In that film-like ambience, among so many insecure actors playing their roles, a single element stood out for its physical presence. Without his orange cap, Bonobo was dancing with Ingrid, their bodies close. His neck was at a straight angle to the parquet floor. His shaved head was held erect but tilted slightly downwards, his eyes apparently fixed on Ingrid’s head, a good eight inches below his. Leading the dance, Bonobo’s body barely seemed to move, while Ingrid’s hips swayed softly. There was latent tension as the dance partners spun around, a play of domination, resistance and surrender. They were, in short, dancing properly. Whether he was aware of it or not, Bonobo knew what he was doing. He didn’t usually take an interest in girls a lot younger than him. As he danced with little Ingrid, it was as if he were teaching her something.
Hermano glanced over his shoulder. Isabela’s mother was watching him. She smiled affectionately when their eyes met. He gave her a little automatic smile in return and when he turned back to the dance floor he found Naiara’s eyes staring into his, intrigued. It was disturbing, as if he’d suddenly found himself on a firing line. He looked at the ground, where there was no risk of any further eye contact with women. Another glass of Coke seemed a good pretext to get out of there. He stood, found himself a clean cup and an open bottle on a nearby table, and plodded towards the door, thinking he’d step outside for a breath of rain-laced air, maybe even convince himself to ditch the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of the party once and for all. Halfway there, the sight of a small disturbance in the scene he had been observing until a few moments earlier caused him to stop in his tracks. Isabela was holding Uruguay by the wrist, apparently trying to keep his arm away from some soft part of her body. The gesture wasn’t terribly overt, but it was enough to suggest a situation of harassment and resistance. Uruguay’s other arm was clasped forcefully to her back. His chin was hooked over her neck like a clamp. She was saying something. Uruguay’s eyes were still closed, and his lips were contorted with the emission of some strange noise that couldn’t be heard over the music. They were no longer turning, and held their positions as if a brusque movement was being prepared by one of the parties. Isabela raised her voice and now he could make out what she was saying. She was telling Uruguay to let her go, saying the same thing over and over, separated by identical pauses. One by one, the people on the dance floor stopped to see what was going on. Uruguay wouldn’t let go of Isabela, as if by insisting he still might, absurdly, turn the situation in his favour again. She struggled to get free more and more vigorously. It was time to do something, and the realization brought a tremor to Hermano because for a moment he thought about intervening, separating them, somehow immobilizing Uruguay and taking him outside, but he did nothing of the sort and just stood there, considering a whole catalogue of possible ways to approach Uruguay and fend off a likely violent reaction, until Isabela gave Uruguay a push and freed herself, except for her hand, which he wouldn’t let go of, and began to scream, and everyone but Hermano decided to intervene at the same time, including Isabela’s mother, who ran to her daughter’s aid and got an earful of what could only have been the lewdest of language coming from Uruguay’s mouth. By now Hermano had convinced himself that the best thing to do was stay right where he was, drinking Coke. That was when Bonobo made his entrance, headbutting Uruguay in the teeth. Uruguay stumbled back about three steps and pushed off the wall to respond to the attack, planting a kangaroo kick in the middle of Bonobo’s chest, leaving him breathless for a few seconds, at the mercy of a few more blows to the face. A clearing formed in the middle of the restaurant. The girls who hadn’t raced outside screamed as they watched the fight. A few people tried to break it up and ended up taking a stray elbow or two. Bricky went as far as to pick up a chair and hurl it at them (the Recanto Espanhol had large, heavy wooden chairs with pointy corners), but it did no good. Uruguay weighed more and was stronger than Bonobo, but the outcome of the fight was predictable. The punches he received only stoked Bonobo’s rage and he flew at Uruguay swinging his arms in a brutal sequence of blows, at a forward tilt, as if fighting his way through a furious flock of bats. A well-placed blow to Uruguay’s jaw left him groggy, allowing Bonobo to get him in a headlock and drag him in an ungentlemanly fashion into the street, where he made it very clear that that was no way to behave at a birthday party. Only then did some adult relatives emerge from their secret corners to bring the situation back under control. The music stopped, the lights came on, and the girls went to console Isabela.
Hermano watched the guests, including his own friends, leave in small groups on foot or in cars driven by the older ones. A taxi was called to take Uruguay, accompanied by Chrome Black, to the emergency room (there was a short debate about whether or not it was best to go first to a hospital or to an orthodontic clinic; no consensus was reached). Before leaving, Hermano needed to drain off the excess Coke in the men’s room. When he opened the door, he found himself staring at Isabela’s mother’s backside, as she leaned over the toilet. Just then, she turned to Hermano.
‘Ice, darling. Can you get me some ice from the kitchen?’
Only then did Hermano see Bonobo sitting on the toilet. The fleeting eye contact between the two of them was empty, no message was exchanged. Bonobo was pressing a white cloth to his mouth, but he took it away from time to time to call Isabela’s mother ‘Aunty’ and say things like ‘Jeez, Aunty, it’s not fair, Isabela’s such a nice girl, this kind of thing really gets me mad’, while ‘Aunty’ responded in nervous monosyllables as she doused balls of cotton wool in hydrogen peroxide.
Hermano went to the kitchen, found the freezer and an ice tray. The mission was almost insignificant, but it included him in what was going on and that was good. It was like visiting an actor’s dressing room after a play. There was the star, sitting on the toilet, a weary and intimidating figure at the centre of attention. Isabela’s mother took the ice cubes from Hermano, rolled them in the cloth and pressed it to Bonobo’s lips, which were already swollen.
‘Thanks,’ said Bonobo, looking over her shoulder.
That slight, almost impersonal acknowledgement gave Hermano an enormous sense of satisfaction. He could hardly believe that until just a few hours earlier he’d been afraid of getting beaten up by Bonobo, and felt ashamed. A few minutes later, the two of them set out on foot for Esplanada, at first about two hundred yards apart, but heading the same way, and now they were walking side by side, each hearing the other’s proximity.
After walking for a few blocks along the shoulder of Serraria Road, they turned right on to Reservation Street. Here and there were parked cars and, under them, dogs and cats that had taken shelter from the rain there, sleeping or watching the night, their eyes points of light in the darkness. The street followed the crest of the hill and on the right was a long downward slope dominated by grey asbestos rooftops. They walked until they reached the top of the stairs where the downhill competitions took place. Bonobo stopped and sat on the first step. Hermano kept going, one step at a time, almost stopping as he looked over his shoulder, a word of goodbye stuck on his tongue. But it was Bonobo who spoke.
‘Have a seat. Or are you going home now?’
Hermano came back and sat down.
‘I’m gonna try and finish this before the sun comes up,’ said Bonobo, holding up the still-full bottle of cachaça to analyse it.
‘In’t that a bit much?’
‘Yep. But a guy’s gotta try, right?’
‘That whole thing with Uruguay was fucked up.’
‘He was asking for it. What a dickhead, forcing himself on a girl like that, especially the birthday girl. You really not drinking?’
‘I don’t drink alcohol. I saw when he started groping her. I was just about to step in myself.’
‘I’ve never liked that guy, although most Uruguayans are pretty cool. Why don’t you drink? Doctor’s orders?’
‘I could if I wanted to. Sorry ’bout that time on the field, it was an accident.’
Bonobo didn’t reply. He just turned and looked Hermano in the eye for a second. The ensuing silence was long and Hermano thought bringing it up again had been a grave mistake, even though it had popped out of his mouth automatically, almost without thinking.
‘See that plot of land down there?’ said Bonobo, pointing with the bottle.
‘Which one?’
‘That one. Near the eucalyptus trees, down at the end. Almost at Police Hill. It’s pretty small. There’s a water tank next to it and a lamp post.’
‘I see it.’
‘It’s my mum’s. She said if I save up enough to build on it she’ll give it to me.’
‘You reckon you can?’
‘I reckon so. I’m doing inspections for a car insurance company. In a year or two, maybe. If I work hard I’ll get a promotion.’
The sound of crunching gravel began and grew in intensity until a yellow beam lit his back and a car sped up the street, invading the silence and then gradually vacating it. Hermano held out his hand, Bonobo read the gesture and, without any questions, offered him the bottle of cachaça. He took a small swig, which left a burning sensation on his lips. It was his first drink of alcohol and it would be his last, he was sure. He just felt an urgent need to have something new in his life. Now he was no longer someone who never drank, and was thus a different person. Switching personalities, or brusquely changing the course of his life, had always seemed unfeasible, nothing more than a source of anxiety and frustration, but in spur-of-the-moment gestures like that a whole world of possibilities opened up. Interfering with destiny suddenly seemed simple. Little by little, through small actions of the sort, maybe it was possible to gradually become someone else, someone not as quiet, who was able to incorporate into the plot of his own life the exquisite violence of comics, the virility and magnetism of his favourite movie heroes, the rugged ease of the actions and words of someone like … he had to own up to it now, not just to himself but to everyone – someone like Bonobo, a figure so ugly he was almost a caricature, whose greatest talent was beating up other people, but who embodied like no one else some kind of obscure ideal to which Hermano aspired. That swig of cachaça might be the first sign of a permanent bond, the first exchange among many that would grow into a meaningful friendship. In a few years’ time, they might be good friends. If they joined forces, they might be able to save enough money to build a house on the land that Bonobo’s mother had promised him. Hermano had only two years of high school left. He could get a part-time job during that time or, why not, simply drop out, open a bike repair shop, anything. He and Bonobo would share a place, their respective girlfriends would be almost permanent fixtures, they’d have the gang from Esplanada over for parties and to watch Grêmio matches on TV. Or not. Maybe the house idea wasn’t so viable, just the delirium of a passing enthusiasm, but a variety of scenes of future possibilities flitted through Hermano’s thoughts like the trailer for an action movie, a road movie, he and Bonobo driving down the continent along Argentinean highways, over the brown plains of Patagonia with snowy mountain ranges on the horizon, leaving a mark on the villages and in the memories of the people they met along the way, heading towards the deep south, to something immense and unspeakable, the climax of a journey. It was the vision of a life beyond the introspection of solitary exercise, an adventure for which he had been preparing himself for so many years, at last a concrete goal for all the unspecific expectation he had carried with him since some time in his childhood, an unfolding of the desire to take on and be taken on by the world. Hermano was exultant. Beside him, Bonobo looked absorbed in his own thoughts, and only the devil could have said what they were. They sat there without speaking for a long time, but it wasn’t a problem, because to pass the time nothing seemed necessary but their mute presence, a telepathic tension between two interior monologues.
6.31 A.M.
When he was a child, Serraria Road ran through a semi-rural area that was progressively being taken over by lower-middle-class families. He had watched the gradual occupation of the southernmost part of Porto Alegre from birth through to his university years, witnessing the transformation of the landscape around him. He still had clear memories of when it was an almost virgin subdivision, each vacant lot holding its own secret – a living or dead animal, vestiges of a mysterious camp, a trail that appeared to lead somewhere previously unexplored and then petered out in the grass inexplicably. Returning now, years after moving into Adri’s mother’s apartment in Petrópolis and, more recently, into their three-bedroom house in Bela Vista, Esplanada’s calling as a residential zone struck him with a profusion of apartment complexes, gated communities and a new supermarket. Cobbled streets and dirt roads had been tarmacked over. The hundreds of residences built over the last few years reminded him of the homes found on suburban housing estates, with two- or three-storey constructions on narrow properties, craning over one another for a view of the Guaíba. Most of these new houses looked like stacked crates with slight variations in size and layout, minuscule or non-existent front gardens, high metal fences topped with spikes and, in many cases, electric fences, double garages, colonial or French ceramic tiles, and white or horrible pastel-coloured walls. A giant display of cheap construction materials designed by an evil sect of civil engineers and lobotomized architects. He drove a few hundred yards down Serraria Road and turned on to Reservation Street. There, where most of the plots of land were occupied by older homes, the passing of time seemed to have brought fewer changes. The street had been tarmacked over, but the slimy granite pavements were there, the modest one-storey houses with gardens harmonized by the action of the years, and cement walls little more than three feet high, rusty steel dustbins, stray dogs rubbing muzzles with dogs behind bars or restrained by collars. They were banal but familiar things, like the repetitive birdsong that sounded like a bossa nova refrain. After four blocks and two turns, he found himself in front of the house he had lived in with his parents until he was twenty-five, now owned by a couple of young veterinarians who had three Siberian huskies, innumerable cats and a freshwater lobster. The dogs were in a fenced-off kennel to one side of the house, which now boasted a garden full of decorative plants and was protected by green steel bars. To his horror, he saw that the exposed brick walls of the formerly modest but cosy dwelling had been rendered and painted an awful salmon colour. The old guillotine windows with varnished wooden frames had been replaced with sliding windows with aluminium frames. But it all paled in comparison with the second storey, which had been added on more recently, covered with immaculate new tiles. It appeared to be an en suite with a balcony that had simply been fitted over the old roof without a thought for the overall harmony of the building. His parents, who now lived in an apartment in Auxiliadora bought with the money from the sale of the house, no doubt knew nothing of it. They’d be devastated if they did. His father not so much, as he had actually adapted well to the new suburb and, at the age of fifty-nine, continued to play tennis two or three times a week at União and to peruse – in reading glasses, face glued to the computer screen – several daily newspapers online, despite the macular degeneration that was progressively affecting the centre of his visual field and his ability to read. His mother was more attached to the old neighbourhood. She had left behind her friends and a provincial micro-universe which she had navigated effortlessly and comfortably, while the urban density of areas closer to the centre got on her nerves. Some two years earlier, he had insisted that his parents go through with the sale of the house and the move closer in, thinking of a not-so-distant future in which being close to their son, shops and medical clinics would be more important than the ramshackle bucolicism of the southern suburbs. He was no longer sure it had been such a good idea. The move was yet another example of his obstinate way of planning everything so far in advance, organizing life around him so that everything happened as planned in five, ten, twenty years’ time. Only now did he see this clearly: his encouragement to sell the house in Esplanada had had more to
do with his anticipation of his own future than his parents’ interests. The realization, coupled with the sight of what the veterinarians had done to the house, made him feel like crap. Maybe it hadn’t all been necessary. Not just the sale of the house and his parents’ move, but everything. Everything he had done since that Sunday in 1991. The front door of the old family home, solid hardwood darkened with carnauba wax, was the only part of the house that appeared to have remained untouched, and now, staring at the door, he saw himself as a fifteen-year-old turning the oval doorknob and hearing the spring creak, still digesting the experience of his first visit to a cemetery, his first funeral, building a shelter amidst a mental storm, planning what his life would be like from then on as if he were planning his slow, obstinate transformation into a superhero who would re-emerge fifteen years later to be admired for his self-control and intelligence, for his stoicism and physical vigour, like the heavy front door that had remained oblivious to the world in transformation around it. Fifteen years earlier, he had decided to shut himself away, reading and studying, until he’d exhausted his ability to concentrate, going out only to tire his body with forty-mile bike rides to Lami or hour-long runs along the riverside promenade in Ipanema, as solitary a routine as possible, entirely focused on surpassing his own limits and demanding the utmost of himself, pushing himself to a level that few human beings could attain. He scouted around for the most difficult degree at the most demanding university in the state, and the trail led to the profession to which he felt he was clearly destined, the profession that would justify complete surrender to discipline and at the same time satisfy his fascination with blood and gore, an ambiguous feeling that involved an aesthetic attraction to violence and a frankly cowardly fear of the real thing. He would learn to tame his urges, to domesticate blood, to apply violence scientifically with the noble aim of curing other human beings. He mapped out the rest of his life in the week following the funeral. He would become a doctor. The best. In the second semester, he finished his second year of high school with marks higher than 9.2, and the following year he didn’t have a single mark under 9. Four months before graduating, he started an after-hours prep course for the university entrance exams and began to read newspapers and Brazilian literary classics well into the night, in addition to carefully rereading biology, chemistry, maths, history, literature, physics and English textbooks, doing exercises and copying out long passages by hand until the friction of the pencil made a painful yellow callus on the side of his right middle finger. He stopped watching films, reading comics and going out. He pulled away almost completely from his friends in Esplanada, who still came looking for him with accusations of ‘Hey, stranger’ and ‘Where you been?’ but after a few weeks they gave up. He resisted his parents’ attempts to get him to see a psychologist. He wasn’t traumatized. He wasn’t trying to get over a difficult experience. He didn’t feel alienated. He was just looking for an objective. And in so doing he came first in the entrance exam to study medicine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. The prep course asked if they could use his photograph for a publicity campaign, but he turned down the request. He humbly received congratulations from friends and family and ignored his fame, which was spreading through the neighbourhood. It was just the beginning. With the same energy, he plunged into six years of med school, a two-year residency in general surgery and another two years of plastic surgery at Ernesto Dornelles Hospital, until he opened his own practice at the age of twenty-eight. With his age, skill and appearance, he quickly became a well-kept secret among a small but devout group of clients who came to him to correct physical flaws or, in most cases, to fix bodies that only needed fixing if held to beauty standards as unrealistic as they were omnipresent. The more he tried to convince a female client that this or that implant or treatment was unnecessary, the more adamant she would become, and in extreme cases he had no choice but to refuse to proceed. Men were more easily persuaded to try diets, exercise, or simply do something to give their self-esteem a tweak. At any rate, his reputation as a young prodigy with a tendency to challenge his patients’ wishes, but who in the operating theatre was an incomparable sculptor, had been growing for about a year now. His hands were large and firm. In them, a scalpel became a tiny, delicate instrument. He explained with great patience and in detail the risks of each operation. None of his breast-augmentation patients went on to the operating table without first understanding what capsular retraction was and the chances of it happening, which would require surgical correction or even removal of the implant; nor did they go under the knife without fully understanding that prostheses weren’t for ever and would have to be replaced due to the useful life of the silicone implant or the normal thinning of the skin tissue and consequent sagging of the breasts, which would require future surgeries, etc., etc. For the vast majority of his patients, however, the violence of surgical intervention and the post-op suffering were almost insignificant aspects of a blessed procedure that solved a whole range of insecurities and problems once and for all. Beauty magazines led people to believe that mammoplasty, chemical peels and liposculpture were ways to change one’s appearance that were as quick and inoffensive as a haircut. He’d never forgotten how the mother of one of his first young patients had broken down and wept when he told her it was possible to perform breast-augmentation surgery on her daughter, for which she had saved a generous portion of her wages as a department-store sales assistant for almost two years. It was as if they’d found a kidney donor after years of anxious waiting. Her eighteen-year-old daughter’s chest puffed out with emotion, pushing forward the small but shapely breasts that would soon be enlarged by the transaxillary placement of prostheses beneath the pectoralis major muscle, and her eyes sparkled and darted randomly about the office, probably imagining scenes from a near future filled with predatory looks from men, her friends’ envy, self-confidence at parties and exhibitionism at the beach. That was when he understood that his patients needed what he had to offer with an intensity that obscured the risks and justified any cost, discomfort or bleeding. He did his part: he spelled out the pros, cons and consequences fully and sincerely. Then he did his job with tremendous attention to detail. His biggest secret was that, deep down, he was unconvinced by the aesthetic result of most of the procedures he performed. Rhinoplasties and otoplasties to correct deformities or shapes too distant from the anatomical standard were one thing, but he didn’t like the artificiality of a breast replaced with a prosthesis and he knew that abdominal liposuction was, in most cases, like papering over cracks. He thought that both men and women, striving to measure up to dubious beauty standards, went overboard with the interventions they sought. But it was his job. He had spent nearly half his life obtaining the necessary knowledge and experience to be what he was: a specialist in aesthetic medicine. It was a career he was proud of. It had demanded great sacrifice and effort on his part, and the only unexpected disruption had been Adri, the girl with wavy waist-length hair, bright teeth and eyes, and ornamental gestures like those of a dancer from the Orient, whose waxy skin smelled of warm stone and, after hours of sex, left a unique, indescribable taste in his mouth that coated his tongue and teeth like the fat from certain meats. Adri, the girl who had made him rethink his conviction that even the company of a woman was an obstacle to his heroic quest. What would have become of him if he really had stayed single for the last fifteen years? Feeling a little guilty, he wondered if he hadn’t demanded too much of his wife the last few years, as if she’d had to prove on a daily basis that she deserved her role within the life of her husband, the man who’d once told her he’d do everything in his power to make her happy. Repressing the urge to self-critique, he turned the key in the ignition and cruised in first gear through the streets of Esplanada, where human life was beginning to announce its presence in the form of a uniformed doorman cycling up a hill in first gear or a woman in tracksuit bottoms swinging her arms and hips on her morning walk. He wondered if Adri had got up early, right after he�
�d left. It was likely, seeing as how she probably hadn’t been asleep. He retrieved his mobile from the passenger seat and switched it on. There was voicemail. He pressed some buttons and listened to the phone operator’s message, expecting to hear Adri immediately afterwards, but the voice he heard was Renan’s. ‘Whatsup dude? It’s six-forty and it ain’t like you to be late. Did you chicken out? Ha ha. Alarm didn’t go off? If you get this, call me. I’m just hanging, waiting for you. Bonete might run away. Big kiss on your soul, bro.’ ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he grumbled, as he punched in his home number. Adri picked up on the third ring. ‘Adri?’ ‘Is that you? Where are you?’ ‘Did I wake you up?’ ‘Renan called here, asking where you were. I told him you’d left more than half an hour ago.’ ‘If he calls again, tell him I went to Bolivia by myself.’ ‘Where are you? Is everything OK?’ ‘Can I tell you a secret?’ ‘Huh?’ ‘I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before.’ ‘Is everything OK? Renan –’ ‘Did you know you’re the only woman I’ve ever had sex with?’ ‘What the fuck?’ ‘I’m serious. You were my first.’ ‘Come off it … you were twenty-three when I met you.’ ‘Twenty-four. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you.’ ‘Why now? Where are you?’ ‘Bye. When Nara wakes up, tell her I called to say I love her so much.’ ‘Where are you? You’re scaring me now. Are you going to get Renan?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh, God.’ ‘Don’t worry. Bye.’ ‘Wait.’ ‘Bye.’ He hung up, put the phone in silent mode and tossed it back into the passenger seat. The screen lit up to indicate an incoming call but he ignored it. He was passing Esplanada’s old square. It was all there still: the football pitch, the ‘royal box’, where the girls used to sit and watch the boys play, the merry-go-round, the monkey bars and playground equipment, except that now, besides being corroded, faded and worn, it all looked like a miniature model of the square he remembered. It was as if objects and places had shrunk with the years, just as the years themselves had grown shorter. He reached the first intersection and didn’t know which way to turn. Truth be told, he didn’t have the faintest idea why he was there. All he knew was that he wasn’t going home just now, much less to pick up Renan, go to Bolivia or even to leave the city on his own, less again to return to the clinic the following Monday. His mobile screen continued to flash. He flipped a coin in his mind and decided to turn left and drive around the back of the square, where there used to be an area of forest that now looked like a dozen trees and a small adjacent area covered with pointy molasses grass, which resembled light-green hair with violet tips. ‘The lost era,’ he thought, the line from Elomar’s song still echoing in his mind, although the third track of the CD was now playing. The car was doing less than ten miles an hour, the engine almost cutting out. On his right, the morning sun struck the lamp posts and cast shadows across the street diagonally. He had the weird impression that the posts marked graves positioned at regular intervals along the pavement, like the eccentric tombstones of an unknown civilization. The sound of footsteps and a shout or grunt caught his attention and made him glance to his left again. A boy of fifteen or sixteen was sprinting across the flattest part of the square. Another eight to ten appeared behind him. He stopped the car and watched to see where the fugitive and his pursuers were headed. There wouldn’t be any police around, especially at that hour. The boy being chased ran full pelt, jumped over an obstacle and disappeared momentarily behind some trees, to reappear immediately afterwards, further away. The others would eventually catch up and he’d be beaten until he passed out. That was life. What could you do? The group crossed an intersection and disappeared around a corner. It was time to move on, but where to? Maybe Lami. Spend Sunday there, have a beer, see what had changed – people said the water really was clean now. Then he could decide what was to be of his life. He put the car into first, drove fifty feet and stopped again. He pulled up the handbrake. He knew what he had to do. He climbed into the back seat, which had been laid down to become an extension of the car boot, released a few straps on his backpack and pulled out the brand-new ice axe that he’d bought especially for the expedition. It was shaped like a small pickaxe and incredibly light for its size. He held it by its handle, which was about one and a half feet long, and briefly gazed at the sharp stainless-steel blade, which looked like a heron’s beak. Then he climbed back into the driver’s seat, released the handbrake, put the car into reverse and floored it.
The Shape of Bones Page 10