The Girl in the Photograph

by Lygia Fagundes Telles

  “Isn’t there a recipe for curing insomnia in your notebook?”

  “Dozens, child. But they’re bad for my liver.”

  Then keep on composing your marvelous letters, dearie. One for the manager of the supermarket, another for the amusing ladies in the two-story blue house, yet another for the breadman, the milkman, thousands of anonymous letters in the inspired hours of insomnia, her eyes dripping, the callus on her finger growing larger, though the finger itself is retracted out of remorse or fear. Ceaselessly producing letter after letter, her handwriting disguised, her style disguised, begone, Satan! And Satan seated on his rolled-up tail, licking the stamps. There exists the principal Devil, king of all the rest. The others are lesser demons, collaborators in the secondary work involving two-bit sins. These are the ones which occupy themselves with me. “It is necessary to believe in the reality of the Devil!” said the Pope. But Your Holiness, I don’t believe in anything else! In olden times they lived in the deserts, rolling about under the sun, rubbing the scalding sand over themselves, and riding on camels, but now the ideal dwelling place is the human body. Never before have so many demons sported in so many bodies, which like the desert are hot and have the advantage of being soft. Their favorite spot is the womb, or rather, all the southern zone with ramifications in the privates. I clasp my own. When M.N. enters they’ll come bounding out. Exorcism through love.

  “That which we think is reflected in three mirrors of the absurd—” I read in the poetry book which I open at random, I consult poetry the way Daddy used to consult the Old Testament, always at random. Three mirrors of the absurd. This one is mine. And the other two? If M.N. doesn’t make love with me urgently—I’ll turn into a book!

  “You speak so softly, Lorena. What?”

  Oh dear Jesus, why doesn’t she use one of those marvelous contraptions. There’s a little gray wire that comes out of the button in the ear and runs as far as the street like a plastic-coated antenna, it makes things so much easier. Mama described the crime in detail, she probably has an album of cut-out police articles just like Bulie here has an album of medicine labels: The old pederast who was strangled by his young boyfriend with the cord from his hearing aid, listening to Death approach over the battery-powered wire, croaking hoarsely, what are you doing, love? And his love pulling the knot tighter.

  “After all, they’re too old.”

  She puts her hand up to the small bump to which her ear is reduced beneath the veil.

  “Crime!” I yell. “There’s been a lot of crime lately!”

  “Out of all proportion, dear. It’s the bomb, it must be the bomb. In my time you didn’t see even the slightest fraction of this violence. Even the medicine labels, you should see the frightful things they say these days. What a difference! Before, they were encouraging, delicate, it was a delight to read the instructions of medicines. But these days—! So full of threats, so harsh.”

  Boy Kills Brother at Play. Boy Kills Brother—that could be the headline in the scandal-sensation newspaper. For the feature, the testimony of the youngest sister, we print only the initials since those involved are minors. L.V.L. said that they were playing. Romulo was running, chased by Remo who suddenly decided to get the shotgun. It was in the office where the rancher kept it, usually unloaded. Once in possession of the gun, he shouted at the brother: “Run, Romulo, I’m going to kill you!” and fired one shot, fatally on the mark, into the chest of the victim. Although there was a large number of employees working on the ranch, none of them witnessed the accident; only the younger sister saw the boy fall down bleeding. Stunned, she ran to call the mother who was in the back of the immense old colonial-style house. The rancher had gone to the capital that morning, only to return in the evening, when amid shock and despair he learned of the tragedy that had befallen his household.

  Was there a photo? No, but every paper has its artist and this one did a fine job with his vigorously sketched reconstruction of the scene: The mother sitting on the ground with Romulo on her lap, one of her hands holding up the trunk of his body, the other hiding the wound. She is disheveled and in tears but even as she suffers she somehow projects an inexorable calm, the calm of one to whom the worst has happened and who knows that nothing worse can ever occur. A recognized artist, it wasn’t by accident that his sketch was compared to the Virgin succoring the Dead Son. Giovanni Bellini. Museum of Milan.

  “In Milan there’s a square for deaf-mutes, they meet there every afternoon. Their gestures create a rustling sound like foliage, I would close my eyes and hear them, ssssss.”

  “The most famous was the crime of Dona Brunilda, a rancher’s wife who was found without her head,” says Sister Bula holding onto her own. “It was dreadful. For months and months they looked for the poor lady’s head,” the nun went on, turning her uneasy gaze toward the shelves.

  “Did they find it?”

  “Not at all. Neither the murderer nor the head. Everyone was saying it was the husband, apparently she liked her daughter’s music teacher, a very handsome young man who played the piano and wore a flower in his lapel.”

  A carnation. Shubert’s Serenade. Spells and perfumes. Strains of violin music when nobody was playing the violin. A rustling of wings: the Seducer Angel in the shadow of the curtain.

  “Somebody wrote an anonymous letter to her husband,” I say. Why do I think of my father? Of Romulo? I lose the desire to joke. If only M.N. would say to me, “I love you.” Or Fabrízio.

  “Do you remember Fabrízio?”

  “Fabrízio? That boy with the motorcycle?”

  I run to the window, was that the phone? The empty windows. Empty garden. Her membranous eyes question me. Virgin eyes too, no, I don’t want to be like that, not me! Ah, M.N., my love, my love. 1 pull the amber necklace tight around my neck and stick out my tongue.

  “If he doesn’t call or come see me, I’ll kill myself. I’ll be the first suicide case to be canonized.”

  She laughs her little gnome’s laugh, hah, hah, hih, hih.

  “Ah, child, marriage would cure you. Why don’t you marry this Fabrízio?”

  “I can’t. He has a mechanical leg.”

  “He has what?”

  I go to get a glass of liqueur.

  “A mechanical leg.”

  She shakes all over, coughing and laughing. Her gums appear, rosy plastic with enormous sand-colored teeth in Indian file, why do dentists make false teeth so big? Prodigalities to make up for the lost teeth? The Prodigal Son came back toothless and in rags, the years topple heavily but teeth fall like the breadcrumbs that Hansel and Gretel scattered in the forest, the poor things wanted to mark the way back. And the birds came and ate up the crumbs, farewell warm hearth, farewell childhood. Why, my love, why so many children? And to mix himself up in this church group, what do you intend to do, save your marriage? Your marriage is rotting away, what is there to save? Naturally it was she who had the idea, the witch. A gorgeous man, imagine if a witch would give up easily. Five kids. She must be extremely fat. Thighs full of cellulite. Floppy breasts. In short, a cow.

  “Sister, I’m getting awful, awful. Pray for me.”

  “Is this apricot? I like it better than that peppermint one. Pure nectar.”

  I dilate my nostrils, squeezing my solar plexus. The smell of Sister Bula is stronger than that of liqueurs and, cigars: dry flowers, with a vague touch of disinfectant added, and something of the sea coming through pallid scales, ah, if I breathed in now I’d die. I suspend my life in the air and hide under the pillow: Death is here in yet another costume, staring at me with pickled eyes. I’m capable of killing myself-but I don’t want to die.

  “Playing hide-and-seek? Child, child!”

  She drains the last drop from her glass, she’s wild about liqueur. I return her liqueurish smile. Sister, dear Sister, promise you won’t send me a letter denouncing the Japanese who runs the lunch counter for making sandwich filling out of my cat. Oh Lord.

  “Another glass, Sister?”


  She rests her hands on the armchair cushion, ready to get up. Now I don’t smell the scent of sea and flowers, Death has disappeared and in its place is only an old woman, deaf and virgin, who has lost Paradise because of some letters. To love my neighbor as myself. I reach out my hand toward her. But suddenly she becomes distrustful, she wants to leave, just my wanting to like her is enough to send her running away in panic, she’s afraid of me as I was of her.

  “I need to help Sister Priscilla grate coconut, she decided to make coconut candy but she cut her finger, I must go,” she repeats.

  “First try one of these biscuits, you haven’t tried these yet,” I say. When I come back with the can she’s looking with great interest at her feet. Since she has short legs, her feet don’t touch the floor and her legs hang in the air, like those of a child in the visitors’ parlor.

  “I must go, dear.”

  But she doesn’t. Sister Priscilla is already grating her other finger, ah, how distant the word from the act! If I didn’t talk so much about making love, if Ana Clara didn’t talk so much about getting rich, if Lião didn’t run on night and day about revolution.

  “It’s still early, Sister Bula. Here, this magazine came just yesterday,” I say offering her the biscuits and the magazine.

  She strokes the cover photo of a girl.

  “But why do these girls always have to have their pictures taken with their legs apart that way? Why do their legs have to be so wide open?”

  “I agree, my dear. Wide-angle sex. Women have lived so long with the angle narrowed that now they have an ax to grind, poor things.”

  “Speak up!”

  “Lião must have written ten papers explaining this, liberation through sex, dearie. The easiest door, it’s very extensive,” I scream as I change the record.

  Bach? 1 rest my cheek against the cover. M.N. my love, I want so much to go to bed with you while listening to this prelude. I won’t ask for anything more, I’ll go away forever but you must make love with me, it has to be you, do you hear? He doesn’t. I pick up a fallen rose petal and put it in my mouth. I make it split apart with a kiss, and sticking it to my lips I thrust the tip of my tongue out through the hole, the way we used to play with flowers on the ranch. Want to see how well she can hear?

  “Sister, oh Sister, I think I must be unbalanced, I think about sex so much.”

  “Do you really?”

  “All the time.”

  If the Devil wanted to be agreeable, he would carry Bulie away on the breeze, and by return breeze bring me M.N. We’d lock ourselves in my charming bathroom and if Ana Clara or Lião turned up I’d call out, “Not now, dearest, I’m taking an immersion bath that has to last two hours.” And turn on the tap.

  “Ana Clara said she was going to be on the cover of a lot of magazines. I haven’t seen anything yet. Have you, child?”

  I carry my box of manicure instruments to the bed—I always keep this box close at hand. Whenever I sense the beginning of liquid and uncertain conversations, I get out my emery board and cuticle scissors so as not to waste time. Thus my nails are in beautiful shape. I even gave myself a complete pedicure the other night while Lião was rehashing Simone de Beauvoir. From Simone de Beauvoir to sex was only a step, why the first sex, why the third sex, why the second. As always fatally happens, we started talking about the act of sex itself. And the spirit of Herr Karl hovered over everything. She grabbed my arm so hard I actually winced. “You’re not going to tell me you’re still a virgin!” I breathed in; Yes dear, I am. So she bit off the last fraction of fingernail that she had left on her favorite finger. Of course it was all M.N.’s fault, “Incompetent bourgeois!” she muttered cutting something out of a newspaper, she keeps folders and folders overflowing with newspaper cuttings about politics. There was only one subtle way out: “It’s not every day one meets a Guevara,” I said and her eyes softened. The Nazi eagle turned into a dove, coconut palms swayed, coqueiro de Itapoã, coqueiro! Dona Diu smiled from her hammock. “When everything seems to be lost, when even Miguel can’t manage to cheer me up, I think about Ché and there comes to me the certainty that I will overcome. Sometimes, Lena, sometimes I think he had to die for me to be reborn.” I agreed. But I would have gotten upset if she’d attributed the source of life to him, is it the Gospel according to Mark? “Marvel not when I say to you, ye must be born again.” I kept my mouth shut and went running to get whiskey to toast the revolution. I felt light enough to fly; finally I had stopped thinking about M.N. And about this whole dramatic affair of my virginity. I confess, from time to time I need to talk about it, I bring the subject up and provoke people’s reactions with an awful urge to be center-front stage. But then suddenly I feel so ashamed (though shame doesn’t really describe it) that I can’t stand the slightest reference, my problem, I state emphatically, DO NOT ENTER. Whiskey for her and guaraná for me, I adore guaraná. When Lião saw the two bottles together she looked thoughtful. “President brand, Lena? Our poor guaraná looks pretty insignificant beside that.” I quickly explained that it was a present from Mama when in reality it was a present from M.N., these little lies that facilitate our mutual well-being weren’t condemned by Pope John XXIII, a sainted Pope. Knowing I don’t drink, M.N. offered me the bottle, “Wouldn’t your friends like some?” Greater delicacy couldn’t exist. “The only thing those fools know how to do,” said Lião, serving herself a generous shot. “The movies they see have a lot of class too,” I ventured but she didn’t even hear me because she was already warming up for her principal lecture, in which the decadence of the establishment is proved through the illustration of drug abuse. “I can’t explain it but it’s a mistake to think that drugs reflect an antiestablishment attitude, see. The last time I was in Salvador I almost went crazy, I felt so sorry for them, there’s armies of junkies,” she sighed and her eyes filled with tears. Mine did too, ah, it was too too sad. The Bahian so close to the Indian in his state of innocence. I mentioned this very idea to Lião but I must have been gauche because she stared at me half-sadly, shaking her head. “This tone of yours, Lorena. This tone,” she repeated. Then, shrugging her shoulders, “I can’t explain it, but …” and for hours she explained that the fastest way to kill the Brazilian Indian is to try to civilize him. For a while I followed her speech but then I began to tire of it. Yes, the Indian. I adore Indians. But can I help it if I always start thinking about the nineteenth-century poet Gonçalves Dias and his noble savages? Now she was talking about civilized vices. I got an opportunity to quote the verse, “Oh, Tupan, what wrong have I done you / That from your fury you pluck for me a poisoned arrow?” But Lião is not impressed with poetry. Unexpectedly she began a discourse on the fall of the dollar and this time she was right in saying that she couldn’t explain because she didn’t explain a single thing. If that was the kind of subject she wrote about in her little leftist newspaper, the readers would be in fine shape. But fortunately, her journalistic duties consisted of gathering material. I asked her what she was doing in her spare time now that Miguel was in jail. “There isn’t any spare time, see. I distribute pamphlets, direct a study group and translate books. As long as some more important mission doesn’t come up,” she insinuated, tying her shoelaces. The dirt had incorporated itself so completely into the canvas that even the most ingenious chemical operation couldn’t get it out. But the laces were clean, mysteriously clean. Wasn’t it strange they should be so white? Thinking about the shoelaces I asked her if her friend was still incommunicado. “Which friend, Lena? So many of them are incommunicado, an infernal crisis. We need money, people, everything. I almost lose my mind with the tons of urgent things that need attention. But what can you do without yenom, what? Even so, I don’t lose my faith. The structure for revolution is completely intact, all we have to do is connect the little motor—us—with the central motor.” She stood up and with her air of a political rally paced to and fro, holding forth on the difficulties of organizing the workers, the great majority of whom were habituated to servit
ude, misery, the inheritance transmitted through generations of conformity. “Their fear, Lena. Fear of assuming responsibility, it’s shitty enough to make you cry. We have a good group ready for whatever happens, the problem is with the older ones and the intellectuals. Only about half a dozen are worth anything. The rest sign their little manifestos, hold their secret meetings, the secret smile of the Mona Lisa, glass in hand. Big deal.” I looked at the glass she was clutching as energetically as an athlete carrying the baton in a relay race. When Ana Clara takes hold of a glass, she raises her little finger with the refinements of a truck driver at a wedding party but Lião closes her fist and digs in her nails, that is, the places where her nails should have been. Better to bite them all off, imagine her bothering to cut them. I returned to the shoelaces: but why were they alone clean? Lião stopped talking and stared at me like someone who has lost his way in the forest, made an enormous circle and suddenly discovered that he is back where he started. Sitting down on the floor, she took out a cigarette and rolled it between her fingers. “My friends are all in jail, I could be arrested when I walk out of here—” she began softly. “Manuela is in a mental hospital, crazy, and Jaguaribe is dead. And you worry about my shoelaces.”

  “I ascribe importance to things that have none,” I begin and stop.

  It isn’t Lião who is here but Bulie reading with enormous interest—but what is she reading with such interest? She has put on her glasses with their telescopic lenses and raised the magazine up about half an inch from her nose. She doesn’t notice in the slightest when I pull it up to see the title, Erotic Love! Oh Lord.

  “What an exaggeration,” she murmurs without taking her eyes off the page. Why is it that at times I hurt Lião when I want to see her happy? She looked so sad there on the floor that I went running to get the can of biscuits and the hairbrush. I knelt down and began brushing her hair. “You look like Angela Davis,” I said and she smiled but I could tell that her thoughts were still far away, where Manuela went crazy. Where Jaguaribe was shot. Who was this Manuela? And Jaguaribe? You never mentioned him to me, I said and she stroked her tennis shoe, caressing the ink-scribbled rubber toe. A little black flower, carefully drawn, stood out in the tangled design. “These were his,” she said grabbing their tips with both hands. I poured more whiskey into her glass, courage, Lião, don’t get depressed I have my saints who listen to me, you don’t believe in them but leave it to me. “If you must pray, pray for Ché, see, he’s the one I need,” she answered. And her finger touched the black flower drawn on the rubber. I remembered that Romulo was dead too and started to cry, so moved that Lião was obliged to forget her own losses in order to console me. She told me there was no definitive death, not even for her, a materialist. That death and life are part of each other, complement each other as perfectly as a circle and so therefore my brother was still alive: Life needs death to live, “I can’t explain it, see,” she explained. All of a sudden she became happy again, humming along with the Vinicius record and asking after M.N. in her best humor. “How’s the old man?” I grew happy too: I cry when others cry near me, but when their spirits soar, mine zoom upward too. I went off to make some hot tea because after drinking like a sponge, Lião adores hot tea with biscuits. We drank a whole pot, and if she hadn’t gone to make pee-pee and I hadn’t decided to take a bath, we would undoubtedly have gone on that way until five in the morning.