“Bow . . .—plates, I mean.”
“Me too. It seems like bowls can fit more, but it’s just on the bottom, with plates everything gets spread out so you can see everything you’ve got right away. Don’t cucumbers seem inreal?”
“Unreal.”
“Why do you think?”
“That’s how you say it.”
“No, why did you also think that cucumbers seem inreal? Me too. You look at them and you can see part of the other side, it’s got the exact same pattern all over, it’s cold in your mouth, it sounds kind of like glass when you chew it. Don’t you think it seems like someone invented cucumbers?”
“It does.”
“Where did they invent beans and rice?”
“Here.”
“Or at that Arabian place, like Pedrinho said about something else?”
“Here.”
“At the Sorveteria Gatão the ice cream tastes good because it tastes just like the color. Does meat taste like meat to you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Yeah right! I bet: does it taste like the meat hanging in the butcher’s shop?!”
“No.”
“And not even like the meat we’re talking about. It doesn’t taste like when you say meat has vitamins.”
“Don’t talk so much, eat up.”
“But you’re giving me that look, but it’s not to make me eat, it’s because you’re liking me so much, did I guess it?”
“You guessed it. Eat up, Paulinho.”
“That’s all you ever think about. I was talking a lot so you wouldn’t only think about food, but you just can’t forget about it.”
Forgiving God
(“Perdoando Deus”)
I was walking along down Avenida Copacabana and looking distractedly at buildings, patches of sea, people, not thinking about anything. I still hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t actually distracted, my guard was just down, I was being something quite rare: free. I saw everything, and at random. I was gradually starting to notice that I was noticing things. My freedom then grew slightly more intense, without ceasing to be freedom. It wasn’t a tour du propriétaire, none of it was mine, nor did I want it to be. But I seemed to feel satisfied with what I saw.
I then had a feeling I’ve never heard of before. Out of pure affection, I felt I was the mother of God, I was the Earth, the world. Out of pure affection, really, without any arrogance or glory, without the least sense of superiority or equality, I was, out of affection, the mother of whatever exists. I also discovered that if all this “really was” what I was feeling—and not a potentially mistaken feeling—that God without pride or pettiness would let someone show affection toward Him, and with no obligation to me. The intimacy with which I felt affection would be acceptable to Him. The feeling was new to me, but quite assured, and it hadn’t occurred before only because it couldn’t have existed. I know that we love whatever is God. With serious love, solemn love, respect, fear, and reverence. But I’d never heard of maternal affection for Him. And as my affection for a son doesn’t reduce him, it even expands him, in this way, being mother of the world was my merely free love.
And that was when I almost stepped on a huge dead rat. In less than a second I was bristling from the terror of living, in less than a second I was shattering in panic, and doing my best to rein in my deepest scream. Nearly running in fright, blind in the midst of all those people, I wound up on the next block leaning on a pole, violently shutting my eyes, which no longer wanted to see. But the image stuck to my eyelids: a big red-haired rat, with an enormous tail, its feet crushed, and dead, still, tawny. My boundless fear of rats.
Trembling all over, I managed to keep on living. Utterly bewildered I kept walking, my mouth made childish with surprise. I tried to sever the connection between the two facts: what I’d felt minutes earlier and the rat. But it was no use. At least contiguity linked them. The two facts illogically had one nexus. It shocked me that a rat had been my counterpart. And suddenly revolt seized me: so couldn’t I surrender heedlessly to love? What was God trying to remind me of? I’m not someone who needs to be reminded that inside everything is blood. Not only do I not forget the blood inside but I allow and desire it, I am too much blood to forget blood, and for me the spiritual word has no meaning, and neither does the earthly word. There was no need to throw a rat in my bare naked face. Not right then. What could easily have been taken into account was the terror that has hounded me and made me delirious since childhood, rats have mocked me, in the past of the world rats have devoured me quickly and furiously. So that’s how it was?, with me roaming through the world not asking for a thing, not needing a thing, loving out of pure, innocent love, and God shows me his rat? God’s coarseness hurt and insulted me. God was a brute. As I walked with my heart closed off, my disappointment was as inconsolable as disappointment was only when I was a child. I kept walking, trying to forget. But the only thing that occurred to me was revenge. But what sort of revenge could I wreak on an All-Powerful God, on a God who even with a crushed rat could crush me? My vulnerability of a solitary creature. In my craving for revenge I couldn’t even face Him, since I didn’t know wherein He most resided, in what thing He most likely resided, and would I, glaring angrily at this thing, would I see Him? in the rat? in that window? in the stones on the ground? Inside me is where He no longer was. Inside me is where I no longer saw Him.
Then the revenge of the weak occurred to me: ah, that’s how it is? then I won’t keep any secret, and I’m going to tell. I know it’s low to enter Someone’s private life, and then to tell his secrets, but I’m going to tell—don’t tell, strictly out of affection don’t tell, keep the things He’s ashamed of to yourself—but I’m going to tell, yes, I’m going to tell everyone what happened to me, he won’t get away with it this time, just for this, I’ll tell what He did, I’ll ruin His reputation.
. . . but who knows, maybe it happened because the world too is a rat, and I had thought I was ready for the rat too. Because I imagined myself stronger. Because I was making an incorrect mathematical calculation about love: I thought that, in adding up everything I understood, I loved. I didn’t know that, adding up everything you don’t understand is the way to truly love. Because I, just from having felt affection, thought that loving is easy. It’s because I didn’t want solemn love, not understanding that solemnity ritualizes incomprehension and transforms it into an offering. And also because I’ve always tended to fight a lot, fighting is my way of doing things. It’s because I always try to handle things my way. It’s because I still don’t know how to give in. It’s because deep down I want to love the thing I would love—and not what is. It’s because I’m still not myself, and so the punishment is loving a world that’s not itself. It’s also because I offend myself for no reason. It’s because I might need to be told brutally, since I’m so stubborn. It’s because I’m so possessive and therefore was asked with some irony if I’d also like a rat for myself. It’s because I can only be mother of all things once I can pick up a rat with my hand. I know I’ll never be able to pick up a rat without dying my worst death. So, then, let me resort to the Magnificat that chants blindly about whatever is not known or seen. And let me resort to the formalism that pushes me away. Because formalism hasn’t wounded my simplicity, but my pride, since it’s through the pride of being born that I feel so intimate with the world, but this world that I nevertheless extracted from myself with a mute scream. Because the rat exists as much as I do, and perhaps neither I nor the rat are meant to be seen by our own selves, distance makes us equal. Perhaps I have to accept above all else this nature of mine that desires the death of a rat. Perhaps I consider myself too refined just because I haven’t committed my crimes. Just because I’ve restrained my crimes, I think I’m made of innocent love. Perhaps I cannot look at the rat as long as I don’t look without outrage upon this soul of mine that is merely restrained. Perhaps I must call “world�
�� this way I have of being a bit of everything. How can I love the greatness of the world if I cannot love the extent of my nature? As long as I imagine that “God” is good just because I am bad, I won’t be loving anything: that will merely be my way of denouncing myself. I, who without even at least searching myself thoroughly, have already chosen to love my opposite, and I want to call my opposite God. I, who will never get used to myself, was hoping the world wouldn’t scandalize me. Because I, who only ever got myself to submit to me, since I am so much more inexorable than I, I was hoping to compensate myself for me with an earth less violent than I. Because as long as I love a God just because I don’t want myself, I’ll be a loaded die, and the game of my greater life won’t be played. As long as I invent God, He doesn’t exist.
One Hundred Years of Forgiveness
(“Cem anos de perdão”)
If you’ve never stolen anything you won’t understand me. And if you’ve never stolen roses, then you can never understand me. I, as a child, used to steal roses.
In Recife there were countless streets, rich people’s streets, lined with mansions set amid extensive gardens. A little friend and I would often play at deciding whose mansions they were. “That white one’s mine.” “No, I already said the white ones are mine.” “But that one’s not all white, it’s got green windows.” Sometimes we’d halt for a long time, our faces pressed to the wrought-iron fence, staring.
That’s how it started. During one of those games of “that’s my house,” we stopped before one that looked like a small castle. Behind it you could see an immense orchard. And, in the front, in well-tended beds, the flowers were planted.
Yes, but standing apart in its bed was a single rose, only partway open and bright pink. I was dumbstruck, staring in admiration at that proud rose that wasn’t even a fully formed woman yet. And then it happened: from the bottom of my heart, I wanted that rose for myself. I wanted it, oh how I wanted it. And there was no way to get it. If the gardener had been around, I’d have asked for the rose, though I knew he’d have kicked us out the way they do with street kids. There was no gardener in sight, nobody. And the windows, because of the sun, were shuttered. It was a street where no trams passed and cars rarely ever appeared. In between my silence and the rose’s, was my desire to possess it as my very own. I wanted to be able to pluck it. I wanted to sniff it until I felt my vision go dark from so much heady perfume.
And then I couldn’t take it any longer. The plan formed in me instantaneously, full of passion. Yet, like the good schemer I was, I coolly devised a plan with my little playmate, explaining her role: to keep watch on the windows or for the gardener’s still-possible approach, to watch out for the odd passerby on the street. Meanwhile, I slowly opened the slightly rusty gate, already anticipating the slight creaking. I cracked it just enough for my slender girlish body to slip past. And, treading lightly but quickly, I walked over the gravel surrounding the flower beds. The time it took to reach the rose was a century of my heart pounding.
Then I’m standing before it at last. I stop for a second, dangerously, because up close it’s even more beautiful. Finally I start to break its stem, scratching myself on its thorns, and sucking the blood off my fingers.
And, all of a sudden—it’s completely in my hand. The dash back to the gate also had to be noiseless. I slipped through the gate I had left cracked open, clasping the rose. And then both pale, the rose and I, we literally ran away from the house.
What was I doing with the rose? I was doing this: it was mine.
I took it home, put it in a glass of water, where it stood magnificent, its petals thick and velvety, in several shades of pale pink. Its color grew more concentrated at the center and its heart looked almost red.
It felt so good.
It felt so good that I simply began stealing roses. The process was always the same: the girl on the lookout, while I went in, broke off the stem and fled with the rose in my hand. Always with my heart pounding and always with that glory that no one could take away from me.
I used to steal pitanga berries too. There was a Presbyterian church near my house, surrounded by a tall, green hedge so dense that it blocked the church from view. I never managed to catch sight of it, except for one corner of the roof. The hedge was a pitanga shrub. But pitangas are fruits that hide: I couldn’t see a single one. Then, looking around first to make sure no one was coming, I stuck my hand between the iron bars, plunged it into the hedge and groped around until my fingers felt the moisture of the tiny fruit. Several times in my haste, I smashed an overripe pitanga with my fingers, which ended up looking bloodstained. I picked several that I ate right there, even a few that were too green, which I tossed aside.
No one ever found out. I don’t regret it: rose and pitanga thieves get one hundred years of forgiveness. It’s the pitangas themselves, for example, that beg to be picked, instead of ripening and dying on the branch, virgins.
A Hope
(“Uma esperança”)
Right here at home a hope landed. Not the classic kind that so often proves illusory, though even still it always sustains us. But the other kind, very concrete and green: the cricket.*
There came a muffled cry from one of my sons:
“A hope! and on the wall right over your chair!” His excitement also unites the two kinds of hope, he’s already old enough for that. The surprise was mostly mine: a hope is a secret thing and usually lands right on me, without anyone’s knowing, and not above my head on a wall. A minor fuss: but it was undeniable, there it was, and as skinny and green as could be.
“It hardly has a body,” I complained.
“All it has is a soul,” my son explained and, since children are a surprise to us, I realized in surprise that he was talking about both kinds of hope.
It was walking slowly on the threads of its long legs, among the pictures on the wall. Three times it stubbornly attempted to find a way out between two pictures, three times it had to backtrack. It was a slow learner.
“It’s pretty dumb,” the boy remarked.
“Don’t I know it,” I answered somewhat tragically.
“Now it’s looking for a different way, look, poor thing, how it’s hesitating.”
“I know, that’s just how it goes.”
“It seems like hopes don’t have eyes, Mama, it uses its antennae.”
“I know,” I went on, unhappier still.
There we sat, for I don’t know how long, looking. Keeping watch as they kept watch over the first sparks in the hearth in Greece or Rome so that the fire wouldn’t go out.
“It forgot it can fly, Mama, and it thinks all it can do is walk slowly like that.”
It really was walking slowly—could it be hurt? Ah no, if it were it would be bleeding, that’s how it’s always been with me.
That was when, catching a whiff of a world that’s edible, out from behind a picture came a spider. Not a spider, but it struck me as “the” spider. Walking along its invisible web, it seemed to glide softly through the air. It wanted the hope. But we wanted it too and, oh! God, we wanted less than to eat it. My son went to get the broom. I said weakly, confused, not knowing whether the time had unfortunately come to lose this hope:
“It’s just that we’re not supposed to kill spiders, I’ve heard they’re good luck . . .”
“But it’ll pulverize the hope!” the boy answered fiercely.
“I need to speak to the maid about dusting behind the pictures,” I said, sensing that the statement was out of place and catching a certain weariness in my voice. Then I daydreamed a little about how I’d be curt and mysterious with the maid: I’d only say: would you please clear the way for any hope.
The boy, once the spider was dead, made a pun, on the cricket and our hope. My other son, who was watching television, heard it and laughed with pleasure. There was no doubt: hope had alighted in our home, soul and body.
But how lovely the hope is: it alights more than it lives, it’s a little green skeleton, and so delicately formed that it explains why I, who like catching things, never tried to catch it.
Once, incidentally, I remember now, a hope much smaller than this one, landed on my arm. I didn’t feel a thing, light as it was, I only noticed its presence when I saw it. I grew bashful at its delicateness. I didn’t move my arm and thought: “Now what? what should I do?” I did nothing. I held extremely still as if a flower had sprung up inside me. I no longer remember what happened next. And, I think nothing happened.
* Esperança means both “hope” and “cricket.”
The Servant
(“A criada”)
Her name was Eremita.* She was nineteen. A confident face, a few pimples. Where was her beauty? There was beauty in that body that was neither ugly nor pretty, in that face in which a sweetness eager for greater sweetnesses was its sign of life.
As for beauty, I don’t know. There may not have been any, though indefinite features attract as water attracts. There was, indeed, living substance, nails, flesh, teeth, a mixture of resistances and weaknesses, constituting a vague presence that nonetheless immediately solidified into an inquisitive and readily helpful head, as soon as someone uttered a name: Eremita. Her brown eyes were untranslatable, at odds with her whole face. As independent as if they’d been planted in the flesh of an arm, and were peering at us from there—open, moist. She was made entirely of a sweetness bordering on tears.
Sometimes she’d answer with a servant’s ill-breeding. She’d been like that since childhood, she explained. Not that it stemmed from her character. For there was nothing hard about her spirit, no perceptible law. “I got scared,” she’d say naturally. “It made me hungry,” she’d say, and whatever she said was always indisputable, who knows why. “He respects me a lot,” she’d say of her fiancé and, though it was a borrowed and conventional expression, whoever heard it entered a delicate world of animals and birds, where all respected each other. “I’m embarrassed,” she’d say, and smile, entangled in her own shadows. If her hunger was for bread—which she ate quickly as if it could be taken away—her fear was of thunder, her embarrassment was of speaking. She was kind, honest. “God forbid, right?” she’d say absently.
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