The End

by Fernanda Torres

  Norma was pretty, petite, and naive—a farmer’s daughter. They lived in Ribeirão Preto. She came to spend the holidays in Rio and my mother asked me to be her chaperone. I took her up to Sugarloaf Mountain, to the Christ statue, to the beach. I took her for ice cream, introduced her to my friends, and it was weeks before she gave me a kiss, lips only. I played the hopeless romantic, acting like I didn’t expect anything of her and that I was lovesick and depressed at the idea of her leaving. I was bored with the easy lays. They were vulgar, brassy, and most had been to bed with every guy I knew. Norma’s virginity became a fetish.

  It was impossible, back then, to exist without fulfilling certain rituals. Marriage was the main one. I recognized Norma’s potential to be a geisha. She’d be so thankful to me for rescuing her from the boondocks that she’d put up with anything in order to save her marriage. Norma was my ticket to freedom.

  My mother wept at the news.

  When I lifted up her wedding gown after the reception, completely off my face, Norma was shaking like a leaf. I became a beast and took the poor woman like a pagan bull. Then I collapsed beside her and snored. During the night I heard her crying. It’s okay, I thought, I’ll worry about it tomorrow. When I sobered up, I treated her better and life went smoothly. My outings with my friends were sacrosanct. The uncertain work hours, too. I wasn’t born a saint. Dad died and left me a bit of money. I bought the pad in Glória, a suburb a few towns away—my refuge.

  Norma went out a lot to take Inácio to the playground, the beach, the doctor. I’d arrive home in the morning, sleep until late and, just after dinner, I’d head out. We lived like that for two years without her noticing my absence. Women like Norma only have eyes for young children. Everything was just fine until Suzana came along.

  Someone told Norma’s mother that I was having an affair with a hippie from Bauru and she told her daughter. Norma was nine months pregnant. With a mother like that… She went into labor and almost lost the baby. Vanda was born purple; it was a nightmare. When she got back from the hospital, Norma was a mess. Her mother moved in to help out. Whenever she saw me she’d look away in indignation. I stayed in that hellhole until I couldn’t take it anymore, then I sent Inácio to boarding school, hired a nursemaid to look after Vanda, bid the mother-in-law farewell, and headed for Glória.

  Like the song: In Glória…

  Suzana in the morning, Suzana in the afternoon, Suzana at night. With Suzana I made up for lost time. Valdir, the diplomats, the benders, it all came back full strength. And better, because I wasn’t a kid anymore. The day I moved, Suzana prepared a surprise. She invited over two girlfriends from Bahia who helped me put the mess in order. Then they took off their clothes and fondled each other on the sofa while I watched.

  Suzana straddled me to bid me welcome. That woman was out of Ribeiro’s league. The only one up to the job was old Sílvio here.

  Hot flashes, palpitations, shaking. Parkinson’s. I need my medicine. That poison they call medicine. People are milling around. “Back off, for fuck’s sake! No, I don’t know my name. Stop bugging me. I’m not going to tell you my name!” A son of a bitch dressed as a zebra wants to help me up. “Leave me alone, quadruped! I’m fine here.” Where? Where am I? Why is there a guy dressed as a zebra trying to help me up? A Colombine… a tranny… where the fuck am I? Why is it so cold? “Zebra! Hey, zebra! Someone! Call an ambulance and tell them to put me out with propofol. Only propofol will do it! The one Michael used to take! Jackson… Five…” They’re gone. Thank God, they’ve left me in peace.

  My son dragged me off to hospital the day I showed up naked in the foyer, asking for a light. I wanted to light a cigarette. I didn’t do anything, just gave him my hand and let him lead me away. Parkinson’s does away with your initiative. I don’t know how Inácio can still feel anything for me, I did everything to make him hate me—I never did get it. At the clinic, they turned me inside out and gave me the verdict: from that point on, I’d have difficulty walking, talking, eating, thinking, sleeping, and fucking. Great. And you have to pay to hear shit like that. I was sorry I hadn’t gone to the hospital sooner. Some exams require anesthesia, the kind that you only get in the best specialized wards.

  The treatment for Parkinson’s is far worse than Parkinson’s itself. And there’s no cure. The drugs give you a racing mind, cold sweats, and brutal panic attacks. The doctor stamps the prescription and sends you home hand in hand with the Incredible Hulk. They’re a sick bunch, doctors. Carbidopa 25 mg, levodopa 250 mg, benserazide hydrochloride 25 mg. Before the pharmacist can give you the bundle, you have to show them your social security number, driver’s license, electoral enrollment card, police clearance, photograph. It’s easier to buy a gun and kill yourself. And that’s not counting the antidepressants, antispasmodics, antacids, and the like. I got hooked on all of them. After a month, along came the hallucinations, exhausting deliriums about cars driving backwards, cuts in time, and blackouts. A whole new world. Ah, if only Valdir were here! Poor guy, he only got to try amphetamines and alcohol, he missed the best of the party.

  “Get lost, drunk! Hound’s breath. Piss off, go! Take a hike! Where’s the zebra?” This year isn’t going to be… like the last… My god, the cops are breaking up the last Carnival blocs. What about you, Sílvio? You staying here? At least sit up, have some dignity. Giddiness, nosebleed, fucking shit coke. The ground’s wet. That’s better, head up. People don’t crowd around if you’re sitting. Boy, does Rio de Janeiro stink. It always has. “Piss off, mongrel, go pee on another lamppost, I was here first.”

  I gave up everything for Suzana—my friends, my job, I lost money, everything. She and Ribeiro were always at each other’s throats. Suzana spent her days hiding out in Glória with me, making up excuses to give up the night. Whenever the gang asked if I was going to introduce the mystery woman, I’d change the subject and Ribeiro would just about lose it. Suzana wasn’t the sort to sit around waiting for anyone. She’d leave without telling me, say she was going to meet me and not show up, threaten to make up with Ribeiro; she’d even say she was expecting his child just to make me suffer. Suzana was one of my own.

  When Ribeiro finally kicked her out, Suzana caught a cab straight to Glória. Brites came trailing after her. She was a plump blond from down south who arrived by bus with a stash of weed that she was going to sell in Rio. I told her she could stay if she gave me half in exchange for the rent. They had no other option, so they agreed. Ciro wanted to buy a third of what I had. We shared the bed, Suzana, Brites, and me. I told Ciro, Ribeiro, Álvaro, and Neto that I was involved with two gaúchas and that I was planning to move down south. Ribeiro shot me daggers from the other side of the table. He hadn’t seen Suzana in six months and it was obvious that one of the gaúchas was her.

  Suzana and Brites knew lots of people. All die-hard bisexuals, with a boring spiel about the world being divided into bis and the repressed. The commies didn’t spend their time on sex, unlike the bis, who fucked like crazy. Brites was in love with a fag from the Dzi Croquettes who I think was named Ciro, too. I watched that crap more than ten times. The two of them liked to play Elis Regina singing “Dois Pra Lá, Dois Pra Cá” on the turntable and dance up close, imitating Lennie Dale. It was all a big freak show; no one distinguished between male and female. Total anarchy.

  One day, Brites showed up with an invitation to a fancy party in a penthouse on Flamengo Beach. I thought she was bullshitting, but she explained that she was going to make a delivery and that the host, a millionaire painter, was going to let her in. The three of us went, along with thirty Gs of coke.

  We took the elevator up and rang the doorbell. The music was at full blast, no one came. After ten minutes of waiting, nothing, so we turned the door handle and discovered it was unlocked. We crossed the massive foyer and went down the main corridor, following the music and voices. When we turned into the living room, behind a marble column, there were enormous windows overlooking Guanabara Bay. A hundred naked people were en
tertaining themselves majestically. We entered the court of the Sun King, the splendor of Versailles. We didn’t leave until the next morning and walked through Aterro do Flamengo Park to get home. We had sex all afternoon. I was thankful for having been born when I was, in time to enjoy that sexual liberation. I was never the same again. I said to hell with Christian suffering and reinstated the glory, In Glória… of the old Roman Empire.

  The Roman Empire. What’s this guy in a toga doing in front of me? What’s he supposed to be?

  “What are you supposed to be?”

  “Hercules,” he says.

  “Where’s your club?”

  Hercules asks if I’ve got a light. Hideous breath.

  “Yes, Hercules, I’ve got a light. Have you got a cigarette?”

  We exchange pleasantries.

  “Just what I needed, this Marlboro. I’ve got some blow, want some?”

  “No thanks…” Hercules trails off.

  “What about poppers?”

  He wants poppers. Hercules takes a whiff and returns the flask, then off he goes down Rua Evaristo da Veiga, imitating a siren. Evaristo. What a fucked-up name.

  I don’t have legs anymore, or arms, I don’t even have a head, I’ve lost my extremities. Screw the taxi. I’m staying here. Tomorrow Suzana will come and get me. I wonder if she’s already gone. It wasn’t her, Sílvio, it was another girl, girls. Suzana never came back. Cry, go ahead and cry. You left three pussies in the apartment and went out to buy more blow. Suzana never showed her face again. God, I miss it all.

  I had an epiphany in the penthouse in Flamengo. I owe it to her. It was Suzana who made me understand that men were born to be free, and fuck, and come, and merge with other arms, asses, tits, thighs, and cocks. I don’t really remember what happened, just the ecstasy, the fulfillment. That night was a game changer, the peak of something that separated me definitively from Ciro, Neto, Álvaro, and Ribeiro. It was the end of my youth. In that neoclassical sitting room, with my tongue in Brites’s cunt, as she kissed Suzana, who was getting it from a blond guy with a beard, who was fondling the tits of the Japanese girl from São Paulo, who was admiring the jumble of bodies on the sofa in front of her, I thought: This is the pinnacle, the high point of my existence. I decided, there, to abandon once and for all the manual of good behavior, which stops you from having sex with your friend, your friend’s wife, your friend’s mother and father. A bunch of sissies who don’t know the pleasures of amorality.

  I wanted to seduce Ruth, Irene, and Célia. As well as Ribeiro, Álvaro, Neto and, of course, Ciro. I actually tried with Irene. She’d been dumped by Jairo, the club manager she’d been having an affair with. I sniffed out my prey, called her up under some pretext or other, invited her out for a coffee. When I rubbed my foot against hers under the table, she gave me a slap, stood, and left, offended. Frigid idiot.

  Her and all the rest of them. A tacky, uptight middle class, living under house arrest with their parakeets and their neutered dogs and cats. Tragic. The only thing worse is the crowd at the bank. They actually manage to exceed the bovine stupidity of my friends. Ricardo. Little Richie climbed the management ladder at the downtown branch. He was the incarnation of a new kind of employee, the economist just out of diapers, clean, pressed shirt buttoned up to his neck, tortoise-shell glasses, and a sense of ambition the size of Brazil’s financial crisis. Ricardo took office when the currency changed to the cruzado novo. He arrived kicking the door down. I don’t think he even had any pubes. He demanded returns. What returns?! The currency’s worth zip. We’re bankrupt, Ricardo! The government’s lassoing cattle in the pastures to fill supermarket shelves, and along comes this little brat wanting to be productive, demanding balance sheets, projections, and targets from public servants who have taken solemn vows, before the flag, to never lift a finger. Didn’t he get that that was the whole point? To get a job in public service and not have to strive for anything? Little Richie had hissy fits in the corridor and flapped his hands with dissatisfaction. I was the only thing standing him between him and Brasília, where he wanted to be a part of those shit plans for economic reform that always went to the dogs. My slowness was the direct enemy of his efficiency, my bare minimum, my not giving a shit about the brilliant future that lay before him. Go get fucked in that square little asshole of yours, Richie. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

  The suit, the business district, the watercooler talk, nights out with the four, it all seemed like a big failure. There was just Suzana, she was the only one who got me. Why bother with the rest? Why not do to them what I did to Norma? To Inácio and Vanda? Give them all the flick.

  Every three months or so, it was never exact, Brites would go to Porto Alegre to buy drugs from a Bolivian. Suzana suggested we go with her the next time. We could go to Gramado, drink chimarrão, go riding in the pampas. I said yes on the spot. In the deflated state I was in, it was my salvation. I told Little Richie that an uncle of mine was on death’s doorstep. “Soon, I’d have to make an urgent trip.” He was actually overcome with emotion at prospect of being rid of me. I really was going away on a trip, but I told my friends that I was moving down south. Even I was surprised by my lie. Why had I said that? Why did I need to sever ties with my chums like that? It was loathing. I hated that they wanted to be everything I despised. Nothing new was coming out of there. It was the end. One of many. I went on the trip, came back quietly, and asked for a transfer. Little Richie could barely hide his glee. He offered me the Niterói branch. Perfect; every day I would drive over the Rio-Niterói Bridge and wouldn’t run the risk of bumping into them. I didn’t want to leave Rio. Niterói was as far as I intended to go.

  The Bolivian took his time to make contact. The wait gave me time to think. I couldn’t just up and leave. I needed to make a mark, provide proof of all they were losing by choosing normality. My chance came at the birthday party of a socialite in Leme. It was a golden opportunity for me to exit in style, leaving a lesson for those ignorant plebs, slave to their shitty little lives, barely managing to juggle marriage, work, and whiskey on the weekends. The party would be the beginning of something that would end in an orgy, in Glória, at dawn.

  Brites prepared the arsenal and she and Suzana arranged to spend the night elsewhere; they knew how important that night was to me. I really wanted Suzana to be with me, but Ribeiro wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I looked after them all, handing out spirits, narcotics, and speed to warm up. I managed it until we were kicked out by the bodyguards. Neto had taken off his clothes to pay homage to the birthday girl. He kept quiet about what he had between his legs, but when he got drunk he insisted on displaying the goods.

  On the sidewalk, I finished off the rest of what I had in my pocket and suggested we head to Glória. Glória… I was heralded as a hero. We got into our cars with some bimbos and I don’t remember how, but Ribeiro ended up in the passenger seat of mine. I only noticed he was there when I made a U-turn in front of the Hotel Glória. I’d been concentrating on the steering wheel while the brunette with fake eyelashes stuck her tongue in my ear. Ribeiro asked me point-blank if I’d fucked Suzana. He was curt, irritated. I laughed. What else could I do? I was headed for the grand finale of my farewell ceremony—we were about to have a fuck fest in Glória—and he comes out with, “Did you fuck Suzana?” Even Norma would have used the occasion better. Ribeiro opened the door of the moving car, the brunette screamed, and he threw himself out. I was going slowly. I drove off with the door open and didn’t waste another two seconds on the dickhead.

  At the pad, Ciro gave it to the Argentinean babe in the bedroom. I thought it was rude. It was my going away party, for fuck’s sake, he could at least have invited me to watch. Neto must have backed out on the way there. He had the biggest guilt complex, by far, and was incurably, earnestly monogamous. Álvaro, obviously, couldn’t get it up. Ciro was the only one who called the next day to wish me luck.

  I went horseback riding, dropped acid, stuffed my face with barbecued meats,
pulled all-nighters drinking chimarrão and bought three ponchos: one for me and one for each of the girls. We fucked a lot underneath them since it was cold; it was really good. It was the childhood of my old age.

  Because no one ever went to Glória, I didn’t have to change my routine. I drove over the bridge to Niterói from Monday to Friday and, from Friday to Sunday, hung out with the camp crowd from the theater, Brites’s friends. The other four were dead to me, along with my salad days.

  Where am I now? On Evaristo da Veiga. What kind of fucked-up name is that? Are my teeth chattering from the cold, or is it the Parkinson’s? It’s the Parkinson’s. My doctors told me to cut out the excesses. My liver, pancreas, gall bladder, lungs, brain, they’re all hanging in there by the skin of their teeth. Mephisto comes to collect. What a pretty little devil… “Stick me with your horns! Stick me with your horns!” She didn’t hear me.

  * * *

  Brites was arrested on one of her many trips to and from Porto Alegre. She filled two suitcases with coke from the Bolivian and thought it was safer to come by bus, as she’d had two close calls at the airport and wasn’t taking any more chances. Didn’t do her much good. She rode for fourteen hours on a semi-sleeper only to end up detained at a police post on the Paraná–São Paulo state border. It would have been less painful by plane. She’d have served her sentence in Rio and Suzana wouldn’t have gone after her. Brites was transferred to a prison in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul. Suzana was devastated. She packed her bags and left for Pelotas that very night. She loved Brites. And I was alone again.

  The incident in the foyer made my son want to be the father I’d never been to him. He hired a psychiatrist, a physiotherapist, a speech therapist—it was awful. I told him I preferred the money to that endless trial, but he refused and paid the specialists himself. Big bucks down the drain. Inácio tried to control me in every way he could, until I put my foot down. I explained to my saintly son that we were cut from a different cloth, as they say in English. That the neat little life he dreamed of for himself was death to me. That I had supported him, working for that bank my whole life, and now it was his obligation to help me with my vices. I said that I was grateful for the health insurance, but I was no one without my blow, my whiskey, and my weed. That if I had to live sober I’d rather he shot me dead right then and there and sent me off to Hell. Or are you under some illusion that Heaven awaits your beloved father, Inácio?