Urban Mosaics
Page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
478
Abrantes
The Stage
Water steam
And Nothing
Jackpot of Départ
MM38 or the day that we expected french flying fishes
The Highway
The Clown
Origami
The legend of the tsuru
At the Margin of the Tigris
In the heart of Macao
645
Introduction
Other Books
Credits
478
Arturo de Oliveira, writer of several successful detective novels called his editor, Walter Mariot to learn what he thought of his fourth book:
W: Hello?
A: Hi, it’s Arturo, how’s going?
W: Everything ok. When are you sending me the rest of the manuscript?
A: There’s no rest of manuscript, it finishes right there, in page 478.
W: But how about the end of the story? Don’t you know the reader will want to know what happens with investigator Orlando? How about his arch enemy? Someone has to set an end to the atrocities of the villain, or I’m not right?
A: Stephen King always wanted to write a book without an end, but if he cannot write, I can...
W: Only if it is with another editor, my friend – Walter interrupted, the tone of voice rising. Ah, c’mon, it’s not serious, stop cheating, please – he went on, in a conciliatory tone, as one who knows he’s the victim of a joke.
A: This fourth book will be a gift for my readers, stop with the hero journey.
W: The hero journey sells.
A: But this old trick is broadly known, my dearest. You see, the first volume, Orlando and the Tlön mystery, the investigator is induced to an adventure in a typical hero journey. In the second volume, Orlando and the light-giving eternity, I took to the exhaustion the method of the New York’s Actor’s Studio, two narrators, two truths, one reader stuck up to the last paragraph of the last page to know what the true version is. The third volume, Orlando in the Trinity Little Island, I put in action the classical enigma of the murder in the closed room, a murder, several suspects, all stuck in an island. And now, in the fourth volume I lead the reader to another threshold, a story that flows to an astonishing climax and end up abruptly without beating around the bush and without explanations: as an athlete that decides to quit at the top of his career. That’s what’s been missing in the detective novels: vanguardist boldness and strength!
W: Look, Arturo, we have an agreement and will respect it, since you want it to be so... I will forward it to the proofreading.
A: Don’t worry; it will be the great revolution of the modern Brazilian literature!
W: Ok.
***
Arturo and Walter only met again three months later, in the book release, in one of the shops of the Curitiba Bookstores. The author took his novel for the first time, enraptured for the cover neatly worked. He thought the volume to be thick like a Bolaño, his luck numbers, 478. He opened it in the last page to see his numbers again, friends: 657. 657? He looked at his editor. He kept the look. Shot him with the look. Walter cleared his throat and whispered in the ear of Arturo that a ghost writer finished the service. The author took the volume and looked for a comfortable armchair, asked the little girl for a coffee and opened the book in page 478.
— What is this, man are you going to read it now? The guests are coming!
He took the coffee cup, sweetened it, stirred it and took a sip of coffee:
— Ask your ghost writer to come autograph it, because I’m curious to know the end of the story, by the way, will Orlando win his arch enemy or not?
478 is a winner short story. Winner of the Fifth Short Stores Contest Curitiba Bookstores, and was published in edition 57 of magazine Ler & Cia (July/August).
Abrantes
I could see the way how she smiled, I know that smile. She was happy like a child who’s given an ice-cream on a summer hot day. The Fiat 500 cabriolet advanced through the highway, I stretched my arm to feel the wind, while my eyes ran the bucolic landscapes torn out here and there by the blue of the sky. We passed by a sign, Abrantes was 25 miles from there. It didn’t matter, nothing else mattered, and we only wanted to go on through that highway until the twilight. When the light began to run from us, we would search for the first hotel our smartphone indicated in the vicinities. There was a merlot in the luggage compartment and we would have a lot to do until dawn. On the day after, we would arrive to the pond where we met, some years ago. We would rent a boat and sail under the sun, wetting the tip of our feet sometimes.
The Stage
The old man looked at the sea and his heart was filled with melancholy. The swells had separated from the world all these years. His family had always been there, as well as the bog sea currents that digladiated day and night in epic battles, invisible to the human eye, but that seduced the angels and other creatures in the development of the ages. The spirits should do their work, make the water circulate throughout the globe, and, as some brought heat from the warm waters and the hope of the flourishing from the tropics, others, in addition to the veil of our ordinary life, sought to lead the cutting cold weather to the heart of all the living creatures, by bringing the waters from the core of the eternal darkness below the big immemorial ice from the poles, cutting waters to contaminate the seas.
The old man looked up to the sky. The grey clouds ran to the horizon, as though they were pushed by invisible horses whose trot boomed through the three hundred and sixty degrees of that large stage that he agreed to call the Atlantic. The same sky that protected his family, away from the grey clouds. The old man looked at the containers behind him and to the stem that would cut the waves ahead. The wind whistled and howled by some crack and he closed his eyes for a moment. The hope to see them again made him open his eyes. Someone called his name behind him.
Water steam
She looked by the rear view mirror, but he was not there anymore. As if one memory could fade away with the steam from a hot tea cup. It would be good if it was so, but it’s not like this that things work. Now her memories would be the only link she would have with that child who was her son for two years.
A mother never forgets about her children, that’s what’s said. And as the truck got away from the field, she’d imagine what would be of her sweetheart in his blue and white striped pajama. The war had brought a horror that remained hidden for many years on the surface. Men would transmute into monsters, and all the population became the hostage of that hoard that would dress a uniform and say they had some authority.
One night she went back to the field and stopped in front of the grid. Under the low light of the moon she got on her knees and cried for some minutes; she returned to the village right after. It seemed there was no more hope, but she still believed.
And Nothing
Joyce got home about three o’clock, she opened the gate as easily as always and went up the stairs up to her studio apartment in the first floor. She took the bunch of keys and opened her house’s door. On the door, the number 2 from number 25 was hanging crooked. She took mental note that she needed to fix this. The door screaked and she got in. She went to the toilet. She thought of the last night’s happenings, but she regretted. She shouldn’t think of this now.
Punta del Este to the South America’s Las Vegas. María took her by the arm. The beauty of the night, the statues and the opaque shine of a street lamp. Through the milky glass of the computers’ room partition walls of the hotel, she perceived María’s thighs. Milk thighs. I’m in the land of the milk and honey, she thought, as she managed to roll one of her hair locks on the tip of her fingers. The delicious lack of familiarity wi
th the foreign environments. The sound of the language she didn’t master filled the spaces, and the Portuguese language would only roam in her mind. Full immersion into a completely Latin-American environment. But isn’t Brazilian Latin-American? Hispano-American is the definition she searched for. She took a pill from her purse and put it under her tongue, feeling the ocher flavor.
One night to call yours. With the Nix bless. One body. One starry sky. The stars in the cap of the policeman. One sound, one texture. And then the return to the thighs of María, the milk and honey. But something was not right. One dice game. The light.
Joyce rose from the toilet and washed herself. She took off her clothes and delighted a long shower. She didn’t want to worry about time. She remained for a long time feeling the water flowing through her body, then; she turned off the faucet and applied scented oil all over her body. She dried herself, dressed herself and went to the car. She went up with the heavy case full of money and went back to take her clothes backpack.
She still felt the smell of the Uruguayan, although it was only a memory. A memory in the shape of an ice cube that her conscious mind left under the sun. She went up the stairs and went to the bedroom. She lay down in bed.
Two dices. Six. Six. Twelve. Perplexity.
Joyce doesn’t want to think about it nor of the meaning of all this. Not now. She opens the night table drawer and takes the gun. She feels the metallic cold on her temple. Cold as the ice the sun liquefied. The being...
Jackpot of Départ
The upmost work of Charles Garnier was in front of my eyes. The architect didn’t save details when drawing the casino that would be a synonym of the gender for all eternity. In every fresco of the Belle Époque style, eyes have already released swearing of wickedness and lips dropped kisses of gratitude. In that atrium, the wealth and the misery walked hand by hand, one running after the other. I got in the games room where the classic and the modern met their balance in the exquisiteness. I was greeted by a beautiful and elegant young girl who politely offered me a fidelity card. I remained some minutes lost in the blue of that look while her soft voice explained me each advantage of the 777 Slot Privilège card. Blue eyes. Like those of Josh, the boy had the deepest sea blue, even being in a desert. The girl smile, and Josh’s smile came to her mind, how long it remained lost in that child’s smile, a smile that was only love for him. No, I wasn’t interested in fidelity card. It was the last day I would step on Monte Carlo, I wouldn’t need discounts.
— Well, sir, where do you want to begin with, we have all variety of table games, like the classic European roulette, the charming Trente & Quarente, the English roulette, baccarat and its Chemin de Fer variation, Punto Branco, 21 and dice. The only thing is choosing which one you want to try your luck on – Felling that she didn’t wake my interest for anything, she tried another approach:
— We also have more than a thousand slot machines; do you like this kind of machines?
Susan could spend hours in front of the machines, and every time the tokens went down by the metal spinning and screaming cling-cling, she got euphoric – Did you see? Did you see? I won! I Won! Look at the little coins! – She would shout excited, jumping and smiling. And in the cruiser, where they won more than a hundred thousand, in coins of twenty five cents. The tokens fell like crazy, and it was difficult to hold them, the little buckets getting full in a matter of seconds, and faced with Susan’s joy, I ran to bring more buckets that got full and were forming a row of pots. Our row of gold pots! – she didn’t get enough repeating, lively. Back to the casino, I examined the beautiful assistant in front of me:
— Which one do you prefer, Anna? – I asked looking at the badge on her chest.
— Luck may be beneficial in any of our game tables as much as in the machines.
— But if you had to give a personal opinion? She twisted her head:
— I’d say the citizens of Monte Carlo are forbidden to play; actually I can only get in here because I work for the Société des Bains de Mer, which administers the casino.
— Hum... I had no idea. Slot machines, you said?
— Yes, come with me, sir?
— Anderson.
— Very well, Mr. Anderson, come this way – she told me, escorting me through the elegant room, where, around the tables the elegant and polite employees assisted the selected players of the Monte Carlo Casino.
— The casino has more than a thousand slot machines, actually, the biggest collection of them in Europe. We have exclusive machines in Europe, and even some exclusive worldwide. Today we have the opening of the new machines “Star Trek”.
We soon got to the day’s sensation, the new Star Trek machines, the white ones of the Stormtroopers, the shiny ones of the clones command and the black ones where the fearful Darth Vader faced the players. She showed me the corridors where those numerous machines were and then returned to her position at the door. I couldn’t imagine that the space within that Nineteen Century building could stand so many machines. Josh enjoyed so much the cartoons on the clone command, he would spend hours watching over and over. I gave him the clones computer game on his twelve-year old birthday, and he got very excited, he was expecting it for a long time. Right after, there was an exhibit of the series in Los Angeles and I took him to watch it. He got astonished with the hundred items there was there, he took pictures of each item, explaining me in chronological order the importance of that item for the series. We took picture with the characters, in some scenarios that were specially reedited for the exhibit, we ate hot-dog in a replica of the port-space cafeteria of Mos Eisley. There was a small crowd in front of the great sensation of the day. A banner promised:
I went to the casher, passed my card, took the bucked full of tokens and returned to the Star Trek machine. Going back to the machines, all were occupied. I waited some time, then a guy dressed with a green T-shirt, where a distinctive sentence was stamped, turned and freed the machine. The phase drew my attention: “Chekov is not a Star Trek guy”. I pulled the lever and the pictures began to roll in front of me. The series’ characters rolled, rolled, rolled and, then, stopped, no pair, no picture like the other. I put more tokens and pulled the lever again, the machine rolled some more seconds, then, it stopped at once, the three imperial soldiers looking straight at my face. The machine began to blink, then there was a click and a small door opened at the top of the machine, a light sword got out from inside the machine, blinking, the famous music of John Williams playing, the Imperial March announcing the prize. Then, the coins began to tinkle to the little bulk that soon appeared, brought by a casino employee.
— It’s your lucky day, Mr. Anderson; you won the great opening prize! The security of the casino showed up, an Asian with thick glasses, stopped the machine. It was too much money to be released by tokens. The Asian removed the ticked from the machine and informed that my prize was available in the cashier. I went to the cashier at the same time, took my million euros. Very beautiful women offered me places at a poker table, which I refused, saying I would be back the day after.
I went a millionaire to the hotel, where I laid comfortably beside the money. I took the pills and laid down again. How we would have celebrated it, Susan, Josh and I. At this time, the room would be all wet with Champaign, the Susan’s dream come true in the machines chosen by Josh... Then I began to feel dizziness, the heavy head, difficulty to breathe, difficult to think... What a shame not having heirs anymore, one million euros! My departure jackpot...
MM38 or the day that we expected french flying fishes
Gathered around the table we played cards for hours and hours. As it was a no smoking shelter, there are excited tempers. 6. Truco[1]. 9. Thief. 12. A hit. The table turned. A lamp that twists in the thin line that comes down the musty ceiling.
The men are separated and each one goes to a corner of the room. One of them swats, another sits down, the third one remains standing looking at the lamp that like a pendulum still twists, making shadows dance
on the walls, a fourth one takes a handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers and wipes away the sweat from his face. The people like to ignore the horror, turn their face to the other side. It’s not like this, someone exaggerated, they say to themselves. That’s it, they answer. And then they follow their ordinary lives as if nothing had happened. But all human actions are cumulative. Like the colored layers of the soil that an archeologist examines trying to discover the past from a bulk of stone and mud. Each omission letting the evil to spread like a waving on a liquid surface. That adds another that adds a third one and meets other wavings and this one other and more successively until flowing into on the general chaos in which we are. I played the blind man not to see the horror in my life, but I drowned on a sea of atrocities, and blind, I couldn’t see the light on the surface, and lost in such waters I was swallowed to the depth. Another group sits at the table. The oldest one takes a game of dominoes from inside his jacket. The game begins. The ones connect to the ones, the twos connect to the twos, the threes connect to the threes and so on. The elder ones counting pieces that are placed in the game and mounting their strategies to win the game, while they wait for the Exocet missiles[2].
The Highway
The highway was born on a roundabout, coiling in the middle of the pine trees. Pine trees forest where sparrow-hawk and the seriemas[3] pullulated. Where one day wolves hunted. Now a boy spews an ice-cream in the badly clipped grass of the hard shoulder. I pass by the resort, I pass along the Wolf dike, the sun shines reflected on the calm waters of the balneary, but I can only see them in a flash, an interval between the pine tree and another, like a man who leers upon and sees the reflex of the sun in a mirror. Too long ago, I drove through other yellow lines that crossed the black asphalt, another highway. Cutting Vigo, I followed its yellow lines up to the horizon. In the clear blue sky, an aircraft crossed the zenith. Probably it took off from the aerodrome dr. José Augusto de Arruda Botelho, where there was an explosion last year. And in a fire ball a pilot raised his last flight.