Granta 121: Best of Young Brazilian Novelists

by Unknown

  I feel myself nodding off, the stuffy weather adding to my sense of immobility and draining me of energy. The heat inside me, rancid and strange, has been overwhelming and gradually destroying me ever since the moment it set in, I no longer remember when. I don’t hesitate to open the can and rack up two more lines of white powder. My work is nocturnal. Always has been. At some point in my life I tried to invert the hours, but failed. Mornings and afternoons tire me, distract me, lead me into doing all the usual things that end up ruining any chance of interpreting the writing. I require night because night commands silence. And silence out here, despite the house’s peculiar sounds, is almost holy.

  I snort another line and, just as happened before, I hear a noise behind me. Not the same sharp whistle, nor anything similar, but a sound that’s no less shrill and horrible. I am so startled I stand up quickly, using my crutches for support. I go into the middle of the room, straighten myself up so as not to fall, and only then do I see it. A monstrous creature, a rat about a foot long. It has a coat of lead-coloured hair, practically black, dirty, wet and bristly, tufts coming up as far as a face that’s pocked as if it were raw, with a long snout full of folds and pits all mixed up with its whiskers. The animal stops trying to hide and comes out of the shadows, ignoring the silence to put on a show of authority. Its eyes are red, protruding, intense, shrill, excited, and when it opens its mouth and reveals its gums, I notice its sharp, crooked, rotten teeth. I remain on my feet, standing still, for with one leg broken and the other unable to make sudden movements, I’ve no choice. I wait for the creature to adopt a position before deciding my next move. The rat stops making its strange noises and just stares at me. Now that it has revealed itself and quickly shown me its powers, I realize it is studying me. Like me, it doesn’t know what to do. It takes me a while to think of an idea, then I move slowly towards the kitchen, as if walking under water, and grab the worm-ridden cheese. Without making any aggressive movements, I throw the piece of decomposed cheese over towards the rat. The animal retreats but doesn’t, I notice, seem to be afraid. Then it heads for the cheese, allowing me to see for the first time its long tail, which had been tucked away under its body. It sniffs the cheese, moving its snout from one side to the other, vigilantly, not daring to take a bite, but what it does next surprises me. With its huge nails, sharp like a knife, it pounds the cheese and worms, smashing them to smithereens. Then, with its hind legs, it starts to further destroy what remains. I can’t figure out what it’s up to, but it never stops sniffing at what’s left of the cheese. And then its intentions become clear. It moves quickly towards the dining table, circles round the chair where I’d been sitting, sticks its claws into the wood and, without too much trouble, climbs up onto the chair. It leans upon its front legs then rocks back on its hind legs and springs forward up onto the table. Then the rat snorts the cocaine. Snorts it and eats it, as it doesn’t quite have the skill to sniff it all up. With its snout all filthy and slobbery and speckled with white powder, the monster squeals again in a show of victory. I act without thinking. If I’d thought things through I wouldn’t have done it, but only afterwards do I realize my mistake. My arm jumps the gun, lifting the crutch up off the floor and hurling it, with all the force my body can muster, in the direction of the animal. I don’t know how I do it but I hit it full on, though I also take out everything else on the table, computer, film can, bag, everything. The impact sends the rat flying off the table and smashing into the wall on the other side of the living room, where it falls to the floor, stunned and spilling blood. I’ve lost my means of support and so I inevitably collapse too, and when I hit the wooden floor the pain in my legs is so overpowering I lose all feeling of any kind.

  I awake screaming. All eyes in the funeral parlour flash upon me and only then do I realize that I must have dozed off in my seat, my head propped up against the wall and my eyes shadowed behind my sunglasses. An old lady, I’ve no idea who she is, whispers to another, a long-lost great-aunt I amaze myself by being able to recall. ‘What an awful man!’ I overhear the old lady uttering into my great-aunt’s ear. A tall, stout man with a huge scar across his face – and only because of the scar do I know he’s my godfather – nudges a short guy with his elbow and nods in my direction, pointing out who I am. He doesn’t even know me, but he gives me a dirty look as he straightens his tie. I lower my eyes and do likewise, evidently having loosened it at some moment before falling asleep, which must also have irritated everyone. I decide to leave the hall. Outside the day is clear, the sun is full, and I think about it being the wrong kind of day for burying someone. I walk around a bit outside and come upon the office of the funeral parlour, damp on its walls and in a state of disrepair. A tall, incredibly thin man comes over to me and asks if I’m a relative of the deceased. I tell him I’m the son and he looks me up and down before offering me a coffee, which I accept. We speak very little, he doubtless thinking it bad manners to interfere with a son’s grief. I remember that the person who told me about my mother’s death on the phone was a distant cousin, but he didn’t even take the trouble to tell me how it happened. He must have been made to do it by the others. He just said that she’d died and that the funeral was scheduled for today. The conversation had been a mere formality. But the funeral director has a loose tongue. He tells me that Mother died at home, in bed, probably in her sleep.

  When I look back outside, the coffin is being taken by procession to the family plot. I should have been one of the pall-bearers, but nobody called for me. Even the distant cousin is involved, probably in my place. I watch from afar as the stonemasons fill up the grave and then, just when I’m thinking of heading over, I realize that everyone will reproach me for having forgotten to buy flowers. And yet it wasn’t a lapse, much less a lack of consideration, but rather because I know Mother never liked flowers. Doubtless no one else here knows that. As they doubtless don’t know what made me leave home. Just as they doubtless don’t know why I never went back.

  I leave the place quickly and walk to the car park, taking my jacket off and unbuttoning the top of my dress shirt as I go. My clothes are totally soaked in sweat and I start wondering whether the fever that periodically takes over my body might somehow be inherent in me. I’m dizzy and pale when I get in the car. I wait for a good while, breathe deeply. Then I leave, accelerate and, in an instant, as if the diving equipment of my memory had suddenly broken, Mum’s almost secretive voice enters my head, as if talking to herself, speaking the phrase that has nagged, trapped and tormented me. Only now do I recall that it came from her mouth following the death of my father, a death I have no memory of: the only thing that makes life bearable is that it comes to an end, son.

  And at that, I hear the sound of tyres screeching on tarmac, the smash, the shattering of glass, and I sense twisted iron entering flesh.

  GRANTA

  * * *

  FAR FROM RAMIRO

  Chico Mattoso

  TRANSLATED BY CLIFFORD E. LANDERS

  * * *

  CHICO MATTOSO

  1978

  Chico Mattoso was born in France but has lived in São Paulo ever since. His first novel, Longe de Ramiro (2007), was shortlisted for the Jabuti Award. His second novel, Nunca vai embora, was published in 2011. Mattoso was one of the editors of Ácaro magazine and has written for numerous other magazines and newspapers. He currently lives in Chicago, where he studies screenwriting at Northwestern University. ‘Far from Ramiro’ is an extract from his novel of the same title.

  Morning invaded the room. Ramiro tried to protect himself with the sheets, but when he looked, it was still there, as if to say: I didn’t ask to be born. Neither did I, he murmured, and covered his head with the pillow. He managed to sleep a bit more, but then the light came again, sharp, penetrating the cotton padding. Ramiro rubbed his eyes and got up. He staggered to the window. Grabbed the shutter. Jerked it, tried to push it back onto the track. He began to shake the window, and that was when the shutter yielded and opened fully.
Sunlight and city noise blasted in. It became impossible to go back to sleep.

  Still groggy, Ramiro could only emit a guttural yawn. Lucidity returned slowly, accompanied by uneasiness. Hand on his belly. An involuntary belch. A desperate run from the bedroom, followed by a disastrous stumble over a magazine dropped at the entrance to the bathroom. Ramiro crawled to the toilet, but when he got there the nausea had gone away. A weak sound came from the plumbing. Someone dropped something on the floor above, and outside a car braked abruptly and gave rise to a long chorus of horns.

  It was autumn. A meagre autumn, one that held the leaves on the trees and refused to abandon the warm embrace of summer. Ramiro missed the cold. In the cold, the days were more defined. In the cold, the birds calmed down. In the cold, everything sought accommodation, there wasn’t that Babylon of heated bodies bumping and tripping into one another. But now it was hot, and Ramiro’s skin was sticky, and the prospect of taking a shower seemed just as inviting as the desire to go to the window and hurl insults at the pedestrians below.

  He could see the backs of several buildings from the window. Service stairs. Clothes hung out to dry. A few balconies, with women of about forty charring their breasts in the sun. One day Ramiro saw a boy throw a cat out of the window. He witnessed the entire scene, the cat thrashing about, the boy trying to escape the scratches, the fall down seventeen floors until the crash. The cat landed on its feet. The boy – he could hear – was beaten so badly that the police had to be called. One thing or another happened, couples slapping each other, old people talking to themselves, a man in a tie who every Friday climbed to the terrace and bellowed like an orphaned gorilla, a dishevelled lady who spent the day at the window smoking and staring at nothing.

  By that time, life in the hotel had become so routine that it seemed as though Ramiro had always been there. It had only been three months, but it could have been three days, or three years, or three centuries; looking back was like listening to a fairy tale. Once upon a time Ramiro. Once upon a time Ramiro walking downtown. Once upon a time Ramiro walking and wanting to buy a sound system, or rather, torn between buying a sound system and continuing to save money so he could wander around Europe. Once upon a time Ramiro passing by a hotel and having his attention caught by its flickering facade and stopping in front of that vertical aquarium guarded by a pair of rhinoceroses in coats and ties with communication devices. Ramiro approached the glass. Inside, people were moving with a submerged slowness. There were old women with no wrinkles, gringos with moustaches, well-behaved children counting the stains on the sofa, young receptionists with blue badges helping conference participants; there were velvet walls, cab drivers in hats, prostitutes attempting discretion, a decorative fountain, and many, many employees with no apparent job function, each one wandering around as if expecting something terribly important to happen. That’s how it was: Ramiro looked, went in, approached the reception desk, and, almost without thinking, smiled at the attendant, opening a formal dialogue that culminated in the signing of a document and the approach of the porter, who tipped his hat and then noticed that Ramiro wasn’t carrying any luggage.

  Three months. Three months without setting foot in the street, three months wandering through the service areas of the Royal Soft Residence. Three months of silence, and insomnia, and yawns, Ramiro dragging himself through the halls like some hostile ghost, not speaking to anyone, not thinking of anything at all, calling home just often enough to keep his mother from committing suicide or calling the police or renting a helicopter and showering the city with flyers bearing his photo. It was uncomfortable. Ramiro would say everything was fine, that his trip had been unexpected; his mother would implore him to tell her where he had disappeared to, that his friends also wanted to know, and the people from the newspaper weren’t sure if they could count on him, and the back pain, and the brother out of work, and Tati, poor Tati who was left in the lurch – and how could Ramiro not heed even his girlfriend’s appeals? I’m fine, he would reply, I’m fine, and his mother would yelp at the other end when he repeated these words: I’m fine, trust me, I’m fine.

  He didn’t have any clothes – when he entered the hotel he had been wearing a T-shirt and Bermudas, which had transformed into useless rags – so Ramiro opted for a bathrobe. Besides being comfortable, it proved effective in warding off company, once even provoking rebellion in an elderly lady who declared herself incapable of eating her asparagus in the presence of an ‘undressed man’ in the dining room. There were other incidents, but none worthy of note, and little by little the garment started to seem normal to the guests and employees, who came to view Ramiro with the same sleepy arrogance they dedicated to one another.

  An undressed man. Still dazed by his stumble, Ramiro spent a few seconds hesitating between thinking about the shutter and jumping in the shower. Clearly, the prospect of bathing was much more attractive, not only because of the burning sun out there but because the shutter awoke in Ramiro a vague desire for destruction, as if all the world’s evil were packed into the rectangular framework of the window in his room. The shower seemed the most appropriate action for that moment – and surely would be, were it not for the incident the night before.

  It had been during his shower. When it started, Ramiro had even thought it funny: it was a game, a harmless joke. Gradually, however, the amusement gave way to a peculiar kind of terror. When the water began falling, Ramiro felt that he was soaping parts of a body that was not his. The legs were not his legs, the arms were not his arms, the chest was not his chest – not even the dick seemed familiar. He continued to bathe and felt as if he were invading someone’s privacy, touching unbidden a strange body, and this induced horror and disgust, Ramiro trying to take away his hands but realizing that they too did not belong to him – and soon all that was left were the eyes, Ramiro transformed into a spectator of himself, or rather, of the other, seeing like one of those cameras skydivers wear on their helmets. But then he looked around, saw the bathroom, the robe, the bottles of shampoo, and began to understand that it wasn’t he who was invading another’s privacy but the opposite: through the eyes of the intruder, Ramiro saw the invasion of his own space.

  The discussion alternates between the origin of Bilica’s nose – Armenian, Turkish or Lebanese – and establishing a criterion for deciding who’ll go and get the beer. It’s difficult. Besides the abstainers and the recently arrived, two other categories try to avoid the task: the wealthy, who shirk responsibility by tossing large bills in the kitty instead, and the lovers, who fight violently in a corner and thus prevent any approach or demand. Fifteen people are yelling at once, some loudly requesting silence, others laughing at some joke, two or three beginning a peanut war while, in the middle of everything, someone coming out of the bathroom declares that the toilet has stopped working again.

  Bilica, the host, is shut in the bedroom with his girlfriend, which is sufficient excuse for the provenance of his nose to come back into play. The argument is interrupted when Egídio, holding an extremely strange piece of metal, comes into the room and announces to those present that now the bathroom is available only for washing their hands. Then the doorbell rings and Vanessa and two girlfriends arrive with bags full of beer, and the euphoria is such that no one asks why they’re dressed the way they are, all three in green, wearing hats that look like remnants from a carnival float.

  Sitting on an ottoman, Ramiro struggles to find a comfortable position. Someone offers him wine. Only when he says thanks does he realize he hasn’t opened his mouth for two hours. There he is, in the home of old friends, surrounded by people he knows, and even enjoying himself, appreciating one person’s joke, another’s sarcasm, the funny story that Pedro always tells about some distant uncle, but all this time he hasn’t felt the need to say anything at all. Sometimes he thinks about Tati, wondering whether she’ll get off work in time to stop by the party, but then his thoughts wander and before he knows it, his mind is on things as diverse as the latest earthquake
in Asia, king-size mattresses and the odd growth that has appeared on his index finger.

  It’s still good to think about Tati. They’re approaching one year together, but there’s still the old quiver, the weird sensation of imagining that, at that very moment, she’s somewhere in the city, breathing, imparting to things her soft manner, making everything seem absolutely natural or necessary. On the other hand, for a while now, thinking about her releases in him a vague nostalgia, like a river that gradually turns into a swamp. To Ramiro, it is more and more uncomfortable to wallow there, and perhaps this is why it’s so hard to maintain his concentration, why the growth on the end of his finger seems so large, why the matter of the earthquake causes him so much anguish.