Urban Mosaics

by Mauricio R B Campos

  — Thank God they don’t have your address.

  — Exactly. Because there was a state-of-the-art here, while they handed them an ordinary copy, as well as in the literary adventure I shared with you here today.

  In the heart of Macao

  Macao is the entrance door for this other world that is China. Where a Brazilian feels he’s in a world completely different from theirs, but even though unusually familiar. This sensation of walking through its streets, where the Portuguese presence has left its footprints not only in the buildings and in the streets and façades nomenclatures, but in the soul of this people who feel proud to be called Macanese. In the streets the speech we hear is the Mandarin with a typically Cantonese accent. And the scents of the city are the scents of China, the Philippines, Hong Kong. Macao is where the West kisses the East. A city of contrasts and excesses.

  I was invited to take part of a Literary Festival in Macao, and Walter Mariot, my editor, took the chance to promote the release of my books translated into Mandarin. The trip was designed to be a tour, beginning by Macao we would follow to Hong-Kong, Shanghai one week later, and finally Beijing. He said if I got through China by Macao I would be getting into Chine without fright. I stayed at a three-star hotel downtown, the unpretentious Holiday Inn, at Street Shanghai. Walter managed to get a suite in Galaxy. After some hours or restoring sleep, I woke up at two o’clock afternoon of the local time. In this season in the East I didn’t get used with the time change. I asked something to eat and remained the rest of the afternoon watching local programs. I don’t speak Chinese, but I feel amazed to see the foreign TV news, even when I don’t understand them. It was about seven p.m., after a nap, I went down to the hotel lobby.

  I went up to the street to feel the atmosphere of the place. The row of motorcycles parked in front of the hotel I had realized upon arrival had disappeared. The dozen little shops had closed, but their lights shone at night. People smoked at the sidewalks and looking at them exhaling the smoke, I felt like smoking again. From all the poisons, the cigarette was the best one. But the memory of the horror it was quitting made me go back to the hotel lobby. I got around from the temptation and went to the counter of the bar, in L, that was in a big hall covered with carpet. Throughout the side extension of the bar there were armchairs in sets of four, turned to elegant coffee tables. I look at the menu, among the drinks, one drew my attention: Hemingway Special. I asked the waiter what this drink took and he answer Hemingway Special, smiling shyly. I asked again in English. I didn’t understand all of this answer, only rum, maraschino and lemon. It couldn’t be bad and would be a good literary option from the menu. That’s then it got in my life. Like a bar counter interpreter, she said in English:

  — Torange juice.

  I turned to her and got impressed with her beauty. Her wide expressive eyes met mine and her rosy and shiny lips smiled.

  — Are you Arturo de Oliveira, the Brazilian — she said, with a soft Portuguese accent. — You have come for the festival.

  I was going to stretch my hand, but she came and kissed my face three times, like the Brazilian habit. Her perfume was citric and refreshing, the long silky hair had a different sweet scent. The waiter placed the cocktail on the counter. She went to one of the padded purple armchairs beside the bar and took three books from a purse. I looked at the tissue of her silky white dress waving through her skin softly as she moved. Her motions were fluent and her body seemed to be rigid in opposition to her skin. She was a flower in its best shape.

  She sat by my side, on the bar little bench. She placed the books in front of me and began to stir up in the purse. I looked at the titles in the books spines and for my surprise there I could see the Portuguese version of my Orlando and the Tlön Mystery, under a volume of the Red Dodecahedrons, by Mário Pessoa, and another book called The Dawn of Yu Shan Lin. She put the pen on my book and asked for an autograph with her velvety voice. She said her name was Yu Shan Lin, she learned Portuguese when she studied Arts and Humanities at the University of Macao, but now she lived in Canton, in the North, where she thought. She also asked me a Hemingway Special in Cantonese and showed the hotel card to the waiter.

  We talked on literature and about Brazil. She had never been there and had a genuine interest in knowing how much the customs she had read in the books were loyal to reality. I asked her to see her book. It was a beautiful hard cover volume. In the cover there was a cetin sheets bed shining over the sun and a desert of red sands. I leafed through the book and rode its pages calmly, and when the drink finished we asked for another. She was a talented poet, her poetry was powerful and descriptive, she talked like a god observing the world from the top of Himalayas.

  We got tired of Hemingway and asked for a round of Cuba Libre. At this point we were already screaming viva la revolución! I almost don’t remember the details of our conversation, only that it was the most delicious conversation about literature I ever had. We talked of the great authors of the Latin America: Borges, Bolaño, Cortázar, Neruda, Rosa, Suassuna, Márquez... But she said that the one who touched her the most was Morte e Vida Severina, by João Cabral de Melo Neto. And asked me to describe the dry forest, with all the naturality, as if I was to describe my backyard. I said those things that everyone finds in Wikipedia, that I never saw the caatinga face by face, as a native from São Paulo that I am. But she didn’t know that. She didn’t know the size of Brazil as much I didn’t know the size of China. That since I got to the Mandarin land, I looked for the famous wall in vain. My wall was her caatinga. And her eyes shone as I described the retorted woods, the dry land, the thick cacti that we called mandacarus, and by the sounds of the mandacarus I mentioned the carcarás, I said was a kind of eagle, and from carcará I passed to the calangos, I even talked about the bandits of Lampião, who was said to be known by the grandfather of my cousin. Then I taught the barman how to prepare caipiroska.

  She said what enchanted her the most in the literature was that when one opened a book nobody know where that story could lead us to. It was a surprise, it was placing your soul in the hands of the author and let us be taken where the author wanted to conduct us.

  And when we were exhaling alcohol, we said goodbye to the waiter and went up to my room. We took a shower and went to bed. I felt her flavor in my mouth, I ran her geography like an explorer for the first time stepping on east soil, I searched within her lips the mysteries of madness, of love and death, and in the bends of these lips I found Aleph. I caressed her straight and hair black like the night, and there where the West meets the East I found the secret of truths never revealed, and at a state of suspended excitement I shimmered for some seconds the paradise of the East beliefs.

  After the love, there came the sleep, and with the sleep, the dreams.

  Brief Dream in Macao

  I’m in front of a café in Stockholm, the Mellqvists Kaffebar, no. 78 of Hornsgatan. It’s cold. A girl is in front of me, she says her name is Pippi. She speaks in English with a strong accent. She was a pale anorexic young girl with black short and messy hair, she had piercings in her nose and eyebrow. She had a tattoo of a wasp on her neck. I answer I don’t intend to be there, I have to go back to Macao. Go back to Yo Shan Lin. Then the scenario was undone in a mist.

  I woke up shocked. She was no more in the room. I went to the toilet, washed myself, brushed my teeth and went down to the lobby. When I got to the lobby I could see her through the corridor and the glass doors smoking at the sidewalk. I went to her. When she saw me, she smiled. The blue sky smiles at us, she said, pointing towards the street lighted by the sun, the lightness invading the niche that was formed between the buildings columns. She took me by the hand and we crossed the street up to the parking lot full of motorcycles. She took the keys from her pocket and started a red scooter. I protested I needed to have breakfast. She sat on the motorcycle and I couldn’t resist and went up on the back. We left with the wind on our hair crossing streets and avenues up to a point of full movement. She par
ked the motorcycle and holding my hand she guided me through a bystreet up to the Senate Square, which I had recognized by pictures of the Internet. We walked among the passers-by and tourists, and, crossing the square, close to the church, we found a bastion of the east culture, under a small entry the green sign of Starbucks. The American Iemanjá figure was absent from the façade. I thanked Yu for having taken me to such a familiar environment like that. It’s incredible how the Americans managed to keep the standard in shops worldwide.

  — Let’s ask one to go — she clarified.

  She asked for a mocca coffee and I asked for a latte coffee. We took our drinks and went back to the scooter; from there she guided me up to the old part of the city, through narrow streets and old Portuguese buildings, full of air-conditioning appliances and ill-done installations crossing the constructions. We stopped in front of one of these old buildings. A building with balcony recalled the grids of my grandfather’s gate. She called me and we crossed the small street we were. There were plates announcing commerce in practically all the extension, narrow stairs; the walls that one day were painted green smelled musty. We got to a small atrium and she pointed upwards with the drinks she brought. Up and up we go, she sang. And then we kept on for several floors until I lost count.

  When we got to the top of the building, she turned to me and smiled:

  — This is Macao no tourist can see.

  I took my latte coffee and had a sip. It was still hot. I looked around. The building dwellers (at least it was what I imagined) had created a vegetable-garden in the terrace; at the bottom a room where odds and sods were accumulated like rusty bicycles, plastic boxes and tools, appliances parts, etc. Between the vegetable-garden and the wall that limited the terrace there were several chairs, all different amongst each other, colors and shapes. We took our place and kept quiet for some time, recovering the breath of the long raise. I at least. Because she didn’t seem to be tired by any means. She lit a cigarette.

  We were in the old Macao. At the island of Taipa, linked to the Peninsula by two or three bridges; there we find those casinos that appear to have left another galaxy, the casinos of the James Bond movies. Not here. Here we discern Asia. Where millions of people crushed in small dwellings, where the grey sky covered the landscape. The grey of the constructions heap recalled something of São Paulo, a compressed São Paulo, taken on a holdup by China. I said that to Yu, who laughed.

  — Nobody understands Macao. And Macao doesn’t care.

  I took the cigarette from her hand.

  — Like life.

  — Yes, like life.

  I still had the cigarette in my hand. I looked at her legs supported on the wall. They were wonderful shining under the sun. I gave her back the cigarette. As we remained there, I thought of my life. There was a Madame Oliveira in São Paulo. Two small Oliveiras. But the world was always calling me, claiming, and all life that pulsed through breasts delicately sculpted by the creator teased my thirst like the blood teases the fury of the shark. Sharks amongst flowers. It could be the title of a book. Not any book, but my book. Or the Call of the Sharks. It could be mine, it could be by Philip Roth. But then we would have to fill it with Jews. In this case it would be good to take off the sharks.

  We stared at the city, lively under our feet, pulsating like a heart. The heart of Macao. We drank our coffees. We observed each other. We got hand by hand.

  — There’s a group of Macanese that gather not very far from here. — she said.

  — How did you get to my books?

  — I’ve always enjoyed criminal novels.

  — I could write something about Macao.

  — Orlando and the triads — she suggested.

  — Orlando and the Enigma of Yu, imagine how nice the translation into English would be? Yu you.

  — Did you like my enigma? — she asked, with a shameless smile.

  I was going to say something but my cellphone rang. I got standing and answered it. It was Walter, my editor, calling me into reality. It was already four afternoon and I had to be at the hotel at six to wait for Walter Mariot, who would take me for us to go to an event at Galaxy. I think I would never get used with the Asian time. My biological watch was all out of axis. This sky was not the sky of the morning. The coffee was not the morning breakfast of the Starbucks. I told her I had to go back to the hotel. She said she would throw herself from the roof, and I would be lost in Macao, accused of having pushed her. I smiled and passed my hands in her hair, feeling her hair strings in my fingers. I wanted to crystalize that moment in a haiku; and keep it forever, like in the movies of Harry Potter. Memories bottled to take home. To see in the bedroom when nobody is looking.

  — Don’t say that. You are precious for me. Your life is a gift — I whispered in her ear.

  She stood up and, approaching me, she passed her hands on my breast and held the collar of my polo shirt. She looked at my eyes with her wide expressive shining eyes. And seriously she pronounced the words I never forgot:

  — I’m not a teacher nor a poet. I’m a hooker.

  And after having said that she left heading to the door by where we came in. I ran after her, but she was much faster than me. When I got to the entry corridor and could see the street light invading the stairs, I heard the sound of the scooter departing. When I put my right foot on the street, I could only see her by the back, on the motorcycle, getting away from my life forever. I shouted, or at least my brain sent the necessary electric signs for me to shout, but the body didn’t respond. I only whispered, and then I coughed. Yu, Yu, Yu.

  I got dizzy and took some steps up to the close lamppost, by using it to support myself. I got there for some time, waiting for her to come back, my jewel of Macao. I sat on the sidewalk and after half an hour I called Mariot.

  — Come to bring me, dickhead — I said.

  — Where are you, you asshole?

  — In a deadlock. Lost in Macao.

  — This smells like pussy you asshole. You’re gonna get us late. Find somebody there and ask for a reference point. The taxi driver will ride up to Hong-Kong before taking you there, it will be very expensive and the money will not get out from my pocket, I will discount from your book’s rights, Arturo.

  Great Mariot, always bothering me with shitty financial matters.

  About that night what I remember is that I went back to the hotel and took a shower. We got late to the event. My editor kept complaining, but I was not there anymore, my body remained there, but during all this trip to China, my mind stayed someone else. Searching for Yu on each face. There and after in Hong-Kong, in Shanghai and Beijing. I even suggested Mariot we could contact some bookstore in Canton, as an excuse to check Yu’s city. But Walter said no. That it wasn’t this way that things were done. I was not Paulo Coelho. I saw her face on the eyes of every stranger lady. I never saw her anymore; I don’t know whether she was a hooker who became a teacher or a teacher hooker. Or even if she was not a hooker, only a poet, who knows a teacher who said to be a hooker to say stop at once in terms of our relationship. At the hotel, I asked about the woman of room 119, and they said there was no room 119. As for the waiter who served us the cocktails and to whom I taught how to prepare the typical Brazilian caipirinha, I never saw him anymore. When I returned to China, I had the sensation the dickhead had baptized my cocktail, and that there was never any teacher nor hooker at all.

  I can only say that after that, the Starbucks latte coffee had never more the same flavor for me. It had a scent of something lost in somewhere in Asia. In the heart of Macao.

  645

  The light could not overtake the barrier of the glass reaching the freedom from the external world.

  Life masked by a glass freedom could not reach the light from the black barrier.

  The fury and hate without limits of the evil perpetrators were heavier than the bombs buzzing.

  The rain rushed without limits in the ashes of a world that only breathes in the memory.

  The
light masked by the fury of the bombs of the evil perpetrators breathed in the hate ashes.

  The external world couldn’t reach the heaviest light on the ashes of the fury masked in the memory.

  The barrier of the glass freedom heavier than ashes of the evil breathed a world in the memory.

  The bombs rain light freedom destroys life in the world. In the memory the ashes breathe.

  The lack of liberty. The weight of hate. The bombs rain ashes. The life that doesn’t breathe.

  The light. The masked life. The bombs. The rain. The ashes. The world. The barrier. The liberty.

  The darkness. The death stamped. The debris. The blood. The mud. The dirty. The wickedness.

  Iluntasuna. Heriotza. Suntsitzea. Odola. Lokatzetan. Osasunerako kaltegarria da. Maltzurkeriaz da.

  In honor of the 645 dead in a single night of terror in Guernica, on April 26, 1937, by German airplanes over the Basque Country, during the Spanish civil war. This poem received special mention at ASES - Associação de Escritores de Bragança Paulista [Writers Society of Bragança Paulista] in 2014 and will be part of an Anthology to be released by ASES with support from the Prefeitura Municipal de Bragança Paulista [City Hall of Bragança Paulista] through its Secretaria de Cultura e Turismo [Secretary of Culture and Tourism] (secretary Noieraldo de Souza Camilo) on May 17, 2014.

  Introduction

  Hello, so it was you who got to the end of the book? Nice to meet you, I’m Mauricio RB Campos and you’ve just red my book Urban Mosaics. I hope you have enjoyed and intend to read more of what I write. If you liked, leave your opinion in the comments.