The Girl in the Photograph (17 page)

“I ascribe importance to things that have none,” I begin and stop.

It isn’t Lião who is here but Bulie reading with enormous interest—but what
is
she reading with such interest? She has put on her glasses with their telescopic
lenses and raised the magazine up about half an inch from her nose. She doesn’t notice
in the slightest when I pull it up to see the title,
Erotic Love
! Oh Lord.

“What an exaggeration,” she murmurs without taking her eyes off the page. Why is it
that at times I hurt Lião when I want to see her happy? She looked so sad there on
the floor that I went running to get the can of biscuits and the hairbrush. I knelt
down and began brushing her hair. “You look like Angela Davis,” I said and she smiled
but I could tell that her thoughts were still far away, where Manuela went crazy.
Where Jaguaribe was shot. Who was this Manuela? And Jaguaribe? You never mentioned
him to me, I said and she stroked her tennis shoe, caressing the ink-scribbled rubber
toe. A little black
flower, carefully drawn, stood out in the tangled design. “These were his,” she said
grabbing their tips with both hands. I poured more whiskey into her glass, courage,
Lião, don’t get depressed I have my saints who listen to me, you don’t believe in
them but leave it to me. “If you must pray, pray for Ché, see, he’s the one I need,”
she answered. And her finger touched the black flower drawn on the rubber. I remembered
that Romulo was dead too and started to cry, so moved that Lião was obliged to forget
her own losses in order to console me. She told me there was no definitive death,
not even for her, a materialist. That death and life are part of each other, complement
each other as perfectly as a circle and so therefore my brother was still alive: Life
needs death to live, “I can’t explain it, see,” she explained. All of a sudden she
became happy again, humming along with the Vinicius record and asking after M.N. in
her best humor. “How’s the old man?” I grew happy too: I cry when others cry near
me, but when their spirits soar, mine zoom upward too. I went off to make some hot
tea because after drinking like a sponge, Lião adores hot tea with biscuits. We drank
a whole pot, and if she hadn’t gone to make pee-pee and I hadn’t decided to take a
bath, we would undoubtedly have gone on that way until five in the morning.

“Such nonsense,” mutters Sister Bula closing the magazine. I blow on the cuticle of
my thumb where the scissor point has left a half-moon of blood, and choose a blues
record.

“Did you read it all?”

“I don’t know why they waste so much paper on such nonsense,” she adds putting away
her glasses. She dries her eyes on the sheet-sized handkerchief which would absorb
the mucus of a battalion. “These people act as if sex were the most important thing
in the world.”

And isn’t it? Or one of the most important. In one night alone Crazy Annie had dozens
of orgasms, which is a lie, naturally. But what about the others? The conversations
I hear, people talk about their sex lives so much. Some of them are a bit mad, obviously
they should talk to a doctor. It must be an exaggeration, not natural.

“Dear, do you suppose you could put on some Chopin music? One of those
Nocturnes
, perhaps? These singers of yours tire one a little, don’t they. I used to think you
girls were fighting, so much shouting. I’m used to it now. Sometimes I ask myself,
do the words make sense?”

And how. The words are trivial, but in triviality is tragedy. How could it be otherwise:
The grass in the garden is just grass, the soup in the soup bowl is not concealing
any mystery, and the hummingbird is the very negation of mystery. But if we’re in
a state of grace, we can intuit all sorts of things spreading fanlike in a variety
of directions: Dona Guiomar’s cards. The jack of spades means marriage if it comes
close by the seven of diamonds, which is bad news when coupled with the five of clubs,
which in turn means a journey when linked to the king of hearts, which becomes a death
sentence without appeal when it comes arm in arm with the queen of spades—oh! circumstances.
Lião gets furious if I mention fortune-tellers, I’m wild about them. She says there’s
no such thing as destiny, there’s nothing at all because we’re free, completely free.
“I can’t explain it but if I go to jail one day, my being jailed will prove my freedom.”
I didn’t see, it was suffocatingly hot, almost a hundred degrees in the shade and
Lião in the mood to explain Sartrean doctrine to me. She kept talking to herself about
the nausea she felt for nineteenth-century literature with all its characters destined
either to Good or to Evil like trains running fatally down the rails they had been
placed on, “There are no rails!” So fine, let me laugh.
That old black magic
, he sang when he was condemned to the gas chamber, an old condemnation, the day he
was born he was already marked, if we escape the fire we can’t escape our signs. I
ventured to speak of signs and she accused me of being a half-assed Christian: “How
can a Christian believe in that stuff?”

“I’m a Pisces.”

The nun was looking at the ceiling.

“I read that young people need violence to channel their complexes. Did you see the
other day where a fourteen-year-old boy dumped gasoline on his grandmother’s wheelchair
and set fire to it, she was fried like a piece of bacon. They say it’s necessary.
So we have to wait for these young people to get tired of so much violence, what else
is there to do? When they get tired of it, they’ll be old like we are.”

“Smart,” whispered Lorena rubbing the soles of her feet on the rug as she looked for
the Chopin record. “One more glassful,” she chuckled, “and I’ll get an explanation
for the generation gap!” Bringing the bottle she refilled the wineglass which the
nun offered her amid weak protests, “I’ll be tipsy!” The protest
was transformed into an
ah!
of beatitude as the first chords of the
Nocturne
sounded.

“Do you prefer to read or write, Sister? Write diaries, for example. Letters …?”

“Neither, dear. My eyes have gotten worse …” she answered turning toward Lorena with
an expression of faded innocence. “And your brother, is he still in Italy?”

“North Africa. North Africa!”

“I heard you, Lorena. Is that Romulo?”

“Romulo is dead, this is Remo.”

If he comes back, he remembers, thought Lorena opening her hands palms-up in a gesture
of oblation. He had analysis, took courses, made love to beautiful women, fathered
beautiful children, traveled, more women, more children, more cars. If he comes back
he remembers. All he has to do is look Mama in the face, she’s transparent. The face
engraved on Veronica’s handkerchief.

“
Attendite et videte!
” she exclaimed stretching her arms frontward to exhibit her open-book hands. “Do
you think I’m crazy, Sister?” she asked, bending toward the nun’s ear.

“Do I think what?”

Lorena smiled. She folded her hands together and stared at her fingernails. Even Remo’s
fingers, too heavy for the piano, got slenderer and lighter, until they could have
been Romulo’s fingers if Romulo had lived. Yes, it was better for him to stay on in
his exile, sending presents, cards, pictures. Immense houses surrounded by green lawns
stretching into the distance. The children in their colored knits always running after
some dog. The shining car parked nearby. Ana Clara chattered so much about a Jaguar,
poor thing. The Jaguar was so outdated. She should take a refresher course in the
showroom where Remo always bought the latest models, he had a passion for machines.
“If he comes back, he remembers.” Meetings with him should be in faraway places outside
the country, like that time in Venice. The museums, the shops. Ruins and wine. “Mama
will buy a gondola yet,” he said as he helped take packages out of the trunk of the
car. And kissed Lorena’s only purchase, a small antique beaded purse she had discovered
in the jumble of a bazaar. Daytimes and evenings bursting with commitments, yes, other
countries were a necessity. Other people. Here, in the first available hour he would
start to talk loud and fast. Mama would
start to laugh stridently, both trying to cover up the murmuring sound rising from
the grayish bottom. The river. In summertime, the water would grow so warm it would
seem impossible it could turn into the icy flood of winter. Even then the two of them
would swim in it, purple and panting. Remo, the daring one, would yell, “Wanna feel
hotter? Go wash your butt in the waa-a-a-a-ter!” Under the surface, Remo’s black hair
was still black, but Romulo’s blond curls turned grayish. The color of ashes.

“Was your brother handsome?” asked Lorena.

The nun blotted her overflowing eyes on her handkerchief and drank the last gulp of
liqueur.

“Not really handsome. But he was a fine boy. He went on a picnic with his schoolmates,
I’ve told you. He was drowned in the ocean. When they recovered his body I was there,
dear Lord Jesus, what a frightful thing, all those shrimps on top of each other, moving
around in his eyesockets.”

Lorena closed her eyes and thought about Romulo, his pale teeth, how could that be?
How could teeth grow pale? And on his red shirt, increasing, the stronger red of his
blood. Mama’s hand covering the hole which bubbled like a bottle of wine drenching
a towel.

“I thought a cork might take care of it.”

“Years and years I went and couldn’t bear the sight of shrimp. Then I gradually forgot
about it, one forgets…. Just the other night I ate shrimp casserole that Sister Clotilde
made, I enjoyed it so much. Upon my word I didn’t even remember.”

With a slow, reflective gesture Lorena corked the bottle of liqueur. Wasn’t it strange?
Such a small, insignificant hole and all that blood. Her mother didn’t understand
either. “What’s all this?” she kept repeating. We need to stop it up quick, put your
finger over it, or better yet your hand, like this Mama, like this! Mothers fix everything,
know everything, stop it up tight! And the blood kept running out. Underneath her
hand, look there, the red shirt fading out, so much more powerful this other red,
my God, so strong. I looked aside quickly because she was hiding the wound with the
same shame as when she hid her breasts from us if we wandered into her room when she
was getting dressed. “Don’t look, I don’t have my clothes on!” I allowed her time
to dress her voice. And the wound. She was calmer than on that afternoon when he had
cut his finger slicing the watermelon.
“But what happened, Lorena!” she asked, hoarse. Only hoarse. They were playing, I
guess Remo was the bandit, I only know that he got the gun and pointed it at him,
it wasn’t his fault, Mama, really it wasn’t. Imitating her hushed voice, I offered
to call the doctor almost in a whisper. Or Lauro. Do you want me to call for Jandira?
She shook her head no, it wasn’t necessary. I stayed nailed to the spot, my mouth
opening and closing, dry and soundless. Romulo’s mouth was opening and closing too,
silent like the mouth of a fish thrown onto the sand where the water cannot reach
it. He gradually relaxed. If he could have, he would have asked us to excuse him for
dying.

“Dreaming, dear?”

I close Romulo and the bottle of liqueur behind the glassed-in door of the bar. Pull
the curtains shut. And M.N. hasn’t phoned. And this
Nocturne
playing with that sun outside, ah! what I’d like to do is climb on the motorbike
and zoom away, disembodied, free from thoughts, come get me, Fabrízio! Suppose I died
in an explosion, M.N. would see the gory remains arriving, “Lorena!” Incinerated and
deflowered.

“I’m carbonizing with passion, Sister. Marcus Nemesius!” I scream. I throw my arms
around her and place my lips next to her ear: “His father was a Latin scholar, all
the children have declinable names, his sister is
Rosa. Rosae
like
excreta, excretae
.”

She doesn’t understand, but she smiles. I go with her to the door. Her bones crack.
Will I get old this way someday? I’ll kill myself first. I bow my head. She blesses
me and prepares to go down the stairs. I turn off the record player. A sound of voices.
The isle is full of noises
. A few meows mixed in with the noises. How would you say
meow
in English? I open the dictionary.

Chapter 6

The small room was low-ceilinged and poorly lighted. In it were two very old desks,
an ancient typewriter and a few straw chairs, two of which had holes in the seats.
On the floor, a pile of folders and newspapers with a bundle of clothes on top. Tied
together with a piece of twine, two pillows and a blanket. The blackish floor, full
of cigarette burns, had been swept, as was indicated by the wastebasket overflowing
with trash, a broom sticking up out of the middle. Over the broom handle had been
thrust a roll of toilet paper.

Lia took her bag from her shoulder and hung it on the nearest chair. She surveyed
the dust-covered table, the rolled-up calendar half-visible behind the typewriter,
the glass with a heel of coffee in the bottom. She unrolled the calendar: Occupying
more than half the page was the colored photo of a blonde in a bikini, her fleshy
mouth half-open to drink from a bottle of Coca-Cola. When Lia dropped it, it rolled
up again as if it had springs. Her gaze turned to the grayish ceiling, specked with
squatting flies, most of them dead among the old spiderwebs. She smiled. “Lorena would
have a fine time here,” she thought. In the center of the globe-shaped light fixture
was a thick spot created by accumulated insects which had entered and died imprisoned.

“Very weak,” thought Lia examining her index finger with severity. She turned to face
the young man who had just come in.

“We need a stronger light bulb. Where were you?”

He wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans and shook his head.

“The john is something else, Rosa, you should see it. It’s down at the end of the
hall. You have to close your eyes and remember the Queen.”