The Complete Stories (27 page)

The eggs crackle in the frying pan, and lost in a dream I make breakfast. Lacking any sense of reality, I shout for the children who sprout from various beds, drag the chairs out and eat, and the work of the breaking day begins, shouted and laughed and eaten, white and yolk, merriment amid fighting, the day that is our salt and we are the day’s salt, living is extremely tolerable, living keeps us busy and distracts us, living makes us laugh.

And it makes me smile in my mystery. My mystery is that being merely a means, and not an end, has given me the most mischievous of freedoms: I’m no fool and I make the most of things. Even to the point of wronging others so much that, frankly. The fake job they have given me to disguise my true purpose, since I make the most of this fake job and turn it into my real one; this includes the money they give me as a daily allowance to ease my life so that the egg may form, since I have used this money for other purposes, diverting the funds, I recently bought stock in Brahma beer and am rich. All this I still call having the necessary modesty to live. And also the time they have granted me, and that they grant us just so that in this honorable leisure the egg may form, well I have used this time for illicit pleasures and illicit pains, completely forgetting the egg. That is my simplicity.

Or is that exactly what they want to happen to me, precisely so the egg can carry out its mission? Is it freedom or am I being controlled? Because I keep noticing how every error of mine has been put to use. My rebellion is that for them I am nothing, I am merely valuable: they take care of me from one second to the next, with the most absolute lack of love; I am merely valuable. With the money they give me, I have taken to drinking lately. Abuse of trust? But it’s because nobody knows how it feels inside for someone whose job consists of pretending that she is betraying, and who ends up believing in her own betrayal. Whose job consists of forgetting every day. Someone of whom apparent dishonor is required. Not even my mirror still reflects a face that is mine. Either I am an agent, or it really is betrayal.

Yet I sleep the sleep of the righteous because I know that my futile life doesn’t interfere with the march of great time. On the contrary: it seems that I am required to be extremely futile, I’m even required to sleep like one of the righteous. They want me busy and distracted, and they don’t care how. Because, with my misguided attention and grave foolishness, I could interfere with whatever is carried out through me. It’s because I myself, I properly speaking, all I have really been good for is interfering. What tells me that I might be an agent is the idea that my destiny surpasses me: at least they really did have to let me guess that, I was one of those people who would do their job badly if they couldn’t guess at least a little; they made me forget what they had let me guess, but I still had the vague notion that my destiny surpasses me, and that I am an instrument of their work. But in any case all I could be was an instrument, since the work couldn’t really be mine. I have already tried to set myself up on my own and it didn’t work out; my hand trembles to this day. Had I kept at it any longer I would have damaged my health forever. Since then, ever since that thwarted experiment, I have tried to consider things this way: that much has already been given me, that they have granted me everything that might be granted; and that other agents, far superior to me, have also worked solely for something they did not know. And with the same minimal instructions. Much has already been given me; this, for example: every once in a while, with my heart beating at the privilege, I at least know that I am not recognizing anything! with my heart beating from emotion, I at least do not understand! with my heart beating from trust, I at least do not know.

But what about the egg? This is one of their ploys: while I was talking about the egg, I had forgotten the egg. “Talk, talk!” they instructed me. And the egg is fully protected by all those words. Keep talking, is one of the instructions, I am so tired.

Out of devotion to the egg, I forgot it. My necessary forgetting. My self-serving forgetting. Because the egg is an evasion. In the face of my possessive adoration it could retreat and never again return. But if it is forgotten. If I make the sacrifice of living only my life and of forgetting it. If the egg becomes impossible. Then—free, delicate, with no message for me—perhaps one last time it will move from space over to this window that I have always left open. And at dawn it will descend into our building. Serene all the way to the kitchen. Illuminating it with my pallor.

Temptation

(“Tentação”)

She was sobbing. And as if the two o’clock glare weren’t enough, she had red hair.

On the empty street the cobblestones were vibrating with heat—the little girl’s head was aflame. Sitting on the front steps of her house, she endured. Nobody on the street, just one person waiting in vain at the tram stop. And as if her submissive and patient gaze weren’t enough, her sobs kept interrupting her, making her chin slip off the hand it was resting on in resignation. What could you do about a sobbing red-haired girl? We looked at each other wordlessly, dejection to dejection. On the deserted street not a sign of the tram. In a land of dark-haired people, being a redhead was an involuntary rebellion. What did it matter if one day in the future her emblem would make her insolently hold erect the head of a woman. For now she was sitting on a shimmering doorstep, at two o’clock. What saved her was an old purse, with a torn strap. She clutched it with a long-familiar conjugal love, pressing it against her knees.

That was when her other half in this world approached, a brother in Grajaú. The possibility of communication appeared at the scorching angle of the street corner, accompanied by a lady, and incarnated in the form of a dog. It was a basset hound, beautiful and miserable, sweet inside its fate. It was a red-haired basset hound.

There he came trotting, ahead of his owner, stretching his body out. Unsuspecting, nonchalant, dog.

The girl widened her eyes in amazement. Mildly alerted, the dog stopped in front of her. His tongue quivered. They looked at each other.

Of all the beings suited to become the owner of another being, there sat the girl who had come into this world to have that dog. He growled gently, without barking. She looked at him from under her hair, fascinated, solemn. How much time passed? A big sob jangled her. He didn’t even tremble. She overcame her sobs and kept staring at him.

Both had short, red hair.

What did they say to each other? Nobody knows. All we know is they communicated rapidly, since there was no time. We also know that without speaking they were asking for each other. They were asking for each other urgently, bashfully, surprised.

Amid so much vague impossibility and so much sun, here was the solution for the red child. And amid so many streets to be trotted down, so many bigger dogs, so many dry gutters—there sat a little girl, as if she were flesh of his ginger flesh. They stared at each other deeply, immersed, absent from Grajaú. Another second and the suspended dream would shatter, yielding perhaps to the seriousness with which they asked for one another.

But both were already committed.

She to her impossible childhood, the center of the innocence that would only open once she was a woman. He, to his imprisoned nature.

His owner waited impatiently beneath her parasol. The red-haired basset finally pried himself away from the girl and went off sleepwalking. She sat there in shock, holding the event in her hands, in a muteness that neither her father nor mother would understand. She followed him with black eyes that could hardly believe it, hunched over her purse and knees, until she saw him round the other corner.

But he was stronger than she. He didn’t look back once.

Journey to Petrópolis

(“Viagem a Petrópolis”)

She was a withered little old lady who, sweet and stubborn, didn’t seem to understand that she was alone in the world. Her eyes were always tearing up, her hands rested on her dull black dress, an old document of her life. On the now-stiff fabric were little bread crumbs stuck on by the drool that was now resurfacing, recalling the cradle. There was a yellowish stain, from an egg she’d eaten two weeks before. And marks from the places where she slept. She always found somewhere to sleep, at someone or other’s house. Whenever they asked her name, she’d say in a voice purified by frailty and countless years of good manners:

“Missy.”

People would smile. Pleased at sparking their interest, she’d explain:

“My name, my real name, is Margarida.”

Her body was small, dark, though she’d been tall and fair. She’d had a father, mother, husband, two children. All had died one after the other. Only she remained, with her rheumy, expectant eyes nearly covered by a velvety white film. Whenever anyone gave her money it was very little, since she was small and really didn’t need to eat much. Whenever they gave her a bed to sleep in they gave her a hard, narrow one because Margarida was gradually losing mass. Nor did she offer much thanks: she’d smile and nod.

Nowadays she was sleeping, no one remembered why, in a room behind a big house, on a broad, tree-lined street in Botafogo. The family thought Missy was quaint but forgot her most of the time. It was because she was also a mysterious old lady. She rose at the crack of dawn, made up her dwarf’s bed and darted out nimbly as if the house were on fire. Nobody knew where she went. One day one of the girls of the house asked her what she was doing. She answered with a pleasant smile:

“Strolling around.”

They thought it quaint that an old lady, living off charity, would stroll around. But it was true. Missy was born in Maranhão, where she had always lived. She’d come to Rio not long before, with a very nice lady who’d been planning to put her in a nursing home, but it didn’t work out: the lady went to Minas and gave Missy some money to set herself up in Rio. And the old woman strolled around getting to know the city. All you had to do anyhow was sit on a park bench and you’d already be seeing Rio de Janeiro.

Her life was going along smoothly, when one day the family from the Botafogo house was surprised that she’d been in their house so long, and thought it was too much. In a way they were right. Everyone there was very busy, every so often weddings, parties, engagements, visits came up. And whenever they rushed busily past the old lady, they’d start as if they’d been interrupted, accosted with a swipe on the shoulder: “hey!” In particular one of the girls of the house felt an irritated distress, the old lady annoyed her for no reason. In particular her permanent smile, though the girl understood it was just an inoffensive rictus. Perhaps because they didn’t have time, no one brought it up. But as soon as someone thought of sending her to Petrópolis, to their German sister-in-law’s house, there came a more enthusiastic consensus than an old lady could have provoked.

So, when the son of the house took his girlfriend and two sisters for a weekend in Petrópolis, they brought the old lady along in the car.

Why didn’t Missy sleep the night before? At the idea of a trip, in her stiff body her heart lost its rust, all dry and skipping a beat, as if she’d swallowed a large pill without water. There were moments when she couldn’t even breathe. She talked all night long, sometimes loudly. Her excitement about the promised outing and the change in her life suddenly cleared up some of her ideas. She remembered things that a few days before she’d have sworn never existed. Starting with her son who was run over, killed by a tram in Maranhão—if he had lived amid the traffic of Rio de Janeiro, then he’d really have been run over. She remembered her son’s hair, his clothing. She remembered the teacup Maria Rosa had broken and how she’d yelled at Maria Rosa. If she had known her daughter would die in childbirth, of course she wouldn’t have needed to yell. And she remembered her husband. She could only recall her husband in shirtsleeves. But that couldn’t be, she was sure he went to the office in his clerk uniform, he’d go to parties in a sport coat, not to mention that he couldn’t have gone to the funerals of his son and daughter in shirtsleeves. Searching for her husband’s sport coat tired the old lady out further as she tossed and turned lightly in bed. Suddenly she discovered that the mattress was hard.

“What a hard mattress,” she said very loudly in the middle of the night.

What happened is that all her senses had returned. Parts of her body she hadn’t been aware of in a long time were now clamoring for her attention. And all of a sudden—oh what raging hunger! Hallucinating, she got up, unfastened her little bundle, took out a stale piece of buttered bread she had secretly kept for two days. She ate the bread like a rat, scratching up the places in her mouth that had only gums until they bled. And thanks to the food, she felt increasingly reinvigorated. She managed, though fleetingly, to catch a vision of her husband saying goodbye on his way to work. Only after the memory vanished did she notice she’d forgotten to check whether he was in shirtsleeves. She lay down again, scratching her searing body all over. She spent the rest of the night in this pattern of seeing for an instant and then not managing to see anymore. Near dawn she fell asleep.

And for the very first time she had to be roused. While it was still dark, the girl came to get her, kerchief tied around her head and suitcase already in hand. Unexpectedly Missy asked for a few seconds to comb her hair. Her tremulous hands held the broken comb. She combed her hair, combed her hair. She’d never been the kind of woman who went out without first combing her hair thoroughly.

When she finally approached the car, the young man and the girls were surprised by her cheerful manner and sprightly step. “She’s healthier than I am!” the young man joked. The thought occurred to the girl of the house: “And to think I was even feeling sorry for her.”

Missy sat by the car window, a little cramped by the two sisters crowded onto the same backseat. She didn’t say anything, smiling. But when the car jerked into motion, launching her backward, she felt pain in her chest. It wasn’t just from joy, it was tearing at her. The young man turned around:

“Don’t get sick, Granny!”

The girls laughed, especially the one who’d sat in front, the one who occasionally leaned her head on the young man’s shoulder. Out of politeness, the old lady wanted to answer, but couldn’t. She wanted to smile, she couldn’t. She looked at everyone, teary-eyed, which the others already knew didn’t mean she was crying. Something in her face somewhat deadened the joy the girl of the house felt and lent her a stubborn expression.

It was quite a lovely journey.

The girls were pleased, Missy had started smiling again. And, though her heart was racing, everything was better. They drove past a cemetery, past a grocery store, tree, two women, a soldier, cat! signs—everything swallowed up by speed.

When Missy awoke she no longer knew where she was. The highway was now in broad daylight: it was narrow and dangerous. The old lady’s mouth stung, her frozen feet and hands were growing distant from the rest of her body. The girls were talking, the one in front had rested her head on the young man’s shoulder. Their belongings were constantly tumbling down.

Then Missy’s head started working. Her husband appeared to her in a sport coat—I found it, I found it! the sport coat had been on a hanger the whole time. She remembered the name of Maria Rosa’s friend, the one who lived across the street: Elvira, and Elvira’s mother was even crippled. The memories nearly wrenched a shout from her. Then she moved her lips slowly and murmured a few words.

The girls were talking:

“Well, thank you very much, I won’t accept a present like that!”

That’s when Missy finally started not to understand. What was she doing in the car? how had she met her husband and where? how did Maria Rosa and Rafael’s mother, their very own mother, end up in a car with these people? A moment later she was used to it again.

The young man said to his sisters:

“I think it’s better not to park in front, to avoid gossip. She’ll get out of the car, we’ll show her where it is, she’ll go by herself and tell them she’s supposed to stay.”

One of the girls of the house felt uneasy: she worried that her brother, being dense like a typical man, would say too much in front of his girlfriend. They didn’t visit their brother in Petrópolis anymore, and saw their sister-in-law even less.

“Right,” she broke in just before he said too much. “Look, Missy, go down that alley and you can’t miss it: at the red-brick house, you ask for Arnaldo, my brother, okay? Arnaldo. Say you couldn’t stay with us anymore, say there’s room at Arnaldo’s and you could even look after their boy sometimes, okay . . .”

Missy got out of the car, and for a while kept standing there but floating dizzily above wheels. The cool wind blew her long skirt between her legs.

Arnaldo wasn’t home. Missy entered the alcove where the lady of the house, with a dust rag tied around her head, was having breakfast. A blond boy—surely the one Missy was supposed to look after—was seated in front of a plate of tomatoes and onions and eating drowsily, while his white, freckled legs were swinging under the table. The German woman filled his dish with oatmeal, pushed buttered toast across the table to him. The flies were buzzing. Missy felt faint. If she drank some hot coffee maybe the chill in her body would go away.

The German woman examined her silently every so often: she hadn’t believed the story about her sister-in-law’s suggestion, though “from them” anything was possible. But maybe the old lady had heard the address from someone, maybe even on a tram, by chance, that sometimes happened, all you had to do was open the newspaper and see the things that went on. It was just that the story wasn’t very convincing, and the old lady had a sly look, she didn’t even hide her smile. Best not to leave her alone in the alcove with the cupboard full of new dishes.

“First I have to eat breakfast,” she told her. “After my husband gets home, we’ll see what can be done.”

Missy didn’t understand very well, because the woman spoke like a foreigner. But she understood that she was to stay seated. The smell of coffee gave her a craving, and a dizziness that darkened the whole room. Her lips stung drily and her heart beat completely independently. Coffee, coffee, she looked on, smiling and tearing up. At her feet the dog was gnawing at its own paw, growling. The maid, also somewhat foreign, tall, with a very slender neck and large breasts, the maid brought a plate of soft white cheese. Wordlessly, the mother smashed a hunk of cheese onto the toast and pushed it over to her son’s side of the table. The boy ate it all and, with his belly sticking out, grabbed a toothpick and stood:

“Mother, gimme a hundred cruzeiros.”

“No. For what?”

“Chocolate.”

“No. Sunday’s not till tomorrow.”

A flicker of light lit up Missy: Sunday? what was she doing in that house on the eve of the Sabbath? She could never have guessed. But she’d be pleased to look after that boy. She’d always liked blond children: all blond boys looked like the Baby Jesus. What was she doing in that house? They kept making her move from one side to the other for no reason, but she’d tell about everything, they’d see. She smiled sheepishly: she wouldn’t tell on them at all, since what she really wanted was coffee.

The lady of the house shouted toward another room, and the indifferent maid brought out a bowl, filled with dark mush. Foreigners sure ate a lot in the morning, Missy had witnessed as much in Maranhão. The lady of the house, with her no-nonsense manner, because foreigners in Petrópolis were just as serious as they were in Maranhão, the lady of the house took a spoonful of white cheese, mashed it with her fork and mixed it into the mush. Honestly, it really was foreign slop. She then started eating, absorbed, with the same look of distaste foreigners in Maranhão have. Missy watched. The dog growled at its fleas.

Finally Arnaldo appeared in full sunlight, the crystal cabinet sparkling. He wasn’t blond. He spoke with his wife in a hushed voice, and after a drawn-out discussion informed Missy firmly and carefully: “It’s just not possible, there’s just no room here.”

And since the old lady didn’t object and kept on smiling, he said it louder:

“There’s just no room, okay?”

But Missy remained seated. Arnaldo half gestured. He looked at the two women in the room and got a vague sense of the comic nature of the contrast. His wife taut and ruddy. And past her the old lady shriveled and dark, with folds of dry wrinkles hanging from her shoulders. Faced with the old lady’s mischievous smile, he lost his patience:

“And I’m very busy now! I’ll give you some money and you take the train to Rio, okay? go back to my mother’s house, and when you get there say: Arnaldo’s house isn’t an old folks’ home, okay? there’s no room here. Say this: Arnaldo’s house isn’t an old folks’ home, okay!”

Missy took the money and headed for the door. When Arnaldo was just sitting down to eat, Missy reappeared:

“Thank you, may God help you.”

Out on the street, she thought once more of Maria Rosa, Rafael, her husband. She didn’t miss them the slightest bit. But she remembered. She headed for the highway, getting farther and farther from the station. She smiled as if playing a trick on somebody: instead of heading back right away, she’d take a little stroll first. A man walked by. Then a very odd and utterly unimportant thing was illuminated: when she was still a woman, men. She couldn’t manage to get an exact image of the men’s faces, but she saw herself in light-colored blouses with long hair. Her thirst returned, burning her throat. The sun flamed, sparkling on every white pebble. The Petrópolis highway is quite lovely.

At the wet black stone fountain, right on the highway, a barefoot black woman was filling a can of water.

Missy stood still, watching. Then she saw the black woman cup her hands and drink.