The Girl in the Photograph (11 page)

“Be careful of the sun, Lorena!” says Sister Priscilla.

Is it Sister Priscilla’s voice? I open my eyes. Sister Priscilla coming up the steps.
I advance toward her on my knees and reach for the letter she holds out to me. Her
porcelain face opens in a rosy smile.

“From my brother,” I say.

Her hands shade her eyes which seem to melt in the light.

“The sun is very hot, dear. Did you wash your hair?”

“And it’s dry already, look there.”

“Such beautiful blue skies and this girl hidden away in her
room. Mother Alix asked if you were all right, she was a little worried.”

“I’m fine, Sister. The Department is on strike, I have nothing to do there. If my
love telephones, I’m going out to dinner with him. Didn’t anyone call?”

Her small teeth are rounded and white, a little separated. The smile of baby teeth.

“Before you go out with your boyfriend, stop by, there are honey caramels.”

She has hope. I throw her a kiss. People
are
good, yes, wasn’t it beautiful what she said? An unarguable point that he will phone
and we will go out together. Positive thinking. I do my solar respiration through
my right nostril and go back to my step. I squeeze the letter which isn’t a letter,
it’s a postcard. I put off the moment of reading it like I used to put off eating
the first mangos back on the ranch. Dear Remo. The embassy is in Tunis but his house
is in Carthage, does Carthage still exist, Remo? Yes, it exists. A gorgeous suburb
with gorgeous houses in the middle of the Roman ruins. “In the garden through which
Salammbô walked there are jasmine trees just like the ones on the ranch,” he wrote,
sometimes he gets poetic. There are olive trees planted in the orchards, the olives
are picked right off the trees. And the dates come in clusters. “Like the beggars,”
interrupted Lião when I read her the letter. “The beggars go around in clusters, like
in the Northeast.” I didn’t even answer, what good would it do? You can’t talk about
anything pleasant or beautiful because Lião has to attack with the Northeast. Remo
only associates with diplomats and banker friends of Bourguiba, what would he know
about beggars?

“Was that the telephone?” I ask getting up. I grab the banister and lean over it.
“The phone?”

The wide windows of the old house, open to the garden, were empty. On the driveways
that curved around the planters, the small stones glittered like lumps of salt. Lorena’s
perplexed gaze searched the windows. Never had the house seemed so empty as at that
moment. “But didn’t I hear the telephone?” Cat came up tranquilly to Sister Bula’s
garden basket, touched her apron experimentally with a paw, and lay down on it. She
rolled herself up forming a perfect circle. “She’s catted around all she wants and
now she’s resting,” thought Lorena, threading
her fingers through the warm-damp tangle of her hair. The wind brought a few chance
scraps of voices. But behind them, total, dense, was the voice of Jimi Hendrix repeating
the same thing over and over on the phonograph, he’s soaked in sweat and desperate
but he doesn’t stop, he has to tell it fast! “Listen, everyone, before I go away,
quick!”

“I already know,” she said picking up the plate and glass from the floor. She covered
them with the napkin. In the screaming darkness of the bedroom she opened her dazzled
eyes wider: Blind thus she could hear even better the silent voice repeating itself,
like the record, “Why, M.N., why?”

If even Fabrízio would telephone. The four-to-six movie. A hamburger with beer, he
loved beer.
Tu quoque, Fabrici?
His bearded face. His hair standing on end, his way of walking a little like a caveman,
“Hi, Lorena.”

It was night, and rain was pouring down in bucketfuls. He arrived all wet, laughing
and shaking himself all over like a big dog who doesn’t quite know where to put its
paws, his boots heavy with mud, his notes dripping wet. She threatened to carry him
so he wouldn’t mess up the rug and in the end was carried herself, whirled in his
arms about the room. “Who says you can handle me?” “You don’t weigh anything, see
there?” When she felt the crispness of his beard on her face, she stopped laughing
and pretended to be fragile, melting between his muscular arms as she used to in her
father’s. The certainty that he had taken a bath recently made her tender; wasn’t
that the smell of lavender soap? She felt again that exciting dizziness and opened
her mouth, struggling weakly against him, “Let me go, let me go!” she cried pulling
his hair and thinking at the same time that they would become lovers that very night.
Lovers
. Was it that word that caused her to panic? She untangled herself. “Shall we have
some tea? I know how to make delicious tea.” He held her back by the hand. He had
lost his air of a big happy dog; now he was serious, his eyes low. His voice low:
“Sit down here, Lorena, sit here.” She ran off to fill the teakettle with water, tea
wouldn’t take any time at all, not five minutes. It took almost an hour. First it
was the electric ring that didn’t want to work, I called him to help me, he studies
electronics as well as law. When the coils of wires started to work, lightning struck
somewhere or other ana all the lights in the block went out. Thousands of nuns bringing
packages of candles, screams through
the neighborhood, Sister Priscilla falling down when she went to rescue Cat, who meowed
dreadfully in the darkness of the garden, an umbrella—was it Bulie’s? that escaped,
open, and went flying off in the wind. When the lights came back on, there was a certain
peace around us, the peace of things accounted for, of verification. On the roof,
a modest drizzle. Peaceful. I felt that tea was really necessary in order to build
a certain atmosphere of confidence, love made to conform to the tea ritual. But isn’t
there a one-legged demon who gets inside the teapot and blows on the water? I threw
the tea in before the water boiled, not that I was nervous, imagine, but I’ve already
said that tea isn’t so good with water that has boiled. When, finally, we were face
to face without tea and without words, guess who arrived. She never looked so big
as on that night with her ancient raincoat and tempestuous hair. She carried under
her arm the newspapers and a briefcase full of statistics, that was during her statistics
phase. She sat down in her favorite place, which is the rug, asked for a whiskey and
took off her water-soaked tennis shoes. I gave her a towel to dry her feet after offering
her a bath, which she refused. I love to dive into a hot shower after being in the
rain, ah, the sensation of well-being that talcum, perfume and dry clothes bring,
I get happy to the point of tears. But Lião doesn’t take a bath before or after. She
was excited about the interview she’d had with two prostitutes. She talked a little
about the questions in her discursive tone, and after touching lightly on the bourgeoise
decadence, including the decomposition of our generation and the false morality of
the older one, she tore a piece of newspaper off to line her shoes with. The sight
of her gathering up her belongings that she had scattered over the rug in preparation
to leave gave me such happiness that I offered her the bottle of whiskey which was
still half full, take it, dear, I have more. She accepted it joyfully because there
was going to be a meeting of her group and with the rain at least two must have caught
cold. She was clearly in love with Miguel, he was still free, poor thing. “After the
meeting I have an interview in private,” she said making a suggestive face. As soon
as she went down the steps in her three jumps, I went to the record player, Bach,
it should be Bach. Fabrízio was smoking, serious, his arm under his head, stretched
out on the floor, here only the nuns use the chairs. Then I heard footsteps. “I’ll
kill myself if it’s Ana Clara!” And I had what people call a
wan smile
when
she came in in a black suit, very dignified, she spent more than two weeks that way
without wearing makeup, talking for hours with Mother Alix, meditating, and drinking
milk. She asked for a glassful, refused the cigarette Fabrízio offered her and sat
down on the little armchair, I forgot, Annie also prefers chairs. She wanted to borrow
some books, she was about to reopen her registration in the Psychology Department,
she says she’s in her second year but I suspect that she never finished half a semester
of her first. We’re having exams, I said pointing to the pile of notes that Fabrízio
had left to dry near the electric ring. We have to read through all that, can you
believe it? She took her glass of milk and went to the chair beside the bookshelf.
She turned on the lamp, took her glasses out of her purse, every time she stops drinking
she goes back to wearing glasses: “I won’t bother you, I’ll stay here looking at some
books.” And without the smallest ceremony she started unwrapping the one I had bought
that morning,
God Exists, I Found Him
. Fabrízio looked at me. I turned off the record player. When we turned the last page
of the notes, it was four-thirty in the morning. Ana Clara had covered herself with
my shawl and was sleeping profoundly, all curled up in the chair. The rain had passed.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said without the slightest enthusiasm as he mounted
his motorcycle. I closed the gate.
Tomorrow
I met M.N.

I squeeze Donald Duck, a present from Fabrízio. Quack, quack! I kiss his beak. My
poor clumsy big dog, I think as I hug the duck, be faithful and guard me like that
dog in the commercial (a police dog?) who guards the safe. Before Astronaut I used
to like dogs better but I discovered that if dogs interest me, cats fascinate me.
No, my poet, it’s not death that is
clean but cruel
, it’s the cat. I was coming back from the cinema with Annie (sober) when I saw that
miserable little kitten abandoned on the corner. I made a bottle out of an old medicine
container that Sister Bula brought; he slept on my cashmere pullover, made pee-pee
and etc. in my bidet until he learned to go in the garden, even got in bed with me,
but do you think he turned into a sentimental kitty-cat? Let me laugh. He would spend
the day on his pillow, either sleeping or looking at me with minimal interest. Neither
affections nor concessions, an Egyptian. He came inside my shell, but I didn’t get
inside his. One day, without word or gesture, he went out through that door and never
came back.
But he will, I know he’ll turn up someday all dirty and ragged. I’ll bathe his wounds,
nurse his illnesses and when he becomes once more a lustrous fat tomcat he’ll run
off again. Free, free. Who can hang onto a tomcat? Not his wife who is old or almost
old, isn’t the middle son my age? She must be about the age of Mama, who has already
had two facelifts and is on her way to the third. Other structures, other spheres.
“I am the mother of your children!” she must remind him three hundred and sixtyfive
hours a day. Blackmail. My love, my love, how can you allow such blackmail.

“I am destined to live alone,” I say and begin to laugh. I hear this from Aunt Luci
every time she ends a marriage, just before she starts another one. I put on a Maria
Bethânia record, ah, how she reminds me of Lião’s amenities when Lião drinks and becomes
amenable. Before M.N. I thought that I couldn’t live without music, but now I know
I can’t live without him. I’d die listening to music, hours, days, months passing
by and the record going around and around for all eternity, la, la, la, la … one day
they would discover a skeleton more fragile than skeletons generally are, dressed
in a shift so tenuous that the breeze would make it fall apart with one puff. And
the record player buried under the dust, the music without record or needle rotating
in the tiny tummy of a mouse, li, li, li, li … The phone! Oh Lord, the phone.

Chapter 4

“There was this great big clock in the tower and I wanted to grab onto its hands,
hold the hours back, why wouldn’t time stop a little? I wanted to hang there, holding
back time. Then Mama took me by the hand and led me to the park, everything was so
green, was it in London? The musicians were playing and we were sitting in chairs,
‘Listen, Max, it’s Mozart. Pay attention, dearest, Mozart.’ ”

I discover a cookie under the pillow. I chew it slowly because it’s a sugary one and
I don’t want to finish it right away I like sweet things so much I can eat all the
sugar I want my body is super-elegant I don’t gain weight. I can eat tons of sugar
and nothing happens. Lião sure can’t. She’s on her way to obesity, a few more pounds
and she can put on her macumba priestess costume. Lorena doesn’t count she’s an insect.
Is there such a thing as an insect with a weight problem? An insect.

“The hell with Mozart, I like Chopin. Chopin and Renoir, I want sweet artists. The
mouth where the mouth should be, everything where it belongs, everything happy, I’m
sick of squalor. That’s what I told Loreninha, she loves to listen to those crummy
singers but she’ll only eat English jam on her toast. A snob. Let me laugh, she says
and bends backward and goes hah, hah, hah.”

He releases the hands of the clock and lies down again.

“We didn’t come into this world to get up-tight, that’s where the problem is.”

I look for more cookies but all I find is crumbs. I take the cigarette from his hand
and the smoke is sugary. His kiss is cotton candy.

“Max, do you like Renoir? Renoir the painter, you like him?”

He takes the cigarette back and stretches his arm toward the ceiling. “Bosch, Hieronymus
Bosch.”

“Ah, all monsters, all torment. Shit, a crazy man’s work. I hate crazy people.”

Sitting on the bed, he started turning his arms propeller fashion. He gave a cry of
pain when his closed fists hit each other in midair.

“I broke my hand.
Aiiyyyy
, it hurts …”

“Bastards. I want beautiful things, things that remind me of money. Abundance, prosperity.
I adore the United States, why shouldn’t I. Lião is anti-American because she’s hard
up, she’ll never have anything, let her stay with her subversive friends, but me!
The best hotel. How many stars does the best hotel in the world have?”