A Cup of Rage (3 page)

–
in order to act – the screams of a supporting actress, and let me be perfectly
clear: I didn't want the bleatings of an audience, far from it, I was fully aware
that I only wanted to get back my lost shriek, and she didn't even have much to do
with all this (yes, it's confusing, but that's how it was), I was inside
myself, as I just said (chaos!), I was dealing with an imbroglio, with the colic, with
terrible contortions brought on by this flush, with things that fermented in the tunnel
of my stomach, all the things that existed outside and that my ants had carried, bit by
bit, and were they ever great at carrying, the bastards, plain excellent at it, and the
damned insects had found every possible entrance into me, my eyes, my nostrils, my ears,
especially my earholes! and someone had to pay, someone always had to pay, whether they
wanted to or not, that was one of life's axioms, that was a natural prop for rage
(and sometimes even the best relief from guilt), the fact is that even feeling eyes on
me – Dona Mariana's Protestant eyes were ready, and I had already found
Antônio's shaky legs behind a bush – even so I stuck my chest out a
little and took two steps towards her, and she must have noticed some solemnity in how I
approached her, she was an intelligent little miss, and fickle, the bitch, I only know
that she suddenly put her hands on her waist, her face became two defiant eyes, the two
ends of her mouth turned sarcastic, and she squandered other gaudy little gestures, most
of them completely unnecessary, at this point I could no longer contain a violent
‘hey you, you', I suddenly let fly ‘you, you shitty little
journalist', I continued expelling my bile in bursts, she stood quite still by the
car, only her little bum rubbed against the door handle, and the bitch smiled, laughed a
‘ha ha hah' that I had and hadn't expected, she was trying to confuse
me, but even so I continued to advance, ‘why insist on trying to teach me, you
shitty little journalist? why insist on trying to teach me when the little that you
learnt in life you learnt from me, from me'
and I hammered on my
chest and was already raising my voice to a shout, but she said ‘oh! honourable
master! …' and with a swish-whoosh her venomous tongue came out and back,
unbelievable how that well-oiled instrument worked, and hearing what she said I shook,
not exactly because of her irony, which didn't go beyond an amateurish attempt to
defend herself, rather it was her obsession with castrating me, calling me
‘master' yes, yet as always denying my access to knowledge because of my
lack of titles, I was the ‘graduate odd-job man' (what did the fraud know of
my work and my affairs?), suggesting that I stick to my usual territory in our
discussions, although I couldn't care less by then, I mean, I wasn't
interested in being venerated in the field of ideas, and anyway I had said to her many
times that the quality of someone's thought wasn't seen in their profession,
nor in their head, but in their throat, in the stubborn girth of the gullet when they
swallow, an anatomical defect that is just as rare among common mortals as it is among
stupid intellectuals, and so it's from a sickness – and only from there
– that the bitter force of independent thought comes, obviously the prophets
can't be held responsible for the sensuality of their followers, but I used to go
rigid when I saw the fraud, anointed with the spirit of the times, surrendering herself
lasciviously to the myths of the moment, I used to go rigid when I saw the fraud, in
spite of her affected rebelliousness, being pulled here or there by this or that owner,
I tried many fucking times to slip a penknife in under her dog-collar, many fucking
times I said to her that every chained dog hides a wild one, to her, who at every
opportunity would refer me to her guides (she was as strong as iron, the fraud, it was
impossible to harm her bone structure), despairingly I'd tell her that rather than
esoteric ghouls it was I who held my existence in my hands, not knowing, apart from the
womb, a mould capable of giving this raw material form, but it was always heresy to
touch her idols' tablets of the law, to
draw a line in the dust,
to scare off the ghosts, I even reminded her of the episode with that wanderer from
earlier times (were he around now, she would be his spaniel, join his school, lick his
feet in an obscene display of submission), who in his natural history incorrectly
attributed a certain number of teeth to the horse, and whose slow but authoritative pace
meant that his mistake passed down the centuries as if it were true, and also of many
other absurdities, some there since primordial times, that continued to be idiotically
carried on high litters, and that even in schools (the altars of dogma) people formed
lines to let such litters pass, but it didn't do any good to preach against them,
it didn't do any good to turn the key to unlock the door, I ‘an odd-job
man' (a graduate in odd jobs), I was not a ‘master', much less
‘honourable', I (the irony) was certainly not an authority and yet even so I
had the sudden urge – and this wasn't the first time – to put two
fingers at each end of my lips, stretching them until the mouth of my forge was wide
open, and at the same time winking in a clear admonition to ‘open my mouth and
count this horse's teeth for yourself', thus giving a grotesque illustration
of the force of empiricism, since I was no more to her than a ‘vaguely interesting
animal', this by the way, in her unconvulsive hours, was the most she granted me,
but I didn't say or do any of all that, I didn't bare my teeth, or do
anything comparable, the effort wouldn't exactly be educational after all, and as
I've already said, I didn't want the bleatings of an audience, and as
I've also already said, I wanted to get back my lost shriek, I only haven't
yet said – and this is the most important thing – that I wanted to stick to
my usual territory, and so I tackled her viciously ‘it never occurred to you, did
it? you shitty intellectual, it never occurred to you that everything you say and
everything you vomit up is all stuff that you've heard from other people, that you
haven't done any of the stuff you talk about, that you only screwed like a virgin
and that without my
crowbar you aren't any-fucking-thing, that
I've got a different life and a different weight', but there she interrupted
me ‘go on, go on, say it once more, tell me that you aren't the great hermit
I imagine you to be, but that you have a ton of demons around you, go on, say it, say it
again … ha ha hah … you demon … ha ha hah …' she must have
scoffed a whole tub of brilliantine for breakfast, I'd never said anything like
that! it was clear that things were slipping out of control, I for my part was shaking,
and so was on the way to losing it, to loosening my tongue much more than was acceptable
‘listen here, fraud, don't talk about what you don't understand, mouth
off in your press, go and preach your sermons there, denounce repression, teach what is
just and what is unjust, go and pour your drop on the torrent of words; waste the paper
of your newspaper, but don't poke your maw into the leaves of my privet' I
said, angry as hell with myself for suddenly being simply on the defensive after my
sharp and crude attack, allowing crafty her to stab me with absolute precision
‘quite understood, sir, I'm more than capable of gauging your fears …
such modesty, such a need for security, all this oh-so-suspicious concern for your
hedge, and by the way it's unbelievable how you are mirrorizing yourself in what
you say; go on, talk, don't stop all those words, don't stop your portrait,
but afterwards come and see your face from here … ha ha hah …
disgusting!' and she said it as if she were catching me in the act, and took
advantage of my confusion to twist the blade in further ‘build a wall, a fort,
protect what you own behind a thick wall' ‘don't draw easy
conclusions' I managed to squeeze in, ‘it's what the people
conclude' she retorted, making it clear that the only thing left to do was
pronounce sentence, probably the medieval wheel, ‘do you know who you remind me
of, do you, you fraud?' I said in a level voice, unable to believe in the sudden
calm of each word (all of them still nervous inside), pretending you see that I was
going to get into the battle royal, use
her methods (she insisted on
the preamble, wanted, before the beating, for me to light up the buttons of her body),
but I rode off on my own calculations, simmering away under the pot's lid you
could see my numbers jiggling around in the bubbles ‘you remind me of a man who
dresses as a woman for carnival: he straps on enormous conches of rubber as breasts,
paints two scarlet circles on his cheeks and heavy eyeliner over his lashes, pads out
his buttocks with cushions, and then he's off, with enough swing in his hips to
make even the most flexible dark girl envious; his figure is so striking that the guy
manages – although the hair on his arms and legs betrays him – to be more of
a woman than a real woman' ‘and? …' ‘and that makes me
think about how dogmatism, caricatures and depravity often go together, and that
privileged people like you, dressed up as
the people
, generally look to me like
carnival trannies', and what I said was absolutely clear, without any interruption
that might disturb my illustration, but her agility was amazing, it wasn't only in
her use of populism, in her style too she achieved a transcendent mimicry ‘every
citizen has the right to paint two scarlet circles on their cheeks, why not!, decorate
their nose with a red ball, hang a thick, crooked stick from their arm as a walking
stick, put on a pointy hat, and, once they've done that, go and joke around on the
main square … ha ha hah … ha ha hah … ha ha hah …' I ought
to have congratulated the fraud, I didn't have her talent, my cynicism
didn't go that far, to put on a show of indifference so close to a bonfire, to
guffaw with laughter just before the sacrifice, I had to acknowledge her skill at
imitation, my head was a little blank for a moment, I felt my legs had suddenly been
amputated, I fell into a total paralysis, and noticed out of the corner of my right eye
Dona Mariana – peering round the corner of the house – quickly pull her head
back, and out of the corner of my left eye I could clearly see – stuck between the
bush's branches – Antônio's slow face, oh,
she
was enjoying having an audience all right ‘take it easy, fraud, people like you
fulfil a function' I said bitterly, ‘take it easy, know-it-all, people like
you fulfil a function too – with your arms crossed you'd just be a conniver,
but now I see that's not enough, you'll be judged as a perpetrator!'
‘I didn't ask your opinion' I said, leaning on this set phrase, a lazy
cliché but, to compensate, one able to stir up what remained of my muscles, I felt
that two gigantic balls were bursting here on my biceps as I reconquered – highest
adventure! – my conscience that had been occupied, thus sickness and sovereignty
came together of necessity ‘to judge what I say and what I do I have my own
courts, I don't delegate it to third parties, I don't recognize in anyone
– in absolutely anyone – the moral power to weigh my actions' I said,
with a sudden change in rhetoric (I had struck the tuning fork and picked up a suspect
tone, but simple instruments that they were – even the unutterable ones –
how could words be guilty, considering that everything depends on context? what we had
were useless solutions), and reversing the proportions once and for all, tossing in
three shovelfuls of cement to each one of sand, mixing a different bond into the
discourse, and reserving for myself a chaste communion wafer and a superb goblet of wine
I began firmly and cohesively (as well as masterfully, like an actor) to intone the
liturgy of a black mass ‘I was thirteen when I lost my father, never did I don
mourning clothes, nor did I even then suffer any feeling of abandonment, and so
I'm not looking for a new father–son bond now, my history would have to be
remade for me to give up being an orphan' ‘congratulations on that fine
deed' she said casually ‘only you manage to be an orphan and an old man at
the same time … ha ha hah …' and as well as diverting the course of
what I had said, her sarcasm forged a subtle addition: a suggestion that her lumping me
in the grey generation would annoy the hell out of me, I of all people, I, who even
cultivated
old age prematurely, and the fraud knew it, she wasn't
unaware of what she herself called my ‘superfluous pretension', which only
set off the daring contortionism of her reply all the more, even more so bearing in mind
that I had some white hairs, which had been appearing chronologically, by force of time,
but that I was far from having salt-and-pepper hair (the twists and turns of her logic
were brilliant, without a doubt she deserved to be complimented on them), in truth,
brilliance aside, her mockery hid as always a fog of sensuality, the same plaintive,
provocative and redundant appeal, in short the little miss could never get enough of
this ‘old man', I only know that I continued in the saddle of my
calculations, although, while in full control, I must admit that she was still tugging
on my numbers' ear, for in spite of the time being up that I had allowed myself
for the battle royal, I saw myself quickly binding – tying one end to another
– the thread she had just cut ‘I said and I repeat: my history would have to
be remade for me to give up being an orphan, I know that's impossible, but that
would be the very first condition; the time has gone when I saw living together as
viable, only demanding, piously, my share of the common good, the time has gone when I
consented to a contract, leaving out many things, although not what was most vital to
me, the time has gone when I recognized the shocking existence of imagined values, the
spine of all “order”; but I didn't even have the air I needed to
breathe, and with that denied me, I was suffocating; being conscious of this frees me,
it drives me on, I dwell on other things, today the universe of my problems is
different; in a world without rhyme or reason – definitely out of focus –
sooner or later everything gets reduced to a point of view, and you, spending all your
time cooing over the humanities don't even realize that you're cooing over a
joke: it's impossible to tidy up the world of values, you can't clean the
devil's house; so I refuse to think about what I don't believe in any