The Tuner of Silences (18 page)

The so-called “women's magazines” sell recipes, secrets and techniques for how to love more and better. Little hints on how to enjoy sex. At the beginning, I was sold on this illusion. I wanted to win back Marcelo and I was open to any persuasion. Now, I don't know: all I want to know about love is precisely not to know, to disconnect the body from the mind, and allow it uncontrolled freedom. I'm just a woman in appearance. Underneath my surface expression I'm a creature of nature, a wild beast, a lava flow.

All this sky reminds me of Marcelo. He used to tell me, “I'm going to count stars,” and then he would touch each of my freckles. He would dot my shoulders, my back, my breast with his finger. My body was Marcelo's sky. And I never discovered how to fly, to surrender to the languorous way he counted the stars. I never felt at ease with sex. Let's say it was a strange territory, an unknown language. My demureness was more than just shame. I was a deaf translator, incapable of turning the desire that spoke deep within me into outward expression. I was the rotten tooth in a vampire's mouth.

And so I return to my bedside table, to look your black mistress in the face. This was the gaze, at the moment the photo was taken, that plunged into my man's eyes. A luminous gaze, like the light at the entrance to a house. Maybe it was precisely that, a bedazzling look, maybe that's what
Marcelo had always desired. It wasn't sex after all. But to feel desired, even if it were only a fleeting pretence.

Under an African sky, I become a woman once more. Earth, life, water are my sex. No, not the sky, for the sky is masculine. I feel the sky touching me with all its fingers. I fall asleep under Marcelo's caress. And in the distance, I can hear the words of the Brazilian singer, Chico César: “If you look at me, I gently surrender, snow in a volcano . . . .”

I want to live in a city where people dream of rain. In a world where rain is the greatest happiness of all. And where we all rain.

Tonight, I carried out the ritual: I stripped off all my clothes in order to read Marcelo's old letters. My love wrote so profoundly that, as I read, I felt his arm brush against my body, and it was as if he were unbuttoning my dress and my clothes were falling to my feet.

—
You're a poet, Marcelo.

—
Don't say that again.

—
Why?

—
Poetry is a mortal illness.

Marcelo would fall asleep straight away after making love. He would fold the pillow between his legs and sink into slumber. I was left alone, awake, to ruminate over time. At first, I considered Marcelo's attitude intolerably selfish. Then, much later on, I understood. Men don't look at the women they've made love to because they're scared. They're scared of what they may find in the depths of women's eyes.

M
arta's papers were burning my hands. I tidied them away so as no one could see that the intimacy inhabiting them had been violated. I returned home with a heavy heart. We fear God because he exists. But we fear the devil more because he doesn't. What made me more afraid at that particular moment was neither God nor the devil. I was especially worried about Silvestre Vitalício's reaction when I told him that all I had found in the Portuguese woman's room was a bunch of love letters. There was my old man at the entrance to the camp, hands on hips, his voice laden with anxiety:

—
A report! I want a report. What did you find in the Portagee woman's things?

—
Just papers. That's all.

—
So what did they say?

—
Don't you remember, Father, that I can't read?

—
Did you bring any papers with you?

—
No. Next time . . .

He didn't let me finish. He ran out of the kitchen and returned, the next moment, pulling Ntunzi by his arm.

—
You two go to the Portuguese woman's house and give her my order.

—
What order, Father?
—Ntunzi asked.

—
You mean to say you don't know?

We were to tell her to go back to the city. We were to be curt, we were to be gruff. The Portagee was to get the message fairly and squarely.

—
I want that woman out of here, far away, and I don't want to see her back here again.

I looked at Ntunzi who was standing there, motionless, as if he were giving in. But within him, he must have been seething with recalcitrance. Nevertheless, he said nothing, and expressed no objection. There we stood, waiting for Silvestre to start speaking again. My father's silence kept both of us quiet and so we set off, meek and vanquished, in the direction of the haunted house. Halfway there, I asked:

—
Are you going to send the Portuguese woman away? How are you going to tell her?

Ntunzi shook his head sluggishly. The two extremes of impossibility had met within him: he couldn't obey, but nor could he disobey. In the end, he said:

—
You go and speak to her.

And he turned his back. I went on towards the big house, my steps faltering, like someone in a funeral procession. I found the intruder sitting on the steps, with a bag at her feet. She greeted me affectionately and stared up at the sky as if preparing to launch herself into flight. I expected to hear her say things in the gentle tone with which she had visited me in my dream. But she remained quiet while she took something from the bag, which I later learned was a camera. She took a photo of me, glimpsing hidden corners of my soul that I never knew existed. Then she took a small gadget made of metal from a case, and put it to her ear, only to put it away again.

—
What's that?

She explained that it was a cellphone, and told me what it was for. But right there, in Jezoosalem, she couldn't pick up a signal for her machine.

—
Without this
— she said, pointing at the phone, —
I feel lost. My God, how I need to talk to someone . . .

A deep sadness clouded her eyes. She looked as if she was going to burst into tears. But she controlled herself, her hands stroking her cheeks. And then she became distant for a while. She seemed to be muttering Marcelo's name. But it was so slow and quiet that it sounded more like a prayer for the dead. She slowly put everything away in her bag, and eventually asked:

—
Where do herons usually gather round here?

—
There are lots in the lake
—I said.

—
When it's less hot, will you take me to this lake?

I nodded. I didn't tell her about the crocodile that lived on the banks of the pond. I was afraid she might have second thoughts. At that moment, she began to rub creams into her body. Intrigued, I surprised her with a question:

—
Do you want me to go and get a bucket of water?

—
Water? What for?

—
Aren't you washing yourself?

Her sadness was suddenly shattered: the Portuguese woman laughed out loud, and almost offended me. Wash? What she was doing was applying creams to herself as protection against the sun. Maybe she's got some illness, I thought. But no. The woman said that nowadays, sunlight was poisoned.

—
Not here, lady, not here in Jezoosalem.

The Portuguese woman leaned on a wooden beam, closed her eyes and began to sing. Once again, the world escaped me. Never before had I heard a melody like that, flowing from human lips. I'd heard birds, the breezes and rivers, but nothing resembling her tones. Maybe in order to save myself from this lullaby, I asked:

—
Pardon me, but are you a whore?

—
What?

—
A whore
—I said slowly and deliberately.

At first astonished, and then amused, the woman lowered her head as if deep in thought, and in the end, she answered with a sigh:

—
Maybe, who knows?

—
My father says all women are whores . . .

She seemed to smile. Then she got up and, giving me an intense look, her eyes half-closed, exclaimed:

—
You're like your mother.

A kind of flood rushed over my inner self as her gentle voice spread out and covered my entire soul. Some time was needed before I could ask myself: did this foreign woman know Dordalma? How and when had the two women met?

—
Begging your pardon, but do you . . .

—
Call me Marta.

—
Yes, lady.

—
I know your family's story, but I never met Dordalma. And you, did you ever know your mother?

I shook my head, as slowly as my sadness allowed me to control my own body.

—
Do you remember her?

—
I don't know. Everyone says I don't.

I wanted to ask her to sing once more. For there was something I was now sure of. Marta wasn't a visitor: she was an emissary. Zachary Kalash had predicted her arrival. As for me, I had a suspicion: Marta was my second mother. She had come to take me home. And Dordalma, my first mother, was that home.

The shadows were already lengthening when I accompanied Marta to the lake where the herons could be found. I helped
her carry her photographic equipment and chose the paths down the slope that were less steep. Every so often, she would pause in the middle of the path, and with both hands, gather her hair together at the nape of her neck as if she wanted to avoid its obscuring her field of vision. Then, she would once again survey the firmament. I remembered Aproximado's words: “He who seeks eternity should look at the sky, he who seeks the moment, should look at the cloud.” The visitor wanted everything, sky and cloud, birds and infinities.

—
What magnificent light
—she repeated, ecstatic.

—
Aren't you scared it might be poisoned?

—
You can't imagine how much I need this light at this precise moment . . .

She spoke as if in prayer. For me, the magnificent light was that which emanated from her movements. Nor had I ever seen such smooth, abundant hair. But she was talking of something that had always been there, and that I had never noticed: the light that radiates not from the sun but from places themselves.