“. . . what’s up . . . don’t you recognize me!”
But he laughed happy into the air . . .
And suddenly time raced by with the breeze over the countryside, they walked and were already at the Gate.
They made sure no train was coming, the wind from the rails hit them in the face — they crossed quickly.
Time was racing by and it seemed to Lucrécia that the house across the way was undoubtedly tall, the pavement smooth, the stone dark, it seemed to her that the sewer was shining — and the girl no longer knew how to see! For an instant she broke her caution and looked immodestly at the stone, the house, this world. Even without holding herself back, she could see only the narrow street, the stone pavement, windows . . . She wanted at least to push into that same instant the dress and the hat, and compose São Geraldo, but she put it off for Felipe, and both were walking excited, silent and fatigued. Perseu had taken off his hat because of the sun and was clasping it to his chest. From a certain distance they looked like street musicians who’d come from very far away — and whatever other people could see was making Lucrécia Neves walk full of pride, showing herself off; the young man’s lips were opening dry and laughing. How happy they were! the breeze was blowing over the township.
Lucrécia Neves might have wanted to express it, imitating with thought the wind that knocks on doors — but she was missing the name of things. She was missing the name of things, but behold, look here, there, behold the thing, the church, the doves flying over the Library, the salamis in the doorway of the store, the burning glass of a window signaling insistently to the hill . . .
The two of them standing watching. And the hardness of things was the girl’s most clipped way of seeing. From the impossibility of overcoming that resistance was emerging, in green fruit, the tang of firm things over which was blowing with heroism that civic wind that makes flags flutter! the city was an unconquerable fortress! And she trying at least to imitate what she was seeing: things were practically right there! and there! But you had to repeat them. The girl was trying to repeat with her eyes whatever she was seeing, that would yet be the only way of taking possession. Her voice couldn’t take it and was fraying, her hair sticking out from under her stiff hat — and entering Market Street, the wind lifting her skirt, she clasping her hat with both hands — everything that was resting as trash in the dry gutters was awakened by the wind; despite the firmness, how reversible the township was just from the wind! a little dark bird flew off tweeting with fright — the girl tried to take advantage of the quick surrender of the streets and enter into intimacy with whatever the neighing horses were sensing in the township. But the only means of contact was looking and she saw the soldiers on the corner. Ah, the soldiers.
“Just look at the soldiers, Perseu,” said Lucrécia.
Her way of seeing was crude, hoarse, clipped: the soldiers!
But she wasn’t the only one seeing. In fact a man was passing by and looked at her: she had the feeling he’d seen her narrow and elongated, with a too-small hat: as in a mirror. She batted her eyelids disturbed, though she didn’t know what shape she’d choose to have; but whatever a man sees is a reality. And without realizing it the girl took the shape that the man had perceived in her. That’s how things were built. She turned all modest toward Perseu — like an elongated person — reaching out, removing a bit of lint from his jacket. She investigated Perseu’s face, looking at him insistently as the man who’d walked by would understand what she looked at.
Perseu and Lucrécia stared at each other . . .
Perseu then faced the store, not right afterward — trying to move his gaze slowly so as not to take it blatantly off her. He was polite. He even started whistling a bit. But the moment was getting more and more unsustainable, what had happened? she said with humility and dream:
“What a windy day, huh.”
The fellow stopped whistling immediately and looked at the day. For no reason he faked a suffocating cough and when at last he got control of it spoke with a certain importance.
“Yeah, huh.”
The dog was running down the sidewalk with weak paws, trotting, wagging its tail in light. Perseu awkwardly frightened it off — his beardless face smiling out of shame and delight at being such a coward. Big, polite. He could have grown his hair out, full of curls; he knew how to make verses and was Catholic:
“So big and afraid of a dog,” she said rudely looking him over with curiosity and the street organ on the corner began to play Toselli’s Serenade heating up the street. The musician was turning the crank and the machine was swallowing the music with difficulty and care — the music was taking on several quick object-like shapes . . . would everything that tumbled into that city materialize into a thing? then the girl stopped and grabbed her purse from the ground. Perseu tried out of revenge to show that he was well aware that she walked around with a purse full of useless things, wilted flowers from the dance, papers; he tried with wisdom to show at least that he was seeing because one couldn’t even understand it.
But when Lucrécia lifted her head from the ground, light was emerging from her hair . . . some thing turning around and showing its good side; her eyes, disappointed for a second, were releasing the same empty light as her hair, and stopped looking in order to allow themselves to be seen: Perseu tried quickly at least to see. Also from the girl’s stained lips a breath of brightness was being born . . . whatever she possessed was slipping through fingers — so lovely . . . she looked like she didn’t bathe, her nails and neck of a dubious color, standing in the air — so lovely, he thought desperately, so lovely . . . she seemed blind.
“I really like you!” the fellow said stubbornly, his forehead lowered to charge.
She turned around with harshness and extreme joy:
“You know I don’t like that sort of thing!” she said coquettishly, taking offense.
Perseu looked at her ashamed laughing, and she started to laugh too. And they laughed so much that they choked for real or were faking it and started coughing. Lucrécia Neves had stopped and was wiping her eyes, red all over, disheveled: he saw quite well . . . Oh, loving her was a permanent effort — he stopped serious, bathed by the palest sun, peering into the distance with dissatisfaction. The young man’s eyes were open. His pupils dark and golden. There was a solitude forever in the way he was standing. Then she said:
“Let’s go,” she said sweetly also because she was already starting to cheat on him.
At the stairs of the house where the girl lived, he said he’d wait for her to go up.
“No,” she answered all intimate and scheming, “I’m the one waiting for you to go, understand . . .”, she was speaking with great politeness trembling all over in her hat but looking him in the eye with concern: she didn’t want the trouble of going upstairs just to come back down. But he laughed extraordinarily flattered:
“Well then, farewell!”
“Salutations,” she said suffocating with laughter.
The fellow blushed:
“Salutations,” he said without looking at her. He went off slowly trying to be elegant in Lucrécia’s eyes but you could tell he’d lost his natural way of walking. The girl watched him wave in relief as he turned onto the first street. She herself answered by moving her fingers above her hat. Then she stopped smiling, dried up, inexpressive for a moment. She waited a bit.
She leaned forward until she could see the clock on the column. She was waiting thoughtfully, it was hard to get ready once again. Finally, looking both ways, she went out.
The movement in the streets had calmed down and the afternoon light was sharp and discolored. On the corner the wagon seemed fantastical . . . the ropes and wheels in a breath of light. The girl’s face was moving ahead gently, watchful. You could already even glimpse the stone square full of hitched horses. Next to the column with the clock she stood waiting. With her thoughts blind and c
alm due to the kind of light.
The people in the distance were already black. And between the flagstones the strips of earth were dark. Lucrécia Neves was waiting, aerial, peaceful. Adjusting without looking the straps of her dress. The square. What a sight. What a threshold. She didn’t cross it. The cooler air was turning her hands white and the girl seemed to be rejoicing at that: she’d glance at them now and then, precise. Above the shops the same insignificant and unmistakable expression that belonged to Perseu was wandering — the girl recognized it: it was São Geraldo at dusk. She was waiting.
The township too, at that hour, had reached its final stage. It would now be impossible to replace a door, a lamppost. Or the equestrian statue. Or one of the impersonal men who were passing by without touching the ground. The panting of the horses was making life precious all around . . . Standing upright might knock off balance the girl who’d shift the position of her feet from time to time: she too with a superficial sensitivity that in another inwardly turned second was becoming unreachable; sometimes she’d touch her hair and tremble shivering at herself, the motionless horses would beat their hooves for a second on the colorless stone. The girl’s face wasn’t saying anything. Her mouth hard, delicate. It was the end of the day.
Eventually Felipe showed up in his uniform, his face red. The closer he came in the light, the more impossible it became to look at him. Until getting close and she no longer seeing him, he became a warrior. She shook his hand with the shyness that the distance between their meetings had created. But the lieutenant quickly destroyed the girl’s submissive unfamiliarity by taking her arm, invisible such that she wasn’t looking, he almost mute, such that she was already hardly hearing:
“My beauty in blue, let’s go see the water right away since I have to go to bed early, tomorrow is a training day. And to top it off this devil of a horse is giving up.”
That’s how a man spoke. And Lucrécia smiled with displeasure and polite lividness, already possessed by the light of the township. She let herself be monotonously led once more through the Gate toward the stream he was calling water — behind the railroad. Where they’d sit on the rock. Felipe was talking and asking questions invisible, the girl guessing that he’d twist his neck now and then, in a gesture that would give him great beauty and extra-human freedom: a new habit of his after he’d finally been admitted to the cavalry; and she was also trying to imitate him with watchfulness, imitating a horse. After he’d changed weapons, everything that was bothering him was easily chased off, Lieutenant Felipe now looked like he was always on horseback. That’s how he’d lead the girl away from people, both of them riding the same steed through the ever more invisible crowd. That familiar and distant being, that outsider quick on the draw, well then a warrior! with mild sleepiness the girl was enjoying the company of a lieutenant. If the soldier had so desired, Lucrécia Neves would bind herself to him, if not out of love, at least out of a limitless admiration to which she was susceptible, sinking into whatever sweetness and listening she had inside her — for that was her nature. But the lieutenant didn’t want that, he was free. And just as the girl had never truly looked at him, afraid to muddy such a clear surface, he too almost hadn’t looked at her because he didn’t know her; later, each would forget the other’s useless features.
“Damned things!” said Felipe with a twisted mouth kicking the stone that happened to be there.
And she suddenly happy, frightened. Felipe’s nose had turned pale with anger. The thing the girl loved most in the lieutenant was the foaming rage into which he could fall. Damned things! he said again. And turning around with gallantry: “let’s go see the water, my beauty.” But she was still rejoicing looking toward the hill in the pasture where only at night the beasts would raise their manes in a neigh: damned things! They advanced into the vast tarnished light and there was the water.
Dead things abutted the cliffs. They stood watching. Felipe was smoking. But each nearby thing was distant for the girl, she only had her eyes. She herself out of reach.
And that’s how the city was at that hour.
The land around the water was full of humus, fecund, exhaling — Lucrécia Neves was breathing it in with impotence and delicateness. From staring at the stream for so long her face had fastened to one of the rocks, floating and becoming warped in the current, the only spot that was hurting, barely hurting from floating and dreaming so much in the water. Eventually she wasn’t sure if she was looking at the image or if the image was staring at her because that’s how things had always been and you couldn’t be sure if a city had been made for the people or the people for the city — she was looking.
When Felipe stirred she remembered with a start his presence to her left . . . quickly she raised her left shoulder until it touched her ear, protecting herself from the lieutenant with wounded sweetness. She thought, almost awakening and perking up her ears, she thought the foreigner would say: what filth! she almost heard him blaspheme and again leaned her shoulder against her ear, recoiled, hunched. She was full of free rancor, the stream was metallic, and a bird flew over the dirty waters! her shoulder was stroking her ear like a wing, dislodging her hat, the wind blowing over the city of steel. But Felipe was tying his shoelaces whistling in the brightness, and saying nothing. Whatever he wasn’t saying ended up lost in the immense and bluish twilight. The girl then started listening to the soldier’s melodious whistling.
Until one more tone sank into the evening. Everything now was in profile, the eaves of the roofs clipped-out in the void . . . She relaxed her shoulder, interrupting immediately the quick face-washing the whistling had made so intimate. Now she was sitting up straight: but not a sound could be heard: a weak light was lit in the air.
And little by little, as if they’d fallen asleep, it got very late, and transformed.
Things were growing with deep tranquility. São Geraldo was displaying itself. She standing facing the bright world. Felipe was talking with lost sound . . . Even the noises of the township were arriving dismantled in a pale round of applause. The girl was looking while standing, constant, with her patient falcon-like existence. Everything was incomparable. The city was a manifestation. And on the bright threshold of the night all of a sudden the world was the orb. On the threshold of the night, an instant of muteness was the silence, appearing was an appearance, the city a fortress, victims were offerings. And the world was the orb.
In this new universe, an abyss away, there on the ground was the screw.
Lucrécia Neves was looking from her own height at the horror of the object. Terrible and delicate things were resting on the ground. The perfect screw. The girl was inhaling the leaden odor of the brightness. And turning around — there was São Geraldo: annunciated, inexplicable, set down with the hardness of a foot. Each object hyperphysical. The spots. The girl softly moved her hooves.
One more tone sank. Now, in the darkened color of the air, each tower, each smokestack suddenly straightened up . . . Now would be the time to disembark and at last touch all things. Would the city let you grope, frightened, its stone? before closing in on the bold prey, raising its walls with one more slab . . .
“. . . what time is it . . .” she asked politely.
Felipe scratched his neck, lifting his illuminated chin:
“The same time it was yesterday at this hour . . .”
Lucrécia Neves laughed, her dry lips opened with ardor in several bloodless gashes. The girl moistened her lips with her long bird tongue, looking both ways, instinctive, suspicious. Standing, beside the darkened waters, the lieutenant and the girl were growing weaker and weaker beneath the extreme brightness of the city. The township was rising as high as it could go. The light didn’t seem to sink but to rise, with stifling effort, to the light. With this effort São Geraldo had become extraordinarily exterior, the stones weightless. Things were staying on their own surface with the vehemence of an egg. Immunized. From afar the houses wer
e hollow and tall.
The cylindrical tower of the power plant.
If this were a world of heroes what a terrifying profile it would have.
“No, really, Felipe darling, what time is it,” the girl purred anxious and attractive.
But when São Geraldo would appear, it would appear identical to itself, without revealing itself.
“Didn’t I already tell you?” the lieutenant said again examining her in the greenish shadow with greater interest.
She laughed a lot, tossing her empty head with grace and fear, lightly tapping him on his uniform . . . the twilight widened then, a rapier had been driven trembling into the air! the color of the girl’s dress suddenly paled with wilting, the straps trembled, the bracelets sank in purple insignias . . . São Geraldo was barely standing.
“Let’s go,” said Felipe, and the man’s voice was ringing out like pushing off branches, and like steps.
They started walking once again toward the center of town. The surfaces thinning out more and more though inside each thing it was still dark and shining.
Another moment however — and a flower suddenly drooped on its stem, roots sweetened in the rotting earth, the substructures of the houses were tumbling down — the whole city was trembling after having collapsed.
The danger had passed. It was night.
All that remained was the immediate echo of the stone, a brightening in the man passing by. A light turning on in the already nocturnal air that smelled of bread . . . And now a pleasant externality of old root. But everything again untouchable. The world was indirect.
Lucrécia was worn-out and innocent, Lieutenant Felipe was looking at the clouds with precision without seeing them. And finally they turned onto the street that would take them to the center. The township had darkened and lit up like a ship. Right now it was invisible . . . you could only see the odd streetlamp and the small lit-up areas. The rest were bastions in darkness. Lucrécia was walking with dreamy security in the company of a soldier. He was smiling a bit, the horseman, observing her aslant. In order to say at last, so pleasant and happy — he seemed to come from a meadow where he’d been running free:
The Besieged City Page 6