Harmada

by João Gilberto Noll

  This invisible response left me unsatisfied, it’s true, but at the same time, it made me say, repeatedly: Man, oh man!

  And it was through speaking to this one that I managed to get up, with a lot of effort…my joints, my injuries hurt me, but I spoke to this one, kept my eyes on the playing children, and said things like: It hurts, but I’ll get out of here, look, I’m getting up, man, I’m going to get in line, I’m going to ask why it was formed, look, I won’t squander this meager strength that has stayed with me, man, believe me, I’m going to go slowly, I won’t waste the slightest bit of my scarce breath, oh man, see how I can walk? Oh!

  I asked an old man. He was swollen, dirty, tattered.

  He said, frowning his wrinkled face:

  “What? You’re not hungry?”

  “I don’t know. I just woke up… I don’t know yet…”

  “They’re handing out soup over there. They call it the soup of the poor,” the old man said, wiping his forehead with a greasy rag.

  The noise of children playing surrounded us.

  “Of the poor,” I repeated after some delay.

  “Yeah, the soup of the poor,” he reaffirmed.

  A child ran up and hugged my legs.

  “Of the poor,” I repeated in disbelief.

  “Yes, my son, of the poor, of the poor,” the old man said, turning toward the front of the line for the soup.

  “I don’t know if I’m hungry yet,” I said, going to the back of the line.

  In ten, fifteen minutes, a real crowd had formed in line behind me. I asked the old lady in front of me if I could protect myself from the sun under her umbrella. Bandages covered her legs. The line barely moved. The early afternoon sun made the grass shimmer. Children’s bodies—the smallest ones—flickered in the heat.

  Finally, I found myself in front of the man who poured ladles of soup into empty cans that still had their old labels attached—mine used to be peaches.

  “But the soup is gone,” the man said, seeing me with the can in my hand.

  I peered into the big pot. It was completely empty. And right then, I felt the vacuum in my stomach, that famous hunger.

  “When will they have more?” I asked.

  The man let out a resounding laugh. I immediately realized why: another big pot was coming, full of the precious steaming liquid. The man was prone to jokes. If I could—I murmured to the invisible presence that was accompanying me that day—if only I could…but I can’t do anything, so I’ll just resign myself to some soup.

  An eye full of discharging rheum was spying on me from behind a tree. Only one eye—I could not see the other, hidden behind the trunk. The eye discharged, but I now realize it wasn’t rheum precisely; the eye suppurated, terrible secretions hardening around it, and the other eye suddenly came into view, it had the same condition as the first eye, two sickly eyes looking at me. They belonged to a young man, I saw, a young man who, like me, sipped soup. He emerged from his hiding place with his can already empty. I kept on sipping my thin broth of carrot and turnip.

  “Don’t you want to treat your injuries?” the young man asked.

  I asked him who could help me. He told me there was a place next to a church nearby. The church called the Temple of Gentleness.

  “I go there every Sunday, and today is Sunday, so I’m going to take care of my eyes…so much stuff comes out of them…my vision is fading…”

  That’s how the young man in front of me was. I finished the soup, reached out my arm, and I asked him to help me get up. Then I followed him to the Temple of Gentleness.

  A man spoke to the crowded church. The church was large, enormous, almost a sanctuary sitting in the middle of an endless plain covered with short bushes. The man spoke:

  “Work removes the decay that insists on lurking around. Without work, we are reptiles crawling insanely in the opposite direction of time. Without work, the minutes imprison us and hold us back as if we’re trying to find a childhood that cannot lead to thriving in any future, a sterile childhood, almost like the darkness before birth. Without work, our hands, which should be involved in the operations of life, touch the deceptive surface of idleness instead, letting themselves be swallowed without even realizing it.”

  I looked at the palm of my hand with its wide-open wound, vaguely obscene. I looked into the eyes of the young man who carried the viruses of the world, and I wondered if the sermon didn’t especially befit us.

  The man now called on the faithful to sing the “Song of the Infirm.”

  On the way out of the religious service, showers greeted the surrounding plain, but the sky at the horizon was blue, and to the right, where the clouds seemed to originate, a pale rainbow had taken shape.

  “So much time spent waiting, so much time,” the young man said, coming down the stairs next to me.

  “Indeed, so much time,” I confirmed, feeling that strange shiver in my spine.

  We entered the room where the sick were receiving their diagnosis: auscultations, quick outpatient surgeries, bandaging, attentive faces for desperate confessions. Children were crying all over the ample room. Disease and faith abounded.

  They bandaged my whole body, but didn’t prescribe me anything. They spoke only of the Father. They replied with Him to every moan, every woe.

  “Oh Father, oh Father…”

  “What?” asked the man who was putting the bandages on me.

  “Nothing, I didn’t say anything,” I said, knowing all along that I had said it. But I’d said it to my invisible friend because I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to place my body into someone’s care, to learn the language of this environment so I could tell them something.

  “Oh Father, oh Father,” I repeated without externalizing it, feeling the mute vibration in my throat.

  I had lost sight of the young man who’d first brought me to the Temple of Gentleness. I looked for him everywhere; I couldn’t find him. I asked a girl who was sitting at a table by the door. No, she had not seen anyone like the person I was painstakingly attempting to describe.

  “If he’s the person I think he is,” she suddenly snapped, “that young man wouldn’t have come here today because he’s been completely blind since yesterday.”

  “Completely blind, man, oh man,” I stammered, walking away on the still-damp plain.

  There are so many things I don’t understand yet, I thought. Even though they’re happening so close to where I live. This plain, for example… And a sheet of newspaper came flying, hitting my legs. I grabbed it: first, I lifted it against the sun, as if intending to make a shade; then, I brought it close to my eyes, real close—for some time now, letters have been a bit washed-out for me, middle-age stuff.

  It was a page of job listings. One of them was looking for someone with experience in typing and office chores.

  It was the office of a salesman. His highest achievement: representing a canned food company from the capital, from Harmada. He sold those canned goods throughout the whole region, an old man, and he took my hand with frailty: Just a few more years here, in this profession, I am a widower with no children, he said, then I’ll retire, I’ll go live by the ocean, where I’m from…

  I got the job. I typed letters, sales reports, orders, and when I came home—to a little cottage I’d rented down the road—in the evenings, I opened cans of sausages, corn, and cucumbers, and that was my dinner. Then I’d watch a black-and-white television that my boss had given me, and then…then I’d masturbate with a porn magazine, all smudged with its pages falling apart.

  An attractive woman is in front of me in my office.

  “Yes?” I ask.

  “Please, do you know where this address is?” she asks, showing me a little piece of paper.

  “It’s here, it’s right here, my dear, it’s here. Who do you want to talk to?”

  “My uncle Alexandre.”

  “Your uncle Alexandre is my boss. Sit down. He won’t be long.”

  Uncle Alexandre arrives. They greet
each other with some effusion.

  They leave and go into an adjoining room. They talk in a halftone. I go back to work, tap-tap-tap on the keyboard. I’m a man, she’s a woman, a minute of meditation, stretching my tired fingers: Why don’t I get married?

  Jane is her name. Everyone has a name, and I must proclaim hers, hers is… JANE!

  I’m marrying Jane today, exactly three months after she arrived and showed me the address where we had both found ourselves at that very moment.

  She’s wearing a veil, a satin train. I’m waiting for her at the altar, navy-blue suit, red tie, oh man, my dear, my friend, my brother…

  The “Bridal Chorus,” and here she comes; I take her hand, there’s a party outside, the whole region attends, we dance the waltz, it’s called “Ode to a Summer,” guests all around us applaud; I get excited, my dear, I’ll tell you, I get excited, I don’t know how I get out of that dance without my groin engorged but I manage to; and I take the bride with me, and here in my cottage—nicer now thanks to my boss—with a double bed, a blender, pans, a picture on the wall depicting the Alps’ immense whiteness—here, in this cottage, I start undressing the bride with all my lust, and here I go licking her body, and she says don’t, baby, don’t, not yet, I say yes, yes, baby, yes, and I feel her pussy getting wet, it’s almost nothing, it’s everything, I say, and then, like a poor animal that has nothing else to do but come, I come, yes, my friend, I come…

  Things weren’t just all orgasms for me from that night on, but I can’t deny that I tried to find any opportunity to encounter that flame of desire burning inside me. Oh, that devilish flame, even if just fleetingly, and every time I took a bath and went to hang the towel on the clothesline in the backyard I looked absentmindedly into the air around me, especially if I happened to glance toward the trees past the neighbor’s yard—that yard with its chickens, pig, and tired horse—if I looked at those trees past the neighbor’s yard, unintentionally, of course, the trees would seem to respond to me, and a tiny oval shape amid all that greenery would glow.

  But that secret party never lasted long. The air would suddenly seem to fade a little; it could no longer sustain itself.

  Jane wanted to have kids. Fill the house with children. But, two and a half years later—nothing. Jane did all the medical exams. The problem wasn’t with her. So it was my turn.

  I sat in front of a doctor wearing a white coat. I hate doctors. I’d rather dig my own grave. I didn’t need anyone trying to understand what I had. I’d rather have worms diagnose my diseases than have to face the supposedly superior look of a doctor. I didn’t want to subject myself to clinical analysis or fill out medical forms. Let me die before I fall into the hands of a doctor. Let me die one minute before the guy in his white coat announces my diagnosis.

  But Jane had pressured me so exasperatingly that I ended up in front of a doctor that late afternoon.

  “Bring me your sperm in this bottle.”

  When I got home, Jane was out. I locked myself in the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and started playing with my dick: foreskin up, foreskin down.

  Jane came back and started knocking on the bathroom door, asking about my conversation with the doctor, telling me she had a right to know.

  My cock began to grow. A gush was supposed to come, which I’d take to the doctor so he could tell me if I was sterile.

  Jane was yelling that I should stop pretending I was dead in the bathroom, and that if I didn’t want to tell her about my conversation with the doctor, I should at least say something to her, like good afternoon, or even give her a kiss, which she had stopped asking me for altogether, they had become a luxury item lately.

  My cock was not as thick and long as it used to be; it no longer stayed in the right position before the gravitational force of a pussy—middle-age stuff—but even with Jane knocking on the door, it reached its apex in that bathroom, and the spurt that was about to issue from it would allow us to know, at last, if my cum was any good, if the millions of spermatozoa I was about to explode into the little bottle would be enough to make my heir or not, oh Jane, oh Jane, don’t piss me off, Jane, I shouted, ejaculating into the bottle.

  “What did you say?” She asked me in tears, still knocking on the door.

  “I said God exists.” Wiping the head of my cock with toilet paper.

  Days later:

  “Your sperm count is not enough for fertilization,” the doctor said.

  Three months later, Uncle Alexandre, my boss, died. I arrive at the office at the same time as usual and go to the bathroom, but the door’s locked.

  “Anybody in there?” I ask.

  Nobody answers. I knock on the door. I call for the old man. Nothing. I knock again and again. I break down the door. My boss is there, sitting on the toilet and leaning against the wall, pants down to his ankles, head bowed. I lift his head and his hard eyes land on my eyes—they seem to be asking me for help. His body slumps to the side. I struggle to return him to sitting position.

  The wake. Jane holding a rosary. I lift the veil that covers the dead man’s face to shoo a fly away.

  Jane goes to the chapel door and stays there, as if she is listening to singing of the cicadas. I arrange a flower in the casket. Inadvertently, I touch the old man’s knee. I need to pee, so I ask the young man in charge of the mortuary chapel where the bathroom is. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and it’s so hot that I decide, sitting on the toilet, to take my shirt off. I take a nap.

  “Where’s that employee of the deceased?” I hear a voice ask. I shake out of my nap.

  It’s the priest, who has arrived to send the body off. Old ladies begin their crying.

  “Our Lady of the Amazing Promises…”

  “Pray for us…”

  The priest continues speaking. For fifteen long minutes.

  I grab one of the coffin handles. I help carry it. I don’t recognize any of the other pallbearers.

  Jane doesn’t cry. I notice that she looks, without hiding it, at a young man who had held one of the other handles. I bet he’s not even twenty. He has a scar above his left eyebrow. When it’s time to leave the cemetery, Jane gets in his car. A beige Volkswagen, a bit beat up.

  In a matter of hours, I’ve lost my job and my wife.

  I go to the office to pack up my things, which there aren’t a lot of. I wish I never had to step back into the house I lived in with Jane. But I decide to go anyway. There are two, three things I don’t want to lose.

  Jane isn’t home. God only knows where she went with that stud who helped me carry the coffin.

  I left a note for Jane. I didn’t have to. But there I was, writing some foolish words that would never make any difference in any situation anywhere in the world.

  Before leaving the house, I took one last look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I was sweating a lot around my neck and chest. A drop of sweat hung from my earlobe, like an earring. One could say I was a man with no more secrets: not the residual clarity of spirit I had from the good old times with Jane; nor a seemingly natural sadness in this moment. In this light, I saw myself as a serious man, trying to brush from my shoulders the dust of the storms I had known so far.

  In the mirror I was that man: almost someone else, someone I hadn’t had a chance to know yet.

  I left with an old suitcase. A little smaller than a suitcase, perhaps merely a briefcase.

  I went to the bus station and sat on a bench. The station manager saw me and sat next to me. He was well known in the area; people said he was queer. He said: you’re all sweaty. I said: yes, I am. He said: life gives us surprises. I said: that some content of our composition is alcohol is undeniable. He said: do you want a bath, a beer? I live here, in the bus station building itself. I said: a shower would do me right, we’ll see about the beer later.

  We climbed the stairs that led to his apartment. He turned on the shower and showed me how much water came out.

  I felt refreshed after the shower. I stood at the window. Downstai
rs, my bus was leaving. The station manager approached the window, rubbing his arm against mine, as if unintentionally. I pretended I didn’t notice.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Where?”

  “Nowhere.”

  We drank beer. I lay down on the couch, drunkenly. The music was over.

  Evening was falling when I opened my eyes. The station manager wasn’t there anymore. I went back to the window. Fans of Eldorado were boarding a bus, several of them wearing the team jersey, others wrapped in the green and black flag. On the sidewalk, a boy who looked like he was ten or eleven stared at me as he hummed the team’s anthem: The magnificent green explodes in victory.

  I took my briefcase and went downstairs. I asked the station manager where everybody was going. It was an important game for Eldorado in the city of Chaves, a few miles away.

  I got on the bus. Everyone was shouting. A street vendor passed cans of beer through the window.

  Less than an hour later, there I was in the stadium… A waiter in a threadbare white shirt offered me whiskey he was carrying on a tray.

  “Lots of ice,” I said.

  I was sitting in the bleachers. Bars separated my section from the numbered chairs. The waiter was on the side with the chairs, so he passed me a plastic cup of whiskey through the bars.

  “More ice?” I asked.

  Goal! The whole stadium screamed. It was the third goal from Eldorado, and the other team hadn’t scored any.

  The waiter turned his back to serve another customer—he hadn’t heard me asking for more ice.

  Eldorado, of course, wins. I wait for the stadium to empty, and only then do I leave. The rain starts to fall, relieving the heat.

  At the stadium exit, I step in mud. I walk toward a lake nearby.

  I get down on my knees in the mud; I lie on my stomach; the left side of my face wallows.

  Then I roll on my back. I tear open my shirt, ripping off the buttons. I use all my strength to destroy what’s left of my shirt and pants. There is a moon, I see.