The House in Smyrna (8 page)

This journey is a lie: I've never left this musty bed. My body rots a little more each day, I'm riddled with pustules, and soon I'll be nothing but bones. My legs are covered in weeping wounds and my flesh is raw. How could I undertake such a journey? I have no joints; my bones are fused to one another. The only way I could leave this bed is if someone were to carry me, but who would pick up such a repugnant body? What for? I have the silence and solitude of an entire family in me, of generations and generations. As if all the happy things that they all lived had dissipated into the air, leaving only the sad ones. When I was born, my parents took one look at me and knew that I was sadness and solitude. That after me there would be nothing, because after sadness and solitude there is nothing. Ever since I was a girl, it's always been the same: whenever someone looks at me, I see fear cross their face, because I came into the world old and I carry death in my eyes.

I have never left the spot, I have never travelled, I know nothing but the darkness of my room. The key my grandfather gave me is still beside me, lying on the bed as if it were part of my putrid body. We are both the colour of worn bronze, covered in dust. It is as if we were one, so rusted that, in a person's hand, we would be nothing but dust, lumps of flesh, and shards of metal.

Don't you ever think about positive things? Don't you have any dreams?
I do, of course I do. I dream that one day a prince will come to fetch me on a white horse. I won't need to make any effort. He'll know that I'm the woman he has been looking for. All we'll have to do is look at each other to know we were made for one another. He'll offer me his hand and take me, on horseback, to a beautiful place, where there will be a big party, where I will be reunited with everyone who has already departed this world and everyone that is still in it. We'll live happily there, in a land that knows no death, no time, no pain.
So you dream?
Of course I dream. I have another dream that I've never told anyone.
What is it?
My dream, Mother, is to write.
To write?
Yes, I have this impossible dream: to write and write and write.

He had sworn never to love another woman and, although he wished he could undo his promise, it was what ended up happening. When he saw Hilda at the club dance, he knew he would make a home with her. He also knew that he would cultivate affection and admiration for her, but never the love he had felt for Rosa. He had two left feet, and stepped on Hilda's toes. He didn't know the music had a beat to follow. The invitation (Let's sit down a little?) was a way to avoid another such disaster. Hilda wasn't especially beautiful (short, slightly hunched shoulders, long nose, crooked fingers), but she was attractive in her own way, with the charm of a woman who was quick to smile, at peace with life. And that was what drew him to her; he wanted someone cheerful by his side. He asked her how old she was, if she came to the club often, and if he could see her the following week.

The second time they saw each other, they didn't dance to a single song. They just talked. He asked about her family, where she was from, her father's profession, and where they lived. The third time, again at the club, he asked if she was single. The fourth, in Lido Square, if she would like to marry him. The fifth, in Machado Square, if he could talk to his future father-in-law to ask for her hand in marriage. The sixth, at their home, Hilda hung back, watching her almost-fiancé talk to her father. The seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth, and the eleventh, they talked about the wedding and the future. The twelfth time they saw each other, she drank from the wine the rabbi handed her, and he broke the glass, the noise of the splinters on the ground confirming that they would be connected for life, until death did they part.

He and Hilda were a couple like many others. His business began to grow, with increasingly satisfactory profits, and he decided to expand the shop. He remained in the same downtown shopping district he'd been in from the start, but moved to a bigger establishment. At home, Hilda fell pregnant for the first time: they hoped for a boy to carry on the family business. He hired new employees to help in the shop, which was even busier. She suffered from morning sickness, and missed having company in the house. He worked late into the night at the shop. His ambitions were great. She felt her belly growing at a frightening pace. He barely saw her, and would arrive home with bookkeeping to do, his mind elsewhere. Her eyes teared up when she felt her baby's feet kick for the first time. He was euphoric about the shop's profits. She gave birth on a hot March day. He was there, heart beating wildly, when the doctor came out of the delivery room to give him the good news: it was a boy. His kingdom was guaranteed.

By the time their second child (a girl) came along, the shop already had a branch in Copacabana, and the family had moved to a house in the now-affluent neighbourhood of Leblon — which, at the time, was madness: Leblon? But it's so far away, so deserted … The girl came at a good time, because Hilda was aching for a companion. The daughter would keep her company as she starched collars, cooked dinner, and dusted the house. The son, in turn, was already a little king, demanding his mother's constant attention and pampering.

They were well-off by the time Hilda fell pregnant for the third time: another girl. He was a little disappointed at the news, while she was happy with what fate had given her, a new ally around the house. By now, the shop had another three branches in different parts of town, and no longer sold only tools, but all kinds of construction materials. This success in business ensured the family many privileges, such as an imported car, a driver, and two maids; and for the children, a bilingual school, and private piano and French lessons. The third child was born into the bosom of a family that was so successful it barely remembered the past. The suffering and hardship the father had endured before he was married were not to be mentioned. After all, what mattered now was that they were well, with good health, work, and harmony. Everything else was the past, and the past had to be silenced, left dormant among the threads of memory.

No one was surprised when Hilda fell pregnant for the fourth time. An affluent family should proliferate. The second boy came into the world on the last day of an atypically harsh winter in Rio de Janeiro. But he was terribly weak, with underdeveloped lungs, and lived only three days. He never saw the family home and barely spent any time in his mother's arms. My grandfather raged in the corridors, talked to himself, saying
mazel bajo
— it can only be God's punishment. He felt deeply guilty, although he was guilty of nothing. It must have been a divine curse for some sin of his own. But why the boy? he repeated, unafraid and unashamed that his daughters might hear him.

Four years passed, and silence and mourning reigned in the house. The boy's ghost lurked in every room and, like the past, no one was allowed to talk about him. If someone mentioned him, even if only briefly, it would bring on a fit of paternal fury. As if it was disrespectful of his pain. Until, on another winter's day, Hilda revealed that she was pregnant again. They would have another boy, it was certain.

Wary of a second divine punishment, he curbed his urge to shout at the heavens when he walked into the hospital room and saw another girl in his wife's arms. After a dead boy, a girl. There she was, fragile, trying to suck a little of her mother's milk, and she could never have imagined how strong she would have to be in life. It was as if her body contained a secret that would only be revealed years later. Even as an adult, when she had to face the dictatorship and, later, cancer, she never lost the fragility that was evident in her tiny baby's body.

Her father thought he didn't love her, because she reminded him of his dead son. Only when she was taken prisoner by the dictatorship and he feared he might lose her did he finally understand that his love was old, and that the ties that united them had been established at the hospital, the same day he had almost cursed fate for having brought him another girl.

When you leaned over to whisper sweetly in my ear, I knew you were going to ask me to do something: Think of a woman. I closed my eyes and sought in my memory for a female body that excited me. Have you thought of someone?

Wait, I said, and was immediately surprised by your face between my legs. With my eyes closed, I thought of the most beautiful breasts I had ever seen, ever wanted to touch. Small, round nipples. Maybe you, certain I was thinking about a woman, were thinking about her too. The same one or another one. And we made love untiringly, all over the flat. Then we lay on the bed and you asked who I had thought about, if she was real, what she looked like. Blonde? Brunette? If I'd ever made love with a woman, if I was attracted to women. Then we started all over again, you, excited by my answers, and I, excited to be telling you my stories, to invent stories.

It was the first time I had prayed. I didn't know what to do, how to do it, but I prayed. I asked God, if he existed, not to let the phone ring. I prayed quietly, whispering, with my hands clasped together in front of my chest. I prayed for the phone never to ring so I wouldn't have to pick up, hear the person on the other end telling me what had happened. I prayed: don't ring don't ring don't ring. I prayed: please God, if you exist, don't take her away from me. Please don't let the phone ring, never ever. But it did: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve times, I counted, telling myself: it's not ringing, I can't hear it, it's not ringing. Then it stopped, and for a few seconds I believed it hadn't rung. Until I heard a voice inside the flat, a roar, a cry of despair, and thought: He doesn't exist, God doesn't exist. It had been the phone, it had rung, there was no avoiding it. I hadn't been the one to pick up, I hadn't heard the voice on the other end, but it had all happened. My body buckled, my torso bent over my legs, I felt like I was going to faint, and then, as if hanging on to the last stretch of rope, I roared too, echoing the voice in the other room. I let out a wail, a howl that faltered, a voice in ruins.

There was nothing more I could do, not even pray.

I was heading for the city centre when the long black hair of a woman on the other side of the street caught my eye. Was it her? I couldn't get her beauty out of my mind. I thought about her obsessively. Yes, it's her, I thought, the woman from the
hammam
. Hypnotised, I crossed the street without looking either way, hurrying so I wouldn't lose sight of her. In the morning there were so many people in the street that it wouldn't have been hard. I bumped into people and stumbled, anxious to keep up. When she left the crowd and turned onto a wide footpath, I thought, with relief, that she wasn't going to escape me. She was wearing a long skirt and a tank top. Under her arm, she was carrying a folder that was neither large nor small. She wasn't far from me now.

As I stepped through a door in a large wall, I realised we had just entered the Grand Bazaar, a kind of walled-off district, with its own streets and corners. But it was an area where there were only shops, rows and rows of them. It wasn't long before the shopkeepers started inviting me into their businesses. Some asked: Spanish? Italian? Portuguese? The funnier ones said: Chinese? Japanese?

She walked along quickly, oblivious to her surroundings. I quickened my pace and positioned myself diagonally in front of her. When I looked back, certain of finding the same gaze as the other day, I was unable to hide my disappointment. She stared me firmly in the eye, as if to say: What are you looking at? Unintimidated, I merely responded with a look of frustration.

After she walked away, I lost myself in the bazaar, like a stray dog. I heard the voices of the shopkeepers coming from all sides. They all stood outside their shops, trying to catch the attention of passers-by. When someone showed an interest, they went inside to show them their wares, ever ready to reveal the secrets and qualities of each item.

I was drawn to one shop by the colours, the lighting. It sold only candleholders, of every shape and size. Some to sit on tables, others to hang, others to rest on the ground like glass mosaics of alternating colours: red, blue, green, orange, yellow. They were small glass hexagons held together by a kind of plaster. Contrary to other shops of the sort, this one had lit candles in almost every holder, to attract prospective buyers. I stood at the entrance admiring them all, and a man came out to greet me. He told me that there were different kinds inside and invited me in. The shop was small but adorable. The objects were arranged well and I was truly enchanted by what I saw. The man observed me without speaking. It was hard to pick one. They were all beautiful and at the same time similar. I chose one almost randomly and asked how much it was. It was one to hang from the ceiling, and looked old-fashioned, reminding me of the palaces I had visited. Thirty euros, he told me.

I smiled and said: I don't have euros, I'm Brazilian. I had already been warned not to buy anything without bargaining, as they never give you the real price.

Thirty-five Turkish liras, he said.

It's too much, I insisted.

Thirty, he said.

Twenty, I said.

Twenty-five, I can't do it for any less.

Okay, I said, twenty-five.

I left the shop with the wrapped candleholder in a plastic bag and continued strolling casually through the bazaar. The most beautiful shops were those selling spices, with enormous bags displaying chillies, saffron, paprika, herbs, dried fruits, olives, pistachios, and a vast array of Turkish sweets. Like so many other customers, I tasted a little of each, and ended up buying a bag of rose-flavoured Turkish delights to eat as I wandered.