A Cup of Rage (5 page)

between us,
just that; and you only don't know that you've turned into one because
– although this is hardly new – nothing is more fashionable today than to be
a fascist in the name of reason' ‘so can I conclude that our fascist
who's confessed is actually better, compared to me' ‘not at all, if on
the one hand it's a saving grace, on the other hand confession can also liberate
me: to be more of a fascist than ever …' ‘what are you trying to
say?' and her eyes pecked at me, challenged me, ‘are you threatening
me?', but from the corner of my eye I noticed that Bingo was stiffening his body
to a statue, his eyes boring into her, his tail straight as a length of wood, his ears
two antennae, a mongrel yes, but in the poised position of a dog that's found its
prey, ‘keep out of it, Bingo' I ordered, hurting his sense of loyalty,
‘don't get involved' I murmured as well, dismissing his help without
any consideration, after all, he hadn't been very loyal in letting the fraud
incite my furious calculations, she had gone so far that my fire was one crackling roar
(it's easy to work out that two plus two makes four under the shade of a fig tree,
but I'd like to see someone right in the fires of hell draw lines and segments,
create a perfect circle, and even prove theorems), I only know that I collected myself
and, determined, took another step forward, scorching her, saying ‘types like you
drool for a boot, types like you drool for a foot', perfectly balancing the
ambivalence of what I suspected – her will to power mixed with the sensuality of
submission – but she was flexible, this little miss, throwing her shoulder bag
inside the car she rested her hands on the car's bodywork as if asking me to hit
her, and it was obvious what she wanted, but I didn't really want to smack her
‘you think I'm into hitting you, do you, idiot?' and seeing in this
perhaps a step backwards, a weakness, or who knows what, and making her own
associations, she sparked back, metallic, and her scornful laugh cut me ‘ha ha hah
… you queer!' was the sharp bite the piranha gave me, trying to castrate me
with a
single swipe of her knife (‘obviously! …'),
yet, like the carnival trannie, the thick hairs of her ideology gave her away, she who
trumpeted her protest against torture while at the same time being a shameless torturer
in daily life, just like the people, made in her image there in the football
stadiums,
³
just like the government, the oppressor, that she fought tirelessly, I only know
that's what stopped us in our tracks, the circus caught fire (a mask lay on the
ground in the ring), my architecture collapsed in flames, including its iron structure,
and burning myself I said ‘whore', it was an explosion in my mouth and my
hand flying another explosion in her face, and the good smack in the face wasn't
part of a ritual, I now intentionally used the palm of my hand together with the
repressive weapons in her arsenal (yes, I'd give her both an outburst and a
beating!), so I said ‘whore' again and again my hand flew out, and I saw her
rosy skin stain red and her whole face be covered suddenly by a swarm of ants, tears
welled up in her eyes, I watched closely, my eyes burning into her face, she
didn't move, supported herself on the car, I had steel in my backbone again, she,
savouring the lascivious recoil from the smack, skilfully crystallizing a complex system
of gestures, her hair dishevelled, enjoyed, almost to the point of orgasm, the sensual
drama of her own position, but none of that surprised me, after all I knew her well, the
calibre of the thrashing didn't matter, she had never had enough, just what would
do, at that moment it was clear that I held the pendulum that had sure control over her
movements, it was clear that I had decisively changed the way time went round, knowing,
as I knew, the immense realms of her gluttony still left to explore, knowing, as I knew,
what changes I was capable of, and it was right here in me that I thought ‘just
wait, you'll see' ‘just wait, you'll see all right' was
what I thought as I realized that the shit filling my mouth was already leaking out at
the corners, but I didn't lose any of this intimate substance, I
caught on my tongue whatever was about to drip, what's more the moment's
billowing smoke was extremely favourable to occultism, and I wasn't going to waste
this chance to practise the sorcerer's fine arts, so it was like this: combusting
drops of fat appeared on the metal of my cheeks, my face started to change, first the
surface of my eyes, and right afterwards the obscene mass of my mouth, in an instant I
was the bastard I was in bed, and in the glow of her eyes I read ‘yes, bastard,
you're the one I love', and always attentive to the signals of her flesh I
started to use my tongue silently, sinuously it worked its way into the most
inconceivable of positions, and it wasn't long before she moved her lips softly
and said an ambiguous ‘you dirty man', you needed to know her mouth up close
to get what she was saying, and you needed to know this girl and her various moods to
get her suggestion, I pretended that I'd forgotten everything and that the world
had been squeezed down to that one metre in diameter, I was still the bastard I was in
bed and she said ‘you dirty man' again in a more salacious way, it was the
same as saying ‘ask me to lie down on the lawn', she who in her bucolic
raptures would always ask me to screw in the woods, so I formed a viper from the slimy
muscle of my tongue, gave it a head and a mean arrogance, ‘m'
‘m' ‘m' I said, with a flick of its salacious tip, ‘dirty
man, dirty man' she said with hypnotized abandon, perhaps already entering a state
of grace, still keeping her nostrils flared, her noisy breath rippling over her body,
her pert breasts rising and falling, all the feathers of her body at the ready, in this
situation it made no difference if you said that the bird was prepared for flight or
that the bird had spread its wings on the ground, and it was to make her even more drunk
with desire that I lifted my hand close to her face, and began to run my middle finger
along her lower lip, and first there was a trembling, then an intense burning, slowly
her mouth was opening for a perfect performance, and we started to say things to each
other through our eyes (this language that I also taught her), and
attentive to her mouth, I got it to fake as if it were … I was clearly saying with
my eyes ‘you'd never imagined that your body had a spot so perfect for this
finger of mine until I penetrated you and you moaned', and immediately her eyes
screamed back at me ‘dirty man dirty man dirty man' as if they were saying
‘tear me open bleed me step on me', and I felt the tip of her tongue
touching my finger, furtively licking my nail, and felt her teeth, that were no longer
sharp, nibbling the humid pulp, she sucked greedily on my bait, we were watching each
other, and birdlime oozed from her pupils, and it was just as if I were hearing what
she'd said so often in that ambivalent way ‘I never met anyone who works
like you, you're the best craftsman for my body, no question', and so I
carried on modelling a wantonness in her mouth, and then my hand slid down to the
plaster of Paris of her throat, and it didn't take long before her ravenous
sucker-pores swallowed my fingers, and with my dirty mouth I said ‘I'm
barefoot' and saw how a stark despair took control of her, but without rushing I
said ‘I'm not wearing socks or shoes, as always my feet are clean and
moist' and suddenly from her eyes I heard a crazed cry for help ‘loose all
your demons on me now, it's only with them that I can come', and listening
to this strangled moan I, the bastard, whispered ‘you remember the foot I once
gave you?' and here she said ‘my love' as if she were suffocating, and
I, the old man, reminded her ‘it was a foot as slim and white as a lily, remember?
…' and slowly closing her eyes she said ‘my love my love', and
I, the bastard, even asked ‘what did you do with the foot I once gave you?
…' and now in agonies she sighed ‘my love my love my love' and
that's when I saw I really had my foot on her, and that – in my forge
– I could turn the supposed rigour of her logic upside down, because if I said
with a sigh ‘you see how many things I've taught you?' she would have
to say ‘yes my love yes' and if I
also said ‘why
persist so much in trying to teach me?' she would have to say ‘forget it my
love forget it' and if I said to her ‘it's day already, your common
sense stretched its limbs long ago, which path is it wandering down now?' she
would have to say ‘no idea my love no idea' and seeing the sacred and
obscene heat simmering in her flesh I would be able to say ‘be more careful in
your judgements, put some of this burning material into them too' and she would
agree without hesitation ‘of course my love of course' and remembering the
scorn which she had heaped on me I, still the bastard, could get the last word, saying
‘and who is your only man, the clay of your clay?' and she as loyal as ever
would reply ‘you my love you' and I'd even be able to put my tongue in
her earhole, until it reached the little uterus deep in her skull, and spitting my blood
in a well-aimed fiery gob, say ‘the one who uses reason incorporates his passions
into it', imbuing the grey hydrangea hidden there with a deep red, sending that
anaemic flower mad for good, making a new species germinate with my thick sperm, a new
species that for all I cared could live or die, because in fact it was only to save a
few moments that, notwithstanding my huge turmoil, I was rioting, she got on my nerves
with her visits, getting in my way every day, but I didn't say or do any of this,
and for a while I just continued to look at her numbed, crushed face beneath my feet,
examining without any mercy, almost as a doctor would, the by-product of my sorcery
(hadn't I told her a hundred times that pious prostration and the erection of a
saint are mutually dependent?) as I listened to her anointed lips stripping in an
obsessive delirium ‘my dirty love my dirty love my dirty love', and when I
felt her little hand trembling as it slid under my shirt, become a finch that has flown
from a nearby thicket to nest in my chest hairs, it was only then that I washed the
bastard from my face and in a flash pounced, she was a white sheet of fear as I roared
‘take it! take the other one too!' and held out the
foot
like a soldier would ‘at least take the big toe and put it between your legs,
since it so tickled your clit' I was shouting ‘go on, fucking bitch,
it's the only thing I'm leaving you, cut off the big toe while you've
got the chance' and I saw her dumbstruck face, the free and easy turtle, I'd
known how to make her feel the weight and torture of a shell again, I'd reduced
her reaction to an agony, I saw the terror in her eyes, it's not enough to
sacrifice an animal, you need to send it off with the right ritual prayers too
‘snap out of it, not a bit of my body ever again, nothing! nothing! you'll
go to the dogs too!' I was also shouting, knowing that I was digging a deep pit in
her memory forever ‘nothing! nothing of my body ever again'
‘you're not human' she said coming out of her daze ‘you're
not human' ‘out! out! you'll go to the dogs too!'
‘you're not human, you're a monster!' ‘get out, get out of
my life once and for all!' ‘you're a monster, you scare me'
‘so fuck off, fraud' ‘I'm scared' ‘fuck off'
‘scared scared' ‘fuck off fuck off' I screamed almost happily,
as her car slithered crazily in reverse, not finding the way out, although the gate was
open, I hadn't even noticed, and sticking her head out she was still shouting
‘you're not human' and I was there pushing her car further out of
control, kicking her out with a mixture of anger and laughter ‘fuck you, you
little closet fascist' ‘your mother's a fat sow', ‘your
mother loves dick' ‘you degenerate cum' ‘you piece of
short-billed pipit shit' all of that ladled out with true pleasure, not to mention
that Bingo was backing me up fully in the brawl, barking like he never had, carrying out
dangerous leaps and spins, even throwing himself at the wheels, and then there came a
terrible ‘limp dick!' that she shouted from the road before hunkering down
behind the steering wheel with the usual extras: the wet, red cheeks and the big,
generous tears rolling down them, and the girl that she was, just like most of them, she
wanted me as her son, but (being emancipated) wanted me much more as her man, I only
know that to
drown out the fury of her car accelerating away I almost
tore my mouth with a ‘fuck you' and no longer seeing Antônio's
legs, but only the bush rustling, I gathered my strength and bellowed a ‘fuck the
whole world!', ripping my chest open, bursting my jugular, having a grand old time
with my scandalous behaviour, noticing a demure window on the hillside opposite open and
close with a single gust of wind, but I screamed ‘fuck you all! fuck you all! fuck
you all!' and with this was bringing up offal, pluck and tripe, I was surprised
and touched to see the other side of me, I even felt like turning somersaults on the
lawn (only then realizing that I'd misjudged her size, she wasn't even a
dwarf, she was an insect, an ant), but instead of abandoning myself to monkeying around
gleefully, I stood there for a while, looking at the ground like a hanged man, my body
tangled in the threads of this swindle, my innards shredded by the acid's action,
an actor in the raw, in absolute solitude – without an audience, a stage or
lights, under an already glorious and indifferent sun – struggling with a din of
bloods and voices and with more distant gravel, and suddenly my thoughts drifted to her,
and to the forlorn seclusion of her house at this breakfast hour, by now she'd
certainly be sat looking to the side, that was what she always did after her frugal
breakfast, one elbow propped on the table, her head cupped in her hand, her eyes fixed
on the past, her advanced widowhood trickling by for hours on end, reliving day by day
the old times of our unity, ruminating from early in the morning on the remains of the
myth, having silently witnessed, year after year, the noisy destruction of all
principles, and I also remembered the most intense page in her book of wisdom (next to
the sermon against egoism), for even though her offspring had been scattered she was
still the spiritual keeper of a rare heritage, the lesson that she always repeated on
the rare occasions she saw me, a son only abandons his home when he takes a woman as his
wife and