With My Dog Eyes: A Novel

by Hilda Hilst

  A cousin of my mother’s told my father he thought that Libitina had something to do with the word passion. Her mother thought it was pretty.

  Passion? Wouldn’t it be libido?

  What? Like I would know, Amós? I only know that later they said it was all wrong. The cousin’s cousin looked it up in a book and found out that Libitina was an old lady who took care of presents that people made to the dead.

  Mycology.

  What? You mean mythology?

  Like I would know, Amós? Listen, you say so little. You come here, you bring your books with no words in them, and you hang around here acting rude. You know you have a nickname?

  Oh yeah?

  Mule-shoer.

  Why?

  Because as serious as you are, so closed off, you’d be able to shoe a mule right on the edge of a cliff. Come talk a little bit with your Libitina, sweet talk. She was all stiff. Like you were grabbing rubber, one of those rectangle erasers, big white ones. Disgusting feet, blocky, puffy. Legs one big trunk, from the ankle to the knee. Thighs like stewed melons. Pubis jutting out as though it were frightened of seeing you for the first time, and there it was, jutting. Solid Libitina, her breasts those of a twenty-year-old. She faked her sighs, and expelled ohs ays baby you’re killing me cutting me like a knife you’re socking it to me and other silly things, her little-girl teeth, thick gums, put your little books between my legs, she asked once as though she suspected some sort of defect in me, don’t you want to? you want to cum on the thing you like the most, your little books, don’t you baby?

  My many hungers

  My core so jagged:

  Alive in the dark of my selves

  I’m a datum-dagger, I’m a windlass

  Lake-ingot, attics

  I’m a pigeonhole, a high bird

  Looking for seed, grain.

  Let us assume that much can be proven with a few words: an unprogrammed plus-minus, answer-surplus frightening through synthesis the other as well as itself, that which answers. Perhaps the Unfounded was right to have buried the anchor in laughter. Someone questioned laughter with great originality. Canetti, if I’m not mistaken. “We laugh instead of eating.” What’s more: “the whole interior process of gulping down food could be summed up and replaced by those movements of the diaphragm which are characteristic of laughter.” Canetti indeed. Crowds and Power. Devour me, Lord. There’s a plus-minus in me that only frightens me. And there’s Amanda and the kid. The house. The University. There are books all over the place and I can’t interest myself in them any longer. After that thing I don’t know how to explain. Of incommensurable meaning. And what was I doing at the time? I was there on the top of the little hill. Was I thinking of transcendents? Of number theory? No. The theory of ideas? No. Fermat? Eratosthenes? No. I was looking at the tip of my shoes, the scuffed tips, I turned over my right foot, and yes, the sole was bad too, two dark ants passed close by my left shoe, I stopped on the path, they were conferring now, and I thought there were sounds my ears couldn’t capture, the sounds ants would make, did they emit sounds as they touched each other? I smiled. So there. Some days beforehand Amanda had said that I was smiling in a new way. New? I asked. Yeah, weird, you don’t smile like that. But was I smiling? Of course you were smiling, Amós, or at least your mouth was all stretched out, look, you’re almost always smiling, and it looked like this. Her mouth made an imperceptible movement to the right, a little crease on that side of the face. And yes, it looked like a smile. But why was I smiling?

  Made of phlegm and laughter

  Myth-gambler

  I equate chimeras

  I’m a beginning and plump

  And go descending the abyss

  Of your third.

  Ants. An animated and cohesive world. Superproduction. Silos. Do they have infirmaries? I’m ill. Short-circuiting. Little bodies running about in perfect health. There on the farm they toiled at night, on the veranda. Father used to say that there wasn’t enough money to kill so many ants. Killing? they worked so hard. And how did those little bodies manage to move themselves? What aura hovered over those little bodies? What was it that made them walk, select leaves, find their routines, their secret places? Father would go scraping the sole of his boot over their ranks, and I would go to my room brimming with compassion. Those feelings. Painful, intense, pulsing without rest, my body a tremulous throb, a continuous living mass attempting to conceal itself, there was danger in life, there was danger in father. The words vanished from my lips. One or another at times glittered, the shimmer of the back of some fish as it emerges from under a rock, takes a few quick turns, and returns to its lair. Life so colorful, mother, that they frighten me, these colors of life, I said early one morning while gazing at the magenta pastures. She looked at me like someone who understood. I wonder about those delicate women who marry crude men, always flushed with blood, vulgarity and rudeness, I guess they like it? But why do they later turn so dry, mute, my mother as mute as I myself, piety and stupor and from so much of all this the same old muteness? He: there are people who think the boy is mute. Mother: stupid people. He: a few slaps to the mouth and he’ll open it, you’ll see. mute? Mother would get to her feet, look at father dead-on. He would cough, dissemble. Later he’d go away saying: kids, what a drag.

  I saw words and numbers

  Circles, tangents

  Extensive theorems

  On the slinky back

  Of a tramp in the midday sun.

  He looked at me between his rags:

  Numbers, words?

  Oh, no sir, misery is what it is

  But my deepest thanks

  For thinking me a blackboard

  As they’re just sores upon my back.

  I tried to follow him.

  He entered a hilltop thicket.

  I entered.

  Empty tunnel

  Opening onto everything I’ve passed.

  I looked at numbers formulas equations theorems and it was a pleasure, a fiery freeze, a bodyguard for wandering alone without the speech-rupture of others, logicality and reason and nevertheless the possibility of surprise as though we were unfolding a piece of silk, blue triangles on the fresh surface and suddenly just a dull little grid, lines that we can separate and recompose into triangles again, yes, this we could do, but where did the blue get to, where? And everything begins anew, the patience of these animals infinitely digging a hole, until one day (I hoped, why not?) transparence inundates body and heart, body and heart of mine, Amós, animal infinitely digging a hole. In mathematics, the old world of catastrophes and syllables, of imprecision and pain, was cracking up. I no longer saw hard faces twisting into questions, in tears so many times, I didn’t see the gaze of the other on mine, what a thing it can be to have eyes on your eyes, eyes on your mouth. Waiting for what kind of word? Such formidable cruelties occurring every day, humans meeting and in the good-mornings and good-afternoons such secrets, such crimes, such a chalice of lies principally in the good-nights, good-night of husbands and wives, of lovers, of supposed friends, good-night my love Amanda tells me, sated in this moment, her arms finally at rest, one of her hands on my chest, such effort to complete that act, such an effort I’m making, debaucheries that I wrenched out from a darkness in me, Amanda-Libitina interlaced, I nude in my forty-eight years sucking her down the middle, the hair wet, I nude at twenty getting royally sucked, the two mouths salivating over this poor cock, and then I lift the sheets and look at cock and thighs and a certain smile comes to me, yes, I’m smiling in that funny way Amanda told me about, I go to the mirror, there it is, a perceptible movement to the right, a little crease on that side of my face. And why was I smiling? Some joker will go and cite “a certain smile.” The one that Amanda read.

  I leap over the path

  I croak. A blabbering of cripples

  Jams the traces

  I should pursue

  To follow in this light of dust.

  Walking stuck to the walls, banging into doorjam
bs, many times stumbling for no reason, was there a stone there? Uneven floorboards? No. He also stumbled through the poems he mentally constructed, squinting haikus emerged from him the moment he began the class:

  A path without steps

  The wing of the bird touches

  That virginity.

  Duration. All-enduring.

  The gold of your name

  Amid the flowing water.

  Under the pomegranates

  I caressed your face.

  As you slept?

  Fifteen minutes? the dean had said. Yes, the sentence went like this: fifteen minutes is too much, Professor. Fifteen minutes? For me it was only a second. A little bee, the kind they call Little Star (don’t kill it, dad, it’s a Little Star), landed on the back of my hand. I think I watched it for barely five seconds:

  It’s summer.

  The little bee

  Lands.

  Shall I speak of Zeno?

  I realize that the classroom is empty. I light a cigarette. Someone opens the door, apologizes, closes it again. I turn to the blackboard. There’s a note there. A poem: “we wait for your return / take care / before the door closes.” I get up and it’s as though I were a little drunk. The desks arranged in a semicircle. Yes, the other half is missing. And half of me knows that Amós is here and that at this time he should be composed, perfectly crisp in all their eyes, back turned, facing the blackboard: let’s take, for example, using the formula that we found, let’s consider, let’s assume, now let’s imagine, according to our rule, we’ll wait a moment, but this is only an impression, etc.

  A poem lacing up its shoes

  Preparing itself entirely

  And gentlemen

  Making sausages with facts

  Tiny eructations

  Flitting terrified around the room.

  Pink corridors

  of the University.

  Niches pulsing

  Text and geometry.

  I vomit, nude on the asphalt.

  I hear:

  Is this, my friend, this silly thing

  You call a Nobel Prize?

  —How odd.

  —I think it’s nice.

  —Superb! Mathematician, right?

  Pity for Amanda washes over me. She has, looking at me, a stupid and childish look on her face. Some seminary man will say that a child can’t have a stupid look. I have always been afraid of children (I think my father was too, deep down), afraid they’ll spit in my face my eye my chest. For instance, the kid of one of Amanda’s friends spit in my glass of whiskey during one of those tedious parties, a birthday party for somebody’s little Junior, come on Amanda, come, afterward we’ll play a little game, well okay, he spit, and another little twerp let out a drawn-out fart that really set me off, and he just wandered away, a little cardboard party hat on his head. Amanda tersely screeching: Amós, I’m thirty years old, you get it? thirty. I say I don’t get it. She explains: I’m trying to say I’m young, Amós, and living with you it’s like I was dead, get it? Sheesh, Amanda, why would you say that? Every day you look older to me, more closed up, you don’t say a word to my friends, not even to that mathematician who seems to adore you. Who? Isaiah. Well that’s because we understand each other. How can you understand each other without even talking? I understand Isaiah, I do, Amanda. I don’t tell her that Isaiah lives with a pig in his house. Isaiah: I took a shine, Amós, to that little animal, she’s called hilde and she just showed up one day at my house, she’s friendly, very nice, she makes great company. And mathematics? Ah, it helps me a lot to have hilde around the house, she doesn’t annoy me, doesn’t shed, she’s gentle, patient, quiet. A few grunts at times, but that gets me a bit excited, you know? I know. Amanda continues: Amós, you’re acting strange. She leans over me. I’m seated. I see the groove between her breasts and the pendants on her neck. She says: you stink. I say: it was that little twerp that farted. Ah. You’re being very strange. You always knew that I was a bit confused. Confused how, Amós? You were never confused, you’re a professor of pure mathematics, you’re a university professor, you did a thesis and all that, remember? You were simply adorable. Adorable, huh? And they said you were brilliant. Brilliant, huh? Please, Amós, tell me what’s going on. I don’t even drink my whiskey. I couldn’t do it. I go home.

  When will you give me, O Great Laughter

  A string of agates or of threads of water

  Fine like those silky strands

  That hang from anemones

  When? So that I can

  Lace you, darkness and pleasure

  My selves disintegrating

  AND BARELY

  The you of you in me

  When

  This love clasped to your bone?

  Suspicions. Whispers that flare in the corners, at the edges. I’m stretched out on the sofa, looking at the ceiling. A friend of Amanda’s: could I squeeze in here on the edge? Her buttocks against my waist. Little lizards up above me. Their little feet clutching the long boards. I clutch at that understanding, the one from up there on the hill. A univocal universe, yes. A perfect and splendid Absolute. A short formula injected with light. Did the possibility of Amós having felt that incommensurable meaning create a loss or a gain? Around him objects, shelves, books, the kid’s bike, notebooks, the little building where he lived, walls roof floor, and the old car outside, and the two beings he lived with, and drawers with some shirts and socks and underpants, Amanda’s dresses, the boy’s clothing, and me here stretched on the sofa, this woman’s buttocks still warming my waist, and sweetened words, the sweetness of squash (want some?) and foolishness, a ride in the car (wanna go?) and senselessness, a cup of tea (want some?), whiskey (want some?). But is there any? We’ll buy some says Amanda, of course we’ll buy some says the hot buttcheek, I reflect: after that incommensurable experience there are only two options: live a pathetic, indecent life, transude obscenity, why not? Get drunk every night, and vicious, sputtering, shake my dick timetotime for Amanda’s friends, plumed knowitalls, psychologists historians nattering housewives, wives of my horrid colleagues, and jerk off right between their thick legs, stiff and bright exploding with haikus, eh? I close my eyes. The second option: abandon house Amanda son university. Have nothing. Lean my carcass against a nearby wall and here comes someone: you hungry, man? I say yes and here comes a piece of bread (without butter) and a plate of food. Or not? Or here comes that phrase: you look young, can’t you work? I croak, say no, you idiot, I’m never going to work again, because I felt it and I understood it in that instant, got it? They’ll call the police. Right? Just because I lean against somebody’s wall and croak? He of the cross, they ran him out for a lot less than that. Just for wiping sweat. Catching his breath. I felt the un-feelable, I understood the non-equational. If Kadek were still alive I could join up with him. He studied the Möbius strip for ten years. He was rich. And what a wino. Later it was only cachaça. They say some guy heard his last words, as Kadek lay dying in the grass: winged and ocher bird of death, he said. Was there some bird flying by? Isaiah and I asked around. I didn’t see one, professorsirs, well to tell the truth I did see two black cuckoos, but way over there. Over where? Way over in the ass-end of the sky, professorsirs. Whiskey was it? I think that would be nice. The two of them were clucking like hens. Amanda: look, if after a few stiff whiskeys you don’t get better I’m calling your mother. Mom? That’s right, Amós, because only a mother can understand a son at a time like this. What time? This time of yours that I don’t understand. Mom. She’ll put on that purple hat with little light-gray felt flowers. Or is the hat gray with purple flowers? All alone. Out in the country. My father dead. The hot buttcheek whispers: I’m going to bring you a really nice scotch. They leave. Staring at the ceiling I think I should take a walk down to Maria Ancuda’s brothel. Are they all dead? Freshness. Lightness. Early morning brothel silence. Would there still be a corner for my desk? To live at the brothel. Mother and I at the brothel. She’ll say: I’m going wherever you g
o, my son. I think: would all that still exist? Twenty-eight years later. I know Eni’s brothel lasted generations. Grandfather father son. And why shouldn’t Maria Ancuda’s? I think it over again. Mother in the brothel. It’s not possible. I explain: mother, this is good for me, I’ll be calm there, some friend of mine will still be there and I’ll be a little at peace. At peace, she says, in a brothel? Mother, you’ve never been to a brothel, it’s nice in the early morning, calm like the country, just like at your house. And won’t she smile? A vast smile, showing her dentures. Mother at seventy. Yes, you laugh, but you won’t be able to go, you’ll stay in a boardinghouse in the suburbs, or go back to the farm, okay? I’ll go wherever you go, son. They’ll say I stuck my little old mother in a brothel. She: is there a yard there? Well, I don’t really remember, but it was a good piece of land, it had a little dog kennel, just wait, it had a tree with purple flowers. Glory-bush, she tells me, a sad tree for a brothel, but there should be room to plant some collards in the back. You’re going to plant collards in the yard at the brothel? Collards, lettuce, what’s wrong with that? I’ll sew too, someone’s likely to tear some clothing, with the hurry of getting everything off, right? We both laugh. I’m taking the car. It’s old but I like it. Amanda went out with the boy. I leave a note: I went with mother. Still don’t know where. Take care of the kid. It’s what a father says. Some day I’ll come back. I have some money. You have more in the little savings account book. Don’t make a scene. Say I’m not there, in Timbuktu, okay? I’m taking the car, since you don’t like it anyway. Amós. Two suitcases. Mine and mother’s. She in her light-gray hat, a little tuft of violets by the brim. Or is it the other way around? Wearing a hat, eh? I always wear this hat when I go out, I came here with it, you don’t remember. No, I don’t remember, it’s pretty. I always liked violets, son, maybe I’ll plant some there. Glory-bush, violets, I think I’m going to die. My son shakes me, hey hey? Where was I? What’s wrong, dad? Today I dreamed about you, dad, I dreamed that I was going up a mountain with you in front of me. You were collecting pretty little stones and we went up and up. After you gathered so many little stones that no more would fit in your hand, I went grabbing all the ones that were falling. But there was also something funny. What’s that, son? You were dressed like a priest. A priest, huh? And the funniest part was that your skirt kept flying up with the wind and showing your butt. Very funny, son. The boy climbed up on my legs and started to laugh resplendent-hysteric, repeating: daddy’s butt, daddy’s butt. All right, I tell him, that’s enough, everyone has a butt, including your father. He jumped off my legs, grabbed his bike, and went around in circles in the yard, shrieking: everyone has a butt everyone has a butt, daddy too. I close my eyes, twist my face, disgusted. The world seems dim and fauve at the same time. Fuzzy and effulgent. Going up a mountain, eh? Gathering little stones. So many that they wouldn’t fit in my hands. Little stones. Words? Words that another will try to put together to explain the inexplicable. My backside in full view. This complicates things. The wind of ideas uncovering the grotesqueness of our condition. Human condition. Dressed just like a priest. Pretensions of a life spent getting to know the sacristy. Libitina had a friend, Jacinta, who could only cum with priests. She’d go to the confessional in those silk blouses, so delicate, a little shawl on top. She squeezed her breasts against the lattice of the confessional. The so-called sins were related haltingly, with little whimpers, full of saliva, and well-detailed. Libitina said the priests would go nuts. One of them poked his fingers through the holes in the grating and pinched frenetically at the tips of her nipples. Jacinta would get wetter and wetter and weak in the knees. Later the sacristy. Priestly skirts, Jacinta’s pants, the former raised, the latter lowered, and according to Jacinta: what joy, Libi, the silence and the perfume of saintliness, and so calm after, at peace with God, at peace with men, may they be praised. Praised be this quietude of mine in this instant.