The Girl in the Photograph

by Lygia Fagundes Telles

  “That sax, Bunny! Hear it? Uon, Uon, Uon. Fabulous.”

  The hell with that saxophone. And what about the family jewels? A whole bagful of jewels, who kept them? Crazy but smart. What about the jewels. Perfect teeth, beautiful teeth. Tradition of good milk. Fruit. Loreninha used to drink goat’s milk. “I used to drink milk like a little calf.” She grew up to be a dwarf-insect but her teeth. I believe her, she must never have drunk anything else. This one here nursed the goat dry too.

  “Tell me, Max. Talk to me, talk.”

  The bread is already bare. I’ll tell him I went with Lorena and that’s why I’m late. There to that place. I doesn’t matter now go to sleep. In January my darling. Now sleep. He would.

  Chapter 3

  Like this it’s easy to keep my mouth shut, but what if I’m put to the test some day? I hope that doesn’t happen because I won’t resist; if they squeeze my little finger the slightest bit I’ll talk. I am the delicate type. Sensitive. Cousin to that little lizard spread out on the windowpane: Through the flesh you can see the shadow of the butterfly wing it has just swallowed. Lião knows that she can’t count on me, of course, but if she invited me I’d go running right after her. Bank of Boston. Too much, to rob a bank with a name like that. I’d wear an American sailor suit with emblems and all, Lião can’t even bear to look at these emblems but wouldn’t that kind of detail add a special touch to the scenario? The news would come out in Time, isn’t the bank in Boston? At least I’d love to say, “This is a holdup!” The shooting, that would be the boring part. Death, violent death. Romulo with the hole in his chest spouting blood, such a small hole that if Mama put her finger over it, eh, Mama? He didn’t mean it, how could Remo guess that the Devil had hidden the bullet in the chamber of the shotgun. A shotgun almost bigger than he was. To this day I don’t know how I managed to run with it, I don’t know. Don’t cry, little brother, don’t cry, it’s not anybody’s fault, not anybody’s. Papa removed the bullets, didn’t he? But there was one that the Devil. Remo dear, it’s all over. Past. But sometimes, you see, I need to remember. You galloping about on a wild donkey, disheveled, your eyes burning. You catching flies to throw into Romulo’s orange juice. Hiding moths in my bed. Remo a diplomat? The eloquent voice, the gestures. The subtle expression, that’s the perfect word, there couldn’t be a better word to describe Remo’s official expression: subtle. At parties for kings and queens, at the right-hand side. Or is it the left? Protocol. How can a person change so much? Romulo and I were the delicate ones, remember? People used to take such care of us. Like that plant, Sleepy-Mary, sleep, Mary, we used to order it, and even before we touched its leaves they would close up like eyes. I was born in such violent times. Orpheus managed to charm the savage beasts with his lyre and I couldn’t even charm Astronaut. True, a cat is a cat, but how I’d love to deliver my message of love and equilibrium to the world—without becoming part of it, naturally. Stay on the outside: MAINTAIN SAFE DISTANCE, says the bus belching so much smoke out its rear exhaust that I can’t stay behind it. I detest driving, changing gears. Buzzing around, Annie says. Cogs slipping into place. Intrigues. Far better to stay watching the well-lighted living room of an apartment there in the distance, its inhabitants so inoffensive in their routine. They eat and I don’t see what they’re eating; they speak and I don’t hear what they say, total harmony without sound or fury. If one approaches the slightest bit one smells odors. Hears voices. A little closer and one is no longer a spectator, one becomes a witness. Open your mouth to say “Good evening” and you pass from witness to participant. And it’s no good making a face like a dissolving cloud as you shove off because by this time they’ve pulled the cloud inside and quickly slammed the guillotine-window. Loose ties? They become tentacles. Ah, the joy of being here all alone. Alone. Like eating a sweet cluster of grapes in secret. “And the engine of the world, forced back, minutely re-composing…” Ah, I need to memorize that. Carlos Drummond de Andrade. My poetry. My music. Occasionally (oh Lord, the occasions could be fewer) my friends. The presence-absence of M.N. Of my dead ones. Romulo, my brother. Daddy. The velvet recollection of Astronaut.

  Grapes, there must still be a bunch in the refrigerator, see there? Pink ones. I wash my grapes; Mama sent an enormous crate. I distributed nearly all of them. “I abandoned my little girl in a nuns’ roominghouse, in a chauffeur’s room over the garage, and went to live with a man who stabs me in the back,” she said to Aunt Luci on one of her days of chastisement that run from Monday through Sunday. Number one, imagine Mieux wielding a dagger, poor thing. Let me laugh. The most he can handle are those little plastic toothpicks for spearing olives. Number two, this is no longer the chauffeur’s room. Neusa’s name lies buried beneath the rose-colored ceramic tile, the faded walls of the bedroom with the obscenity written in red pencil are permanently hidden beneath the yellow-gold wallpaper; the room has become a shell. Outside things may be black but in here all is rosy-golden. “You need to have an iron constitution to tolerate this city,” says Lião, who crosses it regularly in her blue sneakers. But I don’t jump in the stream, nor do I want to. Classes, movies, a short time at the sports club (a closed one), a luncheonette or two, some shopping at my very special stores. The yenom comes in an envelope. There’s a day for buying books and records, a day for God to visit me, oh, Lorena. At times, fear; not of the city (so remote with its people) but fear that hatches from under my bed. Imagine if I read newspapers like Lião does, she reads thousands of newspapers a day, cuts out articles. But her hair, which is already uncontrollable by nature, stands on end like Astronaut’s when he used to see ghosts—there was a time when the block was haunted. Lião’s eyes grow big, she stops biting her nails, “I can’t explain it,” she begins. And she spends two hours explaining that one must treat one’s body like a horse that refuses to jump a hurdle: with a whip. Fear resides in the pupils. Astronaut’s jet-black pupils invading the green like paint spilling over as far as his eyelids. Ana Clara’s pupils are dilated, but for other reasons, poor thing, drugs excite the pupils with the same force as fear. Two black circles. A brilliance. The lies come brilliantly forth, she lies, oh, how she can lie. She clenches her hands and starts to lie with such fervor, she’s perfected this manner of lying gratuitously, without the slightest objective. Are the nuns afraid too? Mother Alix is equilibrium in person. But what about the times when she closes the door? The lamplight. Our Lady of Fear Roominghouse. And you? I ask Jimi Hendrix who screams, hoarse already from so much screaming. I remove the record. Lião gets tigerish when she hears this music, she says it destroys all fiber. But who should I listen to? Wagner?

  “I don’t have Wagner, dear, will milk do?” murmured Lorena going to the small refrigerator built into the wall. Apathetically she eyed the white pitcher beneath the cold light and bit into an apple. The warm froth of the milk in the stable. Warm smell of cowshit and hay. The little apples from the orchard were sour but they had so much juice. Once Remo climbed up onto the highest branch and ripped his jeans at the knee, he would get himself dirty and torn in the same furious way he tore fruit off the trees. Or played sheriff and bandits, he was always the bandit carrying the sun that was too big for him. So big.

  “Study?” she invited, bringing the pile of books and notes from the bookshelf and spreading them on the table. She put her glasses, her pen and the transparent plastic ruler on top of them. Squinting, she read the underlined passages through the clear plastic. She already knew that part. And the rest. She knew everything. If the strike was over and they were to have exams the next day, it would be glory. “Music absorbs chaos and orders it,” she said and grew alert. Mozart. Musicalia. Carelessly she examined the book that Lia had returned to her with various pages marked in red, Lião had the habit (awful) of underlining what interested her not only in her own books but in other people’s as well. She paused over a passage indicated by an especially vehement cross: “The Nation holds a man with a sacred bond. It is necessary to love it as one loves religion, obey it as
one obeys God. It is necessary to give ourselves to it completely, turn everything over, give everything back to it. One must love it whether it is glorious or obscure, prosperous or disgraced.”

  Obey the nation as one obeys God? wondered Lorena, perplexed. Why had Lia marked this? She didn’t believe in God, did she? And wasn’t the Nation, for her, synonymous with the people? She opened the bathtub faucets and sat down on the tub’s edge, her hand playing in the water. She laughed softly, remembering the day Lia had arrived with her two huge bursting suitcases and Das Kapital under her arm, wrapped in brown paper that showed more than it hid. “Her mother is an oliveskinned woman from Bahia married to a Dutchman,” Lorena thought as soon as she saw her. It was a woman from Bahia and a German, Herr Paul, ex-Nazi who became Mr. Pô, a peaceful businessman in love with music and with Miss Dionisia, Diu to her intimates, Diu with that long drawn-out uuuu that seemed to go on forever, Diuuuuuuuuuu … the result was Lião. What madness, imagine, a Nazi with an eagle on his chest, understand, to turn up in Salvador and there, I can’t explain it, to fall in love with young Miss Diu. The product is Lia de Melo Schultz, who packs up her necessaire and comes to finish her courses while living at Our Lady of Fatima Roominghouse. Half Bahia, half Berlin. Conga tennis shoes. “When my father, who is very absentminded, actually saw what Nazism was all about, he ripped off his uniform and came trotting off to Salvador.” Difficult, very difficult to understand that kind of desertion, if it weren’t for the movies. In the movies hadn’t Lorena seen all those actors go across the Red Sea which opened before them like two arms? Total madness, this German to flee from that faraway inferno without his uniform. And to demonstrate, moreover, his complete disdain for racial prejudice upon proudly entering an honorable and blessed local family, the Melos, whose youngest daughter Dionisia was available. Ah, Lião! From her father she inherited the Germanic vigor, the adventurous spirit capable of enduring hunger, frostbite and torture in crocodile-choked rivers. But her glorious proportions she inherited from her mother, proportions and hair like a black sun spreading its rays in all directions, what hairpins, what comb could manage to hold it in place? The sugar in her voice when she grows nostalgic also came from Bahia. Jaca-fruit compote. But Herr Karl firmly under her arm, hidden and exposed, camouflaged and exhibited, “nobody must find out this is my Bible!” Did she read it through to the end? Her German half was solidly rational but what about her Brazilian half? “I’ve read it,” said Lorena pointing to the book. “I’m very smart even though I don’t look it; if you want I can explain it to you.” Then Lia laughed, the teeth of a German fanatic but the laugh itself tropical, as she tried to gather her sunburst hair into an elastic band. Which snapped, they all snap, there is no elastic in the world that could resist such an explosion.

  “Afro type. There are hymn women and ballad women,” thought Lorena as she took off her pajamas. Perched on the edge of the tub, she dabbled her fingertips in the water and decided, “I’m a medieval ballad.” And Ana Clara? And Lia? What kind of music were they? The only way to help them was to offer them things they didn’t have, introduce them to things they didn’t know. Lia’s surprise when she arrived in her open sandals, a straw bag hanging over her shoulder, it was only later that she bought the leather one at the big market. “Great, understand? Great,” she repeated examining the bath accessories in the bathroom. She opened the jar of bath salts, sniffed them. And in the midst of her ecstasy tapped her cigarette ashes onto the floor. Pretending to straighten the bathmat, Lorena gathered up the little roll of ashes as one would a butterfly. “Would you like to take a bath? This tub is so restful,” she suggested when, upon leaning over, she saw her friend’s sandaled feet at close range. “Oh, may I?” asked Lia, throwing the cigarette butt into the commode. I flushed it and prepared a luxurious bath for her. I offered her cologne for a body massage, she was wearing sandals but it was cold. The talcum powder. The impeccable comb. Tea with biscuits. To culminate, poetry; I read poetry well. When I looked up, she was drowsing in the armchair. Later I discovered that she doesn’t like poetry or music. Even so, I turned on the record player and put on the music of her fellow Bahians: Bethania, Caetano. And if I didn’t turn on the television for her it’s because I simply can’t bear TV. Although I’m thinking of getting one just for the sake of the old films. And the long-run ones about vampires and monsters. As Lião was leaving, she made her first ironic remark. I didn’t even answer it. I may yet put up a sign in my shell: Excuse the order, excuse the cleanliness, excuse the style and the superfluity but here resides a civilized citizen of the most civilized city in Brazil. Will they pardon me? Ana Clara gives me an ambiguous answer and asks me to loan her some yenom. Lião doesn’t answer but asks me to loan her the car. You may take it, dear. Pardon me, moreover, if I loan you a Corcel and not a jeep, everybody has to contribute what they can, understand. I dive into the golden bathtub with its golden salts. How startled Lião was when she got in and the water began spilling over on all sides, oh! Lião. I had calculated a bath with my amount of water. She begged my pardon (for the damage) while I saved the bathmat from the waterfall. When things settled down, she gazed smiling at the foam: “A bath like this every day would ruin anybody’s backbone. I came prepared for a hard life, understand.” About the masses themselves she started talking later on. I love these masses too, Lião, you needn’t look at me that way. A cerebral love, I recognize, what other kind could it be? If I don’t mix with them (they frighten me to death) at least I don’t play the snob like Annie does. Which is natural, she must have been dirt poor. If she were already driving her famous Jaguar do you think she’d lend your group so much as a bicycle? Imagine. She’ll pass us by like a transatlantic cruiser, her hipbones parting the waves. And her empty magazine-cover face, “Have we by chance met before?” A white satin turban with an emerald to match her green eyes, which are so much more beautiful than emeralds, she has beautiful eyes she’s beautiful all over. Oh Lord. I could look a little less insignificant, couldn’t I? Toothpick legs. Washed-out skin, look there, I bake myself in the sun and it has no effect whatsoever. Fainting Magnolia. The worst of all are these poor little breasts, oh! Is this envy? No, of course not, it’s a simple statement of fact. I want to see her cured, married to the millionaire although I know that when she becomes marvelously successful she’ll never pardon me. I saw her through her drinking sprees, held her hand during the abortions, loaned her thousands of things, half of them never came back. And what about the pile of money I’m going to loan (give) her for the sew-up job in the southern zone? Hard to forgive me for that. “Have we by chance met before?” she’ll ask, tapping her cigarette ashes on my head, she’s very tall. Not personally, Highness. I’m simply a college student in recess. Aside from the Department, I go to very few places and all of them unimportant. I remember that one day there arrived at Our Lady of Fatima Roominghouse a vague student and model loaded with baggage and debts but it wasn’t Your Highness, naturally. She was so mixed-up in the head that I panicked; if I let her into my life she’ll create problems. She forced her way in. God knows that I tried to avoid it but now it’s too late on the planet. “Getting late on the planet!” Daddy would say as he locked the door that opened onto the veranda. She opens my closets, borrows my things, uses my northern-zone sponge in the southern zone, and only doesn’t make off with my books because in reality what she likes to read are escape-fiction romances. And Little Lulu comics. She denies it, imagine, whenever possible she goes around with a Herman Hesse or a Kafka under her arm, both from my shelf, let it be said in passing. But only to show off. As for the rest, she installed herself in my bathroom and in me. I made myself practice true acts of Christian charity in order to accept her but now I miss her when she disappears. Ana the Depressing. Depressed and depressing. The lovers. The agonies. I taught her to breathe deeply, then to walk. By taking deep breaths and walking miles, the desire to work returns: salvation through work. But did she learn the lesson? Can analysis, affairs and diamond-buckled sh
oes change anyone? I think everybody continues the same way to the end. Mama used to make guava dessert, take care of the garden, and embroider little hand towels. She was gling-glong. Now she has facelifts, massages, sessions with her analyst and, principally, makes love to another man. The circumstances changed. But her? Just the same. She doesn’t relax with Mieux the way she used to with Daddy, of course. She play-acts. But she continues dissatisfied and catastrophic. More afraid than ever of getting old, because she already is old, poor thing. Gling-glong. I want to be different when I get older, the type of old lady with no makeup and a very white blouse, my ear trumpet raised, virgins end up going deaf, Lião has a story, the orifices close up. All of them? I see Lião as a mother, very fat and very happy, smiling rather ironically at her guerrilla past, the follies of youth, the follies of youth! Ana Clara, extremely made-up and affected, lying about her age and all the rest, her hands always clenched, she’s the hand-clenching variety of liar. Getting drunk in private. Oh, what I learned from her. I don’t drink but I could write a thesis on alcoholism and drugs. I never had a man and yet I know the arts and blunders of making love.

  “Ni ange ni bête,” Lorena murmured, bending her body and sliding deeper into the bathtub. She lathered her hair until it was enclosed in a thick helmet of soapsuds, then looked at her reflection in the mirror. With her fingertips she smeared the white suds downward until they reached her eyebrows. In a cap and mask like this M.N. performed operations. The yellow surgical gloves breaking the white, “Ah, how sensual!” If he could make love to her right in the operating room. She would go in on a stretcher like Ana Clara. In the background, the Seducer Angel in his immaculate robes, still immaculate. And masked. “Lena, give me your hand,” Ana Clara asked. She took her hand, constrained: She knew Ana Clara’s hands perspired terribly and she had a horror of sweat. A sweat as cold as the operating room, as cold as the spotlight. The doctor’s eyes were cold too in the narrow space between the cap and mask. Ana Clara’s white voice seemed to come filtered through layers of cotton: “One, two, three, four, five, six, ss—” The metallic struggle of the instruments tapping against each other. The weight of blood in the gauze. The ether smell dissolving into the air. Not to be.