Granta 121: Best of Young Brazilian Novelists

by Unknown

  the house, you see the house, its crockery lost in an ocean of reflections and deceptions, in a labyrinth of repetitions behind closed cupboards and drawers, the fine crockery used for the boy’s wedding imprisoned with its hopes and best intentions, the knife that no longer hangs

  I’d run through the bush and sit down in the mud with the toads, which leapt about excitedly, running away and invading the creeks, and when I got tired of chasing toads I’d sit on a rock and settle down to some fishing with my little cane and I’d catch a few tiddlers until night drew in behind the hill and then go running back to the house, running along as the afternoon slowly died and was overtaken by shadows, hearing noises like the laughter of ghosts getting louder until everything finally became night, I’d go running into the living room and find my mother submerged in the half-light, propelling the levers of the sewing machine with her feet, the incessant creaking and bashing echoing about the house like voices of the tortured coming out of the beyond, and she’d look at me and say good God what a dirty little pig and she’d shoo me into the bathroom like she did with the chickens when she fed them in the pen in the yard and I’d throw myself laughing into the bath and become a fish, a toad lost in the marshes, and Mum too, a little toad, a toad-pig, and I’d get her wet with my furious splashing and I’d laugh because I was a fish at the bottom of the sea, swimming with the whales and sharks, and Mum, is it true that if you swim really deep you get to China, and she’d laugh, and later I’d hide behind the kitchen door afraid of the screaming chickens, Mum breaking their necks one by one and gathering their blood in a pan and it was terrifying to see the bare chicken and its severed head staring at me on the marble table and then, Mum, is it true that humans come from monkeys, and she’d laugh and say go ask your father, he’s the clever one, I’m just a seamstress, but the next day I was older, watching the trams go by with my dad, in Vicente de Carvalho Square, stealing sips of cold beer from his glass and trying to inhale the smoke from the cigarettes I smoked awkwardly, pretending I was interested in the panic of the people betting on horse races and the results announced in Morse code by taciturn men on stands, laughing at the mules and asses as they kicked out and neighed, admiring the pretty girls coming out of church who stared at the ground as they passed by in groups, accompanied by their aunts and helpers, Dad telling me with wonder that one day hundreds of iron horses would cross right through Irajá and into the town centre in under twenty minutes and me thinking he was going mad, that the horse was too fine an animal to stop being used just like that and anyway what would happen to all the asses and mules and Dad saying that every house would keep one as a pet, colleagues from school sitting around the bandstand waiting to go into the cinema and admiring me from afar because I was drinking and smoking with the adults, I’d stand at the side of the table as they played rummy and watch them cheat and now and again I’d run to a far-off house carrying the groceries of one of my father’s friends, who’d decided to stay out with his friends because our friends are all we have, lad, don’t ever forget it, and I was always glad to go to Nazário’s house with his groceries as I got to see his three daughters and Nazário would tell my father that I was helpful but a fool, if he thinks I won’t chop his balls off out of friendship then he’s very much mistaken, but what old Nazário didn’t know was that I’d already kissed all three of them in the backyard of the house and promised to marry them all

  unclaimed photographs pile up in drawers, the last vestiges of remembrance holding on until everything is finally destroyed, because when the house loses the smell of its owners, and its objects resign themselves to tedium, there will be no more memory and the clock will become just a clock, the key just a key, the glass just a glass, grease encrusting every nook and cranny in the old kitchen, a black shadow spreading everywhere, rotting the air and staining the white of the tiles, the old fridge robbed of its integrity by cavities of rust, the penguin at the top offering a lost look of exile

  when Ana had left I took all his clothes and angrily threw them in the dirt in the backyard so that the few neighbours we had could see that he’d been thrown out of my life, out of my house, even though I knew he was the only thing that mattered to me, Paulo, dear Paulo, watching me from behind the wall, making kind and gallant signals that I pretended had no effect on me, such pretty hands with long fingers, green and blue veins against his pale skin, and smiling that soft smile that first charmed me, before a friend gave me a little message from him, written in round, timid handwriting and full of pompous words I was unfamiliar with but that lifted me up to the clouds, my friends saying that if I didn’t steal away with him then they surely would, and my torturing him by withholding the only answer I was ever going to give him, the man I chose to be mine the very moment we started courting, and then finally getting engaged in the living room with an aunt watching, entwining our fingers in love and privation, his smooth voice whispering sweet nothings in my ear, words that stilled my beating heart, and I felt like the happiest most complete woman in all the world, and when my aunt left the room I squeezed his thighs and gave him longer kisses, and I felt him get excited, and I turned red and crazy, my world spinning and I let him see my legs just a little, wanting and desiring and worrying, imagining what it would be like, hearing stories from my older cousins, being given confusing and alarming advice, nobody knew how to love back then and they still don’t, I bathed and felt my legs and my whole body, my hand ran all over my bristling skin and I let the water run down to my feet, happy seeing myself in the steamed-up mirror, torturing myself as I touched myself until one terrifying day I felt all that I’d only previously imagined those feverish nights, and right away I thought my cousins had lied, could it be so simple, a little that was a lot and that I wanted more of, that I wanted again laughing happily at life in our little room in Cascadura, hugging my man, and now this, dear Paulo with another woman, Ana tells me, thinking I’d die of shame and feeling ridiculously pregnant and hating myself for loving him the way I loved him, wanting to die when neighbours stared at me as I

  the old record player thrown in the corner with a collection of old vinyls, a rusty gas canister and piles of ancient newspapers announcing the breaking news of bygone days, corroded and burned a dull yellow: the house, you see the house, abandoned to its fate, its stories silenced with no one to tell them to

  a goddamn bullet in the chest, now is that any way to die, Pedro, for a man like Getúlio to end his days like that, in such a way, the life of the most prized and principled man this country has ever seen coming to an end like that, it’s disgraceful, it’s absurd, and I never saw Dad drink like he did that day, spitting and cursing, saying to himself that these days presidents killed themselves fucking hell, fucking hell, if presidents killed themselves then why not bakers, and mechanics and postmen, and chauffeurs and engineers, that presidents killing themselves really took the biscuit, and there were thousands of angry people ganging up together in the town centre, news of crowds gathering outside the Tribune’s offices and Son, now what, Son, what a fucking mess Son, you work for nothing in this country Son, you sweat blood in this country and it’s all for nothing Son, if there’s no longer room for people like Getúlio in this world then what’s to become of the rest of us Son, I was no longer so young and by then I smoked my own cigarettes and drank beer from my own glass and Dad wanted Lacerda’s head for what he’d published about Getúlio, that swine, that bastard, that Nazi, my father said, death to Lacerda and his family, may his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all die for what he’s done, it’s disgraceful, that’s no way to die, but I didn’t care, I saw people fighting in Cinelândia and Lavradio and I didn’t care, I preferred talking to the whores in the brothels of Olaria and Madureira, fixing a car door would matter more to me than fixing a country, they could kill the lot of them for all I cared so long as they spared the whores, the world would be unbearable without the sad affections of a whore, if they killed the whores then I’d set the whole world on fire but fu
ck the president, he never whispered false sweet nothings in my ear for a few coins, fuck the president and his children and Lacerda and his children and the fact that they owned the country and that we were the doomed, that we worked for people who lived the high life without ever getting their hands dirty, I earned money as a typist on a magazine but I never read the news I set down, and Dad telling me things I didn’t care about, Dad lost amid the confusion of the shouting and anger and running and fighting and broken bottles and people crying, Dad trying to imagine where it would all lead and saying to himself that Brazil was fucked, that Brazil murdered its own future every bloody day, a country with no enemies destroying itself, humiliating itself and humiliating everyone who dared dream beautiful dreams, that was what he said, that everything beautiful died young in this fucked-up country, the country had lost its innocence, said my father, and I didn’t care, I didn’t care, I didn’t care about the future, what I did care about was reading mechanics journals and understanding the cars I so restlessly admired, hanging about the garage near home, watching the people at work, the parts and the motors, I loved cars without ever having seen inside one, loved them from afar, until one day the owner of the garage asked me to go fetch some oil from Madureira and he gave me some money and I bought it and then when it came to him paying me I said I didn’t want to be paid, what I wanted was to work in the garage and he laughed and said very well, that I took after my father and that I could stay so long as I didn’t set fire to anything

  dozens of old tools and apparatus abandoned in the loft, rubbish accumulating in the corners of the living room, in the hallways, dense dust encrusted in the indentations on plastic containers, in the grooves of the furniture, the threadbare fabric of the sofas, the sad and disorderly holes of the fan’s rusted mesh covering, the sun entering the living room and orbiting the dark clammy dust in a slow and circular ballet

  when I finally earned my first promotion and became a detective, I started to earn a little more and Vera cut down on her clothes orders and was able to read magazines and listen to the radio and I could buy the little wooden horse Pedro wanted so badly, to run around the backyard like an animal, leaping and getting dirty and falling and laughing, giving military orders to huge armies that fought against the poisonous threat of the flowers in the garden, killing the hordes of camellias with his wooden sword, a boy who killed camellias would end up either an imbecile or a crook, to calm him down I’d walk with him for hours, following the tramlines almost as far as Olaria, and I tried to answer all the questions he asked me about the stars and animals and machines and dinosaurs, making things up to leave him satisfied when faced with the inexplicable, only heading home once evening was drawing in and he sat on the sofa in the living room with his arms folded, silently waiting to be brought his bread and butter and milk like Lord Muck, milk just appearing in his glass while I had to steal it from the cow, and Vera always looking at me with eyes full of hurt and nothing I could say would make her look at me the way she used to, a look that had always annoyed me but now that I didn’t have it was all that I wanted, to win back that look, to be held hostage to her dreams once more, to have her include me in the future she imagined in her head and that no longer featured me, but I’d have to wince in shame for many years yet, face the disapproving looks of neighbours who’d witnessed the scandal of my clothes thrown out in the backyard, then one day I bought her flowers for the first time since we’d got married, with a note saying madwoman I love you, and she put the flowers to one side and went back to her sewing and I felt alone in the world and when I went to say something to her all that came out were tears, I wanted to thank her for everything she’d done for me and tears came out, I wanted to say what a blessing our son was and tears came out, that the modest house we now had was like a fortress to me and only tears came out, and faced with her silence I thought I’d lost her forever and all night I felt adrift in a bed that was a foreign country, until the next day when I found some shrapnel in my trouser pocket and I understood, the world became vast and expansive once more and I understood and I spent the whole day waiting to go home, and when I got off the tram I quickened my pace and when I got to my street I started to run scared that the house might no longer be there but it was, just as the table was there, ready with roast beef and potatoes, and the bed was made and fragrant and without a word being said I understood, I put my hands on her hips and she purred and I understood that I’d won back what I thought I’d lost forever

  the floor bestrewn and lustreless, termites gnawing the corners of the floorboards and hiding in the door frames, fearful, lazily devouring what will soon no longer exist

  Mila was lying on the ground as if she were asleep and I came sneaking out from behind the wall to give her a fright, laughing, screaming with all my might, and I screamed again, startling the pigeons on the telephone lines, a terrified flock that made a shadow as it flew away over the backyard, but nothing, Mila kept lying there on the ground pretending she hadn’t seen me, pretending to be asleep just to alarm me, I poked her under the tummy with a small stick and nothing, she’s good at pretending, the little devil, if only Dad could see how good at pretending she is, this dog’s an artist, we should take her to the circus and earn some money because she’s an artist, once I made her hold her breath for half an hour, but she was very wise, she learned that Chinese trick, and she was stubborn besides, and Dad told me Mila had died, but that was impossible because only that morning she had run with me and played with me and even bit me and she’d eaten too and she’d done a poo in the living room so it wasn’t possible, she was dead like when we played cops and robbers and so I told her the game had finished, which was why I didn’t like the Chinese because they only played for real, and now how could I get my dog to stop playing the game, but Dad said she wasn’t going to wake up again and that dying meant going to sleep forever and I told Dad that I wouldn’t like to go to sleep forever and he went quiet and fetched a bread sack and put Mila in it and at dawn he went out and I ran to the door and asked if I could go with him and we went out into the dark night walking in silence, I played with the lantern and the fireflies and the sounds around us were strange, the world seemed to be plotting against us ever making it home again and we got to the river and we threw Mila in the river and when the sack hit the water it started to sink and disappear and Mila had turned into a fish, she would bark at the other fish and lead them to the riverbed to help me when I went fishing, when we got back home I asked Dad if I’d die too and Dad said that everything dies one day and that’s just the way life is, so everything dies, and he said yes, that was the price for being alive and that was why every day was very important, and in bed I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to go to sleep forever and I got bored because it was boring and the next morning I told Dad that if I died he was not to hurry into throwing me in the river but rather be patient and wait because I’d find a way of waking up

  the deaf and mute telephone battling to hold on to the memory of dear numbers that now give nothing when dialled

  my son going about hand in hand with that dumb ugly north-eastern hick, a fifth-rate nurse with parents who looked dumb and poor, living among people of that sort, God, I was poor but I was never dumb, dying of shame having to appear in photos with these people, his having chosen them seemed to be some sort of revenge against me, falling in with such people just to wound me, them being in the house I’d built through honest labour, eyeing everything with curiosity, wanting to open all the drawers with their dozens of hands and smiling at me as if we were part of the same family, me hardly disguising my fear that they’d steal the crockery, that their dozens of hands would make off with my cutlery and jewellery, that they’d spirit away part of my fulfilled dream and the comfort of my things, I never understood Pedro leaving home when he could have happily married the daughter of the greengrocer, the pretty little Portuguese girl who was all smiles and called me madam, and was elegant and beautiful and whom I taught to sew af
ter her mother asked me to and who went to church every Sunday and had a big heart, not like that dumb ugly north-eastern hick who dropped eggs on the floor and burned orange and cornmeal cake and made gloopy rice and couldn’t even season beans properly, a woman lacking and uneducated, who went for walks on Sundays, didn’t know how to read her rosary and lay on the sofa pretending to read bright-coloured fashion magazines, my son handing me her tatty clothes while she wandered the streets making idle chit-chat with any man who’d talk to her, and she was foul-mouthed and interrupted the men in conversation and didn’t know her place, a young woman who rather than stay at home went out dressed in white to work with other men, left the house to sneak about with who knows whom, doing who knows what, while my son got home without a decent meal waiting for him, the bed doubtless crumpled and neglected, those dishonest north-easterners, dirty like the blacks who’d started to build wooden shacks on the hills and who came down to sit in the squares and laze about, the government promised to clear vagrants off the streets but just removing the blacks from the streets would have been a big improvement, communists are still people but where did so many blacks come from, and my son going about hand in hand with them, laughing with them, being mistaken for one of them, and becoming increasingly estranged from me, my Pedro, increasingly far removed from that lovely little boy who listened to my stories and watched me sew glassy-eyed and who asked me questions I didn’t know the answers to, and to hide the shame of my ignorance I invented meanings, names, countries, did everything for him, gave my all for them, those ungrateful men incapable of giving me a kind look or word, my two boys living as if I no longer existed