in the fading light

We sit on the wall at the door of the closing bar, slowly sipping the rest of the wine. She's from a Europe so cold that if you walk northward just a little bit more you'll be going south. The cultural differences on sharing one's pain, that's what we talk about. Here, pain, illnesses and suffering are favorite themes, mainly because they are thought to be alleviated, soothed by talking.
There, she says, on the contrary, speaking about your pain is seen as burdening the other with it, who has, as we all do, his own crux to bear. So one doesn't do it, to spare the other, who is grateful for it. While here, keeping your pain to yourself is considered a cruel thing, like cutting the other out of your life, not letting them in.

She speaks about her mother, who hid her illness until the very last, and then called her. Of the few but beautiful days they shared. Of how, in the last moments when the mother didn't respond anymore, the daughter suddenly found herself singing all the songs the mother had sung to her since she'd been a baby, the lullabies and the washing songs, the walking songs, the berry-picking songs. All the songs of her childhood poured out of her, the lyrics she hadn't even known she remembered, accompanying death as they had new life, and still will, and still do.  

quero o pão que nasce

causality of old love

Absent-minded he walks to the dressing-room, his body happily hurting in the lively way that is the real reason he exercices. Unexpected oriental music makes him turn his head. He stops. To his right the large ball-room is housing paradise. Rows and rows of houris, over a hundred of them! swinging  hips, curving slender backs lashed by long hair. Tender flowing beauty. Belly-dance workshop, a paper taped to the door announces. Hundred navels going fairy maelström.
Once somebody he loved had danced for him on a rooftop. Plump clumsy so daring the sun laughing high in her eyes.
He smiles, the decision he hesitates about for weeks suddenly taken. He is going to spend all his inheritance - to the last penny- on a ticket around the earth in that space shuttle.

1.

aproveita toda vertigem



-

qualquer coisa no ritmo

o homem sobe as escadas
é madrugada e volta do emprego
sobe as escadas passo leve
é novo ele e de dia dorme
todos os dias não
mas muitos dias da semana
sobe as escadas de madrugada
e sempre ouvindo o seu passo
a mulher que não é dele
ouvindo o passo leve de madrugada
de repente tem nos lábios
palavras inesperadas:
detector de mentiras

china and the essence of sexual happiness

intimacy of strangers

- Falta pouco para eu fazer cinquenta anos. Não teria medo da idade, você?
A fruteira pesa as uvas antes de responder a mulher encostada numa caixa de alhos, a mala bem segura contra o peito:
- Não teria não. Mas por mim, já não quero.
- Faria tão bem à minha filha...
De repente vira-se para Emília.
- E você?
- Desculpe?
- Ter um filho. Nas nossas idades?
Emília um pouco espantada. Vê-se. A mulher explica.
- É que ele não tem. O meu.. não é marido... E eu tenho a minha filha... 
Emília nem pensa.
- Medo porquê? Não tenha medo. Se engravidar...
O sorriso da senhora, por cima da caixa dos alhos, o sorriso da senhora.
- Tenho ido aos treinos.

Um segundo suspenso, olhos nos olhos, mulheres.
Sorrir. Abrir.
- De onde é, você?

Fall of an oenophile

Rui Piedranegra was waiting for his turn at one of the rowing machines.

He'd been coming to this gym for so long...  He began trying to analyse the smell of the place, as he had been told to do at his first wine-tasting class, a few hours ago. First he made out the reassuring tang of the lubrication oil, wet cloth, a cleaning liquid with some lemon to it, very artificial lemon,  cold sweat and hot sweat...

That's when it happened. The place switched.

Opened.

And Rui Piedranegra saw what years of weekly visits had hidden under the thick coat of habit.

The place was sad, the place was squalid. The place was not one he'd ever want to be associated to.

He closed his eyes, thinking this is crazy. He opened them again to the same abrupt colors, hard muscles working on an dead clown. The only possible laughter was one of despair.

But Rui didn't saw himself as of the despairing kind. He was, he thought, of the kind that kayaks down life's whitewaters unafraid.

He went out, losing  his turn at the rowing machine.

Took a shower, hot and hard.

On his way home, he bought a bottle of wine. It came from Chile, and was the most expensive he could get without using his credit card.

He drank the first glass in his kitchen, while beating the yolks for a purple and blue cake he had promised to bake for his son's birthday party, the next evening. At first the wine tasted, or smelled - by now he was at a loss about the difference - like wine. Then suddenly he was remembered of a winter afternoon long ago, when as a child he had tipped his tongue to the icy chain of the park swing, and got immediately stuck, frozen to the metal. After a while he had managed to free himself, but not without tearing  his tongue. As he'd tried to scrap the tiny speck of skin off the chain, (you couldn't let pieces of you laying around) it had fallen to the ground, in the mashed snow,  not to be relinquished.   Yes, the wine tasted of blood and snow.  Good value for his money. He chuckled.  He doubted he'd get away with it at the next tasting class.

The next glass he drank while the cake was cooling on the window sill, as american-speaking cakes do, its rich chocolate scent pervading the flat, nicely mingling with the wine.  He was musing on how to decorate it, something appropriate for an eleven years old boy who loved mountain bike and his new sister ( not Rui's daughter) when it happened again. His flat switched.

Opened.

Not again.

Well yes. Again. What do you see, Rui?

I see every day that passed since we bought this couch, Eva and I. (Tomorrow I'll call the church guys, to come and get it.) I see the aging of things, I see how time gathers in little clusters of dirt and dust, how it turns sticky what was shiny,  thin what was sturdy, as I never have before.

I see the flow of repeted motions, their erosion on the walls, the knobs, the edges. I see the wear. It's nothing new, it was always there for me to see. But I didn't, and now I do.

Rui Piedranegra kneads blue almond paste into rose petals to put on the cake. (Flowers are much easier then cars, not to speak of bikes!) He knows they will please Eva more then his son. He knows she will never even imagine he made them himself.  He knows his son will eat them all except one that he will give his new sister. (She's three, but to Rui, she still feels new).
Rui drinks the last of the wine. Tomorrow same time, there will be none of the cake left. Hehe, cakes don't grow old.

Rio - São Paulo en bus de nuit

02:00 Arrêt sandwich à Resende, Shopping Graal. La plupart des voyageurs ne se réveillent même pas, confortablement installés dans les sièges larges qui s´inclinent bas. La pluie bat les vitres. Je ne bouge pas, j´ai visité le Graal à l´aller, petit supermarché qui vend de la nourriture au kilo,des chouettes en plâtre et du torron de noix de cajou. Une très jeune fille sort pour téléphoner, sa voix excitée perce le sommeil qui me revenait: " A Gígia teve um novo néné? ... Chama Barackobama? É memo? Não é menina? É? "
06:00 São Paulo, rodoviária Tieté. Les toilettes coûtent 1 real 25. je déteste payer les chiottes, abus des humaines nécessités, je trouve, mais bon. Et voilà que je me retrouve à me laver les dents dans une extraordinaire ambiance de concentration efficace. Devant les longs miroirs une trentaine de femmes s´affaire à se fabriquer leur visage de travail. Dans le plus grand silence, elles coiffent, peignent, ourlent, rafraîchissent. Sérieuse affaire, le déployment du masque de jour pardessus le visage de nuit, visage intime.
Et moi sans autre but que de les regarder.

Felicitas l'allemande folle d'amour qui ayant craché sur sa beauté de femme, l'ayant littéralement assassinée, trop tard en a eu le désir, le besoin. Elle n'a jamais pardonné à ses parents de lui avoir donné, à elle qui se croyait destinée au malheur, ce nom de bonheur.

divorce 2

I needed company. So I went for a drink. On my way, I heard somebody call my name from outside a café. I was only too glad to stop. It was two people i very seldom see, but how well do you need to know somebody to have a beer with them and talk the working blues away?
A beer calls a beer calls a beer and we ended up having dinner. They had divorced a year ago, and had just met here by chance. Walking a tightrope between the two of them, is what I really spent the evening at.
I couldn't help trying to guess who'd left whom. To no avail. Much unfinished desires, everyday hurt and plain longing got hurled at full strength from both sides.
Then the scientist screamed to her artist ex: Go to work instead of whimpering! Just go to work! ( Yes, beer had called wine too.)
That's when I stood up and went away. See, I choose my working hours too. That's even part of where the working blues come from.
Failure can take you the same long hours as success.

the Intimacy of Strangers (3)

This lady has been living with me for ages. In the eighties in Berlin, one filmmaker-apprentice was earning some money touching up prints in a photo lab that worked for the Bauhaus museum. Some prints that he liked but were too bad to work on (not that you would notice it), he brought home. This one I fell in love with, so much I asked for it. Her steady gaze has been following me ever since, over changes of homes and countries. Time passes, she's immune. She was a mature lady then, she's now something of a child. She's part of my life. I had forgotten her name. If asked, I'd answer she was a textile artist of secondary importance at the Weimarer school. Two days ago, I stumbled on her in the Internet. I stood still, actually shocked, like seeing your half-naked sibling's pic on a dating site.
Marianne Brandt. That's her name. (Which I could have remembered, since the first boy who kissed me was thus called, Brandt. It happened by the fountain at the train station, an awful -if puzzling- disillusion. Which might be the reason.) She was a successful designer, and this is a self portrait. I read this and saw what I hadn't seen in some 25 years: the release mechanism in her left hand. And then I found the following: the whole picture. No idea when it was cut, and who did it. Public privacy. One way to exorcise it.

The intimacy of strangers (2)

Mouraria. Feriado de Carnaval.
A rapariga rosa e morena, a embalar a bébé rosa e morena contra o peito rosa, está de nariz colado à montra do tatuador. Fascinada, não desvia as atenções de dentro da pequena loja.
Nada atrai como atracção, aproximo-me. Eis-nos as duas a olhar para as espadaúdas costas nuas dum rapaz, dobrado para a frente numa especie de maca, no deleitável sofrimento da tatuagem. Tem a cabeça virada para a esquerda, só se lhe vê um olho, fechado, longas pestanas debaixo da linha perfeita da sobrancelha. A pálpebra estremece.
Vejo o que viu quem o amou.
O tatuador, daqui apenas um remoinho ordenado de cabelos brancos e a mão segura com a pistola, acaba de o marcar na nuca dum nome ao qual já só falta a letra final, a que divide o masculino do feminino.
De repente percebo. Viro-me para a rapariga rosa, cada vez mais rosa – É o seu amigo ?
Ela, rosa, e orgulhosa. - É o meu marido. É o nome da filha.
Não : a minha filha, ou : a nossa filha. A filha.
Olho para a bébé. Está a dormir, longas pestanas sobre a linha perfeita da bochecha.
Nicole.
A filha do seu pai.
Pertencer. Possuir.
Aos 5, aos 13, aos 20… Nicole.

Já longe imagino-os com nove filhos, o nome do nono a ondular nos sopés do rabo paterno, e a rapariga rosa a dizer este é o último, já não cabe nenhum.

the intimacy of strangers

In a street cafe overlooking downtown, Emilia drinks moscatel in the afternoon sun. Her table has a lot of free chairs and two young turists from London ask if they might join her. One is originally from Iran, the other Albanian from Kosovo. The Iranian is talking, he has beautiful liquid eyes, to Emilia.
- I don’t like french movies, I don’t understand them.
- Which one, for example ?
- The Dreamers.
- The Dreamers ? I don’t know that one.
- You must know it ! About incest, in Paris…
- Oh, this one ! she frowns. - It’s italian, actually.
- You’re only making this face because you’re disgusted by the whole incest thing !
- Me ?!? Oh no ! When I was young I even sometimes wished I had a brother, so I could …
- So you could have sex with him?
- … You could put it that way.
A beat. The boy thinks it over:
- Well of course there is the confidence factor. This way, I mean, if he’s your brother, at least you can be sure he will still be there the next day.

The sudden naked loneliness of it startles the three of them into short silence. Then, fast, the boy launches into how he likes to make breakfast for his lovers, the next day. Because of course he wasn’t speaking of himself. His lovers don’t walk away into the night… Emilia interrupts him almost harshly, speaks of the movie, the actors, anything but the thing.

Then it gets cold. The boys don’t relate this to the setting sun. They say "so nice to have met you, darling" and take a cab to their hotel.
On her walk home, she passes a church on whose wall a tiny note is glued, offering a scribbled message. Always a fool for the handwritten, she picks it up:
Roguemos ao senhor da existência para que não nos deixe confundidos.

Pray the lord of existence (Lord of existence ! Some title ! She sees wind-blown pyramids of decepated heads) that he won’t let us get confused !

Being confused means not being able to tell apart someone who’ll still be there the next day from someone who won’t, for example.