Ivair Antonio Gomes

by Death in the Camping

  He liked criticizing everything what people did and said too much.

  He had arguments for everything.

  He made friendship with a guy whose name was Marcos.

  He made internship in a bank and lived outside the town center. A simple and restrained guy in words, he was Marcelo’s opponent.

  That guy had really become so boring or just like that kind of person who always detested, he’d become a pretty mess guy.

  Marcos soon became to Marcelo like a brother.

  He liked his company. He calmed him and showed him how quite far he was from what he dreamed of his ideal personality.

  As he had not many friends, Marcelo sometimes used to go out to have lunch at Marcelo’s house. This family always received him with the hands open. Marco’s mother was already an elderly lady over seventy years old of protuberant white hair, but who even suffering from bronchitis never gave up from the old cigarettes of straw neither taking care of the animals she had home, like rabbits, dogs, cats, drakes, chickens. Their house was really a true zoo, but everything all in order quite clean. It was quite an excellent familiar climate.

  The boy to whom Marcelo divided the house, had one girlfriend and he used to leave them alone, to enjoy well their courtship.

  But the house where he lived with this friend named Mirosmar, had some problems; it rained inside, the doors had no locks, many times the plumbing clogged, etc. poor people’s house, dear reader with a little bit of imagination, you know how it works. he commented with Marcos the possibility of arranging another house to live there.

  Two months later he came around and told him that his brother had left living in a house.

  The place was next to Marco’s house. As the boy had already known the place, he had no words to express his gratitude.

  Him, Mirosmar, moved from that place, on the following weekend.

  There were no furniture. Only a four burner stove which belonged to Marcelo; a Miro’s refrigerator, the way he used to call him; the beds, a TV of Marcelo and a stereo. With some woods they arranged some shelves and they got a sink with a kitchen given by a neighbor. Marcos got an old sofa set which they did not need anymore

  Then after that, Marcos got a trainee vacancy in a bank for Marcelo.

  Everything in a sequence of about three months and the boy had already gotten a new job, new house, thanks to that one who was always grateful.

  Now you the reader, can understand that why he wished him all the best.

  Marcos in fact, became really like a brother to Marcelo. The internship of six hours, in the morning. Soon he started working in the afternoon period also. He studied in the evening.

  The reader, when this boy arrived at night, he was deadly tired. He slept many times in the classes, and could only keep his eyes awaken, when there was a discussion.

  And what is even worse is that he almost ate badly, for he ate bread only and drank milk whenever he arrived home at night.

  But he was at his peak.

  On Sunday he did a mayonnaise and some tasty noodles so he could fill in his stomach. His friend Mirosmar, did not get along with non-fat foods. The frying pan was always almost full of oil, and whenever he invented to cook a chicken stew, my God! There was fat in, all around it. But on their way they could understand each other well.

  Miro, the way Marcelo used to call Mirosmar, worked on freight carrier and liked to go at the dancing clubs. In the places where sertaneja and gauchesca music played. Marcelo was not of going out so much, but whenever he went out in the street he used to go rarely at these places with Miro.

  This guy’s girlfriend, used to wait for him there on Saturdays at night and from there came home.

  On one of this goings Marcelo met beside Cilene, Miro’s girlfriend, a very beautiful brunette, a little shorter than him. At the boys invitation they sat together at the table. Soon Miro and Cilene stood up to dance. Marcelo remained on his own with the brunette at the table. She told him that her name was Helena and then asked him if he did not like to dance. A little bit uneasy, he revealed her that he did not know how to dance well.

  She smiled, with a very beautiful smile, simple, honest.

  She held him in his hand and took him in the middle of dance hall.

  Awkward, a little bit shy, he let himself be taken away by her small smooth hands.

  This Young man was already for a long time without any woman, almost six months. The last time was when the blonde went to visit him at his house.

  His instincts and hormones surfaced when he felt his body together with the girl’s. she felt his exciting state and decided to sit down.

  Helena and Cilene started to go at the boys’ house every weekends. They sometimes went out for dance, but most of the times stayed there, talked a little bit their four together played cards and then left. Each couple in their room.

  Helena seemed inexperienced to him in sex, but soon this passed away. She was a girl with approximately 1.60 cm, short hair and stunned skin. She lived on a sea shore. Her parents were from a fisher men community. And what captivated him was her simplicity, her girl’s way and in the same time her maturity.

  Hey, how many mistakes do we commit when young! How many wishes bump into us and cannot see that what we sometimes have can be the best what life will offer us.

  The reader, for sure you’ve passed through this age or you’re still in it, and what I say is not unknown anymore.

  No matter how much he liked Helena, prejudice was embedded in Marcelo.

  Rooted as a cancer in his tentacles. For Helena being a little bit of stature than normal, he felt himself ridiculed to go out with her.

  And he might have make it appear, for after that the girl insisted to go out with him by day time. He always invented an excuse.

  But even today he still remembers the few little times they went out together during the day time. They even went at cinema. The movie was very romantic, too many tears on the screen and in the couple’s eyes as well. It was a man’s story who has been killed and came back to protect his wife. The movie was one of the record keepers in the city. Helena was too much moved and wanted to get back and watch that again. If she went back or not Marcelo never came to know about that anymore.

  They stayed together almost one year. Then everything quit just like that. Without any explanation. Nor arguments..

  He didn’t look for her anymore and she never showed up again.

  The cocoon was getting stronger and firmer.

  In the street where he lived there was a very good looking girl. Marcelo saw her at the first time when he was helping to build a wall in the house he lived. The brick layer was Marco’s brother and he was helping to give the cement mass and carrying the bricks and cement too.

  One day she passed in the street. Maybe she always did that, by that time, and he only saw her at that instant.

  Happy, always smiling, he started to pay attention on that female figure that paraded her beauty before his window’s house. Gradually he created courage and started talking to her.

  Her name was Marli. She was younger than Helena and at this time Marcelo was still with this last one, who originated countless numbers of arguing for jealousy.

  The short one, the way he used to call Helena, one day she found a pile number of poems dedicated to the young girl Marli. But she said nothing. Some days later when he scribbled something he realized that Helena had read the poems dedicated to the other girl.

  From that day on she less visited him at his house and then suddenly she never showed in anymore. Soon Mirosmar quit his relationship with Cilene.

  Marcelo never knew any more news of Helena.

  Cilene was the connection link with her, and when she quit everything with Miro this connection ended too.

  He remembers one night when Marli was coming back from school.

  At this time, he had already quit his relationship with Helena, but he had no more intimate connection with Marli. He desired her only and the one used to pretend ind
ifference.

  Well, he began working at the dawn and in the morning. He arrived home nearly at two o’clock p.m. slept and woke up at about nine o’clock p.m. at midnight began the work in another company.

  As I was saying in this evening Marli was coming back from school earlier. He was at the gate house and as he heard her voice he changed his position to see her well too. She was coming with another friend, laughing and talking happily.

  As she saw Marcelo she said goodbye to her friend and came up to the gate. They began talking and at a certain time he hugged her.

  It was an act without studies, no preparation. It happened normally..

  She, a little scared and when she saw that there was no one around, and no one looking she kissed him joyfully. It was a quick kiss, impulsive, but which pleased him greatly.

  He held her on his lap, she was younger and light and took her inside his house.

  Miro was listening to the radio in his room. Marli tried to complain, but with her mouth covered by his lips she could not do much.

  They stayed only with the caresses because Miro heard her moans and came to spy up to Marcelo room’s door. She became a little ashamed and decided to go out.

  At that time the boy from the countryside became furious with the mate to whom he divided the house. He doesn’t remember another opportunity like that one he had with Marli that night.

  E

  ight

  As I have said before, at this time he had another job. His internship at the bank was over, and he was on the other job, he did not pass on the entrance exam he had done. The company where he was working, provided services in the area of check processing and clearing. He was a typist of the dawn period. Few workers. Eight people in all. It was a well-integrated teamwork. All young. The oldest besides Marcelo, a was brunette boy who was 29 years old.

  They worked joyfully. always with jokes and music. The supervisor was 25 years old and had just concluded his studies at University, faculty of Accounting sciences. He liked to watch movies so much and it was not rare that he sometimes began a chat about a certain subject. Of course he imposed limits for a mess. Let us say that it was an organized mess.

  There was also a typist who could play guitar in a Rock band. Skinny, tall, spiked and crazy ways, with this one he had no bad mood. Beside him everyone always felt well.

  Together with this rocker another guy joined them, tall, strong muscular boy, who practiced rowing as a sport. They were the two animation center of the group. There was still another boy who worked on the system operation, another one on pouches section and another brunette one who stayed on printers operations.

  That was a very great teamwork indeed. They used to organize football tournament and they were always together. Parties, dancing and even in the crazy things in their prime of youth.

  Well, Marcelo and the rower, Carlos Schiatell, planned something.

  They finished typing all the work and had the break for lunch after that. It was 02.:30 in the morning and they had to stay until 06:00 a.m. without doing anything more. Perhaps playing chess or tell stories or even spending the rest of the dawn telling funny stories as they always did.

  So him and his future best friend went out. While the rest of the team got down up to the square (good time, without any violence), they looked at each other and decided to go in a club. I mean, they used to call that Wiskeria, for Marcelo that was a night club, or zone whatever.

  He still remembers until today the stripper girl; Paulinha, it’s the name he’d give her.

  Of course that might not be her true name.

  The result.

  They could get back at work around 04.30 a.m. they were strongly scolded by the Supervisor. But he was a good guy and forgave them. The following days, they had to type the other worker’s service, but alright.

  Marcelo had already seen Schiatell when he worked as trainee in the bank, but they could not even come to have conversation.

  However in this service they’d become great friends. It really was with him that Marcelo at this time had great adventures.

  Mateus Lago was the guy who stayed at the correspondence departments, or pouches. He was the sector responsible. He was the other guy to whom Marcelo got along with in so many ways.

  In the service, sometimes it was necessary for someone to help in the pouches sector, so then he was the chosen. The chosen would stay for a month providing the help to Lago. Marcelo did not want to type anymore.

  Gradually he began trusting more the brunette boy, and with the lizard smile.

  It didn’t take long and soon they were climbing mountains and setting camping on the beaches and closely woods.

  Without any doubt he was one of the few guys who had the same bump with Marcelo, however he was married and had two children. But this boy was true and Leal to his friendship and Marcelo never forgot about that.

  For several times, when he was in deep depression, were Lago’s words that lifted him and made him stand up again.

  This part about the work there, is long, but it’s where Marcelo seems to have been out of the cocoon that’s why it spreads out a little bit more the content.

  They also had together with them a boy who spoke very little who in the beginning was taxed as a jerk for he rarely talked with the typists. He had some freckles on the face and worked as an operator, but together to the other workers of the company which were outsourced. A glass wall, like a dome which the rock boy Bonifácio nicknamed the aquarium. The name fitted that quite well.

  Well, the freckles boy his name was Percio and gradually Marcelo came to knowing him well. He was one of the oldest workers inside there, together with the period Supervisor.

  As they did not know each other, both had wrong suppositions of each other. As the years went by, Percio became a great friend of his. He had a yellow Volkswagen car which for Marcelo insisting so much for a ride in a friend’s village they finished spoiling the car. For some other reasons, for Percio trying to sing one of his known Marcelo wanted to talk seriously with him.

  Today Marcelo laughs of himself.

  How so stupid he was!

  To fear Percio he called him to have some beers in a bar, heavy bar. After refusing the lift he had offered to him he went home dying with fear.

  That’s why Marcelo thought of getting out from cocoon.

  In fact, living with these extraordinary people, he rarely felt depression. Instead he felt himself expansive, as if could do everything of all.

  But time rolled on, and one day each one of them got separated and followed their own ways.

  The company lost the bid.

  Percio left the company shortly after, Bonifacio created a band, Schiatell went to Japan trying his luck on rowing and Lago set his own company.

  Marcelo also left the company and to try his luck at Mato Grosso.

  N

  ine

  It took him for days and three nights to reach at his destiny.

  New Xavantina.

  New Xavantina, xavantes Indians land. Almost bordering with Paraná. Was a wilderness uninhabited land, not totally due to a dozen of huts.

  What did he go to do there in those sides?

  Well, I think so that we summarized the things very quickly in former paragraphs up there. He did not leave the company together with his friends. In fact when the company lost the bidding, Marcelo was already the typist supervisor and kept on with the subsequent company.

  So, then the pressure was gigantic for the charge and he lived having to take an attitude which did not match with what he felt. That was too much for the countryside young man. The new company required everything and gave nothing. It was as if the typists had only de duty and not any rights.

  He could stand there for two years more and then gave up.

  During this time he looked to keep his friendship with his former friends at the company when he was a typist.

  But with the pressure that originated the stress, with shell and cocoon came again around him
.

  He could not stand that so he threw everything in the air.

  He knew what he was looking for. Something new, new people.

  Ah, I see now. Reading over again, what I had written up to here, is that I didn’t talk about his Family again.

  Well, his mother had died when he got internship in the bank and the following his father after his wife’s death could not stand the loneliness he fell on alcohol consuming, then eight months later died also.

  He also came to know that through the letter that said that his youngest brother Ricardo had entered university and the second one, the football player, had constituted a Family on North of Bahia, when he went to play on local team in that place. All his sisters were married.

  The youngest one had gotten married when he was still working as a typist.

  He had never seen her again.

  He did not want to bother her with his roughness.

  He didn’t write her a letter.

  He knew about her through a bus driver who was of the local they used to live, who Marcelo had met with accidentally one of these days.

  At New Xavantina he was sorry of the step he’d given.

  He missed the laughs from his friends and the parties made.

  In fact they’d gone there occasionally.

  After receiving his rescission Money he’d decided to travel around until finishing his economies.

  To know a little bit more Brazil that he never knew.

  He went up to Paraná, and he could even knock on the gate where he knew that an aunt of his lived, but nor soon than the bell rang he hid himself.

  He did not want that. He wanted freedom in his movements.

  He read the papers about how the unemployment plagued the country.

  Where he stayed for few months he worked as waiter or diesel attendant on a pump station. Just to pay his staying and for food. He spent the less possible.

  He carried with him a bible and a notebook besides an old backpack with old and worn clothes and two pairs of shoes a boot and dirty sneakers.

  He many times feared the men on steering wheels of the trucks who gave him lifts, however after some jokes, they could now talk without any problem.