Remember Why You Fear Me

by Robert Shearman

  The question caught me by surprise. “I don’t know your wife,” I said. He didn’t loosen his grip, the eyes staring at me, the sneer still spreading. “I don’t even know your wife’s name,” I went on, “what is it?”

  “She is not to be liked, she is to be admired. She does not like you. But maybe you are not to be liked either. I sometimes wonder,” he said, and he suddenly seemed lost in reverie, and he let me go, and he was smiling, smiling like a child, “I wonder how she’ll turn out.”

  He poured me another feijoada. I took it gratefully. This time it tasted sweeter, so sweet my head spun. “Shall we choose some art?” he said, and I agreed.

  We started at the very beginnings of his oeuvre, the paintings from the 1950s. Here he showed me women with three eyes, teeth that tapered off into fingers, a man with thick red lips growing out of the side of his head. I wasn’t sure whether Saras would mind the comparison to Picasso, but he was looking for a reaction, looking at me so expectantly, and I had to say something—what else was there to say? I opened my mouth, I thought I would phrase it intelligently at least, and suddenly I could feel that sweetness all over my mouth, popping like millions of little bubbles, and it was as much as I could do just to get one coherent word out—“Picasso,” I mumbled, and then belched.

  At this he merely laughed. “Pick a picture,” he said. “What shall we display in this exhibition of yours?”

  I didn’t know, I didn’t care, and the bubbling was past my mouth now, it was pricking at my nose, and pretty soon I thought it’d reach my brain. I took another sip of the feijoada, maybe that would take the edge off.

  “Pick one!” he said, and he sounded angry now. “What shall we have? An extra ear? An extra eye? Or something more inventive, a pig’s snout, a cow’s udder, a dog’s tail maybe, would you like a puppy dog’s tail?”

  I didn’t like the anger, I thought I’d take refuge in the feijoada. I raised it to my lips again, but he took the mug from me. I reached out for it, but it was far away now, too far away. I didn’t want to open my mouth, I knew that if I did all the bubbles would come pouring out, but Saras did seem very insistent I make a decision—“That one,” I said. I don’t know what I pointed at. I just hoped I wouldn’t throw up all over it.

  “My pictures are nothing like Picasso’s,” said Saras, but he said it gently, as if to a child willing to understand. “Picasso painted the absurd images in his head. But I make my images live, and then, only then, do I paint them.” And I staggered, I nearly fell over, and he caught me by the arm. He looked genuinely concerned. “You are not well?” he said.

  I didn’t want to speak, I didn’t want to let the sweetness out, the sweetness in my head would drown everything in its path—no—no, I was not well—no, I shook my head.

  “The jetlag,” suggested Saras. “I am sorry. You go back to bed. There is plenty of time. We shall look at my cruel work of yesterday, and then I’ll show you my crueller work of tomorrow. Yes! And then, then you can go and visit your Christ, yes?”

  I spoke in spite of myself. “Where is Mrs. Saras?” I asked, out it blurted, and I didn’t even know why I cared, not until the words had popped out of my mouth like so many sweet bubbles, and then I knew that I really did care, that it mattered in ways I couldn’t understand. “Where is Mrs. Saras?” I asked again, but at this he laughed, and he gave no answer, or if he gave an answer I do not remember it—because I remember nothing, I don’t remember how I got to my bedroom, how I was undressed, it was all a blur.

  (My story is nearly told. Miguel Saras asks me one more question, just one, and then never speaks to me again. We shall get to that soon.)

  You’ll say I was drugged. But I don’t think I was drugged.

  My wife met me at the airport when I flew home. I was surprised. She’d never normally meet me at airports. And I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and it had been a long flight, so I put my arms around her in welcome, and she put her arms around me, but I could quickly tell that hadn’t been what she’d wanted. On the way home in the car she was mostly silent; she answered my questions politely enough, but never asked any of hers. Only the one, quite suddenly—“Is it all true?” she asked. And I didn’t know exactly what she was referring to. “Yes,” I said, and at that she nodded, and let the subject drop. I wonder whether that had been the right thing to say. I wonder whether a ‘no’ would have made the slightest bit of difference.

  About a week later she came to me and said, “You must know we’re all very disappointed.”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You were drugged.”

  “I was drugged,” I said.

  She sighed. “You’re such a victim,” she said. “Don’t you see how much better it would be if it had been your fault? How much more easily I might be able to forgive you?” I didn’t say anything to that. I just put on the usual facial expression, the one that got me through our occasional bouts of awkward conversation. She shook her head sadly. “I will forgive you,” she said. “I’ll do my best. It’s not your fault, I’ll tell Daddy, it’s just the way you are. I’ve decided that we can have a little fuckery. I’ll give you some fuckery tonight.” And I thanked her for that, and I was grateful, I did understand the concession she was making. My wife looks a little like a horse, I’ve always thought, that long face, that noble bearing. When I married her I thought she was a champion thoroughbred, not exactly warm or funny, but you don’t want thoroughbreds to make you laugh or feel better. In bed she’s more like a rhinoceros. She just lies there and sort of wallows. That night I did my very best to service her in the way she’d come to expect.

  You say I was drugged. But I wasn’t drugged. That would be too easy. And it wouldn’t make sense of the things I said to Mrs. Saras, the way I deliberately decided to say them. I don’t pretend that many aspects of my time with her didn’t confuse me, but there were moments of great clarity, and that night I knew I had chosen to change my life. That it didn’t quite work out that way, that within days I was back at home in Richmond rutting the rhino, it doesn’t alter that. I was a man with Mrs. Saras, I was the master, I was no victim.

  Maybe this is a confession after all.

  She came to my bedroom again. I started awake.

  “Ssh,” she said, and put a finger to my lips.

  “How long have I slept?” It was dark outside.

  “You must be hungry,” she said. She had brought me a bowl of feijoada.

  “I don’t want it,” I said.

  “But you are so hungry,” she insisted, “I can see how very hungry you are.” And I could hear the growling in my stomach, and no doubt so could she, there was no point denying it.

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “But these aren’t his leftovers. These are my leftovers. Look. Look. Smell. Taste.” And she spooned some into my mouth, and it was like steak, it was juicy and so full of flavour, and that flavour had a copper ting to it, and I swallowed it down greedily and my stomach growled for more.

  “There’s some on your chin,” she said. And she opened her mouth, and out came the tongue, and it was a beautiful tongue, why should a tongue have to be of one colour and one consistency? And she licked the gravy away.

  And she licked at my face then, hot and hard, and this time I could feel under the sheen of the saliva my skin become softer, more pliable—and that the tongue was pushing at it in different directions, playing with it as if it were warm clay, she was moulding me anew.

  “I wonder what you’ll turn out to be,” she said.

  And she stripped off my stripy pyjamas, she ripped them, and I didn’t care. And she kissed at my neck, at my chest. She kissed at my breasts, she took one nipple between her teeth, and she pulled on it—and out it stretched like chewing gum—she tilted her head back further and further and still how that gum stretched, I laughed to see it, and she laughed too at my laughter. I reached up and out to her and in to her and she did
n’t recoil, not this time, and my fingertips traced the scars on her cheeks, tickled her moustache, and she closed her eyes at my touch and she groaned and she sucked my finger into her mouth and my finger turned to syrup. She licked at my balls, and I felt something harden and something puddle, it was very curious, it was very disconcerting, it was very wonderful. And once in a while she’d climb up my body again, back to my face—and my body was now leaking on to the bed like melting ice cream, and my face was like a lake—and she’d put her tongue back into my mouth, and she’d suck out all the moisture she could, she’d suck out all my water and then use it to make my body putty. And then she might pause, she’d look down at her handiwork, she’d smile—and my heart would skip, my heart that now seemed smeared across my entire chest, everywhere there was a heart beating for her. She blew on my skin so it tingled; she breathed in deep, sucking the air in like it was a cigarette, like the world was her cigarette, and then she puffed it all back out through those glorious nostrils of hers, the air would be a frost on my warm liquid skin, it’d make the skin harden, it made it set.

  “I like your dog,” I said.

  “. . . What?”

  She looked confused. She stopped. I didn’t want her to stop. “Don’t stop,” I said.

  “My dog got broken,” she said.

  “The dog in the painting,” I explained. “I like it.”

  And at this she tilted her head a little, again trying to work out the joke—and then smiled. And this smile seemed real and warm.

  “That’s my favourite dog,” she said. “But I didn’t get the legs right.”

  “It’s my favourite dog too,” I assured her. “He’s beautiful.” I said, “You’re beautiful.”

  “Bark for me,” she said.

  “Yip yip!” I said.

  “No,” she said. “No. I’ll bark for you. Let me bark for you.”

  And she pulled back her head, she looked up to the ceiling. And out she let a howl. It was long and mournful, as if searching for a moon that wasn’t there. She reached for my hand. I took it, I held it tight.

  “I love you,” I said. And she looked at me. And she considered this. And then she kissed me—and it was our first kiss this time, a real kiss—not something for public display in front of baying strangers, nor something that was meant to change who I was and what I could be to her. It was very soft, very gentle, and just a little nibble at my lips.

  She was still dressed, all this while she’d been dressed. And I held her close. And there was no stiffening downstairs, I’m not sure any longer I had anything left that could stiffen. But I felt something fatten between her legs, a little bulge that came into play.

  “Show me,” I said. “Show me what you look like.”

  She nodded. She got up. She took off her clothes. I saw the art in all its glory.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “I can’t have a name,” she said. “I’m not finished.”

  And at that, I admit, looking at my poor dear sweet love, all the different chunks of flesh that had been put to use—I wondered what her leftovers might have been, what meat might have been swimming in that feijoada she’d fed me.

  She was not a pretty piece of art. She was a cruel piece of art. But all the parts of her patchwork body, where had they all come from, what adventures had they had! It seemed that they’d all had more life than me, seen more, done more than I’d even tried. And I loved them. And I said so.

  And when I told her I loved her, I saw that this time she believed me. She believed in me, and I saw her little stump of a penis stiffen—and I thought, o-ho, there’s fuckery afoot!

  But it wasn’t fuckery. It was love, it was real love, even if just the once, even if in that tangle of limbs I wasn’t sure which body parts were hers and which were mine, there was really no way to tell. But she didn’t lay there like a rhino, like some rhino who could only express approval through yellow post-it notes, and she was all around me and above me and beneath, she was everywhere and I was everywhere, and I thought we might just fuse together, at times I think we actually did.

  “Are you finished?” I asked at last.

  “I’m finished,” she said. “So now you’ll have to name me.” I said I’d give it some thought.

  “Sleep,” she said. “I’ll watch over you, I’ll take care.” And she began to lick again, and I wanted to lick her back—but there was an intensity to what she was doing, the concentration of an artist at work, I knew I mustn’t interrupt—“sleep,” she said again, and she kissed me on the forehead, and she smiled, and I did sleep, because I was spent.

  You’ll say I was drugged. I was not drugged.

  She stayed with me all night. When I awoke, her head was resting on my chest. My all too solid chest, ribs hard, skin hard, hard enough to support her, hard enough to keep her safe.

  I stroked at her hair, still so severely pulled against the skull. I teased a few strands out, they came loose in my hand.

  She stirred.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  Her eyes were wide open in a moment, flat and hard and so wide. “We have to tell him,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “Good idea. Do you want me to be with you for that, or shall I just . . . ?”

  She left.

  I got washed and dressed. I spent a long time getting washed and dressed. By the time I came out of my bedroom the deed was done, Mrs. Saras had told her husband she was leaving him for a pasty Englishman with no appreciation of art. Saras was slumped in a chair, all the swagger had gone out of him.

  “This is what you really want?” he asked her.

  “You knew this would happen someday,” she said.

  “Someday,” he said, “yes. But I am so proud of you. So very proud.”

  She said nothing to this. I cleared my throat to speak, realized I had nothing to say, closed my mouth again—but it was all right, neither husband nor wife had turned to me, it was as if they didn’t know I was even there.

  “And where do we go?” he asked. “Where do you want to do this?” And he looked at me for the very last time. “Where do you want to go today?”

  “The statue of Christ the Redeemer,” I said. “Let’s all go there.”

  His eyes flashed with fury at that, just for a second. Then he nodded, turned away from me forever. “So be it,” he said.

  Saras got changed into one of his designer suits. To me he looked much like his old self, leaner, snappier, the confident sneer playing around his mouth. But as we made our way to the ticket entrance, at the bottom of the Corvocado Mountains, no one seemed to give him a second glance.

  “I’ll pay for these,” I told my hosts, “this is on me.” They didn’t bother to argue. The woman behind the glass window of the ticket booth told me there was no point visiting the statue today; there was heavy cloud, I wouldn’t see a thing. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, and she shrugged, and sold me three admissions.

  Other tourists, it seemed, were just as stupid as we were. The tram that pulled us up the side of the mountain was packed. Children were leaning against the windows, their parents were taking photographs of anything and everything. Saras stared dead ahead, he took no interest in the view. He came out of his reverie only when a band began to play the samba with guitars and maracas—at this he allowed his eyes to roll in despair. I reached for Mrs. Saras’ hand, but she didn’t want to be held.

  Seven hundred metres in the sky, Christ loomed down on Rio de Janeiro. But in the clouds we couldn’t see Christ’s head, it might as well have been replaced by Saras’ for all it mattered. I stared down over the railings at Rio, but Rio was lost within a smog of thick white, there may have been no city beneath us at all, it may have been smoothed away and erased forever.

  “I love you,” Saras said to his wife.

  “I know,” she said.

  He seemed to wait for something else, anything else. When it didn’t come, he smiled at her politely. He
moved his head towards her. She moved her head the same. He kissed her smartly on both cheeks.

  And then she kissed him.

  And he moved his head towards her lips in acceptance—but these weren’t pecks to the cheek she was offering, they were hungry sucks with the mouth full open, she was nuzzling into his face, first one side, then both sides. I could see the spit spill out the sides of that mouth of hers, and how that mouth grew, how big it was, Saras’ face being taken in with hefty gulps. And then, suddenly, she pulled away. And already I could see that his cheeks were softening, where she’d kissed was putty, the skin was starting to drip. And he looked so very old.

  He stumbled back. He gave a bow (to her, but not to me), then quickly turned away and I could no longer see that face and oh, how it melted. And he disappeared into the cloud.

  “Goodbye, carissimos amor,” she said, softly.

  She turned to me.

  “And now,” she said, “I’m yours.” And she smiled with that mouth still so wide, still with flecks of white saliva at her lips. “And now,” she said, “you have to find a name for me.”

  “I can’t think of a name,” I said.

  “You will,” she said. “A name that we can both enjoy.” And she leaned forward to kiss me on my cheek.

  And I recoiled.

  I did not mean to recoil.

  We held the distance between us. For a moment her lips stayed fixed in mid-pucker, as if giving me the chance to relent, to put everything back the way it should be. Then the lips sagged back. The nostrils flared. The eyes were dead. And the hair looked so severe, and disappeared hard into the skull. And there was that distance, and we both held it. For the longest few seconds.