have you any idea just how rare our routine is?,
nobody believes that anyone can love twenty-four hours a day for their whole life and nor do we, it seems ridiculous to call the exact time we spend together twenty-four hours, let’s call it life and leave it at that,
words are simple after all, and no love ever died from want of words, only from want of love,
and I don’t know if I’m saying the right words to you but I love you like a poet, write that, please.
Give me a wet kiss at the door to the supermarket and make me happy,
as adolescent as only you can be, your request, your piercing laugh, the cashier not knowing whether to laugh or cry and your legs around my waist,
I don’t know whether to call them lips, those things that make me feel like that,
it’s not the best way to live, probably, but it’s certainly the only possible way, and for me that’s enough for everything to be right,
I like it when happiness can be measured, your hand where the flesh rises,
what damned bliss are you?,
if God existed you would make Him sin, now come with me and take a bath, wash my back and rub my skin, I don’t know if it’s romantic but it makes me cry, you make me not know what I want the whole time and that’s my desire,
how many imbalances does a happiness require?,
and at the end of the day or night there we’ll be in our normal house, on the usual sofa, your head in my common lap, your hair in my banal hands, and anyone who saw us would think we’re just any old couple, and we are, but don’t tell anyone that’s exactly why nothing compares to us,
the only poverty is having just one single reality to live, and it’s just as well we’re aware of that, isn’t it?,
and I don’t know if I’m saying the right words to you but I love you like a poet, write that, please.
If you knew that I don’t fear perfection,
because as luck would have it I fear only what’s within my reach, like that strange thing your hair does when you arrive at work in the morning, your purse slung over your shoulder and in such a hurry to start answering those emails, the first one is always from me and you’ve never noticed, tomorrow I’ll try sending you the first and also the last, I’ll send you one just after you’ve left and another just after you’ve arrived the following day, maybe that way you’ll notice it’s not by chance,
everything you want with such force is by chance, maybe that’s it,
I’ve wanted you since I first saw you and even then you couldn’t see me,
if you knew that I’ve never taken the paving stones’ name in vain, let that be quite clear,
but the truth is I envy them, your ordered steps along what isn’t me,
where do you go when I don’t see you?,
it’s hard to bear the existence of your life beyond my loving you, you can call me possessive, jealous, whatever, call me anything you like so long as you call me yours,
all my freedom for one kiss, deal?,
today I invite you for a coffee, it’s a good start and always a chance to look further inside you, when I look at you for more than five straight seconds I’m happy for ever, I swear,
if you knew I bought a new suit just to look at you better,
the lady in the store thought it strange, she looked contemptuously at me,
when have you ever seen a badly dressed man in love?,
but she did end up serving me, she chose me a grey one with little blue stripes, I hope you like it, I spent my holiday allowance on it, if the boss knew he’d cut me off completely once and for all, I think he’s got a little crush on you, as I saw him look you up and down at the Christmas dinner, if he hits on you just tell me and I’ll thump him and I’ll quit on the spot, I couldn’t care less about the salary but no longer seeing you would be the harder price to pay, maybe you’d figure out some way to see me and everything would turn out fine, you’re just coming out and here’s the invitation, I’m begging you on my knees to accept, however much I look like your answer doesn’t matter,
the drama of the body is in knowing how to lie,
if you knew that what I do for you is not really crying, rather it’s dying,
there’s no way for you to love me and it’d be best to give up, throw in the towel and go in search of some potential happiness,
who knows, maybe there’s a woman hiding you?,
and I go to bed every day with that wish, I convince myself that tomorrow I’ll stop trying, but then tomorrow comes and your steps on the pavement, I see them from up here from the window as I drink my coffee on the building’s patio, exactly three hundred and seventy-three steps from when you come out of the metro till you reach the entrance to the factory, I counted them yesterday and confirmed it today,
that’s the irony of madness, that it knows how to count,
and once again I’m yours any time you want, even my snot is trembling, just so you know, it’s not at all romantic but it’s the truth,
when I go to the ophthalmologist and he asks me what I see I’ll show him a photo of you and then leave, I promise you,
if you knew I love you,
maybe it would be different, maybe you’d lie down with me at night and you’d let me watch you fall asleep, touch your hair all the way to the depth of your tears, bring your head to my fearful shoulders and wait for happiness to arrive at last,
if you knew I love you,
but you do.
Assuage my hunger just so you know I’m insatiable,
I’d so like to tell you like this just how I love you, but there’s bashfulness, there’s fear, there’s shame, all those things,
how many ‘No’s can a person really bear?,
and when I’m with you we spend the time talking about your sister and about her boyfriend, a complete loser, I have to tell you,
do morons always get the best women or is that just my impression?,
or about one of your classes, 8B, that’s doing your head in, some kid called Diogo, really rude,
if there’s someone making things bad for you just tell me where he lives and I’ll deal with it, OK?,
and when it’s time for silence I’d like to take you up in my arms, tell you the story of the unfortunate boy who was only friends with the girl he loved so he could at least be near her for a while, learn about her life, about what’s happening, it’s a kind of betrayal, I know that, but I don’t think it’s possible to bear your existence without being able to have you, and he’s you and I’m me, what do you do when there’s so much to lose and everything to win?,
I just wanted someone who understood me, don’t you see?,
and your question deserved to have me say I’m here, and I understand you completely, I know you get afraid of the dark when it’s thundering, I know your left leg hurts when the weather changes, that your favourite animal is a cat, your favourite colour is blue, I know you liked living in New York but you don’t know why, I know your perfect man is tall and dark but that the only time you ever loved anyone he was short and chubby and even a bit blondish, I know you brush your teeth with your left hand even though you’re not left-handed, I know that sometimes you call your mother for her to put you to sleep,
what is it that’s so perfect about parents’ voices?,
I know you hate driving, and only I know that you found it hard getting your licence so late but it had to be so,
better to be your driver than nothing at all, right?,
people do the strangest things for love and getting a driving licence isn’t even one of them, after all it has other uses and even if I only drive for you, don’t tell anyone but when I’m not I go by taxi or subway or bus, driving is an act that requires you, just like all the others for that matter,
but enough about me, let’s continue with you, your need for an it’s all fine when something’s hurting, your unlikely need for a goal from your team, I was never a Sporting fan before I met you, you should know that, and only I know
how I managed to get such a low membership number just to persuade you I’d been a member since I was little,
not many things justify a swindle as well as love, and there’s me seeming like I don’t think I love you,
I’m not satisfied with your friendship,
that’s the most I can say, for a moment I fear you misunderstand and that I no longer want you here, in the most intimate space of my fragility, but when you touch my ear lightly with your left hand,
when you’re in love you’re like when you’re brushing your teeth, that’s curious,
and you ask me to make you forget time and I know it was worth it, and it will be,
this, the only thing I know,
I think it was yesterday or the day before that I remembered to love you,
you said to me, and I said nothing because my lips would not speak, truly, and also because I didn’t know how to answer you,
when you asked me to make you forget time and I obeyed, you know?, and I think I went too far,
what day is it today anyway?,
the morons always get the best women, and that’s my good fortune,
thank God.
‘I live in a country where poverty is legalised,’
and Guilherme (a fictional name for someone who should be a work of fiction) pulls his right eye, rubbing the wet skin again and again, the wrinkles showing that it’s not only on the inside that time passes. He’s seventy-one, his whole working life behind him, and now all that’s left to him is the same old falling-down house in the same old run-down neighbourhood.
‘I live in a country where poverty isn’t a crime,’
his hand still in his tears, people looking at him again fearfully.
‘A poor man scares people, did you know that?’
he asks me, blue eyes wide like someone apologising for the smell of somebody who hasn’t known what hot water is in years, hands moving as though in a search for a reason for life.
‘Sometimes, as a matter of respect, I give up on holding out my hand and asking, I know people have their problems and don’t want anything to do with me. Nowadays I go through the trash cans and I haven’t even done too badly,’
he tells me, and he manages to smile the bravest smile there is, and this time it’s my tears that want to come out; I soldier on, ask him what he used to do, what brought him there, to that piece of nothing in such a big life that has gone.
‘I worked on the building sites, I had a grocery store, then I even opened a restaurant, believe it or not. But then came that crisis thing and I had to go back to the hard labour. But nobody wanted me. I was already too old to work, and still too young to stop working,’
he pauses a moment, or two, then goes on, his tears have stopped but his head hasn’t.
‘I was too old to live and too young to die,’
the lives of all the old people in this country, and of so many old people in this world, defined in a single phrase, I want to hug him, tell him to come home with me, that I’ll do whatever I can and more, so that he lacks for nothing, but I don’t say a word: I know the one thing he is not lacking is the pride that’s left to a man who no longer has anything.
‘There’ve been people who wanted to help me, to give me a life far from here, where there was good water to drink and good food to eat. But I don’t want it. I’ve worked for too long to agree to die on charity,’
the expression sticks in my head, and he explains it, maybe there’s another tear about to come.
‘Living off charity doesn’t exist, you know that? Living off charity doesn’t exist. Anyone round here living off charity is dying on charity, and I’ve worked so much, so much, you know? I don’t want what I don’t deserve, I’ve never wanted what I didn’t deserve. I just want what they said I’d have, but here in this country, I might have said this to you already, poverty isn’t a crime, it’s like the politicians who’re in power now have legalised it,’
and he shows me a newspaper as worn as the skin on his arms, the news of some state budget that’s been passed covering the entire front page.
‘What they want is for the mob to be afraid of ending up like me. Nothing scares people more than poverty, I may have said that already. Poverty isn’t the end but it’s an ending that moves, we end gradually on the inside, taken away bit by bit; it starts with your pride, then it takes your self-confidence, until, if we don’t keep alert, we’re left with nothing, all we can do is to beg and put ourselves in the hands of those who put us here. But I won’t let those people take me. They don’t get to take me,’
the words waved like a flag, white for peace and never for surrender, more and more people around us, night falling and, in the distance, in the sky, the promise of rain coming soon.
‘What they want is for us to take shelter from the rain, you understand? They want us to be afraid of getting wet and to take shelter from the rain, and so for this, for this to happen, we’ll do anything they want. What they want is for us all to be little sheep, and they say go and we go, and they tell us to stay and we stay. We’re all just as we are now, right this moment, with the rain about to fall and each of us having to choose whether we take shelter or allow ourselves to stay,’
until the rain really does start, people running, the surrounding cafés filling up, the shop awnings all occupied, me and Guilherme alone in the middle of the street.
‘See how they all run away? That’s what they do,’
the newspaper shaken again, the wet pages coming apart.
‘They threaten that there’s rain coming, they make it really rain, and people run away, that way it’s easier to pretend you can take it; people prefer to be reserved, hidden from what will get them wet. But look: my grandmother, God keep her, always said to me that he who goes out in the rain gets wet, and I prefer to get completely soaked rather than just slightly wet, know what I mean? If you’re going to get wet anyway, might as well have a good wash, that’s what she used to tell me,’
the street deserted now, him and me both soaked, and for a moment even his wrinkles seem to disappear beneath the rain.
‘All waters heal. It won’t happen in my lifetime but I’m sure one day people will understand that all waters heal, and then the revolution will come. The revolution will come. I’m going to die, you should know this, sir, with hope for the revolution, and that’s not such a bad way to die after all, is it?’,
he smiles, his lost life in those lost teeth, he runs his hand over my shoulder, a friendly pat on the back, and continues on his way, the rain and his silhouette, the night closing in, and a final refusal when I ask him if he wants me to go with him or to take him somewhere:
‘Let it be. I’ll stay here where it’s raining.’
And he stays. And he stays.
God wears a bikini and flip-flops,
I wrote yesterday on the way here to the beach, I wanted to pay tribute to you, a poem after my fashion, I don’t know any better, I’m sorry, my father always said that he who gives of what he has is not obliged to do any more, it’s a crappy line but it works for me just now,
lines are worth the aim they achieve, that’s the truth,
you leave my certainties in rubble,
and that’s true, too, when I see you in that body and in that bikini, you’re coming over with so many girlfriends and it seems intolerable for me to believe that one day you might be mine, and that’s why I believe, I stare at you exhaustively, I confess, and there might be a thousand police officers and only your brown skin turns me in, the way the sun beats down on your back draws me in so badly it hurts,
give me hope and I’ll build a house,
the water is incomplete when you’re not there, and I fear that ninety percent of the people are only here to see you, at least ninety percent of me is, the rest stands still when it sees you and it’s as though I’m living in parts when I have you there in front of me, either you love indisputably or you love under protest,
my heart’s for sale as long as you don
’t want it for free,
I’m so mediocre when I speak to you, aren’t I?, it’s you who makes me like this,
how many dummies can just one love produce?,
you should know I’m the best student in the class, I got the Year Four prize in middle school, and at secondary everyone wanted to sit next to me during the tests, take this and use it so that you’ll like me, if you can, and also if you can’t, please, better to be desperate than to have no hope for you,
when I saw you six months ago I didn’t know how to swim and now I’m the lifeguard on your beach,
how about that for a proof of love?,
one day I write you a message,
Guedes, who plays at Benfica and who wants to take you to bed, if he tries to force anything you’ll let me know, OK?, when have you ever heard of someone being taken to bed who can only be taken to heaven, God that’s so tacky, OK, do forgive me that one,
but one day, as I was saying, I’ll write you a message on Facebook because Guedes got me your link in exchange for helping him pass Portuguese,
you don’t want one of those cheats to love, you promise?,
God wears a bikini and flip-flops,
it’ll start like that and then there will be all the words that are above here after that,
take my whole life and enjoy it,
and me too, thank you.
Your body is visible from my window, it’s about ten o’clock, you have your dinner and then you sit there, in that armchair in the corner of the living room, you smoke a cigarette, sometimes two, you look out at the immense space of the city, the still lights, the empty places, and I imagine that you’re looking at me, these are the moments I feel moved, the smoke in the air of your living room and me smoking with you, and I can see no greater intimacy than a cigarette à deux in the deepest silence of the night.
Your life is visible from my desk, just a little but it’ll do, you only have to go to fetch something from the staple drawer and I can see how weary your expression is, maybe you don’t really like filing documents, organising envelopes and receipts, and I like to stop what I’m doing so that I cannot like it with you, I close my eyes and try to sense what’s changed in you since last night, to sense if you’ve slept well or not, what colour the lipstick is that you’re wearing today, how many times you look at the photograph of your daughter, and I can see no greater intimacy than us looking together at what you love most.
The Day I Found You Page 6