The Girl in the Photograph

by Lygia Fagundes Telles

  “I never did understand the billiard-ball effect,” he said and faced me. “I’d like to ask you something, Rosa, can I? It’s something I want to know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you ever have an experience with a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really? How super! And…?”

  “I don’t understand what it is you want to know,” I say laughing inwardly because I know exactly what it is he wants to know.

  “Nothing extraordinary about it, Pedro. Very simple. It was in my hometown, I was still in high school. We were students together and since we both thought we were ugly, we invented boyfriends. When I remember! … how wonderful it felt to be loved by boys, even boys who didn’t exist. We sent each other love notes, she pretended her name was Ophelia and I was Richard, with the green eyes and a certain mockery in his gaze, oh, how she suffered from that mockery. But a little suffering only added to the fun. I don’t really know when Richard’s name started disappearing and mine stayed on. I guess it was one night when I put on a sentimental record and asked her to dance, may I have the pleasure? We started dancing all in giggles but while we were twirling around something was changing, we grew serious, so serious. We were so terribly ashamed, see. We held and kissed each other with such fear. We used to cry with fear.”

  “Were you happy, Rosa?”

  I run my hand over his strong chin.

  “It was a profound and sad love. We knew that if they suspected we’d suffer even more. So we had to hide our secret like a robbery, a crime. So many alarms. We started to talk alike. Laugh alike. So close it was as if I had fallen in love with myself. I can’t explain it, but the first time I went to bed with a man I had the sensation of loving a strange being. The Other. The mouth, the body, no, I was no longer one, we were two, the man and me.”

  “Did you think that was good?”

  “When we want something, it becomes good. And I wanted to know what it was like in order to be able to choose. I chose. But when I remember … Oh, why do people interfere so much? Nobody knows anything but they all talk, judge. There are too many judges. One night she called me up in tears, her family was about to make a scandal, I had to disappear, or in other words, appear in the form of a boyfriend. Reinvent with urgency a boyfriend, the boyfriend of the beginning of our game. I’d have to send her letters, keepsakes from a fellow who wouldn’t be Richard any more, what name then? I bribed the kid from the bakery to talk over the phone, we needed a voice for Ricardo, we chose Ricardo for his name. We had to lie so much on account of other people that we got contaminated with lying. We weren’t lovers but accomplices. We became formal. Suspicious. The fun had gone out of the game, it went sour. Then she left her ficticious charmer for a real one. As for me, I let myself be squired about by a cousin, there was talk of an engagement.”

  “And what about your family, Rosa?”

  “My father was aware of everything but never said a word. My mother made a few guesses and panicked, she wanted to marry me off to the cousin as quickly as possible. The neighbor would have been OK too, an old man who played the cello. She did everything she could to tie me down, but I packed my necessaire and came here.”

  “What’s that? Necessaire?”

  I open the newspaper article on the table and glance at my watch.

  “One of my friends is always talking about preparing your necessaire—foolishness. It means pack your bag, your toothbrush kit. Let’s get to work?”

  “I’m at your service, Rosa de Luxembourg.”

  I take two chocolate bars from my bag, one for him and another. And the other for him too, I decide. I throw him the second bar, I have to lose ten pounds, don’t I? Then I grab my share back and now I can’t answer because my mouth is full. Miguel in jail, no money, father and mother far away, all my friends disappearing around me and I’m going to deny myself sugar?

  We chew, concentrating.

  “Who mentioned her? Rosa Luxembourg,” I ask.

  “Jango.”

  “A fabulous woman. She was murdered by the German police right after the First World War.”

  There’s a malicious glint in Pedro’s eye.

  “I heard your father used to be a Nazi. That true?”

  I slap the table with far more irritation than I feel.

  “He had a fling at it. But look, we’re not playing, I want you to get that through your head. Here I’m Rosa and you’re Pedro. Period.”

  “Just one more question, only one more, I promise!”

  “You ask too many questions, see.”

  “This Rosa de Luxembourg, was she pretty?”

  “There wasn’t any de. No, extremely ugly. But come on. Malraux was an old-time revolutionary, he was in China when things started. He participated in the Spanish Civil War, the French Resistance etcetera, etcetera. As he got older, he started to get soft and ended up as one of de Gaulle’s cabinet ministers. But before that he was pretty neat. Look how lucid this comment on Guevara is, he considers Ché the greatest man of our time, but with the wrong technique, and the proof of this is that he died in an ambush, a trap even stupider than that light fixture up there. He was mistaken to think he was dominating those villages around him, I can’t explain it but they were really controlled by the Americans.”

  “Slower, let me jot that down.”

  He finds an old purple felt-tip pen and licks it with the tip of his tongue; his handwriting is clear but his lips have purple spots. I put the clipping away. I’d like to put him away too, somewhere safe, like the bottom of my bag, protected, Oh! I’m turning into a sentimental old lady.

  “Look at this, Pedro! Also, in Malraux’s opinion, the revolution in Latin America will be of a Trotskyite character, it won’t be a revolution of the masses.”

  “Hell, I think that way too.”

  I light our last cigarette. He takes a drag and his hand trembles slightly.

  “You could include the testimony of a Peruvian priest, Wenceslau Calderón de la Cruz, isn’t that a lovely name?”

  “Wenceslau who?”

  “Calderón de la Cruz. He considers men like Guevara and Martin Luther King to be modern-day saints.”

  “I don’t like King,” he mutters.

  “Leave it just Ché then, but think again about Martin Luther King. In olden times saints were those who did the most penance, exercised the most charity, you know, all that stuff. But everything’s changed. Today a Christian can’t gain salvation of his soul without serving society objectively. I can’t explain it but anyone who fights with his entire consciousness in order to help those in misery and ignorance, anyone who through his office or instruments of work lends a hand to his neighbor, is saintly. The roads may be crooked, it makes no difference. They’re still saintly.”

  “At that point I could put something in about our priests, right, Rosa? You should have seen Brother Christóvão, yesterday he came down with a bad cold but still he went out in the rain to visit the little hookers down at the Maison Rouge, we almost had to beat up the madam. Their ages vary between thirteen and sixteen, they’re only recruited in that age span. He went from there to talk to that blonde who hustles down by the cemetery gates, he takes them one by one, such a slow job, he has to use up so much spit. And the things he hears in exchange!”

  “Romanticism. But even so, a more logical romanticism than the request of all those priests pouring into the Vatican. Marriage! A priest has to marry the Church! Otherwise he won’t be a priest, he’ll want to do other things. A halfway priest is like a halfway politician, garbage. A priest shouldn’t even be allowed to marry his own mother, how can people respect them? I don’t attend Mass, mind you, but if I ever decide to go back some day, I want to find a priest with a clean mind to give me communion.”

  He chuckled. “So sex is dirty?”

  “I can’t explain it, Pedro, but in the case in point it interferes tremendously. It fragments. And the priest has to be whole, we’re the ones who are in pieces. Priests who want to
screw have no calling, they’re ambiguous, and ambiguities are abominable.”

  “I’d bring halfway leftists to your attention too, God, what a shitty bunch.”

  I’m cold and hungry. I pick up a piece of twine from the floor and use it to tie back my hair.

  “Sometimes I get so fed up with this group. And now with this business of the ambassador, dammit. It’s fear.”

  He gets up, goes to the window, and peeks out at the night through the hole in the sleazy venetian blinds. He buries his hands in his pockets and looks at me.

  “I think I’m scareder of my folks than of the police. My oldest brother is gung-ho on family and tradition, you should have seen how hysterical he got. I’m frightened to death of him.”

  “And your father?”

  “Separated from my mother. Oh, Rosa, I really suffered over that. I used to cry at night and bite the pillow, I cried like an idiot. I wanted them both to die but I didn’t want them to split up. Isn’t that weird? Why should it bother me so much? I didn’t tell anyone, they never knew it, nobody did. You’re the only person I’ve told. I was so broken up inside. Just like the glass in my window where a rock hit it, I’d look at the window and see myself exactly that way. I never said anything. I’m saying it now and I’m already crying again. Shit, why do I have to cry, goddammit. How imbecilic.”

  I rub a spot on my blouse with the handkerchief. I know it won’t come out but I keep rubbing as if getting the spot out were the most important thing in the world. Lorena would be radiant if she could see me.

  “And did she remarry? Your mother?”

  “I’ve noticed a guy hanging around who’s actually not so bad. I have nothing more to do with it. I read lots of science fiction, act absentminded so they’ll think I’m stupid and leave me in peace.”

  He mounted the chair again, leaning his arms on the back and resting his chin on his arms. His mouth and fingers are dirty with ink like those of children who are just learning to write. I feel like cradling his head in my lap, go to sleep, Pedro.

  “Families really are a pain. Mine live a long way away, we get along beautifully.”

  And together, didn’t we get along beautifully too? But it’s better for me to console him. He wets the pencil point in his mouth again and starts to draw in the margin of the paper. He makes a bird flying, a house. He reinforces the plume of smoke coming out of the chimney.

  “As soon as I start working, I’m going to transfer to night school and move in with two other guys. Are you prejudiced against queers?”

  “My prejudice is against lack of character.”

  “I think one of them is gay. He hates girls, he says they’re doors of the Devil.”

  I take off my socks and wad them into a ball. I want to laugh but he’s absolutely serious. I leave my socks in the drawer, the irritation those socks caused me with their worthless elastic! How could a simple pair of socks perturb me so? One day I put a pair of foot-warmers in this drawer, black woolen ones. Could they still… I curl my fingers around them. Dusty but warm. I look at Pedro and for some reason I am filled with hope.

  “If you’re not interested, tell them before you move in, explain yourself clearly, right? No pretenses or evasions, that’s the important thing. Are you a virgin?”

  “Not exactly. It’s complicated.”

  I know, a virgin. He and Lorena would make a great pair. I take his felt pen and draw a radiant sun beside his plume of smoke.

  “Isn’t it warmer now? You’ve got to learn to smile again, Pedro. Learn to fight back. And clarity, don’t leave anything foggy. Don’t be either pious or sentimental because then you end up hurting people more. Believe me.”

  “But it’s other people who are sentimental! You should have seen my friend when he had a breakdown, the guy almost died when he came to tell me how unhappy he was, how cruel his family had been. He asked if I was going to act the same way everybody else did just because he was nothing but a wretch. He didn’t go down on his knees because I stopped him.”

  “But why a wretch? I can’t stand panic or declarations of principles. Resignation or provocation. My great-aunt was so burdened down by the fact of sex that she hid herself in a convent, became a nun. Another aunt who was fond of controversies created so many that she ended up a whore. Both acted out of the same fear, the same fear. If only we weren’t so afraid.” “Neither night nor day,” Lorena sentenced once. “They’re in twilight, and twilight will always be uncertain. Insecure.” “Literature, bah. Women are finding their way. The men will come along in good time. I think,” I say grinning, “that in the future there will be only hermaphrodites.” “Poor little things,” Lorena would add. But when she speaks in her poetic tone she doesn’t use diminutives.

  “Are you in love with someone, Rosa?”

  “Yes. Now take off that pullover, I need it today. You can wear mine.”

  “A mission? With Bugre?”

  I take his hand between mine. Dry and dirty. “I didn’t hear that.”

  He remounts his chair, did he blush? He blushed.

  “Crap, I’m really stupid. Oh Rosa, for God’s sake, be my girl. I’ll give you my stuffed rabbit, my tricycle, my dove’s egg, I have a dove’s egg,” he murmured laughing softly. “You can have them all.”

  I pull his hair. “I already have a man. Period. Now I have to go.”

  “Wait, what are the characteristics of a Third-World country? Ours, for example. I’m thinking of writing an article. But where would I publish it?”

  And where would I be able to publish it? I asked. Miguel looked at me the same way I’m looking at Pedro. He straightened the pages of my manuscript and gave me an ambiguous answer, he who isn’t ambiguous. I should keep on writing without worrying about getting published. Someday, who knows? If I felt the text was still valid. One could sense it had been written with love. With honesty.

  I squeeze Pedro’s hand as if I were squeezing my own.

  “Don’t worry about publishing, just keep writing. You want to be a journalist, don’t you? So you’ve got to practice, later we’ll see. And remember, to write about underdevelopment isn’t just to write about the children, afterwards I’ll get you the exact number who die per day. There’s illiteracy, the mushrooming of the slums, the people who flee from the droughts, you should take a ride out along the country roads sometime and hear what these people have to say. Traveling salesmen with combs, pencils, razor blades. Trash multiplying in the streets, what do they call those openings that are always plugging up along the sidewalks? The dirt in the cafés and restaurants, toilets, the apotheosized filth of these toilets, starting with the ones in the Department, oh, Pedro, just take a little walk around outside and your article will practically write itself, ‘from general to specific,’ as my friend says in Latin, she likes Latin. Now I really must go.”

  He follows me to the door. I paw through the bottom of my bag.

  “Here’s some yenom, money spelled backwards brings luck, remember that: yenom. We’ll settle up later.”

  “But it’s a lot, Rosa.”

  I give him a good-bye kiss on the cheek and enter the darkness of the corridor as he asks about my novel. I don’t want him to see me when I answer that I ripped it all up, destroyed it.

  “I thought I had talent but I was wrong, like these priests who are getting married all over the place.”

  “But how do you know you were wrong?”

  “One knows, Pedro. One knows.”

  He embraces me so hard that I am actually alarmed, I never imagined he was so strong. His mouth, quivering, searches for mine. I go to meet it, good grief, he doesn’t even know how to kiss. I’ll teach you stage by stage, wait, what’s the big rush? Don’t hurt me, we’re not enemies, I try to tell him with my tongue that flattens against his and teaches him to kiss slowly and deeply. At first he’s completely clumsy, never mind, pretty soon things will smooth out. I still have fifteen minutes, I murmur in his ear. We draw back inside the room, holding each other. He reaches out
and turns off the light, he wants it to be in the dark. Fine, in the dark and with the door closed, I decide pushing the door shut with my foot. His teeth hurt my lip, he has big teeth, oh, don’t make it such a battle, I’ll show you the way. It’s suffering, yes, but it’s pleasure too, don’t worry about me, see. Come on, don’t be afraid, I’m on your side, not against you.

  “Don’t be like that, Pedro. Relax, take it easy. We have time.”

  He kisses me and sobs with affliction and anger, bewildered. I have to take the initiative, he may fail out of sheer emotion and become desperate. “Come on, Pedro. It’s not a door of the Devil,” I whisper in his ear and we laugh. “Not of God either, just a door like any other. Come inside.” He explodes in a torrent of sperm and tears.

  “I’m sorry, Rosa, I’m sorry!”

  “If you say that again I’ll kill you right now, on the spot.”

  “It was awful!”

  “What do you mean, awful? Wasn’t it good for you?”

  I take the handkerchief from my bag and dry his face. I feel him smiling and smile too. “You’ll orient Pedro,” Bugre ordered. Right, a complete orientation. A good deed or a simple desire to make love? Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. I know I love Miguel even more after the betrayal. If this is what you could call betrayal. I tousle Pedro’s hair; he’s coming out of his depression with alarming speed. He laughs at nothing, he’s high as a kite. He kisses the palm of my hand and places it against his burning face.

  “I love you Rosa, I love you.”

  “Great. Now go and find yourself a girl.”

  “Wait, Rosa!”

  I gather up my belongings. He grabs me but I’m stronger. I leave him lying on the floor, completely tender and silly. He wants to know if we’ll see each other tomorrow, if my boyfriend really is Miguel, he asks questions, questions.

  “Good night, Pedro! Write a good article, you hear?”