The Girl in the Photograph (29 page)

Resting his head in her lap, he relaxed and gave her his hand. He laughed softly.

“Very well, Delilah, if it gives you so much pleasure. You remind me of my mother,
as soon as she sees me she runs for the scissors. You say I want to attack, to protest.
Bah! What I really want is something very different.”

After cutting his fingernails, she cleaned them with an orange stick. “I think you
fit into the doctrine I invented, it’s neat, listen to this: To be or to exist. Either
you
exist
or you
are
something or somewhere. You prefer to exist,
ergo
, you
are not
in the university nor are you on the stage nor are you in the little political-action
groups or art groups or whatever. You’re existing within yourself, right? But Guga,
you can exist freely. And at the same time fulfill your destiny, you have a destiny,
dear.”

“Oh, Loreninha, read less and live more. You’re a book. Come live with us and forget
theories for a while.”

“You guys make pee-pee on the floor, I’d spend the whole day cleaning the bathrooms,
perfuming the thrones.”

“Thrones?” he laughed and pulled her close to him by her hand. He kissed her neck
but when he tried to kiss her mouth she turned quickly away from him.

“No, Guga, don’t.”

“Don’t, why?”

“Because I’m in love.”

“Fabrízio?”

“I wish it were. It’s a married man, old, etc. I’m consumed with passion for him.”

“Oh, look how literary she is! Finished?” he asked examining his fingernails. “I’ll
have natural rose polish, please, I was going to buy some for my mother, natural rose.”

Lorena swept the nail cuttings into a tiny pile.

“I’d like to read you the letter he wrote me, may I?” She picked up the sheets she
had left on the big cushion and returned walking on her knees. Bending her body backward
she balanced on her heels. “I won’t read it all, just a part, listen: ‘
I have lived on two planes, that of the day-to-day, real with its humdrum duties,
its ties that bind me to fond persons whom I love and for whom I am a determined individual
having a certain identity, a past, present and future which tie me to a quiet path
of consciously accepted responsibilities. From this world, L., you are absent and
when this great emotion, which I at times must deny, is absent too, I feel that this
is the real world, the true one, and that we should not, cannot… that it is necessary
to stop at once and flee, keeping only the friendly remembrance of an enchantment
which could have been
—’”

“That’s enough, Loreninha. I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Wait, dear, there’s an important part coming up, wait!”

“That’s enough, I said. I’m not interested in this guy, I’m interested in you. I don’t
even understand what he’s saying there.”

“Just this one little part more, it’s important, please: ‘
Yet when your fragile and so lovely world, L., unexpectedly breaks forth and installs
itself in me
—
like now, as I am engulfed by this emotion
—
then I believe above all in this disturbing joy at having received a gift so miraculous
and high. I believe above all in these times, times made up of your image and built
from small facts and details: a telephone call today, a quick meeting tomorrow, a
hope for God knows when. Such uncertain facts, so scarce
—
and yet they constitute all our visible history. I feel I could let go of even this
small portion if you so desired.’ “

I stop because my mouth is completely dry. I run to the water jar and drink a gulp,
then return. Guga is looking at me with his mouth half-open, as if he hasn’t understood
a single word.

“But why does he write that way?”

“What way?”

“So complicated, Loreninha.”

“I told you he was a lot older, married, didn’t I? It’s his style, dear. Just listen
to this last sentence, listen, just the final one: ‘
This pure and deep affection, secret and proud, which I keep like a precious possession.
Which even you couldn’t reach again if everything were to end tomorrow. This affection
which gives you back to me, re-creates for me your image, now so much mine for always,
so friendly and so much a part of me. M.N
.’”

I fold up the letter. Guga stares intently at me.

“What does this M.N. mean?”

“His initials. They stand for Marcus Nemesius.”

“He’s too complicated, Loreninha, he gives me the jitters.”

I blow off the excess talc accumulated on my feet. One more lesson: Why read the letter
to him? Is it to discourage myself that I throw my poor love before the lions? Lião,
exactly, Lião.
I can’t explain it
and she explained that it was the letter of an old man in love but full of fear.
More fear than love. But why do I expose him that way? Incredible. Only Annie was
marvelous, when I would have imagined that she’d be exactly the opposite. She’d been
drinking and had come to return the stole I loaned her. She yanked off her shoes and
sat down to have a whiskey. I wouldn’t have showed her the letter if I didn’t trust
the subterranean instinct of crazy people and drunks, Daddy taught me that … and then
afterwards, poor man. So she crossed her beautiful legs, told her little lies about
how she was going to be photographed for magazine covers in Rome, the Count Cigonga
had invited her to dinner, etc. Once she quieted down, secure in her power and glory,
I showed her the letter. Halfway through it, she stopped. Her eyes were full of tears.
“Shit, I’d like to be loved by a man like this.” I was enormously happy, “Yes, don’t
you think so, Annie? And Lião saying—.” She adjusted her cigarette in its holder,
for a while she went around with a cigarette holder that has since disappeared. “A
pragmatist like her couldn’t understand a love that is fully spiritual. I’d fall in
love with him too.” When she left, I gave her the stole, it was very pretty but the
fringe would drag on the floor when I wore it, why does Aunt Luci think I’m so tall?
A dwarf dragging the fringe of her stole over the rug. Oh Lord.

“Sad, Loreninha?”

“No, dear, of course not.”

“You wilted up like a little flower.”

“Fainting Magnolia. Did you know that’s my nickname in the Department?” I ask hiding
my face in my robe.

“Loreninha, don’t cry, don’t cry!”

But I’m not crying, I try to say. He doesn’t give me time, he has gotten up and is
holding me by the shoulders, kissing my forehead, my hair. My robe comes open. I fight
to close it but how? His arm is wrapped around me while his tongue penetrates my mouth
which for a moment (a century) responds to his. I jump to one side and he jumps with
me, I pull his beard, his hair, No Guga No! I bite the hand which is flattened over
my breast. He releases me. We measure each other, panting. I attribute my red face
to anger but actually I’m not so certain. He picks up his bag.

“Guga dear, I’m in love with somebody else,” I croak tying my bathrobe belt.

“You already told me. No problem.”

He’s smiling again. I give him the bottle of whiskey and now he laughs looking at
me and smoothing his beard with his fingertips; he has beautiful hands. He kisses
me very lightly.

“This boyfriend of yours has a facility for complicating things, he reminds me of
my father. My father talks for hours to me and I don’t know what he’s trying to say.”

I caress the sun embroidered on his chest, why don’t I want him to leave any more?
I brush the ashes from his jeans with their three spots faded almost to white: one
at each knee and the third at his crotch-bulge. I turn my gaze to the sun.

“I know how to embroider, come and get a shirt with a duck embroidered on the sleeve,
next week I’ll have it ready, it’ll look lovely,” I say and go around behind him,
speaking into his ear: “You aren’t taking garbage, are you, Guga?”

“Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean by that, not necessarily?”

He arched his eyebrows calmly.

“Just what I said, Loreninha. Not necessarily.”

My heart throbs.

“Guga, let me take care of you.”

“What do you mean by taking care of me? Cutting my nails?”

I hug him from behind. As I do so I discover he has very wide shoulders.

“Number one, I’m going to keep your registration open, you dummy. What if you decide
to go back, eh?”

“Ah, she wants to see me with my little diploma. Didn’t I tell you you’re just like
my mother?”

Before disappearing around the curve of the drive, he turns around and throws me kisses.
I return them and feel my eyes moisten, whether from emotion or from the sun that
spreads its rays wide like the sun on his shirt I don’t know. I thrust my toes through
the curlicues of the banister and look at the big old house. Isn’t that the phone?
From the window, Sister Bula waves at me, opening and closing her hands like a little
child. I pause to listen to the motor of an airplane going through a cloud, no. It
isn’t the phone. And even if it were, it could only be Mama calling to tell me how
perverse Mieux has been, I like her so much better when she’s gling-glong. But she’s
only gling-glong when she’s happy, when she’s depressed her voice grows more sullen
than that of a black beetle which has fallen on its back,
vuuuurrrrr
… And Fabrízio? Tangled up with that sinister poetess, was that the way he loved me?
What kind of love was it, if all I had to do was turn slightly to one side. I squeeze
the banister until my fingers grow white, Guga, Guga, take care of yourself! He didn’t
forget me. The fun we used to have, eh, Guga? One afternoon he pretended to be crippled
and went walking through the streets all doubled up, drooling, with me beside him,
very serious. We walked for miles like that. Everybody staring, feeling sorry for
us. “This way, Guga, this way,” I would say and he’d turn the opposite way, tripping
over people. Another day he put on dark glasses but nobody reacted, there are tons
of blind people in the city. So I had to grab his arm and say horrible things to him
at the top of my lungs, I didn’t care who saw that I was furious because I wanted
to go to the movies and I couldn’t, “Why do I have to be the guide? I’m tired of being
a seeing-eye dog!” I yelled when two indignant old ladies came up. The one with the
umbrella almost hit me, “You brutal girl! Don’t you have a heart?” The other one,
chewing and chewing: “Such savage youth! You savage!” When they went away, he took
off his glasses and roared with laughter but in the midst of his merriment I noticed
something painful. In the line for the movies he complained with the greatest bitterness,
“I was blind and you mocked me.” Oh, Guga. How long ago that all seems, isn’t it strange?
After I met M.N., he and Fabrízio
became children as if they had been a part of my childhood, like Remo and Romulo.
Daddy would take me by the hand to go to the barn and see the new baby calf that had
been born the night before. Now I hold out my hand and nobody comes to take it, I
could hold it out until the end of time.
Ad seculum et seculorum
. Nobody. Remo’s hands were banal but Romulo’s were golden, the golden down of his
arms extending to his knuckles, which became gold in turn. Daddy’s were dark with
waves of hair swirling across the backs of them, he would swing me from them. Daddy
has monkey’s hands, Daddy’s a monkey!

“Dreaming?”

I almost fall down the stairs from fright. Lião is behind me but how did she get up
here without a sound?

“Don’t do that, Lião, I almost died, look how I’m trembling!”

She laughs.

“I came on tiptoe, see. You were so quiet there, thinking about the day the calf died
…”

I grab her.

“
Calf?
Did you say
calf
, Lião? Extraordinary.”

“What’s extraordinary about that?”

“It’s because I was just thinking about calves, I was remembering that my father would
take me by the hand to see the new baby calf, there was always a calf being born in
the night. Incredible.”

“So let’s have some tea, I have important things to tell you, are you alone?”

“Guga just left,” I say and lower my voice. “Lião, Lião, he kissed me on the mouth,
I got all unstrung.”

“And then?”

“Well, that was all, I closed my bathrobe quick and sent him away, but isn’t it strange?
He’s all hairy, beard and nails grown out, half-creepy, you know? And I, who dream
of a superbly groomed man, got so excited he actually noticed it, I felt like rolling
over the floor with him, all dusty and sweaty! But I remembered M.N. and the magic
moment was broken.”

Lião flops onto the rug and giggles, embracing the big cushion.

“Lorena, Lorena, how stupid you are!”

I start laughing too. Isn’t it the truth?

“Madness, Lião, total madness.”

She unloads her bag, surrounding herself with little piles of things. I fill the teakettle.

“It’s a shame I have to leave, because if not I’d prove as easy as ABC that you’re
in love with a fantasy, see.”

“What fantasy?” I ask.

“Hell, this M.N. Haven’t you realized yet that he’s taking the place of your father?”

I take out the teacups. I’ll kill myself if she resorts to her marvelous analysts
in order to repeat what’s in any teenage magazine. And even in the comic strips, eeeeh,
the story of the young secretary identifying her gray-haired boss with her progenitor,
in those stories
father
is “progenitor.” On second thought, it was better for Lião to get into minority politics
than keep on explaining autoidentification and transference. Bla-bla-bla.

“What was the name of that psychiatrist, Lião? You used to quote him all the time,
the Frenchman.”

“Lacan?”

Ah. That’s the one. There was this Lacan and another American woman doctor, I used
to know her name too, but never mind. Now she’s turned anti-Oedipal, we’re all more
or less crazy, it’s nonsense to lock up some,
see
. Mental illness comes as a result of the system. Finish the system in order to put
an end to mental illness.