The Hour of the Star (8 page)

— One of these days the aspirin will stick in your throat and you'll be running around the office like a beheaded chicken.

One day Macabéa enjoyed a moment of ecstasy. It happened in front of a tree that was so enormous that she couldn't put her arms around its trunk. Yet despite her ecstasy, she did not abide with God. She prayed with total indifference. True. Yet that mysterious God of others sometimes bestowed on her a state of grace. Bliss, bliss, bliss. Her soul almost took flight. She, too, had become a flying saucer. She had tried to confide in Glória but decided against it. She didn't know how to express herself and what was there to confide? The atmosphere? One doesn't confide everything, for everything is a hollow void.

Sometimes, grace descended upon her as she sat at her desk in the office. Then she would go to the washroom in order to be alone. Standing and smiling until it passed. (It strikes me that this God was extremely merciful towards her: He restored what He had taken from her.) Standing and thinking about nothing, a vacant expression in her eyes.

Not even Glória could be called a friend: just a workmate. Glória, who was buxom, white and tepid. Her body exuded a peculiar smell, and it was quite obvious that she didn't wash much. She bleached the hairs on her legs and under the armpits without bothering to shave them. Olímpico wondered: was she bleached down below as well?

Towards Macabéa, Glória felt vaguely maternal. Whenever she saw Macabéa looking more shrivelled than usual, she would chide her:

— Why are you looking like . . . ?

Macabéa, who never lost her temper with anyone, had to control her impatience with Glória, who had this irritating habit of never finishing a sentence. Glória used an overpowering cologne that smelled of sandalwood, and Macabéa, who had a delicate stomach, always felt queasy when she inhaled the odour. She preferred to say nothing because Glória was now her only remaining contact with the world. A world that consisted of her aunt, Glória, Senhor Raimundo and Olímpico — and more remotely, the girls with whom she stared a room. To compensate, she identified with a portrait of the young Greta Garbo. This surprised me, for I could not imagine any affinity between Macabéa and an actress with a face like Garbo. Although she couldn't explain it, Macabéa was convinced that Garbo was the most important woman in the world. She herself felt no inclination to be like the haughty Greta Garbo, whose tragic sensuality placed her on a solitary pedestal. What Macabéa wanted most of all, as I've already said, was to look like Marilyn Monroe.

She rarely confided in anyone, but one day she made the mistake of telling Glória about her secret ambition. Glória burst out laughing:

— You, Maca, looking like Marilyn Monroe? Have you seen yourself in the mirror?

Glória was terribly smug: in her own estimation, she thought of herself as being really something. Conscious of her mulatta sex appeal, she painted in a beauty spot above her lips, to add a touch of glamour to the bleached hairs around her mouth. Glória was a cunning vixen but none the less good-hearted. Macabéa's situation worried her, but there was little she could do to improve matters. After all, no one forced Macabéa to be quite so foolish? And as Glória reminded herself: she's not my responsibility.

No one can enter another's heart. Macabéa conversed with Glória — without ever opening her heart.

Glória wiggled her bottom in an inviting way and she smoked mentholated cigarettes to keep her breath fresh for those interminable kissing sessions with Olímpico. She was very self-confident, having achieved most of her modest ambitions in life. There was a defiant note in Glória's attitude as if to say: 'Nobody bosses me around.' One day she suddenly began to stare and stare and stare at Macabéa.

Until she couldn't keep silent any longer and, speaking with the slightest trace of Portuguese ancestry in her accent, she said:

— Hey girl, haven't you any face?

— Of course I have a face. It's just that my nose is flat. After all, I'm from Alagoas.

— Tell me something: do you ever think about your future?

The question remained unanswered, for Macabéa had nothing to say.

Very well. Let us return to Olímpico.

In an attempt to impress Glória and play the macho, he bought red hot peppers at the market frequented by North-easterners, and to show his new girl-friend just how tough he was, he bit right into the devil's fruit. He didn't even drink a glass of water to quell the burning sensation. The unbearable pain made him feel tough and a terrified Glória suddenly became submissive. He thought to himself: I'm a conqueror, after all. And he attacked Glória with the ferociousness of a male bee, craving for her honey and that succulent flesh. He felt no remorse for having ditched Macabéa. He was destined to go up in the world and join the privileged. Olímpico was determined to change his life. By associating with Glória, this insignificant metal-worker from the North-east was about to prosper. He would cease to be what he had always been and what he had always refused to acknowledge, ashamed of his own weakness. Even as a child he had been a lonely creature who found it difficult to breathe in space. The man from the backwoods is, above all, patient. I find it easy to forgive him.

Glória, wishing to make amends for having stolen her boy friend, invited Macabéa to tea one Sunday afternoon at her parents' house. Kissing the wound better after biting someone? (This story is so banal that I can scarcely bear to go on writing.)

This invitation (small bang) caused Macabéa to open her eyes wide. In the foul disorder of a third-class surburban bourgeoisie one could still count upon eating well, for most of their money was spent on food. Glória lived in a street named after some General or other. It gave her enormous satisfaction to be able to say that she lived in a street that commemorated a military leader. This made her feel much more secure. In Glória's house there was even a telephone. This was probably one of the few occasions when Macabéa realized why there was no place for her in this world and why Glória was being so generous. A cup filled to the brim with piping hot chocolate mixed with real milk, a selection of sugared buns and even a small cake. While Glória was out of the room, Macabéa furtively ate a biscuit. She then asked to be forgiven by the Abstract Being, the Giver and Taker of all things. She felt she had been forgiven. The Abstract Being had shown mercy.

On the following day, which was a Monday, perhaps because the chocolate had affected her liver or because of her nervousness about drinking something intended for the rich, Macabéa felt unwell.

With an act of will-power, she prevented herself from vomiting in her determination not to squander that delicious chocolate. Some days later, when she received her wages, she summoned enough courage for the first time in her life (bang) to make an appointment with a doctor recommended by Glória, who didn't charge much. He examined her, examined her a second time, and then a third time.

— Are you dieting to lose weight, my girl? Macabéa didn't know how to reply.

— What do you eat?

— Hot dogs.

— Is that all?

— Sometimes I eat a mortadella sandwich.

— What do you drink? Milk?

— Only coffee and soft drinks.

— What do you mean by soft drinks? — He probed, not quite knowing how to proceed. He questioned her at random:

— Do you sometimes have fits of vomiting?

— Oh, never! — she exclaimed in a panic, for she was not a fool to go wasting food, as I've explained. The doctor took a good look at her and felt sure that she didn't diet to lose weight. Nevertheless, he found it easier to go on insisting that she shouldn't diet to lose weight. He knew how things stood and that he was the poor man's doctor. That was what he muttered to himself as he prescribed a tonic that Macabéa wouldn't even bother to buy: she believed it was sufficient to consult a doctor in order to be cured. He snapped at her without being able to account for his sudden outburst of annoyance and indignation:

— This tale about a diet of hot dogs is pure neurosis. What you need is a psychiatrist!

She had no idea what he was talking about but felt that the doctor expected her to smile. So she smiled.

The doctor, who was corpulent and given to perspiring, suffered from a nervous tic that caused him to purse his lips at regular intervals. As a result, he looked like a pouting infant about to burst into tears.

This doctor had no ambition whatsoever. He saw medicine simply as a means of earning a living. It had nothing to do with dedication or concern for the sick. He was negligent and found the squalor of his patients utterly distasteful. He resented having to deal with the poor whom he saw as the rejects of that privileged society from which he himself had been excluded. It had not escaped him that he was out of touch with the latest trends in medicine and new clinical methods, but he had all the training he was likely to need for treating the lower orders. His dream was to earn enough money to do exactly what he pleased: nothing.

When the doctor told Macabéa that he was about to give her a medical examination, she said:

— I've been told you have to take your clothes off when you visit a doctor, but I'm not taking anything off.

He gave her an X-ray and said:

— You're in the early stages of pulmonary tuberculosis. Macabéa didn't know if this was a good or a bad thing.

But being ever so polite she simply said:

— Many thanks.

The doctor resisted any temptation to be compassionate. He advised her: when you can't decide what you should eat, make yourself a generous helping of Italian spaghetti.

With a mere hint of kindness in his voice, since he, too, had been treated unjustly by fate, he added:

— It doesn't cost that much . . .

— I've never heard of the food you've just mentioned. Is it good?

— Of course, it is! Just look at this paunch! It comes from eating big helpings of spaghetti and drinking lots of beer. Forget the beer. You had better avoid alcohol.

She repeated wearily:

— Alcohol?

— Shall I tell you something? I wish you'd get the hell out of here!

Yes, I adore Macabéa, my darling Maca. I adore her ugliness and her total anonymity for she belongs to no one. I adore her for her weak lungs and her under-nourished body. How I should like to see her open her mouth and say:

— I am alone in the world. I don't believe in anyone for they all tell lies, sometimes even when they're making love. I find that people don't really communicate with each other. The truth comes to me only when I'm alone.

Maca, however, never expressed herself in sentences, first of all, because she was a person of few words. She wasn't conscious of herself and made no demands on anyone. Maca even thought of herself as being happy. She was no idiot yet she possessed the pure happiness of idiots. She did not think about herself: she lacked self-awareness. (I can see that I've tried to impose my own situation on Maca: I need several hours of solitude every day, otherwise I die.)

Speaking for myself, I am only true when I'm alone. As a child, I always feared that I was about to fall off the face of the earth at any minute. Why do the clouds keep afloat when everything else drops to the ground? The explanation is simple: the gravity is less than the force of air that sustains the clouds. Clever, don't you think? Yes, but sooner or later they fall in the form of rain. That is my revenge.

She didn't confide any of this to Glória because on the whole she told lies: she was ashamed of the truth. A lie was so much more acceptable. Macabéa believed that to be well-educated was the same as knowing how to tell lies. She also lied to herself in daydreams that reflected her envy of her work-mate. Glória, for instance, could be so imaginative. Macabéa watched her saying goodbye to Olímpico. Glória would put her finger-tips to her lips and blow a kiss into the air like someone giving a bird its freedom. Such a gesture would never have occurred to Macabéa.

(This story consists of nothing more than some crude items of primary material that come to me directly before I even think of them. I know lots of things that I cannot express. Besides, where does thinking come into it?)

Glória, perhaps because she was feeling remorseful, said to Macabéa:

— Olímpico is mine, but you are sure to find yourself another boy friend. I know that Olímpico is mine because the fortune-teller told me so. I mustn't ignore what she told me for she's a clairvoyante and never makes mistakes. Why don't you pay for a session and ask her to read your cards?

— Does it cost much?

I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it's because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I longed to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood. I think about Macabéa's vagina, minute, yet unexpectedly covered with a thick growth of black hairs — her vagina was the only vehement sign of her existence.

She herself asked for nothing, but her sex made its demands like a sunflower germinating in a tomb. As for me, I feel weary. Perhaps of keeping company with Macabéa, Glória and Olímpico. That doctor made me feel quite sick with his talk about beer. I must interrupt this story for three days.

Now I awaken to find that I miss Macabéa. Let's take up the threads again.

— Is it very dear?

— I'll loan you the money. Madame Carlota has the power to break any spells that might be worrying her clients. She broke mine on the stroke of midnight on Friday the thirteenth of August over at San Miguel, on a pitch where they practise voodoo. They bled a black pig and seven white hens over me and tore my bloodstained clothes to shreds. Can you pluck up enough courage?

— I don't know if I could stomach all that blood.

Perhaps because blood is everyone's secret, that life-giving tragedy. But Macabéa only knew that she could not stomach the sight of blood, the other reflections were mine. I am becoming interested in facts: facts are solid stones. There is no means of avoiding them. Facts are words expressed throughout the world.