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I charge after her without any hope of catching up, because we run down the stairs at the same speed, much faster than the stairs, which have become an escalator. And as Maria Helena slows, I too begin to tire, because the descending escalator has quite possibly veered upwards. I don’t know exactly when this phenomenon took place, nor do I have anything by which to measure the incline of the escalator, which rolls on, unimpeded, in the middle of the clouds. I only know the escalator is ascending because I can see Maria Helena at the top, and I only know she’s at the top because I can see her white knickers under her skirt. And Maria Helena suddenly gets her period; it appears on the white fabric like a red flower bud and quickly blooms, tingeing the entire garment and dripping blood on the steps that now recede beneath my feet. When I reach the end, exhausted, the sun blinds me and I lose sight of Maria Helena; her menses are absorbed by the sand on a beach that can only be Copacabana. It is, without a doubt, the Copacabana that Maria Helena used to tell me about, with its many bikinis and multicoloured sun umbrellas, with the crests of waves like bulls ready to turn to foam as they break. Then the sky clouds over, the colours fade, the sea grows calm and the sand disappears under a crowd of bodies pressed up against one another. The bodies are naked and I feel my way with my feet, afraid I might wake them, but they are cold and stiff and bony, hard to walk on. No sooner have I grown accustomed to my path of skin, than I have to climb piles of grey bodies, of old people, children, horses, dogs and cats, fish that look like rats, rats that look like pigeons, babies, foetuses and mothers with sagging breasts, but no matter what, I must reach the windowless, whitewashed house at the top, which is either a lifeguard station or a cremation chamber. Here I am, and the puddle of fresh blood on the doormat is a good omen, a sign that my Jewish brother is still alive, albeit bleeding on the cement escalator which leads to a room full of Russian books and writing in Cyrillic on the walls around an unmade bed with a bloodstain that fans across the sheet until it becomes a red flag, on which I intend to sleep deeply. But it is impossible, because there are disturbances on the surface of my dream, there are footsteps that transport a woman’s sobs, there are howls, there is someone playing a noteless piano that looks more like a typewriter. A–Crump, Crumpet–Haywire, Hazard–Omelet, Omen–Skein, Skeletal–Zyxomma, I read the spines of dictionaries with sleep-filled eyes. I see my jeans lying on the floor and I have no difficulty recognizing, in the distance, perhaps coming from downstairs in the sitting room, Eleonora Fortunato’s voice. I stretch, go to the toilet, come back, scrutinize the silence in my brother’s bedroom, Father wrenches another piece of paper from his Remington and I take my time in bed until I’m sure Ariosto’s mother has gone. I find Mother in the sitting room pulling shapeless clothes out of a plastic bag. One by one she smoothes out skirts, shirts, white knickers, folds them carefully and places them in a tattered valise. Now she holds up a polka-dot dress and notices me without seeing me: Your friend’s inamorata is very thin, and she didn’t even want any minestrone. When Mother looks at me she observes, as always, that I don’t look well. She feels my forehead with the back of her hand and says that Eleonora Fortunato asked after me. Eleonora had brought over the rest of Tricita’s clothing and was pleased to hear that the girl was still resting. She accepted a whisky, fretted about her son and seemed impatient to know how my conversation with that boy Udo had gone, but with the time that I would normally leave for work come and gone, she went off to meet a member of the political opposition, a ruthless congressman. She also hoped to have an audience with the archbishop in the afternoon, which is why she would probably miss Tricita, whom she wished a safe journey home to her country. And without me asking her anything, Mother explains that she’d happily have offered the girl a place in the master bed if Father didn’t snore so loudly. She also thought she’d have felt more comfortable with me; with any luck I’d have entertained her with tales of my old sidekick from his Captain America days. But I was still out last night when my brother came home and insisted that Tricita take his bed. He could sleep on a bedroll on the floor, but wouldn’t hesitate to bed down on the sofa in the sitting room if she didn’t feel comfortable sharing a room with a stranger. He only advised against sleeping in my room, because I came home at all hours, sometimes drunk, sometimes in bad company. And Tricita only agreed to go upstairs with him, according to Mother, because she was afraid of waking up alone in the middle of the night, tormented as she was by the news of her beloved’s kidnapping. Besides, she needed to rest after her long bus journey, not to mention the queues, the traffic and lugging her huge backpack around the city on foot. Having returned from visiting her family in Buenos Aires, she had arrived at the address she had in São Paulo unaware of what had happened, and Eleonora Fortunato had barely opened the door to her. She recommended that Tricita spend the night somewhere less vulnerable, such as down the street with the Hollanders, a family above suspicion. I listen to all of this without making a sound, for who am I to second-guess Mother? But if Eleonora Fortunato had waited for me, I’d have asked her straight out if she knew what kind of reprobate the girl would be spending the night with; had she known, she might have had a little sympathy for her son. Or perhaps Eleonora Fortunato thinks that by now Ariosto has been through so many beatings, electric shocks and humiliations that the stigma of being a cuckold might almost come as a relief. Come to think of it, in a recent nightmare, I remember seeing him hoisted up in the air, with his wrists tied behind his back, until he passed out with dislocated shoulders. And when I got lost fleeing through the corridors of this nightmare, I found him on a dungeon floor, hands and feet bound, his torso convulsing as if something was gnawing at his guts, perhaps a rat rammed up his backside. But just now the image that comes to mind is my brother’s hand in the half-light slowly moving down Ariosto’s girlfriend’s back. This is the scene I am picturing as Mother folds the polka-dot dress and says: Son, stop thinking foolish things. Then I hear the coming and going of footsteps upstairs, the opening and closing of bedroom and bathroom doors, and when Tricita appears on the stairs in trousers, all I can think of is the Eleonora Fortunato of my first libidinous dreams, of my nocturnal emissions. It is her lanky body, her angular face and even her elusive gaze, her way of almost ignoring me when Mother introduces me as Ariosto’s bosom buddy. But of course Ariosto has not so much as glimpsed in her what is immediately obvious to me. He no doubt thinks he’s attracted to Tricita’s tomboyish manner, the way she chews gum with her mouth open, wears trainers with scuffed toes and lugs around a camping backpack. A certain awkwardness, that of a girl who has grown up without realizing it, a kind of semi-innocence that is, invariably, irresistible to my brother, who trails after her, fawning over her, a clear indication that he has yet to reach his goal. He invites her to have breakfast, says she smells lovely after her shower, but I think it’ll be hard for him to win her over with his apery of Spanish: Me gustatu hair wetito. Tricita has other things to do today. She intends to drop off some regalitos that Brazilian friends in Buenos Aires sent for loved ones. And Mother, folding one last blouse, asks her to excuse the valise, which is as old as its owner, both having come from Italy before the war. She suggests that one of her sons give their guest a hand with her luggage, but Tricita assures her that the backpack is light, it’s mostly just Argentinian biscuits. She is amazed that Mother has never tried alfajores and gives her a packet of the Havanna brand: Son muy ricos, con dulce de leche. Which is the cue for Father to appear in pyjamas at the top of the stairs: What’s this about biscuits? And after pulling out a São Paulo travel guide, Tricita tries to pronounce some addresses she has memorized, in parts of town that my brother, over her shoulder, points to on the map: Santo Amaro, Paraíso, Vila Maria, Bom Retiro, Tatuapé, Freguesia do Ó … I offer to guide her on her expedition, given that in an ever-growing São Paulo, no sooner has a map been printed than it becomes obsolete. Not to mention that a young woman on her own will always be prey to sleazebags and delinquents, I say, meaning
that not even her backpack will prevent her from being dry-humped on the city’s packed buses. Meanwhile, however, my brother has already extorted enough money from Father for a week’s worth of taxi rides. Well, I have a better idea: I can deliver the gifts while Tricita goes straight to the bus station. But she insists on delivering the alfajores herself, seeing as how she doesn’t intend to return to Buenos Aires right away, and surely one of the families she’ll be visiting will offer to put her up. She’d rather have her legs cut off than leave Brazil without her beloved, she declares with Hispanic vigour, then bites her bottom lip and lowers her eyes brimming with tears. My brother tells her that it would be an insult to Father, Mother, and him in particular, should she refuse our hospitality. With the tip of his finger he raises her chin towards him and announces: No problemo, let’s vamos in uno taxi. And when Tricita lets him take off her back-pack, it occurs to me that this is just the first step in her allowing herself to be undressed.
I don’t want to be home to hear Argentinian moans coming from my brother’s bed. Nor would I like to be in my room when she knocks on my door with her clothes in disarray. So Christian’s phone call to say that Colette, his nickname for Nicole, asked me to stop by the Alliance Française in the early evening couldn’t have come at a better time. Dressed in a suit and tie, before leaving I go to the shelf of French poets, the same ones I lent Maria Helena years ago, poets who I read differently each time I return to them, trying to imagine on occasion how she might have read them. I think I already read Rimbaud with a woman’s eyes, and any one of his poems will be good company for me in the waiting room, in addition to making me look good to Colette. But Madame Nicole can’t see me after all, she’s in a meeting with her ex-husband, who in the receptionist’s opinion is the spitting image of Elizabeth Taylor’s ex. If it’s true that he beats her, not Richard Burton but the ex, that’s Madame Nicole’s business; she told the receptionist to wish me good luck and give me a leaflet with the requirements and dates of the admission exam for Alliance teachers at provincial branches. There is mayhem and hoots of laughter as herds of students jostle past me and spill into the street. Right behind them is Christian, who looks surprised to see me, smiles, and rests his bundle of books on the receptionist’s desk. I thought he was going to shake my hand, but it is Rimbaud that he picks up, astounded to see a 1920 edition of Le Bateau Ivre, illustrated with two sketches by the poet himself. He examines the little book, estimates that it’s worth a fortune, and on his way out suggests we dine at La Cocagne, much better than last night’s restaurant. He is about to wave down a taxi when I tell him that I came unprepared, I don’t have my wallet on me, only a little loose change. On the bus, he takes the last free seat and reads the poem five times in a row before we get off at the corner by his house. I try to make conversation and thank him for putting in a good word for me with Colette, but he walks quickly in front of me. So I tell him I’ve decided I don’t want a job at the Alliance any more, now that the publisher has approved my manuscript and made me an offer with an advance and everything. A novel, yep, a roman à clef, I can’t believe I’ve never told you about it. The publisher? Privilégio, Editora Privilégio, a small house, not very well known, but open to new talent. Heinz Borgart’s piano can already be heard when Christian comes to a halt on the pavement, bums a cigarette, and I notice his right eyelid twitching. I knew it, I knew he had literary aspirations, he has a book ready to go in a drawer: But it’s poetry and not even Rimbaud made a living from poetry. He says he’d feel a bit embarrassed about taking up an editor’s time with some verses he hasn’t even had the courage to show his girlfriend. But, anyhow, they’re poems along the lines of Yevtushenko and other contemporary Russians, with whom I pretend to be familiar: The books we read read us too / The books see hidden screams and whispers in our eyes / The books hear all our fears … To my unschooled ears the sentimental piano melody coming from Christian’s house and accompanying his recital is Tchaikovsky: The silent return of borrowed books / By those who love one another / It doesn’t seem like a reciprocal favour … With his thinning hair aflap, he is exactly how I’d imagine a Russian poet declaiming in the wind. I feel a sudden rush of admiration for Christian, real pride even, which quickly evaporates, since I can’t bear the idea that he, and not I, should publish a book. If I had access to a publisher tomorrow, I don’t see why I should recommend Christian, if I might try my hand at literature myself. And just as Christian feels that he can emulate Russian poets, I am surely capable of writing a novel inspired by 1930s Germany, so present in my reading and fantasies. I could write, for example, the story of Anne Ernst, whose photograph with my brother in her arms I keep in my shirt pocket and am compelled to look at several times a day. And I am always getting a fright because it’s never where I left it. It’s in the right pocket of my jeans, then it ends up, I don’t know how, in a back pocket, it vanishes then slips out of my sleeve like a magician’s card, and all of a sudden it looks like a Virgin of Hearts with Baby Jesus, and I wonder if Miss Ernst hasn’t become a mischievous ghost. Just now the photograph has slipped into my underwear and is stuck to my pubes, and every time I find it again I want to kiss it in thanks. It’s hard to believe that this Anne gazing at her child devotedly is the kind of woman who could abandon him at an orphanage. But perhaps what I fail to comprehend today will become clear by the end of the book, when I review what my hand has written unconsciously: The snow, the snow, the snow, the snow … My neighbour came over for a coffee and once again she asked me if my Brazilian lover was the son of savage Indians. When the squall had passed, I dressed the baby to go out and Ingeborg thought he looked like an Eskimo … I stopped off at two more bookshops on Kurfürstendamm. I’d accept a job at the till, but I’d rather go back to being a sales assistant … On the first day of spring I took my son out in the pram for a walk in the Tiergarten. Ingeborg and her husband, both unemployed like me, came too. The Schneiders can’t even afford coffee, so I shouldn’t complain … I finally went to Alexanderplatz and sold the white-gold ring that S. gave me to Mr Abrahamovsky … At the edge of the lake Ingeborg asked me if it was hurtful to be pointed at in the street for being a single mother. I laughed out loud, really loud, the way S. liked … This morning someone pointed at me in the street and muttered: Jüdin … And here at last is a hypothesis that has only occurred to me in my worst nightmares, that Anne Ernst herself had some Jewish blood. And in this light I can understand how, guided by a premonitory instinct, in May 1932 she entrusts Sergio Ernst to the State, requesting that the child’s biological father, Sergio de Hollander, Christian, Brazilian but white-skinned, of pure Flemish descent, be informed of the fact. He won’t let her down; he will offer to pay the child’s travel expenses and give him a home in Rio de Janeiro. But, as required by law, Miss Ernst will be granted time to reflect and, God willing, change her mind about giving up her child. She still has some time left when the Nazis come to power, and before the authorities can certify her identity, and that of her mother and grandmother, Anne will leave Berlin, disembark in Hamburg, vanish in Frankfurt to be resurrected in Munich, or perhaps Vienna. I still don’t know if she’ll be detained without papers at a border, if she’ll pass herself off as the Kaiser’s granddaughter, if she’ll end her days in an asylum or a camp in Poland, but at least she’ll always have the consolation of knowing that the child is in good hands, on a sunny beach in Brazil. Though, in fact, he won’t be, either because a neighbour informed the authorities of Anne’s Jewish origins, because the new German attaché cut off contact with my father, or because Father lost the letter from the consulate inside goodness knows what book. Father could solve this mystery for me if he were open to having a one-on-one conversation. Which wouldn’t be entirely unfeasible if he knew I’d become a man of letters. He wouldn’t hear about my novel from me, much less the plot I have in mind, even if the real characters’ names have been changed or they’re referred to by their initials. But I can’t stop him receiving a complimentary copy from the publisher, o
pening it in disbelief, starting to read it reluctantly, and getting caught up against his will in the narrative, which reminds him of episodes lost in memory, perhaps a German book that Assunta won’t be able to find on the bookshelves. Nor can I stop Father becoming unusually flustered, because his memory for literature has always been sharper than that of his own existence, and he may not have enough time left in which to reread his entire library. And then he will call me to his study and cough twice and ask me in a threatening tone of voice that breaks into a pleading falsetto the title of the book from which I copied mine. And I will laugh out loud, point to my head and say: From my own Mangokopf, based on a true story that I’ve been researching for years. And my answer will strike him as flawlessly logical, because it came out of my mouth in immaculate German. And from then on we shall communicate only in German, to the chagrin of my brother and the suspicion of my mother, who, without understanding a word, will see her husband forget the food on his plate and say how fascinating he found the young A.E., so much so that S.H. leaving her in Berlin seems most unlikely. And he will confess that he was somewhat frustrated at the end because he wanted to know what happened to the boy. And in the end I will challenge him to reveal what he would have happen to S.E. if he were the writer. But then perhaps he will trail off, stop speaking in German, turn his back on me and ask my brother what he thinks of Argentinian women, and praise Mother’s spaghetti alla puttanesca. And Mother will be counting the minutes until dinner is over, when she can shelve my book between the novels of João, Mário, Graciliano and other friends of Father’s, intuiting that she will be prouder of me if she doesn’t read my work. But she won’t be able to stop herself from taking a quick peek and, opening the book at random, her eyes will, unfortunately, fall on a sex scene. At least this time it won’t be a sixty-niner or anything similar involving Father, but austere intercourse between A.E. and H.B., a pianist who deserves a chapter all of his own. A pianist who Miss E. believed willing to take her and her son on tour in America, before discovering that she was just another A. with whom he’d had his way. This same pianist from whom I am now separated only by a shuttered window, who in the course of a talk man-to-man, with plenty of beer, could be encouraged to brag of his philandering days. This old goat, who has just shut the piano and is already on his way to the bathroom, will soon sit down at the dinner table and shortly thereafter go to bed with his wife. But Christian isn’t in a hurry, he says that in addition to being a poet he is also a translator and that he has translated directly from Russian the entire poetic oeuvre of Pasternak, who in principle he would also like to see published here: Snow is falling, snow is falling / Not snowflakes stealing down / Sky parachutes to earth instead / in his worn dressing gown … He stops abruptly, says he’s just had a brilliant idea, gives me a kind of salute and hurries into the house. My hands feel empty; I pat myself all over and find Anne’s photograph in the handkerchief pocket of my suit jacket. But it isn’t the photograph I’m missing, it’s the Rimbaud that Christian didn’t give back. I ring the doorbell several times but no one answers, so I leave, but I don’t feel like going home. Surely at the Riviera they’ll let me put three or four whiskies on a tab.
My German Brother Page 10