woman, was at a train station in the hinterlands—nothing around but forest—waiting for someone I wasn’t sure I’d see. Then the train arrived, filling the surroundings with smoke, and I couldn’t see anything.… Then I woke up.
I stayed lying down, without saying anything. For a long time afterward, Sebastião thought I was still sleeping. Then, at some point, he said my name softly.
“Hey, I’m awake,” I said.
He gave a glance back and said that, just like we’d thought, we’d get to Porto Alegre around four.
We were entering Porto Alegre. Sebastião was telling me how, until he was twenty years old, he spent a month out of every year with this grandmother in Porto Alegre. He liked her a lot. She lived in the Mont’Serrat neighborhood.
When we got to the address Sebastião had on a yellowed slip of paper, we saw there was no longer the blue wooden house he now described to me down to the most minute detail, with the hope that I’d help him find it.
Now, in its place, they’d erected a four-story building—visibly new construction. I asked if he was in touch with his grandmother. He said no, he hadn’t seen her since he was twenty years old, and they didn’t write each other because she was illiterate.
“The old lady told me once that she didn’t have any close friends in Porto Alegre who could read or write for her. She worked for many years as a hotel maid, but she was very private, kept her words to herself, and few people understood what she said. When she wasn’t cleaning she folded her arms against her chest, hiding herself. Her closest friends, she used to tell me, jokingly, were even more illiterate than she was. With me, though, she was a different person, she even laughed.”
Then Sebastião looked ahead, asked if I could see that corner store. His grandmother had sometimes bought things there, they might know something about her.
I stayed in the car, looking in every direction, admiring the steep inclines of the neighborhood. The car was parked at a low point, and straight ahead was a hill so steep I couldn’t see the top. I opened the window beside me.
Sebastião didn’t take long in the corner store. He came, leaned into my window, and said it was the same old owner at the corner store. He’d given him the news that his grandmother had died a little more than two years ago, and the owner of the house had sold the property to the developers of the new building.
Sebastião moved back from the car a little, looked at the sky, said the weather was still nice.
“Oh, the sea,” he exclaimed suddenly, “I’ve still never seen it!”
“You’ve never seen the sea?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he replied.
“Look, Sebastião,” I said, “we’ll take the highway to Pinhal; it’s the beach I used to go to when I was a kid.”
Between Porto Alegre and Viamão we stopped at a café, both of us thirsty. There was a bar, and we leaned against it drinking mineral water. The man working the counter said it was already getting into the hot part of the year, but the cold had been stubborn this year.
Through the vents in front of us I noticed the light outside was failing. Sebastião was having an animated conversation with the bartender, telling him he was going to see the sea for the first time.
“No way,” said the man across the counter.
“For the first time,” Sebastião repeated.
Then we went back to the car. We didn’t stop again until we got to Pinhal, an hour or so later.
Night had already fallen. There wasn’t anybody on the streets. The car passed several summer cottages, all of them shuttered.
“Ghost town,” Sebastião said, pretending to be scared.
We found a hotel. It was called the Atlantic. The letters were peeling from its white walls. Right in front of the hotel was a lamppost. A fine mist was visible against the light.
The woman who greeted us said she and her husband had started operating the hotel only recently. They were still getting things organized, but the rooms were cleaned every morning, and her husband, who was the cook, was already making the daily meals.
She was talking to us in the hotel restaurant itself. A spacious dining room with many tables, full of windows to the street. All the walls were peeling.
At the back of the room was an opening in the wall, with an arch at the top, which looked into the kitchen. The woman went over to the opening to call her husband, who was stirring something in a huge pot with a big metal spoon. She had told us her husband practically never came out of the kitchen—he liked being there more than being out in the hotel—and she was the one who served the food.
She introduced us to her husband and choked slightly as she said, “Look, our new guests.”
Sebastião asked the man, who was rather tall and needed to duck to see us from the other side of the opening, how the hotel business was going. The man replied that the hotels along the coast had a lot of guests on spring weekends in other years. This year, with the cold lasting longer, there was almost nobody coming to stay.
“And the crisis, too,” the woman reminded us.
The rooms were in another building, about twenty yards from the restaurant. As we crossed the grounds between one building and the other, I caught the soft fragrance of flowers. A dog was barking nearby—I couldn’t see him, but he was close and it made me feel unsafe. The woman said the dogs around there didn’t attack
anybody—they only knew how to bark. Sebastião was leading the way, and now it was the woman who managed the hotel that hung back, half looking behind her to keep with my slow pace.
I stopped for a second, looked up, and saw a full moon, faint from the mist. Then I lowered my eyes and saw a stack of logs. I asked why all the logs. She told me they were firewood—her husband cooked on a big woodstove.
Sebastião wasn’t carrying much luggage. Just one suitcase, which he now placed on the bed that would be his. The owner of the hotel said we would be the only two guests. If we wanted to call her or ask for something it was just a matter of whistling—it wouldn’t bother anybody. Before closing the door to the room—which looked directly onto the street—she told us we were two blocks from the sea.
I’d sat down in a chair beside a small desk. Took off my blazer; not because I was hot, but just for the simple pleasure of tossing it onto the bed where I’d be sleeping, like I was at home. And I really felt at home for the first time, after so long.
Sitting on his bed, Sebastião was taking off his shoes.
I took off my shoe and saw my foot was rather swollen. I ran a hand over my head, hoping to ward off any bad thoughts that might occur about the remaining foot.
I leaned on the desk, got up, and made it to the bed in three hops. Lay down. Sebastião reminded me not to fall asleep—we’d have dinner first.
We heard the sound of someone chopping wood. We tried to guess which one of them would be cutting the wood, if it was him or her.
We have so much time to guess so many things, I thought, grabbed the pillow, and threw it up in the air. The chopping noise had already stopped.
“And the sea?” I asked.
“I want to see it tomorrow, in the daytime,” he said.
“Did you realize we can hear it from here?” I asked.
“That’s it?” he said, a finger in the air.
“That’s it, Sebastião.”
After dinner, the manager of the hotel, appearing for the first time outside of the kitchen, brought us two bowls of corn pudding. He liked to smile more than he liked to talk. I looked at my watch—it was nine in the evening.
Atlantic Hotel Page 7
