Gods and Soldiers (39 page)

Alongside a language that gives us our sense of humanity, there should be another that can elevate us to the divine.

Thank you very much.

if from these stones one announced what creates silence: here, close by, [ . . . ] this would open, like a wound you would have to plunge into

 

 

A FLUID SOUND ran through the house, brushed against the dust on the garden vines, swayed the mangoes and the papayas as they ripened, terrified a drunken dragonfly that was dozing there, made the sun diminish, and settled still strong, still distinct, at the woman's ear. Followed by a smile.

From the stereo the sound flowed continuously, without interruption. The doctor was locked into this Sunday habit of sitting outdoors on his veranda listening for long periods to the Brazilian singer Adriana Calcanhoto. Now he slept, now he read, now he wrote, now he simply lay back with teary eyes contemplating the fat clouds fleeing the sky. For him nothing more anointed a Sunday than his own peace. “Sunday” was, for the doctor, a deeply personal word, a wellspring.

Knowing this—that the doctor appeared deep in his Sunday routine—the woman hesitated. She lay her head against the iron gate and wanted to believe the impossible: that she was not thirsty. Her head throbbed; her eyes truly wanted to close, to forget the world, to stop rendering their visual services. The cold gate brought pleasure to the fingers and the heart. The music invaded her pores. Right then she and the doctor shared a common sensation. At the same moment he thought: This voice, yes, it can be shared. The voice of Adriana, purring into the afternoon: “People will be crazy, or sane . . . when they want everything to become music.”

When the voice fell quiet, the dragonfly decided to wake up, moving in an open zigzag and landing near the doctor's notes. Scratchings, denied memories, fragments of more sensitive times that he did not need to accept as his own. “I forget the ground, I don't find the words,” the voice sang on. It had been years since he settled accounts with the animals and settled into a balanced relationship with them. He maintained a still-conflicted relationship with the cockroaches and the lizards, but he was no killer. Instead, he used to smile. In the morning he often yearned to see Angolan antelope running like he used to see as a child in the southwestern province of Namibe; sometimes at the beach he found sweaty horses and was held back by eyes that wanted to shut, savoring the strong scent of lathering horse flesh. He was happy only on the eve of a trip, when he dreamt of white or delicately yellow butterflies, and never got an interpretation of the dream. It had been years since he made peace with the animals, including the Dengue cat that he had dealt a mortal wound. The cats, mainly cats, brought the insects back to mind.

It was after the dragonfly that he noticed the woman resting at his gate with closed eyes, listening, it seemed to him, to the music of Adriana: “On principle I never close doors, but . . . keep them open at all times . . .”

He uncrossed his legs and slowly released them from the other chair: he slipped into his sandals. Walking, he was looking at the tranquil dragonfly strolling over his letters, over the smell of his Violet #971 ink. The ink was so sticky that he had to write at a furious pace, since it dried quickly once it met the air. But the dragonfly, not particularly curious, couldn't reach the bottle and couldn't drink. One step, two. He was near the gate and the woman, despite his wishes, didn't open her eyes. But she did speak.

It was neither a shock nor anything really describable. The doctor simply hadn't counted on that feeling of closeness.

The gate was unlocked. He mentioned opening it; she opened her eyes, taking her eyes off the grillwork.

The gate was opened by the doctor's precise hand, while his other offered a friendly gesture. He was not easily ruffled. “Right there I forgot that destiny always wanted me alone,” sang Adriana.

The woman noticed the still dragonfly. Its heart was too alive for it to be dead or embalmed, but it was totally immune to the wind that ruffled the sheets of paper. The woman approached the table but didn't sit down. Out of curiosity she looked at the inky letters against the whiteness without intending to read the message, but more in appreciation of the beauty of the masculine handwriting. It was, she later saw, a “type of quill,” as the doctor told her, that had produced those enchanting scratches. It offered no resistance and came to her nearby hand; it seemed crystalline.

He brought the water, in a normal glass, to her hands. The doctor still kept the pitcher on a long side of the table, without disturbing the dragonfly. He invited the woman to sit down.

The woman served herself again. She drank slowly, as suited her.

The woman held the glass and inhaled deeply.

The dragonfly made its way to the ground. At last it moved, walking.

In the expression of both of them one could see the fear of two children who, with grave open-mouthed attention, watched the sudden graceful movement of a stone. The dragonfly walked toward the object. In a short shake of its wings it jumped and became quiet—a warrior marking its conquered territory. “And the grievance of the stars is for me alone” wafted toward the porch in the afternoon.

The object was a thick glass dome, certainly expensive, that covered a small ordinary gray stone. The most that could be said of it was that it was a tiny stone, neither charming, nor unusual, nor exotic or attractive. It was a crudely common stone. The glass enclosure, however, raised its value.

The doctor, in a confident gesture, shook the dragonfly—a surprise for both the woman and the dragonfly. The insect returned to rest on the letters. The stone and its glass dome were hurled to the floor. The woman didn't have time to be scared. The object noisily hit the floor twice and, after rolling a while, ended its journey. The doctor caught the object and returned to put it on the table at the foot of the letters, the papers, the dragonfly. The insect, in a short sprinkling of wings, returned to its post.

The woman started to feel thirsty but she didn't want to inconvenience him.

The woman didn't want to leave, but she thought she was forcing the moment. The doctor stayed quiet for more than five minutes. The woman thought it was time to leave. The music seemed to stop and the voice, the voice was difficult to record in memory's ear.

The doctor sort of smiled. His lips contorted; only an attempt at a smile. Maybe.

The gate was open. The woman, grabbing the iron grates purposefully, recognized the sensation of that coldness of skin.

The gate closed. The thirst had passed. The woman, walking slowly down the sidewalk, understood that it was the stone that gave value to the enclosure. She heard footsteps. The music started again: “My music wants to transcend taste, it doesn't want to have a face, it doesn't want to be culture.”

Between two sepia pages—in a window of dust—the woman watched the dragonfly stop, undulating. It was a dance. At its feet lay the crudely common stone. Between the memory of the man and the unbreakable dome of glass.

 

 

 

FÉLIX VENTURA STUDIES the newspapers as he has his dinner, leafing through them carefully, and if an article catches his eye he marks it with his pen, in lilac-colored ink. Once he's done eating he cuts it out and stores it carefully away in a file. On one of the shelves in the library he has dozens of these files. Another is where his hundreds of videocassettes lie. Félix likes to record news bulletins, important political happenings, anything that might one day be useful to him. The tapes are lined up in alphabetical order, by the name of the person or the event they're about. His dinner consists of a bowl of vegetable broth, a specialty of Old Esperança's, a cup of mint tea, and a thick slice of papaya, dressed with lemon and a dash of port wine. In his room, before going to bed, he puts on his pajamas with such an air of formality that I'm always half-expecting him to tie a somber-looking tie around his neck. But on this particular night, the shrill ring of the doorbell interrupted him as he ate his soup. This irritated him. He folded up his paper, got up with some effort and went to open the door. I saw a tall man come in, distinguished looking, a hooked nose, prominent cheekbones, and a generous moustache, curved and gleaming, the kind people haven't had these past hundred years. His eyes were small and bright, and seemed to take possession of everything they saw. He was wearing a blue suit, in an old-fashioned cut but which suited him, and in his left hand he was holding a document case. The room darkened. It was as though night— or something even more grief-stricken than night—had come in with him. He took out a calling card, and read aloud:

“Félix Ventura. Guarantee your children a better past.”
And he laughed. A sad laugh, but not unpleasant. “That would be you, I presume? A friend of mine gave me your card.”

I couldn't place his accent. He spoke softly, with a mix of different pronunciations, a faint Slavic roughness, tempered by the honeyed softness of the Portuguese from Brazil. Félix Ventura took a step back:

“And who are you?”

The foreigner closed the door. He walked around the room, his hands clasped behind his back, pausing for a long moment in front of the beautiful oil portrait of Frederick Douglass. Then he sat down, at last, in one of the armchairs, and with an elegant gesture invited the albino to do the same. It was as though he were the owner of the house. Certain common friends, he said—his voice becoming even gentler—had given him this address. They'd told him of a man who dealt in memories, a man who sold the past, clandestinely, the way other people deal in cocaine. Félix looked at him with mistrust. Everything about this strange man annoyed him—his manners that were both gentle and authoritative, his ironic way of speaking, the antiquated moustache. He sat himself down in a grand wickerwork chair, at the opposite end of the room, as though afraid the other man's delicacy might be contagious.