by João Almino
[October 10]
55. Lost photo or the logic of chance
In the years following Aida’s death I slowly became a guy with few friends. Alone, I drank to forget her and some days I drank to the point of getting drunk. Once in a while I agreed to spend Sundays with Antonio and Veronica as long as Guga wasn’t going to be there. Veronica smothered me with attention. Our relationship seemed like one of former lovers. It was as if we knew each other’s secrets. Her nudity had softened the anger I’d felt for her. In this way, I forgave her more easily for everything, even and principally for existing.
In late October of 2002, I participated in the parties for the presidential election with her. Days later, in November, I selected with her help a group of photos of Eduardo Kaufman in ridiculous and comic poses alongside Paulo Antonio or Ana. Eduardo had been elected congressman from São Paulo with the highest turnout in the country, carrying on his coattails four more of his party’s candidates who had barely received any votes. The photographs that Veronica and I selected could at least cause him some political damage.
My collaboration with Veronica had not only the consequences for my future that I intend to discuss later but also, in the present, led me to think about the dark-skinned girl the fortune-teller had seen in the cards. That girl remained in my thoughts for entire days with Veronica’s face. Then she showed a prettier face than Veronica’s and gave me a spontaneous smile that had never belonged to her. Little by little she grew even taller and her body became even darker and more exuberant than Veronica’s. Wasn’t it Antonieta I’d been thinking about in the fortune-teller’s house?
I saw her rarely and always by chance. I got up the courage to contact her. The pretext was to give her as a gift one of the photos I’d taken in the Water Hole Park, the one of the Japanese landscape, that here was given the number 10. The gesture that I’d imagined serving as the start of a new relationship dissipated right there. She received me with polite coldness and didn’t notice the emotional charge stored in that photograph. On the other hand, I was added to her email address list and thus I received her forwarded messages and, after she married, also news of the birth of each child accompanied by photos. Over time I understood I’d wanted to win her affection not out of love but out of vanity. Besides, women are flowers that should be picked when they first bloom. Once the moment is past they can wilt. Nevertheless, my memories of Antonieta brought me joy because in the memories the flower was newly blooming, ready to be picked.
I’ve said I became a guy with few friends. But reducing those “few” to their essentials, I had in truth become a guy with only two friends. In fact, Sundays in the company of my goddaughter alleviated my loneliness, marking the weeks, months, and years. I bought her gifts, pushed her stroller on walks in the park . . . In this way I kept my friendship with Tânia and Paulo Marcos, who frequently invited me over.
At their insistence, one night—it must have been in 2004—I accompanied them to the opening of Stepladder’s art show. I knew of his success. His name always came up because of the prices he charged for his photographs that were now printed on plates, cups, and design objects. He had become an entrepreneur of his artwork. I never saw him except at some bar, always in the company of Paulo Marcos.
Chance has its mysterious ways. That night I ran into Marcela who was thrilled to see me again.
Over the next few days I went to one of the Sunday lunches at Ana’s house and Marcela agreed to accompany me. They were lunches always awash in copious amounts of alcohol at which Berenice continued to avoid me, even though I had promised not to contact Bigfoot anymore.
I saw Guga there for the next to the last time. They were discussing politics, and I’d come to the conclusion that mutual affection and common opinion didn’t always go hand in hand. I could agree with everything Guga was saying despite our strained relationship. And I liked Tânia more and more, although I disagreed with her political romanticism. She was such a passionate defender of Paulo Antonio that she even felt admiration for everything Eduardo Kaufman had done to resurrect the former President’s memory. I felt like a Muslim who wanted to marry an Orthodox Jew, or a Huguenot who had fallen in love with a Catholic during the religious wars.
From local politics they moved to the Middle East and the Iraq War.
– They use principles and morality to suit their purposes. They’re arrogant and they shamelessly lie. One minute they’re in favor of dictatorships, the next they’re supporting democracies, said Guga.
They all clearly condemned the use of lies and disrespect for international law, except Paulo Marcos.
– Everything depends on the direction of world events, on the possibility for democracy in the Middle East . . . In politics, what matters is the outcome.
– Are you one of those who believe that the ends justify the means? Guga asked.
– Are you talking about here or the Middle East? Ana wanted to know.
– It’s been said that freedom has to be earned. Who ever heard of forcing anyone to be free? Carlos declared.
– There can be actions that are morally right but politically wrong. Just as there can be politically responsible acts that are morally questionable, defended Paulo Marcos.
– You should do what’s right, come what may, Tânia said.
– According to the ethic of conviction. Now, according to the one of responsibility . . . Paulo Marcos continued.
– And the ethic of irresponsibility? That’s the one for those who close their eyes to what’s wrong out of selfishness, loyalty to a cause, obedience, or simply because they think that’s the way things are, Carlos ventured. A kind of ethic of complacency.
– Paulo Marcos and I always have this disagreement, Tânia said.
– Well, I don’t know about here, but over there the culture’s different. It should be respected. If they don’t want democracy . . . If it’s the women themselves who want to live that life . . . Marcela volunteered.
– Let’s talk facts: the world isn’t rational; rights get tossed into the trashcan when they conflict with interests, and everyone uses their own power. But I don’t agree with your relativist position, Marcela. Some things should be defended anywhere, Guga said.
– In matters of culture, nothing is definitive. Even the worst cultural conflicts can be undone over the long haul. Look at my case: I’m named for one of the New Testament apostles, I’m the son of a Jewess and married to the granddaughter of Syrian Muslims, said Paulo Marcos.
Ana pulled me into a corner to complain that I’d sold her photographs to Eduardo Kaufman.
– Those photographs are pretty tame. They’re the same ones I gave you.
– And you think that makes it all right! she said indignantly.
Even now, I think her reaction was the result of Eduardo’s perfidy. He probably blackmailed her with those photographs, exaggerated what they showed, or related the circumstances of the sale in such a way as to disparage me in her eyes.
At the end of the afternoon I took Marcela to my studio. I still hadn’t broken the habit of counting the minutes. After one hour and one whiskey Marcela and I were in bed. At the end of two it had been easier and less enjoyable than I’d imagined. Sex with no guilt or consequences; also with no pain or pleasure. Supermodern and superbanal.
Marcela was the first woman I’d taken to bed with any success since Aida’s death, already more than two years before. But that night of sex made me especially miss Joana, whom I hadn’t thought of in a long time. Only she and no other woman could have broken that back and forth between desire without sex and sex without desire. I was going to send her an email or, better yet, a letter by regular mail. I fell asleep an obsessed idealist: I wanted to get back what I had lost, the one I had lost.
I awoke a realist. Joana was unobtainable. She hadn’t been in touch ever since she’d returned to Rio. She might even be seeing Eduardo Kaufman. She’d probably become one of his lovers.
Marcela was there beside me, available. I
kissed her breasts. That was enough to set her on fire like one sets fire to paper drenched in alcohol. The youth and lightness of that skinny girl had their advantages: Joana wouldn’t have been able to do pirouettes or bob up and down as much on top of me; she wouldn’t have had the same excited little ass when she made love. We traded the most crude and vulgar exchanges, I used the foulest profanities I knew and yelled whatever else I could to shock her. Marcela wasn’t to be outdone. She dominated that rich vocabulary better than I did and she wasn’t intimidated, as if she’d had experience with phone sex. She talked fast and a lot, like noise or static from a radio that’s never turned off, but even so I turned it off in order to concentrate only on her figure and her movements. She was still naked in bed displaying well-trimmed pubic hairs, two narrow strips in a V between her legs. She groomed them like someone who grooms a moustache. Her body was a good match for her spirit: fine, distinguished and courteous. She was skinny all over without a millimeter of fat, muscle right against the bone, exact thighs. She might not have given me the generous and succulent pleasure of a Joana, but she had made me happy with her happiness, and I still liked her name: Marcela.
– If I have a daughter one day, I’ll give her your name: Marcela.
This made her even happier, and with her increased happiness she made me even happier still, irrefutable proof that happiness is a highly contagious virus. As a matter of fact I liked her name and I repeated, as if it were now a prophecy, that in order to complete my destiny on earth I would one day have a daughter named Marcela.
– I already have a son.
– You never told me.
– He’s a criminal, a burglar. I think even a murderer.
She laughed, thinking it was a joke.
– Did you know a fortune-teller foresaw that a brown-skinned woman would suddenly appear in my life?
Her full breasts were rigid with perfect curves and round, dark, erect nipples.
– They’re beautiful—I felt them.
– You’re not the first to say so.
– If I were going to remake my panels project I would do it with breasts. Circles instead of triangles. There are an enormous variety of sizes, colors, and shapes. And if we add the shapes, colors, and textures of the nipples . . . I agree with the theory that nature can be entirely represented by triangles, rectangles, and circles.
Good-humored, she agreed with me and described my hypothetical panels with rich details as if she had composed them herself.
When I set up my camera she fled from my field of vision like a skittish cat. That explains the lost photograph (# 55) in which only an unmade bed and Marcela’s right hand appear, blurred in the left corner. If her panties and the condom I’d used were lying on the bed, I’d claim it was a photograph in the manner of Tracey Emin, the British artist who transformed her bed into a work of art. But what would be the value of a photo of an empty, unmade bed, rumpled sheets, and pillows thrown to one side?
The value would be considerable, I don’t hesitate to say; the value of a faithful, steady companion for a man who suffered the bitterness of his solitude. The proof is that I kept it for years on end. That photograph was like a note to myself, a kind of scribble that shouldn’t be shown and that I appreciated secretly whenever I wanted to evoke a pleasant night with no strings attached.
October 10, late afternoon
Laura asked me today (rightly so) if I don’t have other photographs of Marcela. It doesn’t seem correct to abandon certain characters in the middle of the story, but what can we do when they disappear in real life? Could it be that just because she wasn’t the great love of my life or because she no longer kept in touch, Marcela didn’t deserve my writing? Perhaps in the revision I’d substitute the stories of the skinny girl with just one sentence: this is my bitch Marcela, whose name pays homage to a former . . . Friend? Fuck? No, girlfriend! “Girlfriend” was the term she used in her conversation with Laura.
Now that Laura is about to be married, our friendship is even closer. I lost my fear of telling her about myself to the extent that this afternoon for the first time, while we were listening to music, I was able to verbalize the place in my life occupied by Joana and the mothers of Mauricio and Carolina. The love story that I narrated to her in short chapters is different from the one I’ve written in my Book of Emotions. It emerged spontaneously. While I was talking, I became clear about what seemed confusing earlier, and Joana was present from start to finish. In reality, I think and I hope that my story with her hasn’t ended.
– I told her about you. She feels affection for you, Laura said. Don’t you want to write to her?
The last time I saw her was seven years and forty days ago in circumstances that I should relate in my book. My life was made of small failures and missed opportunities, a life lived inside out, not for what I was able to accomplish but for what I didn’t achieve. Joana exists to prove my thesis and to bring me the memory of what could have been.
[October 11]
56. The last flowers
I was happy to donate my photographs of the satellite cities, including the ones I took with Bigfoot in Vila Paulo Antonio, to a philanthropic entity interested in retrieving and organizing them, having placed one on the cover of its brochure.
I was even happier when I got a good price through an agent for the collection of photographs I had selected with Veronica, the ones in which Eduardo Kaufman appeared in comical positions alongside Paulo Antonio and Ana. A buyer who didn’t want to be identified acquired the whole collection at once. In politics yesterday’s enemies can be today’s friends, but every politician has enemies in the present. Therefore, I surmised that some enemy of Eduardo could make excellent use of those photographs. Time had reduced my pretensions. Since I hadn’t been able to wreak major revenge, minor revenge would satisfy me. No, I did not nor would I ever forgive Eduardo.
I would be lying if I said I was successful in what I was doing, but I had been able to survive without great difficulties. Then I began having problems with my vision. Maybe someone in a situation like mine would take the opportunity to recount a long tragedy. I prefer to be brief and limit myself to saying that, although it has been a shock knowing there is no cure for this disease, my anger didn’t last long. My frustrations fit neatly into this paragraph. Little by little I was becoming resigned to my new condition, like someone who forms calluses in order to walk on coals. I lost my lateral vision at first and, although I was medicated as soon as I detected the disease, I was only able to slow the speed of its progress. I reached the point that in the viewfinders of my cameras I saw blurry figures, colors more than shapes, shadows . . . Anyone looking at my photographs saw the clarity and the sharpness that I couldn’t see and that if I had seen I might not have photographed.
My vision problems were a radical watershed in my life and my photography. I changed my habits. I was obliged to take systematic rests. Out of necessity I developed the virtue of patience. The disease saved me from bad books and slowly withdrew me from the superficial, hectic world of images into the world of reflection. Thus I began to listen openly to the echoes of my own thoughts.
The photo par excellence of that watershed was taken in November of 2005. I remember it well because there was “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” with Commissions of Parliamentary Inquiry investigating fake or rigged bidding practices, padded bills, unlawful use of pension funds, illegal payments, slush funds for electoral campaign financing . . . and Eduardo Kaufman hadn’t even been cited.
The photograph captures the blood-red royal poincianas bent over the hedge with the green and yellow cambuí trees in the background. Against that same background one day Aida had talked to me about Tânia. For the first time, I noticed that my eyes no longer saw with perfect sharpness, and I didn’t know yet that those were the symptoms of the cruel disease. It was the last of the photographs for my panel of flowers, # 56 (above).
[October 15]
57. Reality is also flowers
/> Because of my growing vision problem, in general I earned less money from the recent photographs than from the older ones, especially the ones in my archive of Paulo Antonio Fernandes to which Eduardo indirectly contributed as the principal promoter of the rehabilitation of the former President’s memory. Paulo Antonio Fernandes was being discussed in films, TV programs, and books. His name filled squares, streets, highways, and airports.
But one day Tânia bought the panel of flowers as a gift for Paulo Marcos. I’d been composing it for years; it included photo # 53 with the bougainvilleas and concluded with the flamboyant. Of all my recent works it was the only one that sold for a good price, I suspect due to Tânia’s charity.
It was as if without realizing it I were composing that panel exclusively for her. That day, I had a dream about Tânia: she was lying prone on the bed, and I was gently removing her flesh-colored panties and noticing that there were pimples on her buttocks. She turned over and tried to cover herself with her hands. Her breasts rose. Her protruding nipples, like aroused penises, pointed forward. “I don’t need anything else. This is enough. I’m happy knowing you want me,” she was saying. I saw with perfect clarity, and all the colors were bright, so bright they gave off heat. In the dream Tânia had pinkish skin and a fuller body than in the original. She looked tall. Her thighs were long, her buttocks well shaped and arched. I just didn’t understand why she had those pimples.
I never saw the flower panel assembled. I gave precise instructions to a framer on the positioning of each photograph in the panel, in which the rainy season with a green background contrasts with the dry season in a pale yellow hue. The photograph of the whole set, shown above, was taken by Tânia herself.
[October 17]
58. Marcela jumping on me
As my blindness progressed, I had more time for leisure. I learned Braille to occupy myself with reading when I’d lost my sight completely and one day, sixteen years ago, around April of 2006, I acquired Marcela to accompany me on my walks. The federal attorney general had denounced forty politicians and businessmen for racketeering, and I wanted to know if Eduardo Kaufman was among them. I could no longer read and had to ask a neighbor for help.
