My Two Worlds (12 page)

The atmosphere on the outskirts of the city turned out to be both intimate and alien to me; I could recognize the language, since I shared it, but I’d lost a bit—or a great deal, I don’t know—of the pulse of its expressions and of the local idiom in general, its resonances. And so these birthday walks were approximate in more than one sense. My birthdays consisted of vague gestures of this type, an exile for a few hours toward a part of the past and toward a geographic area that no longer belonged to me, but because they’d been mine once, I had considered them united until that moment: both parts were one and the same, a mixture of time and place. When the day was nearly over, I’d return from the outskirts as if I were coming back not from another reality, but rather, from a brother planet, an outlandish dimension into which I could set foot only once a year, when the calendar, underscoring my presence, so to speak, in the world, invited me by this same operation to suspend that presence, to doubt it, or at least, to hide it.

The path that ran along near the water kept displaying its neglected surface; in reality, I didn’t expect it to change, but between one thought and another, some sideways glance at a distraction or some specific point in the landscape that called for my examination, I gradually arrived at the aforementioned place, the oblong building that stood at the lakeshore, with large, empty terraces on either side and great, wide windows that gave onto the water. One didn’t need to examine it for long to know that it had been the old boathouse, converted at some point into a café, according to what it said on several lecterns on both terraces and on a sign over the entrance:
CAFÉ DO LAGO
. The structure was modest and embellished at once. As one could easily imagine, it was in the same style as the terrace on the plaza by the
pedalinhos,
as well as the guardhouses, or tool sheds, whatever they were, that were scattered across the park.

I went to sit down on the left-hand terrace, as far as possible from the water, from where I had a rather privileged view of the lake; I could also see, from the vertex of the old boathouse, how the panorama slowly opened out until it achieved its full breadth even beyond the swans’ area, which now could be seen, on the left-hand shore, as a slightly undefined concentration, a mixture of trees and various facilities. While I was waiting to be served, I began to consider the most recent events. Obviously, the episode with the fish and the turtles, and the associated thought, too, which arrived like an instantaneous revelation, though I should have foreseen it: I was ensconced in my birthday month, and what’s more, the day itself was only a few days off. By now I’m sufficiently acquainted with the fatal succession of nights—Borges said this, I believe—to understand that no distraction or idea can stop time from being realized and the future from arriving. It’s not that I wanted to postpone my birthday, it was my certainty that it made no difference to start thinking about it in advance, though I hadn’t expected to, in that park in the south of Brazil.

Then I happened to have the thought, as I mentioned before, of the two friends whose birthdays seemed to them an opportunity, or alibi, for writing about themselves in relation to time, or to life and its possible changes, and the impact all this had on them. And as I remembered them, an odd thing happened, my birthday vanished from the horizon as a looming eventuality, to assume the validity of the present itself. I felt, as I say, truly ensconced in the day of my birthday. I mean, in one way or another, reality had organized itself in such a way as to anticipate this date, and it inspired in me a feeling of solidarity and concord toward both friends and their books, and one of gratitude toward the carp and the turtles for prompting the moment and having allowed me to preside over that near-secret aquatic celebration. Consequently, from where I sat, I could devote myself to contemplating the calm waters of the lake, and also to reconsidering for a moment these most recent events and thanks to them, understanding that the whole park in its entirety had worked as an unexpected catalyst for my birthday.

A young waiter had left me the menu, only to take refuge immediately inside the café, probably wanting to benefit from the air conditioning. By now a brief age had gone by since his first appearance—short if one takes into consideration the span of a lifetime, long compared with the time most anyone would spend deciding what to order. For a moment, I thought I saw him keeping an eye on me from one of the windows. Not openly, like someone looking straight out, but diagonally, most of his body hidden behind the wall and his face peeking out a bit. I didn’t give much thought to him, because at the same time I discovered I was being observed from another angle: swan No. 15 was headed right toward where I was sitting.

It had its eyes riveted on me, as if it were trying to memorize what it would say when it arrived and wanted to get a head start. I recognized the swan because the father and daughter were aboard, their heads peeking out from behind the animal’s neck, one on either side. I recall that the girl was laughing as the father talked, and that her laughter became heartier just after her father said something and she looked at me. They were talking about and laughing at me, I supposed. It was the worst that could happen to me that day, being sensitized to the opinions of others in such a way. Perhaps I was mistaken, but it’s not easy to overlook certain signs, especially when someone wants to disguise them. The swan kept coming nearer, despite almost touching the shore and having the entire lake to itself, spread out behind it like a mirrored metal fan, tinged slightly with green because of the reflections of the plant life. The father and daughter seemed to be in control of the boat; but seeing them like that, sunken up to their necks inside the enormous body, made me think of them as involuntary yet unnecessary participants in the actual scene that was unfolding.

The scene was the most bucolic of paintings or photos: the afternoon light, the lacustrine landscape, and eloquent in the foreground, the swan looking directly up the line of sight. It was looking at me, as I said, and would keep doing so even if I changed tables or left the terrace. It would keep on looking at me if I stationed myself to one side of the lake, even if I spied on it from behind a tree, or if I actually placed myself behind it. Even to me, one of the protagonists of the critical moment, what was happening was impossible. I started thinking about causes. It obviously involved a dramatic exaggeration. It’s common to find eyes that look at us from paintings or photographs, as if they looked out once and for all, since they’ll never look away from us while we are looking at them. One of the friends I’ve been mentioning has to this day never forgotten an event from his childhood when an older lady lavished praise on a painting whose model gazed at all times at whoever was beholding her.

For me, to compose a picture with that scene of the swan was at that moment the most immediate way of discovering a meaning in it, and that no doubt came about because of my feeling designated, chosen, somehow lionized by chance or fate on being the birthday boy. It was even possible that what I’d picked up on somewhat apprehensively—the father’s derisive remarks to his daughter and her brief look—had in fact been a simple commentary, a piece of information, he told his daughter it was my birthday or that it was about to be, either way it was all the same, except that it would have been more inspiring if he’d said the latter, so that she had smiled shyly in my direction without knowing whether she should believe her father or not.

And I now recall Kentridge, the famous South African whose animated characters, especially one, named Felix—for whom he has a special affection, so much so that he seems to be an alter ego—rarely look out at the viewer. Nonetheless, they compensate for that characteristic, if indeed it must be compensated for and not entirely abandoned, by projecting visible gazes, I don’t know of any better name for them. A visible gaze would be the path traced by someone’s gaze, as if it were a beam of light or a luminous fluid. William Kentridge draws visible gazes by means of dotted lines, like those of the jets of water spurting in manifold directions in the fountain of the park I was in, which I described above. In this way, something physically impossible for painting or drawing to depict, as is the visual behavior of characters whose eyes we don’t see, is successfully achieved. We can observe Felix with his back to us, or from the side, while he contemplates a point in the landscape, a corner of the room, or the stars in the firmament, and we note how intermittent dashes leave his eyes to make up the dotted line, giving the impression of a column of ants or an action in progress, in this case almost the same thing.

The gaze thus drops its habitual burden of passivity. The physical argument, possibly erroneous, that supports this idea, I suppose, is that light is not unduly speedy, and as a result contemplation itself can become material, and hence easily seen. The dotted lines represent not only a connecting link, but the gaze in a process of continuous renewal, stretched toward the point under observation, as if each line, no matter how small, were a concise or great concentration of energy shot from the eye which will, on reaching its goal, vanish. Kentridge is famous for his animated films in graphite that tell stories for adults in the style of the pioneers of animation. Sometimes he seems to seek to represent the insatiable appetite of the capitalist system, devourer of souls, bodies, and nature; at other times he presents graphic reflections charged with melancholy about feelings and human actions. By and large, I’ve been moved after witnessing the physical metamorphoses of his characters, who are subject to earthly forces that literally dissolve them, extinguish them, or reconfigure them in another form in the next drawing.

Once the scene in which they are the protagonists is over, these people yield to their own bodily transformation. One sees the silhouettes in motion and beholds the supreme weariness that overtakes these characters by the time they’ve nearly given their all; a moment comes when they appear to stumble, they get muddled in the forest of dashes the screen has become, and one frame later they’ve been dissolved or transformed. Needless to say, I feel more and more often like a Kentridge character, especially Felix, that errant being, someone versatile set adrift in history and the course of the economy, but at the same time exaggeratedly indolent in the face of what surrounds him, things or individuals, to the point where he succumbs with no sense of shock to the consequences, at times definitive, of his actions.

On the terrace of the Café do Lago, I was taking this in as the afternoon shadows lengthened: my day’s walk, or perhaps my fast-approaching birthday as well, had united me still more with any of this artist’s characters, especially during an episode’s final vicissitudes, when they seem to get squashed, to dissolve among the elements or to vanish down the bathtub drain. I had the sensation of having been dragged to my table on the terrace, impelled by a private devotion, not overly fervent, but indeed pretty inertial, one that dwells on the minutiae of life and reality as a passport to daily existence. I imagined that as Felix I could fling myself into the lake and sink into its waters to drink them, through dozens of self-generated transfusion tubes; the next moment, the lake would empty, sublimating its waters toward the light of the stars and of something like the sun and the moon, a surrogate for the two, and I would remain in the middle of the empty pool, probably naked among the disabled swans, toppled and atilt on the earthen lakebed. The celestial body, moon or whatever it was, would shine, nearly full, and its alabaster reflection bathing the trees would be drawing’s self-evident homage to the gray scale of photography
. . .

The waiter had gone completely into hiding behind the window, and I began thinking of the strange coincidence of both my friends’ beginning their birthday books with a reference to the moon. One presents his theory on the visibility of the moon, the other starts his story by practically commending himself to the lunar cycle, since he’s setting out on a twenty-eight-day journey. I’ve known both men for years, and that’s why I can say, based on experience, that we are, I with each of them, obedient to differing regimes of friendship. In the end, you could say the same of any relationship or person, and even more when you’ve reached a certain age, there are as many types of friendship as friends, though in my case it’s worth clarifying, because there are some friends I’ve stopped seeing from one day to the next, with neither preambles or explanations. To describe what happened in detail would take me another book, probably of a more confessional tone, because I’d have to expand on my responsibility in the matter, or my share of responsibility, and I’d also have to explain the singular perception of time that, owing to those decisions, has been with me ever since. Is this related to my eternal sense of not getting any older, of feeling that the progress of time responds more to the peculiar elasticity of life’s episodes than to an accumulation of events and years? I don’t know. I could say I coexist with several hypotheses and that not one of them manages entirely to persuade me, when here comes a new criterion or substitute argument, the new idea that takes charge. The more I think, the less convinced I am; but it’s not just a question of thinking: I’m actually proceeding in the realm of pre-cerebral intuitions. When I’m on the verge of sighting a definite theory, or a clear one at least, all at once the idea retreats, as if it were afraid of taking on an unexpected responsibility. And so the moon is an astronomical enigma for one, and a narrative clock for the other. I’m not about to discuss their points of view or their choices; I couldn’t begin to do so even if I meant to. If I had to summarize, arbitrarily and in a few words, the sense I gather from both books, I would say that these two writers, on the eve of their fiftieth birthday, were attempting to show the system of beliefs that sustains them.