The elevator hummed in the beachfront heat. She opened the door to her apartment while using her other hand to free herself of her little hat; she seemed poised to reap the largess of the whole world, the path opened by the mother who was burning in her chest. Antônio barely looked up from his book. Saturday afternoon had always been “his,” and, as soon as Severina had left, he gladly reclaimed it, seated at his desk.
“Did ‘she’ leave?”
“Yes she did,” answered Catarina while pushing open the door to her son’s room. Ah, yes, there was the boy, she thought in sudden relief. Her son. Skinny and anxious. Ever since he could walk he’d been steady on his feet; but nearing the age of four he still spoke as if he didn’t know what verbs were: he’d confirm things coldly, not linking them. There he sat fiddling with his wet towel, exact and remote. The woman felt a pleasant warmth and would have liked to capture the boy forever in that moment; she pulled the towel from his hands disapprovingly: that boy! But the boy gazed indifferently into the air, communicating with himself. He was always distracted. No one had ever really managed to hold his attention. His mother shook out the towel and her body blocked the room from his view: “Mama,” said the boy. Catarina spun around. It was the first time he’d said “Mama” in that tone of voice and without asking for anything. It had been more than a confirmation: Mama! The woman kept shaking the towel violently and wondered if there was anyone she could tell what happened, but she couldn’t think of anyone who’d understand what she couldn’t explain. She smoothed the towel vigorously before hanging it to dry. Maybe she could explain, if she changed the way it happened. She’d explain that her son had said: “Mama, who is God.” No, maybe: “Mama, boy wants God.” Maybe. The truth would only fit into symbols, they’d only accept it through symbols. Her eyes smiling at her necessary lie, and above all at her own foolishness, fleeing from Severina, the woman unexpectedly laughed aloud at the boy, not just with her eyes: her whole body burst into laughter, a burst casing, and a harshness emerging as hoarseness. Ugly, the boy then said peering at her.
“Let’s go for a walk!” she replied blushing and taking him by the hand.
She passed through the living room, informing her husband without breaking stride: “We’re going out!” and slammed the apartment door.
Antônio hardly had time to look up from his book — and in surprise saw that the living room was already empty. Catarina! he called, but he could already hear the sound of the descending elevator. Where did they go? he wondered nervously, coughing and blowing his nose. Because Saturday was his, but he wanted his wife and his son at home while he enjoyed his Saturday. Catarina! he called irritably though he knew she could no longer hear him. He got up, went to the window and a second later spotted his wife and son on the sidewalk.
The pair had stopped, the woman perhaps deciding which way to go. And suddenly marching off.
Why was she walking so briskly, holding the child’s hand? through the window he saw his wife gripping the child’s hand tightly and walking swiftly, her eyes staring straight ahead; and, even without seeing it, the man could tell that her jaw was set. The child, with who-knew-what obscure comprehension, was also staring straight ahead, startled and unsuspecting. Seen from above, the two figures lost their familiar perspective, seemingly flattened to the ground and darkened against the light of the sea. The child’s hair was fluttering . . .
The husband repeated his question to himself, which, though cloaked in the innocence of an everyday expression, worried him: where are they going? He nervously watched his wife lead the child and feared that just now when both were beyond his reach she would transmit to their son . . . but what exactly? “Catarina,” he thought, “Catarina, this child is still innocent!” Just when does a mother, holding a child tight, impart to him this prison of love that would forever fall heavily on the future man. Later on her son, a man now, alone, would stand before this very window, drumming his fingers against this windowpane; trapped. Forced to answer to a dead person. Who could ever know just when a mother passes this legacy to her son. And with what somber pleasure. Mother and son now understanding each other inside the shared mystery. Afterward no one would know on what black roots a man’s freedom is nourished. “Catarina,” he thought enraged, “that child is innocent!” Yet they’d disappeared somewhere along the beach. The shared mystery.
“But what about me? what about me?” he asked fearfully. They had gone off alone. And he had stayed behind. “With his Saturday.” And his flu. In that tidy apartment, where “everything ran smoothly.” What if his wife was fleeing with their son from that living room with its well-adjusted light, from the tasteful furniture, the curtains and the paintings? that was what he’d given her. An engineer’s apartment. And he knew that if his wife enjoyed the situation of having a youthful husband with a promising future — she also disparaged it, with those deceitful eyes, fleeing with their anxious, skinny son. The man got worried. Since he couldn’t provide her anything but: more success. And since he knew that she’d help him achieve it and would hate whatever they accomplished. That was how this calm, thirty-two-year-old woman was, who never really spoke, as if she’d been alive forever. Their relationship was so peaceful. Sometimes he tried to humiliate her, he’d barge into their bedroom while she was changing because he knew she detested being seen naked. Why did he need to humiliate her? yet he was well aware that she would only ever belong to a man as long as she had her pride. But he had grown used to this way of making her feminine: he’d humiliate her with tenderness, and soon enough she’d smile — without resentment? Maybe this had given rise to the peaceful nature of their relationship, and those muted conversations that created a homey environment for their child. Or would he sometimes get irritable? Sometimes the boy would get irritable, stomping his feet, screaming from nightmares. What had this vibrant little creature been born from, if not from all that he and his wife had cut from their everyday life. They lived so peacefully that, if they brushed up against a moment of joy, they’d exchange rapid, almost ironic, glances, and both would say with their eyes: let’s not waste it, let’s not use it up frivolously. As if they’d been alive forever.
But he had spotted her from the window, seen her striding swiftly holding hands with their son, and said to himself: she’s savoring a moment of joy — alone. He had felt frustrated because for a while now he hadn’t been able to live unless with her. And she still managed to savor her moments — alone. For example, what had his wife been up to on the way from the train to the apartment? not that he had any suspicions but he felt uneasy.
The last light of the afternoon was heavy and beat down solemnly on the objects. The dry sands crackled. The whole day had been under this threat of radiating. Which just then, without exploding, nonetheless, grew increasingly deafening and droned on in the building’s ceaseless elevator. Whenever Catarina returned they’d have dinner while swatting at the moths. The boy would cry out after first falling asleep, Catarina would interrupt dinner for a moment . . . and wouldn’t the elevator let up for even a second?! No, the elevator wouldn’t let up for a second.
“After dinner we’ll go to the movies,” the man decided. Because after the movies it would be night at last, and this day would shatter with the waves on the crags of Arpoador.
Beginnings of a Fortune
(“Começos de uma fortuna”)
It was one of those mornings that seem to hang in the air. And that are most akin to the idea we have of time.
The veranda doors stood open but the cool air had frozen outside and nothing was coming in from the garden, as if any overflow would break the harmony. Only a few glistening flies had penetrated the dining room and were hovering over the sugar bowl. At that hour, not all of Tijuca was awake. “If I had money . . .” thought Artur, and a desire to amass wealth, to tranquilly possess, gave his face a detached and contemplative look.
“I’m not a gambler.”
“Cut that non
sense out,” his mother replied. “Don’t start again with this money talk.”
Actually he didn’t feel like initiating any pressing conversations that might lead to solutions. A bit of the mortification from the previous night’s dinner conversation about his allowance, his father mixing authority with understanding and his mother mixing understanding with basic principles — a bit of the previous night’s mortification demanded, nevertheless, further discussion. It just seemed pointless to try to muster yesterday’s urgency. Every night, sleep seemed to answer all his needs. And in the morning, unlike the adults who awake dark and unshaven, he got up ever more fresh-faced. Tousled, but different from his father’s disarray, which suggested that things had befallen him in the night. His mother would also emerge from their bedroom a little disheveled and still dreamy, as if the bitterness of sleep had given her satisfaction. Until they’d had breakfast, all were irritable or pensive, including the maid. It wasn’t the right time to ask for anything. But for him, establishing his authority in the morning was a peacemaking necessity: whenever he awoke he felt he had to recuperate the previous days. So thoroughly did sleep sever his moorings, every night.
“I’m not a gambler or a big spender.”
“Artur,” said his highly exasperated mother, “I’ve got my hands full with my own worries!”
“What worries?” he asked curiously.
His mother looked at him as dryly as if he were a stranger. Still he was much more related to her than his father was, who, so to speak, had joined the family. She pursed her lips.
“Everyone has worries, dear,” she corrected herself, thereby shifting into a new relational mode, somewhere between maternal and instructive.
And from that point on his mother had taken the day in hand. The kind of individuality with which she’d awoken had dissipated and Artur now could count on her. Ever since he could remember, they either accepted him or reduced him to being merely himself. When he was little they used to play with him, tossing him up in the air, smothering him with kisses — and then all of a sudden they’d become “individuals” — they’d put him down, saying kindly but already intangible: “all done now,” and he’d go on vibrating with caresses, with so many bursts of laughter still to let out. Then he’d get cranky, kicking at one thing or another, seething with a rage that, nonetheless, would give way just then to delight, sheer delight, if they only wanted it.
“Eat up, Artur,” his mother concluded and now once more he could count on her. Just like that he grew younger and more misbehaved:
“I’ve got worries of my own but nobody cares. Whenever I say I need money it’s like I’m asking to go out gambling or drinking!”
“So now, mister, you admit it might be for gambling or drinking?” said his father striding into the room and making his way toward the head of the table. “Well, well! That’s some nerve!”
He hadn’t counted on his father coming home. Disoriented, but used to it, he began:
“But Papa!” his voice cracking in a protest that didn’t quite manage to be indignant. Counterbalancing things, his mother was already won over, calmly stirring her milk into her coffee, indifferent to a discussion that seemed to amount to little more than a few extra flies. She waved them off the sugar bowl with a languid hand.
“Time to get going,” his father cut him off. Artur turned to his mother. But she was buttering her bread, pleasurably absorbed. She’d escaped again. She’d say yes to everything, without paying any attention.
Shutting the front door, he again had the impression that they were constantly handing him over to life. That’s how the street seemed to greet him. “When I’ve got my own wife and kids I’ll ring the doorbell here and visit and it’ll all be different,” he thought.
Life outside the house was something else entirely. Besides the difference in light — as if only by leaving could he tell what the weather was really like and what course things had taken in the night — besides the difference in light, there was the difference in his manner. When he was little his mother would say: “out of the house he’s a darling, at home he’s a devil.” Even now, passing through the little gate, he’d become visibly younger and at the same time less childish, more sensitive and above all with not much to say. But with a tame interest. He wasn’t the type who struck up conversations, but if someone asked him as they did now: “Sonny, what side of the street is the church on?” he’d grow gently animated, tilt his long neck downward, since everyone was shorter than he; and answer engagedly, as if this entailed an exchange of courtesies and a source of curiosity. He watched intently as the old lady turned the corner in the direction of the church, patiently responsible for her route.
“But money is made to be spent and you know on what,” Carlinhos told him fervently.
“I want it to buy stuff,” he answered somewhat vaguely.
“A little bicycle?” Carlinhos scoffed with a laugh, flushed with mischief.
Artur laughed grimly, unamused.
Seated at his desk, he waited for the teacher to rise. Clearing his throat, a preface to the start of class, was the usual signal for the students to sit further back in their chairs, open their eyes attentively and think about nothing. “Nothing,” came Artur’s flustered reply to the teacher who was interrogating him with irritation. “Nothing” vaguely referred to prior conversations, to hardly definitive decisions about a movie that afternoon, to — to money. He needed money. But in class, forced to sit still and free from any responsibility, any desire was based on idleness.
“So you couldn’t tell right away that Glorinha wanted to be invited to the movies?” Carlinhos said, and they both looked curiously at the girl who was walking away clutching her binder. Thoughtful, Artur kept walking next to his friend, looking at the stones on the ground.
“If you don’t have enough money for two tickets, I’ll cover you, you can pay me back later.”
Apparently, as soon as he got money he’d be forced to use it for a thousand things.
“But then I’ll have to pay you back and I already owe Antônio’s brother,” he replied evasively.
“So what? what’s wrong with that!” his friend reasoned, practical and vehement.
“So what,” he thought with restrained fury, “so what, apparently, as soon as you get money everybody comes around wanting to use it, which explains how people lose their money.”
“Apparently,” he said diverting his anger from his friend, “apparently all you need are a few measly cruzeiros for a woman to sniff it out right away and fall all over you.”
They both laughed. After that he felt happier, more confident. Above all less oppressed by his circumstances.
But later it was already noon and every desire was becoming more brittle and harder to stand. All through lunch he deliberated bitterly over whether to go into debt and he felt like a broken man.
“Either he’s studying too hard or he doesn’t eat enough in the morning,” his mother said. “The fact is that he wakes up in a good mood but then comes back for lunch with that pale face. Right away his features look strained, that’s the first sign.”
“Oh it’s nothing, it’s just how the day wears on people,” his father said affably.
Looking at himself in the hallway mirror before leaving, he really did look just like one of those working fellows, tired and boyish. He smiled without moving his lips, contented in the depths of his eyes. But at the entrance to the theater he couldn’t help borrowing from Carlinhos, because there was Glorinha with a girlfriend.
“Do you guys want to sit in the front or the middle?” Glorinha was asking.
At that, Carlinhos paid for the friend’s ticket while Artur covertly took the money for Glorinha’s ticket.
“Apparently, the movies are ruined,” he said to Carlinhos in passing. He immediately regretted doing so, since his schoolmate hardly heard him, focused on the girl. There was no need to
cut himself down in the eyes of his friend, for whom going to the movies just meant getting somewhere with a girl.
As it turned out the movies were only ruined at first. His body soon relaxed, he forgot all about the presence beside him and started watching the movie. It was only near the middle that he became aware of Glorinha and with a sudden start stole a glance at her. He was somewhat surprised to realize she wasn’t quite the gold digger he’d taken her for: there was Glorinha leaning forward, mouth open in concentration. Relieved, he leaned back in his seat.
Later on, though, he wondered whether he had in fact been used. And his anguish was so intense that he stopped in front of a window display with a horrified expression. His heart pounded like a fist. Beyond his startled face, floating in the glass of the window, were assorted pans and kitchen utensils that he looked at with a certain familiarity. “Apparently, I’ve been had,” he concluded and couldn’t quite superimpose his rage over Glorinha’s blameless profile. The girl’s very innocence gradually became her worst fault: “So she was using me, using me, and then she just sat there all smug watching the movie?” His eyes filled with tears. “Ingrate,” he thought in a poorly chosen word of accusation. Since the word was a token of complaint rather than of anger, he got a little confused and his anger subsided. Now it seemed to him, considered from the outside and leaving out personal preference, that in this case she should have paid for her own ticket.
Complete Stories Page 20