The Girl in the Photograph

by Lygia Fagundes Telles

  “My friend, you dummy. Loreninha has a huge poster of him. She’s been all over Europe, you’re not the only one, see? Dummy. She’s very rich. You used to be. You’re not any more, but never mind. It doesn’t matter. I think it was Milan. Her brother, the diplomat. I think it was there.”

  He swirled the glass of whiskey with ice. He took a large gulp and dried his sparse beard with his hand.

  “We’re going to travel, hanh? Oh, Bunny, we’re going to get all kinds of money, okay? Mama used to love to travel, so many ships. Even in hotels we used to read those books, you know the ones with maps? Hanh? Lots of maps. My little sister was there in that school so we used to travel all the time, the visiting bit.” He sat down on the bed and smiled. “I used to collect postcards.”

  “Lorena collects bells. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Little bells.”

  “But my wee-wee is bigger than his.”

  “Than whose? Bigger than whose wee-wee?”

  “David’s isn’t that the statue you were? Hanh?”

  Next year my love. You were rich, you’ve seen everything. And me. That’s just the thing. Shit, I’ll become a virgin. I’ll marry the scaly one, open my registration and do my course. Brilliant. At vacation time I’ll travel to buy things, he said once he adores traveling. Ah what a coincidence so do I. The operation is easy Lorena will lend it to me. She’s generous Lena. So. She always gets me out of the tight spots. And if I am. It would be an absolute disaster eeeh I said the word Lena says if you say things backwards it’s good luck. Wait calm down. There’s the r. Then the e. What’s the next letter? The next one. Oh never mind that, enough. I am not pregnant. What I am is sober scratch scratch. My head rotten sober.

  “I drink and nothing happens. Nothing. That music is crummy.”

  He stretched his hand toward the pile of records which leaned dangerously sideways, some of them sliding gently to the floor.

  “A string quartet. True angels, hanh? You want this one, Bunny? I’m going to put it on, fabulous, A Certain Sympathy for the Devil, hanh?”

  Miserable howling. God, aggressive music. I’m sick of aggression I’ve seen more of it than I want. Now I want presents, favors. Someday I’ll buy a whole truckload of presents all silly things throw money around on silly stuff I want to be silly. She’s crazy that one with her demands. And she even—. She must think I’m a whore. So what. I’ll bury myself in money take my courses buy a laboratory just like that one. The colored water dripping and me green yellow blue ah I’ll dye myself in an ocean. An ocean, love. I’m floating off and the green tongues of the fish are licking my feet. I laugh because the green tongues are licking me my legs no! I cry covering myself because the biggest tongue licks my abdomen and penetrates me so warm ah love. I love you. As happy as.

  “We could go live someplace stupid like Ireland. Why Ireland? I don’t know either, just Ireland. Hanh? There’s money coming.”

  She opened her eyes and focused them gradually on the young man. He was smoking and smiling vaguely.

  “What time is it? What time is it, Max?”

  “We didn’t come here to get up-tight. Throw everything to the wind, fabulous. An island.”

  She grabbed the cigarette from his mouth and smoked.

  The shorter coat would look great with velvet slacks. She could pay for it in five installments. Ten. Bastard. Queer. He couldn’t forgive her because she was beautiful and had breasts. “Flatten down that chest, flatten it!” he yelled at the showing and everybody laughed. Hatred, he was hateful because he wished he had breasts and didn’t. It doesn’t matter. The scaly one will give me a shipload of coats. Three factories. He’ll want a virgin. So what? I’ll stuff myself full of baby oil and he’ll find one when we go to bed. I could model for Marcil too and he’d give me the little black suit or—. Brando will go crazy but I’ll tell him give me the coat then.

  “Quick, Bunny! Give me your mouth!”

  I give him my mouth give him everything. But tense scratch scratch. And if I am. Lena will pay for plastic surgery but she doesn’t have a bag of gold does she? I need yenom yenom Mother Alix said she’d pay. Take money from a saint and give it to the Turk, group analysis for godssake. Stupidity. Next year I start over. And I can pay for individual treatment thank you sir. Thinking I wanted to go to bed. Pretentious Turk. “I’m married, very happily married. My wife is a geisha.” Geisha geisha. I’ll bet she puts horns on him twenty-four hours a day. Well done. It wouldn’t be any good anyway because one loses respect for them, look what happened with that dumbass. Crazier than me that one there. Psychiatrist, shit. How could he help me? Even a baby. You’ll see, I am again. That’s just it, not to feel any pleasure and on top of it all, What day is today? The twenty-sixth? Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine … does this month have thirty-one days?

  “Max, does this month have thirty-one days?”

  “Come here, Bunny, I want your mouth.”

  I open my arms. He falls onto my chest. Yes I love you. So. To get rich. Get rich. You were once and nha-nha was too. I’d like to try it may I? Lena said she’d loan it to me she’s sweet Lena. Generous. She offered to come with me and hold my hand. The scaly one wants a virgin. He’s had his fun with every whore in town but when it comes to. Bastard. All right. If you really insist, I’ll become a virgin. What if I asked him to loan me the yenom? Why not. Doesn’t a girl have the right to ask her fiancé for a little loan? I’ll tell him it’s for an urgent operation and he’ll ask me what operation there’s nobody in the world who can ask more questions. He’ll ask me and I’ll say I need to have my tonsils out my tonsils are rotten my appendix is rotten ah how depressing. And this one here who doesn’t resolve anything.

  “I’m cold, Max, cover me. Cover me, love,” she said. She shivered beneath the young man’s body. “It’s freezing.”

  He found the woolen blanket among the tangled bedclothes and pulled it up, covering his head. The ends of the fringe reached Ana Clara’s shoulders. He closed the opening of the tent in up-and-down movements that grew faster and faster, reaching a sharp rhythmic pitch. He poised himself above her, then fell downward in a series of convulsions that made the cover slide off them in shallow folds. From underneath him came a fragmented sob, almost a wail.

  “Bunny, Bunny, I love you.”

  She pushed back the fringe of the blanket and turned her face to the wall, rolling her hair around her finger.

  “So good, love.”

  “Let’s get married. Bunny? Let’s? I want to get married immediately, hanh? What about it? A great idea, right, Bunny?”

  “Yeah, yeah, let’s.”

  He kissed Ana Clara repeatedly on the mouth, tenderly straightened her disheveled hair, and rolled off her body as if he were rolling off a sand dune. He lay down on his belly, his face buried in the pillow, one arm hanging down. His hand touched the rug, searching as cautiously as a spider, with two blind fingers stretched out like wiggling antennae. They went around the ashtray where the cigarette still burned; then, inspired, they drew back and found the glass. As he took a gulp, whiskey ran down his chin.

  “Eeeh, Bunny, I’m all wet, quick, wipe me, I’m all wet.”

  “I’m the one that’s wet. What time is it?”

  “Have to look. You remind me of Mademoiselle Germaine after us with her little gold watch, time for this, time for that. ‘Maximiliano, tu es en retard! Tu es en retard!’”

  “Did you go to bed with her?”

  “She was our governess, Bunny.”

  “So what?”

  “She was horrible looking, all bones and freckles with her hair always standing on end, look, like this,” he said holding his fingers up perpendicular to his head. “The way she walked was exactly like the watch, tick, tock, tick, tock. Her hair was like this, look!”

  Ana Clara was staring fixedly at the ceiling, stroking her abdomen.

  “Yeah, I see. Lorena’s governess was English. Nha-nha-nha-nha. She said she learned to write better in English because of the gov
erness living on the ranch. She looks like an insect. Besides, it’s all gone, isn’t it? There you are. Isn’t it all gone? There’s no more ranch nor governess nor anything. Finished. What’s left of the money Mama’s boyfriend takes charge of. Good for him.”

  “Loads of money. I discovered something, it’s easy to have either loads of money or nothing, hanh? Isn’t that fabulous? Yiiipeeeee!”

  “When she puts on those glasses she looks like an insect wearing glasses. And she doesn’t even need them, it’s sickening. Nha-nha-nha. You remember her? That real skinny girl. Both of them envy me because I’m beautiful, elegant. Magazine covers. So. The nha-nha buys thousands of dresses, her mother sends her bagsful of clothes. For what? She doesn’t wear any of them, she only wears those slacks and nha-nha blouses. That’s how she talks, squeaky, nha-nha-nha. Her brother’s a diplomat. He sends her thousands of things too. Does it do any good? Shit, if I only had half that wardrobe. Super-chic.”

  “The communist?”

  “You’re getting it all mixed up, the communist is the fat one from the Northeast. This is the skinny one, the intellectual type. Insect-ish.”

  “Are you sad, Bunny? Cheer up, love, cheer up. I really wish people would be happier, it’s so good to be happy. In the street you see everybody so sad, why are people so sad? Hanh? I’d really like to go out and make people happy. ‘Look here, hold my hand and come with me and I’ll show you the garden of happiness with God and all, come on …’”

  “I think I’m pregnant, you hear? Pregnant.”

  “Hanh?”

  She put her mouth close to his ear. “Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant.”

  He raised his innocent eyebrows. Half of the whiskey in his glass ran down his chest. He put the glass on the floor and bent over her, reaching for her hands under the sheet. They were clenched tightly. He opened them slowly and kissed the palm of one hand, then the other.

  “Let’s have this baby, Bunny. Let’s let him be born, let’s be very happy and he’ll be born happy …”

  ‘Maybe it’s twins.”

  “Fabulous, twins! we’ll put them in one of those little double strollers, hanh? The two of them strolling along, we’ll call the Mademoiselle and she’ll come running, tick, tock, tick tock, ‘et alors, mon petit choux?’ If it’s a girl we’ll call it Celestial Mechanics, isn’t that a beautiful name? My professor of Celestial Mechanics was—Where did I learn that? I learned a whole hell of a lot of things but now I forget, tick tock, tick, tock, et alors?”

  Ana Clara sat up on the bed, encircled her legs and rested her chin on her knees. Her green eyes squinted from the middle of the black circles. She turned sharply to Max who was trying to light a cigarette and shook him. The matches from the box spilled over him.

  “Why did you have to go broke, why? Now I have to marry somebody else, you dummy. I want yenom, you know what yenom is? Lorena says that if you say things backwards it brings you luck. Now I have to. And still sober. I’m sober as a dog. I think you gave me aspirin. Why don’t you give me that little medallion you have around your neck? Our kid will want that medallion, will you give it to him?”

  “Mama wouldn’t let me take it off, only when I want to sleep, there was a story about a baby that died because it was strangled by its little chain…. Ducha had one just like it.”

  “Your sister? The one who went crazy?”

  “Don’t talk like that about my little sister, don’t …”

  “But shit, isn’t she in the nuthouse? So. You told me yourself.”

  “My Ducha, my little Duchinha. So sweet, like a little flower.”

  “But didn’t she lose her memory, Max? You said so, Max. You told me. Am I saying anything bad? Lorena’s father lost his memory too, he died in the sanatorium without remembering anything, the last time Lorena went to visit him he asked, ‘Who’s that girl?’ Am I saying anything bad?”

  He shook his head and turned over onto his belly, his face buried in the pillow, his shoulders shaken by a dry sob. He covered his ears.

  “I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to!” he cried and laughed at the same time. Turning to look at the ceiling he chuckled between the tears that started to run down his face.

  “One day we went to the zoo, oh! that animal, that animal that has a horn here, hanh?”

  “Is she blond like you? Is she? Answer me, Max, I want to know what she’s like. Your little sister.”

  Slowly he extended his arm in the direction of the record player. His hand opened in slow motion, one finger extended to touch something but without conviction, waiting for the something to come toward it.

  “The rug.”

  “What rug? I’m talking about your sister, your sister! So? Is she blond like you?”

  “She would only sleep with the light on, she was afraid of having bad dreams. Say your prayers, Duchinha, say your prayers and tonight you’ll have good dreams, don’t you want to have good dreams? Say your prayers with me, come on, me voici, Seigneur, tout couvert de confusion et pénétré de doleur … douleur … ah … ah … ah … ah … d’avoir offensé un Dieu si bon, si aimable et si digne d’être aimé …”

  “Was it the Mademoiselle who taught you that prayer? Answer me! Answer or I’ll throw this water on your head,” she threatened grabbing the ice bucket. “Come on, wake up! Answer me!”

  He tried to protect himself with his hands, blowing through the water that flooded his face. Laughing, he struggled as two ice cubes slid down from the bucket onto his chest.

  “The champion, look, the champion!” he yelled making swimming motions with his arms. “Time me, Shimoto! You damn Japanese, time me right! You’re cheating on the time, I can’t go any faster, watch him, Mama! I’m almost fainting, I’m dead tired … watch him, Mama, I’m almost there!”

  Drying his chest and face, she dropped the wet cigarette into the glass and lighted another.

  “Did you win, Max?”

  He closed his eyes. With a giggle he gestured theatrically, crooning, “‘I saw in a crystal window … Upon a proud …’ I wanted to be a goddamn singer. ‘Then I saw a perfect Venus, in this doll!’ An idol. If you keep swimming like you are, you can within a year. The impressive thing was my wind.”

  The wavering smoke wound itself tightly about the lamp, isolating the light which fell over the quiet bed. Again, he stretched out his hand, inviting the vague someone to come closer.

  “Mama’s rug. The last one she made. It was green with some things on it like … everything sort of … I used to lie on it. Moss.”

  “Was she pretty? Your mother. Tell me, Max, was she pretty?”

  He made an evasive gesture and began to cry softly. Then he blew his nose on the sheet and laughed.

  “Bobbi would come running from way far away and splash! jump into the pool. He would hop on top of me barking like crazy, he wanted to save me, all the time he was wanting to save me or Duchinha, nobody’s drowning, you dummy! Shimoto, tie up Bobbi because I can’t practice, crazy dog!”

  Pulling herself laboriously across the bed she leaned over his body and took the bottle from the floor. She shook her glass until the cigarette butt came unstuck from the bottom. On the rug, an ice cube was melting, a solitary island in the middle of a pool of water. She grabbed it, dropped it in the glass and went back to her place, crawling painfully the same way she had come.

  “Everything was happy for you. Rich. But shit, when was I ever. I want only the present entering the future-past-perfect, is there such a thing as future-past-perfect? If I could just wash out the inside of my head. With a scrub brush. I’d scrub and scrub until I drew blood.”

  “They demolished the house, destroyed everything. Ducha said that there was nothing left, only the tree, they built a great big bitch of an apartment building on the lot. And the tree too, they were going to …” he murmured and began to sob again, his face in the pillow. “The jabuticaba tree. It never did anybody any harm, it just made jabuticabas, why? It was our friend, it gave us fruit. She ran
away from the sanatorium and went straight to our house, everything was already demolished, all those bricks all over the ground, the doors. The doors were leaning up against a wall. I recognized the door to my room. The doors there, still standing with their handles. The locks,” he sobbed, twisting his hand as if to open the nearest one. “She grabbed the tree trunk and started screaming, screaming, I wanted to scream too when I saw her hanging onto our tree that was going to be cut down, I didn’t scream because if I did they’d put me in the asylum too, they put everybody in, you can’t. Don’t scream, Ducha, don’t scream Duchinha and I wanted to scream too because it was so horrible to see everything among the bricks that way. And my door. Don’t scream I said I’ll give you all of them, look at this big cluster, take it, it’s yours. Take it, Ducha, this bunch is ripe, here!”

  He extends to me his empty-full hands, the jabuticabas rolling on top of us, “Look what a lot, hide them, hide them,” he cries and we hide them under the sheet. I kiss his mouth shiny with juice which drips sweet.

  “Max, give me your childhood!”

  He gives me his tongue. I slide down and escape that’s not it. I wanted. My head scratch scratch. That way of massaging the back of your neck is so calming, Lorena knows.

  “Rub my neck, Max, start here, that massage. Harder, love. I wish I knew what time it was. I’ll say I got delayed in the. He’ll ask little questions. Pretentious dwarf. That pretentious dwarf. Bastard. Just some guy. Tell me, Max.”

  “The little Chinaman seated on a cushion he’d nod his head yes, yes. I had to climb up on the bench to get near him, does Isabel like me, Mr. Chinaman? And he’d put his finger to his forehead yes, yes. Always laughing nodding yes yes. Am I going to pass school this year, Mr. Chinaman? Yes, yes, yes. Eeeh, what a sonovabitch, don’t lie or I’ll beat you up, tell it right! Yes yes yes, he would answer wearing his little black cap. Is Mama going to get well? Yes yes.”

  “Harder, love. Right here by this bone. Don’t be sad because I’ll give you a house with doors, a jabuticaba tree, I’ll give it to you never mind. I’ll have money and I’ll divide it all, thousands of jabuticaba trees, nobody can cut them down, okay? There, rub harder there…. Shit, I’ll say I was run over. Just the shock.”