In another house, amid the rite of spring, the young bride-to-be experienced an ecstasy of compassion:
“Mama, look at her little picture, poor little thing! just look how sad she is!”
“But,” said the mother, firm and defeated and proud, “but it’s the sadness of an animal, not human sadness.”
“Oh! Mama,” said the girl discouraged.
It was in another house that a clever boy had a clever idea:
“Mama, what if I put that little African lady on Paulinho’s bed while he’s sleeping? when he wakes up, he’ll be so scared, right! he’ll scream, when he sees her sitting on the bed! And then we could play so much with her! we could make her our toy, right!”
His mother was at that moment curling her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, and she recalled something a cook had told her about her time at the orphanage. Having no dolls to play with, and maternity already pulsating terribly in the hearts of those orphans, the sly little girls had concealed another girl’s death from the nun. They hid the corpse in a wardrobe until the nun left, and played with the dead girl, giving her baths and little snacks, punishing her just so they could kiss her afterward, consoling her. This is what the mother recalled in the bathroom, and she lowered her pendulous hands, full of hairpins. And considered the cruel necessity of loving. She considered the malignity of our desire to be happy. Considered the ferocity with which we want to play. And how many times we will kill out of love. Then she looked at her clever son as if looking at a dangerous stranger. And she felt horror at her own soul that, more than her body, had engendered that being fit for life and happiness. That is how she looked, with careful attention and an uncomfortable pride, at that boy already missing his two front teeth, evolution, evolution in action, a tooth falling out to make way for one better for biting. “I’m going to buy him a new suit,” she decided looking at him deep in thought. Obstinately she dressed her gap-toothed son in nice clothes, obstinately wanting him to be squeaky clean, as if cleanliness would emphasize a calming superficiality, obstinately perfecting the courteous side of beauty. Obstinately distancing herself, and distancing him, from something that ought to be “dark like a monkey.” Then, looking in the bathroom mirror, the mother made a deliberately refined and polite smile, placing, between that face of hers with its abstract lines and Little Flower’s crude face, the insurmountable distance of millennia. But, after years of practice, she knew this would be one of those Sundays on which she’d have to conceal from herself the anxiety, the dream, and millennia lost.
In another house, beside a wall, they were engaged in the excited task of measuring Little Flower’s eighteen inches with a ruler. And that was where, delighted, they gasped in shock: she was even smaller than the keenest imagination could conceive. In each family member’s heart arose, nostalgic, the desire to have that tiny and indomitable thing for himself, that thing spared from being eaten, that permanent source of charity. The family’s eager soul wanted to devote itself. And, really, who hasn’t ever wished to possess a human being for one’s very own? Which, to be sure, wouldn’t always be convenient, there are times when you don’t want to have feelings:
“I bet if she lived here, it would lead to fighting,” said the father seated in his armchair, definitively turning the page of his newspaper. “In this house everything leads to fighting.”
“There you go again, José, always pessimistic,” said the mother.
“Mama, have you thought about how tiny her little baby would be?” the eldest daughter, age thirteen, said ardently.
The father stirred behind his newspaper.
“It must be the smallest black baby in the world,” replied the mother, oozing with pleasure. “Just imagine her serving dinner here at home! and with that enormous little belly!”
“Enough of this chatter!” the father growled.
“But you must admit,” said the mother unexpectedly offended, “that we’re talking about a rare thing. You’re the one being insensitive.”
And the rare thing herself?
Meanwhile, in Africa, the rare thing herself held in her heart—who knows, maybe it was black too, since a Nature that’s erred once can no longer be trusted—meanwhile the rare thing herself harbored in her heart something rarer still, like the secret of the secret itself: a tiny child. Methodically the explorer peered closely at the little belly of the smallest full-grown human being. In that instant the explorer, for the first time since he’d met her, instead of feeling curiosity or exaltation or triumph or the scientific spirit, the explorer felt distress.
Because the smallest woman in the world was laughing.
She was laughing, warm, warm. Little Flower was delighting in life. The rare thing herself was having the ineffable sensation of not yet having been eaten. Not having been eaten was something that, at other times, gave her the agile impulse to leap from branch to branch. But, in this moment of tranquility, amidst the dense leaves of the Central Congo, she wasn’t putting that impulse into action—and the impulse had become concentrated entirely in the smallness of the rare thing herself. And so she was laughing. It was a laugh that only one who doesn’t speak, laughs. That laugh, the embarrassed explorer couldn’t manage to classify. And she kept enjoying her own soft laughter, she who wasn’t being devoured. Not being devoured is the most perfect of feelings. Not being devoured is the secret goal of an entire life. So long as she wasn’t being eaten, her bestial laughter was as delicate as joy is delicate. The explorer was confounded.
Second of all, if the rare thing herself was laughing, it was because, within her smallness, a great darkness had sprung into motion.
It was that the rare thing herself felt her breast warmed with what might be called Love. She loved that yellow explorer. If she knew how to speak and told him she loved him, he’d puff up with vanity. Vanity that would shrivel when she added that she also loved the explorer’s ring very much and that she loved the explorer’s boots very much. And when he deflated in disappointment, Little Flower wouldn’t understand why. For, not in the slightest, would her love for the explorer—one might even say her “profound love,” because, having no other resources, she was reduced to profundity—for not in the slightest would her profound love for the explorer be devalued by the fact that she also loved his boots. There’s an old mistake about the word love, and, if many children have been born of this mistake, countless others have missed their only instant of being born merely due to a susceptibility that demands you be mine, mine! that you like me, and not my money. But in the humidity of the forest there are no such cruel refinements, and love is not being eaten, love is thinking a boot is pretty, love is liking that rare color of a man who isn’t black, love is laughing with the love of a ring that sparkles. Little Flower blinked with love, and laughed warm, tiny, pregnant, warm.
The explorer tried to smile back at her, without knowing exactly to what abyss his smile responded, and then got flustered as only a big man gets flustered. He pretended to adjust his explorer helmet, blushing bashfully. He turned a lovely color, his own, a greenish pink, like that of a lime at dawn. He must have been sour.
It was probably while adjusting his symbolic helmet that the explorer pulled himself together, severely regained the discipline of work, and recommenced taking notes. He’d learned some of the few words spoken by the tribe, and how to interpret their signals. He could already ask questions.
Little Flower answered “yes.” That it was very good to have a tree to live in, her own, her very own. For—and this she didn’t say, but her eyes went so dark that they said it—for it is good to possess, good to possess, good to possess. The explorer blinked several times.
Marcel Pretre had several difficult moments with himself. But at least he kept busy by taking lots of notes. Those who didn’t take notes had to deal with themselves as best they could:
“Because look,”—suddenly declared an old woman shutting the newspaper d
ecisively—“because look, all I’ll say is this: God knows what He’s doing.”
The Dinner
(“O jantar”)
He came into the restaurant late. He had certainly just been occupied with very important business. He might have been around sixty, was tall and corpulent, with white hair, bushy eyebrows and powerful hands. On one finger the ring of his might. He sat down, ample and solid.
I lost sight of him and while eating went back to observing the slim woman in the hat. She was laughing with her mouth full and her dark eyes sparkled.
Just as I raised my fork to my mouth, I looked over at him. There he sat with his eyes closed chewing his bread vigorously and mechanically, both fists clenched on the table. I kept eating and staring. The “garçon” was setting dishes on the tablecloth. But the old man kept his eyes shut. At one of the waiter’s livelier gestures he opened them so abruptly that this same movement was conveyed to his large hands and a fork dropped. The “garçon” whispered friendly words while stooping down to retrieve it; he didn’t respond. Because now awakened, he was suddenly turning his meat over, examining it vehemently, the tip of his tongue peeking out—he pressed on the steak with the back of his fork, nearly sniffed it, his mouth working in anticipation. And he began slicing it with a gratuitously vigorous movement of his whole body. Soon after he was lifting a bite to a certain level of his face and, as if he had to snatch it in mid-flight, gobbled it with a jerk of his head. I looked down at my plate. When I stared at him again, he was immersed in the full glory of his dinner, chewing with his mouth open, running his tongue over his teeth, his gaze fixed on the ceiling light. I was just about to slice my meat again, when I saw him stop entirely.
And as if he couldn’t stand it anymore—what?—he quickly grabs his napkin and presses it against his eye sockets with his hairy hands. I paused watchfully. His body was having trouble breathing, it was growing. He finally takes the napkin off his eyes and gazes numbly into the distance. He breathes while opening and shutting his eyelids excessively, wipes his eyes carefully and slowly chews the remaining food in his mouth.
A second later, however, he’s recomposed and hardened, he spears a forkful of salad with his whole body and eats hunched over, his chin active, the oil moistening his lips. He breaks off for a second, wipes his eyes again, shakes his head briefly—and another forkful of lettuce with meat is snatched in mid-air. He says to the passing “garçon”:
“This isn’t the wine I told you to bring.”
The very voice I’d been expecting of him: a voice that allows no possibility for rebuttal by which I saw that no one could ever do anything for him. Except obey.
The “garçon” left courteously holding the bottle.
But now the old man freezes again as if his chest were constricted and obstructed. His violent power quakes imprisoned. He waits. Until hunger seems to assault him and he starts chewing hungrily again, frowning. I was the one eating slowly, slightly nauseated without knowing why, participating in I didn’t know what. Suddenly he’s trembling all over, lifting the napkin to his eyes and pressing them with a brutality that transfixes me . . . I drop my fork on the plate with a certain decisiveness, I myself experiencing an unbearable tightness in my throat, furious, broken into submission. But the old man doesn’t let the napkin linger on his eyes. This time, when he pulls it off unhurriedly, his pupils are extremely sweet and tired, and before he wipes his face—I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the tear.
I hunch over my meat, lost. When I finally manage to look at him from the depths of my pale face, I see that he too has hunched over with his elbows propped on the table, head in his hands. And he just couldn’t stand it anymore. His bushy eyebrows were furrowed. The food must have got stuck right below his throat in the harshness of his emotion, for when he managed to go on he made a terrible gesture of effort to swallow and ran the napkin over his forehead. I couldn’t take it anymore, the meat on my plate was raw, I was the one who couldn’t take it anymore. Yet he—he was eating.
The “garçon” brought the bottle in a bucket of ice. I noted everything, indiscriminately: it was a different bottle, the waiter in coattails, the light haloing Pluto’s robust head that was now stirring with curiosity, gluttonous and intent. For an instant the “garçon” blocks my view of the old man and I see only the black wings of coattails: hovering over the table, he was pouring red wine into the glass and waiting with fervent eyes—because here was a guaranteed big tipper, one of those old men who are still at the center of the world and of power. The aggrandized old man took a confident sip, put the glass down and bitterly consulted the taste in his mouth. He smacked his lips together, clucked his tongue in disgust as if what was good was intolerable. I waited, the “garçon” waited, both leaning forward in suspense. Finally, he made a grimace of approval. The waiter bowed his shining head in subjection to this thanks, departed bowing, and I sighed in relief.
Now he was mingling the meat with sips of wine in that large mouth and his false teeth chomped heavily as I spied on him in vain. Nothing else was happening. The restaurant seemed to radiate with redoubled force under the clinking of glasses and cutlery; in the hard, brilliant corona of the room the murmurs ebbed and flowed in soft waves, the woman in the big hat smiling with her eyes half-closed, so slim and beautiful, the “garçon” slowly pouring wine into the glass. But now he gestures.
With his heavy, hairy hand, its palm so fatefully etched with lines, he makes a thinking gesture. He says in pantomime as much as he can, and I, I don’t understand. And as if he could no longer stand it—he put the fork down on his plate. This time you’ve really been caught, old man. He sits there breathing, done, noisy. Then he grabs his wine glass and drinks with his eyes closed, in resounding resurrection. My eyes sting and the brightness is loud, persistent. I am seized by the heaving ecstasy of nausea. Everything seems big and dangerous to me. The increasingly beautiful slim woman trembles, solemn, under the lights.
He’s finished. His face empties of expression. He closes his eyes, stretches out his jaw. I try to seize this moment, in which he no longer possesses his own face, to see at last. But it’s no use. The grand appearance that I see is unknown, majestic, cruel and blind. What I want to see directly, through the venerable elder’s extraordinary strength, doesn’t exist in this instant. He doesn’t want it to.
Dessert comes, some kind of mousse, and I am surprised by the decadence of his choice. He eats slowly, takes a spoonful and watches the sticky liquid drip. He ingests it all, however, grimaces and, enlarged, well-fed, pushes the plate away. Then, no longer hungry, the great horse rests his head on his hand. The first clearer sign appears. The old devourer of children is thinking in his depths. Blanching I watch him lift his napkin to his mouth. I imagine hearing a sob. We both sit in silence at the center of the room. Perhaps he’s eaten too quickly. Because, in spite of everything, you haven’t lost your hunger, have you!, I goaded him with irony, rage and exhaustion. But he was falling to pieces in plain sight. His features now sunken and demented, he swung his head from side to side, from side to side no longer restraining himself, lips compressed, eyes shut, rocking back and forth—the patriarch was crying inside. My anger was choking me. I saw him put his glasses on and age by several years. As he counted his change, he clicked his teeth while jutting out his chin, surrendering for an instant to the sweetness of old age. As for me, so intent on him had I been, that I hadn’t seen him take out his money to pay, nor examine the bill, and I hadn’t noticed the “garçon” returning with the change.
At last he took off his glasses, clicked his teeth, wiped his eyes while grimacing needlessly and painfully. He ran his square hand through his white hair, smoothing it powerfully. He stood holding the table’s edge with vigorous hands. And now, free of anything to lean on, he seems weaker, though still enormous and still capable of stabbing any one of us. With nothing for me to do about it, he puts on his hat caressing his tie in the mirror. He crosses the
luminous shape of the room, disappears.
But I am still a man.
Whenever they betrayed or murdered me, whenever someone leaves forever, or I lost the best of what I still had, or when I found out that I am going to die—I do not eat. I am not yet this power, this structure, this ruin. I push away the plate, reject meat and its blood.
Preciousness
(“Preciosidade”)
(for Mafalda)
Early in the morning it was always the same thing renewed: waking up. Which was languorous, unfurling, vast. Vastly she’d open her eyes.
She was fifteen years old and not pretty. But inside her scrawniness, the nearly majestic vastness in which she moved as within a meditation. And inside the haziness something precious. That never sprawled, never got involved, never got contaminated. That was intense as a jewel. Her.
She awoke before everyone else, since to get to school she’d have to catch a bus and a tram, which would take her an hour. Which would give her an hour. Of daydreaming keen as a crime. The morning wind violating the window and her face until her lips grew stiff, frozen. Then she’d smile. As if smiling were a goal in itself. All this would happen if she were lucky enough for “no one to look at her.”
When she awoke at dawn—gone that instant of vastness in which she fully unwound—she’d dress in a hurry, trick herself into thinking there wasn’t time for a shower, and her sleeping family had never guessed how few she actually took. Under the glare of the dining room light, she’d gulp down the coffee that the maid, scratching herself in the kitchen darkness, had warmed up. She hardly touched the bread that butter never softened. Her mouth fresh from fasting, books tucked under her arm, she’d finally open the door, cross the threshold of the house’s insipid warmth, dashing into the frosty fruition of the morning. Then she’d no longer hurry.
The Complete Stories Page 17