The Girl in the Photograph

by Lygia Fagundes Telles

  “Come on, get down.”

  She won’t obey, she wants to play more. I lift her up by the waist; in the air she stiffens and strikes a ballerina’s pose. I deposit her in front of the gate.

  “When I was a kid I used to walk for miles like that with Romulo.”

  “Is that the diplomat?”

  “Romulo died. The diplomat is Remo.”

  “I’m always getting them confused.”

  “Everybody does. You know that trunk I stored in the garage? Inside there’s an album of old photographs, one day I’ll show it to you. The house on the farm was beautiful, that very pure colonial style. It was a hundred and twenty-odd years old, can you believe it?”

  I open the gate. But there’s still something I have to do, what was it? I bow my head, oh, I know.

  “I’m tied hand and foot, Lena, I can’t do anything to help Ana Clara. If I get involved with drug addicts! Even if she were my own sister I couldn’t, wherever there are pushers and addicts there are dozens of cops, they’re doing all they can to make it look like we’re mixed up with drugs. I can’t take the chance. I know she’s sick but it’s a sickness that makes me want to strangle the patient. They go down with their astonished faces, they all sink one by one, you pull them by the arm, by the hair, yell, threaten, do everything and they go on sinking like cement blocks thrown into a swamp. Even animals, Lena, animals react, kick back. Not them. They sink with that empty expression, dead inside. What is there to do?” I ask and pull on the gate, oh, how hard it is to do what one wants. “I’m already late, Lena. My trip, millions of preparations.”

  Lorena leans on the bars of the gate and groans, whether from pain or discouragement I don’t know.

  “I feel so sorry for her. I feel like an accomplice because I help her, there’s a word for it in Penal Code, connivance. But how can I refuse? Mama already deposited the check for my car, I can give her the yenom for the operations, there’s no problem. But I know it isn’t yenom that’s going to help her, not now.”

  “I’m going to need some too, Lena, the trip is coming up soon. What a pain to get a passport, oh, how many papers. Requirements.”

  “The other night she told me she had seen God.”

  “There’s not a junkie who hasn’t. I think God is getting more popular, a good sign.”

  The red Corcel flashes in the sun. A boy on a bicycle crosses the street. From some yard a dog barks loudly. There’s a man in a dark suit standing under the tree on the corner. Noticing he’s being observed, he takes a newspaper out and begins to read.

  “What’s the matter, Lião? Why are you looking like that?”

  “That man,” I say.

  His wife comes out of the garage. She opens the door of the car. He gets in. I breathe to the very center of the earth. Like a child, Lorena sticks her fingers through the iron grillwork of the gate and hangs from the rusty curlicues.

  “What if it’s true, Lião? That she saw God, like she said.”

  “Have you seen Him?”

  She grows tired of the position and now regards the red marks on her hands.

  “Mama had a friend at school who woke up one day with the marks of the Crucifixion on her hands. Romulo, my brother, heard about the story and the next morning shook me awake, I have the marks, I have the marks! He showed me the impressions on his hands. But my other brother Remo was smarter, it was Mercurochrome! Can you believe it? I used to make enormous soap bubbles, neither Romulo nor Remo could make bubbles as big as mine.”

  A little yellow-spotted beetle is climbing up the sleeve of her cambric shirt. Already I’m remembering her this way, barefoot with her little beetle and her virginity, puzzling over the bubbles she used to blow.

  “Oh God, this trip.”

  “Bahia?”

  “Farther, I told you, pay attention, Lena! Overseas. Later I’ll tell you the details, now I can’t answer any questions.”

  “We’ll have a going-away party, eh, Lião? Guga can come with his guitar, drums, I have all kinds of liquor, shall we throw a party? You can invite all your friends.”

  “My friends? Verboten, oh, die Zeit entrinnt,” I say and open the gate.

  Crazy German. My father. Sometimes when he drank he would sing and then he seemed like a god to me, only strange, because he sang in a strange language. And then he became a stranger with all his prestige of war and exile. His strong soldier’s voice, how did the song go?

  “Wie einst Lilli Marleen! Wie einst Lilli Marleen!”

  Lorena repeats the refrain, tapping out the rhythm enthusiastically. “Sing some more, Lião, sing some more!” She tries to detain me, was I sure I couldn’t come to lunch? How about a ride in the Corcel? An ice cream at the club? I go out and slam the gate. Behind the iron fence she looks like a prisoner trapped in her garden. I feel mildly sad but immediately I want to laugh. Points of view: Don’t I look like a prisoner to her too?

  “Ask Mama if she has any old clothes she wants to get rid of, we accept anything, shirts, underwear, sweaters, whatever.”

  She reaches through the gate and tucks in my shirttail.

  “Of course she has. Maybe she’ll even decide to give Romulo’s clothes away. He was only thirteen but he was so well-developed, you know my sweater with the blue stripes? It was his. She put everything away, it’s so morbid,” she sighs pulling my chain with the little fish outside my shirt. “And Mieux’s stuff? He buys shiploads of fabric and then changes his mind, you can even make uniforms.”

  “For revolutionaries without a revolution?” I ask.

  Lorena leaned her head on the gate and followed her friend with her eyes. She pulled up her loose shirt and scratched her stomach vaguely, her fingers descending in circles to her navel. The tenuous triangular shadow which showed through her white panties claimed her interest briefly. She smiled at the little bird that flitted through the tip of the pine tree and perched on the wall of the house next door. With childish respect she dropped a curtsy: “Good morning, Mister Brown. Good morning, Mister Smith. How is your father? My father is very well, thank you. And your mother? Oh, my mother is a cat. A very little cat. So sorry.”

  In the silence of the sun-filled garden there echoed a woman’s sunny laugh. Lorena made her way painfully over the sharp stones, her hands cupped over her breasts, ah! the breasts of statues. Especially those seminude mountains belonging to the four bronze ladies seated at the foot of the pedestal, the old man in a vampire’s cape perched on top. In the Praça das Rosas. And the rosy full-blown udders swollen with milk at the due times. Milk from the ranch, so foamy and white. The moonlit nights, milky white too. But when the moon went behind the clouds, the old man’s canine teeth grew long and sharp, and he would come down to caress the erect nipples of the exposed breasts, shouldn’t I? You should, they reply silently, offering the bronze blood from their necks. She smiled the smile that the statues must smile. And caressed the retracted nipples of her own almost nonexistent breasts, sighing. She would like to be a cow. A cow with a humid muzzle and rosy teats, washed clean like the cows on the farm. A big spotted cow. “Look at the hindquarters on this one,” Daddy would say patting Snowdrop’s rump lovingly. “Hindquarters,” thought Lorena leaning against the pitanga tree. She cleaned the sand from the soles of her feet. How much more dignified hindquarters than ass. “Has this one been bred yet?” he would ask and the cow would answer with a tender moo, chewing a green cud, green spittle, green shit, verde que te quiero verde! She would moo mossily when M.N. rested his face against her green-dripping muzzle: “My beloved.” The pastoral love of a cow surrounded by bulls on all sides. And virgin, a cowbell around her neck in case of emergency, clang, clang, clang! A novitiate heifer. Ana Clara’s first man was a German who farted like a bull when he threw himself on top of her, like an SS falling on top of the enemy during a silent bayonet attack. But hadn’t she later said that her first lover had been that philosophy professor, a black beard and a feather touch? “In short, with Crazy Ana everything’s delirious anyway.�
�� She thought about Lia with her first lover, staring at the ceiling and smoking, horrible, horrible. “I can’t explain it,” she began, and explained in detail that she had chosen her partner coldly, the way one would choose a toothbrush, this one’s fine, let’s go to bed. “And then, Lia, what did he do?” Lia was sewing a zipper into some jeans that should have been washed long ago. “Well, we lay in bed smoking and looking at the ceiling. We talked about so many things, see.” Unbelievable. “But it’s unbelievable, Lião, the first time and everything so cold,” she exclaimed. Lia regarded her with a tired expression and bit off the last available scrap of fingernail. “Why cold? I wanted to know what it was like and took the necessary measures. What’s cold about that? One doesn’t have to get hysterical. He’s a nice guy. A medical student, one of our group. The other day we had a Coke together, he’s going to get married.” I watched Lia sewing in the zipper with her big aggressive stitches, she sewed in the same tone she spoke, with irritation. “Strange, though,” I ventured and she gave me a sarcastic look. “As simple as drinking a glass of water. How would you expect it to be?”

  I was washing my combs in hot water with a few drops of ammonia, I’ve already showed them countless times that combs should be washed this way but did they pay any attention? Ana Clara puts an ancient plastic comb, all yellowish, into her Dior purse and Lião insists on black combs, always suspect because they don’t show the dirt. The only solution is to go into their rooms, collect their sinister combs and wash them along with mine. I gave such a lovely one to Lião, it even had inlaid mother-of-pearl on the handle. I warned her that it had belonged to my great-aunt. She thanked me profusely, stuffed it into her bag of lost-and-found articles and I never laid eyes on it again. You’ll see, it broke in half the minute she raked it through that hair, Bahians have very stiff hair. “But how would you expect it to be?” she asked and I answered that I expected it to be like in her novels, just imagine if any of the characters in that peach-scented city would go to bed with a man as a mere act of liberation. And for the first time, too. I see now that I lost a good opportunity to keep my mouth shut. She ended up destroying her manuscript, poor little thing. She knows now that it’s not included in any law or article thereof that an intelligent woman must write books. I think I’m very intelligent—but did I keep on writing poetry?

  I climb the stairs slowly so as to feel the warmth of the stones on my feet. A butterfly lands on the banister well within my reach. I take it by the wings but it trembles so hard I let it go. It flies off in confusion as though it has been imprisoned for a hundred years. On my fingers, the silvery powder. So brief, everything. I was holding happiness thus a minute ago but it struggled so hard I opened my fingers before it hurt itself, one can’t force it. If I’d squeezed a little harder there wouldn’t be powder left, but its soul. I go into my shell. Yes, M.N. I chose you because you won’t ask me if it’s the first time. Nor smoke looking at the ceiling, you know I’m super-complicated about sex, careful, careful! Neither will you say that you’re grateful to have been chosen. Grateful. Abominable. Oh Lord. I’ll kill myself if M.N. speaks of gratitude or so much as glances toward the ceiling. I want fervor, fervor, you know what that is? True, he hasn’t manifested very much, but couldn’t that be because he’s self-controlled? Controlled, of course, a gentleman can’t show his excitement. “My fiancé has a real hard-on for me,” said Ana Clara one night when she went on one of her binges, her C-grade vocabulary comes out when she’s really exuberant. I have a particular dislike for that expression but here it is appropriate: One could say that M.N. desires me, but doesn’t have a hard-on for me—that is the question. If I had those breasts.

  He must think I’m unhealthy, his hands protect me more than they caress. As if I were made of porcelain. “Be careful with those porcelain objects!” Mama warned the movers. And the rude, hurried men unexpectedly forgot their haste and began to cushion with straw and cotton the transparent ballerinas from the china closet where the bibelots were kept. The watered-down blood of the end of a breed. If I ever had a child by a man as white as I am, it would disappear among the white of the sheets, look at my baby! I would say to the people who searched, where, where? It would have to be placed oh a black sheet.

  I stretch my hands to the sun which beats through the window. Fragile nails. Weak fingers. M.N.’s are energetic even in respose, the square nails very well-brushed, gynecologists wash their hands more than anyone else. The sensibility of the fingertips that are so familiar with our private parts. That understand our roots so perfectly. I am perturbed when I think of this but it’s exactly this thought that gives me the sweet sensation of security: I’m in good hands.

  Chapter 8

  I sit on the bed and watch the room revolve. I’m motionless I’m the axle. “Sit here this is the axle of the world,” Jorge used to say sticking up his middle finger. Bastard. Rotten with syphilis, now I know it was syphilis. He must be dead too. He used to wake me up screaming. “Coffee! I want coffee!” My mother in bed, vomiting into a towel. “I think you’re going to have a little brother.” Halfwit. Ah, very kind all halfwits are nothing but kindness. The prick would shake me awake and I had to get his breakfast before sunrise because his shitty job was way off at the other end of the world. I’m coming I’m coming you asshole. I could never sleep as long as I wanted because there was always somebody shaking me awake, get up, get up! I’d love to sleep for five days and wake up in that Turk’s office, what’s his name? That analyst. Shit I forget. Never mind. I’d like to talk about the swamp with my mother’s face in the black water. I get away as fast as I can, swimming hard, I don’t know how to swim but I keep on swimming, pulling plants and slime up from the bottom, they rub against me and clog up my mouth, let me go! I shake my hands and free myself of the gelatinous creatures, leaves, fish. I know that just ahead I’ll see the swimming pool, it’s right up there, see it? I dive head first into the clean water and wash my whole body, laughing with Lorena who’s swimming alongside me. I know how to swim, I say and she shakes her head and makes faces, saying pool-blue, pool-blue. I want to laugh at her faces but I clap my hand over my mouth, I’ve lost my bridge. My bridge! I lost my bridge, Ma! I scream running my tongue over the place where it should be, there’s only the gum slippery with slime. She saw, she saw. I start to struggle in the water because I can’t manage to stay afloat any more, I sink with the plants tangling about my feet let go!

  “Dr. Hachibe. His name is Dr. Hachibe,” I say wiping my face which is dripping sweat. I dry my hands. “That analyst of mine.”

  Max leaps out of bed and hops on one foot, laughing and groaning. “My leg’s asleep, Bunny! Completely asleep, completely!”

  I drink from his glass. Dammit. Another dwarf dressed in red flashes by, chuckling. Or is it the same one? I chuckle too. It doesn’t matter.

  “Change that record, Max. All those Negroes howling.”

  With the tips of his fingers he lifts another record from the pile. Lorena’s gesture. He likes Bach too. The Mademoiselle with the little watch must have worked in both their houses, teaching the same things. The tiny gold heart on a chain must have been removed at night so as not to strangle the little girl. They don’t even need to talk and they recognize each other from a distance like the Christians from the catacombs passing each other in the public square. They can mix with others yet they don’t mix. She can utter indecencies and not be indecent, become a whore without being a whore. A ring with a coat of arms. This one here has his ring too, God only knows where he put it. But he has one. The family life. I suffered so much because I didn’t have one but now. Still, it’s all over, the decline has been setting in for a long time, I could see that in the album.

  “The nha-nha has a photo album in her trunk. Velvet cover, silver clasp. All the ancestors posing in sepia. She pretends to be indifferent but that’s all she thinks about. She couldn’t rest until she had showed me every single one.”

  But the woodworms came and attacked them so subtly, the
y went through the taffetas of the skirts, the English flannels of the trousers, and arrived at the respective asses. In sepia. Very slowly they began to gnaw the bottoms, Nha-nha says “bottoms” puckering up her lips. Fine. The bastards gnawed the bottoms and got down to the bones, shit, the appetite woodworms have! Time for the bones. If she put her little ear against the trunk she could hear the scratch-scratch of the woodworms burping, also in sepia. The color of the times.

  “Gimme a light,” he says collecting the matches from the box which has spilled over his chest.

  “Her mother lives with a gigolo. Lorena’s mother, that little skinny girl that talks nha-nha-nha. The widow robbing cradles in order to throw away her money. But even so.”

  “An old American hag wanted me to live with her and travel all over the world in a golden yacht but her face was enough to stop a clock, her nose was on one side, look, like this! Her mouth was over here, everything crooked, look. Look, Bunny!”

  “She’s in love with a doctor. An old guy. He’s married, lots of kids, really awful. But when he disappears she goes nuts. Her brother is a diplomat. ‘Remo, my brother,’ she says every two minutes. He sends her divine presents, the guy has taste. When he was a kid he killed his younger brother.”

  “He killed who?”

  “His brother. He had a shotgun and he aimed, boom. Liquidated his brother.”

  “What a sinister story, Bunny.”

  “Never went to bed with anybody.”

  “The brother?”

  I pound him on the chest. He defends himself by crossing his arms, rolling over with laughter.

  “It’s her, it’s her who never went to bed with anybody,” I repeat and for each her I give him a harder punch. “All excited with her little hummingbird voice, ‘my loverboy.’ Loverboy. Silly combination of lover with boyfriend. She says she’s contemplative-passive.”