Quiet Creature on the Corner

by João Gilberto Noll

  By this point Naíra was lighting a joint, she offered it to me—I thought it was a great idea to have a little toke, and I took three, four deep hits, feeling great, but I hadn’t come all this way just to get stoned—I was crazy for something I’d always been dying to see: a white cock going into a black woman’s pussy. I imagined that inside her I’d find a tone to shock a whitey like me, and the very bright moonlight would make clear every doubt and detail, and I confirmed once more that the moon was really full, resplendent even, and I put Naíra up against the remains of a wall that still endured in the middle of the lot, lifted her skirt, opened my pants—cum outside, Naíra said—and I plunged all the way into her wetness and she moaned, oh wow.

  The moon wasn’t as friendly as I’d hoped—I could barely see any parts of the creole woman who was now quivering and sliding down the wall until she fell on the dirt. And her skirt, now still, had flapped around the whole time, and my shirt was so long I’d had to keep pushing it out of the way with my hand—all that cloth didn’t let me see things very well. But, with respect to Naíra’s drowning wetness: it felt like she was pissing on my hard-on the whole time.

  Naíra stayed sitting in the dirt, I got down to see where she was, groping around—it was the wet dirt she seemed to like. You like it? I murmured. Like what? she asked. Sitting here, I replied.

  I might as well repeat that the moon was full, and can add that it was orange, and also add, or repeat, I don’t remember, that with the breeze you couldn’t exactly call it a hot night, only hot enough to wet through your shirt in the middle of the crowd at the rally, but Naíra…let’s go back. Naíra was sitting at my feet, saying something, telling me she lost her virginity when she was thirteen to a cracker German from São Sebastião do Caí: just think, to be born as black as I am and raised in the middle of those crazy blondes in Caí, well that’s how it was, my father worked at the slaughterhouse, when I was a girl I killed time on Saturday afternoons by going to see the cattle lined up, waiting their turn, and when they got close they’d start to moo desperately, that was my hobby, cattle moaning so loud you could hear them halfway around the world, to this day I can’t forget the sound of it, I’d crouch down by the fence for the whole afternoon looking at them, they wouldn’t let you get very close, they wouldn’t let anybody who didn’t work there jump the fence, Naíra, I said, Naíra, should we go? She said my fly was still open, which it was—I slipped my hand through my fly, gave a tug on my shirt so it wouldn’t stay sticking out of my pants, even down there my shirt was covered in cum, the moon full, the wind somewhat refreshing, pulling Naíra’s hand so she’d come with me, Naíra’s skirt all dirty, the two of us going through the hole in the hedge, looking around to make sure nobody saw, a whistling man coming down the street went by without looking and stopped on the corner without hesitation, as though that were his place, Naíra taking off her high heels, walking away barefoot without even saying goodbye, me seated in the car, picking out a tape from the glove box, a trusty Bach of Kurt’s, there wasn’t anything else, I put on the Bach, hit the gas, the moon full, December, the starry sky and everything else…

  What was he doing there, in the kitchen, with his arms crossed over the table, the low lamp brightening his rope-veined hands? What was he doing there, at that time of night, when I got back to the manor? What was he, Kurt, doing there like I’d never seen him before, it looked like he’d shrunk, yes, he who had been so imposing before was now a man diminished in stature, sitting there in the kitchen under the low lamp—ah, there was a glass, and beside it a bottle of a cachaça called Isaura, beside that a Coke, empty. Long live the samba-in-Berlin, I growled, pulling out the paper napkin with the poem that I’d kept in my pocket ever since we got on the plane in Galeão—a name for it still hadn’t come to me, I wondered if “Quiet Creature on the Corner” wasn’t the title the poem was asking for—Kurt followed me with his eyes, raised the glass like he was toasting me, ah, so he was drunk, I didn’t know how drunk, only the silence of the glass in his hand. I, in the doorway of the kitchen, thinking it was the first time I’d seen Kurt drunk, I stood in the kitchen doorway wondering if I really wanted to go in and continue with the farce that was unfolding, Kurt tremblingly raising the glass, toasting me, I couldn’t stand him drunk, not Kurt, I could tell the night was hanging by a thread, I could tell what I was observing was an invitation: an old man widowed just hours prior beckoning me into the tavern to keep him company, to drink, drink until dawn with an unhappy man, that was the idea—but if someday a miracle were to burst over me, that miracle would come from him: that was what I needed to believe in, a chance I couldn’t throw away because it would never be repeated, but I wondered, I wondered what this man could have besides the skeleton of a cow, a peeling mansion, a sad piece of land, whatever business Gerda had in Germany…

  I took a few steps, tried to say gently: let’s go to Germany, let’s not let Gerda’s death keep us from going.

  Kurt lowered the glass, said his plans were kaput, his body diseased—for years now—and from now on he didn’t think he’d be in any condition to travel, for a while now he hadn’t been able to urinate right, he showed me his swollen feet, darkly swollen, he was getting headaches that drove him near to the point of despair, said it was an abscess, definitely, but keep it a secret because I hate doctors, no doctor is going to touch me, they see everything here inside, and inside here there’s nothing worth seeing, what’s interesting lives out in the light of day, I’ll unbutton my shirt and show you the blotch on my chest, every day it spreads, for a long time I didn’t let Gerda see my bare chest, she didn’t know about the blotch, she always believed I was a strong man, but I’m not going to die, not now.

  I sat down at the other end of the table and thought, I don’t want this: What good did it do me to have him bail me out of jail just to get caught up in illness and old age? First Gerda, then Otávio, and tonight I get home and find him drunk and besides that all rotten, telling me he’s not going to die. What do I get out of this?

  Or, if I wasn’t going to get anything from it, why was he telling me all this? Wouldn’t I be better off among the prisoners, who lacked any appetite for reward? Or in that clinic where nobody demanded my company, where books of poems appeared without me asking for them, where I couldn’t expect any more than that, maybe I’d be better off there?

  But then came this man who brought me here to lick his wounds.

  I stuck my tongue out of my mouth, in the direction of my chin—for the first time in my life I thought that I had my own heart, which beat so many times per minute—I thought about touching the vein in my wrist, counting, I thought about the occult organization of those to whom obedience is owed, I thought that being here before this old man was to obey this same organization—my tongue was now prowling up above my mouth, frightened by the prickle of the mustache that had begun to form, my tongue was passing all around my mouth. Kurt had a dim stare, and I was sure that in that moment he couldn’t distinguish me from the surroundings, but a breath would bring the exact word to my lips, capable of reactivating the senses of the man in front of me, the exact word flowering on my lips would bring him back to my image, my company, and I’d try to swallow everything again, as if this were all a game of patience:

  “Kurt!” I called out.

  “Huh?” he tried to straighten up, “you’re back?”

  “Listen to the hoot of that owl,” I said devilishly.

  “The owl’s hoot, I’d like to hear the owl’s hoot,” he said, looking around, searching.

  I got up, opened a can of sardines. I went back to sit in front of Kurt. I emptied the can of every last morsel and wiped it clean with a hunk of bread.

  The dogs were barking in the distance—I had no interest in knowing where those beasts were imprisoned.

  He told me he’d heard a voice calling for Amália. He said: God knows who’d be calling her, maybe some stranger who’s trying to use her to take charge around here, invading little by little until n
ot a trace of me is left.

  “Plot by plot,” I remarked, without a clear idea of what the words meant.

  “Plot by plot,” he emphasized.

  Kurt seemed blind. He was staring at the refrigerator, but beneath his gaze the refrigerator appeared as a shape without any likeness, strange even to itself, on the verge of dissolving.

  I got up, took a few steps toward Kurt: if as long as all this lasted I stayed close, not letting anything escape me, yes, I wouldn’t regret it later—it was in this difficult thing that I needed to believe.

  Otávio appeared at the kitchen door. There was silence. Only Otávio’s huffy breathing. He was wearing pajamas that were all frayed at the edges, suspiciously stained, a beret on his head, I could tell now it was a uniform beret, a Brazilian Expeditionary Force beret.

  Kurt was still staring at the refrigerator—it was possible that he’d found a way to fill the dead hours before dawn.

  Otávio, in his dirty pajamas and expeditionary beret, and right behind him just then, right on his tail, appeared Amália with half-indecisive steps, Amália avoiding my eyes, as though she were trying to convey her shame—following Otávio out from some hiding place I might not know about, I thought to myself. Otávio looked at me and said:

  “I put on my BEF beret and came to get a drink of water.”

  “You sleep in that beret?” I asked.

  “No,” he was shaking like he wanted to laugh at my question, but was obviously too weak.

  “No?” I insisted.

  “It’s just a little obsession,” he said softly, “I bring the beret to bed with me. Ever since I got back from Italy, I go to sleep with the feeling that during the night the enemy will come and I need to be prepared.”

  I noticed the beret was really worn out, misshapen, saturated by the kind of care that children show the ragged things they won’t get rid of.

  Amália came out from behind him, filled a glass of cold water, and took it to Otávio, who was still standing in the same place, not having budged from the threshold.

  Maybe it was visible, the sacrifice that was being imposed on me by who knows whose designs—accepting the nauseating contact with these creatures until I was completely consumed—and so yes, instead of being a man ready to act.

  While Otávio was gulping down the water, Amália stared at me. She had a thread of blood along her lower lip. I saw Kurt staring at her, caught off guard. Otávio handed the glass back to her and also stared at her, until she asked if he wanted more.

  “No,” Otávio mumbled, now staring at me.

  No, I repeated without knowing why. Sometimes a word slips out of me like that, before I have time to formalize an intention in my head. Sometimes on such occasions it comes to me with relief, as though I’ve felt myself distilling something that only once finished and outside me, I’ll be able to know.

  Otávio doesn’t want any more, I concluded with an indecisive tone.

  “No,” Otávio reaffirmed.

  “No,” said Kurt, returning his gaze to the refrigerator.

  I yawned, looking at the white of the refrigerator.

  Then I belched a little from the sardines.

  I said goodnight and withdrew.

  As I made my way out I paid attention to the abnormal silence in the kitchen. I wanted to go back and see what was happening there inside the inertia the whole atmosphere seemed to have fallen into, but no, tomorrow I’d finish out another whole day with them, and if the three were to drown in that silence, then tomorrow I’d declare my conspiracy finished, finally, hallelujah.

  I closed the door to my room and I wasn’t sad. You might say that the two old men and I don’t know what else left me limp with sadness, but it was nothing like that: when I took off my clothes I caught a whiff of Naíra’s scandalous scent on my body, it was nice to slip my hand across myself and sniff it, as though that sultry odor were coming from my own skin.

  No, I wasn’t sad, and when I turned off the light something came over me: I fell to the floor on all fours and began to feel a strange momentum first to crawl, then drag, myself, in silence, as though the floor were a battlefield swamp, guessing where the next bomb would go off as they flashed closer and closer.

  In the morning, when I awoke, I would remember: I had submitted to this like a man, and I was prepared to master these events, which had confused me before.

  I could sense that someone had opened the door to my room, there was no noise, only the light from the hall washing over me a little—I considered sitting up and turning my head to look at whoever was watching me. But it wasn’t worth it: that presence was incapable of threatening my submerged state, bordering on sleep. I blacked out completely.

  I awoke on the hard floor, ran a hand through my sweat, looked at the closed door, suddenly remembered—but there was no sign of the presence that had come and gone.

  I got up, turned on the lights, and sat on the bed. I looked at my legs, which appeared to be reasonably muscular. I was a man, not the spring chicken that had come here with Kurt. I was a man and I was not in love. Naíra’s scent was still clinging to my body, I was indecisive about which tack to take while the old German still breathed, that protector of a whole man like me, with well-formed muscles—how I acquired them I honestly didn’t know—I knew now that I’d been a man a long time, without adequate conditions for taking a position as long as Kurt existed, but I’d be able to start doing things, making certain preparations, though I still couldn’t say what they’d be—I stared at the muscles in my leg, I was a man and I was not in love.

  I wore Naíra’s scent, and the best I could do was go back to sleep, this time on the soft mattress, hugging one of the pillows, the kind of sleep that maybe wouldn’t come from just lying in bed—maybe I’d rather just roll around and excite myself with Naíra’s fading scent, maybe just keep repeating that I was a man, and that the next day I’d see to things.

  I’d barely hit the mattress when I heard a sob, which seemed at first like it was coming from inside the pillow—a rough crying, not that of a woman—when I opened the door to Kurt’s room, he was in bed all curled up, crying: I need to man up, I need to man up, was what my head then began to hammer, but I needed to think of something else, urgently—get close to Kurt’s body, not rest until I’d made a clear gesture to this man whom I’d known to be so proud and who was now crying this rough sob.

  He had turned into a weak subject, old from head to toe, and now that the moment of my entrance had arrived, I didn’t know whether to divert or interrupt what was waiting there for me to find out.

  I sat on the bed. I thought about what I should do, if anything, or if all this wasn’t much more than a comedy I’d better avoid. The sobbing continued, without pause, and I said to myself: maybe I’ll lie down, stay lying here beside him and wait, because he’ll get tired of crying, oh yes, crying is tiresome. Soon after, he slowly calmed: I was lying beside him and he was calming down—I wonder if I’m hearing right, as Kurt began to breathe deeply like a cat demonstrating satisfaction with something nearby—Kurt purring at my side, until he ended up exposing something unappealing to me, that old purrer, lying at my side uncurling, turning to me, looking at me with his eyes open only to the inside, as though he didn’t think there was anything to look at in my place, as though my body were nothing more than a continuation of the bed.

  Suddenly Kurt whispered, Gerda. I pulled the cord on the lamp—I didn’t want to look at him, I wanted only to calm a vague sense of urgency inside, and tried to reflect: may he at least still have the time necessary for me to prepare a satisfactory life.

  Because I deserved at least that, a satisfactory life—in old age I’d sit and watch the misty fields of my patch of earth, throwing feed to the birds nearby, a blanket across my knees—flannel like the one I was now holding in Kurt’s bed.

  Kurt rolled onto my arm, and I thought about how useless I was with my arm already falling asleep beneath Kurt’s body, and he rolled up onto my chest, and his weight at
first almost suffocated me, but I breathed deeply, settled myself, opened my arms, I opened my clenched hands too, and then I saw Kurt’s face from very, very close, almost up against mine, and Kurt’s face had begun to cry again, this time silently, a whorl of wrinkles, a mute but enormous wail, huge, and I wouldn’t know how, even with him so old and weak, there was anything I could do to evaporate that elephantine wailing that flattened me against the mattress—where were my reasonable muscles?—I thought I’d been a man for a while, but now I’d fallen into the net, through a trapdoor, this weight didn’t even allow me the possibility of saying anything but a faint it’s okay, it’s okay, and Kurt began heaving, bringing up from within him something I couldn’t contain, his samba-in-Berlin breath right in my mouth, and I kept repeating it’s okay, it’s okay, I couldn’t even see how atrociously ridiculous it was or anything: only a daze that left me repeating it’s okay, it’s okay.

  Yes, at that moment I could say I was sad. Atop my body, Kurt was now just dead weight, pure survival, with his head buried in my shoulder, folded into the space where it met my neck. I was sad for having been a man who couldn’t oppose this advance, a full-grown man, with normal muscles, unable to react to that old mass, who couldn’t guarantee him anything but a roof, pocket money, tedious company, who guaranteed him nothing more than that.

  I took pains to disentangle myself from the defenseless weight, the old man’s life was regressing to the wet farts he was letting out, continuously, miasmas of samba-in-Berlin—I slowly opened the blinds, noticed day was about to break through, not a moment too soon, not a single bird was singing, not even the usual rooster, still only the crickets—what suggested day was about to break was an almost invisible vibration behind the hillside, which is to say that it was as cold as that time of day required, and I was, by instinct, unsurprised when I saw a bonfire near the lake, only later did I say to myself: Why is Amália setting another fire, throwing all those things in it to burn?