by Luiz Ruffato
ALSO BY LUIZ RUFFATO
Unremembering Me
There Were Many Horses
Copyright © 2019 by Luiz Ruffato
Originally published in Portuguese as O verão tardio in 2019
by Companhia das Letras, São Paulo, Brazil
Translation copyright © 2021 by Julia Sanches
Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
Text designer: Jennifer Daddio
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Ruffato, Luiz, 1961- author. | Sanches, Julia, translator.
Title: Late summer : a novel / Luiz Ruffato; translated from the Portuguese by Julia Sanches.
Other titles: Verão tardio. English
Description: New York, NY : Other Press, [2021] |
Originally published in Portuguese as O verão tardio in
2019 by Companhia das Letras, São Paulo, Brazil.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020054794 (print) | LCCN 2020054795 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781635420203 (paperback) | ISBN 9781635420210 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PQ9698.428.U44 V4713 2021 (print) |
LCC PQ9698.428.U44 (ebook) | DDC 869.3/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054794
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054795
Ebook ISBN 9781635420210
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Also by Luiz Ruffato
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Tuesday, March 3
Wednesday, March 4
Thursday, March 5
Friday, March 6
Saturday, March 7
Sunday, March 8
Song Credits
Finisce la tarda estate
—BATTIATO/SGALAMBRO
And ever in my forever that same absence
—CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE
my feet heave me through a vast desert. Yellow sand and yellow sun, eyes bleary, throat parched; in the horizon, dunes upon dunes, a cloudless sky. Then, at the bottom of a dip, something resembling a blue pool. Spent, I let myself roll downslope. I slump over the water, and as I bring my wet hand to my lips, the pool turns to quicksand and swallows up my thin, withered body. I try to scream, but my voice catches. I grab at the edge to no avail. Little by little, I sink. I lift my arms in a last-ditch effort, and hear sounds in the distance. I struggle to keep my head above sand and, closer now, make out the words “Mister! Mister!” as I feel someone shake me. Sweating, I open my eyes wide and behind my glasses see the startled face of a young man in uniform who reeks of cigarette smoke. “How’s he doing?” Then, to someone behind him, “Coming to, at least.” I’m seated on a bus. Outside is the tiny Cataguases coach terminal, still the same as when I was a child. People hug on the platform, birds trill in the trees, news trickles from the television, and the scent of diesel mixes with the mustiness of the air conditioner. I look at the uniformed man, “It’s nothing. I’m fine. Thank you,” and try to get up. “Need a hand?” he asks. “That’s all right,” I say, “I’m fine.” With a shove, I am on my feet. I bolster myself as I study the redcap and spy my backpack in his hands. He makes way for me. My legs teeter down the narrow aisle. I reach the steps and lurch down them, coming face-to-face with a small cluster of people who eye me quizzically. The young man hands me my backpack, and the bus driver, harried but wanting to appear cordial, exclaims, “Quite the scare, huh?” He gets back on the bus, shuts the door, reverses. The crowd gradually scatters. I enter a small hall with ticket booths and bystanders awaiting their arrival and departure times, then collapse onto a wood bench. Beside me, a toothless old woman who looks like a defeathered chick turns to face me, flustered. My forehead, feet, and pits are drenched in sweat. A woman in a headscarf scrubs the red-tile floor with a wet rag. I wipe my glasses with the edge of my shirt. The wall clock reads 8:30. My lungs fill with the hot morning air, and suddenly I feel better. I get up, take a long sip of chilled water from the drinking fountain, walk through the turnstile to the bathroom, and relieve myself with a sigh in the recently disinfected urinal. I wash my hands and face. Outside, on the cruddy sidewalk, I pass a shop selling cookies and sweets, another selling trinkets, and yet another that sells smoothies and snack food, then finally make my way into a boteco, a dark and narrow café bar that runs the length of the building. The radio is turned to a local station with the volume on high, drowning out the sound of running water in the sink, where a hulking figure stands with his back to me. “Good morning,” I say, and the figure grunts. “Coffee with milk, and a buttered roll, please.” The man turns off the faucet, wipes his hands on his dirty apron, and places a plastic semitransparent sugar bowl and a stainless-steel saucer on the grimy bar. He shoves his hairy arm into a brown paper bag and pulls out a roll of bread, slicing it in half and smearing both halves with a thin layer of margarine. He arranges them in a plastic, faux-straw basket, and asks: “Black or white?” Something about this man, with his long, soiled strands of greasy hair, face studded with barbs of grayish whiskers, his belly bulging against the buttons of his shirt, and pants slipping down his legs, rings a bell. “Black or white?” he repeats. Confused, I ask, “Excuse me?” And he says, impatiently, “The coffee: black or white?” “Oh, white.” He dumps out some of the coffee and fills the rest with milk, dunks a long metal spoon in the steaming liquid, and sets the glass on the saucer. I’ve got it! We went to school together…Alcides…Alcides…The Beast. That’s what we called him. Because, besides being really strong—he was already fat back then—Alcides turned out to be shockingly cruel toward anything that moved: he killed birds with a slingshot, drowned kittens, and once even doused a mare in gasoline and set her on fire. Even the teachers were scared of him. He’s the devil, they’d say, crossing themselves. He lumbers back to the sink. “Pardon me, but aren’t you Alcides? I think I remember you from…” The man turns to face me, bilious and red-eyed. Leaning over the bar and spooking away the mosquitoes, he cuts me off and yells: “What are you on about? Keep your small talk to yourself. You think you know me? Fuck you! I don’t know you! And I don’t want to know you. Got it? Now sit there nice and quiet and drink your coffee, then get the fuck out.” His breath, vinegary, mists up my face. My legs wobble, my lips pale, and I become light-headed. He turns up the volume on the radio, which is playing sertanejo, and angrily pretends to count and recount his profits from the day before, a couple of ratty bills and a fistful of gummy coins. I try to quiet my hands, which tremble either from shock at the verbal assault, my recent nightmare, or the medication I’ve been taking. I chew the bread with difficulty and wash it down with small sips of milk coffee. Cowed, I ask what I owe. He grunts something or other, and I leave the money on the bar. I stagger back to the hall. The old woman is
gone. I sit back on the wood bench next to a woman reading the Bible—black curls in a bun, light-gray long-sleeved shirt, dark-gray skirt below the knee, chunky masculine shoes. According to the wall clock it’s just before nine. On the bench opposite, a very young mother watches her two small children as they prance this way and that, a grocery bag on the floor beside her. A teenager stands in his backward cap, XXL Los Angeles Lakers tee, shorts, and oversized headphones, swaying to the beat of the music sounding from his cell phone. Gibberish trickles from the television. Outside, the woman, with her headscarf, dustpan and broom, sweeps up piles of trash on the curb. A dusty bus pulls up to a stall. The backward-capped teen and the young mother with two kids begin to move. Others follow, and soon an assembly is formed. My neighbor is still absorbed in her reading. When I first moved to São Paulo, I used to like wandering the coach terminal on weekends and guessing the destinations of the countless, glassy-eyed faces that filed past me. Judging from the way they walked, the clothes they wore, their accessories, and even the food they ate, I tried to imagine whether things were going well for them, or poorly. I did this to quell the loneliness that drove me out of my room in a modest boardinghouse in Pari every Saturday and Sunday. Or maybe I did it to confirm that I—who often felt invisible as I wandered anonymously through the crowd—was real. There, in that purgatory-like space, I saw myself reflected in those men and women—haunted but resolute, vulnerable yet sturdy—and this somehow attested to the fact that I existed, even if it was a notch above nothing. These forays were short-lived. As soon as I found a job, I rented an apartment in Vila Prudente, met Marília, and lost interest in other people’s fates, busy tending to what I mistook for my own happiness. Though I visited Cataguases on occasion, the city and everything it represented had already begun to lose focus in my memories, like a photograph that fades little by little until suddenly it’s only a series of whitish smudges without meaning. And so thirty-five years passed, and in the last nineteen of them, my sister Isinha’s faint voice over the phone was the only thing that could assure me there had once been a place called Cataguases, where a man by the name of Oséias used to live. Isinha would tell me stories about relatives and acquaintances that felt as real as the stories in the books I read as I lay in the narrow, uncomfortable beds of cheap hotels in the rural towns where I stopped to rest from my day-to-day as a traveling salesman. And here I am again, the threads that tie beginning to end in a tangle. I cross the street, dazed by the light brightening the morning. The cabbie, who’d been chatting with his colleague under the shade of a fig tree, climbs into the car. I place my backpack in the back seat and sit down next to him. He asks me where I’m going and tries to strike up a conversation: “Where you visiting from?” “São Paulo,” I answer. “Oh, that bus arrived hours ago,” he remarks indiscreetly. “I was killing time,” I say, feeling embarrassed as I feign interest in the string of low, roughed-up houses that sweep past the window. He goes on: “São Paulo! I used to live there. Taboão da Serra. Heard of it? I quit school at seventeen, to the dismay of my late mother—God rest her soul,” he crosses himself. “And my father, who was scared I was headed down the wrong path—his words,” he smiles, complacent, “sent me to live with Uncle Lenildo. I worked at a law firm in Morumbi, as an office boy. I got my driver’s license and soon I was driving around Mr. Garibaldi, Esquire, himself. Garibaldi José Mendes da Costa. He was fond of me and always encouraging…I did that for five years. Then one Christmas I met Gi, Gisele, that’s my wife. We went out, fell in love, and suddenly I was back here every month. I tried to convince her to move to São Paulo, I painted a picture of Paradise, but Gi said she wouldn’t leave her family. No way, no how. It went on like that for months. Me sweet-talking her and her stringing me along. Then she got pregnant, and you know what that’s like. Mr. Garibaldi promised me the moon, said he’d help me out the first few months and all that. But Gi dug her heels in. There was no way around it. I had to let it all go. With the money I’d saved I bought a piece of land in Santa Clara, built a small house, got this taxi license, and here I am. I’ve been at it for over…a decade now! I don’t regret it, not one bit. Ninfa’s a gem. I’ve got a photo of her right here. Have a gander.” The cabbie pulls his cell phone from his pant pocket and shows me his screen saver, a picture of a little girl with mischievous black eyes. “Her name’s Ninfa?” I ask. “Yeah, Ninfa,” he says, proud. “Gi’s the one who chose it. Isn’t it something?” “Yeah, it’s beautiful,” I answer. In Granjaria, the cabbie pulls up beside a tall rough-concrete wall, in front of an enormous iron-plated gate. I pay for the ride, and he hands me a card. “If you ever need anything. Sizenando Robledo Neto’s the name, but everybody calls me Nonô.” I nearly say, Sizenando?! I used to know your pops, Sizim. He was a little bit older than me and we lived in the same neighborhood, Beira-Rio, he even went out with my sister Isabela for a while. I think of asking him how he’s doing but decide against it. I thank him, slip his card into my shirt pocket, grab my backpack from the back seat, and step onto the sidewalk, where I press the intercom buzzer and watch the car disappear around a corner. The sun beats down on my head. I’m exhausted. I wait a second, then press the intercom buzzer again. A woman’s voice echoes back. “Who is it?” I ask if Rosana is in. “No, Dona Rosana is out.” Disappointed, I’m about to give up when the voice crackles again. “Who is it?” “Oséias, Rosana’s brother.” “Oséias?! Uncle Oséias?! From São Paulo?! Uncle Oséias, it’s me, Tamires!” Tamires…Oh, yes, Rosana’s daughter…“Morning Tamires, how’s it going?” I hear a clicking sound, and the side door pops open. “C’mon in! Did the door open?” I push it, “Yeah, it opened!” A house with an old-style facade comes into view. I cut across a small, overgrown garden that looks as though it was once much larger and had been sacrificed to make room for the garage, which clashes with the rest of the building. From the kitchen door, a young overweight woman about the same height as me—long, straight brown hair and a baggy dress that makes her look even chubbier—waves at me cheerfully. I walk around the silver Honda Fit. She welcomes me with enthusiasm and pulls me into a firm hug, “You don’t remember me, do you?” I try not to look shocked—she was a little girl when I last saw her, eight or nine years old, dumpy and shy…“You were only knee-high,” I explain, awkwardly. She shows me in and says, “I filled out, didn’t I? Mom’s always saying it’s a shame I took after Dad’s family. If I’d taken after Grandpa Nivaldo, I’d be skinny like her…Or like you…” She lets out a sorrowful laugh and I sigh. “When did you get in?” “Not long ago.” “From São Paulo?” “Yeah, São Paulo.” “Huh, where’s your luggage?” “I haven’t got any,” I say. “Everything I need is right here.” I point at my backpack. She calls for the housekeeper, who seems to be running the vacuum somewhere. “Kelly! Hey, Kelly!” A woman in her thirties emerges in shorts, a red tank top that reveals white bra straps, and straightened black hair up in a ponytail. Tamires has me give Kelly my backpack. “Put it in the guest room,” she orders. Kelly studies my clothes and asks, with a touch of disdain, “Will he be sleeping here?” Tamires senses my embarrassment, and brusquely replies, “Maybe, Kelly, maybe.” The housekeeper retreats, annoyed. Tamires pulls up a chair and gestures for me to sit at the table, which is set for breakfast. On the checkered oilcloth sit a ceramic teapot, a Moka coffeepot, napkin holders, a plastic container with fresh white cheese, another with turkey ham, a pack of whole-grain bread, a jug half-full of fresh orange juice, a used mug, a chipped plate with melon peels, and a knife and fork. “Coffee’s probably cold, but Kelly can make more.” “That’s all right, Tamires, I had some at the bus station.” “Won’t you even have some juice?” “No, don’t worry about it.” “Go on, have a glass of juice…” she insists. “All right then,” I say, wanting to be polite. Kelly goes back to vacuuming. Tamires walks to the cupboard and asks, “Are you on vacation?” “Sort of.” She fills a glass with juice, sets it in front of me, and stands against the white-tile wall. “Does Mom know you’re here?” �
�No,” I say. I adjust my glasses, “It’s a surprise.” “A surprise? Mom hates surprises,” she jokes. “You’d better call…Have you got her cell phone number?” “I don’t have a cell phone,” I say. “You haven’t got a cell phone?! How is that even possible in the twenty-first century?” she asks, shocked. I hang my head, embarrassed. “And how’s Rosana doing?” “She’s fine,” says Tamires. “She’s a difficult person, you know,” she adds with a touch of irony, trusting I am on her side. “Sure you don’t want anything to eat?” she insists. “No, thanks, I’m not hungry. Won’t you sit down?” I ask. “I’m on a diet,” she says, thirstily, then apologizes, “I was on my way out when you arrived. I run a delicatessen. We sell cold cuts, fine spices, imported drinks,” she explains. “I’d love if you could come see it, it’s on the street that runs between Rui Barbosa and Santa Rita Square. You know the one I mean?” “Yeah, and of course I’ll come,” I say. As I drain my glass of orange juice, Tamires tells me about how Rosana and Ricardo had wanted her to go to Juiz de Fora to study medicine or law. “But I rebelled. Instead, I signed up for a regular degree right here, in business administration. I never finished it. Halfway through, I started seeing this guy. He wanted to open a deli, and I thought it was a great idea, but neither Mom nor Dad would lend me the money for it. As far as they were concerned, being a shopkeeper was beneath them. They think they’re important. They of all people…Mom, you know her story, and Dad…” She trails off. “Anyway…Of all people,” she repeats with sarcasm. “In the end I got a loan from the bank. My relationship had gone downhill in the meantime. But the business worked out, and I make about as much as Mom does as a school principal, to everyone’s surprise.” “Ah, so she’s finally the principal?” Tamires turns to face me, snidely. “It’s all about contacts, contacts, contacts, Uncle Oséias…” “Yeah, Rosana was always excellent at those,” I say, and my remark sounds malicious, though I hadn’t meant it that way. Back in the kitchen, Kelly asks if she should fix up the guest room. “You’ll stay with us, won’t you, Uncle Oséias?” “Maybe, Tamires.” “Mom’s going to lose it,” she quips, and with perverse delight, says, “Yes, Kelly, do fix up the guest room.” “Does Rosana ever talk about me?” I ask. She hesitates and blushes, then says, “Sometimes.” I change the subject: “And are you…Are you still in touch with Isabela? João Lúcio?” “No, very occasionally. Aunt Isinha is too poor for us and Uncle Jôjo is too rich…” she jests. “Mom says,” and she apes Rosana’s mannerisms, “Isinha’s never been able to stomach how well we’ve done for ourselves! The woman is green with envy. But it’s not my fault things haven’t worked out for her.” Her impersonation is perfect, and makes us both laugh. “I’m sorry but I really have to get going. I’m already late as it is.” Tamires disappears down the hallway, says something or other to Kelly, and returns with a purse and a set of keys. I get up, and she gives me a hug, says she’s happy to see me. “I’ll call Mom on my way there and let her know you’re here.” She then suggests, “Why don’t you try and rest a little?” I hear the sounds of a car being unlocked by the electronic key, of the engine humming, of the metal gate opening and then closing. I don’t know what to do, so I wait, exhausted. The monotonous ticking of the grandfather clock lulls my eyelids. I grab a napkin and slowly wipe my glasses. I open the cupboard, take a glass, and fill it with tap water. I drink the warm liquid, which tastes of chlorine. I study the fridge magnets one by one. Nearly all of them are from New York—a yellow cab, an apple, the Statue of Liberty, NY, I Love New York—while some are ads—gas, mineral water, mini-mart, butcher’s, burger joint, pizzeria, dial-beer. I wash my glass and set it bottom up on the dish rack. I’m starting to regret having come. Tamires was right, Rosana is going to—“Oh, you’re still here?” Kelly is back in the kitchen. “I thought you’d gone out with Tamires.” I ask awkwardly for the guest room, and she leads me to a bedroom with a twin bed, a nightstand, a two-door wardrobe, and a coatrack that holds a dusty felt hat. I ask Kelly to draw the curtains, and she says she’ll switch on the AC. I insist there’s no need. “In this swelter?” she questions, dismayed. I say I’m allergic. She shrugs, points to a folded towel on the bedspread, and leaves. I throw open the windows, which look out onto a small concrete patio at the back of the house. Light pours into the room, bathing it in yellow. A soft gust rustles the branches of a lone rose-apple tree. I lock the door, and, wearied, remove my glasses, slip off my shoes and socks, lie down in my clothes and everything