The Day I Found You

by Pedro Chagas Freitas

  That night you taught me the meaning of myself, you said, between one forced nod and another whenever the world asked you for a reaction, when you thought about going to bed you would say my name, you didn’t talk about sex or about being tired, you talked about this, the simple act of one body grabbing hold of another and saying ‘go to sleep’ and the other goes, the two of them bound by those words that are so sincere, ‘go to sleep’, you’d say, and I’d go, and it could be the other way around, I’d say ‘go to sleep’ and you’d come, and off the two of us would go, arm in arm, or one resting on the other’s shoulder, or the other in the arms of one, to the untouchable space of under the sheets, where all life is summarised into the essential: either love or nothing. That night what was essential about life was no different. After the photographs and all the requests, after all the smiles (have I told you that each time you smile my life gets at least ten or twenty minutes longer?), and all the autographs, the two of us would return to the most secret place in what we are, the most primitive existence of two creatures. And I do still remember, as though it were yesterday (and the truth is it’s always at just this moment that I remember in this way), the words I said to you when you looked me in the eye and without a word asked me for the perfect embrace. ‘I consume you while they covet you,’ I whispered, your open laugh and urgent lips. That night, as on so many other nights when we slept together, we didn’t sleep at all. Happily that’s what the morning is for. That’s where we are, right now. I’m going to stop writing to let you sleep a little more, that’s what I’m going to do. What other meaning could life have besides a morning with you beneath the sheets?

  At least we still have football, said the old man at the bus stop, his eyes heavy from all the life he had behind him, and me standing there, not knowing what to say, and I felt like telling him I had no interest at all in football and all that crap, if Naná, the babe from apartment 10B, the one who I’m sure should be the woman of my life, wants nothing to do with me, or even if my mother, in her uniquely annoying way, won’t let me go to the end-of-year party at the high-school bar. At least we still have football but fuck, old-timer, what’ll become of me if I can’t have Naná or go to the party where the whole crew is going to be?

  And the bus stopped suddenly. And what I saw next I’d never seen before in my whole life – and it’s been more than seven decades on this godforsaken earth. Two adolescents, who can’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, got on, their tongues locked together in their mouths, tangled up together as though there were no tomorrow and as though there were nobody else there. He was doing his best to get his hand in between her tight clothes and her skin and she was rubbing against him as though expecting the genie of the lamp himself to appear. They’re shameless, the youth of today, that’s what they are. And they went on like that the whole journey, they didn’t even need to talk very much, I just learned that her name was Naná, what the hell kind of a name is that?, and him Carlos, I can’t even tell you how I know that, only God would know if he wasn’t too ashamed, because their mouths were too busy to be bothering themselves with words. This country is completely done for, that’s for sure, and I’ve always said so. At least we still have football, at least we still have football.

  If you knew how much I love you, my little genius. If you knew that if I’m going on like this it’s because I want to provoke you, look into your eyes surrounded by all these people and see whether you want me, whether you need me, whether you seek me out the way I seek you out whenever I think about what’s going to become of me. And now that you look at me, in this bus full of people, and you tell me without a word that you’d like to be Carlos, that you’d like to be the body that is feeling mine, I know it’s worth it. All of this is worth it, all this effort, because love demands sacrifice and I’m ready to test out any bodies necessary till I find the perfect soul. I’m a modern romantic, who gives herself to many in order to belong to only one, and I’m for it if my mother finds out but it does have to be like this. I love you, my little genius, I love you the way they say love ought to be, and I only hope that one day you get the courage you’ve never had and come to me and tell me that you want me to be yours for ever; I hope you come with that beautiful head of yours, and invent all the words for all these feelings, and then the whole school is going to stop still in order to watch us love. The whole school stopped still watching us love, when will you come to me and give me that moment?

  And then I went, the old man was saying, some children sitting opposite him round about five or six, their mouths open, listening to his story. I got right up next to her, even though I knew she was going out with the captain of the college football team, and this is what I said to her: if any words, in my life, are left unsaid, let those words not be I love you. I love you. The grandchildren looked at one another, one of them even wiped away a tear, and the other asked: and then what, grandad, then what? Then the old man didn’t say another word, he got up, opened a drawer, and took out an old photograph, which showed a young couple embracing by the door to a university. Then there was this, the old man explained at last, showing them the photo as though displaying a cure for death, then there was the life you must know existed, me and her and the family, me and her and football, me and her and movies. Then there was me and her, the old man emphasised, maybe that thing moistening his face now was a tear, and with total serenity the eyes of the children getting mistier and mistier, he just said those words which still hurt today when I think of them: I didn’t even still have football, not without her.

  I like it so much, I like all of it, when this happens, the TV turned on and suddenly you looking at me and loving me, the touch of my knee between your legs, the untenable weight of your body on mine, the TV goes on, with the movies and the series and even the football, and they also help us to be happy, but when the time comes for one body on the other, or one pair of eyes looking into the other, or just the time for waiting for a pain to pass, a hug to help bear what hurts, when the time comes for us nothing that makes us happy is enough to make us happy, what we need is us absolutely, you give yourself up absolutely to the task of making this fucking life immense, truly immense, you know?; and forgive me, there’s always a moment within that moment when I remember my old man and his story, and I tell him that, yes, always, at least we still have football, grandad. And everything else that, oh, is so fucking good.

  Tell her I love her, please. First of all tell her I love her. That I ache in the darkest insides of my tears, and that her things scattered around the house teach me that the only thing you can do when you love is forgive. Tell her that if I’m here so far away it’s because I need time to feel I need her, like a starving man who decides to spend one more day without eating so that his food will taste even better. Tell her I love her, please. And that when I close my eyes I can still see the other man with her, their naked bodies and our house with him inside it. Tell her that when I shut my eyes I still can’t bear the weight of how much it hurts, that imagining her being somebody else’s in the place where we were sacredly ourselves makes me crazy, and that if there’s something unbearable it’s having to bear what she did to me in order to be able to take her back. Tell her that what she did isn’t something you do but I’d rather have the betrayer I love than some faithful woman I could never possibly love. Tell her I love her and that I’m stupid enough to want her back. Tell her also that love is an idiotic, illogical thing, without the least bit of coherence. That I wake every day with her in my eyes, that when I meet the future she is always there. Tell her I love her, please. And that forgiving her is unforgivable. That the way she treats me and has always treated me goes beyond all limits, that I’m not her little lapdog but if she wants I actually could be her little barking man. That she has never valued me as I deserved, never told me like I told her that life only exists so that she exists, never brought me breakfast in bed, never stroked my hair while I lay with my head in her lap, never even hugged me when there was something str
essing me. Tell her she shouldn’t begin to imagine she deserves me but that I want to be hers for ever. That everything that is to be recommended doesn’t recommend her, that continuing my life beside someone who I don’t even know if she loves me makes no sense. That when I look at the toothbrush she used to use, and which I’ve brought with me, God knows why, I just think about breaking it into pieces to see whether I can be rid of her, to see if I can break her in me, to see if I can liberate myself from this prison of liking her so much, of wanting her quite so much, of being such a slave to somebody who probably doesn’t want me even as a slave. Tell her I even miss her ill temper, her furious tears whenever she didn’t get her own way, the almost childish, or childish, way she sulked for hours just because they didn’t have her favourite chocolate at the supermarket. Tell her I still wake up in the middle of the night to pull the blanket over her, that I still try to find her beside me in order to get to sleep, that the cold of the bed without her has no words to define it let alone blankets to warm it up. Tell her I’m hers for ever. That there must be so many lives in us, so many men and so many women, and that it will still be her, always her, the most inexhaustible her, the most untrustworthy her, the wife of me. That if I had to choose somewhere to die I would choose the depths of her arms. Tell her I love her, please. First of all tell her I love her. And tell her too that I’m not coming back.

  First I was happy, then I became adult,

  here’s hoping old age comes to rescue me, a bit of unconsciousness and it’s easier to get by,

  what wounds is the obsessive presence of the brain,

  only fiction is eternal, only what doesn’t exist, what happens within what I feel, a kiss, of course, the touch of your hand, a word from you in my ear, or simply the scent of the wind,

  only an old man or a child can recognise the scent of the wind, isn’t that right?,

  there’s an indisputable relationship between a naked body and happiness, pleasure almost always happens without any clothes, for what that’s worth, an undressed person is more seldom unhappy,

  the uncertain weight of regrets suffocates me,

  and I’ve done so many things I shouldn’t have done and sometimes I regret them, other times I’m proud of them, I don’t know how something that was so good could be so bad, there’s an inexcusable inconsistency in whoever created all this,

  how long since I’ve had a complete day?,

  something is missing from my hours and I don’t know if I can bear it, I must confess, I urgently need a life, or a skin,

  happiness is loving like a tourist, and never belonging anywhere,

  seen from outside even war is beautiful, do we need another reason to abhor the judgement of our eyes?,

  to die is not an immovable verb,

  age doesn’t stop moving but it’s life that kills, the days that are unending and too short, people with their own lives set up in ours, there is no such thing as egoism, only survival,

  only an idiot would separate flesh and soul, like God, for example,

  old age is a sad resurrection, it teaches us to live and then it kills us, the fascism of the body hurts till I’m tired of it, I have to tell you,

  the unfinished time hurts me, the enormous party I can’t get into, I’d like to go back to the beginning of the whole bewilderment, start everything over,

  and cry better,

  but I don’t want to cry, I can declare that much,

  it’s not death that is an intransigence, it’s the final body, the deceitful edge, the beginning and the end of chaos, only what’s cuttable with a knife is perishable, not me,

  it’s not death that’s an intransigence, but it is intransigent to die,

  while I’m alive.

  ‘You are, despite your not realising it yet, the woman of my life.’

  ‘I am, despite your not realising it yet, a man.’

  It’s one of those things about life: sometimes it ends. Mine ended, at that moment. It went. And yet, strangely, it let me remain behind. Abandoned by two women in the last five years, I am now, disastrously, in love with a third who is, in fact, a man. Deep down, it’s just my subconscious being faithful to a promise I made myself when Joana left me: that I’d never fall in love with another woman.

  ‘You do have a feminine side.’

  ‘Yes, it’s the left. The one with the make-up on.’

  ‘You are, despite being a beautiful man, a beautiful woman.’

  ‘Fine, fine, I’ll let you fuck me. Your room or mine?’

  It’s one of those things about seduction: sometimes it works out. This, without the slightest doubt (not least because he’s the first I’ve tried to win over), is the easiest man of my life. I need to decide: my room, even if it’s only been mine a few hours (since I arrived at the hotel), is already too much mine to be shared with anybody. Least of all a man. I do, I confess, have certain prejudices against homosexuals.

  ‘You have the biggest penis of any woman I’ve ever met.’

  ‘…’

  ‘But for now, do please move it over to one side, OK?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Much obliged.’

  It’s one of those things about heterosexuality: sometimes it’s reversed. The biggest problem (small though it is) of sex with a woman with a penis is the member itself – which does, evidently, lead to a logistical problem, of placement – of getting things to fit. Fortunately ever since I was a kid I’ve got used to living with things being lacking; and so encountering things in excess is pretty easy.

  ‘I’m Rúben.’

  ‘Pleasure.’

  ‘No. I’m satisfied for now. But thanks.’

  The strangest thing about our impossible loves is that they sometimes happen.

  She chose, after much consideration, the really tight blue skirt, to wear at the most important moment of her life. She put on her make-up with the care of somebody assembling an atomic bomb, each line in its place, she chose the tall boots so as to feel more protected, as though having her skin covered would protect her from the world, then finally looked fearfully at herself in the mirror, gave the best smile she could manage, her lips trembling and a tightening in her eyes, huge anxiety governing her body.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she practised in front of the mirror what there was to be said, ‘forgive me for having once believed that there could be life without there being you,’ confidently, sure of herself, ‘I want you for ever and I’m sure that won’t feel like much,’ and she went out into the street, her suit impeccable, her shoes impeccable, her love impeccable, and reality, only reality, stained by a mistake she wanted to correct now.

  They met at the café from before, the table empty as they’d hoped. He arrived first, his rehearsed words well memorised in his head, the gestures, even the gestures, thought through right up to the tiniest detail. Until she arrived, her steps as though treading over people, the tight blue skirt and all the men looking. He said what he had to say, she heard what she had to hear. They both wanted to embrace right then and there before the world ended. But neither one took the risk. He waited for her to say, ‘yes, I forgive you’, she waited for him to say ‘I’m sorry I’m going to embrace you all over even if you don’t want me to’. And the right time for the right moment was lost.

  At home, she took off her blue skirt and her tall boots and surrendered, her body lay down on the bed as though suddenly drained of blood. He remained in the café a few more minutes, just to say goodbye to what he had been unable to do, before returning slowly to the empty room, her smell and her clothes, if he were a courageous man he’d have had the cowardice to give up on life.

  They married and they were almost-happy ever after. Not to each other, of course. She found a perfect man and he found a perfect woman. Time passed, and along the way, they gradually unlearned how they had once run, what had once made them run and jump – but never walk. Children came, new challenges, wrinkles, grandchildren, the skin giving in and all of time becoming increasingly rare episodes of pa
ssion. They died far apart, as far as geography would allow, with even the unbearable size of a sea separating them. It happened that, oddly, both of their gravestones contained the same mistake, ‘an unforgivable typo’, according to their respective husband and wife: the date of death given was more than thirty years earlier, and nobody was ever able to understand why. And the inscription, immediately below the date, had no mistake in it at all.

  ‘It isn’t stopping that is dying, it’s going away.’

  She is naked and all the cells of her skin rise up with the passing of his tongue. The sound of a boat leaving, a woman with short steps and high heels, and now his tongue slips between her legs, maybe the sound of airless breathing from one of them. The bed like an altar and the wordless devotion of both bodies that bend to a greater faith. She twists slightly, shifts slightly to the right, the tongue finding a new angle, he continues along the track of what she’s seeking, the two of them united in the search for a soul that is hidden amid the sheets (I hear the voice of God when you touch me like that). His hand moving up her belly, sweat and fingers, in the distance the barking of a dog, her hand on his head, her fingers in his hair, aggressive and soft, as though they wanted to lead him, and the bedroom just standing there watching them win.