by João Almino
I didn’t tell him that it was also the way a father had found to help his son without his knowledge or that I wanted a chance to spend time with him so that we might forge a friendship.
– Okay. Termite gave me the dope on you, he answered to my surprise, agreeing to my proposal immediately. Later I learned that Termite had reciprocated the kind words I’d sometimes directed at him with praise for me. Through Termite’s stories Big-foot saw me as a famous photographer and also as a degenerate, which seemed like a virtue to him.
Our differences brought us together. I felt good being accepted by him. I admired his bold and rude temperament as well as his sincere words. He felt like a celebrity having a “famous” photographer dedicated to him, interested in his gestures and movements, which facilitated my main objective: earning his trust. During the first week, I photographed the joy of his reunion with friends. We drank at a bar near his house and then walked through the streets like bums with no destination. I took photographs of poverty’s details while Bigfoot and his friends, Termite among them, smoked marijuana.
One week stretched into two, and during the second they let me photograph them in action. They guided me into the underworld of their underworld, to the drug dens and houses of prostitution, in short, to the reality that Aida so liked to quote. A reality with an inhuman face that I could portray with much more life and richness than Stepladder could.
– Today a stray bullet passed through a body during the funeral, Termite told me laughing.
That was soon a pretext for talking about famous crimes, growing violence and murdered friends. I thought it was better to cultivate that camaraderie than to reveal to Bigfoot the secret Berenice wanted to keep.
They were bums. No, bums are people who do nothing. They did things. I don’t want to talk about drugs or police involvement. So I’ll limit myself to saying they were always busy with their mischief. To be frank, I was amused by it all, despite the headaches resulting from the mixture of worry and cheap cachaça.
My new photographs of Vila Paulo Antonio revealed its interiors, Bigfoot’s friends, and daily activities. I saw myself as a photo-journalist of newspaper columns.
One photo marked the moment at which I knew I had earned Bigfoot’s trust. In the black and white photo above, taken in a Vila Paulo Antonio bar, one notices the contrast between the muscles of Bigfoot’s large torso and the visible ribs of Termite’s skinny body, between the look of defiance of the former and the sneering gaze of the latter with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. The idea was theirs, to have themselves photographed bare-chested with the billiards table in the background. I deliberately captured them in movement as if the photograph were announcing the future with gestures. I felt that not only had they accepted me; they liked me. They saw me as an unusual individual who was amused by their pranks. They didn’t have the slightest concern that I might use the photograph against any of them.
[September 13]
47. Family portrait
Without the job and until I gathered a new clientele, it would be difficult to pay rent in the Pilot Plan. Family was good for something. I borrowed money from Antonio.
– If I can’t pay off this debt, brother, you can deduct it from my share of the inheritance when Mother dies.
– You don’t want to kill off the old lady before her time, he protested. And why don’t you stay with me for a while?
I accepted, specifying that “a while” wouldn’t go beyond Carnaval, or more precisely beyond the days required to find an apartment.
– You’ve lowered your standards, Cadu. Who ever heard of living in Vila Paulo Antonio?
– I wanted to take photographs . . .
– No excuses. It’s dangerous. It’s not even a place to visit.
I moved to Antonio’s house, taking my photo equipment with me.
On the very first day at breakfast I was embarrassed when Veronica tried to make me into a model for Antonio:
– Look at your brother. He’s almost the same age as you and he really looks a lot younger. He enjoys life, he has fun.
I denied it categorically:
– I don’t like the life I lead, even less so now.
– But this is a phase, it’ll pass quickly. Now in Antonio’s case . . . He’s really out of touch.
Antonio didn’t answer. She’d always been this way. She was chatty and expansive; he taciturn and reserved.
– Marriage is a difficult art, brother. Veronica isn’t perfect, but no one is. Besides, it’s worth building something that lasts, a family, a legacy, leaving children well settled in life, Antonio commented privately to me.
– Your brother doesn’t have the slightest sense of humor. He’s rude, Veronica told me, when he left.
That night when she was ready to go to a party with him she complained that he hadn’t noticed her outfit.
– There’s no outfit that doesn’t look great on your body, sweetheart, he answered.
– Don’t start on me with your irony. And don’t call me sweetheart.
– I notice your body first, the clothes are secondary. To be honest, I prefer you naked.
– Don’t be a smartass!
– Why is it, Cadu, that women are always dissatisfied? Why is undivided attention too little? They want to spend the rest of their lives as the little girl everyone notices, “look how cute she is,” “how charming,” “what a pretty little dress,” Antonio said.
Since he now refused to escort her to the party, Veronica declared categorically:
– Then I’ll go with Cadu.
I would have never accepted that demand if it weren’t for Antonio’s own insistence. He made it clear I’d be doing him a big favor if I went with her.
While watching Veronica sway her hips gracefully in a tight dress, I stayed at the bar emptying one glass after another and thought of my brother’s statement: “I notice your body first, the clothes are secondary . . .”
The photo above, # 47, was taken the next day: Antonio with his right arm around Veronica’s shoulders and my nephews in front of them, all smiling in the garden of the North Lake house. I’d already noticed that Antonio and Veronica hadn’t touched each other in a long time. No kisses, no caresses. I’d heard the harshest words from one about the other. That time, in response to one of Antonio’s complaints, Veronica yelled at him:
– You’re always reproaching me; you never pay me a compliment. If you don’t like me the way I am, why are you married to me, you prick?
Antonio tried to give her a hug and a peck on the cheek.
– Don’t come near me, she said, with a look of disgust.
The photo, taken at my niece’s request, relaxed everyone’s mood for a moment. It’s a typical family photograph, similar perhaps to billions that exist worldwide, but this photo with its harmonious appearance is always the one that comes to mind when I think how unreal and false a photograph can be. A photograph of a lie. But no other reminds me better of those days spent in my brother’s company. It’s also the only one I ever took of Veronica, and, for reasons that I will yet explain, she deserves a photographic record in my book.
[September 14]
48. Tânia’s belly
The following Sunday, Antonio invited Guga to lunch. To my surprise, Tânia, with her eight-month belly, came too.
The rain upset Veronica’s plans to hold a barbecue outside.
– I hate this city, she said. I can’t wait to get out of here.
– You only like a place after you leave, Antonio said.
– It’s just that our life only gets worse. With each new phase I discover that it was better before.
– We already know hell is the present. The past and the future are always better, Guga agreed, and then he compared Veronica to the Goofus Bird:
– According to Borges, it’s a bird that builds a nest in reverse and flies backwards. It doesn’t care where it’s going, only where it has been.
I noticed Tânia’s enraptured look as
she listened to him.
– Who’s Borges? Veronica asked.
Later on, while I was busy making and drinking caipirinhas on a corner of the veranda, and the other guests were occupied with their plates, I asked Tânia about Paulo Marcos.
– I don’t know where he is. He doesn’t keep in touch. It was better that way, you know, Cadu? The relationship had stopped working. But forget about Paulo Marcos. Tell me what’s been going on with you. You disappeared!
With the courage the liquor was giving me, I dared to ask:
– Are you seeing Guga?
– What an idea!
– Guga certainly wouldn’t be the right person for you. He’s un-trustworthy. He’s irresponsible.
– Look who’s talking, right, Guga? she said.
– I turned around. Guga was behind me. He turned his back on us, and as he prepared to leave I added for his benefit:
– I know I’m not depressive and paranoid like he is.
I was happy to see Tânia’s belly and to know that my goddaughter, who would seal our bonds of affection and friendship, was growing inside her. Tânia let me photograph her belly appearing as a perfect curve in a black dress with white polka-dots against the smooth peach background of the living room wall. A clear, simple photo, able to cleanse my thoughts.
September 16
While he was helping me locate the photo of a white ipê tree today, Mauricio confirmed that he’s been going out with Laura for several weeks. My first impulse was to convince him to give it up. But perhaps because the resignation of the old had conquered the cruelty of the blind, deep down I was relieved and even pleased. Their relationship brought me back to reality. I’m no longer a teenager living on illusions, nor have I aged to the point of underestimating the beauty of young love. I add the happiness of the first to the happiness of the second and I’m twice as happy.
Mauricio wants to help me get back together with Guga.
– He’s the one who broke it off.
– And if he came to see you?
– He’ll never do that. He harbors his resentments for the rest of his life. He’s not the type to forgive.
– But if he comes? Will you see him?
I changed the subject so that I wouldn’t have to confess that I don’t have the slightest desire to see Guga again.
September 23
I’m thinking about abandoning my Book of Emotions, and not just because of the doubts I have regarding the pages I’ve written. The biggest problem is yet to come, because my old diary—the photo diary—ended a little after Aida’s death. The only remaining serviceable photograph in the diary is the one of the white ipê Mauricio helped me locate. After the point at which my diary ends, I’ll have to fabricate new thoughts and look through scattered files for photographs to go with them. Maybe this explains why I haven’t written a single line this whole week.
[September 23]
49. White ipê
I discovered one of Veronica’s morning rituals after Antonio left for work. There was a play of reflections that began with the long mirror on the half-opened door of her bathroom. From a particular angle in the hall—or the entrance to the master bedroom—it was possible to see her in front of the bathroom cabinet as she was entering or leaving her bath. I had never felt attracted to Veronica. She hadn’t even been my partner in the sport I’d invented on my dominical walks on the Main Axis, the game of drawing smiles from attractive women. Her thick lips and wide mouth were disproportionate to her short chin, and her nose turned up defiantly. Her front teeth were too large, and her semi-open mouth revealed too much of her gums. But reflected in the mirror as she undressed, her tall figure acquired an air of elegant vivacity. She moved her body to the music of the CD she left playing in her room, examined herself in the mirror from every angle with her slightly crossed eyes and ran her hands through her hair. She quickly removed her clothes and sandals. Above her buttocks she had two symmetrical dimples. To the left of where bikinis had outlined a miniscule triangle against the sun, dark marks were visible, probably a scar left from a wart. She had thin ankles and shapely legs. The breasts with their large areolae and erect nipples swayed with the movements of her body. She appeared distracted, staring vacantly and intermittently humming a tune. After getting out of the shower she examined her face at length and using finger pressure tried to undo her furrowed brow and crow’s feet. After drying off, then firmly and unstintingly brushing her black hair, she slowly applied cream to her buttocks and thighs. I never tired of seeing her in the small variations of each of these routine movements and sometimes even used a pair of binoculars that I had retired when I left Rio.
One day, watching Veronica change clothes to go to the pool through the half-open bathroom door, I let her see me. She lingered naked in front of me as if thinking about what to do, definitely watching me out of the corner of her eye. I opened my fly and removed my hard dick, which I knew was impressive with its size. I imagined several possible scenarios: she running toward me and we ending up in bed; she covering her eyes with her hands, ashamed; I being thrown out of the house immediately, after being called a pervert, lecher, or exhibitionist; she laughing at me, politely considering me immature; she trying to cover herself, closing the door, and then telling Antonio everything.
None of this happened. She turned around, tried on a bikini, then another, let them drop to the floor, bent over to pick them up, and it seemed obvious to me that her behavior shouldn’t be attributed to myopia; she wanted to show off her firm full ass deliberately and from the most varied angles.
I didn’t like Veronica but over several days her slender nakedness insisted on appearing in the middle of the night in my grieving thoughts. I would fuck Veronica, I would fuck her in anger, and my anger liberated my lowest violent instincts. One moment I saw myself hitting her, throwing her to the ground, and the next minute my imagination had her kneeling, blowing me or on all fours while I buggered her. I was going to masturbate in the bathroom, thinking that one day my brother would catch us in bed, and not that he’d kill me for it but that I’d kill him in self-defense.
Two weeks later, and before any of my ruminations could come true, I was able to rent a small studio on the third floor of one of the interquadras in North Wing. The architecture of the inter-quadra was a dull pseudo-modern, departing from the original plan in which the exclusively commercial buildings weren’t to be more than two stories high. The advantage was that now I could not only live there but also set up my darkroom.
Livia sent me an email. She was passing through Brasília and wanted to see me. I went with her to the Parkshopping Mall and afterward we had a salad at a South Lake restaurant. I had spent that month sleepwalking, not even noticing the city. The regular seasonal rains had spilled a fresh green on the grass and trees of the Main Axis. Several billboards carrying the photograph Step-ladder had described to me at Aida’s funeral advertised a beverage. I didn’t envy the quality of his work, which as usual was low, but rather the amount of money for which an unscrupulous photographer sold himself to advertisers, which was surely high.
– I put all men in a drawer, Livia told me. Once in a while, I take one out. I use him a little and return him to the drawer. When I think the guy isn’t worth the trouble anymore, I throw him in the trash.
I saw myself out of the drawer, ready for the trash. We didn’t speak of our fleeting adventure or of Aida. We talked about the Ministry and what we’d been doing. We spent several hours together, perhaps hoping that some new chemistry would spark between us. But the ingredients of our temperaments were cooking in separate pots, unable to produce flavors of any kind, much less spicy ones. We said good-bye with cordial words and no promise to meet again.
A few weeks after my move, I found myself by chance with Paulo Marcos in an interquadra shop. He and Tânia had reconciled, he said, and she would give birth at any moment.
– I was about to call you. We wanted to ask you to be our daughter’s godfather, he added.
Time was being marked by the flowers, all recorded in my camera for my long-range project, my panel in honor of Brasília. I took photographs of the blooming white ipê behind my new building. I developed one of those photographs, # 49 (above), enlarged it into a four-by-three-foot chromogenic print, framed it, and hung it on my living room wall. I took it as a light, joyful symbol of a new beginning.
[September 24]
50. The fortune-teller
Carolina was born in the month of March and filled the emptiness Mauricio had left and that I would never have been able to fill, even with my own son. After having lived with Bigfoot, I realized that it was impossible to develop a satisfactory paternal relationship with a son who was so different from me, whom I hadn’t seen grow up and whose upbringing I hadn’t contributed to. I considered Carolina the daughter I’d never had. What a joy to be her godfather . . . When I visited, she recognized me, smiled at me, and came willingly into my arms. For days I had awakened smiling just at the thought she existed.
This joy went arm in arm with another, just exactly as Carolina went arm in arm with her mother. Deep down I was content with what I had, and I was rewarded with a nobility and peace of mind I’d never experienced before. It was enough to feel Tânia’s fond look, the certainty that she liked me with a feeling coming from the bottom of her soul, to feel the outflow of her affection and dedicate my tenderness to her without losing Paulo Marcos’s friendship or my respect for the love between the two of them.
[September 25]
The days passed in this habitual peace until one night after midnight as I was arriving home after drinking my usual cachaça at the interquadra bar, I was almost killed by two guys. They beat me up and threatened to kill me without saying why. I couldn’t figure out a reason for the assault. I didn’t have any enemies, they hadn’t robbed me . . . I was seen at the emergency room of the Regional Hospital at North Wing, but I resorted to Ana’s prestige to arrange a transfer to the Sara Kubitschek Hospital.