The Girl in the Photograph Read online

  “You know the latest, Lião? A poetess from the Amazon is going to arrive, how about that? She must be an Indian. She’s going to be your roommate, dear.”

  “Why my room? You here in this penthouse and with a bathroom even, dammit. Indians like baths. Ana Clara’s room would hold a whole tribe, too.”

  “No, not there, imagine! The Indian maiden in her natural state, Ana Clara would be too much of a culture shock, poor thing.”

  “But by January isn’t she supposed to be married to the industrialist? Driving a black Jaguar with red seats. A diamond the size of a saucer on her finger.”

  “And a full-length leopard coat. Stiiiiinking chic!” I roll my eyes upward and imitate Aninha when she adopts her femme fatale air. But Lião is still sober.

  “Crazy Ana isn’t doing so well. She’s already doped up in the mornings now. And she piles up debts something awful, there’s swarms of bill collectors at the gate. The nuns are in panic. And that boyfriend of hers, the pusher—”

  “Max? He’s a pusher?”

  “Come on, you mean you don’t know?” mutters Lião, tearing a piece of fingernail from her thumb. “And it’s not just speed and pot, I’ve seen the needle marks time and again. She should be put into the hospital immediately. Which wouldn’t do any good at this point, she’s so far gone. A wreck, in short.”

  I open my hands on the rug and examine my fingernails.

  “It would be fantastic if the millionaire fiancé married her. I’ll put out the yenom for the plastic surgery in the southern zone, he would only marry a virgin, she has to become a virgin. Oh Lord.”

  “You think a rich marriage is going to help anything?” Lião asks with a sad smile. “You should be ashamed to think that way, Lorena. And will there even be a wedding? Doesn’t the guy know how she gets her kicks? Instead of hoping for a miraculous wedding, you should hope for a true miracle, understand? I don’t know why, but you Christians have such a funny mentality.”

  I go to the teakettle and fill the cups again, then stop halfway back. He sang while on drugs, this half-hoarse voice, isn’t it doped? The twisted voice of someone who cries for help but who doesn’t want to be helped.

  “Yesterday she was so lucid. She says Mother Alix helps, she’s going to start in again with her analysis. Who knows, eh, Lião?”

  “Do you think at this point an analyst is going to help? It would have to be an analyst of the Saint Sebastian brand, that one with the arrows, beautiful and good. Then she’d fall in love with him and be saved through love, like in the comic books she adores reading. And get her Jaguar and her leopard coat to boot.”

  Lorena hands me the teacup with its handsome design of birds and flowers. The linen tablecloth matches the cup, a tablecloth with an exuberant tropical pattern. The small light-colored armchairs. The rare objects.

  “Everything here is very attractive, very pretty. Are you still rich, Lorena?”

  She became serious, relaxing from her exercises.

  “Mieux’s so-called advertising agency came to nothing. With the interior-decorating store, Mama spent money like crazy. And she keeps on spending, a thirst for novelty. They remind me of those American millionaires in Europe in the twenties, you know?”

  “I don’t know. I asked if you had money.”

  “I take care of my part. Why? Do you need some, Lião?”

  I pour more tea into my cup. Damn good tea. I jump over Lorena who has stopped pedaling and is now doing her respiratory exercises, she has already explained to me that there is solar respiration and lunar respiration.

  “I think I’m going to, Lorena. For some operations far different from Crazy Ana’s.”

  “Oh Lord. I feel so sorry for her.”

  She feels so sorry for everyone. No doubt she felt sorry for me when I told her I tore up the novel. Isn’t it just a way of hiding her feeling of superiority? Isn’t feeling sorry for others a way of feeling superior over others? I tore up the novel, I said. And she was silent. I drink the warm tea. She’s a good girl. Ana Clara is a good girl too. I’m a good girl.

  “How’s the collection coming?” I ask examining the bells arranged on the shelf.

  “My brother Remo promised me one of those Bedouin ones from Tunisia, he’s there now, living in a gorgeous house in Carthage, can you imagine? Carthage still exists, Lião. Delenda, delenda! But it still exists.”

  The other day, all excited, she asked to come to one of the group meetings, this same Lorena who stands there ringing her little bells, ting-ting, tang-tang, tong-tong. She imagines our meetings are sort of like debating festivals: She would go with this leotard, boots and a red turtleneck to break the monotony of black. The intellectuals with their little films on the Vietcong. So much hunger, so much blood on the screen made from a sheet. So terrible to see so much death, dammit. How can it be, my God, how can it be? Revolt and nausea. “Sartrean nausea,” murmurs an inexperienced guest. Who shuts up when she feels the icy stares fixed on her in the dark. Silence again, only the exasperated buzzing of the projector, the enjoyment is prolonged, there’s miles of film waiting in the little cans. The lights come on, but the faces take some time to light up, how awful. Whiskey and paté to relieve the atmosphere. Considerations about the probable names on the next lists. The films go back into their respective cans while little by little the people go back to their respective houses. Those who don’t have transportation ask for rides in the available cars going their way. They are good-humored, the intellectuals. There are even a few jokes.

  But, in all justice, they’re watchful. Above all, informed. They should be, going to meetings all the time. They know you were imprisoned and tortured, a courageous boy this Miguel, one needs to have courage, bravo, bravo. They know Sylvia Flute-player was raped with an ear of corn, the cop knew about the episode in the novel, somebody told him and he found it amusing. “Cooked corn or raw?” his helper asked him, and he went into detail. “Dried corn, with those pointed kernels!” The intellectuals are too moved to speak, they only continue shaking their heads and drinking. It’s fortunate that the whiskey isn’t a national brand. Some of the more fanatic ones get irritated with the tone of the meetings; after all, it wasn’t held only for the wine and cheese when the news is the worst possible: Eurico still hasn’t been found; he was arrested just as he disembarked and up to now nobody knows anything about him. He disappeared just like a science-fiction character, when the metallic man emits a ray and the guy dissolves, gun and all, and only a grease spot is left in the place. Jap left a briefcase in his brother’s house; he said he would come to get it the next day.

  “This one’s Greek, Lião. Listen what a divine sound.”

  I told her I tore up my book and I might as well have said I had torn up a newspaper. She doesn’t like what I write. Nobody does, it must be absolute shit. But do people know what’s good? Or what’s bad? Who knows? And is it valid? I shouldn’t have torn it up. But I know it by heart, maybe I could use the text in a diary, I’d like to write a diary. Simple, direct style. I’d dedicate it to him.

  “Perfect. Perfect,” she repeats and picks up the bag. “Don’t forget about the car, Lena.”

  “Lia de Melo Schultz, if you say that one more time, I’ll kill myself. Look, keep this little bell, put it around your neck. When we lose track of each other, you go ding-a-ling and I’ll know where you are, everybody should wear a bell around, like goats do.” Softly, Lia rang the small bronze bell. She smiled at her friend as she tried to untie a black ribbon from around her neck.

  “I’ll put it here with my good-luck charm that my mother gave me. I need to write a long letter to Mother, and another to my father, they’re opposite types. And alike at the same time. When I don’t write, each goes off and cries in a corner, hiding from the other.”

  How they longed to see their daughter receiving her diploma. Getting engaged. Engagement party in the parlor, wedding in the church, hoop-skirted bridal dress. Rice as they dash away. The grandchildren multiplying, everybody togethe
r in the same house, that enormous house, there were so many bedrooms, weren’t there? “The apartment-building curse has reached us here, too,” my father wrote in his last letter. “Our neighborhood is being invaded but we will resist. When you get back and find only one last house in the whole city, you can come in, it’s ours.”

  “If my love phones, want to come and have dinner with us?”

  Lia watches me. What are you thinking about, Lião? She pats me on the head and goes out with the air of somebody who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. I turn up the volume of the record player. Get out of here, he screams hoarsely. I peer out the window. She gallops down the steps with her three leaps and is now exactly where she was before coming up. Yet she hesitates as though she had forgotten to say something important, doesn’t she remember? She opens the bag, looks inside. Indifferently chews the nail of her little finger, and picks up a pebble. She throws it high in the air.

  “Is it the car, dear? Don’t worry, did you know Mama gave me one? I didn’t even go to get the check, imagine. You can keep a key, I hate to drive, eeh, the faces people make when I drive.”

  Her attention is completely fixed on a point behind me, which moves farther away and loses itself like the pebble she threw into the air. I make faces, I can make great faces, neither Remo nor Romulo knew how to make faces like I did but Lião is only interested in the far-off point, which seems to have returned and fallen down inside her. Her face ripples like the surface of a well when the stone falls in.

  “Don’t park by the gate, leave it on the corner. If you go out, leave the key on the shelf. In one of your boxes there.”

  “In the silver one shaped like a clover, dear.”

  She knows I know she’s involved in a tangled plot, but she also knows I respect her secret. The stone reposes in the depths of the compliant waters. Requiescat in pace. I motion her to come closer:

  “Who was it had a compliant hymen?”

  At last she laughs like she used to in the good old times, wrinkling her sunburned face.

  “Go on, give in, Lena.”

  “But isn’t that what I’m wanting to do?” I ask, and deep inside I answer myself, I don’t think I am, really. The joy I feel in the midst of so much promiscuity, both sexes giving themselves without love, desperately, in affliction. And me, virgo et intacta. I open my arms. What a marvelous day.

  “If Ana Clara turns up, tell her I need the money I loaned her.”

  “Yenom, Lião, yenom!” I scream and raise my right arm, fist closed in the antifascist salute.

  She clamps her cigarette between her teeth, closes her hand and makes an obscene gesture.

  “The finger, Lião? Is that the finger?”

  She marches off, and from the way she’s shaking her head, I imagine she’s smiling. She crosses the garden like a soldier on parade, knapsack beside her, socks falling down, let them fall!—one, two, one, two! She opens the gate sharply, heroically, a gesture of one not merely choosing his path, imagine, too prosaic, but rather assuming his very destiny. Long before she reaches the corner her socks have slipped all the way down. Oh Lord. And Mama herself furnishing transportation for the guerrilla operation. She would probably have one of those attacks if she knew.

  Chapter 2

  “Bunny! Hey, Bunny, are you asleep?” he asked. He shook her by the shoulders. “What’s the matter with you that you don’t move?”

  Ana Clara made an effort to open her eyes wider. Around her left eye was smeared a charcoal-colored ring as if she had been socked. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and the eyeliner spread over her other eye also. Sleepily she turned toward the dense cone of smoke projected by the light of the lamp and kissed the young man’s shoulder, disguising her yawn in a lovebite.

  “I’m almost fainting, love. So good, Max.”

  “Then why do you go cold that way? Hanh? It’s as if I were making it with a penguin, ever see a penguin?”

  She twisted and untwisted a lock of hair around her Finger.

  “It’s just that today I’m not too brilliant.”

  “I wish you’d tell me the day you are brilliant,” he muttered sitting up in bed.

  “Max, I love you. I love you.”

  With fingers bent forward clawlike he scratched his head, his sweat-shiny chest, then his head again.

  “But you don’t like to make love, Bunny. It’s important to make love, hanh?”

  “I’m kind of hung up. I need to talk to my analyst, this last treatment got me all screwed up again.”

  “Tell him that when you make love you close up like an oyster when somebody squeezes lemon over it. Wow, would I like to eat some oysters with white wine, nice and cold,” he said stretching his arms.

  “Oysters make me sick, I can’t stand to look at them. Horrible things.”

  He searched through his pants heaped on the floor beside the armchair. From the pocket he took a pack of cigarettes and shook it until a small tissue-paper packet fell into his hand.

  “A nice little dose for Bunny and one for me, hanh? You’ll get in gear with this.”

  I pull the sheet up to my neck. What does he mean, get in gear. If only I could. Get in gear get in gear and climb the walls from getting in gear and if only my head would stop scratch scratch thinking those damn things. Shit, why does my head have to be my enemy? I only think thoughts that make me suffer. Why does this goddamn head hate me so much? That’s what no analyst ever explained to me this head business. It only leaves me in peace when I’m high the bastard. And that dumb ass waiting for me peeling the crust off his bread with his fingernail until there’s nothing left but the soft inside part, just like a rat. It’s my head he’s peeling scratch scratch. Bastard.

  “I can’t stay very long today love,” I say.

  He picks up the empty glasses from the floor, winks his eye and goes to the kitchen taking the glasses and the ice bucket. He opens the refrigerator. I hug the pillow. Sleep sleep. Sleep until I crack in two from sleeping without a single dream because dreams are just another pain in the ass. There are some good ones. Those. Why can’t I ever sleep as long as I want to? Why is there always somebody poking at me, let’s have a nice little screw, let’s have some fun screwing? But what do they mean fun. I love you Max. I love you but I don’t feel a thing with you or with anybody else. It’s a long time since I’ve felt anything. Locked up. There was another word he liked to use what was it? This Hachibe. How will I feel anything with that scaly bastard when I don’t with this one that I love? He’s already sitting there with the bread in his hand, there’s always one wanting to screw me and another one waiting for me at some table. I go from bed to table and from table to bed. Blocked now I remember blocked. “Is it only with me you’re so cold?” he asked. That scaly son of a bitch. Pretentious dwarf. “It’s because I’m a virgin, dear. You must excuse me but I’m a virgin and virgins can’t get turned on like—.” Then he looked at me in his indecent way and laughed. All dental plates. Shit it isn’t just me. Even with money and everything he didn’t do too well as far as teeth go. Poor childhood poor shoulders poor hair. I am five feet ten inches tall. A model. A beautiful model. What more do you want? Bastard. Shit if this head would just leave me alone for awhile. I’d like to have a pumpkin instead of a head, a great big orange pumpkin. Happy. Toasted pumpkin seeds with salt are good for belly worms I can still taste them and that pukey medicine too. I don’t want the seeds Ma I want the story. And so at midnight the princess turned into a pumpkin. Who told me that? Not you Ma because you didn’t re-count stories you only re-counted money. The little face so penniless counting and recounting the money which was never enough for anything. “It’s not enough,” she would say. It wasn’t enough because she was a fool who didn’t charge anyone. It’s not enough it’s not enough she would repeat showing the money that wasn’t enough rolled up in her hand. But give out enough, that she did. For my taste she gave out all too much. A whole crowd of lousy bastards asking and her giving out. The most important o
ne was Dr. Cotton.

  “Max, you there? You know what my dentist’s name was? Dr. Cotton.”

  Max poured whiskey into his glass. He swished it around and the whitish deposit in the bottom slowly rose.

  “Cotton? Dr. Cotton?”

  I clutch the glass in my hand. When Lorena shakes her crystal paperweight the snow rises so lightly. It flutters softly around and then settles on the roof, the fence, and the little girl with the red cape. Then she shakes it again. “This way I have snow all year round.” But why snow all year round? Where is there any snow here? She thinks snow is the most. She’s sickening. I crunch the ice cube between my teeth.

  “Sometimes she sleeps with Donald Duck. She’s always squeezing his tummy, quack, quack. Sickening.”

  I push the piece of ice against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. In reality the sky is way up there without any pain. Hell starts immediately below with its roots. So many roots twining around each other. Solidarity.

  “He was forever changing the cotton in people’s cavities, weeks, months, years went by and there he was with the little bits of cotton in his tweezers, that’s why he got to be called Dr. Cotton.”

  “But you have good teeth, hanh? Don’t you, Bunny?”

  My beautiful. My innocent love.

  “Yes.”

  “So your Dr. Cotton was good.”

  Oh yes. Oh he was great. He would change the cotton while the hole got bigger and bigger. I grew up in that chair with my teeth rotting and him waiting for them to rot completely and me to grow some more so he could do the bridge. A bridge for the mother and another for the daughter. Bastard. Prick. The two bridges falling down in the order they appeared on the scene. First Ma’s who went to bed with him first and then. I went walking across the bridge / It shook before my eyes / Sister the water’s made of poison / He who drinks it dies. Who drinks it dies. She used to sing to put me to sleep but in such a hurry that I would pretend I was asleep so she’d go away faster. In the movies there was always a mother singing romantically to her children who hugged their stuffed animals. Grandmothers used to tell them stories too but where my grandmother might be is something I’d like to know. I wish I had a grandmother like Mother Alix. To have a grandmother like Mother Alix is to have a kingdom.