“I haven’t any idea.”
“That’s strange, you’re such close friends,” she murmurs covering her eyes with her hands. “Everything’s so strange, isn’t it? Why is it that in front of Dr. Francis I wasn’t ashamed of being old? I didn’t have the slightest shame, I wanted to look pretty, yes, elegant, but I wasn’t ashamed the way I was in front of other people. With certain people I sometimes want to hide myself as if I’d committed a crime, hide my age like a criminal hides the victim, a terrible panic that they’d discover it, spread it around. Isn’t that odd? Certain people make me even more ashamed, as if I were naked in a display window. Now with you I’m completely at ease, with you, with Loreninha. My dear little girl. I’ve lost so many things but I still have my daughter, now we can live together again.”
“But will she live with you? Come back under your wing? I know you’re the perfect mother, mine is too, but just for that very reason one has to cut the umbilical cord, see. Otherwise it gets rolled around one’s neck and ends up strangling one. Castrating. Forgive me, but I think this is the most mistaken idea in the world. If one’s child is mature, he has to fly away from the nest as quickly as he can so as not to become what we know so well … oh, I think I’m talking too much.”
I roll down my shirtsleeves. She’ll vampirize her daughter whose blood is already as watered-down as that of the gazelles on the rug.
“This apartment is enormous, dear. She’ll have an entire section all to herself. Why don’t you come and live here too? I’d have the greatest pleasure.”
I don’t even answer. Oh Lord, as Lorena says in moments of affliction. I look with more sympathy at the man with the movie-actor pose, pipe and cloud of smoke.
“That little tree with the photos, is the boy Remo or Romulo?”
“Remo. Romulo couldn’t be there.”
“No?”
“He died when he was a baby, dear.”
“A baby?”
“He wasn’t even a month old, he didn’t even live that long. The doctors said that he had no viability. A heart murmur.”
I jump up with a wild desire to pull down these drapes, rip everything open and let in the light of day. But is it still daytime?
“Wait a minute: Remo shot him when they were playing, wasn’t that it? A shot in the chest, he would have been about twelve, wasn’t that what happened? Thousands of times Lorena told me the story in detail, he was blond. He was wearing a red shirt, you lived on the ranch.”
She is smiling a sad smile, looking at the ceiling.
“My poor little girl. She never knew her brother, she’s the youngest. She was still a little girl when she started to invent this, first only to the servants who would come and ask me, I didn’t even deny it, I covered up, where was the harm? She continued to talk, at school, at parties, the problem began to get more serious. Oh God, the discomfort I would feel when they wanted to know if … I didn’t want them to think she was lying, she was always such a truthful child. The doctors calmed us, it wasn’t so grave, it would pass with time, an overactive childish imagination, probably when she became an adolescent … It didn’t pass. Roberto was always so confident, so secure, he would reassure me, it’s nothing. I spoke to Dr. Francis, he had a talk with Loreninha, found her intelligent, sensitive. Do you understand what I mean, dear? He didn’t give it the slightest importance.”
I feel slightly nauseated, the chocolate? I hold my stomach and stare at the rug, this one is solid color. Honey-beige. But what is this? That whole story she told me so painfully, oh, Lorena. Oh, Lorena. What a meaningless thing, why? Why? I keep thinking and come closer to the cocoon where she sleeps wideawake, her eyelids hardly concealing her burning eyes. What if she’s lying? What if the real version is Lorena’s? Didn’t she say it? Neither the doctors nor her husband, nobody gave Lorena’s story the slightest importance. Why not? Because she was the sick one, the sick one was the mother altering the tragedy in self-defense, much easier to imagine that the son died as a baby and return him to limbo, he had no viability. The young boy in the red shirt, chest pierced by his brother’s shot, is subtracted from death and reduced to a baby with a heart murmur. Hm? I look for a fingernail, aren’t they ever going to grow out? I bite on a remnant that comes loose with a pain as sharp as a stabbing thorn. At the same time, Lorena with that fixation on the truth, complicating even the smallest matters. “And the dream machines?” she asked, her little face growing as secret as this alcove. The striped pullover was his, wasn’t it? He must have existed. I know so much about him, it’s as if he had been my own brother. And now. I need to see her photo album urgently, the gens lorenensis must all be there from beginning to end. Either way, how sad. “Who knows but what Mama might give you his clothes?”
“Back to zero, my dear. I had a facelift but crying the way I have been it must have gotten ruined. My sister Luci discovered a Scandinavian cream made with turtle oil, it must be excellent, turtles live for centuries,” she adds raising herself up on her elbows. “Oh God, that’s the terrible part, that things come to an end. Everything comes to an end.”
Chapter 11
With a soft gesture Ana Clara pushed back the ringlets of hair plastered to her forehead. She buttoned her coat collar high at the neck and, clutching her purse tightly against her chest, started up the steps. She tripped and fell to her knees. As she put out her hands to catch herself, she screamed: The ground was boiling with cockroaches. The biggest of them stood up on its hind feet, its chest stiff in a fencing tunic, foil in hand: En garde! She bent over, laughing because the roach was laughing too behind its wire mask, was it a joke? She peered at it more closely, then tried to hide her chest but it was too late: The foil pierced her from one side to the other. Blood spurted from the heart crowned with thorns, squirting into her mouth so violently that she choked on it. When she tried to breathe she doubled up, coughing.
“No more, no more,” she groaned.
“Take it easy, dear. Lean on me,” Lorena ordered, taking her by the arm.
The horse. The roach was left behind making a spiral dive into the collard greens. She picked up its foil that it had dropped on the ground, pinned her collar shut with it, and mounted the white horse. She laughed as they galloped through the starry countryside; there were so many stars she could see the crystals sparkling on the shelves. She patted the horse’s neck. It smiled. Lorena? It was Lorena. Her body relaxed.
“It’s so good here.”
“Didn’t I say you’d like it? I’m going to turn on the hot water,” advised Lorena. “Come on, lift up your head.”
She obeyed. Giggling weakly, she curled up in the bottom of the bathtub. “Shit, if you only knew.”
With one arm Lorena supported the trunk of Ana Clara’s body, using the other to lather her breasts with the soapy bath sponge.
“Where did you ever get so dirty, Annie? Incredible. You were dirty as an armadillo, dear. There was even mud in your ear, can you believe it?”
Ana Clara spoke with difficulty, voice thick and jaws clenched. She opened her eyes and began to laugh again.
“A bath? Are you giving me a bath?”
“Come on, wash the southern zone now. Here,” ordered Lorena guiding her hand. “Come on, rub hard right here. No, don’t let go of the sponge! Oh Lord.”
“I have to go. What time is it?”
“Be quiet, Annie! Don’t splash me, hold still, it’s still early, dear. Come on, rub.”
“Give me some whiskey.”
“All right but first rub the sponge here. That’s it.”
“Sober. Scratch scratch, I’m completely sober. I get mad as a bitch because my head. Scratch scratch.”
“Eucalyptus perfume, smell it? Isn’t that a delicious smell, it’s eucalyptus.”
“Eucalyptus.”
Now Lorena was soaping her hair.
“Close your eyes and don’t open them until I say.”
“I want my purse.”
“I’ll give it to you but now close your eye
s, come on, do as I say. What I’d like to know is where you’ve been. Where were you?”
“At a party.”
“What party? Wait, let me rinse off the soap,” said Lorena circling the other’s waist. “Be careful, Annie!”
She rolled her up in a towel and guided her into the bedroom. Ana Clara shuddered, pointing at the window.
“Who’s that peering in there?”
“Where? That’s just the curtain, dear. Calm down, there’s no one there, the two of us are alone. The nuns have all gone to bed, calm down.”
“Mother Alix! Mother Alix!”
“She’s coming. Lie down, wasn’t that a lovely bath?”
Lorena rubbed the towel over Ana’s hair, staring at the purple bruises on her breasts and arms. She opened a box of talcum powder.
“Annie, Annie. Where can you have been?”
“He got arrested,” mumbled Ana Clara opening her eyes. She clenched her fists and folded her arms across her chest. “He got arrested.”
“Who? Who got arrested?”
Dry, tearless sobs racked her. Her speech became more painful.
“Scratch-scratch. It’s all right, I’ll say—” She raised herself up and then fell back again on the bed. “God came and lighted on my chest, right here, right here. He flew away, the little bird was God. He came and then.”
I wrap my red bathrobe around her and brush out her hair, which shines like live coals, cut short this way it’ll dry fast. But what madness! Madness. Imagine if Mother Alix. From the floor I collect her filthy clothes, they look like she’s been wallowing in a swamp. And those purple spots? And the frightful odor of vomit mixed with day-old perfume, oh Lord, Lord, Lord. Country estate, indeed. I take the bundle of clothes to the hamper, a good thing tomorrow is Sebastiana’s day. The coat I’ll send to the dry cleaner’s. I place her shoes side by side, isn’t that curious? They’re hardly dirty. As if she’d been walking upside down, poor little thing.
“Ana, who got arrested? You said somebody got arrested.”
Her head rolls back and forth on the pillow as she clutches her hair, pulling it. Her words come out stonily:
“Max disappeared, disappeared! Loreninha, help me,—Max.”
“Ana, talk softer, do you want the nuns to wake up? Do you want Mother Alix to see you in this state? Is that what you want?”
“Max disappeared. He’s not there, I waited.”
“Well, he probably went on a trip. Doesn’t he travel a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“So he’s probably traveling, silly.”
“I waited.”
“You went on a binge, is what you did. Where have you been, anyway?”
Now she is giggling, cheeks pink, slightly crossed eyes shining.
“If you only knew.”
“Knew what? I don’t know but I can guess. You’re going to quit these binges, do you hear? You’re going to have to develop some sense.”
“I don’t want sense.”
“It’ll have to be pounded into you this time, dear, whether you want it or not. Mother Alix is getting tired, everybody’s tired.”
“The big ant was laughing the bastard. Then the cockroach got there and the championship race started. Max was first the Japanese. That guy. What’s his name that Japanese? That guy. That Japanese guy!”
“I don’t know dearie. I only know that I was reading about the stars when Miss Depressed and Depressing Ana tumbled into my arms.”
“I was with God, He was here. It doesn’t matter any more the things that then I said no no and He came and there was a sort of light everything lighted up in my head and He let me fly so high, with His hand holding mine. Very chic. Enough Max! Max is it you?”
“It’s Lorena, dear. Your feet are like two ice cubes, let me rub them. Be still, Ana! Now your name is Ana Bacchante. Bacchante and Dilettante. Do you know what a bacchante is? Those nymphs who danced in the cortège of Bacchus. I’m going to crown you with grape leaves. Rotten chic, eh?”
“Give me a whiskey, I want a whiskey.”
Lorena massaged her feet and covered her with a quilt.
“Lorena. Lorena Vaz Leme. Nha-nha-nha.”
“Ana, be quiet or I’ll call Mother Alix! Stop laughing, nothing’s funny.”
“I want a whiskey, Leninha. Just one, gimme. I promise I promise.”
“I’ll pour some into your tea, I’m going to make some nice hot tea,” said Lorena covering her with the quilt which she had thrown to the floor. “If I ever have to work for a living I’m going to be a femme de chambre. I think it’s the one thing I do perfectly. In another life I must have worked in a castle for a courtesan very much like Ana Clara Conceição.”
“I want my purse. My purse.”
I give her the purse and go to fill the teakettle. Why do things always have to happen at the same time? The strike ending, exams starting tomorrow, Mama going berserk, Dr. Francis dying just now when Mieux decides to take off, isn’t it really a dose for an iguanodon? How would you translate iguanodon”? Lião howling with impatience, discourses and other sentiments and here I am with Ana Clara. I should be studying, shouldn’t I? Yes I should. The abyss between existence and being. I am with Annie and to be with Annie is to be with the winds, the rocks and the tempest, ah, M.N., why don’t you give me a job as a nurse in your hospital? Did you get my note? And aren’t you going to answer it?
“It’s on the ceiling.”
“What’s on the ceiling?” I ask.
I sense my expression to be so sad that I’m moved by it. I’m feeling sorry for myself and that’s not healthy.
“The time! I need to know right away!” she cries still staring at the same point near the light fixture. “Never mind. Next year without fail. Next year.”
She must be promising God the same bla-bla-bla she promises Mother Alix. Neither of them believe her and yet, because she’s the blackest sheep in the flock … “Miserere Nobis,” I say and spread my hands wide above the lid of the teakettle. It retributes my gesture with a hot puff of steam. Ana Clara lets out a groan and says something so mixed-up, what, Aninha? I make her lie down again, a pain somewhere? It must have passed because now she’s cackling with laughter. Her curly hair grows shinier as it dries; her pleasure-crossed eyes have darkened maliciously. The collar of the bathrobe is open and her neck thickens as she laughs, tense and corded. The bruises on her breasts. The spot on her arm, pressing like a finger against the principal vein. “Res accessoria,” I say vaguely. I watch her, fascinated. Her tongue rolls up, obscene. A possessed Dionysian figure contorted in the red robe. I pull the quilt up to her neck and hold her still. She grows calm. Her crazed eyes soften.
“It’s cold, Lena. I’m so cold.”
I adjust the pillows closer around her body.
“You’re going to drink some nice hot tea.”
“I’ll say that—”
Her eyes close. Hands folded, asleep, she has turned into an angel. I pick up the red bath towel from the floor and roll up her blood-stained blouse, I didn’t see the blood but I could feel its moisture on my hand and I folded it fast because I thought Mama wouldn’t like people looking at the stained shirt, since the blood was being washed off his chest in the bathtub. She locked herself in with Romulo and didn’t let anyone help her: “I’ll bathe my son.” Romulo, Romulo. At times I feel that you continued to live in me, your gestures in mine. Your speech. Later, I’m left by myself, you tell me that I need to be alone, that I’ll be happy that way, ah, Romulo. How you’ve grown!
“Give me your hand,” she pleads.
I give her my hand, which she squeezes and then lets go. What is she dreaming about? I tuck her hand under the cover and run to the boiling water. I turn off the stove. The scent of the tea tranquilizes me just as incense does, I must burn a little. Drive away the evil spirits, Annie came in loaded with them as if she had descended into Hell, are you all right, Annie? I asked in alarm when she tripped on the stairway. She smiled, cross-eyed: “The horse.” I
fold my hands around the cup and sip the tea. When I undressed her, her expression was that of the Seducer Angel, a brilliance in her eyes which drifted in and out of focus. “You, Lena? What are you doing to me?”
I open the window. How could nobody in the house have heard her scream? She was screaming when she arrived. And not a single nun appeared, not even Bulie. It’s lucky all these TV serials are on in the neighborhood, there’s always wailing and gnashing of teeth in the background. The cats catting at the top of their lungs as they run through the flower beds. If we were a calm society Ana would draw attention from all and sundry, but in this erotic society all and sundry are occupied with eroticism. Few, very few, are praying. Or thinking. Me, reading about the stars, imagine. They are born and die just like us, the cosmic vision is the same as that of the world, did you know that, M.N.? I survey the Milky Way. The larger stars are the younger ones, my generation. The others, old ones, get smaller and smaller just like Bulie. Until they dissolve, cease to be, isn’t it lovely? “I’d like so much to grow old in peace, to quit this sleight-of-hand game,” Mama said so sincerely. “I’m exhausted, daughter. I’m ready for the wrinkles, the white hair, the freckles, the grandchildren. I’m sick and tired of sex!” The sickness is short-lived. When the body starts to get lonely, she reacts with energy, what energy! All it takes is an intriguing invitation which doesn’t even need to be from a man, even a girlfriend of the stimulating type makes her raise her head and go running off on the tips of her toes. “Now we’ll live together, dear. Like in the good old times,” she recalls. But during those good old times she used to complain so much, were they really that good? Abandon my shell, my delicate world which I love so much … If it were at least to go live with M.N., why doesn’t he ask me to come with him on these trips of his? These high international congresses in which he’s forever participating. I’d fit into his necessaire. And you, Fabrizio. A neurotic little poetess, ask me what it’s like to live with a neurotic and I’ll tell you. If at least Guga would come to get the shirt which I haven’t bought yet. I’ll embroider the duck on it but I’m not thinking about the duck, I’m thinking about his beard, his mouth. The smell of tobacco, sweat, and dust. And his satin dagger of a tongue that I had to expel, but why expel? Oh Lord, I never imagined that those goatlike feet, ill-concealed in his sandals and those jeans with the faded white island at the crotch—I turned my eyes away but I kept on seeing that faded spot where I had such a desire to … M.N., M.N., so you’re the only one who hasn’t the courage? Because I’m a virgin, is that it? Does it make that much difference? We could live in the country, I adore the country. A natural-brick house. A lawn. Books, music. I want to read you all the poets I admire, my voice isn’t pretty but at least I’ve learned to make it sound serious; when I try I can correct this nasal squeak I was born with. They’ll say: alienation, flight. We’ll say: integration, return. To ourselves, to the sun. To God. My note is decisive: Answer, I wrote a decisive note. The decisive notes. Everything summed up in this: I love you. It isn’t a simple friendship between a man and a woman, but a sort of unification, an absolutely harmonic unit in this chaotic world. The profound feeling. Profound, I repeat and look at Ana Clara. Asleep. Lião is forever preaching that society expels that which it cannot assimilate. Ana was driven out with a flaming sword, she said she’d been run through with a fencing foil, but it wasn’t a foil, it was a sword. Which comes to the same thing. Peaceful coexistence, the teachers teach. And in practice.
The Girl in the Photograph Page 27