e quando foi tudo para o caralho enfiei numa pilha de livros e ficou. A última frase do circo aponta que determinado risoto estava coberto de ervilhas - no inglês, em prol de minha esposa - e sei disso pois fui hoje mesmo cutucar o negócio dormente pela primeira vez em sabe-se lá quantos meses.
(Sete.)
Não quero mais escrever sobre isso e só sei escrever sobre isso. Agora esse risoto, que se não fosse pela menção estaria esquecido talvez para o resto da vida, murchando num nada, coberto de ervilhas. Bebo uma taça de vinho em pé na cozinha e penso no risoto. Ajeito o elástico do lençol na cama e penso no risoto. Amarro os cabelos, a coisa toda, me derreto em cremes, me olho no espelho. Levo ainda as mãos ao ventre mas sem pensar na criança. Antes pensava em nada, e agora no risoto.
Que estava realmente uma porcaria e a chateação é essa. Quando digo das ervilhas é preciso entender que foram uma adição de última hora (isso eu apenas estimo) a um prato que, do contrário, eu pensaria até agradável. Jantava só num hotel enquanto Laura viajava a trabalho, um hotel de centenas de anos, cada fibra do carpete dizia pelo-amor-de-deus já chega de existir. Escolhi uma mesa ao lado da janela. Encarei o menu e a carta de vinhos. Me trouxeram aquela aberração.
Agora um papo mais gostoso, atração, tesão, urgência. Querer morrer nas pernas de alguém, morrer sem ar, de afogamento, morrer de vontade. Cheiro de casa limpa e cabelos recém lavados, gosto de merlôs e malbecs, azeitonas, você e todas nós e o espaço por vezes minúsculo, por vezes interminável de um sofá dois-lugares. Aquela fome específica de noite de sexta que nasce das paredes e da garganta das mulheres. Ando pra falar da troca cúmplice que existe na lesbianidade. Outra hora.
A vida inteira escrevendo sobre tesão e sempre de um jeito meio críptico pra não azedar, não fazer sentido demais, urgência de menos. Essa noite no hotel houve uma redescoberta que pouco teve a ver com sexo e muito com ter um corpo, uma reconquista de órgãos, a grande decisão: ou faremos do meu jeito (eu pensava em direção ao meu útero) ou não faremos e deu. Que delícia ter controle, lembrei. Fantasiar com a procedência, guardar desejo por horas e horas ali na boca, nas mãos, vontade alimentando vontade. Deixo enjoos e inchaços e cansaços e digo que o grande perrengue da gestação vive discreto na ausência da autonomia - e eu esperando um glow. O grande prazer do aborto (gosto estranho dessa frase) foi fazer a escolha.
Me trouxeram aquela aberração. E isso que eu gosto de ervilhas. Comi quase tudo que já peguei o hábito inglês de evitar uma ofensa a qualquer custo e voltei pro quarto, puta da cara de ter dado dezesseis libras naquela vergonha, naquela obscenidade. Deitei na cama sem trocar de roupa e pensei, puta, mas o cardápio especificava todos os ingredientes visíveis, do queijo às ervas, e nada das ervilhas, nada das quatrocentas ervilhas que cobriam o prato inteiro e não se sentia gosto de mais nada, não se via mais nada, sem aviso. Me levantei, fui ao banheiro, puta, tirei a blusa, encostei na parede gelada.
Aí outra coisa sobre a vontade. Quem sentiu uma, sentiu todas. Fácil escrever desse frio delicioso entre pescoço e cintura conhecendo desejo, fácil escrever do desejo conhecendo uma ida à praia depois do inverno e por aí vai. Ridículo de fácil escrever sobre um beijaço de língua depois de muito querer, sobre uma olhada que gruda por dois segundos a mais, um toque no braço, um silêncio pesado. Tenho tantas vontades, quero tanto, tanto. Apoio no balcão da cozinha. Passo horas escrevendo sobre risoto.
Primeiramente a que farei pra janta, já acordo pensando, fico na cama por mais meia hora mas sem café que estou meio resfriada e tento manter a hidratação. Escrevo pra Laura logo antes de ajeitar as pernas pra fora do colchão, “soup tonight?” e em três minutos obtenho resposta, “oh lovely!”
Fica por isso e vou ao mercado. Diazinho cinzento, coberto de nuvem, quase-chuva que nunca chove (já escrevemos sobre isso) e todo mundo boiando num mais-ou-menos. Desde que voltei de viagem ando recebendo olhares de senhorinhas que me sorriem como se numa amizade, fosse filme teria de certo ocorrido algum negócio que me conecta à população idosa do bairro, mas não é filme e hoje mesmo não ocorre nada. Tudo num mais-ou-menos. Desenrolo uns pensamentos e memórias você-e-eu pra ter calor aqui no casaco, um caldo de verão bem no peito do inverno, me sinto mais forte, mais certa.
Dentro do mercado as formas são afiadas, informações assim inevitáveis, muitos tipos de pão (demasiados tipos de pão) e etiquetas e latas e latas e latas. Fica uma situação crocante e espinhenta que surgiu no dia errado, nervosa de estar ali, situação amendoim japonês de boteco no dia sopa, nada a ver. Cato uns produtos e saio. Mercado que se vire. De volta ao marasmo frio e quente, bóio pra casa.
Não tenho certeza dessa parte - acho que passo uma boa meia hora sentada na sala de jantar olhando a janela com as compras na mesa, e olhar a janela é diferente de olhar a rua, chegar com o olho mansinho nas madeiras e no vidro, o que acontece do outro lado só passa como vulto, ingere-se nada. Decido tomar um banho quente e preparo a banheira antes das compras: água, sais, óleos, ervas. Não sou mulher de espuma.
Deixo enchendo, desço pra sala e aí as sacolas. Esquento água para o chá, fatio gengibre e limão, duas colheres de mel brasileiro, maravilhoso cheiro do cuidado de mulher, tudo nadando, fatia por cima da outra, o quente se espalhando pelos dedos, bloco de carnaval no copo de vidro.
Tiro a roupa toda já na cozinha e meto na máquina de lavar, subo as escadas, eu pelada e o chá suando o copo. Delícia de dia úmido.
with slender limbs and pubic hair, not unlike yours, but unlike mine at the time. A discreet but noticeable sort of pathway from the top of her abdomen until just under the belly button, it divided the centre of her into halves, which united again and divided again and wherever you looked Aunt Zeza was parts. And a medium at Christmas parties but that is truly for later.
I write about her now because I often doubt my interest in writing and sit at the table as a thing with nothing to say. Love letters became dinner and home decoration and sex, and the great unreachable sleeps with her head on my shoulder. I like the morning and the evening and the light on my street, so much so that I once tried to learn how to paint. One more time, just for me: I often doubt my interest in writing.
My wife is a painter and a photographer and her ex-wife is beautiful, they used to live together near the sea and their marital sitting room was painted in luxurious tones, they used to sit together and smoke and drink and probably travel and return home. Some nights I feel uneasy in bed from a nicotine craving after coming two times but she no longer smokes. I think about these things.
Aunt Zeza’s sister, Aunt Goga, is also a painter - she shows her work in galleries and receives proposals and commissions, and owns a house in France and another in Singapore and another in São Paulo, but as a child I never watched her nudity thus my strongest impression of her is the smell of oils. Zeza, the whole of womanhood in front of the mirror, studying herself, staring at angles, my small head with a fringe peeking through the door and learning a habit I would take for the rest of my life, that of wonder, and that of amazement, learning a taste for the female form alongside the self-awareness of age. Aunt Zeza was in fact my great-aunt Zeza, maybe in her fifties back then, very much alive somewhere in the world as I write this. Her skin, I remember, was the colour of caramel fudge and starting to wrinkle. Her hair was cut above the shoulders and the shoulder blades were sharp and bony. Her face was half of the secret.
This is not a story about sexual attraction or finding myself in lesbianism, or even about desire, or the way I’ve always felt about you. It’s about Aunt Zeza who was a medium at Christmas parties and the literal type of nakedness, what it meant and what it didn’t. In a figurative way, there has been a teacher, a coworker, and an ex. I fell in love three times in my adult life and got up twice.
My wife, Laura, has just turned forty. We met six years ago at a bar in Soho and got to know each other better in a hotel room for two nights and two days. She had just gotten divorced and back then we still smoked glorious cigarettes after sex, drunken sex and unethical smoking through the windows of non-smoking rooms, we’d rent B&Bs in the city and leave blood on the sheets and apologetic notes along with some cash, we weren’t great guests but we’ve grown a good deal. This sort of debauchery cannot be sustained for too long, so we separated after the flowering of the affair and the air of distance allowed for the flowering of affection. The coworker was my superior, and nothing came of it except for thirsty gazes and an occasional cry. She was engaged to somebody else. The teacher was a woman from another time and place, as is this.
My grandparents used to own a tubby building right by the house, an angular creature of terracotta bricks, adornments in cement painted almond, bulky and amiable, surrounded by palm trees and living by the ocean, sunbathing at least six days a week. Its insides were stone and wood and an elevator that smelled like the decades and only went up to the third floor, I don’t know why. In high season it sheltered tourists from Uruguay and Paraguay, Argentina, sometimes Chile, for the rest of the year it sheltered our family and the doors wouldn’t always lock. You see where I’m going with this. It was summer as it usually is in my country and grandmother had cooked for several great-aunts and uncles and cousins, and I would not be able to name or recall the face of another guest if not Zeza’s that afternoon.
The humdrum of relatives grabbing plates and dishing up had been in full swing by the time my grandmother noticed Aunt Zeza’s absence and appointed me to go and fetch her at apartment number 103 (cento e três, in Portuguese). I ran and ran and reached the building, then the stairs, then her door. I knocked. Nobody answered. I knocked again. There was no doorbell. I tried the knob - the door and frame offered a gap.
Now it’s important to write of the girl-child experience regarding grown women which is, I believe, international. If you’ve never been an infant and a female at the same time you may only know this by hearsay or deduction, or by trying to fit adult knowledge into a child-sized mould. But grown women often make the experience of inhabiting a woman’s body seem rather disgraceful and terrifying to the small ears of a girl. There is talk of fighting hopeless battles against their changing bodies, and their whitened hairs and the black ones that appear on legs and faces, there is talk of the texture of an adult woman being almost entirely wrong and it’s all such a drag. My mother and her friends did show a playful thrill in changing the colour of their nails but everything else about carrying their physical form seemed spiteful and military and scared me to my bones. I pretended to be a boy for a few years. I was intimidated by the need to learn dissatisfaction.
But this is certainly not a story about my mother.
I slid half of my head into 103 and while I immediately understood my trespass, I had no will to reverse it. Some force came alive between the stone floor and my feet, my eyeballs and the revelation of the bedroom, past a whole living room area, a corridor widthwise, and one more blissful open door. Aunt Zeza stood alone without noticing me and I remember feeling like I couldn’t exist in my small furless self without any secrets. Briefly hoping to grow up and become something similar. Her hands with unpainted nails - first pulling back the skin on her face, then under the jaw, then on the neck. Inspecting, setting it loose. And going to the hips. Stretching her abdomen and curving it in, turning around, resting her chin on the shoulder, looking at herself from the calves to the thighs up to the eyes. Placing her arms over her head and analyzing how that affected her breasts, I think. Discerning herself still. She was so curious.
I knew it wasn’t for me to see, initially because of her nudity but I soon caught on to something rarer. She seemed to be amused and finding pleasure in the way she looked, grinning at it, unworried, today I can compare it to seeing a clever piece of photography or watching a friend open a present but back then I could compare it to nothing at all except for maybe the childish nature of play. I didn’t know adults could do that, and I certainly didn’t know that adult women could see their bodies that way, carelessly and with sympathy. And then I started to worry because something of this magnitude, really, truly, was not for me to see, and there were my forehead and my mare-sized heartbeat, about to be caught in an intrusion.
Something else about Aunt Zeza, now, is her contact with spirituality, her peculiar position as the medium of our family. I haven’t seen her in ages but in my childhood we often got together to celebrate Christmas and the New Year. It was different when she was there because conversations would always take an unlikely turn towards the paranormal and the odd, and if I remember correctly she was hardly ever the one to start it. It was as if all of them had been waiting for her presence to allow a little strangeness. Then suddenly she would go quiet and beautiful, very beautiful, her posture and expression would unravel into sobriety and radiance. I think she’d close her eyes or perhaps stare at something far away. Stay like that for a good few seconds. Then she’d gently come back and say, so and so was here, a dead grandparent, people I hadn’t heard of but by my family’s commotion they certainly had. I understood she was either a bit deluded or had an uncommon knowledge of things and this aggravated my position, sneakily and magnetically stuck to the floor, watching her watch herself.
I thought I’d discovered the universe and still had to call her for supper. Every second I spent leaning against the doorframe increased my chances of getting caught but a retreat could make her aware of my movement and I’d come across as deliberately furtive. It’s very stressful, being a child. I wondered if she’d tell me off. Worse, if she’d tell my grandmother, then I would be branded as a pervert and this lesson on womanhood would cost me my young dignity. Or perhaps she would get too embarrassed, shut the door and say nothing, and deny herself another moment of her game. I no longer wanted to be there and wished I’d never seen any of it, ready to part with my discovery, forget the whole thing. And still, I had to call her for supper.
“Aunt Zeza?” I muttered, still halfway into 103.
She heard me and turned. Not cross, not even surprised. Serene as a mountain.
“They’re calling for lunch.”
Zeza moved towards the bedroom door, placed one-half of her body against the wall, the other under the nothingness of the open space. She smiled a gentle smile at me and said, “thank you, darling. I’ll be just a minute.”
I learned fondness then shut the door and left.
which is not the same as losing a baby, years short of losing a child. My sturdiest memory of pregnancy is being stabbed across the womb with a needle the length of a forearm, repeatedly and widely and in hurried movements. Imagine mixing coarse chocolate powder and milk using a straw. Then there came placenta in a plastic cup, I smiled at the nurse, looks like watermelon juice. The nurse smiled back, caressed my head.
The abortion would have felt like getting a kidney removed if not for the paperwork that read what is the name of your baby? Would you like to be present at your baby’s funeral? Would you like to receive your baby’s ashes? There’s nothing to write about here. The abortion would have felt like an afternoon nap if not for everything before and after.
No gardening got done for about three months, you can understand. Vines started growing at a steady pace on a Friday and I noticed it first on the front of the house, across and along the brickwork, tapping on the window, green, green and breathing, rambling through the fence and up the gutter, humming its way to the handle. Grapevines. Vinegary autumn. Nothing got done for about three months.
My mum called to talk about god’s will. The palm trees on the back grew arms so long that it became impossible to cross the garden, the palm on the left side merged into the one on the right, and bushes and bushes of who knows what advanced above human waist height. The last time I made it to the furthest end of the yard there was still an embryo trying hard to become, almond-sized, a life ago. Wisteria reaching now into the office, now into the bathroom, leaves drying lilac on the floor when I pull down the sash.
Laura’s dad came over with a ladder and pruning saw. The vines had begun strangling our pipes all the way to the top floor and roof. The vines had begun strangling our neighbour’s pipes. Pressing on their window panes.
I told them to do as they pleased with the ashes just please don’t scatter them in the baby garden (imagine that) and for the love of god do not contact me about this.
Trabalhar lado a lado é um ato de amor, mas carinho faz-se com o labor ao lado de fora da sala. Pense oito, doze pares de mãos em torno d’uma mesa, redonda ou retangular, inquestionavelmente uma só mesa. Eu a haveria posto, nesta ocasião - não por responsabilidade mas por me agradar fazê-lo - e ali no coração da semana esqueceu-se performance e almoçamos em uníssono. Comer lado a lado é um ato de amor.
Estas mãos todas que há pouco labutavam agora partiam pão de centeio, abriam mandarins a escorrer seiva, descascavam ovos cozidos, enchiam copos de café. Um espetáculo. Diversas linhas de conversação atravessavam d’uma boca até outra e dizia-se de tudo, grandes acontecimentos mundiais, passe-aqui-a-manteiga, planos breves do pós-serviço e falava-se sim do serviço em si. E apesar de sabermos todos que logo a labuta havia de recomeçar não era de checar relógio pois o quadro integral ali sossegava, e o quadro integralmente decidiria o momento de dar seus últimos goles e levantar-se da descomposta ceia.
Integral mas não era indivisível: pense que quem sentara defronte a mim e cruzava-me olhos de aprazimento comia usando mãos individualmente femininas. Não tocara uma única vez nos talheres que havia posto eu e dizia-se de tudo exceto do querer.
Do querer apenas olhava-se.
Certain moves come from the delirious or the divine. An art development or business plan, a jolt to dynamism, an eerie craving and whatnot. Think of yourself standing there minding the clouds and out of somewhere sprouts the idea of putting together a pottery workshop. You visualise the vast well-lit space and a dozen pillars, tremendous archways, large wooden tables showcasing pieces and pottery tools. You’ve never touched wet clay before but never mind that. The clouds die out—in front of you are disciples and aspiring ceramicists parading up and down and fermenting upon your work, they lift pots to their foreheads, vocally express the commotion that breaks through.
Certain moves are made of effort. Imagine that you’re financially miserable, your job lacks a thrill and you recede to think. You put ideas together, compose a list, contemplate it for seven days and from the triage this is what stands: maybe you could live off pottery.
Natural que seja tudo um tanto projetado e o segredo jaza justamente no quanto. Quem sabe dava-me os olhos assim glutões era mesmo de fome, de dizer excelente escolha de pêssegos, queijos, que fosse. Ou de inócua cumplicidade, certificar-se de que assim como ela eu andava bem. Quem sabe ainda dava-me olhos nenhuns, os olhos seriam dela e durante todo o almoço mantinham-se dela, e distraía-os em mim que estava à frente e era simples. Com isto pensei: sendo os olhos apenas dela o querer é apenas meu. Enrubesci, meti na boca sabe-se quantas castanhas salgadas. O bater de talheres manteve seu timbre e a constante conversa morna acobertava qualquer irregularidade.
II
É sim relevante a colocação espacial destas coisas. Distinta seria a sensação de uma troca de olhares em sala fechada e em agito de rua. Tratando-se de intimidade nada constrói como um quarto miúdo, vastos gramados sob o sol jamais cumpririam, este intervalo então deu-se assim mesmo: num quarto miúdo. A mesa redonda-retangular e os oito-doze assentos ocupavam quase toda a extensão do soalho e cresciam em duas paredes grandes janelas e nenhuma cortina. Também pinturas abstratas que estudamos ao entrar e não mais, que aí o interesse estabeleceu e notava-se a prataria, as mangas arregaçadas, valia uma boa olhada qualquer que estivesse entre os corpos da assembleia. Valiam boníssima olhada as frescas identidades, que enquanto empregadas performam a parte e aí na mesa se desdobram numas criaturas prontamente interessantes. A nota é que ela dos olhos famintos não desdobra-se em nada.
Nota: ergue um carisma incessante que me atiça progressivamente os nervos. A vontade é de inclinar-me e dizer, faça o favor de fraquejar. Não pra que eu entre que não sou mesmo destas coisas, já digo agora que o interesse não é na conquista, externe uma fragilidade que viemos ter é para isto.
Mas não há fragilidade alguma. Me faz pensar que ocorresse uma catástrofe, uma bomba ou enorme ciclone, sobravam ela e as baratas. Alguns colegas vê-se que teriam um negócio nos órgãos antes mesmo da obliteração e quedavam tão à flor da pele que morreriam antecedendo. Eu mesma acho que aguentava um bocado, via do que se trata e logo decidia deixar-me ir, passaria a um outro andar e de lá a assistiria reter a postura e sorriso calculado fronte ao eminente estrago espacial.