Near to the Wild Heart (12 page)

How often would she reach this decision before actually leaving him? She wore herself out in anticipation of the little struggles she would still endure, rebelling and giving in at once, right to the end. She experienced a rapid and impatient inner movement which manifested itself simply with the imperceptible raising of a hand. Otávio glanced at her for a second and carried on writing like someone in a trance. How sensitive he is, she thought during a pause. She went on following her own thoughts: why hold off? Yes, why hold off? — she asked herself. And her question was concrete, it called for a serious reply. She sat comfortably in the chair, adopted a formal pose, as if to hear what he had to say.

Then Otávio gave a loud sigh, closed the book and his notebook with a slam, threw them down with unwarranted force, his long legs stretched way out in front of him. She looked at him alarmed and outraged. Well then... — she began ironically. But she didn't know how to go on and waited, watching him.

He said, with an expression of mock severity:

— Very well. Now do me the favour of coming over here and putting your hand on this manly chest, for that's what I need right now.

She laughed just to please him. But in the midst of her laughter she was already finding some amusement. She remained sitting, trying to go on: then he... and she moved her lips in a gesture of contempt and triumph, like someone receiving the awaited proof. Then, he... Was it like this? She was waiting for Otávio to notice her attitude, to become aware of her determination not to move from her chair. He, in the meantime, as always, was aware of nothing and just at those moments when he should be looking, he was absorbed in something or other. Now, at this very moment, he had remembered to retrieve the book and notebook which he had thrown down on the table. He wasn't even looking at Joana, was he certain that she would come to him? She smiled with malice, thinking how he had deceived himself and how many thoughts she had enjoyed without him even suspecting. Yes, why hold off?

He raised his eyes, somewhat surprised at the delay. And as she remained seated, they went on there looking at each other from a distance. He was intrigued.

— Well? — he said disgruntled: — My manly...

Joana interrupted him with a gesture, for she could not bear the compassion that had suddenly invaded her and the sense of absurdity conveyed by that phrase, when she herself was so lucid and determined to speak. He was not intimidated by her gesture and she had to swallow carefully in order to suppress the foolish urge to weep which slowly surfaced in her breast.

Now his pity embraced her too, and she saw the two of them together, forlorn and childish. Both of them were going to die, this same man who had tapped his fingers on his teeth with such gusto. She herself, along with the top of the staircase and all her capacity to want to feel. The essential things struck her at such moments also during the empty ones, filling them with meaning. How often she had given a waiter an enormous tip simply because she had remembered that he was going to die and didn't know.

She looked at him mysteriously, her expression grave and tender. And now she tried to excite some emotion by thinking of their future corpses.

She rested her head on his chest and there a heart was beating. She thought: but even so, despite death, I shall leave him one day. She was fully aware of the thought that might come to her, giving her strength if she should yield to emotion before leaving him: 'I've taken everything I could. I neither hate nor despise him. Why look for him even though I love him? I'm not so fond of myself as to like the things I like. I'm more in love with what I want than with myself.' Oh, she also knew that the truth might be contrary to what she had thought. She let her head droop, pressed to her brow against Otávio's white shirt. Little by little, very slowly the idea of death began to fade and she no longer found anything to laugh at. Her heart was softly moulded. Her hearing told her that the other one, indifferent to everything, was pursuing its fatal path with regular heartbeats. .. The sea.

— Hold off, simply hold off, Joana thought before she stopped thinking. Because the last of the ice-cubes had melted, and now she was sadly a happy woman.

Under the Teacher's Protection

Joana remembered it well: days before getting married she had gone to see her teacher.

She had suddenly felt the need to meet him, to listen to him, unyielding and cold, before going away. For in a sense, she had the impression of betraying her entire past by marrying. She wanted to see her teacher again, to feel his support. And when the idea occurred to her of paying a visit, she had calmed down, feeling relieved.

He would have to give her the right word. What word? Nothing, she replied to herself mysteriously, wishing with sudden faith and expectation, to wait and listen to him, completely inexperienced, without having any idea of what she was about to gain. This had happened to her once before: when she had prepared herself for a visit to the circus as a little girl. The best moments had been spent getting ready. And when she approached the broad field where the huge, round tent loomed white, like one of those silver domes that conceal until a certain moment the best dish on the table, when she approached holding the maid's hand, she felt fear and anguish and a disquieting happiness in her heart, she wanted to go back, to escape. When the maid told her: your father has given us money to buy popcorn, then Joana looked at things in wonderment, under that sunny evening sky, as if they were hallucinating.

She knew that the teacher had become ill, that his wife had abandoned him. But although he had aged, she found him stouter and bright-eyed. She had also been afraid, to begin with, that their last dinner together, when she had fled in alarm towards puberty, might make the visit awkward, leave them feeling uneasy, in that same strange, creepy room where the dust had overcome the polish.

The teacher had received her with a serene, distracted air. With those dark circles under his eyes he reminded her of an old-fashioned portrait. He questioned Joana but the moment she tried to answer he stopped listening, as if no longer under any obligation. She interrupted herself a number of times, her attention directed at the clock and the small table with the medicines. She looked all around her and the semi-darkness was humid and stifling. The teacher was like a great tom-cat reigning supreme in a cellar.

— Now you can open the windows, he said. You know what I mean, a little darkness and then plenty of fresh air; your whole body benefits, receives a new lease of life. Just like a neglected child. When it receives everything, it suddenly reacts, blooms again, sometimes even more than the other children.

Joana had flung the windows and doors wide open and the cold air entered with a triumphant blast. A little sunshine came through the door behind him. The teacher had unbuttoned the collar of his pyjama jacket, exposing his chest to the wind.

— It's like this, he had declared.

Looking at him, Joana discovered that he was nothing but a fat old man sitting in the sun, his sparse hairs caught in the breeze, his great body sprawled out in the chair. And his smile, dear God, a smile.

When the clock struck three, he had suddenly become restless, had halted in mid-sentence and, with measured gestures, his expression avid and sober, had counted twenty drops from a phial into a glass of water. He had raised it to eye-level, observing it, his lips pursed, wholly absorbed. He had drunk the dark liquid fearlessly, then stared at the glass with a sour expression and a half-smile which she couldn't explain. He had placed it on the table, had clapped his hands summoning the house-boy, a skinny apathetic black youth. He had waited for him to return in silence, alert, as if he were trying to listen at a distance. Only when he had received the washed glass, examined it carefully and turned it upside down on the saucer, had he given a little sigh:

— Now then, what were we saying? She went on observing him, without paying any attention to the words themselves. Nothing in the man's expression betrayed his wife's departure. Fleetingly, she saw that figure again which she had so feared and detested, nearly always silent, the face aloof and imperious. And, despite the revulsion that other woman still aroused in her, in a moment of reminiscence Joana had discovered to her surprise that not only then, but perhaps always, she had felt herself united to her, as if both of them had something secret and wicked in common.

Nothing in his appearance betrayed his wife's departure. There was even a new-found tranquillity in his attitude, a composure that Joana had never noticed before. She studied him almost as anguished as waters swollen by the rain, whose depth was now difficult to judge. She had come to hear him, to feel his clear-sightedness like some point of anchorage!

— The torture of a strong man is greater than that of a sick one — she had tried to make him speak. He had barely raised his eyes. Her words had hovered in mid-air, foolish and timid. I'll go on, it's precisely in my nature never to feel ridiculous, I always venture on to any platform. Otávio, on the other hand, is such a sensitive creature that it only takes a pointed smile to demolish him and make him feel miserable. He would listen to me, now feeling uneasy or smiling. Was Otávio already thinking inside her? Had she already become transformed into a woman who listens and waits for her man? She was giving up something... She wanted to save herself, to hear the teacher, to shake him. So this old man before her no longer remembered everything she had told him? 'To sin against herself...'

— The sick envisage the world and the healthy possess it, Joana had continued. The sick think they cannot because of their illness and the strong feel that their strength is useless.

— Yes, yes, he shook his head timidly. She perceived that his unease was only that of someone who doesn't wish to be interrupted. She had gone on, however, to the end, her dull voice repeating the thought she had had for a long time.

— That's why the poetry of poets who have suffered is sweet and tender. While the poetry of others, of those who had been deprived of nothing, is ardent, anguished and rebellious.

— Yes — he was saying, as he adjusted the loosened collar of his pyjama jacket.

Humiliated and perplexed, she saw his dark, wrinkled neck. Yes, he said from time to time without taking his eyes from the clock as he searched for some support. How could she tell him that she was about to get married?

At four o'clock, the ritual had been re-enacted. This time the black youth ducked in order to avoid a kick in the pants, for he had almost dropped the medicine bottle. Having missed its target, the teacher's slipper went up into the air exposing his naked foot with its curved, yellowing toenails. The boy had caught the slipper and thrown it to Joana, laughing, afraid of getting too close. After the glass had been put away, she had ventured the first word about his illness, slowly, embarrassed, for never before had they penetrated the intimacy of their own circumstances: they had always understood each other on the surface.

There was no need to try to get any closer... He had taken up the subject, broached it gently, and with obvious satisfaction, he carefully explained all the details. His attitude was a little patronizing and mysterious to begin with, as if he found it impossible to believe that she could penetrate his world. But after a few moments, oblivious of her presence and somewhat animated, he was already talking quite openly.

— The doctor has told me that I'm still not better. But I'm going to be fine, I know more than any of these doctors, he had added. After all, I'm the one who's ill...

She had finally discovered to her astonishment that he was happy...

It was almost five o'clock. She felt that he was longing for her to leave. But she couldn't leave him like this, she tried to press him further. She had cruelly looked him straight in the eye. He had repaid her with a look of mild indifference to begin with, and then almost immediately shunned her, angry and disturbed.

The Little Family

Before starting to write, Otávio arranged his papers neatly on the table, and tidied himself up. He was fond of these little gestures and familiar habits, such as old clothes in which he could move with earnestness and assurance. Ever since his student days, this was how he prepared for any task. After settling at his desk, he would put things in order and, his conscience enlivened by the motion of the objects around him — I mustn't get carried away by any grand ideas, I'm also a thing — he allowed his pen to run somewhat freely to rid himself of some persistent image or reflection that might possibly try to accompany him and impede his train of thought.

For that reason, to work in the presence of others was torture. He feared the absurdity of these tiny rituals yet could not get along without them, for they sustained one as much as any superstition. Just as in order to live, he surrounded himself with do's and don'ts, rules and exceptions. Everything became easier, as if taught. What was fascinating and terrifying about Joana was precisely the freedom in which she lived, suddenly loving certain things, or, in relation to others, completely blind, without as much as using them. For he found himself under an obligation when confronted with what existed. Joana was right when she said that he needed to be possessed by someone... You handle money with such intimacy.. .Joana had teased him once as he was paying a bill in a restaurant and she had caught him so unawares and given him such a fright that, in the presence of the waiter, no doubt smirking, the notes and coins had slipped from his hands and scattered at his feet. Although no ironic comment followed — well, to do her justice, Joana doesn't laugh — she still had an argument ready from then on: but what was one to do with money except keep it in order to spend it? He was annoyed, embarrassed. He felt that his argument was no reply for Joana.

The truth is that if he didn't have any money, if he didn't possess the 'right credentials', if he didn't love order, if the
Law Journal
didn't exist, the vague outline of his book on Civil Law, if Lídia were not separate from Joana, if Joana was not a woman and he was not a man, if... oh, God, if everything... what would he do? No, not 'what would he do?', but to whom would he turn, how would he decide. Impossible to slip between the blocks without seeing them, without needing them...