by João Almino
I didn’t think anything, unless confusion of ideas is thought. I wanted and I didn’t want. Quincas sensed the danger and barked again. I felt relieved. I took the opportunity to snap his picture. It’s photograph # 11. He lifts his head in the direction of the camera and bares his teeth like a wild animal. I decided to leave things at that point, saying goodbye to Tânia with pecks on the cheek. The wise dog had saved me from an embarrassing situation that would have forever complicated my friendship with Paulo Marcos.
[July 15, late at night]
12. Aida
I was finally able to speak to Aida at the Ministry and invited her to lunch at the Brasília Bar. I didn’t have much money, but surely Aida would split the bill with me as she had done the only time we had gone out for lunch together many years earlier in a restaurant in North Wing. She was happily married back then, maybe she had wanted me as much as I wanted her, but nothing had ever happened between us beyond an exchange of languid looks and words of affection.
I spent the rest of the morning sorting photographs of Ana and Joana. I sent Joana another email: “Why don’t you come visit me? I’m not asking much. Spend a few days here with me, no obligation.” Then I went to the bar. It was crowded, people talking loudly, groups of spinsters, beer drinkers, one young woman or other. Could that woman in the back with white hair and wrinkles like the Brasília sidewalks be Aida?
I saw myself as Bertrand Morane, the character in Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women, while I enjoyed my draft beer and the line of women with their backs to me at the buffet who were suspended on platform shoes and high heels. My eyes penetrated their clothes to scrutinize their bodies in the most minute details and the variety of size, shape, fabric, and color of their panties. I had become an expert on the topic. I noticed a tiny pair of white bikinis beneath a pair of slacks that were also white. The curve of the derriere could be Aida’s.
Time passes quickly when our minds are distracted, relaxed, and calm. But it almost stops when we impatiently observe the passage of time itself, measuring the minutes with our eyes glued to the clock. Those minutes were the equivalent of hours of waiting.
That’s when Aida surprised me, younger and in better shape than I had imagined. She still had a ballerina’s carriage. She never stopped smiling while telling me the story of her life in short chapters. She wanted to know if I had a girlfriend, a fiancée, if I was married. I couldn’t let Aida think I was a loser who contacted her because Joana had dumped me and left me at a loss, not even able to convince Antonieta to go for a walk with me. No, on the contrary, I needed to display a big game trophy. I spoke of Marcela. No, it wasn’t anything serious, I said. Yes, an affair, I wouldn’t call it a relationship. I “hooked up” with her, as the kids would say.
Aida was divorced and had an eight-year-old son named Mauricio. She had three sisters, all of them living in Goiânia. I told her about Guga and Antonio, about my friendship with Tânia and Paulo Marcos and finally about Antonieta.
– Antonieta Lobo? she asked.
– Precisely.
– A good friend of mine. We see each other all the time.
While I was talking, Aida let me hold her hands and stroke them.
I suggested we go to a motel.
– You’re still the same, hopeless, she said, laughing. No, I’m not up for this. But I want to see you again.
I mixed that austere face with the face from the past, fit that body onto my mental image of it, and in this way Aida continued to be attractive, despite a few extra kilos and a son named Mauricio. In that instant I took photograph # 12 because our eyes crossed with tenderness and intensity. There is sweetness, goodness, and patience in Aida’s expression. The natural light from the window directly hits her very pale round face, the face of someone who doesn’t get any sun, a few wrinkles visible on her forehead and fair hair falling over her shoulders. The gleam in her eyes is pure and transparent. Between the fingers of her left hand, in the foreground, smoke rises from the cigarette. I noticed her smile smudged by the light nicotine stain between her teeth only after the photograph was developed. It was the smile of someone who admired me as much as I admired her. And mutual admiration was a good beginning for love. Here’s proof that photography can store whole conversations and unique moments that are dear to us.
July 17
I try to make myself write every day, but yesterday I had no energy. The dryness of the air has been bothering me. Sleeping little and eating poorly, I caught a cold. I should add that The Book of Emotions has begun to worry me. I imagine this is what authors call writer’s block, a block that has settled in because I’ll still have to write about Eduardo Kaufman.
Mauricio was here today. Seeing my photographs, he thinks I’ve had countless girlfriends. He even asked me out of the blue:
– Did you sleep with all these women?
– Only three or four were of any importance in my life, I answered with suspect arithmetic and I almost emended the answer to add two or three. And the most important of them all was your mother.
I didn’t show Mauricio my writings. No matter how open-minded he may be or how much he likes me, I don’t think he would appreciate what I’ve written about his mother up to now. I wouldn’t need to call so much attention to my inveterate voyeurism that even blindness hasn’t cured. Maybe in the rewrite I’ll put more clothes on the women in that bar, cover the sheerness with heavier fabrics, darker colors, or less tiny underwear, or even turn my eyes to an antique light fixture, the paintings on the wall, or the hard wooden stools. From my reunion with Aida I didn’t forget even the smallest secondary details.
After he left, I continued to reflect on desire and its arithmetic, seen from the perspective of an old man. I’m almost twice as old as Humbert Humbert; on the other hand, Laura is more than twice as old as Lolita, and for that reason, if anything were to happen between us, we wouldn’t cause the same scandal as Nabokov’s characters. And for me there would be the advantage of feeling younger, since as I imagine the best medical manuals say, love with a younger woman is like a tonic. With Laura by my side I would live at least another twenty years, and the longer we live the more the difference in our ages that had at first seemed far apart narrows. If today Laura is only a little more than a third my age, in twenty years she’ll be half my age.
I discovered a very concrete meaning for the expression “either eight or eighty.” It’s clear that Laura is no longer eight nor has Joana reached eighty. If we add eight and eighty, we can take the average and I should be happy to stay in the past with Aida and her forty-four years of age.
July 18
I just walked around the block twice with Marcela. My cold feels a little better and I try to resume my routine.
[July 18]
13. Ana in her splendor
Eduardo called me around that time. He didn’t tell me what he was doing in Rio but I guessed that he was with Joana.
– I need the selection of photos of Paulo Antonio, he demanded.
– It’s not ready. These days I’ve been browsing through photos of Ana and other girlfriends (I mentioned Ana on purpose). But I promise to go to the Paulo Antonio Memorial. And I’ll do research in my personal archive.
He insisted that he wanted a sample a week from then, when he would arrive for the tribute to Paulo Antonio at the Garden of Salvation.
I rearranged the bottles in the living room cabinet to hide the missing ones. The empty spots on the shelves had grown in exact proportion to my binges.
A week from then, I woke to Eduardo Kaufman invading my bedroom. Of course the apartment belonged to him; even so he was still an intruder, arriving unannounced. I reluctantly accepted his invitation for lunch at Piantella. After waving to several regulars he told me that the bald man in the back was Congressman So-and-so, a scoundrel and his political archenemy.
– Corrupt? I asked.
– That I don’t know. But he must be. Who wouldn’t be if he were sure to go unpunished? These guys have specia
l judicial privileges. Only the Supreme Court can judge them.
This guy back here was the Minister of Justice; that one, Senator What’s-his-name; the dark woman whispering in his ear was a social columnist; the man standing smoking a cigar was a well-known political commentator . . . With my camera over my shoulder and threadbare clothing, I stood in contrast to the others and in particular to Eduardo, wearing his Armani suit, briefcase at his feet.
Through the large horizontal stained glass window above, a yellow light projected onto equally yellow walls. An air-conditioned chill moved down my back. We both ordered beer and chateaubriand.
– And the selection, is it ready?
– No. Organizing Ana and Joana’s photographs took longer than I expected.
– You’re going to use Ana’s photographs in your exhibit?
– I haven’t decided yet what to do with them. Do you want to buy them?
– Either you do the research I asked for or I’ll have to hire another photographer, got it? You can stay in the apartment as long as you want, just so you prove to me each week that the project is progressing. Marcela has already produced some of the texts. She said she tried to show them to you . . .
Marcela, who had agreed to model for my triangle panels project, thought I wasn’t very professional after I tried to kiss her when she was standing naked in front of me. I explained to her the meaning of that series of photographs for which I didn’t hire models because, although the photos showed only an anonymous piece of the female body, it was essential to have a story behind each one of them.
– I don’t want to be part of your collection of women, she said, irritated.
In short, I’d grown bored with Marcela and that’s why I hadn’t returned her phone calls.
– Would you sell Ana’s photographs with the negatives?
Rationality was prudent, patient, calm, and gentle, like accepting the invitation to work on the project with Eduardo Kaufman. Madness was intense, impassioned, and violent. It spoke louder, like the hatred I felt for him. I wanted the courage to make mincemeat out of him, to send him into orbit. Or at least to ask him about Joana. Three glasses of beer hadn’t been enough to do it. Out of that anger, a touch of reality finally distilled an exorbitant price for Ana’s photos.
– Deal, Eduardo said, without batting an eye at the price. But I’m afraid our project is coasting. Have you at least set up the darkroom? I don’t want to get to the point of making you show me the receipts to prove that you actually spent the money on equipment . . .
Before delivering Ana’s photographs to Eduardo, I’d make copies. There were no nudes. They were chaste photographs, in black and white, the sensuality and melancholy obvious in the eyes and the facial expressions. As one can see in # 13, reproduced above, Ana’s beauty was unconventional, imposing itself firmly in her slanted, almost oriental eyes, full lips, black hair, and a nose that I wouldn’t say was large, not to give the impression of disproportion, when everything about her seemed to be made to express her intelligence and personality perfectly. She’s reclining on the sofa at her house in the position of an Ingres odalisque, the curves of her tall, brown body highlighted by the black dress.
[July 18, night]
14. Harmony, by a hair
Aida wanted to see a movie about gangs in the hills of Rio, the crime and drug trafficking underworld, that was showing at the Tennis Academy. I quoted Guga:
– This is demagoguery glorifying violence and crime. They substitute plots with a disaster or an extremely violent scene.
– It’s reality, Aida argued. Things are like this and someone has to show them.
– Yes. Reality is reality, I said, with a dripping irony she didn’t notice, repeating the phrase Eduardo Kaufman had spoken at the meeting a month earlier, and I added:
– And dreams aren’t real? The comfort of the rich? And isn’t my own life real, spending every day doing nothing, not having a single disaster, not being robbed, not confronting any bandits or coming into contact with criminality?
– But there’s no narrative in that. It wouldn’t make a movie.
– For me, more real than the violence is living with the fear of violence without ever facing danger. The movies don’t have to convince me that the newspaper articles are right. I don’t even need to read the papers.
– If the violence doesn’t seem real to you . . .
– Maybe it’s just a question of probability. The probable doesn’t happen to me, and the improbable winds up happening. I can sleep out in the open at the bus terminal or leave the door of my apartment open and I won’t be robbed. I can plant myself in front of an ATM rubbing my credit card in the thief ’s nose and I won’t be the victim of a kidnapping.
– Don’t be so sure, my dear. What’s the most improbable thing that ever happened to you?
– You appearing in my life.
– I was about to tell you something: you’re a photographer, my dear; photography is the only art that requires a concrete, real object before it. More than cinema. The essence of photography is to represent reality, you know that.
– An instantaneous, fleeting, and sometimes deceptive reality.
– The fact is that you can doubt a story or a painting but no one doubts a photograph. If it shows something it’s because that thing was there, it was real at least for that moment. And what photo do you think would be more realistic, one you take of the Ministries’ Esplanade, the Three Powers Plaza or a session of the National Congress, or another, showing Vila Paulo Antonio? If it’s a question of probability, there is a greater probability of finding misery and violence in that Vila than here in the Pilot Plan. There’s where you’ll feel the people’s drama. Behind each photograph, a tragedy. Do that, Cadu, go take photographs some day in Vila Paulo Antonio instead of wasting time with your nudes.
– That’s exactly what I’ll need to do for Eduardo Kaufman.
– Or at least do realistic work. I don’t know if you saw that exhibit by a famous artist, a painter who does photography now . . . What’s his name? He ran the risk of confronting criminals, then he took a series of photographs at Papuda . . .
I preferred to ignore the reference to Stepladder. I wasn’t the only one to whom the probable didn’t happen and the improbable ultimately did. Stepladder’s success was improbable. It should be more probable that quality would be recognized and banality relegated to oblivion. Well, my work wasn’t lacking in quality, and Stepladder’s overflowed with banality. Some blind curator had appreciated his mediocre work and given him notoriety. What did it matter to me that Stepladder ran risks taking his photos if the result was a low-quality commercial product, packaged for the market like a bar of soap? Where were the critics who didn’t recognize his sham or my genius?
I thought about confessing to Aida that the reality Stepladder portrayed was closer to me than to him because my son was imprisoned at Papuda; showing her how poorly portrayed Bigfoot had been by Stepladder, who hadn’t even interested him in being photographed. What a joke, a photograph in which the subject was trying to leave the scene! How much better I’d do if I took his picture!
– You haven’t even been to the satellite cities, Cadu.
– I confess that I went as far as Taguatinga but I didn’t cross the border of Ceilândia.
– That’s unforgivable, Cadu. Let’s go to Samambaia together, to Vila Paulo Antonio and the other cities.
Fellini’s La Strada, a mixture of cruelty and poetry, was showing. That was my salvation. We went to the Academy in Aida’s car, a blue Golf with several years of use. The story of Gelsomina sold to Zampano by her dirt poor mother touched Aida, and that allowed me to hug her as if I were protecting her from a monster.
Since it was raining when we left, we sat at one of the tables with a view of the lake to have coffee and ran into Veronica and Antonio. She was in high-heeled sandals, wearing a short white skirt and a blouse with ruffled straps. I liked the silver braided earrings that moved with her restless
head. They had seen the violent film Aida had initially suggested we see.
– They’re the new romantics, I said. They’ll soon be able to show the most horrendous massacre and dissect the cadavers in the public square.
– That’s been done, Veronica said.
– There will always be more, cutting flesh into small pieces with the victim still alive, being abused and suffering the most terrible pain before dying. With the public present, of course, just like in the Roman arena.
– That’s been done too, you’re behind the times, Veronica said with laughing eyes.
We compared the poverty and the realism in the two films and, to reach an agreement faster, I didn’t argue with Antonio’s conclusion:
– Reality is reality.
Afterward Aida wanted to stop by her house to pick up Mauricio. Every weekend he went out with his father and by then he should be back.
– How was today with your father? Aida asked Mauricio when we arrived.
– I don’t want to go there any more.
– He demands Mauricio’s presence because he won that right in court, but he pays no attention to the boy. He’s always busy. That’s the main reason for our separation. He’s self-centered; he thinks only of himself, his work, even on the weekends. Mauricio is losing patience, right honey?
– He’s a pain, Mauricio answered.
– But he’s still your father, I told him, thinking about my son who certainly would have an even worse opinion of me: a father who had run off, who had taken no responsibility and had never contacted him.
Mauricio made a face. I would have to work twice as hard now to win back his affection. We stopped by 104 to pick up the photography bag I always liked to carry over my shoulder, and then the three of us went to a nearby restaurant at the end of an inter-quadra at the start of South Wing, a spacious, open place. It was impossible not to become involved with the neighboring table, to hear the yelled conversations and the whistles to the waiters. We got in the buffet line—paunchy men in Bermudas, women in tight clothes, short, tall, thin, fat, obese, big round rumps, tiny flat bottoms, groups of women, men, older couples, young couples . . . We sat at a table for four outside.