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poliedricoHello. as I approach the end of Caio's complete short stories book I'm reading, here's another short story by Caio Fernando Abreu I played translator with. it was part of his last-published short story collection, Ovelhas Negras (Black Sheeps), published in 1995, a year before his death. Ovelhas Negras, which he described as "a fictional autobiography", gathers stories from 1962 to 1995 that for any reasons weren't included in his previous collections ("Some of them were interdicted by the militarist censorship; others, by myself, that condemned them as obscene, cruel, juvenile, hermetic, etc.; others simply didn't fit into the formal and/or thematic unity that I have always wanted for my short story books.").
Though I'm re-reading it now, this is a book (alongside Morangos Mofados) I had read before -- in fact, it was through my mother's pocket-size copy of Ovelhas Negras that I had my first contact with Caio Fernando Abreu's work, some many years ago. The book has (indeed!) a very clear/strong autobiographical quality to it: it starts with a story he wrote at 13 or 14 and, as the book progresses, you get to see how his writing and stylistic/thematic/etc preferences/choices/abilities/etc develop with time. It makes it feel almost unfair to pick (for now!!!) just one story out of all of them to translate and post here (alone... a single sheep all by itself...) but there's no way I'd translate the whole thing(...?)(for now) + all stories are part of a bigger thing anyway + I might and probably will come back one day to translate others [from this specific book. Because I like it very much] eventually. Each story in this book comes with a little note explaining things like when the story was written, where, why it was discarded, etc., which I of course kept in my translation. You can read the original story here.
IN A CERTAIN WAY it was my face. Only in a certain way: I emphasize. But this doesn’t matter anymore. Before: we pulled open the elevator's iron grates and went down to the gray corridor. And it wasn’t even a weird corridor. Maybe the building was too old for the street. But even then it was justifiable. Or understandable. And so were the tiny cement shards embedded in the walls — the dark tiled floor — the yellow light from the ceiling. All this before. And.
We heard the doorbell ring many times inside the apartment and without meaning to I pictured the high-pitched sound revealing depths I didn’t know and also didn’t care for at that point because I knew nothing about him and also because I was immersed in some kind of choice just like a dark lake whose bottom and surface are identical and where the stones or the fallen autumn leaves would never form concentric circles again. But I listened. Many times after the doorbell rang she said he wasn’t home and even before she added that it was a shame he wasn’t home because I would have liked to meet him. She didn’t say whether or not he would also like to meet me but it didn’t matter: even if it had been said it would add nothing to what I already not-expected. I also don’t remember her name or her face because until the next moment all would be forgotten. All this before that I now label as such and that unfolds itself in spirals in the intertwined memory of turbid sinking to the bottom or surface of that same lake that would never again reflect the sky: all this was before and all of this I had known before. I just didn’t know of him. Of when we walked back through the same corridor while I ran the palms of my hands over the cement shards and the ceiling light tinted our shadows yellow over the gray tiles. I didn’t feel bad about it. I know I didn’t feel bad about it because I wasn’t expecting anything or anyone to once again pierce through the rock-hard firmness that had been solidifying year after year in the inside of my inner self. And I wasn’t even alone. The elevator grates opening as he called us from the apartment door: during.
I repeat exactly: during. From then on I couldn’t return neither to the surface nor to the bottom: the interstice between sleep and wakefulness manifesting itself — black and white — good and evil. A transition point. She turned around. I turned around. And that was when the wolf came to the surface. It curled up retracting its nails like the tendrils of a carnivorous plant comfortable in its own ferocity. Ah. It wasn’t easy but it tasted harsh like vertiginous darkness. I know I looked at his face. And in a certain way his face was my face. Not my expressionless face that — during — stared at him perplexed from the middle of the corridor as he reached out to touch me. No. Only in a certain way his face was the face I should have had before knowing him with that face which should have been mine. I looked at his face. He looked at my face. And as he said things to the woman I knew he was thinking similar things of my face as I thought of his because he looked at me with huge eyes and the huge green eyes I didn’t have and some vague thing like a slow and colorful fish softly cut across the background of his pupils. We didn’t talk.
The apartment was made of narrow metallic labyrinths in the midst of which he moved with ease showing entrances and doors but never exits nor windows. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about it: this was how he lived. From then on I can’t remember the woman. I know she was speaking: my auditory memory registered some kind of alternately rotating tape rapidly overlaying unimportant words. My visual memory registered nothing. Maybe because she shouldn’t be seen but heard. Maybe because by being heard she was less annoying than by being seen yet still insufferable. As she was. In short: a woman interfering like any other in the meeting of two men. The green eyes that weren’t mine detailed my face: the unmoving eyes that were mine detailed his face. I noticed on his right wrist the same scar that marked my left wrist. But soon I noticed in his shoulders a boldness that mine didn’t carry. His fingers longer than mine and his mouth freer than mine and his gestures leaned into the air towards what he wanted to touch: me. He ventured towards my wolfish ferocity. Alone in my lair and coming to surface and perhaps carefully treading over other latitudes than the one which was shown to me. Afraid. And what I wanted to see: I never saw.
Perhaps at the bottom of the lake some cave.
Perhaps at the bottom of the cave some plant.
Perhaps at the bottom of the plant some flower.
Perhaps at the bottom of the flower some thirst.
Perhaps at the bottom of the thirst some lake.
I hounded him thirsty because the meetings alone didn’t unthirst me. Because I would conquer his clarity inch by inch as in him it was natural like a gift from a fairy godmother in me it would be fought over with grinding teeth and razor against veins leaned over the gesture — over the other — over everything — but in pain. He touched me. He touched everything with his white fingers. The defined neck growing out from a multiple chest. The scent of poppies intoxicating the air. His pupils inside mine. An unmoving lake of rotten water and perhaps but only and back in the day garlands over the well reflected on a lake that’s simply clean. Or isn't. All his darkness had diluted as it thickened like if a high concentration of something could turn the thing into something else that was its own opposite. I lowered my eyes: everything that announced itself as rough in me appeared sweet in him. The woman talked and talked and talked and talked still emitting organic sounds distorted electronic uterine squeaks however I didn’t know what would come next. If I ask for love — because he would give it to me; if I ask for poppies — because there were plenty of them in the room; if I ask for a touch — because he would do it. I wouldn’t ask anything of him. I felt the rhythm accelerating soon foretelling the after. I didn’t choose because I no longer choose my paths: my only concern is to keep my forehead upright and my posture proud just like if singing an anthem
“I will not make a move to put away the corpses that litter the lake's water I won’t make a move to guide the boat towards the south because I know that there are winds and that the winds blow I know that if a leaf brushes softly against my face I will crush it like a fly and I know that if there are children dancing on the shore I will kill the children I know of my blade-like self I know of my nasty learnings I know what lies in the bottom of this lake and I know you won’t touch it because the surface won't show it and it will be easier for your gesture to put away the corpses that litter the water of your own lake and guide the boat towards the wind’s direction and welcome the leaves that brush your face and listen to the children’s songs and smile at the kids standing on the shore I know your ways of reaching death I know my ways of reaching life and I know I won’t touch you in the wheat field behind your face and I know you won’t touch the tip of the knife behind my face and I know of our mutual murder and I know of our insatiable hunger for human flesh however I tell you of this obscured self of mine this self of mine is a self of knives and not of flowers."
It wasn’t difficult. The woman fell silent suddenly startled. And I’m sure that I killed her right at that moment because some time later we could hear the blood dripping down the stairs. But I meant no harm. It’s just that I would never find that same sunset in that same afternoon again just like his face would never be mine.
This was the after: everything became blurry. I mean: anything that I wasn’t. Him. Anything I could have been. Anything a little more tough and less concerned with interweaving tenderness. My chances stabbed. Since everything became blurry. Since I loved him — so much — I wanted to tell him to be careful. And to bend down when he sees me lowering my hand to take the dagger out of my belt and then slowly plunge it countless times in his multiple chest and to stop my arm at the exact moment when I started to stick the needles into the green depths of those eyes I didn’t have and distribute the needles throughout his whole body in laborious care because I loved him — so much — and gently stretch both arms as if exercising and in the tip of the arms open my hands that weren’t as thin as his and fingers not as long as I would have liked but strong enough to set a web around his throat and then deftly and enchantingly squeeze until his face that’s just like mine contorts itself in agony and his eyes contain a shock in the gap between always and never and his right hand still tries some gesture in the air some random gesture as if holding something round and alive like a poppy.
After: to leave the two corpses and traverse the metallic labyrinths in order to reach the corridor with the embedded shards and see my single shadow cast over the dark tiles and press the elevator button and open the grates and close the grates and go down and open the doors to walk beyond an atrium lit by the sun which I won’t see and reject the touches and finally step out to the new street filled with colors that are not mine and feel the wolf contract back to being inconspicuous and only then stop myself. Stop myself to remember and miss that face I had killed which in some way was mine. Only in some way. For I repeat over and over how I loved him. Just like someone who kills.
Though I'm re-reading it now, this is a book (alongside Morangos Mofados) I had read before -- in fact, it was through my mother's pocket-size copy of Ovelhas Negras that I had my first contact with Caio Fernando Abreu's work, some many years ago. The book has (indeed!) a very clear/strong autobiographical quality to it: it starts with a story he wrote at 13 or 14 and, as the book progresses, you get to see how his writing and stylistic/thematic/etc preferences/choices/abilities/etc develop with time. It makes it feel almost unfair to pick (for now!!!) just one story out of all of them to translate and post here (alone... a single sheep all by itself...) but there's no way I'd translate the whole thing(...?)(for now) + all stories are part of a bigger thing anyway + I might and probably will come back one day to translate others [from this specific book. Because I like it very much] eventually. Each story in this book comes with a little note explaining things like when the story was written, where, why it was discarded, etc., which I of course kept in my translation. You can read the original story here.
BUT ONLY AND BACK IN THE DAY GARLANDS OVER THE WELL
It’s one of the weirdest short stories I’ve written, in 1970 or 1971, but I can’t remember where or why. Its genesis is an absolute mystery to me. Published only once in Correio do Povo’s Caderno de Sábado, alongside a beautiful illustration by Nelson Boeira Faedrich, it was later included in O ovo apunhalado [1975] and removed from the book by the IEL’s internal censorship (read: Paulo Amorim). There are some gratuitous avant-gardisms and punctuation pyrotechnics (there are no commas, for example), but in some irrational way it terrifies just as much as it fascinates me, maybe precisely because of how I can’t tell where did such violence and shadow come from.
It’s one of the weirdest short stories I’ve written, in 1970 or 1971, but I can’t remember where or why. Its genesis is an absolute mystery to me. Published only once in Correio do Povo’s Caderno de Sábado, alongside a beautiful illustration by Nelson Boeira Faedrich, it was later included in O ovo apunhalado [1975] and removed from the book by the IEL’s internal censorship (read: Paulo Amorim). There are some gratuitous avant-gardisms and punctuation pyrotechnics (there are no commas, for example), but in some irrational way it terrifies just as much as it fascinates me, maybe precisely because of how I can’t tell where did such violence and shadow come from.
Yes I am that worm soul under
the hell of the daemon horses
ALLEN GINSBERG, PLANET NEWS
the hell of the daemon horses
ALLEN GINSBERG, PLANET NEWS
IN A CERTAIN WAY it was my face. Only in a certain way: I emphasize. But this doesn’t matter anymore. Before: we pulled open the elevator's iron grates and went down to the gray corridor. And it wasn’t even a weird corridor. Maybe the building was too old for the street. But even then it was justifiable. Or understandable. And so were the tiny cement shards embedded in the walls — the dark tiled floor — the yellow light from the ceiling. All this before. And.
We heard the doorbell ring many times inside the apartment and without meaning to I pictured the high-pitched sound revealing depths I didn’t know and also didn’t care for at that point because I knew nothing about him and also because I was immersed in some kind of choice just like a dark lake whose bottom and surface are identical and where the stones or the fallen autumn leaves would never form concentric circles again. But I listened. Many times after the doorbell rang she said he wasn’t home and even before she added that it was a shame he wasn’t home because I would have liked to meet him. She didn’t say whether or not he would also like to meet me but it didn’t matter: even if it had been said it would add nothing to what I already not-expected. I also don’t remember her name or her face because until the next moment all would be forgotten. All this before that I now label as such and that unfolds itself in spirals in the intertwined memory of turbid sinking to the bottom or surface of that same lake that would never again reflect the sky: all this was before and all of this I had known before. I just didn’t know of him. Of when we walked back through the same corridor while I ran the palms of my hands over the cement shards and the ceiling light tinted our shadows yellow over the gray tiles. I didn’t feel bad about it. I know I didn’t feel bad about it because I wasn’t expecting anything or anyone to once again pierce through the rock-hard firmness that had been solidifying year after year in the inside of my inner self. And I wasn’t even alone. The elevator grates opening as he called us from the apartment door: during.
I repeat exactly: during. From then on I couldn’t return neither to the surface nor to the bottom: the interstice between sleep and wakefulness manifesting itself — black and white — good and evil. A transition point. She turned around. I turned around. And that was when the wolf came to the surface. It curled up retracting its nails like the tendrils of a carnivorous plant comfortable in its own ferocity. Ah. It wasn’t easy but it tasted harsh like vertiginous darkness. I know I looked at his face. And in a certain way his face was my face. Not my expressionless face that — during — stared at him perplexed from the middle of the corridor as he reached out to touch me. No. Only in a certain way his face was the face I should have had before knowing him with that face which should have been mine. I looked at his face. He looked at my face. And as he said things to the woman I knew he was thinking similar things of my face as I thought of his because he looked at me with huge eyes and the huge green eyes I didn’t have and some vague thing like a slow and colorful fish softly cut across the background of his pupils. We didn’t talk.
The apartment was made of narrow metallic labyrinths in the midst of which he moved with ease showing entrances and doors but never exits nor windows. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about it: this was how he lived. From then on I can’t remember the woman. I know she was speaking: my auditory memory registered some kind of alternately rotating tape rapidly overlaying unimportant words. My visual memory registered nothing. Maybe because she shouldn’t be seen but heard. Maybe because by being heard she was less annoying than by being seen yet still insufferable. As she was. In short: a woman interfering like any other in the meeting of two men. The green eyes that weren’t mine detailed my face: the unmoving eyes that were mine detailed his face. I noticed on his right wrist the same scar that marked my left wrist. But soon I noticed in his shoulders a boldness that mine didn’t carry. His fingers longer than mine and his mouth freer than mine and his gestures leaned into the air towards what he wanted to touch: me. He ventured towards my wolfish ferocity. Alone in my lair and coming to surface and perhaps carefully treading over other latitudes than the one which was shown to me. Afraid. And what I wanted to see: I never saw.
Perhaps at the bottom of the lake some cave.
Perhaps at the bottom of the cave some plant.
Perhaps at the bottom of the plant some flower.
Perhaps at the bottom of the flower some thirst.
Perhaps at the bottom of the thirst some lake.
I hounded him thirsty because the meetings alone didn’t unthirst me. Because I would conquer his clarity inch by inch as in him it was natural like a gift from a fairy godmother in me it would be fought over with grinding teeth and razor against veins leaned over the gesture — over the other — over everything — but in pain. He touched me. He touched everything with his white fingers. The defined neck growing out from a multiple chest. The scent of poppies intoxicating the air. His pupils inside mine. An unmoving lake of rotten water and perhaps but only and back in the day garlands over the well reflected on a lake that’s simply clean. Or isn't. All his darkness had diluted as it thickened like if a high concentration of something could turn the thing into something else that was its own opposite. I lowered my eyes: everything that announced itself as rough in me appeared sweet in him. The woman talked and talked and talked and talked still emitting organic sounds distorted electronic uterine squeaks however I didn’t know what would come next. If I ask for love — because he would give it to me; if I ask for poppies — because there were plenty of them in the room; if I ask for a touch — because he would do it. I wouldn’t ask anything of him. I felt the rhythm accelerating soon foretelling the after. I didn’t choose because I no longer choose my paths: my only concern is to keep my forehead upright and my posture proud just like if singing an anthem
even if inside me the waters rot and fill themselves with mud and occasional winds leave dead fishes over the shores and all warnings make themselves clear in the wings of the butterflies and in the leaves of the plane trees that must be losing their leaves far in the south and even if you shake me and say that you love me and need me: even then I won’t smell the putrid water and my feet won’t get dirty in the mud and my eyes won’t see the carcasses half open with worms on the shore even then I will kill the butterflies and spit on the yellow leaves of the plane trees and I will push you away with the harshest gesture I can muster and I will say harshly that your love doesn’t touch or move me at all and that your need for me is nothing more than hunger and that you would devour me just as I’d devour you ah if we dared.
He looked sadly at me. I couldn’t bear his sad look that reminded me of all the times I had looked for him through the streets without finding. Now that I had found him I no longer sought him. And finding without seeking was as useless as seeking without finding. I detail my movements so as not to frighten him. And I looked at him again. Ah if only I could. But the bread of this agony will always be necessary. And I said:“I will not make a move to put away the corpses that litter the lake's water I won’t make a move to guide the boat towards the south because I know that there are winds and that the winds blow I know that if a leaf brushes softly against my face I will crush it like a fly and I know that if there are children dancing on the shore I will kill the children I know of my blade-like self I know of my nasty learnings I know what lies in the bottom of this lake and I know you won’t touch it because the surface won't show it and it will be easier for your gesture to put away the corpses that litter the water of your own lake and guide the boat towards the wind’s direction and welcome the leaves that brush your face and listen to the children’s songs and smile at the kids standing on the shore I know your ways of reaching death I know my ways of reaching life and I know I won’t touch you in the wheat field behind your face and I know you won’t touch the tip of the knife behind my face and I know of our mutual murder and I know of our insatiable hunger for human flesh however I tell you of this obscured self of mine this self of mine is a self of knives and not of flowers."
It wasn’t difficult. The woman fell silent suddenly startled. And I’m sure that I killed her right at that moment because some time later we could hear the blood dripping down the stairs. But I meant no harm. It’s just that I would never find that same sunset in that same afternoon again just like his face would never be mine.
This was the after: everything became blurry. I mean: anything that I wasn’t. Him. Anything I could have been. Anything a little more tough and less concerned with interweaving tenderness. My chances stabbed. Since everything became blurry. Since I loved him — so much — I wanted to tell him to be careful. And to bend down when he sees me lowering my hand to take the dagger out of my belt and then slowly plunge it countless times in his multiple chest and to stop my arm at the exact moment when I started to stick the needles into the green depths of those eyes I didn’t have and distribute the needles throughout his whole body in laborious care because I loved him — so much — and gently stretch both arms as if exercising and in the tip of the arms open my hands that weren’t as thin as his and fingers not as long as I would have liked but strong enough to set a web around his throat and then deftly and enchantingly squeeze until his face that’s just like mine contorts itself in agony and his eyes contain a shock in the gap between always and never and his right hand still tries some gesture in the air some random gesture as if holding something round and alive like a poppy.
After: to leave the two corpses and traverse the metallic labyrinths in order to reach the corridor with the embedded shards and see my single shadow cast over the dark tiles and press the elevator button and open the grates and close the grates and go down and open the doors to walk beyond an atrium lit by the sun which I won’t see and reject the touches and finally step out to the new street filled with colors that are not mine and feel the wolf contract back to being inconspicuous and only then stop myself. Stop myself to remember and miss that face I had killed which in some way was mine. Only in some way. For I repeat over and over how I loved him. Just like someone who kills.
