“Why are you so selfish and won’t give me a kiss!”
Forgetting to not look at him, the girl saw him close-up — now invisible again because he was so close. She breathed the almost-night air. The smell of warm flour in the streets and her mother waiting to have dinner on a second floor. How dark it was getting.
Almost cheery, finally shredding the slender veins of the night, the girl stood on her hooves, breathed deeply releasing her battle cry — and when he was near, touchable on his buttons — stabbable — she mumbled, gradually losing the use of speech:
“Never!” she said laughing unpleasant in her glory, in her useless cry of conquest that came from São Geraldo, “never! I’ll bite you, that’s right, Felipe . . . Felipe!” she called in the darkness, “I’ll walk all over you, that’s the kiss you’ll get!” she said already serious, completely focused on her feet that were stomping.
Felipe opened his mouth in fright. And that’s how they stood looking at each other, astonished, curious, increasingly shivering. Finally he gave a fake laugh, trying to free his neck:
“You’ve got no manners at all!” — a child running unleashed crossed between them — “And it’s my fault for hanging around people of this sort, these must be the manners of this filthy township of yours!” he said now with pleasure, insulting her right in her city.
Both recoiled opening a small clearing, bristling, moving about, cautious. In the shadows the lieutenant was almost laughing out of rage. The girl would never laugh, pale. At the same time she could suddenly do a somersault in the air.
That’s what the young man seemed to foresee and recoiled even more. And finally after a bit of effort he turned his back.
Lucrécia trembled enormous raising herself on her tiptoes: this outsider would never leave victorious. That new and painful inspiration, like water entering her nose, and she splashing her large animal body in order to keep afloat:
“Look!”
She still didn’t know what she was going to say but it was urgent, it was a question of fighting for the kingdom. She saw the young man turn around with hope — at that distance the uniform was shining beautifully, lost, his loveliest object. And Lucrécia Neves looked at it disappointed.
The street was blinking with darkness and light. Hesitant figures of girls were starting to move about along the walls, searching. The women of the city. The smell of the invisible stones of the houses and the nausea of the gas burners were mingling in the new wind — the girl saw herself years back running to get bread for dinner, flying between the last people of the night, terrorized by the dark form of the hill, she herself frightening as she ran . . .
“Look!” she said. “Why don’t you kiss your grandmother, she’s not from São Geraldo!” she finally threw at him, tragic, out loud so everyone could hear.
It was horrible, and she was shaking all over in the darkness. While the embarrassed lieutenant was twisting his neck and adjusting the uniform insulted in public — someone had stopped in the shadow of the sidewalk smiling with great interest. It had been the meeting of two horses in the air, both dripping with blood. And they wouldn’t stop until one was king. She had wanted him because he was an outsider, she hated him because he was an outsider. The fight for the kingdom. Lucrécia Neves elbowed the woman who was watching eliciting a small cry of fright. She violently straightened her hat, shaking her bracelet in the air. And with her head high, holding back a dizziness that would make her fly over the smokestacks — she took her leave slowly, full of trembling ribbons.
She was all worked up, now and then she’d give a kick with one of her hind legs at her absent tail. But as she was crossing the street, unable to wait any longer she started to tell herself what had happened, in detail; she had hard eyes and lips dripping with saliva while recounting: “then I said to darling Felipe: only a criminal would dare!” Oh, Perseu, she suddenly murmured turning her thoughts to the one who’d never offend her.
But Perseu dressed like a farmhand. And the girl was already needing, in her iron streets, the armed forces.
She arrived at Market Street when it was already dark. She kept examining herself anxious as if she might be shredded. And losing the lieutenant . . . And he’d be Captain someday! . . . Oh, oh, Felipe! she called.
I’m fooling them all, I don’t want anything, she thought with spite clinging to the lights that the lamplighter was brightening. But in a general way she liked men so much. Oh, Felipe, she said with regret.
What frightened her, as she passed the closed butcher shop, is that no one was talking about marrying her. Only Mateus who respected her with paternal and ceremonious desire, visiting her mother in order to win the daughter. Which was already beginning to appeal to her, it all had a familiar and repugnant air, it reeked in short of what people call real life. Mateus who’d watch her while smoking a cigar. With him, she’d have a luxurious and violent future . . . The girl really was eager to marry.
Ah, some news, some news, she suddenly asked in agony, oh, to find at last at home a messenger from afar, his clothes dusty, suitcases in the hallway, and who’d take out a letter from his leather satchel. And while her mother was serving the stranger a glass of liqueur, she’d open the letter trembling, the letter that would take her far away!
Because São Geraldo was asphyxiating her with its mud and its cloves floating in the gutters.
Ana had turned on the feeble lights and was waiting in the lounge chair for dinner. She was the only spectator. The house immersed in the silence of electricity.
And right there was her room.
Like a piano left open. How frightening to see things. The design of the beams in the ceiling was strange and new, like that of a hanging chair . . . She took off her shoes while looking up, put away her hat while smoothing it out, counting on the unforeseeable day of tomorrow. Suddenly straightening herself.
She grabbed a handkerchief, covered her nose. The handkerchief came back wet with blood. She leaned her head back as she’d been taught. Taking advantage to look at the ceiling beams. The liquid was running warmly and the room smelled of blood. She stayed like that, without impatience, panting a bit. Her mouth muted by the cloth, her eyes enlarged. At last she removed the handkerchief. Between her nose and her mouth the blood had dried giving her face a filthy and childish appearance. Once again she’d come back wounded.
Ugly, wilted beneath her disheveled hair, sniffing occasionally; the haunting had passed and she’d returned to the great frogs. But she also remained whole — fighting without wearing out, she was horrible, the patriot.
She took off her dress and, sweating in the slip stuck to her body, breathed with closed eyes. Her hair was hiding half of her struck face. Lucrécia Neves was wiping her forehead with the back of her hand as if she’d taken a beating, comforting herself as best she could. She was dirty and bloody. Snorting humiliated while stroking her ear with her shoulder.
4 The Public Statue
The steps to the dining room were three and the difference in height threw the room into some relief. The township’s poor electricity, in those days distributed only to a few houses, would construct at night a compartment full of structures and cores where the ticktack of the pendulum would tumble down precisely — concentric circles erasing themselves in the shadows of the furniture. Yellowing tea cozies, the little stuffed bird, the wooden box with an Alpine landscape on the lid, were Ana’s meticulous presence.
The house seemed decorated with the spoils of a bigger city.
“You’re tired,” Ana asked from the head of the table, squinting her eyes as if her daughter were far away and the light between them strong.
Lucrécia didn’t like this room so permeated with Ana’s happy widowhood. To understand it a continuity of presence would be required, the girl seemed to be thinking trying to look at each object: they’d reveal nothing and reserve themselves only for her mother’s way of looking. Her mot
her who’d move them around and dust them — then take a step back, as if sculpting them, in order to examine them from afar with myopic delicateness — a sideways gaze. The objects themselves now could only be seen obliquely; a straight-on stare would see them cross-eyed. After examining them Ana would sigh and stare at Lucrécia signaling that she was now available; Lucrécia would divert her eyes toward the ceiling, rude.
Ana was increasingly trying to get closer, anxious to convey to her the insignificant secrets that were suffocating her: in fact she was already complaining of not sleeping at night. Lucrécia would divert her eyes.
She’d been solitary for a while now, and loving that widowhood without the shocks that can come from a man, the woman was nonetheless starting to worry — and trying to drag her daughter toward an intimacy in which both might construct sneaky compensations, sighs and delights, that pleasure of a seamstress at her sewing, Ana who’d rejoice when there was some article of clothing to mend.
Uselessly she was seeking her daughter’s support asking her with her patient gaze for the sacrifice. What the sacrifice might consist of, neither needed to know: but Ana was asking, Lucrécia turning her down — and secondary requests and denials were emerging, unimportant in themselves but enormous in the dining room, loaded with the same stubbornness: why didn’t Lucrécia spend the evenings with her in the dining room?
But if the girl finally gave in — the room and Ana, radiant, were encircling her, the teacups sparkling, the Alpine landscape in extraordinary prominence, nothing however capable of being seen straight-on — though Ana would try to teach her to see from the perspective of beauty, pointing out here and there:
“The china cabinet looks much nicer with my little bird on the first shelf, you can see it much better, right, sweetie,” she’d say.
But it was just a way of seeing, and nothing more.
And when Lucrécia was in the living room, which was called “resting after dinner, mama” — the door might open and Ana would turn up with a mischievous smile, carrying her bag of yarn, needles and embroidery frames: ready to visit her. The girl however revealed nothing to her. Ana would sit ceremonious and dreamy without unrolling her needlework — looking with some curiosity at the trinkets, the small table, this living room that because it rarely received visits had become her daughter’s second bedroom. Left to herself, Ana Rocha Neves would eventually start speaking of her youth, with details that would suffocate her if she didn’t transmit them with exactness: she’d sometimes stop for a long while until making up her mind precisely when some fact had happened. And thinking she was speaking of herself, she’d only describe the place where she’d lived when she left the farm until finding a husband:
“Now that, that was a city, sweetie, and not this hole: even the horses had bells, and a church was a church, a house was a house, a street was a street — not this hole with houses that don’t even make sense.”
Despite the details, what a lost city that had been, and what a mixed-up youth! her mother had been happy and scared in her city, that was it in the end. And when the revolution was over, the silence had frightened her, she’d gone to sleep in her sister’s bed.
That was the thing that alarmed Lucrécia Neves about the story. The girl too seemed to be familiar with this fear that wasn’t fear, just getting chills down the spine in the face of a thing. Once she’d gone to the state museum and been afraid of having a wet umbrella in a museum. That’s what had happened. She was afraid of seeing, in a single glance, a train and a little bird. And of a man with a diamond ring on his middle finger: Mateus. She’d freeze if that finger pointed her out.
Also with a movement of hers in bed a crippled and content being would sometimes take shape in the roses on the wall — then she’d shiver the way a dog barks at a wardrobe.
Worried by the silence, Ana stirred at the head of the table, passing her the bread plate. But the girl looked at her.
And then the game started up again. Lucrécia Neves removed the slice and placed it decisively on the table, without touching it.
This stupidity had one day been the opening scene of a long conversation about a lack of appetite that ended in accusations of love and sadness, and had become the secret starting signal. Ana immediately received the short message. She answered her with enormous eyes fixed on the plate: which was already feigned. Something had begun. The two women became sly and shrewd, running cautiously like rats through the shadowy room — and taking on the unfamiliar natures of two characters they’d never know how to describe but could imitate, just by imitating themselves.
That was when a soft and singing rain started to fall, the wind opened the window. Ana, impatient with the interruption, got up to shut it, and the whole room became more interior: both trembled with pleasure, exchanged a glance of friendship.
“Today I got so tired, I even felt like I was going to die,” Lucrécia began with a decisive sigh.
“Is that so?” said her mother making an effort so Lucrécia would notice her interest through the ceremonious tone she’d adopt when they were beginning a “scene.” “Isn’t that something!” she added a bit foolish, feigning a special understanding.
But this time a certain sadness overtook that woman who, a bit dreamy, was stroking her fork. She was even almost smiling. At other times, when her daughter would touch her, Ana would jump startled and still try to trot amidst the things. But today she was slightly panting. “Is that so?” she repeated tilting a face to which some thought of calm desperation gave an expression of such luminous love that if anyone saw it that person would have seen love.
The certainty of a great experience, despite her reclusive life, overtook this more-than-mature woman. She looked with some compassion at that girl across from her, full of stupid youth, whom you could never teach . . . teach . . . kindness? what kindness? she’d have to learn all by herself.
“Isn’t that something!” said Ana Rocha Neves disappointed.
The girl then answered that if she died — “anyway what did it matter? mother wouldn’t even cry.”
If they were awakened, maybe they’d be surprised that, with such scarce resources, they could fall so completely into their roles. But they no longer needed much preparation to get into character, and the beginnings were getting quicker every time, almost impatient.
“Mother wouldn’t cry,” Lucrécia said, and this offended Ana. It had become clear, amidst the sheets of rain, that if the woman wouldn’t cry, Lucrécia wasn’t the one who would lose out — for in that moment she’d be the one who was humble and dead.
The girl continued: “you wouldn’t even have to cry just like Perseu for example didn’t cry” . . . Ana agreed quickly avenging herself on the fellow who’d stolen from her so many of her daughter’s hours.
But, by agreeing that Perseu wouldn’t cry, she’d accepted one of the facts of the pronouncement — and the comparison itself became impossible to contradict. The woman fell silent while Lucrécia was gaining strength and a certain bitterness for having convinced her so easily. Experience should have taught her that there was no point waiting for her mother to object. Above all the role that had fallen to Ana seemed to have an even weaker character than the real one.
“Because you’d be alone, you wouldn’t even need to pay for my clothes, mama, and if you missed being around people you could even find some girlfriends . . .”
Ana was now almost smiling at the hopes Lucrécia had given to her; and with troubled eyes, eyes already immersed in the future, she was almost agreeing.
“And you could marry Perseu’s father . . .” she continued now horrified imagining that sanguine man scorning her dear mama. She’d never gone that far and both looked at each other surprised. The woman finally stirred in her chair, flushed:
“Well now, young lady! . . .” — she said coquettishly.
Lucrécia was afraid and added cautiously:
“Or, d
on’t then, mama dear, just live more comfortably . . .”
Ana nodded quickly in agreement — for a short instant she looked at and away from her daughter, smiling suspiciously.
But faced with Ana’s contented gaze the girl couldn’t stand it anymore, and some thing finally breaking, out of tune, she swallowed her food, got up running and was kneeling beside her mother who was staring at her terrified and blushing with pleasure . . .
“. . . mama how sad our life is!” she cried smothered by the woman’s legs. (What about the dances, what about the dances? the devil was saying to her.) Ana babbled something, full of modesty, offended: “I don’t think so!” she was mumbling almost haughty.
But while she kept her suffocated expression, and the whole room that she wasn’t seeing was spinning dizzily, the girl seemed to discover that she hadn’t cried out because of sadness. It was because she could no longer bear that mute existence that was always above her, the room, the city, the high degree the things atop the china cabinet had reached, the small dry bird ready to fly, stuffed, around the house, the height of the tower of the power plant, so much intolerable balance — that only a horse could manage to express with rage atop its hooves. So much joy that would never be broken — and that only sometimes the military band would burst finally making all the city’s windows open.
When the girl stood her face was tranquil.
Things were perched around her, very calm. Coffee cups were steaming, her mother seated, table and tablecloth, everything unconquerable once again.
The Besieged City Page 7
