— Look, Macabéa . . .
— Look at what?
— No, my God, not “look” to see something, “look” when you want someone to listen! Are you listening to me?
— Every word, every word!
— Every word of what, my God, if I still haven’t said anything! Anyway look, I’m going to treat you to a coffee at the bar. You want one?
— Can it be with milk?
— It’s the same price but if it’s extra you pay the difference.
Macabéa didn’t cost Olímpico a cent. Only this time when he bought her a coffee with milk which she stuffed with so much sugar that she almost threw up but managed to hold it down and not disgrace herself. She put in a lot of sugar to take advantage of the opportunity.
And once they went to the zoo, she paying her own way. She was shocked to see the animals. She was afraid and didn’t understand them: why did they live? When she saw the compact, thick, black and chubby mass of the rhinoceros which was moving in slow motion she was so afraid she wet her pants. The rhinoceros looked to her like an error of God, please forgive me, okay? But she hadn’t thought of any God, it was just a way of. By the grace of some deity, Olímpico didn’t notice and she said to him:
— I’m wet because I sat on the wet bench.
And he didn’t notice a thing. She automatically prayed in thanks. It wasn’t thanks to God, she was just repeating what she learned in childhood.
— The giraffe is so elegant, isn’t it?
— Bullshit, animals aren’t elegant.
She envied the giraffe that hovered so far in the air. Having seen that her comments on animals displeased Olímpico she sought another subject:
— On Clock Radio they used a word I thought was a little weird: mimetism.
Olímpico looked at her warily.
— Is that the kind of thing a virgin girl ought to be saying? And what’s the use of knowing too much? The Mangue is full of girls who asked too many questions.
— Is the Mangue a neighborhood?
— It’s a bad place, just for men. You won’t understand but I’ll tell you something: you can still get women cheap. You didn’t cost me much, just a coffee. I won’t spend another cent on you, okay?
She thought: I don’t deserve for him to buy me anything because I’ve peed in my pants.
After the rain in the zoo, Olímpico changed: he lost his temper. And without realizing that he himself was a man of few words like a man ought to be, he said to her:
— But for goodness sake! You never open your trap and don’t have anything to say!
Then devastated she said to him:
— Look, the Emperor Charlemagne was called Carolus in his own land! And did you know that flies travel so fast that if they flew in a straight line they could go around the whole world in 28 days?
— That’s a lie!
— No it’s not, I swear by my pure soul I learned that on Clock Radio!
— Well I don’t believe you.
— May I drop dead this minute if I’m telling a lie. May my father and mother go to hell if I’m tricking you.
— You just might drop dead. Listen here: are you just pretending to be an idiot or are you actually an idiot?
— I’m not sure what I am, I think I’m a little . . . what? . . . I mean I’m not quite sure who I am.
— But you know your name is Macabéa, at least?
— That’s true. But I don’t know what’s inside my name. I only know that I never was important . . .
— Well mark my words that my name will be in all the papers and everybody will know it.
She said to Olímpico:
— Do you know that on my street there’s a rooster that sings?
— Why do you lie so much?
— I swear, may my mother drop dead if it’s not true!
— But didn’t your mother already die?
— Oh, that’s right . . . how do you like that . . .
(But what about me? What about me telling this story that never happened to me or anyone I know? I’m astonished to know the truth so well. Could it be that my painful task is to guess in the flesh the truth that nobody wants to see? If I know almost everything about Macabéa it’s because I once caught the eye of a jaundiced northeastern girl. That glance gave me every inch of her. As for the Paraíban, I must have made a mental photograph of his face — and when you pay attention spontaneously and virgin of impressions, when you pay attention the face says almost everything.)
And now I’m erasing myself again and returning to these two people who inevitably were somewhat abstract beings.
But I still haven’t explained Olímpico very well. He came from the backlands of Paraíba and had a toughness that came from the passion for his wild land cracked by drought. He’d brought with him, bought in a market in Paraíba, a tin of perfumed Vaseline and a comb, as sole and exclusive possessions. He greased his black hair till it was soaked. He never suspected that Rio girls were disgusted by that fatty treacle. He’d been born more charred and hard than a dry tree branch or a rock in the sun. He was more susceptible to survive than Macabéa because it wasn’t by chance that he had killed a man, a rival of his, in the back of beyond, the long jackknife entering softly softly the backwoodsman’s liver. He had kept this crime an absolute secret, which gave him the power a secret gives. Olímpico was tough as a prizefighter. But he broke down during funerals: sometimes he went three times a week to the funerals of strangers, whose obituaries appeared in the papers and especially in “O Dia”: and his eyes filled with tears. It was a weakness, but who doesn’t have one. A week without a funeral was an empty week for this man who might have been crazy but knew very well what he wanted. So actually he wasn’t crazy at all. Macabéa, unlike Olímpico, was a cross between “what” and “what." In fact she seemed to have been born of some vague idea of her starving parents. Olímpico at least stole whenever he could and even from the night watchman at the construction site where he slept. Having killed and stealing made him more than a random occurrence, they gave him some class, they made him a man whose honor had been defended. He had an additional advantage over Macabéa because he had great talent for quickly drawing perfect ridiculous caricatures of the pictures of powerful people in the papers. It was his revenge. The only nice thing he did for Macabéa was tell her he’d find her a job in the metal factory when she got fired. For her the promise was a scandal of joy (explosion) because in the metal factory she’d find her only current connection with the world: Olímpico himself. But Macabéa in general didn’t worry about her own future: having a future was a luxury. She’d heard on Clock Radio that there were seven billion people in the world. She felt lost. But with the tendency she had to be happy she immediately consoled herself: there were seven billion people to help her.
Macabéa loved horror films and musicals. She especially liked when the women were hanged or shot through the heart. She didn’t know that she herself was a suicide although it had never crossed her mind to kill herself. Because life was more tasteless to her than old bread with no butter. Whereas Olímpico was a certified and vital demon and from him children would be born, he had the precious semen. And as was already said or not said Macabéa had ovaries shriveled as a cooked mushroom. Ah if only I could grab Macabéa, give her a good bath, a plate of hot soup, a kiss on the forehead as I tucked her into bed. And cause her to wake up and find simply the great luxury of living.
Olímpico in fact showed no satisfaction in dating Macabéa — th
at’s what I’m discovering now. Olímpico might have seen that Macabéa didn’t have the strength of breeding, she was a subproduct. But when he saw Glória, Macabéa’s coworker, he immediately realized she had class.
Glória had a good Portuguese wine in her blood and also a way of swinging her hips when she walked thanks to some hidden African blood. Though she was white, she had the strength of mixed race. She bleached egg-yellow the frizzy hair whose roots were always black. But even bleached she was still a blonde, which made her a step up for Olímpico. Besides having a great advantage a northeasterner couldn’t overstate. Because Glória has said to him, when she’d been introduced to him by Macabéa: “I was born and bred in Rio!” Olímpico didn’t know what “born and bred” meant since that was an expression that dated to Glória’s father’s youth. The fact that she was a carioca made her belong to the longed-for clan from the South. Seeing her, he immediately guessed that, though ugly, Glória was well fed. And that made her quality goods.
In the meantime his relationship with Macabéa had fallen into a tepid routine, not that it ever could have been described as hot. He often didn’t show up at the bus stop. But at least he was still a boyfriend. And all Macabéa thought about was the day he’d want to get engaged. And married.
Later, from asking around, he learned that Glória had a father, mother and a hot meal at the same hour every day. That made her first-quality goods. Olímpico was ecstatic when he learned that her father worked in a butcher’s shop.
From her hips you could tell Glória was made for childbearing. Whereas Macabéa seemed to have in herself her own end.
I forgot to say that it was really alarming that from Macabéa’s almost parched body so vast was her almost unlimited breath of life and as rich as of that of a pregnant maiden, impregnated by herself, by parthenogenesis; she had schizoid dreams in which giant antediluvian animals appeared as if she’d lived in the most remote epics of this bloody earth.
It was then (explosion) that suddenly the relationship between Olímpico and Macabéa came to an end. A perhaps odd relationship but at least a distant relative of some pale love. He told her he’d met another girl and it was Glória. (Explosion) Macabéa saw perfectly well what happened between Olímpico and Glória: their eyes had kissed.
Looking at Macabéa’s slightly too inexpressive face, he almost wanted to say something nice to take away the sting of saying goodbye forever. And as he was leaving he said:
— You, Macabéa, are like a hair in the soup. Nobody feels like eating it. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but I’m being honest. Did I hurt your feelings?
— No, no, no! Oh please I want to go! Please just say goodbye!
It’s better for me not to speak of happiness or unhappiness — it provokes that swooning longing and lilac, that violet perfume, the chilly waters of the gentle tide in foam upon the sand. I don’t want to provoke because it hurts.
Macabéa, I forgot to say, had an unhappiness: she was sensual. How could it be that in that cavity-ridden body so much lasciviousness could fit, without her even knowing she had it? Mystery. She had, at the beginning of the relationship, asked Olímpico for a 3x4 snapshot in which he was laughing to show off his gold tooth and she got so excited that she prayed three Our Fathers and two Hail Marys to calm down.
When Olímpico dumped her, her reaction (explosion) came suddenly unexpected: with no warning she started laughing. She was laughing because she forgot how to cry. Surprised, Olímpico, not understanding, chuckled a few times.
The two stood there laughing. Then he had an intuition which ended up being an act of kindness: he asked if she was laughing out of nervousness. She stopped laughing and said very, very tired:
— I don’t really know . . .
Macabéa understood one thing: Glória was a fanfare of existence. And it must have been all because Glória was fat. Fat had always been Macabéa’s secret ideal, since in Maceió she’d heard a guy say to a fat girl walking down the street: “your flesh is fresh!” From then on she’d aspired to fleshiness and that was when she made the only request of her life. She asked her aunt to buy her cod-liver oil. (Even then she had a thing for ads.) Her aunt asked her: you think you’re some rich man’s daughter wanting luxuries?
After Olímpico dumped her, since she wasn’t a sad person, she tried to go on as if she hadn’t lost anything. (She didn’t despair, etc. etc.) And anyway what could she do? Since she was chronic. And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn’t have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.
I forgot to say the day after he dumped her she got an idea. Since nobody ever gave her a party, much less got engaged to her, she’d give a party for herself. The party consisted in buying without necessity a new lipstick: not pink like the one she had, but bright red. In the office bathroom she painted her lips and even beyond so her thin lips would get that weird thing like Marylin Monroe. Once she was done, she stood looking in the mirror at the figure that in turn looked back at her astonished. Because instead of lipstick it looked like thick blood had spurted from her lips from a tooth-breaking flesh-busting sock in the mouth (small explosion). When she went back to her desk Glória laughed at her:
— Did you lose your mind, girl? Painting your face like you’re possessed? You look like the kind of girl who goes with soldiers.
— I’m a virgin! I don’t go with soldiers or sailors.
— Sorry for asking: does being ugly hurt?
— I never thought about it, I think it hurts a little. But I should ask you if you hurt because you’re ugly.
— I’m not ugly!!! — Glória howled.
After that peace was restored and Macabéa continued to enjoy thinking about nothing. Empty, empty. As I said before, she didn’t have a guardian angel. But she got on the best she could. Beyond that, she was almost impersonal. Glória asked her:
— Why do you ask me for so much aspirin? I’m not complaining, even though it costs money.
— It’s so I won’t hurt.
— What? Huh? You’re hurting?
— I hurt all the time.
— Where?
— Inside, I can’t explain.
Besides she increasingly couldn’t explain herself. She transformed herself into organic simplicity. And she’d figured out how to find in simple and honest things the grace of a sin. She liked to feel time passing. Although she didn’t have a watch, or perhaps for that very reason, she savored the greatness of time. She was supersonic in life. Nobody noticed that with her existence she was breaking the sound barrier. For other people she didn’t exist. Her only advantage over others was knowing how to swallow pills without any water, dry. Glória, who gave her aspirin, admired this a lot, which gave Macabéa a nice feeling of warmth in her heart. Glória warned her:
— One day the pill will stick in your throat and you’ll be running around like a chicken with a half-cut neck.
One day she had an ecstasy. It was in front of a tree that was so big she could never wrap her arms around its trunk. But despite the ecstasy she did not abide with God. She prayed indifferently. Yes. But the mysterious God of other people gave her a state of grace. Happy, happy, happy. Her soul almost flying. And she’d also seen a flying saucer. She’d tried to tell Glória but couldn’t, she didn’t know how to talk, and to tell her what? The air? You can’t tell everything because the everything is a hollow nothing.
Sometimes grace grabbed her in the middle of the office. So she’d
go to the bathroom to be alone. Standing and smiling until it passed (it strikes me that this God was extremely merciful to her: He gave her what He took away). Standing thinking of nothing, eyes glazed over.
Not even Glória was a friend: just a coworker. Chubby, white, dull Glória. She smelled weird. Because she didn’t wash much, that was for sure. She bleached the hair on her hairy legs and on the armpits she didn’t shave. Olímpico: is she blonde down there too?
Toward Macabéa, Glória had a vague feeling of maternity. Whenever Macabéa looked too shriveled, she said:
— And that look is because?
Macabéa, who never got annoyed with anyone, cringed at Glória’s habit of leaving sentences unfinished. Glória used a strong sandalwood cologne and Macabéa, who had a delicate stomach, almost threw up when she smelled it. She said nothing because Glória was her only connection with the world. That world had been composed of her aunt, Glória, Mr. Raimundo and Olímpico — and very distantly the girls she shared a room with. To make up for it she identified with the picture of the young Greta Garbo. To my surprise, since I didn’t imagine Macabéa could feel what a face like that was saying. Greta Garbo, she thought without explaining herself, that woman must be the most important woman in the world. But what she really wanted to be wasn’t the haughty Greta Garbo whose tragic sensuality was on a solitary pedestal. What she wanted, as I said, was to look like Marylin. One day, in a rare confessional moment, she told Glória who she wanted to be. And Glória burst out laughing:
— Her, Maca? Get real!
Glória was all happy about herself: she thought she was really something. She knew she had the swinging groove of the mulata, a beauty spot painted next to her mouth, to make herself look tastier, and a downy upper lip that she bleached. Her mouth was blonde. It looked like a moustache. She was a cunning vixen but had a good heart. She felt bad for Macabéa but let her deal with it, who forced her to be such a moron? And Glória thought: I’ve got nothing to do with her.
The Hour of the Star () Page 6