He’d say the letters were his, that they were his now, and he wouldn’t be lying. He would ask for the address, the return address that was never there, and the name, just an initial. He would say, correctly, that they were his now, they belonged to him, and what would the man on the other side say, as if in a mirror, he wondered. He was someone who left, because after all this was the man who had left, who had run away, running down the middle of the street, in the early morning, but not him, he’d stayed, he was there now, the open letters in his hands, in his hands, he would show them to him, what was now his, she was waiting for him, for him, and he would be the one to lie down in her lap, his head heavy as a stone in her lap after the battle, he’d say, looking at the other man like someone seeing himself and, at last, recognizing himself. He would say it was his, all those days, those words, that he’d been looking for her, right across the city, he’d been looking for her, him, the apartment, the movie, a cup of coffee, everything that belonged to him.
And so, when he took a good look at that man on the other side of the door, he would see nobody. He would ring the bell, the door would open, and there would be no one there.
When the man finally opened the door, it wasn’t him, that was the first thing he thought, surprised. He was in jeans and a T-shirt, any old man, a guy like so many others. This man gave him a look that was not exactly friendly. He was standing there on his doorstep, after all, early on a Sunday morning.
What letters are those, the man asked with a certain brusqueness. He had already explained on the intercom who he was and what he had come for, about the owner of the apartment, the address, the urgency, and he just stood there a few seconds, as though he himself didn’t know the right answer. What are those letters, he asked again. The letters weighed down his hands. He held out one of them, an envelope. Just one. The man took the envelope, examined it with curiosity, yet didn’t hide a certain impatience at the open envelope, somebody else’s letters. He wore an expression of distrust and reproach. He looked at the address, the sender, opened the letter, the letter a foreign body. He read it then and there, quickly, standing in front of him like a mirror, he thought. The man standing in front of him read the words he knew by heart, the pauses, the rhythms. He watched each gesture, each change of expression, however small, something that might give him away. He watched his hands, his fingers holding the paper, as if they meant something, and they did. He had read and knew every space, every line. And as the man read, it was as though the whole world were suspended; as he read, everything was still possible. He felt his breathing speeding up, his whole body contracting, his whole body waiting.
And when the reading was over, everything went back to regular existence.
“What does this mean?” The man held out the letter, the envelope, as though using the gesture to punctuate his question.
He was still standing there, unsure how to reply. Then he said:
“It’s a letter.”
“Yeah, that much I get.”
“It’s . . .”
“What does this mean?” His voice was turning impatient. “Some kind of joke?”
He rushed to make himself clear:
“No, of course not.”
The man looked at him suspiciously. He tried to explain:
“Is that not you? It’s got your name on it, the address . . .”
“Of course it’s me. But these letters aren’t for me. These letters, which—by the way—you’ve already opened, read, done whatever you wanted with, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I . . .”
“Well, I’m not the person you have to apologize to. These letters aren’t mine. In fact, I have no idea who she is, this woman.”
He looked at the letter one more time:
“It’s not even signed.”
“No, that’s right.”
“And now that I look more carefully, my name doesn’t appear in the letters, only on the envelope, or is it in the other letters?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Well then?”
He didn’t know how to reply.
“You don’t want to take a look at the others?”
“No. What for? I’m telling you they aren’t for me.” His voice brusque, irritated.
Then, more conciliatory:
“Look, it must be some joke, some hoax, whatever.”
“A joke?”
“Yeah, someone’s playing a joke on you, I guess.”
“On me?”
The man nodded. He kept insisting:
“You’re absolutely sure the letters aren’t yours?”
“Absolutely.”
“But this woman, you don’t know her?”
“No.”
“But don’t you have any idea who she might be? You only read the first letter, if you read the others I’m sure that maybe . . .”
What had been impatience was beginning to turn into aggression:
“Look, are you deaf? I’m telling you I don’t know her, I don’t know who she is, I’ve never seen her, I’m not interested, I have no idea at all. And I’ve got better things to do than to stand here reading this pile of letters some crazy woman has decided to write.”
He stood there, looking at him as if he were no longer there.
“Look, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got things to do. You’ve come here, I’ve seen you, I’ve explained things. Thank you for the trouble, thank you for coming, it’s all great, but I’ve got to go now.”
“Ah, of course . . .”
“Here’s your letter, look, it must have been some kind of joke.”
“Sure, a joke, of course.”
The man closed the door, and he stayed there a while, the door closed to him. As though there were still a possibility of the man changing his mind, his memory returning, something he’d forgotten to say, or at least a clue, a curiosity. He felt heavy, the stress was only now starting to show itself. His own thoughts, the difficulty in getting them to take shape, kept disappearing before they even became a series of words or an intention. Eventually he gave up. He turned with some effort and made his way slowly toward the elevator. The bundle of letters still in his hands. The bundle of open letters, the blue envelopes, from one moment to the next, had lost their meaning, the meaning he had given them. These past days without sleep. And now there was not even any more waiting to do.
In the meantime, the street was full of busy people and their newspapers and loaves of bread and milk they had just bought.
He was moving slowly. The elevator door opened and he got in, pressed a button, stepped out, walked past the doorman without looking to either side, past the metal fence at the entrance and out onto the street. There was a hubbub of cars and people. The hubbub of a Sunday that was finally starting. And he kept on walking, as though he couldn’t hear it, or as though the sounds reached him muffled, the pack of open letters weighing down on him, his steps weighing down on him, his steps getting slower and slower. On his face, an involuntary grimace, a vein standing out, his hair clinging to his forehead.
He had been carrying the letters, had spent the whole week waiting, endured the recent days’ insomnia, and something dissolved away, right there, in his hands. The letters and everything dissolved away into the distance. The landscape, the cars and the muffled noise of the cars, and the people and the muffled noise of the people around him, and everything around him, circling, circling, at that early time of the morning. How was it possible. That urgency. How was it possible. That encounter, that battle.
How was it possible, he thought.
About the Author and Translator
Carola Saavedra is the author of several novels in Brazilian Portuguese, including the award-winning Blue Flowers. She lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Daniel Hahn is an award-winning writer, editor, and translator with more than sixty books to his nam
e. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish, and French) have won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award and have been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among others.
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Blue Flowers Page 13