The Day I Found You

by Pedro Chagas Freitas

  It was unintentional, but then everything worthwhile in life is unintentional. You were in the corner of the room when my father was taken off to be buried. And suddenly an inexplicable desire to smile. My father – God keep him, and how much I loved him, how much, so much that even today every second of distance hurts – going for ever beneath the earth and then your eyes. An absurd desire to smile. You weren’t even especially attractive, a man like any other among so many men like any others. The priest saying goodbye in the name of God to my father and your furtive eyes on mine. All places are good for loving, I remember thinking that on that day, understanding that even the funeral of someone you love can be the most romantic moment in a life. There wasn’t, on that day, any kind of advance made. But nor was there any kind of retreat, which for somebody who loves is always a good start. It was my father who introduced us after his death and it would have to be my father to bring us together again. It was seven days later, at the customary mass with the customary tears – and how I cried that day, as if it were only then, a week later, that I’d understood that, yes, my father had gone and he wasn’t coming back. The most ironic thing about loss is that it can happen gradually and sometimes with a delay of days or months. I was crying over the end of life when your eyes in the second row. How did you learn to look like that?, I asked you with mine, I don’t even know if I even managed to bear the smile that I was smiling inside. You looked at me and you seemed to be asking my forgiveness for looking at me like this when everything in me was hurting me everywhere. All tears are small when you lose a father, you know that? You did know that, of course, which was why at the end of the mass, at the door of the church, you plucked up the courage to come and say what nobody else, on that day, ever said to me. You began with the trivial ‘my condolences’, and I thought you were just another guy and that your eyes didn’t exist after all, but then you said ‘congratulations’ and my legs went weak. You saw my baffled silence, you said it again, ‘congratulations’, and just added ‘for that look in your eyes’, before touching my shoulder gently with your hand and turning your back. I swear I saw my whole life going with you into that small white car where I couldn’t imagine how someone your size could possibly fit in. I knew then that everything in me could die but what I had seen in you would never die. Later there were so many people between us, we did a thousand and one dumb things, travelled a thousand and one roads, until, more than five years after the first time, you arrived at the door to my house, I was already a married woman and the mother of two kids, and you said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, ‘hello, I’m Pedro and I’m the man of your dreams’, and you handed me a piece of paper which just said ‘Write something on here if you’d like me to leave right away’ and I thought about writing something but my hands stopped, my husband in the living room asking who it was and me, there, standing in front of you, with a piece of paper on which I had to write something if I didn’t want you to be the man of my life. I never wrote a word for you, at least not until today, as I write these letters with you lying beside me the way you’re always beside me when I’m working, and when I ask myself whether there was anything left to be said between us I always answer yes, there were words I never had the courage to say or to write. And it’s just as well.

  ‘A coffee and an everlasting love, please,’ he said, the look in her eyes like life. All around there were all the tables and all the people at the tables, the hot, acidic smell of caffeine, the vagabond sun coming in at the big, dirty-paned windows. The need for more words was erased when the silence remained, for a second or two, to say what there was to be said. Of course they both smiled, of course she didn’t bring him love that was everlasting but she did bring him love that was possible, hidden in the paper of one of the sachets of sugar. He didn’t want to read it right away, he wanted to act strong and he withstood, he drank (slowly, he thought, but actually it only took ten or twenty seconds) the coffee while considering various possibilities about what might be written there, and of all the possibilities the one he chose would always be the simplest of all, something like ‘I get off at midnight’ would be enough for him.

  ‘I get off at midnight,’ he said again, repeating it over and over, the note in his hand (which was firm, he thought, but actually was trembling so hard that the employee wasn’t able to take hold of it at first) and his breathing lost somewhere between fear and hope. ‘See you tomorrow, then,’ he said as he left (normally, he thought, but actually nobody in that café heard a word he said, such was the speed at which he said it), his hurrying steps and the small sugar sachet which was so big that it filled his entire body. He wanted everything to be perfect when he read it, he wanted to read it somewhere that deserved it, so that he would never forget that moment, and he was already imagining himself many years later, sitting by the fire, telling his grandchildren how he’d met their grandma, their adventures, with a simple sachet of sugar taking one of the leading roles; then he thought about how the story would be passed down from generation to generation, how four or five hundred years from now, when maybe sugar wouldn’t even exist any more, people would still know the story of that sachet that made a whole family possible. ‘I get off at midnight,’ he said one more time, as though asking whoever’s in charge of the world to do as he pleased.

  ‘The sea is always a good place for loving,’ he thought, already seated on the sand, two or three metres between him and the water that came in and went out. The piece of paper crumpled in his hand, the cold sweat and aching arms, his whole organism begging for mercy. He summoned up the courage, opened his hand, the sun was already setting behind the sea (he thought it couldn’t be more perfect, as a tear fell without his noticing on to the sand), and he gradually unfolded the piece of paper, some grains still alive and making themselves felt. He looked once, he looked twice, he raised the palm of his hand to wipe away his tears, he looked again. Half an hour later, the night and the moon and the cold sea, he looked once again and everything was still just the same. There wasn’t a single word written there, nothing, really nothing at all, just the make of the sugar, the company that made it and the ingredients, perhaps in tiny letters the expiry date, and he was sure he had the wrong sachet, and that there just had to be another lost in the trash somewhere with everything there was to be read. The moon seemed dark when, his eyes on the ground and the weight of all his illusions on his back, he left the beach, a homeless man looking at him sympathetically with a little pat on the back. He saw his whole family disappear, the grandchildren in front of the fire, the myth over so many generations of the sachet of sugar and the message that created life. None of this, he was sure, without tears now but with his eyes sagging, was going to happen. There was no note to be read. But she would be getting off at midnight all the same.

  The rain started falling on the wet ground

  and that’s why I love you.

  There is of course your smile, the way

  you cut the fish when we sit down

  at the table, the effort in your eyes

  not to cry when I kiss you,

  and that’s why I love you.

  Your skin tastes of what keeps me alive,

  and that’s why I love you.

  You wake up in a bad mood, you don’t

  use words or open your eyes completely, as though

  asking the light not to drag you out of what I know

  is a dream in which we love each other for

  ever, you turn the other way, waiting for

  my body to hold yours once again, you shrink down

  completely so as to hold me in you,

  and that’s why I love you.

  We go out and people do exist even if

  neither you nor I see them any more than

  necessary so that we can love in secret,

  we know that everything we kiss is à deux and

  nobody can see it however many men or women

  see us hugging and kissing in the supermarket


  queue or when we’re waiting for the popcorn

  before sharing in the cinema, with your badly behaved feet

  on the seat in front and your hands

  so often seeking the underneath of bodies

  in the adolescent darkness of the late-night screening,

  and that’s why I love you.

  When I want to smile I remember

  that you exist and I’m always smiling,

  and that’s why I love you.

  Amid so many people I immediately had to find the only

  woman in the world who like me has no interest in travelling,

  and that’s why I love you.

  We spend our lives moving from place to place because

  it has to be, we know that we have to work and

  things like that for us to love each other

  without thinking about getting something in return,

  we get to know the cities where we take our

  love, the beds we show the market value

  of sweat, we go in search of a stop someplace

  where we can love in peace and understand

  that if we are together

  then we are loving each other in peace,

  and that’s why I love you.

  The first time I saw you I promised myself

  that I was not going to love you,

  and that’s why I love you.

  We went to bed without noticing the time, the day already

  existing or about to exist, we laughed a lot

  in bed, you say something interesting, I

  say something of no interest, our

  laughter alone would be enough for us to be

  together, but there’s also the way we reach

  orgasm, which consists of the difficult task of

  loving each other, you love me and I love you and that’s how

  we strangely reach orgasm,

  and that’s why I love you.

  I’m absolutely certain that staying with you is

  the stupidest decision of my life,

  and that’s why I love you.

  The depth of her moans could be heard all over the building, or maybe it was just inside my ears that it could be heard all over the building. When did you learn to love me like that?

  He got up after orgasm, barefoot on the cold bedroom floor, he went over to the kitchen, had a bite of something, and thought the most important thing in life is the moment when, every day, you are reborn. Through the window he saw the boats on the sea, he imagined all the possibilities that a world can contain, people and more people living their lives under the gaze of other people and still more people, he thought that it might be selfishness on his part to be concerned only with his own business, but when he was really going to think about this properly she appeared, with not a single piece of clothing to cover her body.

  As of today I’ll never love you again, that was more or less how I told you I was yours for ever. The silent house smiled, you were left with the certainty that there was no room for anything but us, and we loved each other without our bodies knowing. The only thing I’m certain of is that your skin does not exist, nor your smell, nor even your touch – they are unrealities that bind me to life, sensitive memories that prevent me from dying.

  It’s feeling you that keeps me alive and that is going to kill me, she said again, ten times after the first time she’d said it, at some other orgasm in some other bed. No orgasm is ever repeated but they all transform us, and those words in her voice stopped all breathing. When had she learned to lie like that?

  Lunch had been in the cheapest restaurant in the neighbourhood, her and her eyes, and he who was there by chance thought that being a millionaire meant loving eyes like those. That was how it all began, they both knew that. But nothing lasts for ever, especially not what is eternal.

  I like to wander the streets with you, giving you my hand and showing you you’re mine, knowing that I have the happiness of your company for a few minutes, everybody, I’m sure of it, believing that if you love me there must be something special about me. And of course there’s the money, all the things I give you, but even that request you just made of me to go with you to the bank doesn’t persuade me that you want me for any more than I am myself. When did you learn to deceive me like that?

  She said ‘here’ and he signed, then she said ‘and here’ and he signed, two or three of the bank’s employees smiling on the outside and shaking their heads on the inside, a feeling like in a casino when somebody hands over the very clothes they’re wearing just to be able to keep playing. There was the goodbye, ‘it’s been a pleasure,’ he said, and he shook the hand of the bank manager, who for the first time wasn’t disgusted to be shaking the hand of a poor vagrant without a cent deposited there. On their way out the woman at the reception desk looked at them with pity, smiled the most natural smile she could manage at that moment, the door opened and they left, both on their feet but him, despite being so big, fitting perfectly in her two divine hands. As they left they gave each other their first kiss without money getting in their way. When had she learned to free him like that?

  I have nothing but this house in which we live, you kept everything of mine and I’m happy. Yesterday when you arrived you said there was one more hungry child I’d allowed to grow up and that the world was a happier place now. I was happy, of course, for the child and for the world, but if you want to know the truth I don’t give a damn about the child or about the world, I just want to know about your body and about your being here. The great usefulness of money is helping you to love me, and if you want to know I’m not sure that wasn’t actually why it was invented. When did you learn to teach me like that?

  There’s a crack of light coming into the bed,

  and the greatest injustice in life is your existing and being mortal.

  In the small hours when we discover pleasure, the

  sheets stick to our bodies, hands searching

  desperately for skin, until all the happiness shrinks

  to be able to understand us. You teach me to find the

  place between your legs, the space where all

  orgasms meet, then there is a whole texture

  to be found, the wise wrinkles around your eyes,

  the soft touch of all the curves of your breast, until

  absolute truth asserts itself. All of you pulls me

  inside you and all of me pushes me

  into the heat of your belly. And heaven happens.

  There is a fine line of sweat joining the head of the bed to its foot,

  and the greatest injustice in life is your existing and being mortal.

  The morning arrives with its illogical light, the certainty that

  night has gone and it’s important to keep going. Each time

  I love you I find the perfect death. We get up,

  our lazy souls not knowing what to do with

  life out there, the secret desire for the world

  not to exist. And then you disappear, minutes later,

  and you show me the emptiness of all things. Everything that

  is useful to you exists only to be useful to you. When the morning falls and you

  aren’t there, the whole house goes quiet waiting to hear you, I walk

  the hallways like a vagrant of myself, and a mere

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow’ from you is enough for all the furniture and all

  the beds to make sense once again. Either I’m with you

  or I’m alone, I always think when you aren’t there, and I end up

  getting tangled up in myself and in tears in the space

  on the bed that belongs to you, defeated by

  the possibility of there being a final embrace, one day,

  to surrender, by the cruel existence of life in you.

  Why must you be human if I love you so much?

  There’s a door opening slowly, the cat already knows it’s the whole world coming,

&nb
sp; and the greatest injustice in life is your existing and being mortal.

  You were the most beautiful woman in the world and the worst thing of all was that the world had already realised it. The whole hall stopping dead at the sight of your arrival, that long dress, those things you told me were called sequins or whatever the hell they are, and your bare ankles, only them, supporting the weight of a whole God. And all those stares, everybody, women and men, all of them in love with your steps, one after another, your head raised high and your smile. When you smiled, that day I went into a party arm in arm with you for the first time, with photographers and cameras and the two of us as alone as if sitting on a sofa together, everybody stopped to watch you go by, and my body next to yours was invisible just as I always imagined love should be, as I always asked you for love to be. All I wanted was to be the person who accompanied you, to get the chance to see your smile when you smiled, and to be certain that you were only smiling like that because you had me there. What other meaning could life have besides making you smile?

  Men, so many men, around your body, trying to find some flaw, some gap, some pathway to what united us. You looked at me all night long and asked me to forgive you for there being so many people wanting you like that, and I knew how much it hurt, how tight it squeezed, but then I remembered that you only existed like this, so big and so unbearably beautiful, because we existed. Loving you is a privilege, I know, I didn’t need any of that crowd wanting you so completely to know it; and when you tell me you feel like the most blessed woman in the world because we exist like this I’m sure it’s true – it’s true I’m just another guy like any other guy, I don’t create characters, I’m don’t get invited to elegant parties, I don’t give interviews and I’m not hounded by photographers, I don’t have people worshipping me, but I have all the love in the world in me and that’s enough for me to want for nothing. What other meaning could life have besides our wanting for nothing?