The Complete Stories (24 page)

Like a virgin annunciate, yes. For him to let me make him smile at least, with that he had announced me. He had just transformed me into something more than the King of Creation: he had made me the wife of the King of Creation. Because it had fallen to me of all people, with all my claws and dreams, to pluck the barbed arrow from his heart. In a flash it became clear why I’d been born with rough hands, and why I’d been born without recoiling when faced with pain. Why do you have those long nails? To wrest you from death and pluck out your deadly thorns, answers the wolf of man. Why do you have that cruel, hungering mouth? To bite you and blow so I don’t hurt you too much, my love, since I must hurt you, I am the inevitable wolf because life was given me. Why do you have those hands that sting and clutch? So we can hold hands, for I need it so much, so much, so much—howled the wolves, and they looked fearfully at their own claws before snuggling atop each other to love and fall asleep.

. . . And that was how in the big park of the school I slowly started learning how to be loved, bearing the sacrifice of not deserving it, just to soothe the pain of one who doesn’t love. No, that was only one reason. Since the others lead to other stories. In some of them it was from my heart that other claws full of hard love plucked the barbed arrow, and without recoiling from my scream.

The Sharing of Loaves

(“A repartição dos pães”)

It was Saturday and we had been invited to the obligatory luncheon. But we all liked Saturday too much to waste it on people we didn’t want to be with. We’d all been happy once and marked by desire. Me, I wanted everything. And there we were, trapped, as if our train had derailed and we were forced to spend the night with strangers. No one there wanted me, I wanted no one. As for my Saturday—swaying outside the window in acacias and shadows—I preferred, instead of squandering it, to grasp it in my tight fist, where I crumpled it like a handkerchief. While waiting for lunch, we drank without pleasure, to the health of resentment: tomorrow would already be Sunday. I don’t want to spend it with you, said our arid stares, and we slowly exhaled the smoke from our dry cigarettes. Our greediness not to have to share Saturday was progressively gnawing at us and closing in like rust, until any joy whatsoever would have been an insult to greater joy.

The hostess was the only one who didn’t seem to be saving up her Saturday to use on a Thursday night. She, nonetheless, whose heart had already known other Saturdays. How had she forgotten that people desire more and more? She wasn’t even the least impatient with this disparate, dreamy bunch, who were resigned to the fact that all there was to do at her house was wait, as for the departure of the first train, any train—anything except staying in that empty station, except having to rein in the horse that would run, its heart pounding, toward others, other horses.

We finally went into the living room for a lunch that lacked the blessing of hunger. And that was when in surprise we happened upon the table. It couldn’t possibly be for us . . .

It was a table laid for men of good will. Who could be the actual expected guests who hadn’t come? But it really was for us. So that woman gave away her best to just anyone? And contentedly washed the feet of the first stranger. Embarrassed, we stared.

The table had been spread with a solemn abundance. Piled on the white tablecloth were stalks of wheat. And red apples, enormous yellow carrots, plump tomatoes nearly bursting their skin, watery-green chayote, pineapples malignant in their savagery, calm and orangey oranges, gherkins spiky like porcupines, cucumbers wrapped taut round their watery flesh, hollow red peppers that stung our eyes—all entangled with strands and strands of corn silk, reddish as near a mouth. And all those grapes. They were the deepest shade of purple grape and could hardly wait for the moment they’d be crushed. And they didn’t care who crushed them. The tomatoes were plump to please no one: for the air, for the plump air. Saturday was for whoever showed up. And the orange would sweeten the tongue of whoever arrived first. Alongside the plate of every undeserving guest, the woman who washed the feet of strangers had placed—without even singling us out, without even loving us—a stalk of wheat or a bunch of spicy radishes or a red slice of watermelon with its cheerful seeds. All cut through with the Spanish tartness the limes suggested. In the jugs was milk, as if it had crossed the desert bluffs with the goats. Wine, nearly black from being so thoroughly pressed, trembled in earthen vessels. Everything before us. Everything unsullied by twisted human desire. Everything the way it is, not the way we wanted it. Simply existing, and whole. Just like a field exists. Just like the mountains. Just like men and women, and not us, the greedy ones. Just like a Saturday. Just as it simply exists. It exists.

In the name of nothing, it was time to eat. In the name of no one, it was good. Without any dreams. And we were slowly rising to the day, slowly becoming anonymous, growing, adults, to the level of possible life. Then, like rustic noblemen, we accepted the food.

There was no holocaust: it all wanted to be eaten as badly as we wanted to eat it. Saving nothing for the next day, there and then I made an offering of what I was feeling to what was making me feel. It was a way of living that I hadn’t paid in advance with the suffering of waiting, a hunger born when the mouth is already nearing the food. Because now we were hungry, a complete hunger that encompassed everything down to the crumbs. Whoever was drinking wine, kept an eye on the milk. Whoever slowly drank the milk, tasted the wine someone else was drinking. Outside, God in the acacias. Which existed. We kept eating. As if watering a horse. The carved meat was doled out. The geniality was crude and rural. No one spoke ill of anyone because no one spoke well of anyone. It was a harvest gathering, and there was a truce. We kept eating. Like a horde of living beings, we gradually covered the earth. Busy like people who plow for their existence, and plant, and harvest, and kill, and live, and die, and eat. I ate with the honesty of someone who doesn’t betray the things he eats: I ate that food and not its name. Never was God so taken by what He is. The food was saying crudely, happily, austerely: eat, eat and share. All that belonged to me, it was my father’s table. I ate without tenderness, I ate without the passion of piety. And without offering myself to hope. I ate without longing. And I really did deserve that food. Because I cannot always be my brother’s keeper, and I cannot be my own any longer, oh I don’t want myself any longer. And I don’t want to shape life since existence already exists. It exists like some ground over which we all advance. Without a word of love. Without a word. But your pleasure understands mine. We are strong and we eat. Bread is love among strangers.

The Message

(“A mensagem”)

At first, when the girl said she felt anguish, the boy was so surprised that he blushed and quickly changed the subject to disguise the quickening of his heart.

Yet for a long time now—since he was young—he had boldly outgrown the childish oversimplification of discussing events in terms of “coincidence.” Or rather—having
evolved
substantially and no longer believing in them—he considered the expression “coincidence” just another play on words and yet another ruse.

Thus, excitedly swallowing the involuntary joy that the truly shocking coincidence that she too felt anguish had provoked in him—he found himself talking to her about his own anguish, and with a girl of all people! he who from a woman’s heart had only ever received a mother’s kiss.

He found himself talking to her, harshly concealing the wonder of finally being able to talk about things that really mattered; and with a girl of all people! They also discussed books, barely able to conceal their urgency to catch up on everything they had never talked about before. Even so, certain words were never exchanged between them. In this case not because the term was yet another trap
the others
set to fool young people. But from embarrassment. Because he wouldn’t have the nerve to say everything, though she, because she felt anguish, was trustworthy. He’d never even mention a
mission
, though this most perfect term, which he in a manner of speaking had created, burned in his mouth, anxious to be uttered.

Naturally, the fact that she too suffered had simplified the way you were supposed to treat a girl, because it granted her a masculine quality. He started treating her like a buddy.

She herself also started flaunting her own anguish with a haloed modesty, like a new sex. Being hybrids—not yet settling on an individual way of walking, and not yet possessing a defined handwriting, copying the lesson’s main points in a different hand each day—being hybrids they sought each other out, barely concealing their seriousness. Every once in a while, he still felt that incredulous acceptance of the coincidence: that he, such an original, had found someone who spoke his language! Over time they came to an agreement. All she had to do was say, like a code word, “I had a terrible afternoon yesterday,” for him to know austerely that she suffered the same way he did. There was sadness, pride and daring between them.

Until even the word anguish started to wither, showing how spoken language lied. (They hoped to write some day.) The word anguish started acquiring that tone
the others
used, and eventually became a source of slight hostility between them. Whenever he was suffering, he would consider it a faux pas for her to speak of anguish. “I’m already
over
that word,” he was always
over
everything before she was, only afterward did the girl ever catch up to him.

And she eventually got tired of being the sole anguished woman in his eyes. Though it gave her an intellectual quality, she was also wary of that kind of misjudgment. Since they both wanted, more than anything, to be
authentic
. She, for example, didn’t want any mistakes even if they were in her favor, she wanted the
truth
, bad as it might be. Anyhow, sometimes it was all the better if it were “bad as it might be.” Above all the girl had already started taking no pleasure in being awarded the title of man whenever she showed the slightest hint . . . of being a person. While this flattered her, it offended her a bit: it was as if he were surprised that she was competent, precisely because he didn’t think she was. Still, if they weren’t careful, the fact that she was a woman could suddenly come up. They were careful.

Yet, naturally, there was confusion, no possibility of explaining, and that meant time was passing. Entire months.

And though the hostility between them grew progressively more intense, like hands that come close but never clasp, they couldn’t help seeking each other out. And that was because—if in the mouths of
the others
being called “young” was an insult—between them “being young” was their mutual secret, and their same irremediable curse. They couldn’t help seeking each other out because, despite their hostility—with the repulsion that members of the opposite sex feel when they don’t desire one another—, despite their hostility, they believed in one another’s sincerity,
versus
everyone else’s big lie. Neither offended heart forgave everyone else’s lies. They were sincere. And, not being petty, they overlooked the fact that they were good at lying—as if the main thing was solely the sincerity of the imagination. So they kept seeking each other out, vaguely proud of being different from
the others
, so different that they weren’t even in love. Those
others
who did nothing but live. Vaguely aware that something rang false in their relationship. Like homosexuals of the opposite sex, and with no possibility of uniting, as one, their separate misfortunes. All they agreed on was the sole point that united them: the error in the world and their tacit certainty that if they didn’t save it they’d be traitors. As for love, they weren’t in love, of course. She’d even told him about her recent crush on a teacher. He’d even managed to tell her—since she was like a man to him—, he’d even managed to tell her, with a coldness that unexpectedly shattered into a horrible pounding of his heart, that a guy has to take care of “certain problems,” if he wants his head clear in order to think. He was sixteen, and she, seventeen. That he, with severity, occasionally took care of certain problems, was something not even his father knew.

The thing is, once they’d found the secret part of themselves in each other, the temptation and the hope arrived, of one day reaching the greatest. The greatest what?

What, after all, did they want? They didn’t know, and were using each other like people clinging to smaller rocks until all by themselves they can scale a big one, the difficult and impossible one; they were using each other to rehearse for the initiation; they were using each other impatiently, practicing the beating of their wings until they finally—each alone and freed—could take wing in that great solitary flight that also meant farewell to each other. Was that it? They needed each other temporarily, each annoyed at the other for being clumsy, each blaming the other for not being experienced. They failed at every encounter, as if disillusioned in bed. What, after all, did they want? They wanted to learn. Learn what? they were an incompetent pair. Oh, they couldn’t say they were unhappy without feeling ashamed, because they knew there were people who were starving; they’d eat with appetite and shame. Unhappy? How? if in fact they were touching, for no reason, some extreme of happiness as if the world were shaken and a thousand fruits fell from that immense tree. Unhappy? if they were bodies coursing with blood like flowers in the sun. How? if they were forever propped on their own weak legs, tumultuous, free, miraculously standing, her legs shaven, his indeterminate but ending in size 44 shoes. How could beings like this ever be unhappy?

They were very unhappy. Weary, expectant, they sought each other out, forcing a continuation of the initial and casual comprehension that was never repeated—and without even loving one another. The ideal was suffocating them, time was uselessly passing, urgency was calling them—they didn’t know where they were going, and the path was calling them. Each was asking a lot of the other, but both had the same neediness, and neither would ever have sought an older partner to teach them, because they weren’t crazy enough to surrender for no good reason to the ready-made world.

One possible way they might still have saved themselves would be the thing they never would have called
poetry
. In fact, what was poetry anyway, that embarrassing word? Could it be meeting when, by coincidence, a sudden rain fell over the city? Or perhaps, while having sodas together, they both looked simultaneously at a passing woman’s face? or even running into each other on that old night of moon and wind? But they’d both already been born by the time the word poetry was being published with the greatest shamelessness in the Sunday paper. Poetry was the word older people used. And their wariness was enormous, like that of animals. Whom instinct alerts: that one day they will be hunted. They had been fooled far too many times to start believing now. And, hunting them would have required utmost caution, lots of tracking and fast-talking, and an even more cautious tenderness—tenderness that wouldn’t offend them—in order to, catching them off guard, capture them in the net. And, more cautiously still to avoid tipping them off, leading them slyly into the world of addicts, into the ready-made world; since that was the role of adults and spies. From having been tricked for so long, prideful from their own bitterness, they felt an aversion to words, especially when a word—like poetry—was so clever that it almost expressed something, and only then really showed how little it expressed. They both felt, in fact, an aversion to most words, which hardly facilitated communication, since they still hadn’t invented better words: they were constantly at odds, stubborn rivals. Poetry? Oh, how they detested it. As if it were sex. They also thought
the others
wanted to hunt them not for sex, but for
normality
. They were fearful, scientific, exhausted by experience. As for the word experience, yes, they’d talk about it without shame and without explaining it: indeed the term was always changing its meaning.
Experience
also sometimes got mixed up with
message
. They used both words without deepening their meaning much.

Anyhow, they weren’t deepening anything, as if there weren’t time, as if there were too many things to discuss. Without realizing that they didn’t have a single idea to discuss.

Well, it wasn’t just that, and it wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t just that: meanwhile time was passing, mixed up, vast, fragmented, and at the heart of time there was a shock and that hatred toward the world that no one could convince them was desperate love and compassion, and they had the skeptical wisdom of the ancient Chinese, a wisdom that could suddenly break down exposing two faces that got upset because they couldn’t sit naturally in an ice cream parlor: then everything would break apart, suddenly revealing two imposters. Time was passing, not a single thing was discussed, and never, never did they understand each other as perfectly as that first time when she’d said she felt
anguish
and, miraculously, he’d said he felt it too, and that horrible pact had been formed. And never, never did anything happen to finish off at last the blindness with which they were reaching out their hands and that would ready them for the destiny that impatiently awaited them, and made them finally bid farewell forever.

Perhaps they were as ready to break free of each other as a drop of water about to fall, and were just waiting for something symbolizing the fullness of
anguish
in order to go their separate ways. Perhaps, ripe as a drop of water, they had sparked the event of which I am about to tell.

The vague event surrounding the old house only came into existence because they were ready for it. It was just an old, empty house. But they had a life that was poor and anxious as if they would never grow old, as if nothing would ever happen to them—and so the house became an event. They’d come from the last class of the year. They had taken the bus, gotten off, and started walking. As always, their pace was somewhere between fast and separate, then suddenly slowing down, never falling into step, uneasy with each other’s presence. It was an
awful
day for both, right before summer vacation. The last class left them with no future and nothing tying them down, each contemptuous of what their families had in store for them at home in terms of future and love and incomprehension. With no next day and nothing tying them down, they were worse off than ever, mute, eyes wide open.

That afternoon the girl’s teeth were clenched, she was glaring at everything with resentment or ardor, as if seeking in the wind, in the dust and in her own extreme poverty of spirit something else to provoke her rage.

And the boy, on that street whose name they didn’t even know, the boy bore little resemblance to the Man of Creation. The day was pale, and the little boy even paler still, involuntarily boyish, windblown, forced to live. Nevertheless he was mild and indeterminate, as if any pain whatsoever would only make him more boyish, unlike her, who was feeling aggressive. Unformed as they were, anything was possible for them, their qualities were even sometimes interchangeable: she became mannish, and he possessed the almost lowly sweetness of a woman. Several times he almost took his leave, but, vague and empty as he was, he didn’t know what to do once he got home, as if the end of school had severed his last link. So he walked on, mute, behind her, following with a meek helplessness. Only a seventh sense of minimal listening to the world kept him going, connecting him in obscure promise to the next day. No, they weren’t exactly neurotic and—despite what they vindictively thought about each other in moments of barely contained hostility—it doesn’t seem that psychoanalysis would have fixed them completely. Or maybe it would.

It was one of those streets that let out onto the São João Batista cemetery, with its dry dust, loose stones and black men lingering in the doorways of corner bars.

They walked down a potholed sidewalk so narrow they could hardly fit. She made a movement—he thought she was going to cross the street and took a step to follow her—she turned around without knowing which side he was on—he hung back seeking her. In that sliver of a second in which they worriedly looked for each other, they simultaneously turned their backs to the buses—and stood facing the house, their searching still on their faces.

Perhaps everything happened because their searching stayed on their faces. Or perhaps from the fact that the house was right on the sidewalk and stood so “close.” They hardly had room to look at it, crowded as they were on the narrow sidewalk, caught between the threatening movement of the buses and the absolutely serene stillness of the house. No, it wasn’t that it had been bombarded: but it was a broken house, as a child would say. It was big, wide and tall like the multi-storied houses of old Rio. A big rooted house.