by João Almino
I asked her to locate a photograph in which a Brasília interquadra sidewalk imitates the Copacabana sidewalks. I can’t stop her from reading this or that sentence from my Book of Emotions when she helps me arrange the photos. But I should redouble the security surrounding this diary, which I must keep in absolute secrecy.
The significance of the date took me to the Bastille and the French Revolution and from there by meandering paths to my youth, to the only remaining bottle of champagne and to an old song by Serge Gainsbourg.
– I want to raise a toast to our friendship! I said.
– To our friendship! she answered, clinking her glass with mine while we listened to Gainsbourg’s song:
Aux armes, et caetera . . .
Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides
L’opprobre de tous les partis
Tremblez! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix!
. . . aux armes, et caetera.
[July 14]
8. Emotion without meaning
I would have to wait until Monday to call Aida. After taking two swigs of one of the last bottles of whiskey in Eduardo’s cabinet, I put the camera over my shoulder and went for a walk through the blocks to the little church of 307. It was Sunday, and more people were attending Mass than the little church could hold. The old, the young, and children gathered outside. I had scruples about taking photographs of the beggar families lined up at a good angle. I preferred the manacás and the purple glory trees that could become part of the panel I had planned.
I continued to the Main Axis, full of people walking, running, or riding bicycles. I thought up a new sport: collecting the smiles of beautiful women. I smiled first, and felt good when one of them reciprocated.
I passed a group of marathoners. “Running is fattening,” I thought when I saw how many fat people were running. On the Central Axis, hundreds of plastic cups shone in the sun. I placed the camera on the ground. Through the viewfinder it looked like an endless sea with the texture of the waters in la nave va.
Back in the apartment, I connected my laptop and sent Aida an email although I doubted she would check her work email on the weekend.
Sunday afternoon, what could be worse than sitting by myself at the table in the Carpe Diem drinking beer? Then walking aimlessly and spending a long March rainstorm between supermarket shopping and organizing negatives? I realized that during all those years in which I had made a point of living alone, separated from Joana by several floors, I had never really been alone. I sent another email, this time to Joana. If she would have me, I’d run back to Rio.
I made a quick inventory of the bottles in the living room cabinet. I poured half a glass of Danish brandy. I drank it at the window. The block became silent again. I repeated the shot of brandy. The crickets were now singing that the world was beautiful and living was worthwhile, loving was worthwhile. The day was fading in its slow faint. A third shot and that uniform shadowless light moved me. During those hours, I always fell in love with the landscape. Everything became beautiful: the doorman going by with a broom in his hand, a cute couple crossing the center of the block, children playing ball on the pavement, and, in the distance, beer drinkers in the interquadra bar. All of it should happen at the same time, together with the flying leaves . . . That’s why I used the wide angle. So that the emotion that overcame me would be manifest in photograph # 8 (above), all of the space shrunk to fit the camera’s field of vision. It’s the photograph of an undefinable late-afternoon emotion, with no meaning, composed by the eye of a drunkard who forgets himself at the window.
9. Copacabana in Brasília
I went downstairs and followed the tree-lined path. No one remained in the 304 shopping area. On the left side in the middle of the block, a bar, perhaps an ice-cream parlor, which appeared out of focus in the photograph I’d later take. I drank a coconut water there. At the table in the back, toward the sides of the interior of the block, young people were celebrating some great achievement, or perhaps only their own youth: they got up, hugged each other yelling at the same time and laughed, laughed a lot. The girl at the table in front looked at me. “This isn’t going to amount to anything,” I thought. I was going to insist with directory assistance that I wanted Aida’s phone number. I would check my emails and with luck she and Joana would have received my messages.
The waiter gave me a big smile and said goodbye as if I were an old friend. I crossed the street and slowly examined the imperfections on the ground and the ugliness of the shop windows. Before a bare-breasted mannequin I came to think that Aida would no longer be the girl of old times. Perhaps her wrinkles would have changed her facial expression. But I intuited that the beauty of her body, molded by many years of ballet practice, had not been disfigured by time or by the birth of her son eight years ago. At the end of the interquadra, when I was preparing my camera in front of a Middle Eastern grocery, a stronger image attracted my attention.
In the picture I took (# 9) a blind man is sitting at the edge of the sidewalk made of Portuguese stone mosaic imitating Copacabana’s sidewalk patterns. His head is slightly reclined, the right eye shut, while the left, with a milky iris, casts its dead, frozen gaze on the puddle the rain created and in which his body is reflected. In the background, the plaque “104/301.” On the ground to his left, one can read the sign: “Help the blind.” There’s also a package of pens and stickers beside him. He must be exhausted and feeling abandoned at the end of the day. The good man inside me made a point of removing a bill from my wallet and exchanging it for one of those stickers. But the photographer cruelly controlled the scene, told the good man to keep silent and, taking advantage of his invisibility, drew near to find the best angle. The poor man’s blindness helped me forget the scruples that in the morning had kept me from taking a picture of the beggars. I was moved and indignant at what I saw, but the strongest sentiment came from taking a picture of that scene and being able to show it to others, to reproduce, preserve, and appropriate it for myself forever. My respect for photography was greater than my compassion for a pitiful wretch. Cold and calculating, I felt like that photographer who between preventing a murder and taking a picture of the murderer prefers the picture. The opportunity that makes the man and the thief, also makes the photographer and his ethics.
[July 15]
10. Photograph of an absence
The memory of Antonieta pushed Aida from my thoughts and excited me as I hadn’t been since I’d arrived in Brasília. It was for her and not Aida that I’d felt more lust in that city. More than anyone, she could make me forget Joana. She was a new, younger Joana with an even more attractive body. An athletic, black Joana—a successful basketball player who, as I’d been told, turned down an invitation to pose for Playboy. Antonieta exaggerated in her words as well as in her makeup and clothes, but I needed her exaggerations. I’d gone out with her in Rio a year earlier.
– Men are different, they like casual sex, even with strangers, I’d said to her at the bar.
– The same could be true for women, she’d answered.
She’d take a flight to Brasília in a few hours and we’d promised we’d see each other again.
On the phone, back in my apartment, I noticed a tremor in Antonieta’s voice. She was newly married or had a steady boyfriend, I didn’t get which. Whoever it was, he was traveling and would arrive within a week, that she had told me. And why did she tell me? There was no doubt about it. Brasília wasn’t disappointing me. I’d start my long exploration of the south-sector love motels along the highway to Belo Horizonte, in the company of that black body sculpted to perfection.
I could see myself dating Antonieta and having to justify myself to Mother and Antonio. “It’s not that I’m prejudiced,” she’d say, quickly adding something about the possible complications and practical problems of dating a black woman.
Even if it were just for one night, it wouldn’t matter in light of Ana Kaufman’s example. I’d had one night with h
er that had never ended. As a matter of fact, almost all the one-night women had lasted. I counted them. There were many. But Ana had lasted in a special way. Who knows, I might still be able to get back together with her. It didn’t matter that she was six years older than I was. She was married to an idiot, that marriage couldn’t last.
One detail bothered me: Berenice was now Ana’s maid. My son, Berenice’s son, was in Brasília. I only knew him from Stepladder’s snapshot. I thought about those novels in which the main character, usually the narrator, from one moment to another and as the result of a sudden revelation, a tragic accident, or for some reason or other, decides to find a father, a mother, a father or mother’s murderer, a son or daughter, a missing husband or wife, or someone who represents the promise of love . . . I was certainly curious. Sooner or later I would have to meet Bigfoot—that’s what they called him. It was as if I’d already an appointment with him and merely didn’t know the date. What would he do after leaving prison? Why shouldn’t I make my photo essay about Papuda prison? If Stepladder had gotten authorization to photograph the inmates, why couldn’t I photograph just one, Bigfoot? But why photograph him, if I wasn’t interested in identifying myself, in acknowledging my son and caring for him?
As planned, on Saturday I went to Antonio’s for lunch. He lived on North Lake in a completely white single-story house set back from the street. He pretended to be happy with his ordinary life. He’d married a charming temperamental woman who bossed him around and exploded over any little thing.
Like me, Veronica liked movies. With her friends she was amusing. With Antonio, annoying. He suffered in silence and perhaps thought that, for an unattractive dull man, he was extremely lucky to have a woman, any woman, by his side. And not to mention a woman younger than he was! Perhaps they were together because of the children or simply out of inertia.
Taller than Antonio, dark-skinned in a very Brazilian combination, Veronica dressed as if she were half her thirty-eight years. Her frivolous, restless eyes, wrinkled by myopia and slightly crossed, smiled at me. She made a point of showing me the guest room where I would always be welcome, and the children’s bedrooms, my niece’s neat room with photographs covering the walls, and my nephew’s room with clothes and papers strewn on the floor. At the end of the hall, the master bedroom. I noticed long mirrors in the spacious bathroom, one on the door and another inside, in front of which Veronica surely liked to dress seeing herself from head to toe. On the terrace, two straw hammocks were hanging on hooks, ready to be extended. In the backyard surrounded by a hedge were a grill and a small amoeba-shaped pool.
Veronica showed me an article in the Correio Braziliense about an exhibit by Stepladder at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center. A whole page, with photo reproductions and a text titled “A Photographer’s Success.”
– Since you’re a photographer I thought you might be interested, she said.
Stepladder’s work didn’t have the consistency, the aesthetic quality, or the technical accomplishment of mine. I was confident that time—a patient, unfailing judge—would yet put us in our rightful places.
The feijoada was good and the caipirinha even better. While I was listening to Veronica’s complaints, I had four or five.
– I apologize for the feijoada, Cadu. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted.
– You exaggerate, Antonio said.
– I accept full responsibility for my mistakes. Now that mess you saw in the living room and the children’s bedrooms, Cadu, as well as the overgrown grass, are Antonio’s fault. If it were up to me I’d have hired a cleaning woman and a gardener and the problem would be solved. But Antonio is a tightwad . . .
The chatter and the caipirinhas made me sleepy. Veronica put up a hammock on the terrace where I slept until dark. Later she was disappointed that I didn’t want to go to the Yacht Club with her the next day.
While still at Antonio’s house, I called Antonieta. She didn’t want to go out that night. She suggested that I come meet her at Water Hole Park where she walked every day.
– The day after tomorrow very early, at 7:30.
I told Antonio about my plans to date a black woman. His reaction was more measured than I expected.
– It won’t work, he declared laconically.
Then he wanted to know if I was going to settle permanently in Brasília. He gave me suggestions for spaces to rent, told me about incentives to open a microbusiness and asked if I paid into any private pension fund.
– Life also means working and building something, he said.
The next day, Sunday, I went to Water Hole Park to rehearse my meeting with Antonieta. The sky clouded over and then the sun lit up the park and the ground. With my camera in hand I took the inside path. From within, the cement shining in the sun, the trees rose like a forest of snakes. It would be a good place to hold Antonieta’s hands, to tell her I had never known a prettier woman, that I associated her with Rio, that I had spent months and months thinking about her and the memory of her startled me in the middle of the night, or on a trip to the beach or while watching a movie. Up ahead, a bench. I photographed a mysterious, interior climate by framing only an edge of the bench against a play of light and shadow projected against the gravel background. I would invite her to sit. She might not accept, we’d continue our walk. If the photographs turned out well, they could make up the fourth wall of my exhibition, an entire wall dedicated to Antonieta. I say “the fourth” because the other walls were already full: one with triangles in the style of Volpi; another more intimate, with Joana; a third with the panel of flowers.
Soon the vegetation grew more dense, the path darker, the sun filtered by leaves, no other stroller, “careful crossing this area” the sign said, perhaps because it was a deserted section, not a soul, we could be mugged . . . I’d clasp Antonieta’s hands more firmly there, pull her toward me, embrace her whole body, feeling her breasts pressed against me. I’d close my eyes and no kiss could be more real, no lips more sensitive, impassioned flesh one for another, her genitals kissing mine. Looking at the sky, I saw the cloud formations in a sharp picture, layers upon layers. That’s what I could photograph to record our imaginary embrace.
I continued walking and went up the small hill, perhaps it would make a better meeting place. Other hills were in view, covered with vegetation. It was as if the stroll had taken place on a rural road that took us to the high rustic bench up ahead. We’d sit on it, I’d stroke Antonieta’s thighs and she’d smile at me. One more picture, the tall bench in the foreground and a background of hills tinted with several shades of green.
Later at the lake, the Water Hole lake, toads croaked. On the other side, a small bridge, people running, getting exercise. I didn’t know if she was romantic, whether she would appreciate the landscape . . . Antonieta, I only knew the expression of her face and the shape of her body. With the exception of that afternoon in Rio we had never talked for more than five minutes. But if she lingered on the landscape I’d pretend to enjoy the view too. I’d continue to admire her lips and pointed breasts, her ebony complexion, her broad smile revealing perfect teeth.
In the absence of Antonieta’s breasts, ebony complexion, and broad smile, I photographed the bridge, the water beneath it, some stones, and the green in the distance, like a Japanese landscape.
That night I received an email from Antonieta. She thought it would be better for me not to come. A tremulous, angry glow from a far-off street lamp twinkled under the palm fronds up ahead. I wouldn’t give up, she might change her mind. I called her. She was polite:
– You know what? I don’t like to do anything in secret.
– Why in secret? What if I went to the park and we met by accident?
– The thing is, I don’t know what you want from me. For me everything is slower. It needs to be built a little at a time. We barely know each other, right?
– Everything starts somewhere.
– It won’t work now, Cadu. Someday I’ll explain.
&nbs
p; I developed the photograph of the Japanese landscape, thinking I’d show Antonieta the charge of desire contained in the image. A photograph of an absence, # 10 (above). Anyone who can’t sense Antonieta’s absence in that photograph or hear my heartbeats thinks it’s just a peaceful postcard landscape.
[July 15, in the afternoon]
11. Quincas’s warning of danger
Despite Antonieta’s refusal, I went to Water Hole Park the following morning at the appointed time, still hoping to meet her. After two complete loops in which all of the places from the previous day’s pictures had lost their charm, I ran into Tânia accompanied by Quincas Borba. A quick glance was enough to notice her nipples were enlarged with pleasure. Or was it just the cold? There were no panty lines under her skin-tight shiny black leggings. I thanked her for the lunch and praised each detail of the apartment, from the Persian carpet to the Belgian vase.
– Don’t you want to come with us to Stepladder’s exhibition?
– I don’t know. I’m so busy these days. I have to get working on the research about Paulo Antonio that Eduardo ordered . . .
Would I be capable of betraying a friend? I thought, walking alongside Tânia. She seemed to like Paulo Marcos, he trusted me . . . I diverted my eyes from Tânia to the landscape and, for a few seconds, my thoughts were carried to a zone of fear and prudence populated by devils pointing their tridents at me. But only for a few seconds. It was her fault, because she was so charming . . . And why did she squeeze my hands while smiling contentedly?
Quincas began to bark, censoring my intentions. Then he went quiet. He seemed to be consenting now. I held her hands firmly, pulled her in my direction, slid my hands around her back and ran them down her curves to confirm that in fact she wasn’t wearing panties. Tânia laughed and squirmed away as if I’d tickled her.
– What do you think you’re doing?
