by João Almino
Now I can be the true blind Brasiliarian—and with all the beauty to which I’m entitled—in that story of Clarice’s, which I decided to listen to again:
“Brasília . . . was inhabited by extremely tall, blond men and women who were neither Americans nor Swedes and that sparkled in the sun. They were all blind . . . The more beautiful the Brasiliarians the more blind . . . and the fewer children they had. The Brasiliarians lived around three hundred years.”
I lack only one quality: to be able to live three hundred years.
[November 2]
61. The visible and the invisible
I tried in vain to forget Eduardo Kaufman. He was popular and had been elected to a third term. He was in the news as a member of the Ethics Committee and a promoter of new bills to reform campaign financing and combat corruption, thus helping nurture a national taste for long-postponed bills that, once passed, would never be enforced. As if this weren’t enough to invade my day-today life, one day he sent an aide to see me.
– The congressman knows how you’re feeling and the difficulties you’re facing. That’s why he insists on helping you.
Eduardo proposed to collect the photos I had taken of him into a book, and he’d pay me for my permission to show them.
I thought hard about what to answer. It would be the second time I’d sold myself to him. Besides that, his purchase of those photographs had been totally out of line. How many reais were my principles worth?
I concluded that I wouldn’t be selling myself. Eduardo didn’t realize the trap he was falling into. The revenge I’d planned kept diminishing in size with time, but on the other hand it was becoming more viable. This plot was miniscule but it was concrete and possible. I gave the authorization he requested in writing and in exchange he sent me the payment for the corresponding amount. The price of each photograph was low when compared to my earlier photographs of Paulo Antonio. Because there were so many of them, however, the amount was sufficient to cover the monotony of my routine for several weeks.
The grotesqueness of those photographs wasn’t an invention of the photographer’s eye. It was manifest in the subject’s movements and behavior. Could there be any better proof than the theatrical photograph (# 61, above) in which Eduardo Kaufman appears with his mouth open in the pose of an opera singer with half-closed eyes alongside a stupefied Ana? The ad for a well-known bank, visible in the background, is an allusion to his crooked dealings. The money bills and the slogan that—due to the framing of the picture—was limited to the word “contribute” refer to the illicit funds that circulated in his campaigns. The small child going by who appears at the bottom in the foreground, a poor Indian with a distended belly, as well as the word “never” prominently visible on the poster hanging behind Eduardo, add another suggestive layer of interpretation. I chose that photograph for the cover of the proposed book given the clarity of all of its planes, its luminosity, and its excellent color contrast.
November 2
Almost midnight on November 2, after so many years of not using my camera, I now took a series of photos. Only to me will they not be mysterious and incomprehensible. They’re of keys and two wedding bands atop a rectangular piece of black lace placed in a box, recalling a work by Joseph Cornell. I felt like a naughty boy. I cut up the lace from Joana’s panties that I had kept for so many years.
Lewd thoughts don’t ask permission to enter one’s mind. If I try to push them away, they become more present. If I insist on hiding them under the name of modesty and common sense, they get aggressive, like a bull attacking me, like African bees threatening to kill me, like a dog barking at me nonstop.
November 3
They barked all night. The once young man saw himself again in Joana’s room in Rio, she rearranging her garters and parading from one side to the other. I remembered that Carnaval I spent with her in Rio, listening to the clamor in the streets and to what she was saying, that no fall of a government would measure up to the memory of our meeting. Paulo Antonio and all of his era are worth less than Joana’s perfume, embraces, and moans on that distant afternoon. Could I still hold her in my arms even if it only meant that our skin would touch? I wonder whether she’s still fascinated by Eduardo Kaufman.
November 8
I’ve fallen ill and so I haven’t written for several days. Yesterday Mauricio came to visit me.
– Is it true that you intend to dedicate your book to Joana? he asked, adding that she’s already in Brasília.
– First, I haven’t finished it yet. Second, I don’t intend to publish it. And third, I have written mainly in memory of Aida. I don’t like sentimentality or objects, but I never got rid of the little silver heart that Aida gave me and I grow sad when I think about her.
I was mixing half-sincerity with good manners. I say that I was half sincere, not because I lied but because I omitted the rest. I should have confessed that if Joana came in here today, I would trade everything I’ve written for her embrace.
– Why don’t you publish it on the Internet? It would be read even more and would still earn you royalties.
Mauricio dialed a number and wanted me to invite Joana to visit me.
– No, not in this condition.
I’m suspicious that he or Laura has been reading my diary. They know too much about me. They even guess what I’m thinking. Whom I’m thinking about. I don’t want to contact Joana. I’m afraid both that she doesn’t and that she does want to see me. In the first case, the confirmation that she doesn’t desire me will still cause me pain. In the second, I wouldn’t feel any better because I’d see in it the promise of love, which at our age is mainly the promise of shared sorrows.
November 20
If the names of pain are many, as I came to write in this diary, then many more are those of pleasure. A few words, and mainly three exclamation points, were suddenly able to change my mood. Repeatedly, I hear the words of an email in the voice of the computer as if it were music. I will fully reproduce them here:
Dear Cadu,
What a lovely surprise to receive your email. Paulo Mar- cos and I are well. Miami is pleasant at this time of year. It’s not as hot now. Beautiful days, blue sky, after the hurri- cane season that this year saw us almost lose the house. Paulo Marcos loves it here. I’ve adjusted now, even to the American habit of periodically electing an enemy of the moment. Politicians have the power to simplify the world and to make everyone believe in a new map and new weapons.
And you? How are you? Sometimes we get news of you from Carolina. I’ll never forget our many conversations. In our living room we have your panel of flowers, and it’s with great affection that I keep the photos you took of me. I hope to visit you on a future trip to Brasília.
We received an invitation to Mauricio’s wedding. Unfor- tunately we won’t be able to attend.
Send news whenever you can. All the best from Paulo Marcos.
Miss you lots!!!
Tânia
I feel pleasure again in listening to the night music with its crickets, toads, and the roar of cars passing on the Main Axis, even the noise of the elevator and the neighbor’s television; in savoring the taste of whatever touches my lips, in exploring shapes with my hands, in reading Braille, in smelling rain, the perfume of women, and even the stink of Marcela’s coat.
I feel pleasure especially in learning of Mauricio’s joy. Tomorrow will be his wedding to Laura.
November 22
Last night Carolina took me to the wedding in Don Bosco Sanctuary at 702 South. Churches have a particular smell. Perhaps it’s the mixture of incense, candles, and flowers, not to mention the sweat of the crowd.
The sound of the violins reverberated around the walls. Laura’s musical selection mixed something from Bach to the Beatles to Gershwin, besides some recent hits I’m not familar with.
Joana was there. I don’t know whose idea it was to have me sit beside her. She was wearing one of her perfumes from the old days. She came over to talk to me and a
sked if she could visit me.
Guga gave me a hug, this time less timid than the one at Ana’s funeral. I still have a hard time speaking to him. There will always be an open wound in our relationship. I felt we agreed on the basics: we’re imperfect and for this reason incapable of erasing our resentments; but we forgave each other.
As I was leaving I also ran into Antonieta. The last time I’d seen her, many years ago, I’d noticed that time had passed for her. Her aging had been slowly approaching mine but then had overtaken it at great speed. Her eyes were sunken. They seemed faded and opaque. She’d lost her sensuality; her face was etched by day-to-day concerns and certainly by the years dedicated to her children.
It was my good fortune, therefore, not to be able to see her this time. Thus, I could imagine her young, in a Rio bar which then blended with the paths, sky, and lake of the Water Hole Park. She was accompanied by her husband and children, four in total, the oldest apparently a friend of Carolina’s.
[November 22, with revision on December 9]
62. Physical love
Despite the aide’s promises, months went by without my photographs of Eduardo being exhibited. There was also no news about the book. I who had initially hesitated to sell those photos began to await impatiently for them to appear. I called and complained. The aide explained that the project had had to be postponed.
One day, finally, with Eduardo already finishing his third term, the photographs were exhibited. In the interviews I did, I spoke sincerely about what I thought of him. If I said he was corrupt without proof, I could be sued. I revealed, however, that he had wanted to kill me, and I pointed out that his character was evident in those photos. They thought it was funny—even Eduardo thought it was funny—that a blind man could describe a photograph in its smallest details.
That was my only successful exhibit, and not just because being a blind photographer was a field day for the newspapers or because the public felt sorry for me. Eduardo was famous, and I had discovered pearls in his earlier life and had placed him alongside Paulo Antonio and beauties like the young Ana Kaufman. There was also the Stepladder effect, which elevated me several steps. At the opening reception, he put his hands on my shoulders, walked around the room a little with me and said:
– Pretend you’re talking to me and we’re close friends.
Photographs of our fake conversation later appeared all over the papers, together with praise from Stepladder himself about my work.
When it was finally displayed, I thought that the collection of photographs of Eduardo Kaufman could demonstrate a thesis about the photographed subject, his character and his flaws. On the contrary: to the commentators it demonstrated a thesis about the photographer, especially about my qualities as a creative humorist who had managed to magically transform a serious person into a grotesque one, a photocaricaturist who didn’t resort to montages or manipulations. I felt like a child whose pranks adults thought entertaining. The photos were enlarged, reduced, republished in newspapers and magazines, reframed to highlight some detail or other and juxtaposed with “serious” photographs of Eduardo Kaufman taken by other photographers. I had done everything to fell Eduardo, but like that punching bag from my childhood, Bozo the Clown, he had teetered from one side to the other and in the end always bounced back upright.
I was misunderstood and, thus, recognized for the wrong reasons. They liked what I hadn’t set out to do. What pleasure could I get from achieving glory by mistake? All that required my sensitivity, technical prowess, and intelligence would be buried and forgotten with me, if it didn’t go into the trash first.
The repercussion of the exhibition was such that Veronica and Antonio, who were then living in Natal, learned about it on television. They called me from there. Veronica felt as if she were part of the project.
– I selected the photographs with you, she made a point of reminding me.
– You finally found your path, Antonio said.
For me, personally, the greatest success of the exhibition was that it attracted Joana’s presence. I didn’t expect her. She didn’t stay at the opening reception long, but it was enough time to unnerve me. I wanted all of the other guests to depart and leave me alone with her. I needed to talk to her, to find out if she still felt anything for me. In the midst of the crowd, she greeted me effusively and left her perfume on my hands, which I didn’t wash for several days.
Later she sent me a message reiterating her congratulations. I tried to call her several times and wrote to her, with no answer.
Because for me that exhibit became associated principally with her presence and absence, and also so that Eduardo’s face doesn’t appear again printed in this book, I prefer to change the photograph that opens this section. In the place of a photo from that misunderstood series goes one from the work destined for oblivion. The portrait above, # 62, is obviously of Joana. It was taken when I met her. I carried it in my wallet for a long time. It became wrinkled and acquired spots and the patina of time. One day, when I wanted to reproduce it, I preferred to make a copy from the print I carried in my pocket and that had its own story, instead of reverting to the negative. I digitized it and made a new print. The portrait was still there, subtler than in the original and with paler colors, juxtaposed with the hues that time and chance had applied to it. Photography can reproduce a singular instant for eternity and provoke the return of things forgotten, hidden, or dead. Joana’s body is damp from the river water near Pirenópolis where we had bathed. Her dripping hair hangs down to her shoulders. She looks at me and there is desire and love in her eyes, a seductive seriousness in the shape of her lips. This is the photograph par excellence of that desire, the love I can’t forget. A photograph that brings back the perfume and the softness of Joana’s skin; that revives dormant feelings and has the ability through memory to resuscitate physical, carnal love in all its freshness.
November 30
Marcela has fallen ill. I suspect that she doesn’t want to be left alone and for this reason she is racing me to the grave. Carolina offered to take her to the vet, if necessary.
I’m no longer so sure that I’m the handsome Brasiliarian of Clarice’s stories, which I listened to again. “Brasília is the ghost of an old blind man with a cane going tap-tap-tap. And without a dog, poor man,” she also wrote.
December 1, night, in the hospital
Joana was leaning her body over my bed, supporting her arms on the mattress and the bed was starting to shake. Distressed, and no matter how much I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see what was happening. Joana moaned and her body swayed. Now I clearly heard a man moaning right behind her, unleashing brusque, back and forth movements, Joana’s skirt raised, brushing my legs. “Fuck me, Eduardo, fuck me,” she said. “I want to give it to you. I want you to fuck me in front of this little shit.” My bed shook even more. Besides not being able to see, a cloth covered my mouth and they tied me to the bed. Joana yelled louder: “Come, Eduardo. Come. Deeper, honey, put it all in.” I tried in vain to free myself.
I awoke in a cold sweat, feeling a deep uneasiness. The dream, all too real, affected me physically. My body is still sore all over, inside and out. My head weighs heavily.
– You called the name Joana several times, and asked for your laptop, said a nurse who made my bed and tried to cheer me up with talk about a soap opera.
December 5
I felt a tremor when Tânia’s voice approached the door of the room. The calendar receded twenty years. It was as if I saw her with the body and face from the time when I’d returned to Brasília. Without moving in the bed, I heard whispering between her and the nurse who takes care of me. We haven’t met in five years. I almost asked her not to come in; memory was preferable to facing the present misery. But reality is the present and it imposed itself relentlessly.
I retrieved all the vestiges of my youth and put on a happy face. Tânia entered and sat on the edge of my bed. I knew that her face was serene and sad. The nurse, noticing the gravity
of her expression, left us alone. For some minutes, Tânia left her hand forgotten atop one of my legs and we didn’t say a word. Two hearts that had failed to connect were all that remained of our promises of love.
– I won’t escape this one, I told her.
– You’ll get better and be out of bed in no time. You’ll bury all of us yet, Tânia told me with her protective maternal voice, holding my hands.
We were still alone and could say whatever we wanted. We wanted little. She brought me up to date on the news about Paulo Marcos and people we knew in common, not without revealing a nervous affection in her voice. I responded with farewells to her and the world without any regret, convinced that with all accounts settled, my life was a net gain.
– Get those ideas out of your head, she said. Tomorrow I’ll be back.
– You’re leaving already?
– I promise I’ll come tomorrow and the day after. And every day as long as I’m in Brasília.
My goddaughter came in.
– Keep him company. And don’t let him dwell on these morbid thoughts, Tânia told her.
– There are more visitors coming, Godfather, Carolina announced.
I heard Laura’s and Joana’s voices.
– It’s just the way he likes it, always surrounded by female admirers, Joana commented, in a cheerful tone. Look how loved you are, Cadu. Your women are faithful.
– How are you feeling? Laura clasped my hands tightly and gave me a kiss on the forehead.
– Much better, now. Better all the time, I answered.
Their voices were the background music that soothed me and, perhaps because they mixed with the effects of the medications, they ended up putting me to sleep.
When I awoke I was alone with Joana. I grew accustomed to examining the darkness in the back of my retina. In general, small stars float over a gray sea or I see orange circles, light bluish layers, dark brown rectangles on a light brown background . . . It was late afternoon and as I lay on my hospital bed I felt goose bumps. The color of death wasn’t black, or gray, or purple, it was the color of sand bathed by a red sun that I saw with my blind eyes from the top of a dune. At the back of my retina, imposing itself on the customary blotches, Joana’s form took shape. Colors blended muddily and I saw Joana undressing. It wasn’t a dream. She was naked and young. A mound rose from my body creating pressure against the sheet. Joana revived me. I would trade my entire past for my little remaining future.