by João Almino
I reviewed the photographs I’d taken of Eduardo in the Garden of Salvation. There was a close-up of his face: a gaping mouth showing all his teeth, furrowed brow, arched eyebrows and tou-sled hair. My revenge was just beginning. I would enlarge this photograph that without my realizing it would someday become a landmark in my work. It gave me the idea of composing the histrionic series, which, as I intend to make clear later, would earn me some notoriety.
– I’ve become homeless. May I move to your hotel? I proposed to Joana, without telling her that Eduardo was letting me stay in the apartment a few more days.
– I’m about to leave.
– Will you take me with you?
With the excuse of saying goodbye, I went to see her, bringing a thicker wedding ring in my pocket than the one she had refused in Rio. I stayed, until she wanted to sleep, without being thrown out of her room. I was full of hope. It could be a new beginning. She didn’t even protest when I undressed and lay down beside her.
When Joana and I were two strangers she placed no limits on her debauchery. She refused nothing. That’s why I can say that until today I’ve never done anything more daring in bed with any other woman. But suddenly, maybe a year earlier, from one moment to another, she didn’t like this, and even less that, she didn’t want it this way but that way. I had been living with her long enough for misunderstandings, suspicions, and complaints to begin. Intimacy had put an end to the enchantment of our relationship.
Even so, during many months something had remained: I could feel her body. Even if she didn’t want to make love to me, she let me hold her from behind in bed before falling asleep, and I stayed there with my body glued to hers. She didn’t protest when my erection pressed against her ass. I only regretted that, after all those months and before our break-up in Rio, she had become so creative in the variations on a recurring theme: it was late or she was tired or she wanted to sleep or she had just woken up or her arm hurt or not today, Cadu, another day . . . Sometimes the lie came followed by a yawn, at other times when I insisted, feigning deafness, by a “no.” A “no” that also had its variations: it could be terse, yelled, cried, whiny, a “please, no,” a “fuck, no!” or a “no” made explicit by a shove. When summer arrived, the same lie came packaged in a truth: it was too hot, she said, her thighs exposed by the short see-through nightgown. “Don’t press,” or else “don’t touch me, I can’t sleep like this.”
Now, lying on her side in the Brasília hotel room, I would bear her refusal and even her scorn in exchange for that lost privilege, a remnant of love. With my look and my touch I would erase what was going through her mind. At the moment our bodies touched, everything could begin anew. Our brief separation would surely have intensified how much she missed me. Who knows, we might even be able to recover the first sensations of our naked, embracing bodies.
She was succinct:
– Don’t start.
I contented myself with the hope of gluing my body to hers the next day.
But the next day I made the mistake of showing, at her request, the portfolio for my exhibition. I started with the flowers, a still unfinished series. Then I showed her the triangles, which irritated her so much that I decided to tell her about the tribute I would make to her on a special wall. It was pretty tame stuff: the hem of a dress, her feet, a fragment of her face . . .
– Look, Cadu, I tried. It’s no good. You’ve gone beyond all boundaries.
– Is it because of the photos?
– No, it’s not because of the photos.
– Look what I had brought for you. I thought of . . . I showed her the wedding band.
– You don’t understand anything at all. There’s no point in arguing.
Then she said:
– Eduardo told me . . . How did you blow this opportunity? You’re an idiot! Totally irresponsible!
It had been a mistake to believe that without the worries of the joint management of a home and the raising of children we would have only the good parts of a marriage. Without the bad parts that handcuff two people together, Joana had felt free. She didn’t need me for anything, I was disposable.
I took one final step before Joana’s departure. What are the ethics of photography? What image would it be permissible to steal, to appropriate? Taking advantage of her bath time, I removed from the closets intimate items that had touched her body: two tiny pairs of panties, silk stockings, a pearl necklace, diamond earrings, a floor-length dress, and a pair of shoes. I took pictures of them on the bed from different angles—see photograph # 19 (above). I slowly smelled and kissed her panties like a priest does with a stole.
– Here’s Joana’s body, I said solemnly, aloud.
I wouldn’t use those photographs in my exhibition. Unlike so many others, I didn’t want to remove them from their private, intimate sphere for public consumption. I wanted to keep them for myself, to appropriate what they represented, Joana’s inert body permanently offered to me. I wrapped the new wedding band she had refused with my profound sadness and a black lace panty that I tucked into my pocket.
July 31
I still have the photographs of triangles printed on paper. On the back of each one is a pseudonym. I wanted to throw Aida off the track in case she wanted to know to whom they belonged. Over time I stopped associating them with their real names. My memory isn’t what it used to be. I’ve forgotten most of those names by now without ever having forgotten the body of each woman, including the texture and exact shape of their triangles.
I would have made even larger panels with the women I couldn’t have. I remember them as much or more than the ones who wanted me. I didn’t dare approach several of them out of scruples, respect, shyness, fear of the ridiculous or because I considered them inaccessible. Other women didn’t find me attractive . . . or rich enough. Some of them, direct and sincere, told me: “I’m not interested.” Still others became silent, smiled with scorn or changed the subject before my passionate declarations, to later transform me into a source of mockery with their friends. The compassionate ones gave me a consoling kiss. There were also some who engulfed me with praise as an introduction to a “sorry, I don’t love you.” I could fill a whole book with these cases. Not a book, a treatise in several volumes, but it won’t be written because I need memories that make me happy and give me the will to live. For this reason, and also in order to impress Laura, I prefer to go to the triangles.
Today, I prepared for Laura’s arrival. I took a long shower, put on shaving lotion, trimmed my finger and toenails, shaved and reshaved, trimmed the hairs in my ears and nose, donned my best clothes, and waited anxiously almost the entire morning.
Laura didn’t hug me, but she saw the triangles and that excited me. I imagined the impossible: that one day she’d want to pose nude for my camera. It would be an unusual experience because I would be taking photographs of what I can’t see and she’d be showing herself to a blind man. To compensate for my blindness, the photographs would be made with the aid of touch. Laura’s soul wouldn’t be made of crystal or cotton as I wrote days ago, but of an ember that ignites, and I’d be there to feel the heat of that fire. I immediately put that insane idea out of my mind. After all, I don’t believe in a soul.
But it wasn’t inappropriate to show Laura how I’d enjoyed myself with so many triangles and how I’d been the object of desire for attractive women like Joana. This way my worth would increase in her eyes. Women rarely confess the truth: they like competition and men in demand, not the ones who dedicate themselves exclusively to them. I know this from Joana. I measured her love on the scale of jealousy, the small vain passion of those who demand exclusivity. And when I decided to abandon everything else and every other woman to dedicate myself only to her, she traded me for a scumbag who attracted girlfriends with his money and power. Returning to my market value in Laura’s eyes, I know that I shouldn’t be interested in someone who could be my granddaughter. But reality is reality, as the scumbag in question said. I won’t den
y it. I’m interested in a reality whose name is Laura.
She was amused by my research on triangles and wanted to know which one was Marcela’s. After so many years, I saw no problem in describing it so that she could find it. I remembered well the rectangle composed of pubic hairs nicely trimmed on four sides, bordered below by two swollen naked lips, in whose center appeared the tip of a tongue like the clapper of a bell.
– Wow! she exclaimed laughing.
No one these days would pay a cent for my notions of geometry or for all that triangular vegetation. By a quirk of fate only the many photographs I took of Paulo Antonio Fernandes and Eduardo Kaufman are still of any value. In fact, Carolina brought me a potential buyer who also expressed interest in my photographs of the Plateau flowers. She’s the director of a research center at a foreign university who’s putting together a photographic archive about Brasília. She says she’ll pay me good money, digitize all the photographs, and even make me two prints of each one.
July 31, night, almost August 1
Mauricio hasn’t been here in days. I had the idea of inviting him and also my goddaughter to have a few beers one afternoon. I need to create the maximum number of opportunities for the two of them to meet. It’s so obvious they were made for each other . . . I have to convince them of this obvious fact.
[August 1]
20. Politicians and oysters
I could survive without Eduardo Kaufman, although I’d had to adapt to lower-quality drinks and, worse, my newly-acquired freedom was spent taking photographs of weddings and baptisms.
I looked for work through friends. When I called Guga, he’d already heard from Tânia that Eduardo had fired me.
– That fellow is an asshole, he said.
– The worst thing is that he’s so dishonest.
I described to him the documents I’d sent to the Revenue Service with a very convincing cover letter.
– An anonymous letter? Then nothing will come of it. You need to send this to the press.
I told Aida that I’d have to return to Rio if I didn’t find clients.
– And in Rio? Do you have anything to live on?
– No. But there are more opportunities. I know more people. I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t given up on Joana or that the biggest advantage to returning would be proximity to her.
Paulo Marcos seemed cold on the phone.
– And Tânia?
– I don’t know.
I don’t know? I didn’t dare ask him.
I called Marcela. She seemed happy to hear from me. Through her recommendations I got a phone call from the owner of a famous restaurant who hired me to document his birthday party. I invited her to go with me.
– I’m in love. And when I fall in love I’m one hundred percent faithful. You know, Cadu, I think I’ve found the man of my dreams: good, faithful, affectionate, and intelligent. She only neglected to add: “as opposed to you.”
– I’m inviting you solely and exclusively to accompany me.
I couldn’t convince her and went alone. If it were possible, at the party I would have photographed the women’s perfume, the conversations about politics, and the nouveau riche garishness. The few attractive women—not a single one as beautiful as Joana—either avoided me or smiled at my camera, not at me. Could it be the arrival of old age? Or did they foresee my failure?
They preferred, of course, to see themselves in the company of easy success. There among the women was Stepladder. He greeted me as if to say: “Look where I am and where you are. Me, I’m here as a guest, and you’re struggling to survive. Me, I have it easy, and you’re killing yourself with work. Me, I’m a great artist and you, merely a birthday-party photographer.”
Even though I was working, I had several glasses of champagne, which compromised not just my balance and my stomach but also the quality of the photographs. Nevertheless, there were things to be photographed: politicians of various persuasions and oysters of various sizes. Oysters and more oysters fell from ice waterfalls over giant basins—the ones in the photograph above, # 20. Fresh oysters, brought the same day from Ceará.
The fat man with the mustache in the center of the photograph is the owner of the restaurant. The others are politicians. The interest in that photograph is in the presence, to the right of the birthday celebrant, of Eduardo Kaufman’s enemy, the congressman he pointed out to me at Piantella. When I saw him—short, protruding belly, a few blond and solitary hairs emerging atop the shiny baldness, and a pale, frank, and decided ugliness—I quickly devised my plan: I would give him the ammunition to annihilate Eduardo Kaufman. I couldn’t continue to wait indefinitely for the Revenue Service to take steps. Not long before, I learned that he was part of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry. The documents found in one of Eduardo Kaufman’s computers needed to reach his hands as quickly as possible, and they would be the tip of the iceberg.
He met with me several days later. He thanked me for contacting him, he was interested in the papers I showed him and agreed they indicated at least some irregularity. However, it would be necessary to have evidence, evidence, evidence. What else did I know about those lists? How had I obtained them?
[August 1, night]
21. Boss arbitrating dispute over computers
From birthday to birthday and baptism to baptism, I came to the conclusion that my freedom hadn’t increased when I stopped working for Eduardo. I felt like the poor do, I was free to complain and go hungry. Just as the athlete of a certain extreme sport throws himself down hundreds of feet knowing he’s attached to a cable that doesn’t allow him to crash to the ground, or like the trapeze artist who sees a safety net beneath him, I saw the advantage of a job that would guarantee the basics for my survival and let me dedicate myself in my spare time to my not at all lucrative projects. Ignoring Guga’s opinion, I considered showing my triangle panels to the curators of the space in the foyer of the National Theater, the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center, and the Gallery of the National Savings Bank.
It was May of 2001, and the reliable pillar of my radical sport became the Ministry where Aida worked. She introduced me to a female friend, a department manager. I was interviewed and got a job. My first job. Aida was offering me the deciding reason to postpone my return to Rio. I’d be a service contractor, with the right to a room in the basement along sprawling long corridors, something like a small city with its winding streets and Middle Eastern bazaar, and where it was possible to find vendors of meat, sweets, and fresh fruit. I shared a room with several employees wearing green uniforms. My principal task was to photograph the Minister shaking visitors’ hands, always sitting on the same group of sofas, with the same wall in the background, where a photo of the President, a map, and a flag were visible. I also took pictures of department directors on similar sofas or speaking in the auditorium to a bored audience.
On the first day, I overheard a conversation between the director of our department and her department managers, and thus attended my first class on the management of cunning and pride that occupies the greater part of a manager’s time.
– I only ask for opinions from those with something to say, she affirmed.
No one would ask for mine, I thought, while I busied myself with the paperclips in the little box in front of me. I picked up one and bent it back and forth until it broke. I picked up another, stretched it like a wire, then broke it in half. I opened a third and left it standing balanced on the table like a sculpture on a pyramid base. With a fourth, I made a square. With another, I made a ring that I wrapped around my finger. And from these wires I extracted one idea after another and prepared my camera for the right moment, because a good photographer moves like a jaguar confronting its victim, and the final leap results from a combination of opportunity, patience, and agility.
– You have to find a creative way to deny this news item, the director ordered her communications aide.
She had the smile of someone trying to be nice. Her aide returned that smile wit
h another from someone whose job was to please. Although I had never worked in a government office, I already had a basic familiarity with public administration, where the competition wasn’t based on work results but on recognition by management, and, for management, accomplishments were less important than a news item.
Suddenly, two uninhibited department managers started to fight in front of the director over three new computers. The art of photography is to capture the moment in which the characters’ expressions and their body language reveal something of their personalities, just like in the theater. Something dramatic, sensual, dumb . . . Or ridiculous. I didn’t invent a thing in that photograph—# 21 (above)—which recalls a Vermeer painting. I didn’t seek angles that would distort the expression of any of those characters. I was simply there, as ready as photographers should be to practice their precise art. And precision exists in the light illuminating each face, throwing a tenuous glow over the table, highlighting the patterns of the carpet and dividing the space into fields of dark and light. It also exists in the expression of each of the subjects and in their nervous exchange of glances.
22. Raise day
