The Girl in the Photograph (12 page)

“He invented the spaceship, it’s there in those paintings, a whole hell of a lot of
spaceships before anybody had even thought of them. The one they put on the moon is
a piece of shit compared. They’re all flying, vvrroooooooom …”

“The scaly one likes to travel. Well he’ll travel all right, look here who’s going
with him. The best hotels. Next year I’ll start studying English again, I want conversation
classes with that guy, what’s his name. That asshole. Oxford accent.”

“Winged devils, look what a mean one … he’s grabbing that woman by the foot, yeah!
Let her have it!”

“I could sleep for three days in a row,” Ana Clara murmured slipping in between the
young man’s legs. She crawled upward until she reached his chest. “Where’s your glass?
I’m sober, Max. Did you give me aspirin? I’m sober, nothing has any effect, I dunno.”

“Eeeeh, that real black one! He has a chamber pot, look, look quick! He can really
fly, huh? Go away, go away!” he yelled shielding himself behind her. “He wants to
put the pisspot on my head!…” he giggled.

“I’ve lived in a pisspot. Nothing but torment and monsters. I’ve had my fill of it,
why should I want more? Now I want things gilded, rich, with cupids. Nice square paintings,
that’s what I want, I’ve had enough abstractionism. In reality misery is abstract.
At its highest point it’s abstract. Ever experience the abstract in the pit of your
stomach? I want a square house, square flowers, roses, I hate exotic flowers, those
that. Faces in the place. Shit, Van Gogh. Lorena has a passion for Van Gogh and that
other nut. Nha-nha-nha-nha. He paints flowers like meat, you know what meat is? They
bleed. Live meat rasped with a file, the blood pours out, confess, confess he would
say rasping deeper with his paintbrush. Lião told how her friend
was filed over that way. If they’d invited me to join their group when I was a little
girl you know I would have? I really would have joined, I used to think so much about
justice and stuff, I was a
very special
little girl, you hear, Lorena? But now I plan to join a different kind of group.”

“Get him out of here, Bunny! Hold me.”

She covered his face with a pillow, rolling a piece of hair around her finger.

“Good idea. Hell, wipe out the establishment. But if now’s my chance to. Wait a little,
it’s my turn, okay? Next year darling a new life. I’ll finish my courses and then.
I want to be first in everything, you hear? With money you can learn quick, with money
it’s easy. I’m intelligent, right? A woman psychologist. The scaly one will buy me
a high-class clinic, beggars’ problems don’t interest me. I’ll choose the clientele.
A bag of gold. So.”

Max, doubled with laughter, rolled himself up in the sheets.

“There’s one trying to peck at my wee-wee, look at his beak,” he yelled uncovering
himself. Peaceful suddenly, he closed his eyes, hid his genitals with his hands, and
smiled. “
Mon chou
…”

Next year he’ll see who’s the
petit chou
. A new life, my gorgeous boy. Farewell, Ana Clara Conceição daughter of Judith Conceição
but is that your last name? Cow. She looked alarmed the cow. Women are really enemies.
Did any male professor ever snub me on account of that? Who cares about a name. She
did. Cow. Jealous because I’m pretty. You have an incredible resistance to languages
Ana! If I had a bag of gold would she have noticed any resistance? Cow. The nha-nha
made the same face I know so well when she repeated my name, Ana Clara Conceição?
Conceição yes ma’am. So what? Who else worries about names in this city? A wonderful
city, there’s no more of that now, you just have to know who has a bag of gold at
home and who doesn’t. If you have one, you can have Crapass as your last name and
people salivate and hang a medal around your neck. The name business is finished,
everything is finished. New times dearie. She likes to joke calling me by my full
name, Ana Clara Conceição are you listening to me? Yes, Lorena Vaz Leme. A descendant
of the first settlers. Original
bandeirantes
, old frontiersmen. They raped the Indian women and stuck hot branding irons up the
Negroes’ rear ends to see if they’d hidden any sold there. But they were so fantastic.
Their enormous hats
and their names even more enormous. Who cares about
bandeirantes
these days? I’ll tear up my birth certificate with the father unknown and unregistered
and then I want to see. A new birth certificate, I’ll buy a new birth certificate
with the father known and registered. I’ll baptize my father in order to get married
shall I? An emperor’s name: Caius Caesar Augustus. Caius Caesar Augustus Conceição.
A teacher. Or a physicist? Neat to have a physicist father. A scientist, or better
yet, a university professor. Aren’t there gobs of universities spread all over the
place? Why can’t my father be. A half-wit. She would even screw the bums in a vacant
lot, she knew how to do that, what she didn’t know was how to grab one of them by
the hair and take him to the registrar, come on, you’re her father, give her your
name because you’re the father. Am I going to be sentimental about her just because
she’s dead?

“Nothing but happiness!” he said throwing his arms wide. “If we go under they open
themselves up so happily. Life is all sweet and perfumed. A fabulous peace. Joy!”

I stare at Max. He’s sleeping so contentedly, holding his dick. What better thing
to hold? Very handsome my love. So then. Next year you’re going to see. I don’t get
sentimental just because she. That’s what you don’t understand, Mother Alix. I don’t
want to blame anyone, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life accusing but. I don’t
know. The filthy scum she used to go to bed with. Lucky she didn’t like Negroes she
must have had something against Negroes. I saw everything but. Jorge had that stiff
hair he used a cap made out of an old nylon stocking. But he was white all the same.
Like the others. “Your type is Italian. Were your ancestors Italians?” asked Lorena.
The scaly one asked me the same thing. Italians no, French. Super-chic to have French
ancestors. My father was a Frenchman, JeanPierre Lariboisière. Lariboisière? Never
mind, I’ll decide when the times comes, I’ll put whatever name I want, I’m paying
right? Conceição comes from my mother’s side. After they separated I stayed with her.
A loyal daughter. So. But then how. I don’t know. Enough questions, don’t you see
my auburn hair? My skin? All authentic, one hundred percent white. Lião is awfully
questionable. And even Lorena with her
bandeirantes
. I shake Max.

“You’re white too, love! We have nothing to do with the poor and underdeveloped, we’re
white, you hear?”

“Such a happy morning. A sunny morning. Shake hands with the sun!” I give him my hand,
which he holds and then lets go. On Jorge’s hand there was a tattooed letter, was
it an R? A ring with a red stone on his little finger. She called him
Joge
. The nail on his little finger longer than the others why was that? His nylon stocking
to straighten his hair falling over his shoulder. He was good at interpretive dancing,
he even won a trophy once on an amateur-talent show,
One Step to Glory
. Queer. He probably offered his ass to the M.C.

“Max, I’m sober, I think I must have taken aspirin. Was it aspirin?”

I search the floor for a cigarette and drink out of the bottle, swallowing until I
reach the stratosphere but why this barrier of solid rock? I need to get away from
things Mother Alix. I want so much to forget and I can’t. At times she’s right there
in front of me, her expression dripping with love, telling the fat woman that Joge
could dance any
moozic
to perfection, and had won a huge trophy on the program. Help me Mother Alix help
me help me help me. I don’t want to remember any more but I do. I know my childhood
is over, everything’s past and she was a. Next year I’ll start over, it will all be
OK and I’ll be able to live as if I didn’t have that background behind me. But sometimes
I hear so plainly the beatings he gave her, putting the ring on his little finger
to work. The icy room in the half-finished building which never seemed to get built,
a good thing too because the day it did. Aldo. It was Aldo. “Aldo’s so good to me,”
she used to say but I believe she was still thinking of Joge. “I want to go back to
Recife when this damn job is over and be rid of you and your damned kid.” The gray
cement and gray rats powdered with lime, the limy shells of the cockroaches and in
fingernails hair and mouth lime lime. It would get in the bread, in our eyes and ears,
we used to have to blow on our bread and clothes to get it off. Why do you always
shake things Lorena asked me. So fine, the powdery lime so white and fine. Subtle,
Loreninha would say. One night I looked at Aldo with his nauseous shirt and cap made
of newspaper. Lime powder on his face, in the crevices and on his eyelashes. He looked
like a statue in the middle of the room. My mother had just been beaten like a dog
and was lying down huddled moaning
aiee
my Jesus,
alee
my Jesus,
aiee
my little Jesus. But little Jesus wanted to get as far away from us as he could.
So I grabbed the first cockroach that went
past the stove and threw it inside the pot of soup. Then I stopped crying, I had been
crying with hatred and that kind of crying is stimulating, my best ideas were hatched
from hate. I watched the roach swim breaststroke across the lake of soup, portage
the wrinkly collard-leaf island and arrive on the other shore wringing its hands and
pleading to get out of the boiling pot. It even climbed up on the edge with its long
wings dripping dripping and looked at me sentimentally, the way my mother was looking
at me,
aiee
my Jesus,
aieee
my little Jesus. I took a spoon and pushed the roach to the bottom, no Mother Alix
I don’t want to lie now. Not now. I had no pity when she came to tell me she had to
have another abortion because Sergio would have nothing to do with the baby, this
was the Sergio era. “I want nothing to do with it,” he roared kicking her hard. She
howled to high heaven all day long and that night took ant poison. Dead, she was more
shrunken than any ant, I never thought she was so small. She turned dark and shriveled
up like an ant and the anthill was finished. The back alleys around Rua dos Guaianenses.
There wasn’t any lime but there were guitars and soccer. Gaucho used to sing too.
A good kicker. Or was it that other one. It doesn’t matter. “He killed your little
brother,” she whined clutching her pregnant belly. When I went back that evening the
first thing I saw was the open can on the floor. I stared at it. I didn’t even cry,
why should I? I didn’t feel anything. Her face was against the black-spotted pillow
and her body was shrunken and twisted like the ant advertised on the can label. I
turned out the light and left, thinking that if I went to work tomorrow at the florists’
I could bring the flowers with broken stems.
But I’m not going back to work at that florists’ I hate that florists’. I don’t want
to any more because I hate it. Nobody will ever see me again. I’m all alone now
. A starry night with people from the tenements hanging out their windows and over
walls. “Is your mother there? The soap opera’s starting, isn’t she coming?” asked
Mina, who got pregnant every other day. She would have been thrilled with the Pill.
My mother too, but at times it fails.

“Max, I’m pregnant. What will I do, what will I do, what will I do.”

The little devils fly overhead and tease me and I pinch Max who doesn’t even feel
it doesn’t even feel it. Is it a party? Forget
forget. I raise my head and enter the pure blue stratosphere blue I scream and slide
blue to the floor velvet-wombed we should always move this way liquefied and blue
along the floor, riverarms flowing and no danger whatever of falling. So much stuff
on the floor look there. An ember grinds its teeth and is put out in the water but
the adult grasshopper comes up and watches me with his round glasses and stretches
out both hands to me, standing in front of me with his black laced-up shoes and white
socks. I laugh at his shoes but he is serious, he pleads wringing his green hands,
“You promised me, Ana Clara!” I kiss his shoes. Next year Mother Alix. Next year.
Everything is all settled, this is just the farewell party, I’m sober am I not? We
have to experience all things, go down to the bottom of the well and then take off
upward like an airplane, vrooom! My fiancé has a little airplane all his own and.
I’ll give you a beach house I’m wild about the sea, look at it there. There was that
friend of mine who was cross-eyed, remember? Adriana. See how sober I am? Adriana.
She didn’t know where I lived didn’t know anything and thought I could be one of her
group we met by chance in line for the movies and afterward had ice cream together
and I intuited right away she was rich Loreninha says that a lot, I intuited. Shit,
me too. I became as subtle as the rats on moonlight nights they knew the moon lit
everything up and took their precautions. I invented tons of things and began to be
so alert, intuition guiding me not that way! close your mouth quick now laugh. Now
cry. Close your mouth Ana! I was keeping my mouth closed because the bridge was ready
to come loose. And the old lady wanted to know why I was so quiet. The house was huge,
right on the ocean, nobody but us could go swimming on that beach. So the old lady
wanted to know. My father died in an airplane crash and my mother has cancer. She
Crossed herself, Dear God, how awful. How awful, she kept repeating and shaking her
head and consoling me because I had started to cry. “Oh, my poor girl my poor girl.”
I thought it might happen just like in the story of the important lady who adopts
the beautiful penniless orphan. And a nephew appears, proud and cruel at first because
I’m poorly dressed but right away he falls madly in love and throws himself at me.
And Dr. Cotton? I’ll say it happened once when I fell down. No, not a fall, a Negro
grabbed me one time when I was on a picnic in the country and tore my dress and I
fainted. Dr. Hachibe knows all about it, my analyst.
The house on top of a cliff and the mother hating me at first because she wanted her
son to marry a rich cross-eyed cousin just like Adriana. The truth Mother Alix my
beloved my saint? The truth under miserable conditions looks trashy. The nha-nha has
the same mania. If one of those disciples had given Pilate a sack of gold, would he
have washed his hands? Never. He would have found a horse and Jesus would have escaped
through the back and had a cavalry escort as far as the border to boot. “But is all
this really true?” wondered the woman as she worked at her tapestry rug, she was making
this rug and demanded as much perfection in her needlework as in her interrogation.
Before talking I needed to think but she was stitching so fast I got tangled up in
her strands of yarn. “It happened when my father was driving an Opel,” I began and
her needle stopped. “Opel? But didn’t you say an airplane?” I started crying again
to gain time. First it was the Opel and then. “But did your father have an airplane?”
she asked. He was the pilot. The plane belonged to an old man who had dealings in
oil. “Oil?” Yes ma’am, oil. “What was this man’s name? This boss of your father’s.”
Oh I don’t know, I know he was a very important man, he had an airplane he had a yacht.
Ah. “Ah,” she said going back to her wretched rug. “And then?” Then the plane was
smashed to pieces on the rocks, a horrible storm had come up and my father lost control,
that was it. Then my mother’s cancer got worse and we lost all we had and went to
live with my uncle who is a famous doctor. “Doctor? What’s his name?” I started to
get mad, why did I have to please her? Yes ma’am a great doctor, very important Uncle
Clovis. She was about to ask his last name when in came Squinty holding a shell in
her hand. Clovis Sheldon, I replied without batting an eye, Clovis Sheldon. Before
she could resume cross-stitch or cross-examination I shrieked and wrang my hand, “A
wasp!
Eeh
, it hurts, it hurts!” Nobody returned to the subject of my unknown father or my mother
either because I decided to sit down in the antechamber of death, nothing better than
death to wipe out footprints like the waves erase whatever is written on the sand.
The scintillating nights. Scintillating nights. Scintillating people drinking and
laughing with the ocean there before them, I don’t know why, when I remember that
time I think of precious stones and gelatins, blue red green in the nights tinkling
with glasses on the veranda. The colors of the dresses, some were as white as
meringues, why? Why did those people make me think of things to eat? Puddings and
parfaits, as similar as helpings served from the same dish. Turned from the same mold.
My mouth would water as if I were looking at a table spread for a feast, may I? No.
Not yet. No cousin to fall in love with me? No married man to seduce me? Let me laugh
says the nha-nha. The game was between them and the stakes were high. There was only
the old woman left over, I would look at her soulfully, who knows but what she might
want my company in her castle? I’d go to the ball in my rags but when the prince saw
me among the half-witted princesses. In my story there was even the squinting rich
friend, already getting standoffish because the comparison was inevitable. “When my
sweetheart turns fifteen she’s going to England for her eye operation, aren’t you
sweetheart?” And the Sweetheart squinting harder than ever from pure happiness her
big mouth laughing laughing. I was thrilled. I agreed that of course Adriana would
be a doll but inside I was somersaulting with joy because not even God operating on
her would fix that face. Not one of them will be my friend Mother Alix not one. You
love me but you don’t count, you’re a saint. In reality. How can they pardon me? Not
even Loreninha who gives me presents and money and helps me put on my makeup when
my hands shake, not even Lorena who washes my combs. Yenom. That superior little air
I know so well. As if I were some hireling. Always referring to her family, the famous
branch of
bandeirantes
with sweeping hats and boots. The lords of the earth who founded cities. And all
the Negroes’ asses? It’s not that I don’t like her, I do. But she wears my patience
with her manner of being so
special
, giving advice by insinuation, complicated little hints, everything about her is
complicated. Nha-nha. A wardrobe of gorgeous dresses a collection of marvelous perfumes
and she wears those little-girl clothes and smells like soap. “I don’t like much perfume,
only a tiny drop at times.” Very refined the little insect with her mini-drop of Miss
Dior. In reality she means I use too much perfume, that I’m vulgar because I pour
it on myself. Shit, I do pour it, so what? The other one, the leftist, smiles her
left-handed smile and turns up her nose too. “I can smell your perfume all the way
from my room.” Working for the nation. What the hell. Who’s asking her to? Sometimes
she stares at me, “What’s that on your arm? A needle mark?” Yes a needle mark. What
about it. I’ll stop when I
damn well please. I’m going to be on magazine covers. Marry a millionaire. You can
shove it because next year. Since I’m nice maybe I’ll even help you and your flea-bitten
bunch, I’ll help everybody. I’ll give you a house for your meetings, I’ll give Lorena
one too, pretty soon she’ll have nothing left with Mommy running through the fortune,
it doesn’t matter no problem. I’ll take care of everything. And then I’ll become truthful.
“I ask God only that I might always be truthful,” she said countless times naturally
with the intention of. Truthful. Shit, with money I can be too. I’ll turn into a regular
fountain gushing truth. It’s easy to tell the truth when you’re rich. It’s neat, famous
people recalling in interviews how in their childhood they robbed garbage cans along
with the rats very charming such authenticity. Courageous, aren’t they? Beautiful.
But you need to have four cars in the garage, caviar in the fridge and a villa God
knows where for true confessions to be interesting. You have to spit dollars for the
story of the rich man disguised as a beggar to be amusing, yes you do Madre Alix my
saint my saint. Not just yet. When I get my structure built I’ll tell everything,
I won’t hide it. You know what to structure means? Cover yourself with money. First
I’ll have myself sewed up and choose a trousseau since the scaly one likes to show
me off to his beer-drinking friends. I’ll find a good psychiatrist I don’t want anything
more to do with that Turk. Greedy bastard. I asked him if he had married for love
and he answered it was a love which had lasted up to and including the present. Hell,
marry for love. If I don’t feel anything with this one here whom I love to distraction
imagine what it’ll be like with that scaly prick. I’ll stuff myself full of oil and
moan a lot. He’s there peeling the crust off his bread, why are you so late? I was
assaulted, period. The guy took me into the woods and if it hadn’t been for Madre
Alix’s Agnus Dei medal. I’m out of money all that you gave me’s gone. Ah Mother Alix
Mother Alix tell me nothing bad’s going to happen give me your blessing and put your
hand here on my head where it’s going scratch scratch, touch me and I’ll forget, like
when the foaming waves would wash over me.