The Girl in the Photograph (22 page)

The baritone voice of Sister Clotilde dominated the buzzing noise of a low-flying
helicopter.

“It looks like a bathroom in the movies. I never saw a girl as painstaking as you.”

“Disorder depresses me, Sister. Ah, if only I could order myself on the inside, everything
calmly arranged in the drawers. Too much woolgathering.”

She stooped to pick up something from the floor and opened the clothes closet. Lorena
accompanied her movements by the small noises that the objects emitted when violated.
“She’s curious, she wants to see if my clothes look like the clothes in movies too,”
she thought examining the piece of notebook paper folded inside a book. The rough
draft of a letter to M.N. A letter in verse, which she hadn’t sent, like so many other
ones imagined and outlined. “My heart arrived bleeding, red sail on the crest of the
wave …” she read and smiled at the little zebra holding a flower in its mouth she
had drawn in one corner of the page.

“My poetry is small in quantity but bad.”

“What?”

Oh Lord. This one must be going deaf too. Lia had said it, hadn’t she? The smaller
orifices end up closing, in keeping with the principal one.
Res accessoria sequitur rem principalem
, she murmured turning to the nun. Her face lit up.

“What if I keep repeating, I am marvelous-divine and he is hopelessly in love with
me, I am marvelous-divine and he is hopelessly in love with me, I am marvelous-divine.
And he.”

“That’s it, dear. Positive thinking.”

Lorena opened her book at random, read a passage about accidents occuring at the place
of work, and then closed her eyes: She could repeat word for word what she had just
read. Excited, she smiled. What about the things she saw with her eyes closed? Couldn’t
they really exist? Why couldn’t delirium correspond to a reality? She stared at the
daisies in the copper mug which the nun had placed on the table. Now their heads were
pointing downward, their long stems without strength to support the blossoms which
hung down, crowns of white petals. “Like timid brides,” she thought, moved. She took
the mug to the shelf where the picture of her father was. “Help me, Daddy. I know
he likes me. But enough? Wife, children, so many people. I hate make-believe and he’ll
want it to be that way, oh, Daddy, I can say I’ll resist, renounce him. But if he
calls me I’ll go running without even touching the ground, I’ll get there two hours
early, ‘my love’!”

“In my grandparents’ house there was one just like this,” said Sister Clotilde polishing
the gilded bars of the bed with a corner of her apron.

I give her a dustcloth and she rejoices, she loves to work. I’ve already told her
that Mama’s maid is forever coming around with her iron shoes and the efficiency of
those fairy godmothers who tidy everything up by magic. But did she pay any attention?
She needs to be doing something with her hands, big bony hands, the square nails cut
straight across. She’s been here for hours and hours, what if she’s in love with me?
A priest’s woman turns into a headless mule, what about a nun’s woman? The straight-cut
nails. Her trademark. They need to be cut with the utmost care, such extremely important
instruments, oh, for shame! Why do only things of this kind go through my perverted
mind? So innocent to look at. A child.

“Only one-third of us is visible, did you know that? The rest is unseen, the reverse
side.”

“Only one-third visible?”

I turn the page. Still about accidents, bla-bla-bla-bla. I already know it. The summary
must be just ahead, what to bet? There, bla-bla-bla-bla. I face her. She has stopped
in suspense, the flannel stretched between her hands, ready to resume her movements
of a shoeshiner on the bars of the headboard which shine like gold.

“Only one-third, dear. I see your mantle, your face, your hands holding that cloth.
Very little, isn’t it? And the rest? Where is the rest that I can’t see?”

She looks satisfied with her high percentage of mystery.

“The rest is everything, my girl. But it belongs to God.”

Her heavy oxfords have taken on her physiognomy; the shoes of someone who knows her
business. And does it well. Her toes point outward, feet open in the measured step
of a stolid duck moving toward the water, plak, plak. Virgin? “Yes, in a way,” answered
Lião rather reticently, she hasn’t done research in this area yet. The dash to Sister
Priscilla’s room has to be barefoot. The whispers. The sighs, nuns must pant doubly
hard when making love. Short sentences. Short breath, in the style of the little eighteenth-century
pornographic books where the Abbess with a French name recounts to the novices her
most secret memories.

“When I get old I’m going to write my memoirs,” I say. “The problem is that the delirious
thoughts, so beautifully disheveled, end up meticulously combed. Triumph of the norms
of conduct.”

She’s in the bathroom washing her hands, after each thing she does, she washes her
hands.

“In my time all the young girls had their diaries. But you girls nowadays can tell
everything to your boyfriends, your analysts. Why bother with diaries?”

She probably likes to wash her feet too. At night, before the midnight sprint, plak,
plak, her toes spread wide, free of the oxfords, choosing the boards that creak less
in the floor which is creaky by nature. Oh Lord. It’s no wonder Sister Bula’s eyes
water all the time, with the things she must see or guess at through her keyhole.
The parade: Lião with her tennis shoes carrying the weight of the world. What’s in
those packages, pamphlets? Bombs? Next, Crazy Ana with her golden shoes and drunken
step, her heel catching on her long neckscarf à la
Isadora Duncan. Pretty soon, this one here appears with her cotton-and-lace nightgown,
her feet too big for any subtlety whatever among the squeaking boards, ah, the inspiration
of the ancient convents with their subterranean passages. Closing the sequence, Cat
with her velvet paws, her swollen belly dragging on the floor, where would be a good
nest to unload the kittens? The order of entrance on the scene subject to variations,
with the effect unaltered. Bulie wiping her eyes on the hanky-bed-sheet and leaning
tremulous over the windowsill, she wants to see me chaste and tranquil, hope of salvation,
“You’re all right, my child?” And the child possessed by demons, wide-open in the
night and begging for help in Morse code, tum-tum, tum—tumtum. Horrible, horrible.
The solution is immediately to write another anonymous letter to Mother Alix, who
will read it and tear it up, magnificently above and beyond everything.
Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordiam tuam
.

“Well, I must go now. Anything else?”

I want to ask her pardon.

“Take some fruit, Sister. Before long another fruit basket will arrive from Mama’s
house, I’ll never eat it all. Throw me a banana, would you?”

She scrutinized the bunch, frowning.

“They’ll only be at their best two days from now. Every fruit has its right day” she
added and instead of looking at the bananas she looks at her own hands. “It shouldn’t
be eaten either before or after.”

A light cloud settles on her posthumous face. Neither before nor after, poor thing.
I quickly turn her attention to me.

“My loverboy thinks I’m too green.”

“Green?” She hands me a fig which she is holding by the stem. “How old is he? Isn’t
it that boy, Fabrízio?”

“It’s another one, Marcus Nemesius. His father was a Latin scholar, all the children
have declinable names, isn’t that neat? Rosa, Rosae. Servus, Servi.”

Like excreta, excretae. I bite into the almost-obscene fig. The cloud is still there.
She has hidden her hands in her pockets. When unoccupied, she becomes sad.

“We’re lovers. I’m expecting his child.”

“Silly girl!” she exclaimed laughing.

At least I managed to make her laugh. I run and fill her pockets with fruit.

“Do you know any medicine for the disease of love? I’m sick with love.”

“Dr. Humphreys’ Marvel Curative Liniment. It cures whatever’s wrong with you, put
some compresses on the chest, beside the heart. Good-bye!”

On the stairway she meets Lião.

“Can I come in?” she asked, already inside the room.

She went to the cluster of bananas and pulled off two.

“They’re green, dear,” Lorena advised.

Lia shrugged her shoulders. “One of her recipes? I heard her mentioning compresses,
see.”

As if she had caught a butterfly by its wings, Lorena held up the stem of the fig.
She looked around her. Where to put it? Not in the ashtray, it would mix with the
ashes and create an odor. Getting a plate, she collected the banana peels which Lia
had been holding cupped in her hand. She knelt in front of her friend and carefully
rolled up the bedraggled hems of her blue jeans, then tied the laces of her canvas
shoes. Inspecting the black turtleneck pullover, she thought, “That’s one I haven’t
seen,” and looked with interest at the cap.

“Where did you get that?”

“A present from a friend. Your mama’s car is there in front, the hard part is finding
the key.”

“Everything go all right?”

“Perfectly,” said Lia.

Methodically she piled up mimeographed sheets, loose cigarettes, a toothbrush, and
half a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. She dumped out the rest of the odds and ends:
a few coins, a black comb with shreds of tobacco accumulated between the teeth, a
silver keychain and a little ball of dirty cloth. Lorena recognized her handkerchief
as it rolled to a stop near her feet. She waited for the second handkerchief to appear,
but from the bottom of the bag there came only breadcrumbs mixed with bits of paper.
She sat down beside her friend and looked up at the ceiling.

“Lia de Melo Schultz, I’m sad but you are happy.”

“Very,” said Lia putting the keychain on top of the table. She knelt on the cushion,
pulling off her cap, and her hair exploded enthusiastically into the air. “Something
great has happened, see. The problem will be the yenom, but my father will help out
and if you could, too—”

“How much?”

“I don’t know yet, I’ll tell you later. It’s for a trip. A trip overseas, later I’ll
tell you all about it. Oh Lena, I’m boiling over inside.”

Lorena came closer. Sitting on the rug, she folded her legs and gazed at her bare
feet.

“Get your microphone and interview me.”

Lia grasped the banana firmly and extended it toward Lorena’s mouth. “Do you swear
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

“I do.”

“Your name, please?”

“Lorena Vaz Leme.”

“A university student?”

“Yes. Law.”

“Do you belong to any political group?”

“No.”

“And by chance do you take part in the women’s lib movement?”

“No, not that either. I am concerned only with
my own
condition.”

“Am I speaking, then, with an alienated young woman?”

“Please don’t judge me, just interview me. I can’t lie, I would be lying if I told
you that I worry about women in general, I only worry about myself. I’m in love. He’s
married, old, thousands of children. Completely head over heels in love.”

“An indiscreet question, may I? Are you a virgin?”

“Yes.”

Asking permission, Lia peeled half of the banana she was holding. She bit off a large
piece and breathed vigorously, her mouth full: “You mean you aren’t lovers. Would
it be presumptuous of me to ask the reason?”

“He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t try to see me any more, it’s been days and days since
he called.”

“But are we talking about an impotent man? A homosexual? If memory doesn’t fail me,
I heard something about children, didn’t I?”

“He is a gentleman.”

“Ah.”

“But if he sent for me, like the last of the Mohicans, I swear I’d go running, did
you call? I’d go live with him in a cellar, un
der a bridge, on the road, in a brothel, Lião, Lião,” she whimpered pushing the banana
away, “I don’t want to play any more, I’m so unhappy.”

Lia frowned, knitting her heavy eyebrows. She chewed in concentration. She started
to reach for the wadded-up handkerchief which lay between the ashtray and the comb,
but changed her mind. Cleaning her hands on the rug, she lightly stroked her friend’s
hair.

“I can’t explain it, but I bet it’s your fault. Didn’t you start talking about marriage?
If you did, the guy got scared off, this mania you have about getting married. Virginity.”

“Things got much worse after he started going to that church group.”

“He’s going to a church group? If that’s the case he wants to save his marriage. You’re
not going to have lover or husband. End of story.”

“But who wants to get married?”

“You. Oh yes you do, yes ma’am, that’s all you think about! Well, so let’s find a
guy who’s free, dammit! What about Fabrízio?”

“Who knows? He’s disappeared. He saw me with M.N. and I was pretty frank, you know
I don’t like to deceive anyone.”

Slowly Lia’s thumb came closer to her mouth. She started to bite her thumbnail, and
suddenly snorted.

“Pedro is too inexperienced, he’d never do. There’s our priest who’s probably inexperienced
too, but with the advantage of his age, you’re an Oedipal case. A priest like you
always dreamed of,
marvelous
. Dying to get hitched.”

Lorena giggled silently, her shoulders shaking.

“Is he really, Lião?”

“It’s what he wants most in the world,” said Lia taking an apple from the tray and
shining it on her pullover sleeve before biting into it.

“Now that it’s been proven that marriage doesn’t work, all the priests are wild to
get married, dozens of resignation petitions. It’ll be the death-blow they deal the
church, a mercy killing.
Kaput
.”

With her fingertips, Lorena delicately brushed together into a pile the bits of debris
scattered on the small area of rug where Lia had emptied her bag. She gathered the
pile onto a mimeographed sheet but before emptying it she read: “
Never again
have we re-encountered liberty, since the day it was placed upon the earth,” wrote
Marx in 1844. Sadly, reactionary rule and submission have been continually maintained
in German history up to the present day
.