He confided what he felt and Jose smiled. He said that, it could be crazy he felt nothing for her, for everybody in the class fancied her. It was difficult to make him understand that what he felt about that girl was not an attraction. But step by step José Martins understood that. And with his help Marcelo learned how to disguise what he felt when he saw her with that very guy named Daniel.
But getting back to the subject, when on his last class day said goodbye to everyone and got encouraged he asked Sandra a souvenir. And she, smiled gave him a small card made from paperboard. He kept the card from Sandra in the middle of his notebooks and went out heading to a corner. He could not hold his tears back. He cried because he knew that he would never see her again. He certainly cried because he would never love her again he way he used to.
Then she turned up where he was. It was just that day, exactly in that last instant that they could stay together alone, without any other soul alive to interrupt them. But his shyness shut his mouth like a gag calms the hostage and kept to himself everything he felt for her.
How the cruel destiny could reserve only this instant of loneliness with a goddess?
He changed the subject, dried his tears, so he got away from there crying, without saying to her what he felt, only crying, holding tight together with his notebooks and books that small card made from paperboard.
At home, already a bit calm, in the small room that he used to share with his brother, Carlos, opened the card and read it once again just to ensure what he had read: That was the invitation for Sandra’s engagement with Daniel.
Three
They moved to another town the following day.
He said goodbye to everyone. That small town, could never be forgotten from his memory anymore. Today is the disputing stage for the colonizers who dream to own a piece of land. About the town, you dear reader, may research, it’s in São Paulo’s countryside, today called Rosana.
Yeah, this other town where they moved to, his father could open a shop. So, Marcelo began working by day and study at night.
His second born brother, Carlos, dedicated much more to football. He got more notoriety at the local. Perhaps much more than Marcelo. To tell the truth, much more indeed. You dear reader might ask me, why you call him as the second? Because he had another brother, in case the third one. As I said before, they were seven, knowing that the other was born dead. The two first bearing were of female, then sooner after the stillborn, followed by Marcelo, another boy, another girl and then the third.
In this town he soon got a girlfriend. The first, I mean. For since then, he’d known only that Plato’s love. This one was a very caring, lovely and beautiful girl. Not as much as Sandra, but she was beautiful.
Her name was Lindalva, but she preferred to be called by Linda. They met in the class. As he was a newly comer in the town, he drew curious looks of the girls and boys who looked at him with the other eyes. Envy, jealousy or even prejudice for being the town newcomer. At this time, his body was being transformed and Marcelo began to lose the trauma of his physical incapacity.
During a work exhibition, Lindalva and him changed some conversation. As the class was over, he took her at his house No, he had no car. They went walking slowly and talking, and when they realized they were holding themselves hand in hand.
Days later he was making love with her for the first time. He can’t say that it was horrible neither the way he was expecting. But it was something new. It was the thing he desired, but as he had read many pornographies magazines, he had created lots of fantasies. With the passing of time, later, he would understand that fantasies exist because they’re only imagination things. Otherwise they would never be fantasies but reality.
Linda was an open-minded girl to talk about sex. He felt himself a new born before the superior mother. He was still shy. His timidity kept him away from lots of people. He could not go somewhere crowded with people. He felt himself depressed and many times he remained days without talking to his family.
He opened his mind to many things. This he started to live a little of what his future would be. He could not stay with Linda in a place where there were many people. The Snail inside him spoke louder and desired for a shell.
At the beginning Linda thought that normal. But as time rolled by she realized how insecure he was. At this time Marcelo worked in market, after working in a charcoal and also in a bar. And in this market where he worked Linda used to appear there sometimes. However she did not use to get in, she called him out and talked for a while quickly. Only later he could understand that why she did not use to get in. in fact that was not a market but a grocery store the correct name.
Dear reader you may wonder Marcelo’s timidity and in the same time working in public place attending lot of people, moreover this is real. He liked to talk, get along with people somehow he never liked to stand among a group of many people. And when he was with these, just to disguise his timidity he always needed to talk. He talked without talking. His hands were oily and used to rub them together unstoppably.
Well, one day he found out that, the owner of the grocery where Marcelo used to work, was already Linda’s boyfriend. It was herself who told him. Up to that, alright. But soon he was highly astonished.
There was a client of this Market who had a team of bushmen. Bushmen were those people who cut the woods from the bush and brought them for woods. Sometimes these guys stayed fifteen or twenty days in the bush. And this man went every time in the town, he shopped for his people in the place where Marcelo used to work. Well, one day this gentleman parked his truck far away from the market. It was an old car with the body removed, left just with the truck bed where they put up wood logs. The old was inside talking to Marcelo’s boss, as there was nobody else Marcelo stayed outside. There was only one door open in the market, the other one was closed. Leaning against this door, he saw when Lindalva was passing by in the street and called her, started to talk and then suddenly the old client got out from the market.
‘Linda! What are you doing here?!’ he said letting Marcelo in amazement. ‘how come?! Did he know her?’
It was her father.
Then he made her leave without even letting her say goodbye to the boy.
He looked at him with an angry man’s face, with no feeling that only a man who lives with men of all strains and characters from the most varied.
With the intervention of Marcelo’s boss, Marcelo could get himself freed.
At this grocery’s time, up to now Marcelo brings inside himself something which he could not sort it out in him.
The grocery’s owner was a Young man, less than thirty years old and his wife two years earlier had given him the first baby boy. She was blond, beautiful, and he, Marcelo went to work at that place, for her to take good care of her child. Until there, okay. The market or grocery’s owners whatever you prefer to say, reader, had a friend who they used to call him Galo. He was a good sort. He sometimes appeared there and helped them with the grocery.
He drank some bears, talked a little bit and hit the road. But one day, he thought of hearing something more.
It was a rainy day, Zé Godinho, the grocery’s owner, was out. He had gone at the bank or somewhere else. The fact is that, he was away home. The house was contiguous to the Market. Galo arrived with umbrella, a little wet. He went up to the back of the house. He said he would dry himself a bit. Marcelo was not surprised at it, he was intimate of the couple. So, in a certain moment he had to go and set the shelf up. Some rain drops were falling in through the roof and he had to change the position of some products. It was in this moment that he heard something that until today he doesn’t know if it was out of his imagination or pure and simple reality.
‘Honey, it’s all wet!’ the grocery’s woman was saying.
‘Be careful! He can listen! Must it be Marcelo the “he”.
‘It’s nothing at all! With the rain’s noise, he doesn’t listen anything! Zé will still be long! He doesn’t distrust
at all... he could not hear other words, the rain in fact interrupted his ears from listening everything.
So, after some minutes straightening his ears and paying more attention between the wood walls, Marcelo listened to something more.
"Little son..." — did he listen well? Galo had called Ze Goguinho’s son of son? And then...??? he moved away from the wall and went to clean on the other side of the grocery, right in time, for in less than two minutes Galo was getting out through the corridor door that gave access to the grocery store. But getting back to Lindalva.
For fear or cowardice he gave up the dating with Linda. The day he said that everything was over, she had an attack. She suffered from epilepsy. But it was nothing serious. Thanks God! after all his cowardice, if I may say so, Marcelo did not wish her anything wrong.
F
our
well, after six months alone, he went out from town together with his father. The shop did not give any result according to their expectation and they went to live in Paraná’s countryside. His father was always a hard-working and a honest man. He never knew that business and honesty are never embraced, when too much, they go on the same road. But he was persistent enough in a way that not to get an inch of idea. So stubborn even to put things in popular term. A kind of faith in God that made Marcelo believe to be miserable sinner in each thinking and action. Discipline and order, was methodic and sincere. With all these predicates dear reader do you think that he would be successful getting involved in business?
They two went ahead to arrange a place where to live. Two months later his mother with the rest of the family arrived. The town was smaller. With an only street from one side to another. It missed to Marcelo to conclude the 3rd year of the second grade. The local school was of the first grade up to eighth grade in the classes at night. So, he stayed one year out of school.
Soon he got a job in a mechanical workshop and his father employed as a super market manager. The only one in the town. The owner was a farmer of the region who was pleased with Mr. Luis and gave him the job and live restfully in a farm.
This time Marcelo left playing football definitely. His brother Carlos, differently from him, adventured and dreamed more and more in this area. Many local acquaintances took advantages on his dreams and hopes thoughts to Carlos, only at the weekends, where, for misery cents dismantled his opponent’s defense, bringing the trophy in the town. However, the real help of that which sustains and feeds the body and soul, he had nothing at all, something like a job with permanent or monthly salary.
But in this town, they stayed there just for two years. Soon they changed again. I think that dear reader, you must have realized that this family had gypsy life. Always from one place to another. This a part was good and other, not. They could never get anything. When they started getting some profits, soon they stopped everything and to live in another place.
At this time Marcelo with seventeen years old, got worried more and more with his future. He left the girlfriends aside and only cared about working. He could see the necessities of what his family passed through and knew that as the first born had to go after the solution for the situation they lived.
Let’s jump then in time and make the clock go forward.
His big sister got married with the son of an industrial man and he went to live her for some time. He left looking for a job and a better life condition, for Marcelo and for his families. This town was far away from their parents, about 790 kilometers away, in another state.
It was a large town. At the beginning he wondered, in fact, he’d lived in small towns only, that, when much, they had 20 thousand people. Now he found himself in the middle of great buildings, in a metropolitan city, with large number of cars and also dangerous, many assaults and other crimes. In his eighteens he got in for the first time in a cinema.
He worked on tinsmith’s shop where the owner was his brother-in-low’s acquaintance. He met simple people there, but who acted and behaved in a very strange way. As there arrived a group of friends, all of them motor-bike riders, the shop’s owner used to send him back then in the yard to get the parts, clean or organize everything. Him, innocently or in his own ingenuity of someone who never lived in midst of tricks and things like that, he never noticed anything wrong. Until one day...
Marcelo was alone in the workshop, there was little work, so he went up to the bungalow that was built inside the very workshop to be the office. Up there he began fussing about looking for a magazine of naked women, he fussed the drawers and in several places, Always looking for and leave exactly the way how he found before touching.
At a certain time he saw the knocking out bag, those training bags for fighters, hung on the ceiling and felt like giving some kicks what he came practicing in his brother-in-low’s house. From kicks he went on punches. It was his time for oriental philosophy reading and so on. Then he looked beside and saw another knocking bag. That was strange, he thought to himself and went to verify what was inside... was it really sand? It was so soft... it wasn’t sand, they were some dry leaves, which looked like cassava leaves... but they weren’t. so his mind began to work.
Suddenly he understood why they kept him away when that group of nice guys who worked at railway and that came always by motorbike. I really can’t say that he was treated badly, instead. They’ve been kind with Marcelo. But, nevertheless, he realized that it was all a part of stratagem to keep him quiet and far away.
Three years later that he left working at the tinsmith’s shop, he heard from the radio that the owner of that workshop was wanted by the police for car theft and drugs trafficking. He really felt pity of the guy, the owner of the workshop. But until today he asks himself, why did he choose that way? He could have been in a totally different situation. He only needed to believe. But one must know what he does. Then he thought how many others who would not be caught. But Marcelo learned that the police delays, but some day, when the less they expect, they get good results.
Still referring to that time, very later, he came to know that one of those boys who worked at the workshop, died drowned in a pool. In fact he was not a worker there, as he was a mare acquaintance of the workshop owner, the one felt pity seeing him without anything in his pocket, sometimes he called him to help and paid a buck. About the death in the pool, it was said he was drugged before diving into the pool. It was no way back diving.
Still in this time also, Marcelo remembered of being in a square, where there was a big college, called convention and some boys were playing football on the grass an improvised pitch. He was called and joined them happily. It has been six months already that he was living in the town and never played football again since then. He still remembers well of what was said about him when he jumped to head a ball:
"Wow, guys did you see that! This guy’s got a damn good impulse...” they commented among themselves the other players.
He was happy and all proud with the commentary. But he never played anymore in that town.
He still lived with his brother-in-low and sister some six months more, summarizing in all one year. One without studying. Another one lost year.
Well. As he got back home, his father went at Santa Catarina’s countryside. Him and other family stayed there surviving the way they could. Many times the neighbors helped them with something to eat. Sweet potatoes, a little bit of beans. He came back and started to work in a market. His second brother, Carlos, was already working there and got him a vacancy. His younger brother, the youngest or the third, whatever, Ricardo at this time he liked wandering in the woods, hunting birds and living his world discoveries time. He was doing what Marcelo used to do when he was his age.
The market people, liked his second brother Carlos so much. As I’ve said before, at this time he was the most commented player in the small town. He did incredible plays and gave wonderful dribbles. He could even win Maradona’s nickname, in attribution the Argentian star, who used to make wonders on Italian football fields.
&nbs
p; Marcelo looked with other eyes what the Market owners used to do with Carlos. Was a pure exploration and simple. His brother in joy of playing and do what he liked to do, never cared about. But Marcelo was aware. The ones, the store owners, obliged Carlos to stay out of his time schedule, and didn’t earn any extra money. They did not let him to get out earlier to study. And they still had to make him carry heavier burden more than what he could on his backs. They were bags of potatoes, wheat, beans, and several other things. At this time he might have been 16 or 17 years old.
When they tried to do that with Marcelo, the one could not stand that for long. He opened his mouth and complained some day when they were unloading from a truck and were thrown a watermelon and his brother left that fall and broke. So, they told him:
‘It will be cashed in your salary! You’re so feeble!’ they said that in front of many clients who were in the Market.
At the time Marcelo did not say anything, but the blood inside him boiled. His brother Carlos said nothing also humiliated. They felt themselves like two slaves.
Then, when they were only him Marcelo and the market owner, he said:
‘Mr. Jandir I don’t think that correct what you did with my brother.’
‘What did you not like? What wrong did we do?’
‘The way you mistreated him in front of others. I beg of you that, if you were to talk to me like that, at least don’t do that in front of customers. You may offend the way you like, but talk to me a part... he tried to make a harsh tone in his words, but he spoke with his head down, shyly and afraid, for he feared to be sent away. But he could not be quiet for any longer, seeing the exploration they did.
‘Look! Here, you’re an employee, and you don’t have to say any bullshit! If I want to shout, I’ll shout, and I think that I must offend, I will offend, understand? And don’t try to be a jerk here, your brother’s good guy, but you’re one of those who thinks that you got the world in your belly and lives complaining’ and he said many other things...
Ivair Antonio Gomes Page 6