Cecilia
I felt relieved at her response. I immediately wrote back confirming my intention to visit her “a little after ten.” I hastily finished packing, I ate a cereal bar from the fridge, I took a shower and shaved. All of this with the TV on.
I left my luggage at the reception and went to meet Mariana to say good-bye to her at a café near her future office, on 47th Street. The taxi driver spent the entire ride—from the hotel to the café—on a phone call, which he only interrupted once for a few seconds to ask for the address.
I was determined not to let the anxiety I felt about my second visit to Cecilia Coutts’s affect my meeting with my daughter. I succeeded.
Mariana told me about the work she would be doing at the bank. She would travel to Brazil on a regular basis. With a sly smile she extended her fingers to show me the ring I had given her on graduation day. She explained how the company would pay for her relocation to New York, and that I would no longer need to send her money.
We said good-bye with a kiss and a hug. I got into a taxi and headed to Cecilia Coutts’s office with the taste of coffee and pride in my mouth. In the car that would take me to the next destination of my unknown fate, I allowed myself to be overcome by positive feelings, such as optimism and a determination to make things right.
As in Fernando Pessoa’s poem saluting Walt Whitman, images of Sergio Y. appeared to me along the entire ride to Dr. Coutts’s office. “Hey, Sergio, it’s me, Armando. Remember the excitement you felt walking these streets, going to see your doctor, trying to change your life? I’m feeling the same thing. Remember the wind you felt in your face on those hot days? I feel that right now. I know you. We’re holding hands.” And, once again, I felt his finger on the doorbell, his hand on the doorknob and his body in the chair Cecilia asked me to sit in when I arrived at her office at five to ten in the morning.
I began my second conversation with Cecilia Coutts inspired by the courage Sergio needed on his journey toward becoming Sandra. Coutts wore a T-shirt identical to the one on the previous day, but of a different color. Her nipples were still there, leaving their imprint on the red fabric.
Just as I had not allowed my anxiety to spoil my meeting with Mariana, I did not allow my desire to interfere with my conversation with Cecilia.
“I don’t know if it’s a question of ethics or humanity, or mere professionalism. In São Paulo, when I decided to write to you, when I sought you the first time, what drove me was curiosity about the case of my patient, Sergio. I was motivated by something in between egotism and altruism. I wanted to know more so as to become a better doctor and, thus, be able to better help others. That was my original intent.
“You know that I enjoy a good reputation. This has always been a source of pride for me. Sergio’s therapy was inconclusive as far as I am concerned. I would not include it among my success stories as a psychiatrist. Quite the opposite. I only managed to make peace with the results of my work with Sergio when I heard from his mother that he was in New York, with the prospect of a promising career ahead of him.
“His death caught me totally by surprise. But an even greater surprise was his transexuality, and that there existed a Sandra in our midst. At no moment did I diagnose that. I suspected nothing. I committed a medical blunder. Technically, I had the responsibility to know.
“You say I helped him greatly, that I helped him find the necessary stability to allow him to transition. But I had no idea that this is what I was doing. If I guided Sergio toward Sandra, I did it blindly. I might just as easily have taken him in another direction, off a cliff. I didn’t know what I was doing. You say I recommended a book to Sergio that led him to Sandra, and I have no idea what book you’re referring to.
“I thought I knew, and I knew nothing. When I learned of Sergio’s tragic fate, it made me afraid of all of the other things I didn’t know. It made me afraid that I might take my other patients to places I didn’t understand, that without meaning to, I would lead them to failure or to tragic deaths. That is not why I became a doctor. I do not want to recklessly drive my patients to death, as I might have done in Sergio’s case.”
Cecilia stared at me in silence and then said: “I’m not going to judge whatever inner conflict you may be going through. I can only speak of Sandra. I just know what you did for Sandra. I can only attest to the effect your work had on her. You showed her that happiness was possible. That her life was possible.
“It was while she was in your hands that she became aware that she could be more happy than when she was in São Paulo. You didn’t lead her to her death. On the contrary, Armando, you led her to life.
“Sandra wouldn’t have lived—she never would have been born—if not for the advice you gave her. Sandra’s first friend was Armando. You allowed her to reveal who she really was. She had understanding parents, but she needed a friend to show her new possibilities. She was lucky enough to find one in you.
“Sandra was happy. She died because everything that is alive will die one day. We don’t choose the day we die. It comes when it wants to. There are people for whom death seems to come prematurely. That was the case with Sandra. You had nothing to do with her death. Quite the contrary. You gave her life. Her death was an accident.
“From my upstairs window I can see her backyard, where they found her body. But even then, when I stare at her house, understanding I’ll never see her again, I still never think of her with sadness. Sandra died early because she crossed paths with a crazy woman who decided to kill her, just like that.”
Turning to the bookshelf, she said: “You said you’d never read Angelus. Well, you can have my copy. Sandra bought it for me during one of her visits to Ellis Island. But I think this copy belongs to you. I just ask that you buy me another one online and have it delivered here to my office, so as to keep my library intact, O.K.? It’s a beautiful story. It’s what inspired Sergio to follow in his great-grandfather’s footsteps. In the same way Areg crossed an ocean to find happiness in Brazil, Sergio crossed an ocean to find happiness in Sandra.
“We don’t have much time, but I’m going to ask my secretary to make a copy of Sandra’s file. I’m not sure whether its right or wrong. It raises some ethical concerns for me, but I think it’ll help you work through questions that ultimately have to do with compassion.”
She called her secretary on the intercom and then walked to the shelf and removed a book, which she presented to me with both hands. On the cover was a sepia portrait of a man in a suit and tie, black hair parted down the middle, set in gel, eyebrows nearly touching, reminiscent of Monteiro Lobato. At chest level was the title of the book that had changed Sergio Y.’s life: Angelus in America: The Story of Our Father.
Within minutes, the secretary, who I never did see, called her on the intercom. Cecilia walked out and returned a few minutes later holding a manila envelope.
It was almost half past eleven and I knew that our meeting had come to an end. She handed me the envelope and said: “It’s not just evil that we do without realizing it, sometimes we do good things too.”
As I left her office, I wanted to thank her for her generosity. The word “compassion” came to mind, but I never uttered it. I muttered a timid thank you instead, but I’m sure I failed to translate the extent of the gratitude I felt.
I left the Barrow Street townhouse without looking back. I entered a taxi and headed to the hotel. In the backseat, I tried to read Sandra’s file, but I started getting carsick and had to stop. At the hotel, I only had time to get my luggage. It took longer than usual to get a taxi to the airport, and I was nervous about being late and missing my flight. In the end, everything worked out, and I even arrived a little early at the airport.
At the gate, I again tried reading Sandra’s file, but soon realized the documents and notes it contained would do little to satisfy my curiosity. I had no interest in Sandra’s hormone counts, or the best surgical tech
nique for her penectomy. That type of information was of no interest to a psychiatrist.
What remained was Angelus’s story, which I began reading as soon as I boarded the plane.
The first thing I noticed when I held the hardback book in my hands was the $29.95 price on the back cover. The book that had changed her life was bought at the Ellis Island Museum, whose existence I had revealed to Sergio.
Maybe my alleged importance to Sergio lay in this fact. Before I mentioned it to him, he did not know of the museum’s existence. I suggested the visit. As a matter of fact, I gave him directions how to get there: “Take the subway. The Number 4, the green line, and stay on it until the last station before Brooklyn. The station name is Bowling Green. When you come out of the station, you’ll be in a square, at the tip of Manhattan; go toward the sea and look for a booth that sells tickets for the ferry. Take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, on Liberty Island. Get off at Ellis Island, which is where the Immigration Museum is. It’s really worth the trip. Especially for you who like stories like your great-grandfather’s. The ferry runs all day, and you can get on and off whenever you wish.”
I finally began understanding my objective role in Sergio Y.’s so-called revelation.
That night, on a darkened airplane I read Angelus Zebrowskas’s biography until I could not resist any longer and fell asleep. Back in São Paulo, after taking a shower and taking care of some urgent matters, I prepared myself a tuna fish sandwich, and I resumed reading in the middle of the afternoon until I finished at around 7 P.M.
Now, after becoming acquainted with Angelus’s story, I can better reconstruct Sergio’s actions, how he interrupted his life story to start Sandra’s. Sergio Y. ceased to exist. He killed himself but his heart kept beating.
THE EXAMPLE I GAVE UNWITTINGLY
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
—WALT WHITMAN, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
I carefully reread my notes on Sergio.
It became clear to me after doing so that in his therapy the references to New York were linked to a feeling of existential possibility that I, as a therapist, had wanted him to explore further. Now I understand that this, in fact, is what happened.
Angelus Zebrowskas’s story begins in Lithuania, at the time under Russian rule, in a small village called Gekodiche, which today no longer exists. Zebrowskas’s biography had been a joint effort, compiled by his stepchildren. It was based on personal diaries he had left behind so that his story would come to light after his death.
“I want to show other sad people who will come after me the way.” With those words, Angelus Zebrowskas explained the reason for his diary. The book was released in 1995 in what would have been the centennial of his birth.
In many ways, the lives of Angelus and Sandra were similar. Both abandoned their place of birth to seek happiness elsewhere, under a new guise, one that offered greater possibilities. They charted different paths through an analogous process held together, in both cases, by a central axis of optimism.
Sandra’s motives become much clearer and more justifiable when one knows the story of the man she named her restaurant after. Angelus was Sandra, and Sandra, somehow, was also her great grandfather Areg. They were all part of the same stubborn, lonely line who, in the face of adversity, preferred to believe a better life was possible.
Many manage to improve on the first drafts of the lives they are given. But for that they need the courage to jump off a diving board fifty meters high, blindfolded, not knowing if it is water or asphalt that awaits them below.
So, in the hopes of improving the reader’s understanding of my report, I will take a small detour and present a summary of the book that inspired the journey Sergio decided to undertake. I will tell you those elements of Angelus’s life which I believe are relevant to understanding the lives and deaths of Sergio and Sandra, as I have come to understand them.
I hope the reader will indulge me.
The first to depart were Antonas Kinklas and Jurgis Vytautas, who emigrated to the United States in 1904, made a fortune and inspired a whole generation of unhappy countrymen by their examples.
The idea that there existed a better life on the other side of the ocean spread, and many young people from Gekodiche and nearby towns embarked on the same voyage to Bremen, Danzig or Libau, where they would board ships that would take them to another world.
Unlike the Jews, who wanted to establish themselves definitively in America, the Christians of the region thought they would make it in America and return to Lithuania rich, with enough money to transform their lives, build additions to their houses, purchase a warehouse or even establish themselves in Vilnius, where life was better.
Five years after the first men left, the first women began leaving as well. The first single woman to leave alone for America was Anna Limiticius.
Anna had gone to the United States to marry a second cousin. Her departure caused an uproar and gave new hope to many of the young women of Gekodiche, who, as a result of the exodus of single men, had resigned themselves to the possibility that they might never find a husband.
Anna Limiticius was considered fortunate. Along with a passage from Danzig to New York, her husband had sent her a small dowry for a trousseau. In New York, she would continue her journey by train to her new life in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which she could barely find on the map in the church’s school library.
Anna was followed by Irena and Paula. They were followed in turn by others, and then came the turn of Adriana Simkevicius, youngest daughter of Old Simkevicius, the tailor.
Adriana was not pretty. She had thick eyebrows, brown eyes and black hair, which she invariably wore braided and in a bun. She was pale and if she became even slightly worried or sick, dark circles would appear under her eyes.
She was sad. Her sadness was apparent. Yet she never complained or blamed anyone for her woes. Her sadness pained her. However, over the years, she had learned to ignore the pain. It was the natural state of things for her. It was like living with a chronic disease.
For years, she cried every night, not knowing why. At fifteen, she learned to control the crying. To stop the crying. But then she became consumed by the desire for death.
She imagined a cold, bluish death for herself. She would have thoughts of filling the pockets of her apron with rocks and entering the river in early spring, just when the ice was thawing. She wanted to die beneath floating plates of ice.
She was taller than the other girls. At sixteen, she was as tall as her father. One of her grandfathers was Serbian, and they said that was the reason. She did not like it when her breasts began to develop. Instinctively, she began to drape a woolen shawl over her chest, until the day she menstruated and decided to stop.
To lead such a life in Gekodiche, even if she managed to get married, even if she managed to have children, even if she managed to establish a routine like everyone else, meant she would forever be unhappy. She knew this but resigned herself to her fate.
But she had a life plan. She would live for her parents. After they were dead, she would help her older sister. After her sister was dead, she—who was very religious—would go to a convent to work for the poor. She would cook, sew, clean toilets, do whatever was needed. She would live for others. Dedicate her life to others like someone who had made the decision not to live her own life, even though living such a life meant she could not avoid images of that early spring night when she would drown.
Franciskus Zebrowskas, her suitor, had apprenticed as a tailor at Old Simkevicius’s shop. In 1911, Franciskus, who had emigrated two years earlier, decided to open a small shop of his own in Chicago. The business prospered and he felt lonely and overwhelmed. He wanted a wife.
Franciskus’s thoughts had turned to Adriana, among the young ladies of Gekodiche, because she was a goo
d seamstress and could help him run his business. In addition, she was the daughter of a man he admired. She was not the most beautiful woman in the world, but that, for Franciskus, was an advantage. She was serious, quiet and hardworking. She was young, she could give him healthy children. She would make a good wife for a man like him.
As was the custom among the Christians of Gekodiche, a priest conveyed Zebrowskas’s interest in Adrianna to Old Simkevicius:
“Simkevicius, you have to marry Adriana off. Carlota is too old. The fair thing is for her to stay home and take care of her parents. Zebrowskas is a good man. You know him. He will make your daughter happy in a country where there is a future. Where there are a lot of opportunities. Talk to her. It will be better for everyone. Then she will bring you over. Who knows, Franciskus might invite you to become a partner in his tailor shop in America. Who is to say Carlota won’t get married there too?”
Adriana was almost seventeen. She worked with her father at his tailor shop. Every day she would spend hours on end concentrating, sitting in front of the sewing machine, immersed in her sad thoughts. In her spare time, she would read and pray the rosary, which was her way of withdrawing from life. Franciskus Zebrowskas was honest, and he was also an excellent tailor. The twelve years’ difference between the two of them was part of the marriage of convenience package he proposed. For whatever reason, Franciskus Zebrowskas, at twenty-eight, was still single and wanted to get married. Not having succeeded in finding a wife to his liking in Chicago, his thoughts turned to someone who knew the customs and the ways of his homeland.
Over Friday dinner, Father Siaudizionis exercised his role as envoy for the groom in a sober and considered way.
“It is a new life that you are going to have,” he said.
Sergio Y. Page 7