translation: Depois de agosto
Nov. 4th, 2023 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliedricoHello. Here's another Caio Fernando Abreu short story... and this one is very special because it's the last story from his last short story collection, Ovelhas Negras. I kind of wish i had posted this translation in the same post as the last one, because I think they could paint an interesting contrast together. This one was written in 1995, a year after Caio got diagnosed with AIDS and a year before his death.
The original text has some little phrases or terms written in different languages, which sometimes means English ("algum milagre de science fiction," or the great "Coxa's Motel") and quotes from Brazilian songs directly or indirectly written into the text (though I tried to link them when they appear), which kind of got lost in translation. Actually, there are many other things I fear got lost, and for that I'm sorry (for this & for any other mistakes, I don't really know what I'm doing, etc.). You can read the original story here
Another specific issue I had with this specific text and trying to translate it to English was the usage of the Portuguese word cigano, which is an exonym and the word most common in everyday vocabulary to refer to the Romani people. It's not, as far as I know, as offensive as the English "gypsy", though it's also not the correct word for such group, which put me in a sort of dilemma. In the end, I decided for using both words (Romani and gypsy) in different instances -- NOT as a way to, I don't know, "balance it out", but because that's how it felt more appropriate to do in the context of each phrase. In the original text, the words are never used to mean something negative or outright pejorative, but they do have some conotations of like, "mystic-ness" (along with other descriptors that, though don't use the "wrong" words/terms, also read very orientalistic/exotifying/etc. see:The whole "eastern" section), which I believe should be read and thought about in a critical way, and are aspects that I in no way would like to defend nor would I like to erase or "fix" in my translation (this is not how translations should work and instead of erasing these aspects I believe it's the job of the reader to recognize and critically think about them). 👍 So here's your warning.
AFTER AUGUST
(A positive story, to be read along with the song “Contigo en la distancia”.)
It was written in February 1995, between Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza and Porto Alegre. There is not much to say about it, for it’s still too close to me to treat with detachment and coldness. Maybe it’s a bit cryptic, but to a good reader mystery should never hinder comprehension.
LAZARUS
On that August morning, it was too late. That's the first thing he thought as he crossed through the hospital gates, leaning shipwrecked on the shoulders of his two friends. Guardian angels, one at each side. He listed: too late for joy, too late for love, for health, for life itself, he repeated to himself without saying a word, trying not to look over to the gray sun reflected on the graves across from Dr. Arnaldo avenue. Trying not to see the graves, but instead the wild life of the tunnels and viaducts flowing into Paulista Avenue, he tried a new way of laughing. Step by step, partly not to startle his friends, partly because it really was funny to be back to the metallic vertigo of that city to which, over a month ago, he had ceased to belong.
Let’s eat sushi at some Japanese place you like, said the woman at his left. And he laughed. Then let’s go to the theater and watch that Tom Hanks movie you love, said the man at his right. And he laughed again. All three of them laughed, somewhat awkwardly, because since that August morning, even though the three of them and everyone else that already knew or would come to know (for he took pride in not hiding anything) gently tried to disguise it, everyone knew that it had become too late. For joy, he repeated, health, life itself. Especially for love, he sighed. Discreet, modest, resigned. To never love again was what hurt the most, and among many other pains, it was the only one he would never confess.
SPRING
But it almost didn't hurt, in the following months. For spring came, bringing so many shades of purple and yellow to the jacarandá trees, so many blue and silver and golden reflections to the river, so much movement in the faces of people from the Other Side, with their delightful tales of living trivialities, and shapes in the clouds — one day, an angel — in the late-afternoon shadows of the garden — another day, two butterflies making love perched on his thigh. Thigh’s Motel, he laughed.
It wasn't always that he laughed. For there were also strict schedules, hard drugs, nausea, vertigo, words slipping away, suspicions at the roof of his mouth, sweaty terror strangling the nights and eyes cast down from the mirror every morning so as not to see Cain imprinted on his own face. But there were still sweet things in life, though distant from him, for everyone knew it was too late, and irrational leaps of faith in some science fiction miracle, occasional magical omens brought by the tiny colorful feathers fallen in the corners of the house. And, most importantly, there were mornings. No longer August mornings but September, then October and so on, until it was January of a new year that, back in August, he didn't even dare to imagine.
I’m strong, he discovered one day, midsummer in the southern city he had moved to, deserted and sun-baked and white and scorching like a Mediterranean village from Theo Angelopoulos. And he decided: I’ll go traveling. Because I didn’t die, because it’s too late and I want to see, see again, see beyond, see a thousand times more everything I’ve never seen and even more what I have, like a damned man, I want to see like Pessoa, who also died without finding. Cursed and lonely, he boldly decided: I’ll go traveling.
JADE
To the coast, close to the sea, where the green water was like jade sparkling in the horizon, a scene out of a kitschy postcard, he drank coconut water in the shade of a palm tree, under a straw hat and the morning sun, picking up colorful seashells from the waves' foamy hem. At sunset he'd sometimes daringly indulge in a beer, watching young men forever out of reach play soccer in the sand.
Too late, he never forgot. And he breathed in slowly, measuredly, conserving his karmic share of prana as he inflated his stomach-ribs-lungs, in that order, softly raising his shoulders before exhaling with a smile, mini-samadhi. Devotional, Buddhic. Because if it really was too late for all those things the Unconscious Living had, as he had come to refer to the People From the Other Side — he did so only to himself, not wanting to seem arrogant — because if it really was so tragically late, then he’d light a guilty cigarette and, fuck it, he stated, with all the arrogance he could muster: if it was too late, it could also be too early, don’t you think? He asked, breathless, to no one.
Ships gliding along the green horizon line. He philosophized: if too late meant after an exact moment, then too early would be before that same moment. He was therefore fixed on that moment, that exact moment, between here-and-now, night-and-day, life-and-death, and that was all there was, and by being all there was it wasn’t neither a good nor a bad moment, but precisely, exactly, it was everything he had. Between this side and the other, this and that, a coconut in his left hand and a cigarette in his right, he smiled. Supported by things both fleeting and wild, angels and guard dogs.
For a man resurrected from the dead, that wasn’t bad, he thought. And right after, foolishly: I’m happy. It was true. Or almost, because:
ANNUNCIATION
Then came the other.
First on the phone, he was a friend-of-a-friend-that-was-away-and-recommended-he’d-check-up-on-him. If he needed anything, if he really was, quotation marks, doing okay. How annoying it was to be reminded of his own fragility in the womb of that tropical January, as if almost expelled from the Paradise he had fought so hard to conquer after his private stay in Hell, and his primal instinct was to be thorns against the other. The other's voice. The other's invasion. The other's gentle cruelty, surely part of the Other Side, of the Complaisant Accomplices mob, who were sometimes even more hateful than the Sordid Bigoted, do you understand?
But there was something — a tint? — in the voice of the other that made him pleasantly nostalgic for a time of hoarse laughter and idle conversations with people from either side — there were no sides to partake, but instead only lakes, he vaguely suspected — just as he had unlearned to do since before that August. Oh to sit at a bar table and drink something, even if it was just water brahma light* alcohol-free cerpa* (and he had been so fond of brandies), bashing or praising any movie, any book, any being, while ships topstitched the green frill of the horizon and muscular, tanned young men played endless soccer matches on the beach, with their colorful swim trunks protecting sweaty and curly pubes, hairy and salty balls. He took a deep and slow breath, forgiving the other seven times. And he set up a meeting.
EASTERN
He knew it the moment he saw him. Perhaps the tan skin, maybe the Chinese eyes? Intriguing, a certain Romani air, and was that a Persian nose?
Perhaps so many things who knows talvez peut-être magari while they drove around listening to anxious tapes and you have this one I can’t believe another being in the galaxy besides me has it: you’re crazy, boy, I swear I never thought.
The windows open to welcome the almost-February breeze that tousled the hair of just one of them, since his own had become thin and sparse since August. Arm hairs bristling — maresia, magnetisms — and on their bare thighs, inside their white shorts, muscles trembled with cramps, breathless for the occasional touches made by one, then the other. Somewhat by chance, at first feeling out any potential rejections with their hands, then more confidently, entangled snakes, pupils crashing together, a big bang contained in a sigh — and suddenly dear saint anthony a wet, warm tongue kissing his mouth the roof of his mouth and almost his throat too flooded by the tropical rain of Botafogo.
But if the other, cuernos, if the other, like all others, was perfectly aware of his situation: then how did he dare? Why do you dare, if we can't simply be friends, he hummed absent-mindedly. Piety, suicide, seduction, hot voodoo, melodrama. For since August he had become so impure that not even the leprous from Carthage would dare to touch him — him, the sickest of all dogs, in the dirtiest of all New Delhi alleys. Ay! he moaned, thirsty and Andalusian in the red desert of the central city.
SONETO
He woke up in a state of enchantment. In another city, even farther north, to where he had fled after that kiss. And he almost couldn’t bear to look outside again. Like in the old days, when he was still part of the circle, when he was still truly alive — but damn it I haven’t fucking died yet, he almost shouted. And maybe it really wasn’t too late after all, for he had desperately started to feel that aching thing again: it was hope. And, as if that wasn’t enough, there came desire too. Bleeding animal desire for the flesh of another animal like him. Calm down, he’d say, restless, abusing Lexotans, warm showers, shiatsus. Forget it, forgo it, baby: those quindins** are not meant for your beak anymore, my little munchkin…
For the first time since that August, half-pretending not to, he disguisedly glanced at himself in the hotel lobby mirror. The marks had disappeared. A bit underweight, biên-sure, he considered, mas pas grave, mon chér. Twiggy, after all, Iggy Pop, Verushka (where had she been?), Tony Perkins — no, not Tony Perkins — he noted: he was a bit sixties. In the end, those who didn’t know would never be able to tell, don’t you think, my dear? But the other knew. And between the enchantment, the hopes and the desires, he began interposing a feeling of pity for the other, but that wasn’t fair, so he tried hate. Experimental hate, of course, because although he was good, he had Ogum with a spear in hand walking ahead of him.
Screaming in the shower: you faggot if you know then what do you want with all this seduction? Get off me, leave me alone, you ruined my life. He started singing an old Nara Leão song that always made him cry, this time more than ever, why have you come down to my dark basement, why did you find me abandoned, why not leave me asleep? But there was a water shortage in the city over there and he stopped singing, soapy and dry.
ESCAPE
Because he couldn’t bear all those things inside him anymore, and on top of them the almost-love and the confusion and the pure fear, he went back to the central city. He booked his return to his southern city for a week after that. Still summer, there were hardly any empty spots anymore and everyone was always moving from the seas to the mountains, from north to south, and then back, all the time. A fateful date, then, that of return. Seven days from now. Only on the third day, the day of fruit-bearing trees, did he make a call.
Once again the other. The other’s voice, the other’s breath, the other’s silence, his longing for him. For three more days, each at a different end of the city, they invented unlikely ways to escape each other. Traffic, rain, heat, exhaustion, fatigue. Never fear — of fear they did not speak. Through machines, they left each other fragmented messages, and whenever they recognized each other’s voice they’d pick up the phone on its first beep or they’d let it ring and ring without answering, voices fading away in the first degrees of Aquarius.
How it deeply distressed him to want without having. Or to have without wanting. Or to not want and to not have. Or to want and to have. Or any other combination of each other’s wantings and havings, how distressing it all was.
DREAM
He had a dream, then. The first one he could remember since August.
He'd arrived at a bar with tables on the sidewalk. He lived in an apartment above that bar, in that same building. He was nervous, waiting for a message, a letter, a note, any kind of urgent sign from the other. Smiling in the bar’s entrance, a young man greeted him. Though he didn’t know the man, he greeted him back, more hurried than intrigued. He rushed up the stairs and opened the door, panting. There was no note on the floor.
On the desk, no message. He checked the clock: it was too late and he hadn’t come. But suddenly he remembered that the man who had greeted him smiling, at the bar’s entrance down below, that dark-haired young man he didn’t recognize — that man was the other.
I can’t see love, he realized as he woke up: I dodge it and fall headfirst into rejection.
CAPITULATION
Because they could no longer postpone it, risking to appear, at best, impolite — and they were both very well-mannered men — the day before flying home, he lit a candle for Jung, another for Oxum. And he went.
Like a maiden, he got out of the taxi trembling, but some virile adrenaline ran in his muscles and some crazy endorphins inside his brain notified: it had come back — that desire that had throbbed so madly and that, because of him, ended up like that. Nosferatu, since August, that hanging sword, neck in the guillotine, a human bomb whose seal no one dared to break.
MIRROR
In the bright and clean room, he began talking of the city farther north, the jade-sea, and of the other city, farther south, the purple tunnel of the jacarandá trees, not knowing how to stop. Of everything that wasn’t there, in that bright and clean room, in the center of which the other looked at him, unmoving, and of everything that had been before and what would come after then, he spoke. But at no moment did he speak of that moment, that precise moment, when they looked at each other face to face.
“Tomorrow is Iemanjá’s Day,” he finally said, exhausted.
The other invited him: “Sit here beside me.”
He did.
The other asked: “Has our friend told you?”
“Told what?”
The other took his hand. His palm was smooth, thin, weightless, cool.
“That me too.”
He didn’t understand.
“Me too,” the other repeated.
The noise the cars made as they went through the curves of Ipanema, the new moon over the lagoon. And like an electric shock, like Iansã’s lightning bolt, he suddenly understood. All of it.
“You too,” he said, white.
“Yes,” the other said yes.
WALTZ
Half-naked, they spent the night laying out stories on the bed, from childhood to present day, among fans, peanut shells, gatorade cans, birth charts and Tarot cards, listening to Ney Matogrosso moan some sad and weary tale about a traveler going through some house, birds with renewed wings, kings dethroned for their immense cowardice. I used to be fat, one of them said. I used to be ugly, said the other. I lived in Paris, one of them said. I lived in New York, said the other. I love mangos, I hate onions. They talked about things like that until five o’clock.
Occasionally, something crazy happened, like one’s feet slipping so deep inside the other’s shirt sleeve that a cautious toe brushed against a hard nipple, or one’s head briefly resting, sweaty, on the curve of the other’s shoulder, sniffing musk. That the other had almost died, even before him, in a previous August, maybe in April, and since then he thought: it was too late for joy, for health, for life itself, and above all, ah, too late for love. He had divided his days between swimming, vitamins, work, sleep and freak wanks so as not to go mad from horniness and terror. The lungs, they had said, the heart. Retrovirus, Pluto in Sagittarius, licorice, zidovudine and BOOM!
When they went out to dine together, they didn’t care that others stared from many different points of view, from many different other sides, at their four hands sometimes intertwined over the blue and white checkered tablecloth. Beautiful and unreachable like two cursed princes, and therefore even more noble.
ENDINGS
It was almost dawn when they exchanged a lingering hug in the car, which looked just like a Simca. So fifties, they laughed. On the morning of Iemanjá, he threw white roses into the seventh wave, then left, alone. They didn’t make any plans.
Maybe one would come back, maybe the other would go. Maybe one would travel to meet the other, maybe the other would flee. Maybe they’d exchange letters, late-night calls on Sundays, crystals and beads sent over by mail, since they were both somewhat like wizards, somewhat like gypsies, somewhat like babalaôs. Maybe they would be healed, simultaneously or not. Maybe one would leave and the other would stay. Maybe one would lose weight, the other would go blind. Maybe they'd never see each other again, at least not with earthly eyes, maybe they'd go mad with love and one would move to the other’s city, or they’d go together to Paris, for example, Prague, Pittsburg or Crete. Maybe one would kill himself, the other would test negative. Abducted by an UFO, killed by stray bullets, who knows.
Maybe everything, maybe nothing. Because it was too early and never too late. It was just the beginning of their non-deaths.
BOLERO
But they had made a deal:
Four nights before, four nights after the full moon, each in their own city, at a determined time, they open the windows of their bachelor rooms, turn off the lights, embraced within themselves, alone in the dark, and dance such tight boleros that their sweats blend together, their scents mix, and their fevers combine to almost ninety degrees, throbbing hard between each other’s thighs.
Slow boleros that sound more like mantras. More Indian than Caribbean. Persian, perhaps, Hebrew Buddhism in Celtic and Yoruba. Or simply Acapulco, whirling in an embrujo de maraca y bongô.
Ever since then, even when it rains or the sky is cloudy, they always know when the moon is full. And, when it wanes and disappears, they know it will renew itself and grow and become full again and so it shall be for all centuries because that’s how it is and how it has always been and always will be, if God wills it and the angels say Amen.
And so they say, will say, are saying, have said already.
* Brazilian brands of beer.
** A Brazilian dessert made with egg yolk, coconut and sugar.
The original text has some little phrases or terms written in different languages, which sometimes means English ("algum milagre de science fiction," or the great "Coxa's Motel") and quotes from Brazilian songs directly or indirectly written into the text (though I tried to link them when they appear), which kind of got lost in translation. Actually, there are many other things I fear got lost, and for that I'm sorry (for this & for any other mistakes, I don't really know what I'm doing, etc.). You can read the original story here
Another specific issue I had with this specific text and trying to translate it to English was the usage of the Portuguese word cigano, which is an exonym and the word most common in everyday vocabulary to refer to the Romani people. It's not, as far as I know, as offensive as the English "gypsy", though it's also not the correct word for such group, which put me in a sort of dilemma. In the end, I decided for using both words (Romani and gypsy) in different instances -- NOT as a way to, I don't know, "balance it out", but because that's how it felt more appropriate to do in the context of each phrase. In the original text, the words are never used to mean something negative or outright pejorative, but they do have some conotations of like, "mystic-ness" (along with other descriptors that, though don't use the "wrong" words/terms, also read very orientalistic/exotifying/etc. see:The whole "eastern" section), which I believe should be read and thought about in a critical way, and are aspects that I in no way would like to defend nor would I like to erase or "fix" in my translation (this is not how translations should work and instead of erasing these aspects I believe it's the job of the reader to recognize and critically think about them). 👍 So here's your warning.
AFTER AUGUST
(A positive story, to be read along with the song “Contigo en la distancia”.)
It was written in February 1995, between Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza and Porto Alegre. There is not much to say about it, for it’s still too close to me to treat with detachment and coldness. Maybe it’s a bit cryptic, but to a good reader mystery should never hinder comprehension.
The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything.
DEUTERONOMY 2:7
DEUTERONOMY 2:7
LAZARUS
On that August morning, it was too late. That's the first thing he thought as he crossed through the hospital gates, leaning shipwrecked on the shoulders of his two friends. Guardian angels, one at each side. He listed: too late for joy, too late for love, for health, for life itself, he repeated to himself without saying a word, trying not to look over to the gray sun reflected on the graves across from Dr. Arnaldo avenue. Trying not to see the graves, but instead the wild life of the tunnels and viaducts flowing into Paulista Avenue, he tried a new way of laughing. Step by step, partly not to startle his friends, partly because it really was funny to be back to the metallic vertigo of that city to which, over a month ago, he had ceased to belong.
Let’s eat sushi at some Japanese place you like, said the woman at his left. And he laughed. Then let’s go to the theater and watch that Tom Hanks movie you love, said the man at his right. And he laughed again. All three of them laughed, somewhat awkwardly, because since that August morning, even though the three of them and everyone else that already knew or would come to know (for he took pride in not hiding anything) gently tried to disguise it, everyone knew that it had become too late. For joy, he repeated, health, life itself. Especially for love, he sighed. Discreet, modest, resigned. To never love again was what hurt the most, and among many other pains, it was the only one he would never confess.
SPRING
But it almost didn't hurt, in the following months. For spring came, bringing so many shades of purple and yellow to the jacarandá trees, so many blue and silver and golden reflections to the river, so much movement in the faces of people from the Other Side, with their delightful tales of living trivialities, and shapes in the clouds — one day, an angel — in the late-afternoon shadows of the garden — another day, two butterflies making love perched on his thigh. Thigh’s Motel, he laughed.
It wasn't always that he laughed. For there were also strict schedules, hard drugs, nausea, vertigo, words slipping away, suspicions at the roof of his mouth, sweaty terror strangling the nights and eyes cast down from the mirror every morning so as not to see Cain imprinted on his own face. But there were still sweet things in life, though distant from him, for everyone knew it was too late, and irrational leaps of faith in some science fiction miracle, occasional magical omens brought by the tiny colorful feathers fallen in the corners of the house. And, most importantly, there were mornings. No longer August mornings but September, then October and so on, until it was January of a new year that, back in August, he didn't even dare to imagine.
I’m strong, he discovered one day, midsummer in the southern city he had moved to, deserted and sun-baked and white and scorching like a Mediterranean village from Theo Angelopoulos. And he decided: I’ll go traveling. Because I didn’t die, because it’s too late and I want to see, see again, see beyond, see a thousand times more everything I’ve never seen and even more what I have, like a damned man, I want to see like Pessoa, who also died without finding. Cursed and lonely, he boldly decided: I’ll go traveling.
JADE
To the coast, close to the sea, where the green water was like jade sparkling in the horizon, a scene out of a kitschy postcard, he drank coconut water in the shade of a palm tree, under a straw hat and the morning sun, picking up colorful seashells from the waves' foamy hem. At sunset he'd sometimes daringly indulge in a beer, watching young men forever out of reach play soccer in the sand.
Too late, he never forgot. And he breathed in slowly, measuredly, conserving his karmic share of prana as he inflated his stomach-ribs-lungs, in that order, softly raising his shoulders before exhaling with a smile, mini-samadhi. Devotional, Buddhic. Because if it really was too late for all those things the Unconscious Living had, as he had come to refer to the People From the Other Side — he did so only to himself, not wanting to seem arrogant — because if it really was so tragically late, then he’d light a guilty cigarette and, fuck it, he stated, with all the arrogance he could muster: if it was too late, it could also be too early, don’t you think? He asked, breathless, to no one.
Ships gliding along the green horizon line. He philosophized: if too late meant after an exact moment, then too early would be before that same moment. He was therefore fixed on that moment, that exact moment, between here-and-now, night-and-day, life-and-death, and that was all there was, and by being all there was it wasn’t neither a good nor a bad moment, but precisely, exactly, it was everything he had. Between this side and the other, this and that, a coconut in his left hand and a cigarette in his right, he smiled. Supported by things both fleeting and wild, angels and guard dogs.
For a man resurrected from the dead, that wasn’t bad, he thought. And right after, foolishly: I’m happy. It was true. Or almost, because:
ANNUNCIATION
Then came the other.
First on the phone, he was a friend-of-a-friend-that-was-away-and-recommended-he’d-check-up-on-him. If he needed anything, if he really was, quotation marks, doing okay. How annoying it was to be reminded of his own fragility in the womb of that tropical January, as if almost expelled from the Paradise he had fought so hard to conquer after his private stay in Hell, and his primal instinct was to be thorns against the other. The other's voice. The other's invasion. The other's gentle cruelty, surely part of the Other Side, of the Complaisant Accomplices mob, who were sometimes even more hateful than the Sordid Bigoted, do you understand?
But there was something — a tint? — in the voice of the other that made him pleasantly nostalgic for a time of hoarse laughter and idle conversations with people from either side — there were no sides to partake, but instead only lakes, he vaguely suspected — just as he had unlearned to do since before that August. Oh to sit at a bar table and drink something, even if it was just water brahma light* alcohol-free cerpa* (and he had been so fond of brandies), bashing or praising any movie, any book, any being, while ships topstitched the green frill of the horizon and muscular, tanned young men played endless soccer matches on the beach, with their colorful swim trunks protecting sweaty and curly pubes, hairy and salty balls. He took a deep and slow breath, forgiving the other seven times. And he set up a meeting.
EASTERN
He knew it the moment he saw him. Perhaps the tan skin, maybe the Chinese eyes? Intriguing, a certain Romani air, and was that a Persian nose?
Perhaps so many things who knows talvez peut-être magari while they drove around listening to anxious tapes and you have this one I can’t believe another being in the galaxy besides me has it: you’re crazy, boy, I swear I never thought.
The windows open to welcome the almost-February breeze that tousled the hair of just one of them, since his own had become thin and sparse since August. Arm hairs bristling — maresia, magnetisms — and on their bare thighs, inside their white shorts, muscles trembled with cramps, breathless for the occasional touches made by one, then the other. Somewhat by chance, at first feeling out any potential rejections with their hands, then more confidently, entangled snakes, pupils crashing together, a big bang contained in a sigh — and suddenly dear saint anthony a wet, warm tongue kissing his mouth the roof of his mouth and almost his throat too flooded by the tropical rain of Botafogo.
But if the other, cuernos, if the other, like all others, was perfectly aware of his situation: then how did he dare? Why do you dare, if we can't simply be friends, he hummed absent-mindedly. Piety, suicide, seduction, hot voodoo, melodrama. For since August he had become so impure that not even the leprous from Carthage would dare to touch him — him, the sickest of all dogs, in the dirtiest of all New Delhi alleys. Ay! he moaned, thirsty and Andalusian in the red desert of the central city.
SONETO
He woke up in a state of enchantment. In another city, even farther north, to where he had fled after that kiss. And he almost couldn’t bear to look outside again. Like in the old days, when he was still part of the circle, when he was still truly alive — but damn it I haven’t fucking died yet, he almost shouted. And maybe it really wasn’t too late after all, for he had desperately started to feel that aching thing again: it was hope. And, as if that wasn’t enough, there came desire too. Bleeding animal desire for the flesh of another animal like him. Calm down, he’d say, restless, abusing Lexotans, warm showers, shiatsus. Forget it, forgo it, baby: those quindins** are not meant for your beak anymore, my little munchkin…
For the first time since that August, half-pretending not to, he disguisedly glanced at himself in the hotel lobby mirror. The marks had disappeared. A bit underweight, biên-sure, he considered, mas pas grave, mon chér. Twiggy, after all, Iggy Pop, Verushka (where had she been?), Tony Perkins — no, not Tony Perkins — he noted: he was a bit sixties. In the end, those who didn’t know would never be able to tell, don’t you think, my dear? But the other knew. And between the enchantment, the hopes and the desires, he began interposing a feeling of pity for the other, but that wasn’t fair, so he tried hate. Experimental hate, of course, because although he was good, he had Ogum with a spear in hand walking ahead of him.
Screaming in the shower: you faggot if you know then what do you want with all this seduction? Get off me, leave me alone, you ruined my life. He started singing an old Nara Leão song that always made him cry, this time more than ever, why have you come down to my dark basement, why did you find me abandoned, why not leave me asleep? But there was a water shortage in the city over there and he stopped singing, soapy and dry.
ESCAPE
Because he couldn’t bear all those things inside him anymore, and on top of them the almost-love and the confusion and the pure fear, he went back to the central city. He booked his return to his southern city for a week after that. Still summer, there were hardly any empty spots anymore and everyone was always moving from the seas to the mountains, from north to south, and then back, all the time. A fateful date, then, that of return. Seven days from now. Only on the third day, the day of fruit-bearing trees, did he make a call.
Once again the other. The other’s voice, the other’s breath, the other’s silence, his longing for him. For three more days, each at a different end of the city, they invented unlikely ways to escape each other. Traffic, rain, heat, exhaustion, fatigue. Never fear — of fear they did not speak. Through machines, they left each other fragmented messages, and whenever they recognized each other’s voice they’d pick up the phone on its first beep or they’d let it ring and ring without answering, voices fading away in the first degrees of Aquarius.
How it deeply distressed him to want without having. Or to have without wanting. Or to not want and to not have. Or to want and to have. Or any other combination of each other’s wantings and havings, how distressing it all was.
DREAM
He had a dream, then. The first one he could remember since August.
He'd arrived at a bar with tables on the sidewalk. He lived in an apartment above that bar, in that same building. He was nervous, waiting for a message, a letter, a note, any kind of urgent sign from the other. Smiling in the bar’s entrance, a young man greeted him. Though he didn’t know the man, he greeted him back, more hurried than intrigued. He rushed up the stairs and opened the door, panting. There was no note on the floor.
On the desk, no message. He checked the clock: it was too late and he hadn’t come. But suddenly he remembered that the man who had greeted him smiling, at the bar’s entrance down below, that dark-haired young man he didn’t recognize — that man was the other.
I can’t see love, he realized as he woke up: I dodge it and fall headfirst into rejection.
CAPITULATION
Because they could no longer postpone it, risking to appear, at best, impolite — and they were both very well-mannered men — the day before flying home, he lit a candle for Jung, another for Oxum. And he went.
Like a maiden, he got out of the taxi trembling, but some virile adrenaline ran in his muscles and some crazy endorphins inside his brain notified: it had come back — that desire that had throbbed so madly and that, because of him, ended up like that. Nosferatu, since August, that hanging sword, neck in the guillotine, a human bomb whose seal no one dared to break.
MIRROR
In the bright and clean room, he began talking of the city farther north, the jade-sea, and of the other city, farther south, the purple tunnel of the jacarandá trees, not knowing how to stop. Of everything that wasn’t there, in that bright and clean room, in the center of which the other looked at him, unmoving, and of everything that had been before and what would come after then, he spoke. But at no moment did he speak of that moment, that precise moment, when they looked at each other face to face.
“Tomorrow is Iemanjá’s Day,” he finally said, exhausted.
The other invited him: “Sit here beside me.”
He did.
The other asked: “Has our friend told you?”
“Told what?”
The other took his hand. His palm was smooth, thin, weightless, cool.
“That me too.”
He didn’t understand.
“Me too,” the other repeated.
The noise the cars made as they went through the curves of Ipanema, the new moon over the lagoon. And like an electric shock, like Iansã’s lightning bolt, he suddenly understood. All of it.
“You too,” he said, white.
“Yes,” the other said yes.
WALTZ
Half-naked, they spent the night laying out stories on the bed, from childhood to present day, among fans, peanut shells, gatorade cans, birth charts and Tarot cards, listening to Ney Matogrosso moan some sad and weary tale about a traveler going through some house, birds with renewed wings, kings dethroned for their immense cowardice. I used to be fat, one of them said. I used to be ugly, said the other. I lived in Paris, one of them said. I lived in New York, said the other. I love mangos, I hate onions. They talked about things like that until five o’clock.
Occasionally, something crazy happened, like one’s feet slipping so deep inside the other’s shirt sleeve that a cautious toe brushed against a hard nipple, or one’s head briefly resting, sweaty, on the curve of the other’s shoulder, sniffing musk. That the other had almost died, even before him, in a previous August, maybe in April, and since then he thought: it was too late for joy, for health, for life itself, and above all, ah, too late for love. He had divided his days between swimming, vitamins, work, sleep and freak wanks so as not to go mad from horniness and terror. The lungs, they had said, the heart. Retrovirus, Pluto in Sagittarius, licorice, zidovudine and BOOM!
When they went out to dine together, they didn’t care that others stared from many different points of view, from many different other sides, at their four hands sometimes intertwined over the blue and white checkered tablecloth. Beautiful and unreachable like two cursed princes, and therefore even more noble.
ENDINGS
It was almost dawn when they exchanged a lingering hug in the car, which looked just like a Simca. So fifties, they laughed. On the morning of Iemanjá, he threw white roses into the seventh wave, then left, alone. They didn’t make any plans.
Maybe one would come back, maybe the other would go. Maybe one would travel to meet the other, maybe the other would flee. Maybe they’d exchange letters, late-night calls on Sundays, crystals and beads sent over by mail, since they were both somewhat like wizards, somewhat like gypsies, somewhat like babalaôs. Maybe they would be healed, simultaneously or not. Maybe one would leave and the other would stay. Maybe one would lose weight, the other would go blind. Maybe they'd never see each other again, at least not with earthly eyes, maybe they'd go mad with love and one would move to the other’s city, or they’d go together to Paris, for example, Prague, Pittsburg or Crete. Maybe one would kill himself, the other would test negative. Abducted by an UFO, killed by stray bullets, who knows.
Maybe everything, maybe nothing. Because it was too early and never too late. It was just the beginning of their non-deaths.
BOLERO
But they had made a deal:
Four nights before, four nights after the full moon, each in their own city, at a determined time, they open the windows of their bachelor rooms, turn off the lights, embraced within themselves, alone in the dark, and dance such tight boleros that their sweats blend together, their scents mix, and their fevers combine to almost ninety degrees, throbbing hard between each other’s thighs.
Slow boleros that sound more like mantras. More Indian than Caribbean. Persian, perhaps, Hebrew Buddhism in Celtic and Yoruba. Or simply Acapulco, whirling in an embrujo de maraca y bongô.
Ever since then, even when it rains or the sky is cloudy, they always know when the moon is full. And, when it wanes and disappears, they know it will renew itself and grow and become full again and so it shall be for all centuries because that’s how it is and how it has always been and always will be, if God wills it and the angels say Amen.
And so they say, will say, are saying, have said already.
* Brazilian brands of beer.
** A Brazilian dessert made with egg yolk, coconut and sugar.
