“Give me that embroidery, Mateus!,” she’d mumble hiding her strength.
And even with her concealing her claws, Mateus was shrinking more and more.
It wasn’t only her fault. Amidst the confusion of the city is where you’d spot an outsider: he had nothing to cling to, whereas Lucrécia Neves was part of the avalanche. She’d prepared it moment by moment. After she’d taken her husband to live on Market Street, she’d grown progressively meaner. Mateus would stay home all day, gazing from his window at the bright shop windows on rainy days, counting the cars. He was always hunting down broken things to fix and would sleep after lunch, on those dirty afternoons full of wind. While she’d strut through the rooms dragging her “robe de chambre.” She thought she was the most intelligent creature in the world and made a point of proving it to Mateus. He, with an ever-weaker voice in an ever-larger body, exasperated her, setting off those short kicks in the tail of her house dress. She’d look at him with wide astonished eyes, laugh loudly with coldness:
“My dear little Mateus,” she’d say smashing him with curiosity, “my dear, little, skinny-legged Mateus,” she’d say laughing and taking advantage of the outsider’s weakness in order to expel him.
He’d laugh a lot because these were the kind of little games he’d taught his wife back when he was the man of the house; he’d laugh approvingly and they’d look at each other. But she was feeling a bit at the mercy of the man who’d seen her decline before her rebirth. Proud, she didn’t want witnesses to the way she’d tried to transform herself and to how she’d employed the same dirty scaffolding that São Geraldo used before turning up with a new building or a more modern sewage system. The more she feared being in his hands, the more she’d try to please him. She’d put on a flattering and odious demeanor that her husband would accept swelling for a moment with his former virility: she’d say to him as if speaking of a third person:
“He doesn’t know anything about clothes! dress his wife in burlap and tell him: it’s beautiful! he’ll repeat: it’s beautiful!” — she’d laugh and her husband would laugh while being fawned over; then she’d laugh more softly: the idiot.
She had to keep the hilarity going in order to disguise the word, while through his own laughter he, modest and troubled, was already examining his wife. Lucrécia, not satisfied, risking everything, would repeat: the idiot. They’d look at each other laughing so much that tears would appear in their eyes, her laughter interspersed with strident “ai”s.
The more São Geraldo expanded, the harder she found it to speak clearly, so dissembled she’d become. Mateus, now extremely curious, would ask her: “how was the visit?” — she immediately on guard: “I don’t know, so-so!”
“Is the house big?” he’d insist, eager, in his slippers.
“Who knows, it’s appropriate . . . ,” she’d defend herself looking at him with intensity to figure out whether his questions would become more pressing.
“But how many rooms?”
“You think I noticed . . . I swear I didn’t even look, what a question . . .”
“But anyway, a single living room?”
“Two,” she finally said, gentle and worn out.
It seemed to her that the only way now to describe São Geraldo was to get lost in its streets.
Until Mateus was reading a passage from that day’s paper. She was hearing almost intimidated his heroic tone — an outsider could sing this big city that was taking shape, whereas she no longer even knew how to see it . . .
“The public,” Mateus was reading, “followed these fortunate renovations with interest, and our press did not fail to applaud them, emphasizing the moral achievement of such actions. For, is it not by valuing the legacy of our ancestors, built with the sweat of their brow, that a city is honored?”, Mateus Correia was trembling. She would have liked to interrupt the tone of insufferable beauty with which her husband was reading the tributes to the city. “But the Urbanization Committee recently had the unfortunate idea of demolishing the old Posts and Telegraphs building, the kind of idea that makes the stones of our streets shake with indignation. Needless to say the people of São Geraldo await explanations.” Gradually, as the man was declaiming, Lucrécia Neves was becoming enlarged, enigmatic, a statue at whose feet, during civic festivals, flowers would be placed.
Then she’d go out alone, enjoying the city traffic with suffering, paying attention to everything: roads full of dust and sunlight, the people passing by. Her difficulty stripped the immediate interest from things, with effort she was going far away in search of whatever existed, taking enormous and useless strolls from which she’d return exhausted. Mateus! she’d yell irritated, Mateus! come here! Mateus already deafened, she awaiting his response, and the house half in shadow, tidy. Mateus!, she’d order, and kept getting more engrossed, dominated by the motionlessness of the rooms, plunged into a reality that could only be overtaken by flights, and from which she could only tear herself away with brutality: Mateus!
Soon enough that state of affairs even seemed to have always existed, the house half in darkness in that rich period of winter. The roads were being covered with asphalt before the rains came, the lights were coming on earlier, the doors opening and closing dryly, Mateus asking from one room to the next: what day is it today? and his own voice answering: Tuesday.
That was when she took the picture that would later so intrigue her children.
During this period she was really at her peak.
She sat, nicely controlled her neck muscles, her vision darkened with emotion, the photographer let out a cry: smile! the magnesium exploded in brightness. Done, the photographer said, and her face, shoulders and waist had crumbled.
Days later she went to pick up the result. And behold that recognizable, hard woman. Was her face saying some thing? her thought was pointing some thing out, her neck tense. A picture like one you take in a big city, which São Geraldo still wasn’t. It had been a harbinger.
She hung it in the hallway, beside a postcard-sized drawing of the future viaduct. She’d dust it daily. Sometimes, dropping her embroidery, she’d run over and halt before it. Both looking at each other. She staring at it with stupor and pride: what a fully realized work. She’d even become freer after being photographed; she now seemed able to be whatever she wanted.
But more and more the photograph was growing detached from the model, and the woman would seek it as if seeking an ideal. The face on the wall, so swollen and dignified, had in the suffocating dream a destiny, whereas she herself . . . Perhaps she’d fallen into the machinery of things, and the picture was the unreachable surface, already the superior order of solitude — her own history that, unnoticed by Lucrécia Neves, the photographer had captured for posterity.
10 The Corn in the Field
On one of his final business trips, instead of leaving his wife on Market Street, Mateus rented the little house on the island for her, hoping the sea would give her some color.
The ferry was lingering while surmounting the waves that a frustrated storm was filling with rage and foam.
Pale from nausea Lucrécia was squinting making an effort to see from afar the land that was holding back. She’d hardly disembarked however, and a certain pleasure was already emerging with her feet sinking into the sand by the dock. Soon she was nearing the center of the small seaside city, directing the entourage of porter and maid. Before taking the carriage she also saw the sign for Dr. Lucas, who represented, in Mateus’s eyes, the assurance of Lucrécia’s health, for she really had lost weight.
Climbing into the carriage, she took careful note of the house where she’d find the doctor if she needed him. With surprise her heart instead of feeling merely confident, did it shiver awakening to the memory of an almost whole strength? she gave the order to depart.
The horses were carrying her in fits and sudden starts along the path but soon were running with raised heads
— and soon the woman wanted them to fly. Weakened by some desire she even pulled off her hat and let her hair be tousled in the wind. What she meant by this gesture only the trees witnessed, and the horses were advancing among them.
There was the wooden house, in black and white because of the moisture that was darkening its outlines. The surrounding foliage was singed by the sea air that the constant wind was blowing: Lucrécia was smelling the salty air, cautiously sniffing it all which seemed to her to have a cold and quick reality like a stream’s — and which so reminded her of the silent time before the progress of São Geraldo. A slight house, built on sandy soil; after a few days she noticed that she too was waking up with white skin and black lashes, all in light and dark, so much had she already begun to imitate the new landscape. A sparrow had crossed the small room from one window to the other. Lucrécia Correia never wearied of wandering through the miniscule dwelling, more and more astonished: everything had become so easy that it hurt a little.
At the first excuse, because of a missing cheese, she’d fought with the maid and dismissed her. And finally — alone with her former careful way of living — she’d notice each creak of wood, keep an eye on the roses growing in the garden, do quick laps and give sharp cries of recognition. At night the cut roses would dimly illuminate the bedroom and leave the woman sleepless; the waters beating on the distant beach wanted to transport her but the croaking of frogs was monitoring her from close by. In the morning she’d awake as pale as if she’d been riding horseback all night: she’d run barefoot and open the door to the sandy yard. New roses had blossomed.
The sea was far off but the roses would burn in the salty wind that blew in the late afternoon.
She’d then sit in the doorway of the house with Ana’s shawl on her shoulders. As night approached everything would seem farther off, whoever had left had left for good, the branches would tremble, the trees would blacken in their roots and the sandy clearings would show themselves to be: white. It was an immense place. If some thing were to happen, it would ring out in bells. The woman was even avoiding joy, hesitating in those steps that she’d recognize only through the intermediary of dread: she’d bring in the chair, close the house and light the lamp on the table. Everything that had been outside was inside.
She’d fall asleep watchful as if dawn could find the house surrounded by horses. And it would resemble the first night of sleep after someone was buried. Had it been that pause in the revolution that had one day frightened Ana? The tick-tock of the alarm clock was dangling every thing at its own surface. Giving every object a precise solitude. The egg on the kitchen table was egg-shaped. The square of the window was square. And in the morning the shape of the woman in the doorway was dark in the light.
And the mosquitos. The house of roses was lifted in glory into the air by slight mosquitos with tall legs. They had grown oversized and, weakened by this excess, it was easy to touch them: when you left a glass of water out they’d drown without at least deteriorating. It was a brief life, without resistance. They seemed to live off a history much larger than their own. And, useless and resplendent as they were, they would make of the world the orb.
*
The spider had already woven several webs in the window when the woman headed down the road that would take her to the center of town.
Tiled houses were at the water’s edge and the whole small city was arrayed in a line for anyone approaching from the sea. Behind the line heaped-up things were decaying in heat and slavery, the women at the windows looking at the rare clouds or keeping an eye on the wooden gangplank that connected the land to the boats.
At night the sea would darken, the gangplank whiten, and bottle rockets would shoot up and explode above the rooftops waking people up. Until the silence of the late night would return and you could make out the calming slaps of water.
That was when the lighthouse would begin its patrol and with patience pick out between intervals the objects from the darkness. In the morning the tide had gone out, the day was being born fresh, windy. But gradually the island would dry out again and by ten o’clock it was a dry city — the gangplank was burning, upon it travelers were looking around dimmed on empty stomachs: the streets lay parched.
All this Lucrécia saw, with one foot upon the village. This her auspicious land.
Wherever a city was forming, there she would be building it: the electrical wiring in the bar was wrapped in fine red paper and the old lady on her knees was washing the stairs. Coffee with milk, Lucrécia said to her, serious, with pleasure.
And nearly at dusk, tired of walking around, she saw finally Dr. Lucas’s office open and from it a man emerge with a heavy gait. He seemed to her quite aged yet as calm as she’d remembered him. The woman quickly crossed the sidewalk and stood before him laughing quietly.
In the half-darkness she didn’t see his surprise but heard his muffled voice mumbling her name and she grew serious for still being that person they could call: Lucrécia Neves from São Geraldo.
They took a walk through the city park just as they’d walked through the park in the township. The doctor was pointing out to her the public monuments . . . And from afar the sanatorium where his wife now lived, forcing him to relocate his practice to the island.
Lucrécia was strolling beside him, the small city darkening dizzily, the lights finally came on. The doctor even ended up buying her a little bag of bonbons, Lucrécia was looking uneasily at the dark sky.
She spoke to him of Mateus, of the house on Market Street, in the night that the sea was filling with salt, but nothing was reaching its own end, the breeze was bringing and taking away the words and the lampposts were being deformed in the water.
Doctor Lucas calm as a man who really worked. It was somehow humiliating to realize that, strong and hardly talkative, he was neither revealing nor concealing himself. To the doctor Lucrécia didn’t need to mention the blouse she was planning to embroider; she’d always imitated her men.
Maybe the house of roses was just a beginning and on this very night she’d come to know another order . . . and she was already wanting to touch all of this, once again came the uncertainty about what Doctor Lucas might do, and she was trying to figure it out by watching him, as if the night that was falling could help her with its darkness.
When he went to assist her with her coat, and while he was brushing his arm across her shoulders — for just an instant Lucrécia Neves leaned back . . . had he made her arms more lively? had he noticed? or was she imagining it? out of uncertainty the hazy light of a lamppost lit up, the instant turning gold in the night, out of uncertainty and delight the little lady was breathing observing severely the car that was moving ahead over the irregular stones: the wheels were screeching and Doctor Lucas was speaking about what he’d done that day, she interrupting him with her errant mouth:
“Doctor Lucas, Doctor Lucas, you work too much, sir!” she was saying taking the opportunity to touch his clothes.
The doctor, with tired and vibrant eyes, was laughing at her . . .
“Ah!” mumbled the woman.
“What happened . . .”
“That star,” she said with tears in her eyes in a sincerity that, in search of expression, was making her lie. “It’s just that I turned around and saw the star,” she said bathed by the grace of her lie.
This time the doctor looked at her through the darkness.
She blushed. But he was also looking at her with understanding and strength, leading her now with a first firmness through the dark lane, and avoiding touching her.
A moment more and, not touching, they were both thrown off balance, not touching was almost bringing them to a certain extreme point. Everything had become precious as if Lucrécia Neves Correia were holding such heavy things with her left hand: a low branch almost undid the bun in her hair, stealing from her a slightly painful exclamation of rapture.
“See,�
�� he said with clarity and strength, “on such a lovely night I’ll have to work” — through the darkness he was looking at her, imposing on her severely a more dignified attitude . . .
“. . . impossible!” she yelled shattered, her happy chest lighting up without paying attention to the man’s warning. “Impossible to work so much,” she added foolishly.
“Can you see all right?” asked the doctor imperiously.
He wanted to take responsibility for what he had unleashed, and did he look guilty? she obeyed with her mouth half-opened.
“Here we are”—the jammed door was cracking open and the man smiled — “did the walk do you any good?” he asked in another tone.
“It did, doctor.”
Was the doctor angry? The frogs were croaking hoarsely.
“I don’t know how to thank you, doctor . . .” — she was speaking with effort, with an ardor slightly out of place, her hair fluttering.
“Don’t thank me then,” he responded curtly.
Oh how annoyed he was!
“Yes, doctor.”
Through the darkness dimly illuminated by the proximity of the sea he looking at her now curious, almost amused — finally smiling:
“Well then, good-night, get some rest.”
He reached out his hand thinking to meet hers and accidentally touched her arm — she blanched: “good night,” she answered, and the man walked off stepping on leaves.
Lucrécia Correia was lingering at the door, held at her current height by the scattered frogs. She coughed snuggling into her coat. She kicked away a bit of rubbish.
Then she went into the house and turned on the light. Inside everything was lightweight, blown. The bed, the table, the lamp. Nothing could be touched — the slight and upright extremities in the wind. Why don’t I go over and touch them? she couldn’t and yawned, shivery.
The Besieged City Page 15
