the lucky thing is that death kills but orgasm does too,
go on, that’s it, come,
and still I don’t stop being here,
if there’s one thing I’m grateful for it’s pleasure, anybody who doesn’t believe in miracles has never come like this,
listen to the old guy and learn.
You’ve left at last and I can try out freedom, watch football all day long, stay out with my friends till late, drink as many beers as I’m in the mood for, go beyond the limits that your presence imposed on me, try visiting all those websites that Heitor from the office told me about, life exists and it’s so good.
You’ve left at last and the space of the house is mine alone, I don’t even need to tidy it up much, I stretch out on the sofa and time just passes, occasionally a woman will visit, pleasure really is so simple after all, nothing to tie me down, I’m a free man and I have to make the most of it, life exists and it’s so good.
You’ve left at last and I’d been missing me, looking at myself noiselessly, thinking about the meaning of the world, realising what I am and what I want, devoting myself to discovering where I begin and where I end, understanding the importance of mistakes, building a new Me, and above all smiling, life exists and it’s so good.
You’ve left at last and today you didn’t answer the phone to me, maybe you’re at the parents’ meeting, but you could have answered as it was important, I wanted to tell you that I’m well and I send you my regards, thank you for not being here and making me happy, I’ll try again soon, life exists and it’s so good.
You’ve left at last and I enjoyed having dinner with you yesterday, your hands gently touching mine as we reached for the glass at the same time, some coincidences are worth it, and your hair so big, so free, you said something about a bit of paper we both have to sign, I didn’t hear you and just looked at you, the inside of your eyes is so beautiful, but I have another woman I met in the library and I’m happy without you, life exists and it’s so good.
You’ve left at last and soon I’ll be going to fetch you at home, I’ve bought a suit at a shop in the mall, this cologne is the one you gave me for my birthday two years ago, I’m picturing you in the green dress that brings out your eyes, the restaurant’s already booked, me and you in front of the sea, or next to the sea, whatever, it’ll be you there and your hair loose, we’ll definitely talk about our lives and about what we’ve done, I don’t care, to tell the truth, I’ll have two hours or more of being able to look at you, and who knows, maybe after that we could take a walk in the park, share an ice cream for two perhaps, life exists and it’s so good.
I’m seduced by the existence of one day after another, my father’s wrinkled hands on mine, my mother’s open smile since the very beginning. I’m seduced by hearing the grocery man’s stories, my grandfather’s frank confessions, my older cousin’s jokes. I’m seduced by the absurd dissatisfaction of being alive, the unbearable cost of temptation, the colour of the sun on the city’s stone. And the woman who sells chestnuts on the street, the teacher who teaches as though he were teaching life, the mystery of cats, the dog’s happy tail when his owner arrives. I’m seduced by the child with a desire for everywhere in his eyes, the hot taste of tea, the intimacy of a love letter hidden in the drawer, even the haughty way a bird takes flight. I’m seduced by the modesty of geniuses, the way the sea consumes the sand, the deafening silence of complicity, one friend in the arms of another, the solitary tears of an ecstasy. I’m seduced by the constant questioning of the adolescent, the fundamentals of pleasure, the desire to live for ever beneath the sheets. And the noise of the rain on the glass when we’re loving, hands warming on a boiling hot mug, the steam in my face freeing me from hurt. And I’m seduced by getting up to face the day, believing in the existence of people, reading on the balcony on summer nights, writing the perfect line of poetry, closing my eyes and managing to dream. I’m seduced by sharing a newspaper on a train, inventing a past for someone I don’t know, offering a banknote to a homeless person. I’m seduced by so many things, so many things, but nothing seduces me like the movement of your legs when they open to me, the small moan only I can hear when you kiss me, the almost second in which you ask me wordlessly for pleasure, the perfect geometry of your clothes strewn around the floor of the house, the complex algorithm of the sum of our skins. I’m seduced by so many things, so many things, but nothing seduces me like knowing that so many things have seduced me since I met you, and that you still seduce me just the same. I’m seduced, and I obeyed.
‘It ended because it took up too much space.’
She explained to him why she had to go, she schematised motives (you’re reckless, you don’t want the same life I want), she elaborated conclusions (it’s not going to work, you’re too big in me for the small space you want us to occupy in you), but the truth is that he had already left long before and she was still there just talking to herself, giving up on somebody who doesn’t love us is less painful than being abandoned, however much it may be exactly the same thing, words have always been the best way to suffer.
‘Silence me with your body, please.’
Ever since she had lost him (where are you if you aren’t looking for me?), she’d been trying new diversions, alternative skins, alternative smells, finding salvation in perdition, and however many men she had (who are you and what are you doing inside my body?) he was always the one she fell asleep with, she retrieved the sheets she kept in the cupboard, laid them down on the sofa, rolled herself up in them and imagined the door opening and her whole life coming back in, the impotent tears, she knew she ought to bear it, that she ought to survive, but nobody survives a love, at least not alive.
‘One day I woke up and you were gone.’
What happens when a love goes?, you fall asleep with it and then the day comes, and the light, you look next to you and it no longer is, and when I looked at you that morning and you looked back at me and I saw that, no, there was a hole in the centre of my chest, you were the most beautiful woman in the world but I no longer loved you, and there’s no greater reason than not loving the person we wake up with, one day it ends as it began, and I began loving you without knowing how, me and you and our first kiss, our first bed, me waking up beside you, the feeling of for ever, there’s always a bed and a waking up to decide who loves.
‘Lie on me and make me wake up.’
He allowed himself to be seduced and she returned to the house, to the bed, he wanted to understand if it was still happening, if love explained itself, and they lay down, and she was happy once again, so happy once again, and they loved each other, bodies and nostalgia, moans, orgasms, and finally sleep, sleep arrived and when they looked up they would understand what there was uniting them, there’s always a bed and a waking up to decide who loves.
‘Uncertainty is enough for me to be able to love you.’
There was no exact conclusion, the morning arrived, he looked at her and didn’t see her as the for-ever woman and he didn’t stop seeing her as the for-ever woman, he looked at her and wanted to embrace her, to give her a kiss where her face began, then he said something to her that made her cry, she just said stop talking and do it, within a few minutes their sexes were in charge, the bed sweaty, him compliant and faced with the impossibility of an explanation, love really can be what makes us have no certainties, or it’s nothing of that at all, but being with her counted for everything, that much is true.
‘One day I wake up and I don’t know if I love you, and that’s how we love.’
She couldn’t forgive him for loving her like this.
One day he asked her to stop being perfect, she replied with an utterly perfect yes, she grimaced and he said ‘lovely’, then she stripped naked, her whole body, all her flaws, she drew his attention to the stretch marks on the backs of her legs, a scar in the middle of her stomach, begged him to look closely, and by the time she realised what was happening he was already crying, his eyes and his perverseness in
believing that even what aesthetics condemns is admirable, love is blind and it really opens our eyes.
After the storm comes the orgasm.
They embraced with all their lives in their arms, it’s not clear how tightly they held each other but certainly when they detached themselves, more than half an hour later, there were deep marks on each one’s back and skin, they had to return to their jobs, routine constraining the eternal, she talked to him about the scale of her fear, of the brief interval between courage and madness, he preferred to expound on the brief interval between death and routine, all of it in seconds and the aching of the clock, there’s a moment when you have to choose between losing yourself in life and a life lost.
They still had madness to keep them sane.
They wasted hours discussing the uselessness of loving and when they finished they’d changed their lives, she said that love hurt, erased, lit up, wept, created, destroyed, constructed, fell ill, leapt, moaned, suspected, was left over, laughed, tore, cut, stuck, sewed, touched, fled, freed, tied, looked, hid, and he added that besides this love also killed, lied, seduced, taught, led, possessed, discovered, dominated, thrilled, infected, controlled, rejoiced, feared, and all that was why it was no use at all.
They gained a deep understanding of the stupidity of loving and only then did they love.
There was no news report that they had returned to their jobs, nobody ever understood how it was they lived and what they subsisted on, they knew only that they were always together, and that when someone asked them, more than forty years later, what they did, they just replied ‘we love’, and the person who asked realised the absurd silliness of what they’d just asked.
Fairy tales don’t exist, the fairy tells us.
‘Go on, I’ll pay you with a smile.’
That was what the woman said, the man and a tube going in his nose, another two or three stuck into his veins, his arm hurt with so many cures that needed performing, all around the smell of slumped people, the white dirty walls, illnesses smell of something indecipherable, perhaps there’s some way of dying that doesn’t need that smell.
‘Don’t look at me like that or I’ll jump you, you bastard.’
And he smiled, he knew she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, sex had stopped, like his whole body had stopped, ever since this had started, his wife sitting there, and his wife so very beautiful, and her smile, if life had ever given him one good thing it was that smile, her eyes wide whenever she looked at him, the certainty that he was loved as though he were the only man in the world, and the illness interrupting this love, where have you ever seen a body that wanted to stop something like this?
‘If God exists He is not between us.’
This time it was her who smiled, or even laughed, at his words, she missed having him beside her on the bed, yes, his tight body, his strong arms, all his fear squeezed inside his chest, yes, she missed having him beside her on the bed, but she missed his words even more, the way he made her laugh at nothing and everything, always ready with some corny jokes, the way he was so clumsy at home and needed her for everything, love is more than anything needing someone for everything.
‘Go on, I’ll pay you with a smile.’
She insisted, he finally agreed, he struggled to his feet, the blue smock revealing half of his thin body, she put his arm around her waist, gave his ass a furtive squeeze and he laughed quietly, she took him to a big, spacious room, with daylight coming in, and the two of them like boyfriend and girlfriend, then she gave him a gentle, very gentle kiss, on the left side of his face, she felt the wrinkles and the harsh skin and it tasted to her of love, he raised his hand and took hers, all his strength going into that movement, into the moment when their hands joined, a passing nurse wiping away her tears, maybe a death in the next bed, and he and she savoured that smile, her opening hers up completely, him happy to be smiling with her, the tubes and blood invisible, the two of them with their eyes closed, so much health, all memories heal and kill in equal measures.
‘Don’t tell anyone, but that smock turns me on.’
She could have cried but she was laughing, with him back in bed now, visiting hours over, a desire to stay there and never leave, to die here, with him, him smiling goodbye, him saying ‘I know what it is you want’, he’s good at kidding around when things get this serious, maybe it’ll be different tomorrow, maybe tomorrow the nurse will say he can go, that everything’s fine, that this crappy illness has backed off, maybe tomorrow, not today as she’s already gone, maybe tomorrow, there are moments when just having a tomorrow is enough.
‘Go on, I’ll pay you with a smile.’
And he smiled,
and went.
I’ve just met you and that proves the non-existence of the past.
And she arrived late (I’m so sorry, the traffic, the traffic), she sat down hurriedly at the table and waited for his question, recorder in his hand (I see the precise world in your eyes, I don’t know what that means but I see the precise world in your eyes), she smiled (yes, that’s a passage from my book, just as well you’ve read it, good that somebody’s read it, did you like it?) then blushed slightly, her eyes wandered over to the wall of the café, then up to the ceiling, finally to the waitress who came over with a tray in her hand (hello, what’s it to be?), and he (her kiss and then death) asked for a piece of toast and a glass of milk, wanting to cry and wanting a hug, how many hugs does each person owe the world?
I don’t find any beauty at all in your face, and you’re so beautiful.
He said yes (your best ever, I read it three times in one night, seriously, I’m not exaggerating), his hands were trembling and he wanted to touch, even if only lightly, hers, she wanted to say something intelligent which was why she had to keep quiet, she waited for a question, that was why she was here, to be asked, she didn’t have to wait long (how many men have you written into the man you loved?), it wasn’t quite what she’d been expecting, it wasn’t what she’d been expecting at all but strangely she had the answer on the tip of her tongue (only you), her hand pulled on his, the earth stopped spinning, but it was just a joke (yes, I do like the title, it was one of the things that most fascinated me about the book), she let go of his hand and smiled, how many truths does a person owe the world?
It must be unbearable living with you, do you want to marry me?
And the worst thing was he really did say that, this time it wasn’t a quote, at least not one she remembered, she wanted to smile but couldn’t do it, she wanted to remain serious but couldn’t do it, she wanted to stay still but couldn’t do it, she wanted not to get up and hug him but couldn’t do it, and he couldn’t do anything, least of all not cry when he had her in his arms, least of all not tell her that he loved her even though he didn’t know her, least of all not tell her he was sure that she was nothing that she wrote and that was why he loved her, she just said yes, she’d marry him, once, as many times as she needed to, every day if necessary, they walked out of the café and didn’t even pay or take the recorder, they ran far away to be able to be close, the café owner standing there with the recorder in his hand, the waitress not knowing who to give the bill to, the sun high in the sky, an old lady sitting in her garden and a smile, how many people does a person owe the world?
I don’t believe in God but I believe in you, oh yes, I do.
Life exists at the moment when you change, you’re either inconsistent or you’re dead, and being at night the same as I was by day is a waste of a day.
‘Hi, I’m Jaime and I haven’t changed for forty-eight hours.’
Applause in the hall, everybody’s afraid of addiction, the most disloyal servitude of all.
‘You’re just the same and you’ve managed to change everything in me.’
People need people. To bear things, to escape, to grow, to live. But also to die.
‘My Jaime.’
Possession excites. Having excites. The woman who is now sticking her tongue into Jaime’s mouth has. And excites.
Jaime should know.
Borderline cases are able to cross the borderline. Any border, actually. There was, when he woke up to face the day, a man content with his reality, breathing peacefully, confident that all life boils down to being at peace. And there is, now, as he lies down for the night, a man who can barely breathe. And who, for this reason, is more alive than ever: breathing better than ever. All life boils down to being at peace, and for this very reason disquieted.
‘Hi, I’m Jaime and I’m addicted to you.’
Meetings that change the world require, on average, only two people. The one who loves. And the one who is loved. And then it stops: the one who loves becomes loved; the one who is loved starts to love. People are afraid of addiction, and it’s only when they’re addicted that they manage to let go of it.
‘I heard about a guy who managed to free himself of his addiction and now I’m going to his funeral.’
Complicity relates to accomplices. An extreme complicity is all you need to die. And also to live.
‘I have an infallible memory but I no longer remember why.’
Happiness doesn’t belong to those who live better. Happiness belongs to those who forget better (remember this always).
‘Hi, I’m Jaime and I no longer know my name.’
You’re the best person I have in me.
I love you and it’s the fault of the person who loves me so much but it isn’t you, the cruelty of the world is that there are so many people and only you are you, and I can’t forgive God for having created millions of possibilities, millions of arms and embraces, and then so many lips, and none of them gives me what you give me, the cruelty of love is that it takes away from us the possibility of another love, how many lives would I need to find you again?
The Day I Found You Page 29