Car Chase
He locks the doors of his little silver car and speeds us along the curved roads of the main highway to the University of Brasilia—not a destination, but a target. The only male in the family not in the air force, my uncle nevertheless proceeds like a military man on the offensive. I have no time to change into suitably defensive attire.
I don’t care about you, he begins harshly. He says everything harshly, because English is not a musical language and he is curt and over-enunciates each syllable, hurling his limited vocabulary. He has a buzz haircut, large limbs and large ears and, framed by enormous glasses, telescopic eyes. Wearing a half-sleeve buttoned dress shirt and blue jeans, he looks like a contractor, pen peeking out of his shirt pocket, and I’m nervous he’s going to pull out a measuring tape and size me up, but he’s already beyond that. He’s way ahead of me and my panic, tearing down wall after wall, and only expects me to keep out of his way. Who are you? I don’t care. You are no one to me. I met you in Ottawa, long time ago. I know this car better and longer than you.
Arrive alive, I say to myself as a mantra, as we whip past dozens of other cars, switching lanes at the blink of an eye. Arrive alive. That’s all I can hope for. What am I doing in this car? It’s bad enough, as The Myth of Fingerprints makes clear, to endure the awkward toasts, stilted conversations, veiled threats, and resentments of family reunion gatherings, but to do so alone—I know I asked Chris to stay home because I wanted no barriers between my mother and me, but no barriers also means no protection, no safety, no tension-relieving laughter or sex—then to trap one’s self in a car with an unknown maniac just because he’s the brother of your lunatic mother suddenly seems completely absurd, the stuff of bad action films.
I wish I could calm this uncle down, say a magic word and diffuse him of his superhuman energy, engage the breaks and slide safely to the side of the road. Why can’t each family come with its own emergency kit? This one would need stomach cramp medication and mouth gags and Tasers. Yes, a Taser would be perfect just about now. I would love to see the look on everyone’s faces at the restaurant if I were able to drag my uncle back inside by the scruff of his shirt because he’d been Tasered. Wouldn’t that show them I am also a force to be reckoned with?
I want you to tell me about your father. How is he? I think sometimes it would be better if he died. Understand me, if I were like him I would want to die. Understand?
Yes, I understand. My father’s quadriplegia is not something many people think they can cope with. And yes, I understand that my uncle has no reason to care for me or wish me well. He, like me, is not after affection but information. Still, I don’t know what to tell him. And this will be the very first thing I say to him.
I think of myself as a man. Strong man. Your father is more a man than I am. He’s so big. His feet—so big. I am big for a Brazilian, but your father. So big. And happy all the time. I have very fond memories of your father. It has never mattered to me to see you or Amerjit, but your father . . . I would like to see your father again!
As intensely uncomfortable as his driving and harsh manner make me feel, the way he speaks so admirably about my father—something I know is straight from his heart, wherever this man’s heart is located—instantly endears him to me. No one else will talk kindly of my father to me; I already sense this. Whether or not they blame him for my mother’s estrangement or her hysteria, they won’t utter his name or make mention of him for fear his shadow will hang over the proceedings like a ghost. But my uncle obviously cares less for their superstitions. He knew my father when he was happy, when he was a walking, working, running, swimming man. When he was six foot two, lean, muscular, and beaming. And he loved him. Perhaps loves him still.
And I’m reminded of a mother-daughter conversation between Mia, played by Julianne Moore, and Lena, played by the ethereal yet stoic Blythe Danner:
Mia: There’s no point to good memories.
Lena: They remind you of who you are, Mia.
Mia: No, they remind you of who you were.
I have no memories of who my father was, so by opening his mouth my uncle opens up a magical cave of the past, a cave my father has kept blocked off. As scared as I am about what’s inside the darkness, my greed for treasure is stronger: Open Sesame!
He used to tell so many jokes, your father. I’d never met a man who laughed so much. People called him the Indian Bob Hope, but Bob Hope wasn’t funny to me. Your father was. When he would finish a swim and rise from the water, he’d still be laughing. He was the biggest man I’d ever seen, and his skin, it glowed and he laughed more. I was sorry to leave Canada. I’m not sure why I went. I went because everyone else was going. I worked construction and I loved it. I love snow. Snowshoeing. Snow shovelling. I loved being cold to the bone. Ooooohh. I loved ice. Ice made by clouds. Brazil is too hot. It’s also too big. I’d love to live in a small town. A cold small town. I don’t like people.
My father is a war god, I think, a line I will use later in a poem. My Uncle Fernando knows my father is no ordinary man. Neither is my Uncle Fernando. What kind of unearthly figure he might be, though, is still up for debate.
The car screeches into the university parking lot. The locks disengage. Uncle Fernando’s door opens. He will not condescend to open mine. The main campus buildings, called the Central Institute of Science, also designed by Oscar Niemeyer, constitute two skinny parallel winding structures, two long hallways shaped into waves.
We call these buildings Minhocão, Giant Worm. Uncle Fernando’s disdain is palpable. Crazy to set up a campus like this. Brazilians are crazy. They only care about cars and carnival. My children are crazy. My daughters try to kill themselves. He shrugs. Here, students get a practical education. I teach math. Economics. When I’m lucky, waste management. I love teaching the subject of garbage. I love garbage, more than people. Teaching about garbage is important. Not if the angels are male or female. My chemist colleague is the one who started calling me Fernando Garbage, then Doctor Garbage. I like my name: Doctor Garbage. I wish everyone would call me that.
Okay, Doctor Garbage. Sounds like a superhero. Ordinary man or trash-seeking missile? He can find a crying baby in a stack of recycled bottles! He can crush villains into square cubes with his bare hands! He can fuel a rocket out of a barrel of banana peels! Ta da! Doctor Garbage is in the dump! Just don’t get too close to take a whiff!
In contrast to the majority of Brazilian buildings, which are either colourful or glossy white, these are prison grey—is the idea that students are distracted enough? Sections are splashed with graffiti, and some of the metal doors to the classrooms and labs shut like garages. Few students cross campus today; those who do are lounging about outside, eating, sleeping, and kissing rather than studying. I follow Doctor Garbage, who is walking briskly to I don’t know where.
I attempt an answer to his question. My father is well, considering. He still lives at home. With my brother. He is pleased that we are grown up and have careers. He’ll be happier when my brother marries and gives him grandchildren.
Doctor Garbage keeps up the pace, staring ahead, not once glancing in my direction. He must have another set of eyes on the back of his head. You look like your mother did when she was young. Mostly. Except your nose. It’s big. But it’s not our nose.
We speed past a woman in an “I fucked your boyfriend” T-shirt. They’ll wear anything English. They don’t even know what it means, he spits. I hate English. It’s a dumb language. Just a famous language. Why should everyone speak English to make money? I refuse to speak to my students in English. The only reason I am speaking in English to you is because it’s your first language. But I hate your first language. Understand? Here, this is my office.
Metal garage door. Shut tight. He doesn’t lift it, open it, offer to let me peek inside. Am I supposed to stand here until I give the correct answer to a riddle? I don’t know how to pass this test, and I’m sure Doctor Garbage is testing me. The situation unnerves me so much t
hat I am tempted to laugh but bite my tongue, although I am fairly sure now that with a cast of characters like these my tale must be a comedy not a tragedy.
Can I take a picture?
Sure, he says and steps out of my way.
No, of you.
Eyeing me suspiciously at first, he waves me over to a green patch beside the grey columns and straightens up, posing stiffly but with determination; I quickly take the shot. I have already been told he refuses to have his picture taken. I wonder why he’s letting me take it so easily. He’s not the sort to do so out of politeness. Then it hits me:
I will send this to my father.
My uncle Fernando smiles. When he smiles, I feel like I’ve been let in on an important secret. That I’m not a total waste of groceries.
You must have come here to learn about yourself. So, let me tell you two things you need to know about yourself: one, you will die of cancer; two, you will go crazy.
Faced with my death sentence and the deterioration of my mental faculties, I can’t help it, I laugh.
You see, you laugh too much. My uncle makes only deliberate motions; he unbuttons his shirt to reveal three nasty surgery scars. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Until six years ago I used to smoke five packs a day and a pipe and run ten kilometres per day. Now I only run. No more cigarettes. We have strong hearts in this family. Your heart will never attack itself. But cancer will come for you. It will find you eventually. You should know this.
While I’m charmed by the image of our hearts refusing to attack, I can’t say I’m convinced by his words. Our hearts are damaged. Some of them don’t seem strong at all. Isn’t that where the second dictum comes in?
But the women in the family live a very long time. Too long. They go crazy and drive everyone around them crazy. The men all die at fifty or sixty. None of them can learn languages. Only the women. I’ve always wanted to learn more languages, but I’m a man, so there’s nothing I can do about it. You’re a woman, so you’ll live until you’re ninety and then you’ll die of cancer, but you’ll be so crazy by then you won’t care.
My uncle continues to smile as he relays these unhappy predictions, so I release another chuckle. It seems everyone in this family smiles or laughs at inappropriate moments, so I might as well give in to my genetic heritage. Plus, it’s a lot of information to take in; it’s like he keeps throwing jellybeans at me and I’m trying to snatch them from the air and store them in my pockets but I’m running out of pockets.
Here, look at this. He extracts a card from his wallet, larger than a business card but smaller than a photo, like a logo sticker for a car or an iron-on patch for a backpack. A cartoon. A cartoon character I know well: Daffy Duck. An image I recognize: Daffy Duck in hobo mode, red kerchief sack tied to a long wooden branch. But this Daffy’s heart is outside his body, floating behind as he charges off to his adventures. And one of his wings is actually flipping the viewer off. Across his chest, like a garish tattoo, in vulgar English is written: Fuck off!
Patinho. Small duck. Peregrino. Traveller. Pilgrim. Alone. Warner Brothers would shit their pants. Roll over in the grave and shit their pants again. Though I feel a tide of laughter welling up inside me, I crush it down with shock. He thinks only with his eyes, not with his heart. His heart is not inside his body. I nod, very slowly; this is a lesson in a subject I am not familiar with so I must pay close attention. This is me. I wish I had no heart, no family, no children. I wish to be left alone, you understand? This image is on my airplane—yes, I am not in the Air Force but I know how to fly and I own an airplane so I can take pictures of landfills. I jump out of airplanes not for fun, you understand, not for fun, that would be stupid, or for war, which is also stupid, but only to take photographs of garbage. This is on my airplane, my motorcycles, my skydiving jackets, everything. This is me, you understand? I don’t know what you are but I am a Peregrino.
Suddenly, I’m jealous of my uncle’s surety and his pictorial avatar. It’s rather wonderful, I say to myself, and then the laughter erupts, quickly but violently. Before I can pocket the card, it disappears again in my uncle’s wallet.
You see, you laugh too much, he repeats, concluding our tour. But you listen. I can see that. People who talk all the time understand nothing.
I laugh again, and add: I quite agree.
He laughs too. We have an understanding about whom we speak.
On the way back to the restaurant, for a man who could not care less if he ever saw me again, he offers up soliloquy after soliloquy just as quickly as he pops mint after mint to deal with his nicotine cravings, which have not subsided in six years: I am frequently mistaken for Anglo-Saxon because I have blue eyes. Victoria has green eyes. Wilhelm’s mother is black and he really wanted a dark child with green eyes. No luck. Wilhelm and I have gone parachuting and deep-sea diving. My daughters are crazy. My wife too. No luck. We do things because they are there to do. I went to the Amazon and thought, I need a wife. So I got myself a wife. And another baby girl. This girl was born white and then turned black later on. I would trade all my girls for boys. Since my father died, I am the only male in the family. This is very lonely. My wife laughs too much. Like you. I have two daughters in Rio. One is a lawyer; she’s the one who keeps trying to kill herself. I don’t know what the other one does except hate me. Their mother hates me. The lawyer wants a father so bad she’s willing to pretend I’m a good father. I’m not. I’m a good father when children are small, very small, playing with blocks and balls, after that I’m useless. I’d rather be alone with my garbage. Your mother doesn’t want you to visit Wilhelm and Victoria’s house because she’s jealous. But your grandmother insists. She’s also crazy, but we all do everything your grandmother insists. Don’t ask me why. We do things because they are there to do. Even your mother, who is the craziest of them all, will not go against our mother. So that’s where we’re going next. Look into your cousin Elizabeth’s eyes and you’ll see she’s also crazy. Walter is her first boyfriend. Elizabeth is so nervous that she could never look at a boy, and now she has a first boyfriend at twenty-seven. She’ll marry him and she won’t know why. We do things because they are there to do. Your grandmother prays too much. She goes to church every day in the morning and sometimes even in the afternoon. She prays for things she did and then she prays for things she didn’t do. She keeps photographs of your mother on her prayer table. I think she prays to apologize for your mother most of all. She thinks she’ll have to answer to God one day about your mother. There’s no such thing as God, but Brazilians are crazy. They’ll believe in anything, the crazier the better. They’d rather be on their knees all morning instead of living. Crazy. But nothing can be done about your mother. She fights all the time with our mother. She thinks you need to wear a steel dress to survive in this world. She won’t negotiate. She is always right, everyone else is always wrong. She’s always in São Paulo. Then she comes back for two or three weeks, fights with everyone and leaves again. Your mother lives to fight, then realizes she is a coward and a weakling, and so she runs away. Then she forgets she is a coward and a weakling, and she returns to do it all over again. She couldn’t face your father after he became a cripple. His sickness let out all her crazy. At once. She’s never been able to put it back inside. Now she unleashes her crazy everywhere. At everyone. She’s so used to being crazy she doesn’t think anyone else is real. She fights with us to fight herself, you understand? I’m sure she’s said some stupid things to you, very stupid, very crazy. She’s not saying them to you, she’s saying them to herself. You don’t exist. Not for years. None of us exist anymore. She’s happier in São Paulo. But I don’t know if your mother is happy. I don’t think so, but I don’t know anything important about your mother at all. Only that she’s the craziest of them all. She takes the cake. You’ll go crazy too, in your own way, but I wouldn’t plan on outdoing your mother, that would be too high a bar for you to reach. Goodbye! Goodbye!
Uncle Fernando/Doctor Garbage yells goodbye to all the dri
vers he cuts off on the highway until we’re back at the restaurant parking lot. Before we get out of the car, staring out the windshield at the huge Brazilian sky, my uncle sighs, then brightens up: I have no souvenir to give you. What will you take back of Brazil? I don’t know. I don’t care. But you care. You came to learn. Your mother does not want to learn anything, you understand? Remember she is a coward. Since you like to laugh, I will teach you a joke as a souvenir to take back with you. This is a Brazilian joke, you understand?
God was creating the Earth and the angel Gabriel was invited to watch. God looked at Japan: Here some earthquakes! Then he looked at Africa: Here I will put the biggest desert on the planet and a host of diseases! He looked at North America: Here go some tornados and hurricanes. Then he looked at Brazil: Here I will put beautiful beaches, the biggest and most fertile lands of the Earth, bright sunshine and a big blue sky. Gabriel objected: But God, this place can’t be that good. God replied: Wait until the sixth day, Gabriel, you will see the kind of people I will put here. Ha!
Once again, my uncle jumps out of his side of the silver vehicle and makes no motion toward mine. Hesitantly, I test my land legs, and we walk down the pathway uncle and niece: an uncle with a lead foot and a nervous condition that made him lose all his teeth but who thinks all the women are crazy, and a niece who is going to go lie down under a grotesque painting of herself tonight and write down every single word she can remember.
Before we cross the threshold, I risk a question: So, do you think I’m already crazy?
Like a real uncle, Fernando soothingly pats my arm. Not yet. Take your time.
The deal with my psyche is sealed.
True to Uncle Fernando’s word, and regardless of my mother’s objections, Grandmother’s wishes are the family’s command and our next stop is Uncle Wilhelm and Aunt Victoria’s home on Embassy Row, across from Lake Paranoá in the western top of the city. Two frowning men with bullet belts and machine guns stand guard outside the house gates in the heat. Now I understand what it means to be head of the Brazilian Air Force. You are supplied with a gorgeous solar-heated house and spacious backyard with an outdoor pool, a high salary, the respect of your family members, and bodyguards. The small mansion boasts several balconies and outdoor lounging and eating areas perfect for a hot climate, as well as lush avocado and banana trees.
Projection Page 21