Either you go back to being crazy or I’ll go crazy.
Those were the words with which I asked you to be you. Desperately you. I could no longer bear the dementia of your being this normal person that you, these past months, had been. You always kept the house nice and tidy, the perfect housewife, an attentive and affectionate wife (we made love like grown-ups and stopped fucking like lunatics) and your greatest madness in this period was to try, one day, not putting sugar in the milk you drank at breakfast. You were too sane and this was making me crazy.
He’s a son-of-a-bitch genius and that’s why I adore him.
Those were the words you said to me when, for the nth time, we were summoned to school to put out a fire started by our boy. This time (after previously having, for example, managed to get the Judicial Police to surround the school believing there was a kidnapping with hostages; or, on another occasion, having convinced hundreds of students to paint the façade of the school a new colour thinking it was a direct request from the School Board), he had, in one hour, done his own test and that of five of his friends. The six of them got top marks but, who knows how, somebody spotted the mess. You were proud of him while I, back at home, said to him harshly: I’m ashamed of this behaviour of yours; that’s not how my son acts. And you, you might not believe me but I saw it, smiled.
My name’s Filipa but I don’t know who I am.
That was how his girlfriend introduced herself when she came over for dinner. And she added: I’m from Barreiro but I don’t know where that is. I was simultaneously sorry for her and envious.
‘We only join lips so that a single mute shout is heard in the world.’
That was the poetic version of what he said to her. Then there was the other one. The one that hurts. The one that destroys. The one that tramples. This one:
‘I love you; now go.’
Without warning, after so long together, he asked her to leave. For good. He didn’t make any claims. He didn’t give any explanations. He just told her to go, his expression sombre, without a smile, without a grimace. Go, he said. And she, laden down with suitcases and tears, went.
‘Promise me that you will never question me in order to be able to love me.’
Those were his only words when she was already on the other side of the door. She promised. She asked nothing, however much she wanted to know what had happened, where she had lost what had always kept them together. She didn’t see him for years. She met a new husband, thought she was in love with him, had the children she’d always wanted and everyone, even her, was sure that she was a happy woman. When if not now?
‘Yes; yes, please.’
That was her answer when, from the other end of the line, someone asked her if she would accept a reverse-charge call. She shivered. She didn’t know why but she knew it was him. It was. And he had news to tell her.
‘I love you too much not to tell you the truth.’
That was his explanation after having revealed that he was, this whole time, being treated for some serious illness (whose name he refused to speak because he believed that what he said would, in this case, come to pass). I need all my strength to feel that I’m not disappointed at the scale of us, he added. She started out by refusing his explanation, then she told him to stop talking, and finally, without hesitating, she hung up without a word.
‘I love you too much for you to be able to love me.’
Those were her words, months later and without a smile, before making a proposition that he accepted at once. The searches for the two bodies, following the accident that involved both their cars, lasted several weeks, and to this day there are people who swear they’ve seen them, many years later, swimming, together and happy, in a lost lake in a distant land. But everybody thinks that’s too far-fetched to be true.
I was all ready to receive my happiness,
and you never came.
I loved you long before loving you. We were what
lovers were and we didn’t even need
bodies for this, because what we said
satisfied us, and whenever life happened it was
to each other that we needed to speak. If there’s one thing
I fear in the world, it’s your end. I spend hours feeling
indestructible, certain that nothing can
touch me, that nothing can hurt me enough to
make me pull back, and then you show up. You and your image
as far as the eye can see, your eyes when you look at me, your
mouth when you speak to me, and it’s then I understand
I am finite, a poor human, and I burst out crying in
search of the telephone and a word from you to
convince me you still exist. It’s in the possibility
of your ending that I find humility.
It was the most beautiful day ever on earth where I was, and you never came.
I don’t know where the world ends but I know that
life ends in the depths of your lips. I had the
words ready to tell you that more than anything
what we needed was to do with our bodies what
all the rest of us had done already. Then I would tell you that
since I’d looked at you I already knew what your kiss tasted of
and that it was time for our mouths to know it too. Then
I would slowly undress your tongue without your
noticing that around us not even clocks dared to shift
so as not to disturb the movement of the earth. Finally
you’d say that it was predictable that we’d end up like that,
just to prove that of all the completely
unpredictable things love is the most predictable
of all. That’s where the words of that day and that night
would end, or of that night and that day, and out there we no longer
knew if it was light or dark, sunny or raining, as
it’s surely true that eyes have many abilities
(kissing, hugging, touching, licking, sucking, grabbing, squeezing)
when you’re in love but seeing isn’t one of them.
For the first time in my life I cleaned the dust behind the
furniture at my house,
and you never came.
There could be no possible explanation for your not being here and
I still believed that you would be coming perfectly on
time so long as you did come. I tried calling you but
you didn’t answer; I tried crying for you but even the tears
didn’t come, and when the body makes decisions
by default it’s because it knows perfectly well what
it’s doing. That was what rested me. I decided to lie down
a little and sleep. Sleeping is always the best way
of waiting for you, since if there’s any moment
when I get close to you it’s when I am
allowed to dream. When I awoke you weren’t there and
I felt like shouting. Fortunately I didn’t do it because
I might have woken you. You were asleep, I later understood,
on the next-door bed, having arrived late
the night before and found me with
my eyes already closed. Now it was my turn
to lie down without a word and wait for
you to wake, or wait for you to fall asleep, because
deep down all I care about is that you stay. You
had arrived so late that you might as well not
have come, but it’s just as well you did.
My will ached to squeeze you and talk to you,
but you had come already.
When you wake up I promise that we will fall asleep
every day
together for ever.
He was a man like any other, which was why, at this precise moment, he was crying. The whole house silent, still, listening to him suffer. Quiet, he’s about to hurt.
&nb
sp; She was a woman like any other, which was why, at this precise moment, she was dreaming. The whole beach silent, still, listening to her flying. Quiet, she’s about to jump.
The meeting happened at the most unexpected hour of all – which, now we think about it, could be any hour because any hour would be the most unexpected of all for someone who never, ever would have imagined that this meeting might one day happen. He was, as he was for much of his day, crying. She was, as she was for much of her day, dreaming. But on the outside he was the man who cleaned the swimming pool in her beach house and she was the rich woman married to the rich man who had a house by the beach. They’d already seen each other over and over again before that moment when they looked at each other. The whole swimming pool silent, still, listening to them feel. Quiet, they’re about to try.
Close to you I lose myself. Her words in his ear. Him smiling, and yet still crying more than ever. I’m sorry but I only like small things and what I’m feeling is too big for me even to acknowledge it as a possibility. His words for her to hear. I’d be grateful, miss, if you wouldn’t approach me like that again. And her turning her back. But only for a moment. Then she turns again, kisses him, he kisses her back. You get better at that every time. Anyone who didn’t know you might almost believe it. Her words between licked lips. Your fool of a husband still thinks I’m a perfect little saint. And she laughs, and he laughs, and there they are, the two of them together by the pool, discovering the extent of their bodies. All the walls silent, still, listening to them lie. Quiet, they’re about to be justiced.
This man’s pistol, the barrel pressed against another man’s head, is a pistol like any other. One can suppose, therefore, that it is capable of killing. This would, at least, seem to be the fear of the woman who, hands on her head, watches the spectacle that is subsequently played out. Please don’t do this to him. That’s what she asks. The man with the pistol agrees. She approaches them both and, within just a few seconds, takes the pistol out of the hand of one and fires at the other, who falls, instantly and with a crash, on to the floor. That’s how you should have done it. I was fed up of watching you waste time. Just fire and that’s that, fuck it. He lowers his head and agrees. And there they were, the three of them, naked bodies, embracing and smiling in the middle of the swimming pool. A few metres away, and all around, there are many people in white overalls and many other people without white overalls but with strange movements (one has been walking in circles for several minutes, another has been looking at the sky and shakes his head vigorously for even more minutes, another is simulating a speech on world peace in a very loud voice and nobody pays him any attention). The whole cinema auditorium silent, still, listening to them perform. Quiet, it’s about to end.
Knowing that you were
is what stops me
being.
Your voice on waking: come, love me. And me loving you
without thinking of the time, my watch stretched out on
the bedside table, fed up of knowing that even
he, time, would have to wait till you were
ready to let me go. And later.
How am I to invent someone to replace you
if you’re still here?
Later you went and left nothing behind, and that was
your way of remaining intact. And if I’m still able to get up
for life it’s because I’m still hoping that you’ll come, tears
in your eyes, asking my forgiveness for having gone, for
having dared to eradicate from me what made me want.
The only thing I want
and have always wanted
is that you want me.
In our bedroom there’s a museum waiting for you. Your
shoes abandoned in the same place where you
left them: every day I clean them religiously
the way every day you used to clean them religiously. Your
side of the bed unoccupied – and woe betide anyone who dares enter
what belongs to you. When you return you’ll find it all the same,
ready to receive you. It will be a different way of absolving you.
What you did to me is unforgivable,
but that you did not come here for me to forgive you,
there’s no forgiveness for that.
It might be late – and it is. But between waiting a whole lifetime
for you to come and fearing a whole lifetime that you’ll leave
I prefer the second option.
Better your hand in my hand
than two other hands
without love.
I will wait for you however much you convince me to the contrary. And
the best men in the world might show up, the most
perfect creatures in the universe, and still it will be enough
to know that your defects want mine again
for ever to be yours for ever again.
Please come back and bring your imperfections.
That’s enough
to make me happy.
The priest has already given the order to close the coffin, and I never told you I loved you.
The worst thing about words is the feeling of those that remained unsaid, the irreparable weight of what never existed and what nonetheless will never stop existing: they will never let me exist. I had your whole life to tell you what I saw in you and I failed. I gave you company, friendship, I offered so much to you, and I never believed that one day you would leave without warning. So naïve. I should have known that everything you did was without warning. Why should it be different at the hour of your death?
I have an empty apartment I dreamed would be for us, and I never told you I loved you.
We were bodiless accomplices, we met every day to offer each other whatever life we had to offer, you used to laugh so much and I wanted you so much, did you ever know that when I fell asleep it was the image of your happiness I was thinking of? I imagine you, even wherever you are now, scattering happiness, and what brings me rest is the certainty that your death will be happy ever after. Did you ever know how much I needed you?
Your desk is being sorted out by your parents, and I never told you I loved you.
We were almost perfect lovers, an almost perfect couple, almost perfect happiness. There were days when our bodies wanted it, days when our bodies forced it. On those days we embraced, my hands around you, yours around me, a complete embrace to prove the only thing we needed was courage. It would have been enough for me to tell you what I never stopped telling you, what every day I practised telling you, so that this weight that will now be mine would have been diluted in sweat. Will you forgive me for loving you for ever in silence?
Your parents are reading the letters we wrote, and I never told you I loved you.
Even my hands fell silent when they needed to speak of the scale of what I felt for you. So often we were able to say those things that hurt, like when I told you it was shameful the way you were running away from a job just because you didn’t like one of your colleagues, and you stayed, you listened to me and decided to stay; or when you told me that I was being idiotically selfish by not agreeing to go with my siblings to Disney World when this would make them happier than a dream, and I decided to go, I listened to you and decided to go. So often we were able to write to each other all there was to write, and we never said, I never told you, the only words that whether written or spoken needed to be said, so that there should be nothing left over from what we were, so that there should be nothing now left over from what we have been. If I’d told you that I loved you for ever would you have driven more slowly that night?
Your parents are showing me a scribble of yours in which you said that I am the man of your life but you never told me that you loved me, and I never told you that I loved you.
How could we have been so stupid and so happy?
The country burns. Everywhere there are people in pain and scorched earth. There is Hell in the air. An
d it’s when Hell arrives that it’s important to have a little Heaven to escape to. A space of absolute non-life to make it possible to live. It’s at these moments, when all that the world can offer is pain, that the melancholy arrives, sneaky, waiting for a wounded defence so that it can wound again. That’s when art arrives, heroically, to save the honour of the moment.
There must always be a book to read to save our lives.
Or otherwise a musical note, a bit of genius to show us that life’s worth it, that the world deserves to go on. If it weren’t for a perfect line of poetry or a note that changes our lives, what would life be for? What’s the point of the world if not to shelter art within it? And all that we are is people and all that we need is people. It’s when the melancholy arrives that we understand it’s people who save us from the abyss. The people who write what we want to feel, the people who create the music that makes us keep going, the people who draw the picture that makes us believe. People. When the abyss comes close, that’s when people are there to grab hold of us and to allow our salvation. It’s not the planet that needs protecting; it’s the people. They must be protected to the utmost, showing them that they are the reason for life. The country burns and ironically it’s just millimetres away from utter misery when other people save themselves from utter misery. Sometimes it’s necessary for things to recede for the world to grow.
The Day I Found You Page 15