Harmada

by João Gilberto Noll

  “Yeah, I remember,” Bruce says with a little sigh. “I got on a plane to Dallas, and two days later she died…”

  “And I remember waiting for you at that hotel in Washington so we could resume our trip together.”

  “And I picked up the little box with my mother’s ashes and sent it to Harmada with a flight attendant friend of mine. I gave him the key to my apartment in Harmada and asked him to put the box on the desk next to my father’s picture. Then I flew back to Washington…”

  “Yes, and we continued with the trip…”

  “And when we got back to Harmada, a month later, you and I went to the cemetery in Alvedo to bury her ashes…”

  “I remember…”

  We keep silent for a minute.

  (Out on the sidewalk, a few steps from the hotel, there was a lopsided vending machine selling Coca-Cola. Nobody was on the streets of Washington—Labor Day weekend. Just the vending machine in the middle of the sidewalk, late afternoon. I go over and put coins in the slot. A can of Coke drops. I’m waiting for Bruce, who went to Dallas to see his mother die.)

  “Huh?” Bruce asks.

  “No, nothing,” I say.

  The rain had passed. From where we lay, we could see the stars in the sky.

  “The rain stopped,” he said.

  “And we never again heard of an earthquake in this country,” I said.

  For a while, we remained in such quietness that only our breath could be heard.

  Bruce broke the silence: “You know that day when I followed you?”

  “Yes, you followed me all over Harmada, walking…at the time, all I did was walk around town. I was already leaving the theater behind. Except for you and two or three other people, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to walk the streets, usually at a fast pace, pretending I was a citizen with errands to run. Then you decided to follow me to see where I was going. Eventually, you discovered that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I was only wandering the streets all day…”

  “Yeah, I followed you for hours on end, hiding behind trees and lampposts every time you seemed about to turn around, because you often looked over your shoulder as if you were engaging in suspicious activity… Until late one afternoon, I decided to go up to you, remember? I was about twenty meters behind you when I called out. You turned your head, startled, as if caught red-handed. You approached me like a guilty child would approach an adult who was her judge. Then, full of shame, almost babbling, you said hi…and we stayed on the street till late, talking. There was a warm breeze coming off the ocean that night, remember? And what struck me then was that during the course of our conversation, you became the same man you had been before, no longer self-absorbed, speaking of the theater with touching sympathy again, mentioning work you intended to pursue. Until we reached the outskirts of the city. A thicket, more precisely. Where you took off your clothes and spread mud all over your face and body. And you started dancing a demonic dance, too. You were that man, entirely covered in clay and mud and sludge, dancing naked in the moonlight in that little clearing in the thicket, remember?”

  “No, I don’t remember,” I confessed.

  “I remember that when we went into the thicket, there were two guys, which scared us at first. Yeah, just the fact that those two guys were in the bushes was enough to scare us. But they didn’t mean any harm, they were just two guys hooking up a little, their dirty little secret. One of them had a bad leg and a crutch. They had their pants down, the one with the crutch was leaning against a tree trunk, remember?”

  “No, I can’t remember…”

  “Well, I remember that after you danced for quite a while, all muddy, they nonchalantly came over to check us out. The crippled man—check this out—was selling candy, lollipops, and caramelized apples. He came over to us with a tray full of treats hanging from his neck by a wide strip of leather. So, the two of them were there, staring at you, full of wonder at your crazy dancing, at your body covered in mud, bits of grass, and leaves. I was staring too, not knowing what to think of all that. And that scene of you dancing was stuck in my head for days and days. First, it was your continuous and frantic movement, but then it was how you calmed down, became serene, with an expression of satiation on your face… That’s when I pointed to your clothes… and you put them on without even trying to get the mud off your body… Do you remember that I took you to my house that night?”

  “No, no, I don’t remember…”

  “Yeah, I took you to my place and helped you get in the bath. I rubbed your back, helping you remove the crusted clay from your hair, and once you were clean and dry, I offered you my pajamas to wear that night, but you said, simply, these exact words: No, I won’t stay. After that, I didn’t see you for twenty years, until now when you’ve returned…”

  At that point, Bruce fell silent. It was dawn; the building seemed dead. Silently leaning against Bruce, I felt an occasional tremble coming from his body, as if from a thorn that grew inside of him. Perhaps it was an unexpected memory, a reminiscence that was nothing more than complete madness…and then he’d seem to frown, hissing and threatening to shake himself out of his inertia, but, little by little, he’d eventually calm down again, and I’d go back to hearing that sad, mortal snoring—of a mortal who sleeps in oblivion just like any other, without the faintest resemblance to the one who, when awake, batters his most desperate passions and affronts his fate with the most haunting ideas and cruelest bursts of memory from the past.

  I was leaning against a man sleeping on the stone floor of an apartment’s laundry room in the city. I had returned to Harmada after so many years, and I had to continue my life here as if it were a brute, heavy thing—something that needed a certain cultivation to become agile enough to move on to different circumstances.

  There, leaning against Bruce’s body, sensing that sleep wouldn’t come that night, I thought how—now that I had returned to work—everything seemed to have smaller proportions compared to my time in the shelter.

  Even though I was far from engaging in any real activity in the shelter, and my ties to the outside world were practically nonexistent, by the time night fell I felt all wound-up by the day, and thought of sleep as a well-deserved achievement that would restore my strength so the next morning I could… I’d do very little, I admit, but still, I’d do things like strolling around the courtyard with stamina and desire.

  The desire I had now was to get up from that floor and prevent everything from being reduced to an imitation of sleep at the end of the day.

  The desire I had was, I had no doubt, to shake Bruce awake, pull him out of the sleep that so drastically curtailed his daytime demeanor, pull him out of that sleep and take him to drink in any bars we could find still open. I admit, wandering around the city at dawn looking for open bars didn’t seem like a good substitute for sleep, but at least we’d get to see the sunrise, and with any luck a police car would stop us and ask for identification. We’d confess to the worst offenses to the police, we’d throw up on their boots, we’d be arrested for resisting arrest, and through the cell bars we’d see a flock of migrating birds. Only then would we realize how much we battle with ourselves, vainly, and we’d surprise ourselves by being forced to learn—the two of us—patiently, a new choreography. You there, me here, both of us occupying, step by step, this one space that’s available to us, these seven by five meters, if only…

  “Bruce, wake up,” I say, rubbing his bald head.

  “Huh?” He opens his eyes.

  “Listen, keep calm, the time has come…”

  Bruce tries to sit up, fumbles some movements, as if he were getting out of a bed. I lean his head on my arm and say, firmly:

  “Listen, keep calm, the time has come…”

  “I know, I realize that. As I was taking the rutted trail that ended up here, I felt that something was about to happen, you know? I could have taken the smooth, well-paved main road, or I could have arrived tomorrow afternoon, but when the trail appeare
d, I thought: Why don’t I just go down here and precipitate everything, once and for all?”

  “It’s better this way, yes, Bruce…now you know where I am, I’m here, and we’re both ready now, there is nothing more to think about, to suspend, to evaluate…”

  “Yes, the time has come, I know, and it’s good that it’s daylight. Look at the sky, the light…”

  “Let’s go then…?”

  “Let’s go…”

  It must have been early afternoon when we woke again. Sunlight was scattered all over the laundry room. I noticed we were both sweating a lot. Then the phone rang.

  I answered it. It was a real estate agent. A nice, large, airy apartment had opened up. It faced a convent’s vegetable garden. I had been very interested in this apartment when I first saw it, but my hopes of getting it weren’t high since the agent said there were seven or eight people who’d applied. Well, the apartment, the agent told me over the phone, was mine.

  I went back to the laundry room. Bruce was still lying on the floor. He looked up at me.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I got a nice apartment. I can go get the keys today.”

  I took Bruce’s hand, helped him to his feet.

  Everything had suddenly become quite solemn and weird. I folded my clothes and deposited them somewhat ritualistically in a secondhand suitcase that I had recently bought. When I’d recognize a shirt or a pair of pants that I’d just put in my suitcase, I’d take a deep breath. Images came to me, such as of an old broom sweeping leaves from a sidewalk. Such representations, quick and unattached to any initiating motivation, made me feel as if I were executing a terminal task, as if, from that point on, I would never have to pack again.

  Bruce had left for the beach. There was nothing else to put in my suitcase except for my razor. I went to the bathroom to grab it. I saw myself in the mirror: stubble.

  As I passed the blade over my chin, I heard the apartment door open.

  Bruce was looking at me from the bathroom door, in shorts, with a towel around his shoulders.

  “Are you leaving now?” he asked.

  “I am.” I put two fingers on a tiny cut I’d just made near my right earlobe.

  “I’m going to get something to eat. There’s chicken thighs from yesterday in the fridge…then I’m going to try to sleep a little. I have a show tonight,” Bruce declared slowly.

  “I’ll finish shaving, go get the apartment keys from the realtor, and move in today…”

  When I opened the front door of Bruce’s building, a beggar was sitting on the steps.

  As I passed he grabbed my leg, asking for money for a loaf of bread.

  I shook my leg vehemently and shouted something like Let go, don’t fuck with me you scumbag, something like that. I noticed that he looked at me with an expression that was utterly incongruous with the way I had reacted. He simply didn’t seem capable of any resentment. He didn’t seem like he’d ever been in a beggar’s situation before. He remained there, prideful, looking at me as if I were merely some neighbor.

  I walked on. I walked with my suitcase in my hand. I began to whistle a song about love and sweetness. I went down Bruce’s street thinking that my suitcase wasn’t too heavy for just one hand, nothing that would indicate a permanent change of address.

  As that thought tickled the back of my neck, euphoria came over me, and I stopped and turned toward the beggar who was still sitting on the steps of Bruce’s building. Looking at him, I stuck my tongue out. I made a monkey face then a clown’s grimace, and I took a few ballet steps, making revolutions with the suitcase and going from one side of the street to the other, until I stopped, crossed my hands on my chest, and effected an air like Our Lady of Sorrows. I saw that it was only then that the beggar began laughing and laughing, clapping his hands…

  I kept going down the street, trying hard to imagine myself all the way down the road from the beggar’s point of view. I kicked an empty beer can I saw lying around. Then I turned the corner.

  The streets seemed even dirtier than usual. Sometimes I needed to step around plastic trash bags that were torn open in the middle of the sidewalk. In several of them, dogs and beggars were scrounging.

  I opened the door to my apartment. From the window in the living room, I could see a nun crouching in the convent’s garden, harvesting lettuce. A church bell rang three quick peals. The nun hurried into the convent carrying the lettuce in the apron that she wore.

  I heard a child whimper. The whining seemed to come from behind me, from within the building. I kneeled on the living room floor and opened the suitcase. The child produced a high-pitched sound. It seemed as if the child had already cried himself out, and now his strength was waning—he was only able to make short-breathed nasally sounds at ever-widening intervals.

  I took off my sweat-soaked shirt. I walked around the apartment. I went into one bedroom, then the other, vaguely inspecting the spaces, as if to match them with the images I had in my mind.

  “Is that child going to calm down?” I asked myself, walking through the apartment, taking the opportunity to listen to my own voice.

  At the kitchen door, I almost backed away. I almost backed away because what I discovered was too unexpected an occurrence. One with a severe chance of disturbing my settling in this apartment.

  The child I’d heard whimpering was in there. More precisely, he was standing in the kitchen, his arms hanging over the edges of the sink, his head lying across his arms.

  A boy of about seven years old. When he saw me, he stopped his grumbling and straightened up in front of me.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  At first glance, there was an impenetrable silence in him, somewhat disturbing, as if this silence were not just a childish whim but had a real function—the function of trying to drown an affliction.

  “Don’t you want to talk?” I insisted.

  Then I got down on my knees as if talking to a child much smaller than he actually was. Perhaps by kneeling I intended to infuse the situation with goodwill. Goodwill that might lead me to the proper tactic to disarm his secret weapons.

  “And your name?”

  Nothing.

  “What are you doing here? Hmm, let me see: You were born from the drain of this sink, and now you don’t know how to start living, right? No… that’s not it…now I know: You live alone here, and you’re afraid of me, this man who broke into your apartment…is that it?”

  Nothing. It seemed like the boy had cried without shedding a tear. His eyes were incredibly dry. No snot was coming from his nose.

  “So, you won’t talk?” I said, getting up.

  The boy stayed still. His body tensed up even more. His air got cloudier. His only other reaction was a nervous tic that made him momentarily squint as if he didn’t want to see anymore.

  “Not a word, huh? Won’t you tell me what you’re doing here in my apartment? Won’t you tell me where your mother and father are?”

  The boy remained impervious to the stranger who had just appeared in this kitchen. Perhaps the only thing he knew about himself was that kitchen in that apartment in the heart of Harmada represented his last refuge, which I was now threatening.

  “Don’t you want to know who I am?” I asked.

  By this point, the boy’s gaze wasn’t cloudy; it was much more than that. His gaze definitely looked lost, as if it belonged to a sphere whose contents were in no condition to be perceived by anything outside of it.

  “What if I’m a bad man?” I asked, and of course, I felt immediately clumsy.

  I needed to fix what I’d just said, but the right way of doing so didn’t come to me. I feared that the boy had already crossed some sort of frontier and I wouldn’t know how to get him back.

  Then I exploded. The same kind of explosion I’d had a few hours earlier in front of the beggar at Bruce’s building. It happened like a lightning bolt from a blue sky: I started to mimic a monkey’s expressions in front of the boy, making ears with my hands to m
ake them look flappy, then, suddenly, I erased that face and made another, quickly turning somersaults on the tiled floor. I gave all of myself in each act, rolling my eyes without any time to think about my next pantomime. Everything came out of me spontaneously—and, without thinking as always, I decided to stand before the boy and kiss his foot. Only then did the boy start letting out loud laughs, suddenly expelling a slurred and indecipherable language, accompanied by his laughter and guttural and rasping screams, which carried an utter euphoria in them. It was then that I understood that the boy was mute—his whole body shuddered with so much laughter and he tried to transmit his crazy joy through babbling. In the middle of my performances I said: Hey, you boy, now listen to what I have to tell you, but the boy kept laughing and laughing and in that moment he was looking at my left hand with its index finger accidentally kept aloft, pointing toward some higher place, so I repeated, Hey, you boy, now listen to what I have to tell you, but the boy kept laughing and laughing and I understood then that the boy was, as could be expected, deaf in addition to being mute. He showed no sign that he could hear me, so I went to the living room, scratched my head, and took a few severe steps around the space—purposeless and free now of any act or forced energy. I realized that the boy’s laughter had broken off little by little, but he hadn’t appeared in the living room yet; he stayed in the kitchen, his laughter quieting. I went to the window and saw that night had fallen; I scratched my head again and asked myself:

  “Who is this boy?”

  A nun was walking in the convent’s garden.

  “What will I do with him?”

  The stained-glass windows of the chapel were lit and voices began to sing.

  Yes, night was falling. And the lyrics of the chant coming out of the chapel talked precisely about the evening rest after a war-ridden day.

  “What will I do with him?”

  The voices were almost diaphanous. One could hear a cricket nearby, very low but still an incipient sound.