The Complete Stories (30 page)

The Foreign Legion

(“A legião estrangeira”)

If anyone asked me about Ofélia and her parents, I’d have answered with the decorum of honesty: I hardly knew them. Before the same jury I’d answer: I hardly know myself—and to every face in the jury I’d say with the same clear-eyed look of someone hypnotized into obedience: I hardly know you. Yet sometimes I awake from a long slumber and I meekly turn to the delicate abyss of disorder.

I am trying to talk about that family that disappeared years ago without leaving a trace in me, and of whom all I’ve retained is an image tinged green by distance. My unexpected consent to know was provoked today by the fact that a chick turned up in the house. It was brought by a hand that wanted the pleasure of giving me something born. As soon as we released the chick, its charm took us by surprise. Tomorrow is Christmas, but the moment of silence I await all year came a day before Christ’s birth. A thing peeping on its own rouses that ever so gentle curiosity that beside a manger is worship. Well, well, said my husband, and now look at that. He’d felt too big. Dirty, mouths open, the boys approached. I, feeling a bit daring, was happy. The chick, it kept peeping. But Christmas is tomorrow, my older boy said bashfully. We were smiling helplessly, curious.

Yet feelings are the water of an instant. Soon—as the same water is already different when the sun turns it clear, and different when it gets riled up trying to bite a stone, and different over a submerged foot—soon our faces no longer held only aura and illumination. Surrounding the woeful chick, we were kind and anxious. With my husband, kindness makes him gruff and severe, which we’re used to; he crucifies himself a bit. In the boys, who are more solemn, kindness is a kind of ardor. With me, kindness intimidates. In a little while the same water was different, and we watched with strained looks, tangled in our clumsiness at being good. And, the water different still, gradually our faces held the responsibility of a yearning, hearts heavy with a love that was no longer free. What also threw us off was the chick’s fear of us; there we were, and none of us deserved to be in the presence of a chick; with every peep, it scattered us back. With every peep, it reduced us to doing nothing. The steadiness of its fright accused us of a frivolous joy that by then was no longer even joy, it was vexation. The chick’s moment had passed, and it, ever more urgently, was expelling us without letting us go. We, the adults, had already shut down our feelings. But in the boys there was a silent indignation, and their accusation was that we were doing nothing for the chick or for humanity. With us, father and mother, the increasingly endless peeping had already led to an embarrassed resignation: that’s just how things are. But we had never told the boys this, we were ashamed; and we’d been putting off indefinitely the moment to call them and explain clearly that’s how things are. It got harder every time, the silence would grow, and they’d slightly push away the eagerness with which we wanted to offer them, in exchange, love. Since we’d never discussed these things, now we had to hide from them all the more the smiling that ultimately came over us at the desperate peeping from that beak, smiling as if it were up to us to bless the fact that this was just how things are, and we had newly blessed them.

The chick, it kept peeping. On the polished table it didn’t venture a step, a movement, it peeped inwardly. I didn’t even know where there was room for all that terror in a thing made only of feathers. Feathers covering what? a half dozen bones that had come together weakly for what? for the peeping of a terror. In silence, respecting the impossibility of understanding ourselves, respecting the boys’ revolt against us, in silence we watched without much patience. It was impossible to offer it that reassuring word that would make it not be afraid, to console a thing frightened because it was born. How could we promise it would get used to things? A father and mother, we knew how fleeting the chick’s life would be. It knew as well, in that way that living things know: through profound fright.

And meanwhile, the chick full of grace, brief and yellow thing. I wanted for it too to feel the grace of its life, just as we’d been asked to, that being who was a joy for others, not for itself. For it to feel that it was gratuitous, not even necessary—one chick has to be useless—it had been born only for the glory of God, thus it was the joy of men. Yet wanting the chick to be happy just because we loved it was loving our own love. I also knew that only a mother can resolve birth, and ours was the love of those who rejoice in loving: I was caught up in the grace of having been allowed to love, bells, bells ringing because I know how to worship. But the chick was trembling, a thing of terror, not beauty.

The youngest boy couldn’t bear it any longer:

“Do you want to be its mother?”

I said yes, startled. I was the envoy dispatched to that thing that didn’t understand my only language: I was loving without being loved. The mission could fail, and the eyes of four boys awaited with the intransigence of hope my first effective gesture of love. I retreated a little, smiling in total solitude, looked at my family, wanting them to smile. A man and four boys were staring at me, incredulous and trusting. I was the woman of the house, the granary. Why this impassiveness from the five of them, I didn’t get it. How often I must have failed to cause, in my moment of shyness, them to be looking at me. I tried to isolate myself from the challenge of the five men so that I too would put hope in myself and remember what love is like. I opened my mouth, about to tell them the truth: I don’t know how.

But what if a woman came to me at night. What if she were holding her son in her lap. And said: heal my son. I’d say: how is it done? She’d answer: heal my son. I’d say: I don’t know how either. She’d reply: heal my son. So then—so then because I don’t know how to do anything and because I don’t remember anything and because it is night—so then I reach out my hand and save a child. Because it is night, because I am alone in someone else’s night, because this silence is too great for me, because I have two hands in order to sacrifice the better one and because I have no choice.

So I reached out my hand and picked up the chick.

In that moment I saw Ofélia again. And in that moment I remembered that I had borne witness to a little girl.

Later I remembered how the neighbor, Ofélia’s mother, was dusky like a Hindu. She had purplish circles under her eyes that greatly heightened her beauty and gave her an air of fatigue that made men give her a second look. One day, on a bench in the square, while the children were playing, she’d told me with that head of hers, obstinate as someone gazing at the desert: “I’ve always wanted to take a cake-decorating class.” I recalled that her husband—dusky too, as if they’d chosen each other for the dryness of their color—wished to move up in life through his business interests: hotel management or even ownership, I never quite understood. Which gave him a stiff politeness. Whenever we were forced into more prolonged contact in the elevator, he’d accept our exchange of words in a tone of arrogance he brought from greater struggles. By the time we reached the tenth floor, the humility his coldness forced on me had already calmed him somewhat; perhaps he arrived home more satisfied. As for Ofélia’s mother, she was afraid that our living on the same floor would create some kind of intimacy and, without knowing that I too kept to myself, avoided me. Our only moment of intimacy had occurred on that park bench, where, with the dark circles under her eyes and her thin mouth, she’d talked about decorating cakes. I hadn’t known how to respond and ended up saying, so she’d know I liked her, that I’d enjoy that cake class. That single moment in common distanced us even more, for fear of an abuse of understanding. Ofélia’s mother even turned rude in the elevator: the next day I was holding one of the boys by the hand, the elevator was slowly descending, and I, oppressed by the silence that, with the other woman there, was strengthening—said in a pleasant voice that I also immediately found repugnant:

“We’re on our way to his grandmother’s.”

And she, to my shock:

“I didn’t ask you anything, I never stick my nose in my neighbors’ business.”

“Well,” I said softly.

Which, right there in the elevator, made me think that I was paying for having been her confidante for a minute on the park bench. Which, in turn, made me think she might have figured that she’d confided more than she actually had. Which, in turn, made me wonder whether she hadn’t in fact told me more than either of us realized. As the elevator kept descending and stopping, I reconstructed her insistent and dreamy look on the park bench—and looked with new eyes at the haughty beauty of Ofélia’s mother. “I won’t tell anyone you want to decorate cakes,” I thought glancing at her.

The father aggressive, the mother keeping to herself. An imperious family. They treated me as if I already lived in their future hotel and were offended that I hadn’t paid. Above all they treated me as if I neither believed, nor could they prove who they were. And who were they? I wondered sometimes. Why that slap imprinted on their faces, why that exiled dynasty? And they so failed to forgive me that I acted unforgiven: if I ran into them on the street, beyond my circumscribed sector, it took me by surprise, caught red-handed: I’d stand aside to let them pass, give them the right of way—all three, dusky and dressed up, would walk by as if on their way to mass, that family that lived under the sign of some pride or concealed martyrdom, purple-hued like passion flowers. An ancient family, that one.

But our contact happened through the daughter. She was an extremely beautiful little girl, with long, stiff curls, Ofélia, with dark circles under her eyes just like her mother’s, the same purplish gums, the same thin mouth like a slit. But this one, the mouth, spoke. It led to her showing up at my place. She’d ring the doorbell, I’d open the peephole, not see anything, hear a resolute voice:

“It’s me, Ofélia Maria dos Santos Aguiar.”

Disheartened, I’d open the door. Ofélia would come in. The visit was for me, since back then my two boys were too young for her drawn-out wisdom. I was grown up and busy, but the visit was for me: with an entirely inward focus, as if there were time enough for everything, she’d carefully lift her ruffled skirt, sit down, arrange her ruffles—and only then look at me. As for me, then in the process of transcribing the office records, I’d work and listen. As for Ofélia, she’d give me advice. She had a clear opinion about everything. Everything I did was a bit wrong, in her opinion. She’d say “in my opinion” in an offended tone, as if I should have asked her advice and, since I didn’t, she gave it. With her eight haughty and experienced years, she’d say that in her opinion I wasn’t raising the boys properly; because give boys an inch and they’ll take miles. Never mix bananas and milk. It’s deadly. But of course you do whatever you like, ma’am; to each his own. It was too late to be in your bathrobe; her mother changed clothes as soon as she got out of bed, but everyone ends up leading the life they want to live. If I explained that it was because I hadn’t yet showered, Ofélia wouldn’t say anything, watching me intently. Somewhat gently, then, somewhat patiently, she’d add that it was too late not to have showered. I never got the last word. What last word could I offer when she’d tell me: vegetable pies don’t have a top crust. One afternoon at a bakery I found myself unexpectedly confronted with the pointless truth: there with no top crust was a row of vegetable pies. “I told you so,” I heard as if she were right there. With her curls and ruffles, with her firm delicacy, she brought an inquisition into the still-messy living room. What mattered was that she also talked a lot of nonsense, which, in my despondency, made me smile hopelessly.

The worst part of the inquisition was the silence. I’d lift my eyes from the typewriter and have no idea how long Ofélia had been silently watching me. What about me could possibly attract that little girl? I wondered in exasperation. Once, after her long silence, she calmly told me: ma’am, you’re weird. And I, struck squarely in my unsheltered face—of all things in the face that, being our insides, is such a sensitive thing—I, struck squarely, thought angrily: I’ll bet it’s that weirdness that brings you around. She who was completely sheltered, and had a sheltered mother, and a sheltered father.

I still preferred, anyhow, advice and criticism. What was less tolerable was her habit of using the word
therefore
to connect clauses in an unerring concatenation. She told me that I had bought too many vegetables at the market—therefore—they wouldn’t fit in that small refrigerator and—therefore—they’d wilt before the next market day. Days later I stood looking at the wilted vegetables. Therefore, yes. Another time she had noticed fewer vegetables scattered on the kitchen table, I who had covertly obeyed. Ofélia stared, stared. She seemed on the verge of not saying anything. I stood waiting, combative, mute. Ofélia remarked in an even tone:

“That’s not enough to last until the next market day.”

The vegetables ran out halfway through the week. How does she know? I wondered curiously. “Therefore” could have been the answer. Why did I never, ever know? Why did she know everything, why was the earth so familiar to her, and I unsheltered? Therefore? Therefore.

One time Ofélia made a mistake. Geography—she said sitting across from me with her fingers clasped in her lap—is a way of studying. It wasn’t exactly a mistake, it was more of a slightly cross-eyed thought—but for me it held the charm of a fall, and before the moment faded, I inwardly told her: that’s exactly how it’s done, just like that! keep going slowly like that, and one day it’ll be easier or harder for you, but that’s how it is, keep making mistakes, very, very slowly.

One morning, in mid-discussion, she informed me authoritatively: “I’m going home to check on something but I’ll be right back.” I ventured: “If you’re really busy, you don’t have to come back.” Ofélia stared at me mute, inquisitive. “There goes a very unlikeable little girl,” I thought very clearly so she could see the entire statement exposed on my face. She kept staring. A stare in which—with surprise and sorrow—I saw faithfulness, patient trust in me and the silence of someone who never spoke. When had I thrown her a bone to make her mutely follow me for the rest of her life? I looked away. She sighed calmly. And said even more resolutely: “I’ll be right back.” What does she want?—I got worked up—why do I attract people who don’t even like me?