The Girl in the Photograph

by Lygia Fagundes Telles

  He turned his back on her and walked away without a sound over the rug-strewn marble floor. Why do the king’s servants end up bigger turds than the king himself? thought Lia tucking in her shirttail. Her fingers explored the empty belt loops—who might be wearing her belt? She smoothed back her hair. Examining her inflamed thumb, she moistened it with her tongue where the nail was bitten down to the quick. On the wall, the tall mirrors reflected her from all angles. How to get sick and tired of yourself. Quickly she bent forward until she was below the level of their frames, settling herself on the rug. How could Narcissus get free, enslaved by his own reflection? She grinned. Lorena was fond of mirrors too, just like her mother. How did the lorenense philosophy go? Being was the stagnation of existence. “If I want to exist I can’t even be in the mirror,” she added to herself, interested in the pale-brown and blue pattern of the rug. Once accustomed to the gloom, she could see the twisting design more clearly: A tiger pursued a gazelle until pouncing on it in the next two sections, digging claw and tooth into its flank, from which flowed a filament of bright-blue blood. Other pursued and wounded gazelles multiplied over the wool and silk of the miniature Oriental tapestry. No matter how fast they ran—and run they did!—they were all condemned. She stroked the terrified head of one that was jumping out of a thicket and searched among the leafy intricacies and arabesques for a different route the gazelle might take to escape the imminent tiger: It would have to jump off the rug. The enthusiasm with which men created or destroyed the element of fatality in all they touched! And then attributed responsibility to the gods. “You are free,” she whispered into the panicked ear of the gazelle. Now it was free. It was still free. She covered the attacking tiger with her book and lay down on her back. The chandelier with its crystal prisms was another fatality hanging there from the ceiling. And the wall clock inside its long black-and-gold case. The pendulum was in the shape of a lyre but the hands were aggressive arrows. “Only our numbers count,” they advised sternly, pinning down their target. The energetic beat of the mechanical heart inside the case. What a magic thing time was. Time of Algeria, suddenly it had become the time of Algeria. What would it be like? Improvisation. Adventure. Certain only the desire to fight, to survive. Certain, the diary. “I want everyone to know that nobody in the world ever loved his country or his people more,” she would write in the introduction. Words already bled dry by the politicians in their campaigns. But she would use them to express a new sentiment. A live one. She’d talk to Miguel at length about that: If the New Left didn’t unite with the other groups they would all end up so divergent and weakened that when a common language was attempted, nobody would understand anybody else. “The Church is already living out its Tower of Babel,” she remembered tapping her cigarette ash into the tiger’s eyes. “Are we going to follow in its footsteps? I ask for a brick and they throw me a rafter. Fractionalized, divided. How to organize the masses in such a confused state?”

  Lia blew on the little roll of ash, which came apart and gradually disappeared into the rug. She smashed the cigarette out against the sole of her blue tennis shoe. They were fated just like those gazelles, after every two, the third would be caught by the neck, skip two more and the blood would gush out in a blue stream. “No!” she exclaimed turning over on her stomach. The diary would be in a simple style like that of the notes and memoranda in her notebook. She opened it at random. She had difficulty in deciphering her own large sprawling handwriting. “Today, the twelfth, Lorena said was bath day. I went into her shower and was almost boiled alive because the cold-water faucet had something wrong with it. Next she offered me lunch, which means raw carrots, a boiled egg and a glass of milk. If I hadn’t attacked the bananas, (I must have eaten half a dozen) I could never have accomplished the thousands of things I did. On the way out I met Depressing Ana who was coming in extremely depressed, she had had a conversation with Mother Alix who must be losing her patience. She spoke in a whisper to Lorena, she wanted to borrow some money. Then she asked to borrow a sweater. And told me that she was in anguish, which is nothing new, either she’s riding high or down in the dumps. Why does her slightly cross-eyed expression make me dizzy? After picking up my passport—Algeria, Algeria!-—I went to the office and there found Pedro and Elizabeth at work. They are in love, or rather, Pedro is ardently impassioned but she seems very cerebral to me. And people like that fall in love in a different way from the passionate ones like Pedro and me. She leads a feminist movement and was composing an article about women’s jobs in our market. Why am I moved by the thought that Pedro is going to suffer? Shit, he has to suffer. Drink kerosene and gasoline because that’s how one builds personality structure, I believe. But in my heart of hearts I get sentimental, I almost say, as Lorena would, ‘poor little thing!’ From there I went on to Bugre’s apartment. Dil, Ivone, and Eliezer were already there listening to music. Chico Buarque and Caetano. Bugre arrived and we started to work. Four solid hours of extremely fruitful study. From economic theory to philosophic idealism, from philosophic idealism to the crisis of physics in the beginning of the century, from there to Hegel, all passing through the tortuous paths of folly, ignorance and love for Brazil.”

  Miguel is cerebral, thought Lia closing her notebook. But wasn’t that a good thing? He averaged out with her, who was the excessive type, in the explosive moments at least one head needed to be able to reason. Or not? I’m the stupid one if they catch me with these notes. Why am I walking around with them?

  “She’s just finishing her bath, she’ll see you right away,” announced a pink-aproned maid entering the foyer. She collected Lia’s already-dead cigarette in an ashtray.

  “Come into the living room. Isn’t Loreninha coming?”

  Is that all anybody can ask around here? thought Lia as she followed the maid. She piled her books on the floor of the living room, which was brighter and more spacious.

  “I haven’t seen Lorena today. I can come back some other time, no problem.”

  “But she wants to see you, wait just a little. It’s that today this house is in confusion. The poor thing has hardly stopped crying, her eyes are all swollen up …”

  “But what happened?”

  “Dr. Francis died!”

  “Who’s Dr. Francis?”

  “Why, the doctor who treats her nerves! The funeral was yesterday, she didn’t know a thing about it. Would you care for some fruit juice? Or do you prefer whiskey?”

  “A little whiskey, straight. But listen, I only came to get a suitcase full of clothes, can’t you take care of it?”

  “Wait, miss. You talk to her a little, it’ll do her good.”

  Without much enthusiasm Lia took the glass. In the first stage, the dim foyer and the butler with his stagnant face. Now, the more important waiting room with the relaxed little maid offering things to drink. Feeling herself a visitor in ascension, Lia drew closer to the oil portrait dominating all one side of the wall. Mama rejuvenated and revivified by a recent transfusion of fresh blood. Lorena adored vampire films; well, there was her mother in a gauzy dressing gown, her face very white, her eyes sepulchral. Even her hair was dense, like two black clots hardening against her high forehead. The Countess Dracula.

  “Do you like it?” the maid wanted to know, simpering with her hands in her apron pockets. “It cost a fortune, that portrait.”

  “It’s unsettling.”

  “And it’s been two days since he showed up. Why, just today three women called asking, ‘Is the doctor in?’” the maid mimicked in a flutelike voice. “Well, after all, he could be her son.”

  I egg her on. “But is he a doctor?”

  The woman giggled hiding her mouth in her pink apron. Her face bore a resemblance to that of the plastic baby.

  “He has a doctor’s degree in pleasure, that’s what!”

  I fill my mouth with almonds. At the Banquet of Inconveniences this faithful servant will sit at the head of the table. With my fingertip I test the blue canine tooth of the Chinese porc
elain dragon bristling on the marble table. On the smaller table, the little silver tree with four enamel-framed photos hanging from its branches like oval fruit: the small snapshot of a pale dark-haired man wearing the expression Lorena wears in her mystical moods. On the parallel branch, Mama in a wide straw hat, holding a pair of garden shears, a bouquet of jasmine at her breast. Just below, on a smaller branch, a picture of Lorena as a little girl, laughing her tinkly laugh, hee-hee-hee. On the neighboring branch, a sulky little boy with a crew cut, Romulo or Remo? Only the four on the tree. And the other brother?

  “Come on, she’s calling,” advises the maid. She grows formal once more as a remote bell sounds the second time. “Not that way, that door leads into the office. Haven’t you been here before?”

  “Everything looks different.”

  Corridors and salons as the tunnel narrows and darkens, becoming more secret. An entrance leads into a shadowy bedroom. Bedroom? For the first time I am entering a veritable alcove, where I can see no windows but only curtains, and the languid draperies of a canopy sustained by four slender bed-posts. I come closer. The draperies descend in soft gathers composing a sort of vaporous cocoon enveloping the gilt-backed bed. Stuffiness and perfumes. Half hidden among the sheets and embroideries, she rests upon the piled-up pillows, two cotton pads covering her eyes. The lamp on the bedside table is lighted; outside the sun explodes but in here it’s night.

  Her voice is humid, cottony. “Sit down, dear. Where’s Lorena?”

  “She’s probably on her way.”

  “Today I need her very much. Today I need all of you, you know what happened, don’t you? He was my friend, my brother. Half of me died with him. Oh God.”

  “I can come back some other time, Mama. No problem.”

  Delicately she removes the cotton pads from her eyes and puts them into a silver dish beside the bottle of rose water. With effort she raises her eyelids.

  “I like so much the way you call me Mama. You see, I’m losing everything, people dying and disappearing. And you come to me and say Mama. I always liked you, Lia. I often tell Loreninha, ‘It’s such a relief to know you have a friend like her nearby.’ “

  I laugh to myself. Relief? I sniffle and sneeze because I can’t blow my nose on the handkerchief I didn’t bring, oh, I’m allergic to this perfume.

  “I’ve caught a miserable cold.”

  “How painful to think that he’s dead, that that smile, that gaze so strong and at the same time so sweet … ‘Well then?’ he’d ask me. And I’d answer in the same tone, ‘Well then, Dr. Francis?’ Oh God, my dear friend, above all else my friend. I’m alone again. Completely alone.”

  She is crying and I search for but cannot find anything to say as she cries in silence. She was wearing a white suit when we met, a flannel suit that Lorena would call impeccable. It was on a Sunday, she had come to bring half of a roast turkey with walnut stuffing, which Ana and I devoured while Lorena nibbled on a wing. She had just had a facelift and was euphoric. But can this be that attractive lady? She has melted like a chocolate icecream sundae, more cream than chocolate. I draw back on the little bench; she is trying to see the maid who was behind me but isn’t any longer.

  “Do you want something?”

  “Oh, Bila’s disappeared. Just push that button there, four servants and none of them to attend when I call, all four sit around talking in the kitchen, push again, they don’t hear. Oh God. He seemed so steadfast, do you understand? Everything could fall apart, go to ruin. But not him. As though he were immortal. So refined and at the same time authoritarian, powerful. Rough and yet genteel. I’ve only known of one other man like him and that was in a novel. A novel by Cronin. The character was like him, but people like that don’t really exist. Dr. Francis. I didn’t even see him dead, nobody told me. He had played tennis that afternoon, he played tennis marvelously, even participated in tournaments. I can imagine him with the racquet in his hand, his movements so energetic, elastic, all of him had such energy and elasticity. Oh God, Oh God. My dear friend. ‘Well then?’ he would ask me. ‘Well then, Dr. Francis?’ “

  The tears run, dripping down her stretched face which hasn’t the slightest wrinkle. But her hands are gnarled like exposed roots of a plant pulled up from the ground, oh! the desire I have to be anywhere but here. I’ll think about Miguel, Miguel rhymes with farewell, a poor rhyme but so rich, I’m coming! The Mediterranean Sea. Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria. The ocean, what color will this ocean be?

  “You can find another analyst, that’s no problem. All it takes is money, you can be treated by the best psychiatrist in the world.”

  “Seven years. Seven years. I’m back to zero, everything I’ve said and done, everything’s been lost as if in a shipwreck. With his death, I’m reduced to nothing as if—oh God, how can I accept it? How can I accept it?”

  He’s the one who probably hasn’t accepted it yet, I think and take advantage of the opportunity to blow my nose on my shirttail, she’s closed her eyes. There won’t be time, the office will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll phone Bugre and explain, if he can leave the message with Mineiro. Okay, a call will take care of that. A screwed-up day. Loreninha might have come to hold up her end of things, mightn’t she?

  “I gave myself to him entire, on a tray—past, present, he took it all. With his death he gives it all back to me again. Those rocks. I had taken them all off one by one, so many rocks piled up on top of me, here on my chest. I took them slowly off, he would encourage me, ‘Come on, girl. Take a deep breath!’ at times he’d call me that, ‘girl.’ ‘What’s the trouble, girl?’ Girl” she repeated covering her mouth into which tears are running. “Now the rocks have fallen back in place, heavier than before, there are even more of them. How can I go to someone strange, who doesn’t know about anything, and repeat it all again? … seven years. He could tell how I was feeling just from the way I walked, at times I would decide, today I’ll bluff, I want to pretend I’m cured, ‘I’m fine, Dr. Francis, today I’m just fine!’ He would just look at me, that penetrating stare that could pass right through one. And then I’d burst into tears because that was exactly the thing I needed to do, to cry. I’m back to zero.”

  I’d sure like to know who picked up my Writing Degree Zero which I haven’t even read yet. Mayakovsky and Lorca I’ll give to Bugre. Malraux, the Beauvoir and Sartre go to Pedro, he’ll be thrilled. Eliezer can keep the Brazilian authors, analyze Indianism down to the last feather, it’s necessary, it’s necessary. The history of philosophy and the dictionaries can go to Loreninha. Psychology books for Ana Clara, who knows, she might still get unkinked and finish her courses. Crazy Annie. Even Mother Alix, who’s been the faithful keeper in person, is beginning to get a bit neurotic; neurosis is contagious. Like a spark in dry straw. The whole thing burns up.

  “God knows that if it wasn’t for him, I would already have thrown myself out that window.”

  I look in the direction she points, only now can I manage to visualize a window behind the draperies. Lorena is the type who withdraws into her shell too, but she likes fresh air.

  “How can a Christian lady talk like that? Aren’t you a Christian?”

  The tears have started again, more slowly, running from the corners of her eyes and infiltrating her hair.

  “He was my father, my brother, my lover. In the spiritual sense, you do understand me, I hope?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Everything I had and lost. I was thinking, the terrible thing about life is that things end. Everything ends. On my ranch we used to have a sugarcane grinder, the children loved to drink the juice we’d squeeze. Roberto, my husband, used to like to choose the sugarcane himself. It would go into the grinder so green and fresh, it would go in alive and come out the other side a dry pulp, all smashed to bits. Not a drop of juice, only pulp. Life does the same thing to us, my dear. Just the same. And people do their part in grinding us up. I ask myself how she could possibly have been so cruel.”

  �
��Who? Who was cruel?”

  “Those viper’s eyes. The nurse. A snake-in-the-grass!”

  “Who, Mama?”

  She took a handkerchief from under the pillow and let it hang suspended from her fingers. A handkerchief as soft and transparent as the canopy hangings.

  “You’re from Bahia, aren’t you, Lia? I think that’s why you’re so polite, Bahians are especially polite. Do you study Law too, dear?”

  “Social Sciences.”

  “Ah yes, Social Sciences. I’m so happy to think you’re Lorena’s friend. My dear little girl. So pure, so honest and sensitive. So refined. It’s not just that she’s my daughter, but I know it’s hard to find a girl like her. When I committed this madness of marrying again, when I fell in love with this man who has made me cry tears of blood, I asked her opinion, ‘What do you think about it, daughter?’ And she took my hands between hers and answered with that sweetness you’ve already seen, ‘Whatever Mama does will be the right thing.’ She doesn’t even know the half of what’s happened to me, I don’t want her to be hurt, to suffer. This boyfriend of hers, the latest one, do you know him?”

  “Only slightly.”

  “I somehow got the idea he might be married, a reference Loreninha made, but I don’t quite know … when I was a young girl I read a charming book, nobody reads it any more but my mother’s generation delighted in it, The Exemplary Girls, by the Countess of Segur. Have you ever heard of it? When I see Loreninha with her delicate old-fashioned air I remember that book.” She sighs, covering her eyes with her handkerchief. “I don’t care too much for that other friend of yours, the redhead, she was at a nightclub the other day with a very strange group of people. Undoubtedly very pretty, but so vulgar. What’s her name?”

  “Ana Clara.”

  “That’s it, Ana Clara.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” I say and flex my leg which has fallen asleep. I get up, I sit down again. But why was the nurse cruel?