The Day I Found You

by Pedro Chagas Freitas

  It was a high-ranking representative of a high-ranking publisher with a high-ranking contract for him to sign, he read it proudly (I know how to read and I can read contracts when they’re put in front of me), such an unusual picture to see a writer as happy as a child because he knows how to read, and he signed it at once, he had this strange insistence on trusting people, not without first asking for a small addendum (yes, an addendum, that really is what it’s called, and I know that’s really what it’s called), the proud writer demanded that the publisher guarantee him a daily delivery, to his home, of at least four books, because however hard he tried his writing pace could never keep up with the reading pace of the woman he loved.

  And so it was that every day, in the late afternoon, a van from the publishers would stop at the door of their house and drop off four books, sometimes more, and that was how they’d spend their evenings, her reading and him watching her reading, and the whole world and all their effort now made sense for ever.

  Of course his book was a resounding success, of course all his books from then on were resounding successes, of course she gave up the restaurant, at least the kitchen of the restaurant (she would later become a business partner of the man who had also helped her man to become his favourite published writer), of course they stopped living in that poor house, but it’s also of course the case that the evenings never stopped being like that, her happily reading and him happily watching her reading, and everyone, deep down, comes to this, some people reading happily and other people watching them reading happily, hence there are books so that life can survive.

  The only thing they could be sure about was that they loved each other, and yet they believed they had everything.

  And they did.

  He was a good man, but he hated skin. He was repulsed by touch, sickened by warmth. He loved at a distance, in safety. Or, as he insisted on explaining, ‘the way you love a landscape’.

  She was a good woman, but she was addicted to skin. She felt a compulsive need for touch, an uncontrollable urge for warmth. She loved through contact, through muscle. Or, as she insisted on explaining, ‘the way you love a food’.

  One day they met, at some party or other of some friend or other. She said her name and wanted to move close to him for a polite kiss, he said his name and stepped two metres back. All the same, through some impulse which they would both, later, call love, they kept talking. She told him about her family, about her dreams, about her fears, while she advanced, bit by bit, towards him; he told her about his profession, about his plans, about his passions, while he retreated, bit by bit, towards the wall. They did at least two complete circuits of the whole room, a good-sized room of at least fifty or sixty square metres, like this: him retreating from her advances.

  Until they decided to talk about their differences.

  He explained his theory, that people are beings of soul and not of touch, hence the greatest pleasure is to feel the immaterial, to savour the intangible. Or, as he said over and over again, ‘touching with our eyes’.

  She explained her theory, that people are beings of veins and not of spirits, hence the greatest pleasure is to nourish what can be felt, to devour the corporeal. Or, as she said over and over again, ‘looking with our skin’.

  They left the party together, though separated by two or three metres, and got into the same taxi, albeit quite apart. Then he allowed her to touch him for a second, maybe two, and she allowed him only to look at her for a second, maybe two. Next they lay down together, as they would lie down together from then on, each in their own bed in the same house. They lived – and happily, according to all those who knew them – like this. One of their closest friends would describe, one day, how they loved each other in stages: now he’d allow himself to be anaesthetised so that she could touch him for a while, now she would stay still so that he could just look at her for a while. There was never any evidence that this had happened. But it’s certainly true that all those who were with them both at the moment when he died heard the last words he spoke to her: ‘I want your embrace,’ he said to her, to general amazement. And he closed his eyes. ‘Now that he can no longer love in his own way, he wants to love in mine,’ she said, seconds before following in his footsteps. And they went on, happy for ever, to love each other in just one way.

  The doorman told me he saw you going past, you were in your blue school skirt and you were running, I bet you were singing that song of Ralph’s or whatever his name is, it’s unbearable but if you hear it I’ve got to hear it, and if you like it I’ve got to hear it, maybe one day you’ll get good taste and start listening to Adele or something,

  in any case if you went past the doorman at that time then you must be about to arrive, you’ll just stop by Gaby’s café to meet up with Joana and Andreia then you’ll come,

  and I’ve already taken a seat in the corner desk, all the way back here, waiting for you to come, I hope you sit in the usual place, after all I missed my lunch so as to be here, to be able to say hi to you when you arrive, and so that we can then read the texts together in our Portuguese class, I pretended to forget my book and I know the teacher will tell me I’ll never get anywhere with that kind of attitude and he’ll tell me about the future and blah blah blah but what matters is that it will get me closer to you, I’m sure of it, you’ll be right next to me and we’ll read boring old Camões together,

  there might even be some cool line or other and I’ll read it while I’m looking at you, maybe you’ll understand that I’m telling you what I feel and you’ll laugh, God willing, and even if God doesn’t want it I do.

  You really are wearing your blue school skirt and don’t hold it against me but I looked at your legs, and as I’d hoped you came over to sit next to me and it wasn’t only because you like coming back here and this was the only free place because I’d been occupying it until you arrived with my big football backpack, so if you liked footballers, well, then you’d find out I’m an ace and that I’m the best player in the whole class, but instead you like that Ralph guy even if he can’t sing and he’s ugly, yes I know I’ve got to respect you, I’ve read it so many times that love means respecting the other person and I never learn, sorry,

  now you’re singing quietly to yourself while the class discusses some line or other, and your voice is so lovely that I could spend my whole life listening to all Ralph’s songs so long as you were the one singing them, the amazing thing is I’m singing with you, no one but you could get me to sing this crap that feels so good,

  the worst part of it is that the teacher has already spotted us and he’s coming over, stand your ground and I’ll protect you, I tell the teacher it was me and he gives me an earful, he asks if it was only me and if it wasn’t also you and I don’t hesitate before saying that, no, you have good taste and you’d never sing anything like that, and the class laughs and you’re laughing too, oh God it’s so good making you laugh,

  the teacher has gone now and you touched my arm with your hand, I swear my skin came alive and my breathing stopped, and in a few minutes the class is discussing some other line and you’re singing another of Ralph’s songs completely unironically and I laugh all over to hear you sing and I sing with you, some guy my dad likes to listen to says that you don’t love someone if you aren’t listening to the same song and if he’s right then you’ll be mine for ever however hard it is, oh boy won’t you be,

  and here comes the teacher, you grab me hard and ask me to help you, and Crazy Joe is laughing because he already knows we’ll be out on our ear, he’s right and off we go, me and you and disciplinary proceedings and yet I’m still the happiest man in the world, I love you so much and one day you’re going to know it, I promise,

  so now give me your hand and let’s go, the two of us, to Tó’s bar to buy chewy candies and think about what we’re going to tell our parents to explain that I love you.

  You asked me to write you something happy, maybe the secret to the perfect opening of your smile, or the
way you cross your legs as though you didn’t know that you are the end of the world and the beginning of me.

  In any case you asked me to write you something happy and what occurred to me was to tell you that there’s a seagull living on the tips of my fingers, I don’t know what that could mean but it’s what I feel and it’s so beautiful and it flies, and deep down that’s what binds us, something that you and I don’t know but which we feel and which is so beautiful and which flies.

  I could also tell you about the silence that connects us, you lying beside me, I write, while inside the cats are stretched out on the sofa in the sun, above us and below us there are neighbours doing things that make noise, doing the washing-up, tidying the house, talking to one another and watching series on TV, but as it happens we are in this bedroom, the light off, just me and my words to you, the bed in chaos, the blanket pulled right up to your neck, your delicious need to lay your skin against mine for you to be able to sleep, a total absence of words, and now you’ve come over to me once again, what proof of happiness could be greater?

  I know we’re going to die one day and that hurts, you know?, I know we’re going to rot away, too, our skin, these bodies that are now touching, will become flaccid, I might even become more grouchy and you more stubborn, just imagine, and what’s left when people stop having their worth determined by their skin and by their bodies is what defines people, some become unbearable and ugly, because everything they had is disappearing, and then there are others, who continue beyond what they’ve lost, they gain new lives just as this one ends, they stop having their skin and their dreams, but they become so lovely, such depth in their eyes, with such stories to tell, speaking the wisdom of someone who has lived long and believes they still have long to live, the loveliest thing about beauty is that it’s not only to be found in what the eyes can see.

  I’d have liked us to have been two old adolescents, I think you should know that, I’d like to wake up next to you every morning and look at you for several long minutes just to know that you were there and you were breathing, beside me as you are always beside me, then immediately we would bring our worn old skins against each other’s, I’d kiss you gently, feel that your lips still exist, say the deepest I love you that anyone could ever say, and fall back asleep right through the morning, our bodies folded over by time and by our desire to seek each other out to bear it,

  and in the afternoon we’d go out for a walk, find out what the city has to show us that’s new, talk to people who love us, our children, grandchildren, probably even great-grandchildren, understand that every day we’re young in our existence, and finally return home, is there any word more beautiful than that?, our home, the dinner we’d make for the two of us, me peeling the potatoes and the carrots, cooking the rice just the way you like it and how I learned to do it just because you like it, you seasoning it the way only you know how, we could even have our dinner by candlelight, two old people in love and a romantic dinner,

  then there would be the sofa, a film about beautiful young people who love each other, just so that we can imagine back again to when we met, our whole lives ahead of us, and then finally bed, me and you and our whole lives beneath the sheets, me snuggling the blanket right up to your neck, our cold feet warming up together, and if death comes let it come there, when I’m with you, and I think it was worth going on for so many years to construct a moment like this.

  You asked me to write you something happy and I remembered us, is there any greater happiness than that?

  ‘The shame of the world is that there are numbers.’

  That was the way he found to tell her that he felt super fluous inside that bed, and what’s most ironic of all is that the whole thing was a number.

  ‘Whoever invented numbers didn’t know how to love.’

  She was more concerned about counting orgasms than hearing words, and she went on with the discovery of the two bodies that were beside her, a lot of people would call her a slut if they knew what she liked, but those people didn’t know that you often need quantity to silence the quality of what makes us hurt, better to fill your life with noise than for ever to hear the unbearable void of a hole in the middle of your veins.

  ‘There’s nothing like nourishing the body to silence the soul.’

  After a few minutes, and between one skin and the other, she lay back a bit and showed what she was thinking, she presented her theory, according to which it’s essential to give the flesh what it wants so that the soul, even if only for a few seconds, forgets that it exists.

  ‘I would like to be what prevents you from needing more.’

  Love me entirely even if it’s only out of pity, that was more or less what he meant by that, he’d spent his whole life trying to be her life, he waited for time to pass, for chaos to order itself, and the most he’d managed to be was what he is being now: a body, a number in that complex sum in which two men plus one woman add up to one frustration.

  ‘I’d so like not to see you as a body but please shut up and move on to round three.’

  The numbers continued, her body was satisfied, her soul was threatening to emerge, she knew that when she arrived home the silence would return, she’d sit in front of the TV and everything she saw would bring him back, then she’d put on the music they both listened to when they got married, she’d feel the hope and the happiness that she would never feel again, life adding up at last, and she’d end up spending a sleepless night loving him without even knowing where he is.

  ‘If I have to suffer let me at least get some pleasure out of it.’

  She lost her shame when she lost her love, is there anything you don’t lose when you lose your love?, and they know what they are: two bodies, two evasions, two nameless material objects. They’re there to block out the sun as best they can, to share what hurts, to entertain what’s left of a woman who one day loved and then never stopped loving, the worst thing about life might well be love, and the best thing about life, too.

  ‘I don’t know your name but take me with you.’

  She was desperate and she wasn’t afraid to show it, he accepted it, even just a bit is better than nothing, and off the two of them went, the other man stayed, he didn’t want anything to do with anything except pleasure, most likely the secret of happiness is being able to isolate pleasure, make it the owner of a single space to which even love doesn’t have access.

  ‘Let’s build a love that’s exemplary.’

  She heard the promise he made and believed it, she believed that she would at last have what she deserved, a house, somebody romantic, travel, even children, everything well balanced and completely correct, could there be anything more senseless than looking for sense in what you love?

  ‘Let me teach you a love that’s good for you.’

  And she let him, she continued seeing the other man every day, which didn’t do her any good but which made her whole, he saw inside her eyes, inside her actions, inside what was good and inside what was bad, but bit by bit he started to grow smaller: ‘less numerous’, as she liked to put it, and the very least someone we love can be is numerous.

  ‘The most I have to give you is one or two minutes of hope.’

  They were at her wedding, everything adding up very nicely, and the other man arrived, shabby-looking, his clothes dirty and yet still him, he said what he had to say, what he had to offer, she heard him and smiled, she had to choose between a whole life of good and two or three minutes of for ever. She chose, as she always did when it was time for a decision, mathematics.

  ‘The shame of the world is that there are numbers.’

  And love, too.

  ‘I will leave you when I find a reason to be with you.’

  The direction of life is moving upwards or it doesn’t have one at all, she went on, this time she just thought it, but inside the idea kept on going, he didn’t hear it, nobody would ever love anybody if all our ideas were spoken aloud, he scratched his chin and looked out of the window, the sky as
naked as he was, the stars empty and a sense that the world is probably about to end.

  ‘I want to love you but all I can manage is to despair of you.’

  The abyss of love is the freedom that it takes from us, the certainty that there’s a rope around our neck that we cannot master, he went on, he didn’t say it but he thought it, their shared history inside his head, an accident caused like in the movies, her picking up her books from the floor, him helping her, and then after that even the high school gave up on parting them, then came university, their dreams, their professions, and suddenly the reason for things appearing, as though reaching a state where it’s necessary to understand where love came from?

  ‘It’s impossible for what brought us together to exist, and that’s why we’re together.’

  Each person has within themselves a foreign land, she understood that love was ninety-nine percent discovery and one percent pleasure, or the opposite as you approach the abyss of orgasm, but what she didn’t acknowledge was that there existed an affection interrupting the veins, still less a tenderness to calm the breathing, either she felt everything trembling or she was stopped still, and stopping isn’t dying: it’s worse.