With the fact of being a man he wanted to look at the world, and saw the fields in the rain, the worn front steps of a house. The people were tepid on the train, the smoke comforting. He was looking at everything with innocence, power and dominion.
The lady in black was smoking, examining him with painted eyes. Perseu didn’t like women on whom nothing was lost. But he experienced a certain hot promise in his chest upon seeing a perfumed and clever woman observing him. Though that direct gaze intimidated him. That bold gaze?
But no.
Right then the woman in black was thinking while exhaling smoke: there all of a sudden is a man. Which was amazing to her. But it was late for her. There all of a sudden is a man, she guessed and, putting out her cigarette, addressed the discovery, in defiance — through the ever-growing distance — in defiance and compassion to a person who during their short separation wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
Perseu however was no longer looking at her, interested now in penetrating the darkness through the window. No woman would receive the heat of his soul that he might one day give to a friend. He’d forgotten the woman and was peering at the night through the window — unstable, big, silent in his raincoat. But he wasn’t just a blind force. Being a man was leading him through the mystery.
He sat with the lady in black at the station bar. She ordered a drink, took out a cigarette. No, thank you, he didn’t smoke. Hearing that answer she seemed even more ironic, despite wrapping him in a broad gaze that made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like women with such big eyes. Right at the exit of the train she’d asked him to help carry her suitcase to the restaurant. Surprised, Perseu had walked ahead of her, placed the suitcase next to a table and bowed a bit rigidly bidding farewell. But the woman, who didn’t stop staring at him calmly, had invited him to drink something before they both headed into the city.
The small room was poorly lit by shaded lamps on the only three tables. Perseu’s brief interest in the woman had gone out, leaving just his impatience to go his own way.
Being thus abducted vaguely reminded him of someone. And, looking at that creature, did the young man anxiously feel that the same race was stalking him? he wondered whether Lucrécia Neves might now have that woman’s face. In fact the weak light of the bar was straining his eyes. And in the filthy brightness, the increasingly unknown creature before him was flickering a fantastical face. Perseu’s complacent nature wouldn’t let him admit that the woman was simply annoying him, those enormous eyes, her constant smoke and the determination with which she’d grabbed him . . . Old and cynical, he thought without rage, with a certain sympathy. She was smoking and drinking, and wasn’t looking at him much now. A vague concept of chivalry was keeping him from excusing himself; he was waiting for the woman to decide to get up.
But she seemed to have time. Though she wouldn’t release him, she’d sometimes forget him — she’d lean over the table, hold her glass with one hand, stroke it with the other, peering at the liquid in slightly ardent meditation. It was raining harder and making the wooden gangplank outside tremble. Perseu kept trying to chat but she wasn’t giving him any encouragement. He was putting up with the nuisance of the situation only because in this unfamiliar scene others might see an adventure: so he was examining his companion, trying to guess what category she’d fall into.
Despite being friendly to all women, he divided them into the ones who were worthwhile and the ones who weren’t. What made it hard to find anything to discuss was that she was so much older than he was.
Yet the woman would know where the young man’s awkwardness was coming from, and even how to dispel it; her understanding had sharpened to the point of shamelessness. But in fact she wasn’t worried about what the skinny young man might think. What she herself was really worried about, she couldn’t say. She just knew that, in ferocity, she was clinging to this moment, and this was already the fourth glass she was drinking in order to keep the young man. Meanwhile the possibility of hilarity became intolerable when the young man asked:
“Are you married, ma’am?”
She was rigid, and telling herself: I could be his mother. Which wasn’t true, she’d thought it to wound herself. She might even scream if he got up — that was all she knew.
What did she want anyway from this beautiful young man? he was clearly bored . . . But that wouldn’t stop her; things were now running along so fast that they were making her serious, ferocious, her hands stiffening on the tablecloth. If she wanted to be upfront and lay her cards on the table, she wouldn’t have any cards — that’s how far she’d gone.
Here all of a sudden is a man, she was thinking. Men had always seemed excessively beautiful to her — that’s what she’d felt when centuries ago, in her parents’ house, in a ball gown, she’d resembled a young tree with few leaves — the memory had made her terribly ironic later.
And you couldn’t tell why the weak had later become her prey. Then, when she’d meet a weak and intelligent man, above all weak because intelligent — she’d devour him roughly, not let him find his balance, make him need her forever — that’s what she’d do, absorbing them, detesting them, supporting them, the ironic mother. Her power had become great. When a defeated person would approach — she’d understand that person, she’d understand; how well you understand me, Afonso said. An object had always needed to be flawed in order for her to be able to seize it, and through its flaw. She’d buy it cheaper, that way.
What did she want now from this young man? a little excited by the drink, she was saying to herself: just look how ridiculous I’ve become. Also he was unusual. I don’t want to understand him, she was repeating sensitive to the cold, aged. Because, a moment more, and she’d understand him so well that she’d weaken this “marvelous” person before her, who — ah, “a marvel” — didn’t need anyone.
Oh, but to understand him for a minute. And he, already no longer unassailable, would need her. The same young man from the first dances, the same angel who’d asked her to dance and who’d disappeared in order to be an engineer . . . It was also her own mother whom she, the daughter, could only reach after learning her sins — increasing their gravity in order to be able to love better.
She could also only summon this distracted perfection before her by destroying it through understanding.
But would he be distracted? or was she the one who wasn’t there. She’d certainly noted on the train that the young man seemed remote from the passengers. Maybe just because he’d been present and was real. The others were the ones who had moved off and were seeing him from afar. She’d made him out when she’d said in surprise: here suddenly is a man.
This was someone who didn’t want or need to flee: he was going, and wherever he’d go she’d go too. She too had already lived through this time. But what had remained of the simple richness in her first ball gown? what had survived of her undefined and professionless intelligence that “marveled” — the word that had become her own, always changing meaning, “a marvel,” spoken by so many of her voices, one loud at the height of an event — a marvel — another full, cavernous, tremulous — a marvel — another down there, quick like a stream — a marvel. What had happened to the audacity of being weak? she hadn’t dared to be. And to the mirror where she’d looked at herself for a second? the fruit gnawed by a worm, the “marvel” with the dark larva in its heart.
She quickly smiled at the young man, time was pressing, there wasn’t a minute to lose. The young man smiled back. Unable not to notice, she discovered in that answer a certain artificial and uncomfortable immorality: out of friendliness he was giving whatever a tired woman’s face was seeming to request. But she leapt over this too — never to be held back now by an obstacle — leapt over, kept running in search of the whole fruit, the gold of the fruit on the tree, the ball gown, the big eyes in the mirror, that beginning of understanding that was just the world around her, and which had later become her
weapon, her image before putting the cape on her shoulders and leaving — the golden fruit in the mirror — a marvel! she too had once been incomprehensible, remote! I never saw such big eyes, said in the lights a young man in black.
With a start Perseu and the woman heard the deaf noise of an airplane above the station. The hoarse wings further darkened the small room filling it with somber luxury. The airplane went off and the city was pulsing in silence.
Again the air of the room awoke blinking in the lamps — the toothpick holder on the tablecloth: the whole thing was sordid, Perseu was saying to himself protecting himself.
And “marvelous,” the woman was saying. The transformations of the bar were the monotonous mutations of an insomnia, the watchfulness of the lady in black stretching out in shadow, her eyelashes flapping somnolent over the black luminosity of her eyes. The fruit was wavering full. As in a children’s game in the garden, she was supposed to seize it with her mouth, no hands — anyway she’d never had hands — and since she didn’t have hands she’d reminded Perseu of that decapitated body that had belonged to Lucrécia. She was supposed to seize it with her own disturbance, with the darkness that was still her only strength, the darkness full of honeybees. But first she’d have to give up forever, first lay down her weapon — be only the dark stain in the mirror — and there the fruit would be. First, turn away the thing that had been her conquest until reaching the universal and dreamy attention of a dog — and behold, behold the whole fruit. For hadn’t that been the way she’d seen herself in the mirror?
Afterward much time had passed, she’d learned a loud way of speaking with children, saying funny phrases for the benefit of the adults around her; only the children wouldn’t get it. They were whole. Remote like the young man. But if the lady in black saw a dog — a real dog — even today she’d still know how to reach it, which proved that the “marvel” kept wavering. She knew like nobody else how to transform a solitary dog into a happy dog that would lie at her side blinking his eyes. And then, with him at her feet — never, never comprehensible — the room would grow large, silent; and it wasn’t the dog, she was the one who was guarding the house. Such was her greatness, such her misery.
The young man across from her was a big dog, skinny, solitary. Not to be able to be him, how unfair. With the same center of somber purity. With the soul that dogs have: belonging to the house, to steps, corner of the yard; with that gaze over the world that a stretched-out dog has. The lady in black thought about her wrinkles — there wasn’t an instant in which they weren’t getting deeper, there wasn’t a minute to lose, she kept running, jumping over streams, sensing the direction of the wind, leaping in the darkness in search of the moment in the forest in which she’d say: a marvel.
The dusty toothpick holder on the tablecloth. Perseu was fighting off Lucrécia’s ghost, and this woman who, coming certainly from a great urban center, was repeating the mystery of bad women. The young man’s face had covered itself in shadows, his eyes shining from a distant and tranquil depth.
Whatever was tranquil was even more distant, whatever was perfect was becoming remoter yet — for the girl on the night of the dance everything was impossible. How beautiful he is, she thought. Here suddenly is a person. She was so maternal that it was horrible. She was seeing the young man’s hands, the pungent cleanliness of his nails, the dark tie. Never — the young man’s polite face was saying. Never — the neck supporting his hard and perfect head was repeating. It was a bit terrible. Not just to her was spoken in him “never” — “never” was spoken much more gravely on his forehead without wrinkles, on that delicate mouth.
But she wasn’t afraid. It was “not forgetting later” that was scaring her: she wouldn’t be able to stand surviving. And she was already calming down: let the young man pass without destroying her way of lighting her cigarette, her high voice, all this was her peace. She didn’t want him to make her lose her way of dealing with whatever had been left behind and abandoned after the train had departed, nor lose the tranquility of showing him her cards — all this was a construction. The peace of taking the train knowing with calm that in the other city there awaiting her would be a hotel room and a balcony from which she could look out before going to sleep; she was the owner of this desert where on the balcony she was smoking a cigarette. She wasn’t ashamed not to want a new life — a new life was very dangerous, who among you could stand it. The lady in black put out her cigarette.
During this interval, the perfect being had a leg that had fallen asleep and was discreetly trying to wake it. Good that he didn’t have to explain where he’d been all this time. What for, where was he anyway? There was no room under the table to stretch his leg, and the numbness was giving his face a stubborn expression. He was imagining, as in an impossible dream, getting up, unfolding his wings and shaking himself until recovering his sleeping virility.
Seeing that woman who was smoking and drinking, the young man had in his sleepwalking the desire to draw her close at last, or to touch her with his knee under the table; it was a slightly cruel and dreamy desire, from which he would easily refrain. With a woman like that it seemed to him he needed above all else to know how to talk, say interesting things. He’d never know if she were expecting a statement about life from him, about the vain passage of the things of this world. That’s how, in his foolishness, he’d imagined Lucrécia Neves, and he wanted to apply the experience to his new companion.
He observed, without moreover blaming himself, not being one of those brilliant men, able to please a woman by telling her what she wants to hear. He reflected with moroseness that despite not constantly thinking “about sexual matters” he must have been loutish since with a woman he’d draw discussions to a close and embrace her with some strength. Friendships with women displeased him — the idea would make him smile intimidated like the idea of entering a women’s bathroom.
And now, because he glanced at her for an instant and because their eyes met — both of them had been waiting for years.
Amidst the fatigue of both there was a moment of impatience, almost of rage, in which the room became darker and more intense as if a train were about to leave; irate, the two focused on the toothpick holder, on the lamp, on everything that was small and lost, so refined that they’d irritate an onlooker. Even now, without losing the habit of calming people, he smiled at her.
Which frightened her: was the young man trying to take his leave? not yet! she thought, and if she’d spoken she would have been hoarse. The drink and the rain, and the somber arousal, and the marvel before her — and she greedy . . . He too was drinking, resigned to losing a few more minutes with that old lady, chivalrous, horribly polite like the others, yes, yes, let’s dance — she was rushing, smoking her cigarette down to the butt almost burning her nails . . .
“. . . what’s your name.”
“Perseu,” he said surprised waking up.
“Perseu!” she repeated with a shock on the verge of laughter. How idiotic, with a name like that. She guessed smiling that he came from some township where important names were common. Perseu.
And maybe because of the absurdity of the name, because of the notion of time that was passing, because of the beauty of the name — she grew very tired. The little empty room, a train passing through the station, the suitcases. Everything grew dark, the scene transported itself into sleep — everything had become obscured intimately, inside the drink. And in the shadow the gentle heart of the woman, without pain, in fatigued love. I’m yours, she thought lying, a bit nauseated. The weak lamp was keeping its balance in the station, it was very nice to live but she needed to throw up. Everything was heavy. Drops of rain were streaming. The young man irremovable . . . could he be winking at her? she winked back at him — finally in the center of this small world, in this comforting disorder of life, with queasiness, black eyes full of gold. What a marvel.
It lasted only a moment, like some spark, and wa
s threatening; intimate and threatening. Behold, behold the “truth.” That’s how at a mature age you had to call the “marvel.”
She got up, disappeared through a door. Perseu terrorized heard her throwing up. Before long she was coming back wiping her mouth, her eyes even bigger, and smiling delighted with modesty. A train approached shaking the little room.
The woman was smiling entirely inside herself, with a certain boredom. I think I can let him go now, she thought. At first she’d clung with her split nails to each minute. But now she was distended as after an operation and wanted to be alone with her bandages.
She examined one more time the young man she, with so much effort, had left intact — looked at him and shook her head like an old lady. She would have liked to push two chairs together, curl up and sleep. She was still feeling grateful to some thing, and her voice, when she coughed, came out husky. So thankful to the boy who’d let her, maybe a little too late — between a train and a hotel, without even abandoning her suitcase — who’d let her simply admire him; she who was always demanding that people suffer, otherwise where could she start to gnaw them? and especially where to forgive them.
Wanting nothing now from the young man, liking him with benevolence and distraction; without trying to steal anything from him; sleepy, fighting back tears that preceded a yawn, thinking with mechanical pleasure about snuggling with “that other one” who was in the distant city nervously awaiting a telegram, that one from whom she’d be separated for a week — which was so much, which was so little.
“Perseu,” she said urbanely, savoring with humorous intelligence whatever was ridiculous and charming in his name, “Perseu, I have to go now and so do you.”
The young man awoke, smiled with sleep — another instant and the dark light of the room would let them walk in slow leaps; a moment more they’d fall asleep face down on the table, to the sound of the rain. Waking up he started to search his pocket. She removed without haste the money from her purse and placed it on the tablecloth. Perseu tried to object but, since she said nothing, gave in. Both seemed to find it natural for the woman to pay. After all she was the one who’d ordered. It’s the least that could happen to me, she thought sleepily, without irony.
The Besieged City Page 18
