Motive Unlike Cecilia’s¹

I sing because life is incomplete.
To banish tears, that old wives’ tale,
the blessing and salvation of the poet.

Remembering Rimbaud

I cry to the heavens for the strength
to scream my no
at the top of my lungs.

For cowardly delicacy
I don’t want to lose my life.

Mystery

I return to the method of Descartes
dividing the problem into parts.
And so I take the word mystery
and separate its phonemes
one by one, like petals from a flower.
M    y    s   t   e   r   y
What remains are minor questions
and no solution to any of them.
I still don’t know if gathered shadows are
the eye’s incompetence
or the dimming of the stars.

Phases of the Moon

Li Po was wrong to say that man
would never reach the moon.
(They’ve even brought back sand from there)

Li Po was right to say: men
today no longer see the moon of yesterday.
(Not because its splendor has faded
but because our gaze has changed)

We know something about now and yesterday.
Of the future we have nothing but questions.

In the Middle of the Road²

In the middle of our road
there was another stone.
Not the poet’s stone
verbal abstract allegorical.
Instead there was a renal stone
concrete chronic solid.
In fact, a plural stone:
one removed, another appeared.

We will never forget
home turned into hospital.
Inside a body was a stone
an obstacle to carnal love.
There was a stone in the road
to reality’s paradise.

Translated by Alexis Levitin

1 Cecelia Meireles, famous Brazilian modernist poet who wrote the following:

I sing because the moment exists
and life itself is complete.
I am not happy, I am not sad.
I am a poet.

2 Carlos Drummond De Andrade wrote a famous poem “In the Middle of the Road,” which begins with the line: “In the middle of the road there was a stone.”

Photo: Vasilina Sirotina, Unsplash.

There are three old women who live in a large house, which is also old. 

In the house there is also a boy of around fifteen. 

Lázaro is neither son nor grandson of any of them. He is homeschooled. Dália teaches religion and piano. Lobélia teaches languages. Alpínia teaches cookery and basic anatomy. The radio is always turned up loud for the old women to listen to music and, so say the local children, to muffle the voices in the attic. 

The town is called Santa Graça—nationally renowned for its virtue and cleanliness. In the future, no black or sick people were seen there. 

ÍCARO CROSSES THE OCEAN

Brazil, 1930s

Lázaro shouts:

Wash your hands, Íris, scrub them. Wash them properly to see if the blackness comes out.

Íris thinks:

Little liar. Lázaro says he came from Germany, but old Alpínia says the kid isn’t very trustworthy and his origins are more local and precise: Três Vendas, the rural part of Santa Graça. His mother, who no one knew, left the child in the street. One day, Dália and Lobélia were passing through the town to buy quinces from Bela Vista farm when they spotted a bundle of cloths inside a hamper. The boy was very white. They looked both ways. The air was tight. Dry. Nobody. An unwavering afternoon. No one to be seen under the intense, orange heat. They sat on the threshold of the chapel and waited almost the whole afternoon for someone to collect the child. That’s how Lázaro was born. He was born from no one wanting him. 

He was as white as a cloud and it was unusual to find a pure child like that without a mother or father. There were plenty of black children without families. Loads of them. They went around in packs, begging for scraps of food and water at the houses of Santa Graça’s rich families. That’s how I grew up, that’s how a lot of kids from Mata Cavalo grew up and how my Joaquim would have too, if he’d grown up. 

One Monday, when young Ícaro came home from school, he hung over the balcony of his mother’s room and saw some four or five kids stop outside the big house. My people: ragged clothes the orange colour of the dirt roads. They asked for a cup of water. Here at Ícaro’s house, I can’t open the door to them, Ícaro’s grandmother doesn’t let me. When they see me from the fence, they shout my name asking for stale bread. If I went out, Dona Rosa would fire me. Ícaro and the black children mustn’t even talk. Dona Rosa and the boy’s mother, Dona Ondina, taught him that black children went into other people’s houses to steal. They were different from the gypsies who came in to read our palms and tell our futures; they stole and we didn’t even realise it. Boys of colour, if need be, would fight each other and take things bought with hard sacrifice. Dona Rosa also said they were lazy because if they, who were white, studied and worked to earn life’s comforts, why didn’t the blacks do the same?

I have my health and I thank God the Father for that every night. I also have the desire to kill Dona Rosa. It was Father Arcanjo who taught me to pray to God and Jesus. He’s a holy man; he also taught me not to be sorrowful for serving others. Everything is part of God’s plan and He knows what He’s doing. The kingdom of heaven belongs to me. Father Arcanjo reminded me of the good life I have. My grandmothers were almost certainly slaves and, thanks be to God, things have improved a lot. 

I moved away from the window so the children didn’t see me, then spied on them as they knocked on the three witches’ door and rang the bell. Ícaro watched them too. Poor thing, he just wanted to play. 

Lobélia opened the door. She motioned for them to wait on the veranda and I watched as she called to someone inside the house. Dália came out onto the veranda and gently patted the heads of the children, who opened their mouths and showed their teeth, but they weren’t smiles. Alpínia arrived with water and cookies and a towel which Dália used to clean her hands after having touched the children. She told them to come back the following day for bread, at the same time. The kids went down the steps that led from the veranda to the street. They seemed happy. Their dirty hands clutched the black sweets they’d earned, those ones with a burnt taste that crunch on your teeth. One of the black boys spotted Ícaro. He smiled with all his teeth, the same ones he’d just shown to the women at the big house. Ícaro was scared, not of the other boy, but of his grandmother if she saw him smiling back. He hid behind the curtain. A whoosh by my right ear. I looked at the little black boy. He smiled again, waved, and went on his way. From the varnished wooden floor, I picked up the sweet he’d thrown for Ícaro. 

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the same thing happened. The kids from Mata Cavalo knocked on the big house’s door, Alpínia or Lobélia gave them bread and water, Dália patted their heads, filled their dirty hands with sweets and they left. The same boy who had thrown a sweet for Ícaro, threw several others until Friday came and that was the last time I saw Ester’s boy. 

Ícaro thinks:

Íris washes plates, clothes, the floor, but her hand stays black. She scrubs sheets in the basin, bleach on the veranda floor. It’s no use: her hand is always black. 

I saw the boy who throws sweets and four others knock on the door of the big house and this time they went inside. It was almost seven at night and the smell of soup coming from the house was a sign that the kids had been invited to sit at the table, to eat like important people. Perhaps a hunk of fresh bread to go with the creamed corn I could smell from the balcony of my mum’s room. 

I hung out the window until eight o’clock when my mum shouted that dinner was ready. From seven to eight, not a sign of them. They must have been really getting stuck into the food. 

I struggled to sleep. The street had been quiet for hours but I was still awake. I thought about the boy who threw sweets: a black boy couldn’t be my friend, Grandma would never allow it. Nor would mum or dad. The whole week we had played at tossing sweets back and forth, him out there and me in here. I looked under the curtain and all over the orange wood floor, but I didn’t find anything. 

The ducks outside the big house were making noise and it was late. They screeched as if someone was robbing the place. But nothing happened in Santa Graça. It was just the puppy, hungry or annoyed. A loud bark that took half an hour to stop. When the animal was done barking, I fell asleep. 

Lázaro says:

Íris washes plates, clothes, the floor, but her hand stays black. She scrubs sheets in the basin, bleach on the veranda floor. It’s no use: her hand is always black and dirty.

My birth mother was German. She gave me away because she didn’t have a husband. Father Arcanjo asked the three old women to look after me and raise me. My blood is pure, just look at me. I don’t want to play with Ícaro because he’s slow.

Dona Rosa orders:

Go play with Lázaro, Ícaro. Be a good boy now. Íris can’t watch you. She needs to clean the house, wash the bathrooms, everything’s filthy. Don’t get close to her, son. God made us all a certain colour so we know what our role is. And we don’t want to argue with God. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Olavo explains:

I’m crazy about my son. Ícaro is a good boy, but he has many limitations. Something or other genetic that we don’t know how to explain. Ondina and myself do everything we can for that boy and we want him to have a normal life. He goes to school. He’s very popular with his classmates. They don’t pity my poor son for those wobbly legs of his. In fact, the other, normal children adore Ícaro. We can feel it just from looking at his little face. God the almighty father has given us this boy to look after. We have a lot of expenses due to Ícaro, the medicines are costly, but they are worth every penny to see him improve. Ondina is a wonderful partner. I hit the jackpot. We were blessed with Ícaro.

Olavo thinks:

The way that child drools, hobbles… it’s embarrassing. Fly, Ícaro, fly.

Ícaro thinks:

At home, every Saturday, at midday, the whole street hears Lázaro’s piano lessons. He combines piano with singing and the lessons last an hour and a half. It’s also the time when the puppy goes crazy. Piano, barking and singing fill the street. From my room you can feel the floor shaking. The clock chimes half-one and returns silence to the house. The loud noise coming from that house irritates me. When it becomes hard to hear from such a racket, I bang my head against the wall to see if all the noise is coming from me. 

With no school to go to that day, I spent the whole time at the window looking for the boys with the sweets. Nothing. They must have left the big house while I was having dinner. We missed each other. Íris didn’t see when they left either. Maybe they would come by after six. Surely they would be hungry and thirsty and would knock on doors until someone gave them some leftovers. The boy with the bright black eyes would look for me and throw another sweet onto the floor of my mum’s room for us to play with. But he didn’t come at six, or seven, or any time at all. 

From the big house there came a strong smell of food. They cooked meat on Sundays. The three sisters cooked together. From the back rooms of my house, you could see their woodfired stove. Huge pots. The constant fire, a nonstop show of food, cutlery, herbs collected from the backyard. The kitchen was dark, old. Every Sunday they cooked seasoned, aromatic meats, with top-quality cuts as Alpínia herself said when she saw me at the back window watching their lives. 

Ondina thinks:

Every Sunday, before lunch, our three neighbours from the big house go to mass. I go, too. Olavo and my mother accompany me. We take Ícaro because my boy needs a lot of prayers. Our Lady of Miracles must intercede and give him the strong legs he deserves, and clear speech and a sure head, poor thing. We share the bread that is the body of Christ and swallow the soggy wafer that becomes the eucharist after a short prayer. God forgive me, but that has made my stomach turn since catechism.

The old women and young Lázaro go, too. They return with Father Arcanjo, who has lunch at the big house every Sunday without fail. 

All of Sunday goes by and Father Arcanjo leaves the big house at four in the afternoon. He carries a bag and a dish of leftovers. The old women of the big house spoil him as much as they can. They are very devout and maintain a close friendship with the priest. Sometimes, Father Arcanjo takes Lázaro with him to the church. If I happen to be on the balcony when they leave, the priest explains that Lázaro takes Latin lessons with him on Sunday afternoons, a time of rest from prayers.

Ondina comments:

Latin classes… right.

Íris makes

Coffee for Olavo.

Olavo watches

Íris washing the soapy spoon up, down, up, down.

Ícaro thinks:

That Sunday, I waited once again for the street kids to go to the big house and ask for food, but they didn’t. My parents kept saying I should play with that weirdo Lázaro. He said he’s a doctor and he cut bugs in half. He sowed and glued spiders’ legs to ants’ bodies. He also had a collection of bones he found under the earth. Lobélia said that before they bought the land for the big house, it had been a dog cemetery. But that was just a story to scare children. What was really under the ground was people, buried years ago and turning to compost and myths. Lázaro found their bones and built the skeletons of imaginary beings. Monsters that he saw. 

At night, around six, the puppy barked with all its might. The radio on full blast for the deaf old women. An hour later, silence. The hushed beginning of the night was broken by the grating of the iron gate, covered in mud and rust. It was Father Arcanjo bringing Lázaro home. He praised the boy’s progress in Latin and announced that Lázaro had already had his bath. He had indulged in some dulce de leche and become smeared in it more than is acceptable for a boy of his stature. The priest had suggested, therefore, that he clean himself up in the parish house before returning home. Without further discussion, Alpínia said goodbye to the priest who went back up the hill, clutching his cassock so as not to trip, head down, always humble. 

I went to sleep unable to stop thinking about the boy with the sweets. The boy who, seemingly, had disappeared. 

Translated by Andrew McDougall

From the novel Puro (Relógio d’Água, 2023; Todavia, 2024)

Photo: Rafaela Biazi, Unsplash

Lavender Roses

I leave home with the feeling that I may end up not going to work after all if I happen to find a flower along the way. Instead, at the sight of its beauty and power, I’ll let myself be taken by a different calling: contemplation.

It’s raining, which blurs the horizon and makes the city rather melancholy. One would think today is Sunday, but no, two is the right number: today is the second day of the week.

I step lightly about the drenched sidewalks, trying to preserve my shoes’ polished appearance; I’ve never trusted anyone with dirty shoes. My black umbrella, precociously aged by my neglect, protects my hair and my throat from catching an occasional cold.

I try to pay attention to the day’s melody. Indeed, for when we are attentive, we can hear in our heads the day’s song, a melody that brings up from our unconscious a surprising message, much like those found in a fortune cookie.

No sign of any flower, much less a rose. My subconscious radio must be suffering interference from the rain and isn’t playing a single note today—a gloomy day, conducive to hopes of finding lavender-colored roses.

I head to work. I walk on, looking for roses that would never bloom on a Monday, since roses seldom survive the weekend’s annoyance of dogs and kids running loose around the buildings in my well-kept neighborhood. I walk on, persistent in my strange form of contemplation, certain of noticing everything around me, full of a sacred hope.

Dreams abound, as do storms and hungry children everywhere, and I don’t pay attention to all those dreams. Some sweet old people still try to break away from their families’ madness; they go to nursing homes and try all forms of mental escapism. In the nursing homes, the elderly revisit a past where pit bulls didn’t exist and children played picking off the petals of a daisy: “…loves me, loves me not…” A world where children played.

I’m still looking for that rose. I still dream of that sacred moment when I’ll play hide-and-seek. I’ll throw open my fears, I’ll plant a garden of lavender roses in my yard and water them sparingly. I’ll dream big. I’ll open the window; I’ll face the sun. Or I’ll open the window and face the rain. I’ll open the window and find the moon.

Here I am, in the middle of my own road. I look at life as a story full of possibilities that one day I’ll tell my kids, my dogs, my menopause, and my wrinkles. Wrinkles like etched lavender roses; like flower petals and thorns, clean shoes, and threads from an old umbrella; like raindrops and moonlight baths. Expression lines on the face of a generation that keeps walking and searching, insistently looking for something: wrinkles of a generation that has averted the sun.

Rendezvous

at three in the morning
Eshu arrives, naked
I sleep peacefully.

Chimera

It was all this talk of heaven
that didn’t let me
live my life.

Law of Blood

I grew up afraid of roosters. Grandma Benedita raised chickens, but the roosters, more aggressive and menacing, ruled the roost. Domestic violence was common in the coop. Grandma was a Christian; for her, God was love, and meanness was something from the devil. In my child’s mind, that applied to the birds too. The first time I made an offering to Eshu, I wasn’t fully there. I hadn’t overcome my fear of roosters, and maybe I was unconsciously thinking of the false liturgy on animal sacrifice; I didn’t go through with my offering. The second time I fed Eshu, I was in control of my thoughts, there was no trace in my mind of that false bird machismo. I bought a big, older rooster, slender, hypnotic. Black feathers, some in dark blue tones. Fascinating and black, like me.

It happened on the seventh day. I didn’t fear my own strength. The rooster looked like an eagle, and I sensed its energy. It didn’t crow, didn’t even stir. By then, I was ready to slash it. As soon as the blood gushed out, I was in love. It was blood of my blood.

Translated by Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey

Photo: Matheus Farias, Unsplash.

For him

My dad is black.

When I was eleven, we went to live in his adolescence, over by the dirt pitch in Morro Dunga, Jardim Míriam. When he left he still had a big afro but when I turned eleven he was already balding, he’d say I was to blame and I’d laugh til I went scarlet. On the way to school I’d be walking past and I’d see my teenage dad shouting to them to pass the ball across the pitch, ‘there were about ten of us, only Tavinho’s still alive’.

My dad worked in central São Paulo for a long time before landing a payment plan for the boxy white Gol that took us to and from Guarujá. My dad used to take the bus into the city, down as far as Avenida Cupecê to catch the first one of the day, ‘do you remember the dictatorship, dad?’, ‘yes, in those days they’d ask for your work permit before they beat you up’.

I used to ask about fighting the generals and all he’d say was how his ears used to get so cold.

I used to ask about the rallies and the secrets, but he’d talk about how his hands would be freezing and hurting and how his fingertips used to go numb, ‘at the rallies?’, ‘no, on the way to work’. The cold, his ears so terribly cold because he couldn’t wear a hat, ‘you couldn’t wear one because you were a communist?’, ‘no, it wasn’t that’.

My teenage dad used to walk to work in the early mornings, head bare, hands clutched to his chest, he’d go rigid with cold so he wouldn’t get beaten to death. Blue-grey lips, lunchbox trembling in his pocket, one step after the other trying furiously not to break the silence, ‘hey, tramp, where you going at this hour?’, ‘to work, sir’, ‘to work? with that favela-boy face?’, ‘yes, sir’, ‘where’s your work permit?’.

My teenage dad couldn’t wear a hat or even put his hands in his pockets, he’d go slowly and show them his trouser pocket so’s to not get shot. My dad still doesn’t put his hands in his pockets, sometimes he’s just a boy and when we walk together to the grocery store I ask: ‘aren’t your hands cold, dad?’, I ask and he rubs one against the other, two stones trying to make a fire, ‘in this heat?’.

My dad is black.

When I was eleven we used to go to Guarujá in the white Gol, driving there and back in one day, I wanted to sit in the front but he said ‘not yet’ .

We’d be driving down Imigrantes highway and they’d stop us and look at the car and ask for my papers, ‘is she your daughter?”, ‘yes, she looks like me, right?’, the officers laughed and I laughed too and the sergeant would turn serious looking at my birth certificate. He’d fold the document, hand it back to my dad and say he reminded him of someone, every time, ‘one of our guys, an officer’.

One day, I gathered up my courage and asked my dad: ‘why do you always look like some police officer?’ He smiled, and I never saw my dad so unhappy. 

My dad is black. 

I turned thirteen and we went to live in my adolescence. I sat in the front seat furious, we were going to Guarujá again, always Guarujá, ‘won’t you bring anything with you?’ my dad asks, ‘I already said I won’t’. The police officer: ‘stop, stop, stop’, always the same dance, the same highway checkpoints, ‘is she your daughter?’, ‘yes’, and the officer peers into the car like a dentist, me and my dad inside the open mouth, ‘where’s your ID?’, I look at my dad, I only came with the clothes I put on today, the officer lays a hand on his gun, ‘get out the car’. 

My dad is black.

The officer calls me over and I don’t understand, ‘young lady?’, I go with him, trembling, I don’t understand, ‘I need you to stay calm and keep looking straight at me, ok?’, I don’t understand, I try to catch my dad’s eye and ask for help and ask for forgiveness but the officer comes between us, ‘he can’t hear you’.

I bury my body inside my blouse and feel my dad’s cold, back there without a shirt, I feel the cold of his body a boy again with only shorts on, his chest exposed to the gun. 

I lower my head looking for my dad within myself and I say nothing afraid my words might tear something down, might break something, but the officer says again, ‘you can tell me the truth’, all I want is my dad, his arm around me, ‘calm down, there’s no need to worry, I know this must be tough for you’, the officer is needling me, ‘he told you to say you’re his daughter, didn’t he ?’.

He talks and I look up in fear, in fury, running through the numbers, ‘take it easy’, the gun, the truncheon, his hand, ‘we’ll protect you’, I don’t understand, don’t want to understand, ‘you can tell the truth now’, I stay silent like my dad taught me, ‘he threatened you, didn’t he? I know, but you don’t need to be afraid, are you feeling bad for him?’. I keep trying to listen out for my dad’s breathing far away and the officer says: ‘I’ll make it easy for you, you don’t even need to speak, just nod your head, or wink, any sign, just give me a sign and I’ll know he’s really abducting you’. 

My dad is black. 

I am white, I see.

Translated by Laura Garmeson and Sophie Lewis

Photo: Marcos Paulo Prado, Unsplash.

When the shadows cover part of the sky and the sun retreats just behind the mountains, the boys climb the street, euphoric. 

The ball, carried with pride, passes from hand to hand. Everyone wants to touch it. Each of them paid for a piece. It took months to save up the money, doing odd jobs here and there. The ball had to be good enough for playing real soccer, on a field, from a famous brand, something professional. 

Seven days a week, the seven boys take turns with the ball. Each one has a special place for it to sit. In the shacks where they live, amid all that scarcity, dust and stench, the ball is the only material possession they have, the only nice thing to admire at home. 

At the top of the deserted street, they jump over the wall of a clandestine graveyard, which for them is just a piece of land with enough space to play soccer without being disturbed. 

They cross the site to the other side, to a flat stretch of dirt where it’s easier to play. They mark the goal with what they find lying around, usually stones, sometimes pieces of dried-up bones. 

The match starts: slowly, with skillful passes and vicious dribbling. Minutes later, cries for revenge and profanity are heard, and rude gestures are made. At least two of the boys show some talent and a possible future in the sport. But everyone is committed. It’s the moment they turn into imagined idols, when they forget about poverty and domestic violence. 

They like being among the dead. Those dead. No name, age or past to identify them. Mortal remains mixed with rocks and scraps of wood. It’s hard to tell them apart. 

Between one match and the next, they drink water from a tap and cool off by dousing their heads. They decide to play a penalty shootout. Two of the boys take turns inside the goal. It’s always the tensest moment of the game, where failure and success become clear, when talents stand out. 

The gate to the graveyard opens, and a small truck pulls inside. The boys stop playing and go sit in a corner, watching the action. 

Two men unload bags of bones from the truck. They lift the tarp covering a grave and toss the bones of several bodies inside. With a shovel, they cover the bones with a little dirt. One good rain will reveal what’s been hidden. 

The men return to the truck and leave. The boys go back to the penalty kicks. Daylight is waning. 

A boy, carrying a bag, hops over the wall and greets his friends. 

He mills around while the others finish their game. Scattered about are some small, overturned crosses, broken skulls, forearms, femurs, jaws, ribs, and other shards and splinters of bone. He bends down and picks up some of the pieces and looks at them, trying to identify the body part. He decides on a jawbone and slips it into his bag. 

The match comes to an end and so does the daylight. There’s only the grayish tinge of the last remaining light that makes them look like figures in silhouette. 

They walk down the street, pleased with their soccer game, commenting on the highlights. The boy shows the others the jawbone he found. They laugh and call him crazy. He shrugs. 

At home, the now clean ball gleams on a shelf. The boy falls asleep gazing at it, dreaming of a promising future, dreaming about the next day’s match. 

In the house next door, the jaw gleams on a shelf alongside other pieces of bone. The boy falls asleep gazing at it, dreaming about that piece of bone. Maybe, just maybe it’s his dad. 

Translated by Zoë Perry

Photo: Morro do Cantagalo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by william f. santos, Unsplash.

It was said that a man who kept names lived in those parts. The night before, she’d anxiously planned how she would stride into his house and take her seat before him. She imagined, her rosary woven between her fingers and her palms face down on her polka dot dress, getting straight to the point as she narrated the reason for her visit and her expectations of the name keeper; nothing more, nothing less. However, as she passed the threshold, an overwhelming, unfamiliar curiosity drove her to scrutinise the details of the foyer: the little patterned hardwood table, the three miniature key hooks on the wall, the old-fashioned jacket and hat, and the collection of thick hardcovers which regarded her sombrely from the other end of the drawing room. In front of those books sat the name keeper: he had whitish hair and a hunch that was too pronounced for his age. He sat before an enormous book, a fountain pen in his hand. He did not look up, indifferent to whoever had entered, looking exactly as they had described him. She eventually came forward, stepping cautiously as if afraid of being attacked, her gaze fixed on the name keeper. She scarcely believed she had arrived.

As she took a seat, she noticed her mouth was dry, her throat knotted and painful. She was startlingly close, close enough to make out the name giver’s nose, his skin, his hands. She squeezed the rosary between her fingers until they ached, then began to speak. Her voice emerged with difficulty, the words struggling to form on her tongue: she needed a sip of water but did not dare ask for one. She took a deep breath, pushing through the dryness, contracting her abdomen for support. Finally, she announced that she had come for a name, though not hers. She confessed the immense effort this required of her, the immense resignation, for she had heard a lot about him, and much had been said about that house. An immense love had brought her here, she clarified. An absolute love. A sacrificial love:

—I come here for a love like that of Christ, true Passion. I come here to answer His call—she crossed herself—Which of course means that I am here on a sacred mission.

She levelled her gaze, fixedly, confidently, onto the name giver, who still had not looked up. She paused for a reaction, and finding none—he really was an old sorcerer, or some such creature—began her story the same way she had rehearsed it. Compassion was the sentiment that defined her, the voice which guided her through the days. She cared for her children and her husband, and all their children and spouses who needed her help. They could depend on her on every holiday and festival; she was tireless, energetic, and even assisted at the parsonage. She was a catechist and also sold raffle tickets, eager to assist as much with funding as with the upkeep of the church. The neighbours all knew that if there was maintenance to be done, they could count on her. She had an ‘unrelenting compassion’; that was how the priest had described her on her birthday mass, and she never failed to smile whenever she recalled those words. Her compassion was indeed infinite: in her prayers, she asked for nothing save long and healthy lives for everyone else except her.

It was impossible for her to ignore the deacon’s urgent call to action in the community news. It was more exciting than challenging: the possibility of extending her compassion beyond the strict boundaries of her community. Despite her age, she was the first to volunteer, the first to put her name down for the group that was to travel by coach to the little town: fifteen hours on the road to assist with the catechism. The scenes the deacon described had moved her: a group of over two hundred naked Indians, cut off from the outside world. Nomads who didn’t even know how to plant crops. They lived subject to nature’s whims, the hostile climate, the wild animals, and now the loggers who were drawing threateningly close. Conflict was imminent. As a mother, wife, Christian and catechist, she was incapable of feeling anything that was not absolute compassion. People had told her she was exaggerating things, and that this wasn’t a mission for a woman of her age. It was a large village, and besides, there were others. She wouldn’t hear of it, even going so far as to imagine the two hundred Indians in her house, at her table with her bending over backwards to teach them everything she knew. They didn’t even know how to use the toilet, they said! She imagined herself caring for them all week to be able to march them single file to the church every Sunday, granting them space in the front pews. The deacon’s calling had moved her from the depths of her soul, and she felt that God had spoken to her at that moment. That village and those primitive people would bring out the best of her, the best of civilization.

She spent the entire two-day journey in prayer. The predicted fifteen-hour timeline was based on the deacon’s calculations rather than the bus driver’s. Dodging potholes and heading down backroads so as not to attract the attention of the Forestry Police, the journey became more of a challenge than the catechism itself. The toilets on the bus were unmaintained and not fit for human use. When the younger missionaries, so full of energy and determination at the beginning of the journey, wanted to give up and go home, she became more resolute. She did not falter; she prayed the whole time, grateful for the unshakeable conviction which the Lord had blessed her with. When they had finally reached the little town, which was surrounded on all sides by the jungle, the others breathed a sigh of relief while she crossed herself and prayed once more for strength and long life; for she knew in truth that the journey had only just begun. This was the great moment of her life. She had come to follow her calling.

Instead of resting and recovering from the journey, or preparing food and waiting for mass as the others were doing, she demanded she go straight to the village. She was there to serve; she had rested, eaten and prayed enough in her lifetime. She was the right person for the task: she wanted the neighbours, the priest and the whole community to see her there, radiating her enthusiasm. She was rejuvenated! They were going to be the happiest days of her life! For the three-hour truck ride into the jungle, she kept on craning her neck, anxious to see the settlements as she had imagined them. She smiled as she talked of how she saw herself as her very own kind of missionary, holding the cross aloft in the midst of all those naked Indians who observed the scene with awe. She was anxious to give herself over, to educate. She wanted to bring salvation to their souls, even if it meant her ultimate sacrifice. She was ready to give it all up, if that was required of her. When she finally arrived, it was very different from how she had imagined it, but this made her feel even more confident. She scolded the driver, who kept close to the truck, his hand on his gun. She was here to love them as Christ loved them. Ignoring all his warnings, she entered the village with open arms in prayer, inviting them all to give themselves over to faith. The Lord was behind her. Of the two hundred Indians they had described, she only found some twenty.

With tears in her eyes, she recounted to the name keeper the emotion she felt upon being accepted, seeing those people with their trinkets—such simple people who didn’t even own jewellery—gesticulating curiously at her clothes and her skin colour. As she taught them how to bring their hands together and directed the oration that Jesus had preached, she felt as if she were completing her life’s mission. They were so pure. They touched her hair, and if something drew her attention, they simply gave it to her. Death was everywhere, yet they were gentle. They were fertile ground to sow the seed: there she was, honoured to bring them the word of God for the first time. She felt nothing but gratitude! They lived like animals, ignorant of everything. The driver had told her how they didn’t plant anything, how they died early, how they loved a certain kind of tree, how they didn’t understand family structures, how couples swapped freely, how the women gave themselves to multiple husbands. Nobody taught the children anything, they did not know how to read nor write, not a single word. For her, the driver’s criticism only turned this into an even more incredible opportunity. She would be the one to bring them to the world, to civilization, to the coming of Christ. Did the name keeper understand what that meant? It was up to her to deliver the good news that the son of God had come to earth and died for them!

The name giver met her gaze but said nothing.

—I knew they were cannibals. The deacon and the driver had both warned me. They also told me they buried invalids and twins alive, just to scare me. If they did that to children, what would they do to me? Of course, it was scary, it was unimaginable—she shook her head and crossed herself—but it was my unrelenting compassion that moved me to act. They were alone, abandoned to their own fate, beyond the end of the world. It was up to me to save them.

A young Indian in particular had caught her attention. She knew the priest would disapprove of such ideas, but she confessed in a low voice that even so, she still had them: this girl was like her daughter from a previous life, so strong and direct was the connection they shared. She was there for everyone, but for her especially—she had sensed this at once. She was fourteen years old and was always flanked by two men. She asked if they were her brothers and found out that both were her husbands! She was beautiful, delicate, purer than pure. She linked arms with her the whole time, she touched her possessions. She was adorable. What happened next was as if she had planned it, but it would not have worked out nearly as well if that were true: she brought the little girl over to the truck to see how it worked, then exchanged a glance with the driver. The girl was allowed to fiddle with the mirrors and turn on the radio, enchanted by the little display. Suddenly, the doors slammed shut. Startled, she screamed for help, which alarmed the others; they hurled things at the truck as they fled. With the girl in her arms, she kept whispering ‘daughter, daughter’ into her ear, comforting her like a mother who had just taken her child to the doctors for a painful treatment. ‘Daughter, daughter’, she repeated lovingly while the driver sped towards the town, to safety.

The name keeper would never be able to imagine the immensity of the challenge of caring for a young Indian girl. From the first few hours she had learned how mad it was to dream of having the whole village in her house: that wild soul alone gave her more work than every spouse and child of any community! She imagined teaching her the catechism, guiding her in prayer, explaining anything she found hard to understand. However, during the first few days, all she did was insist the girl use the toilet, eat, sit and sleep properly. She left the bathroom in a filthy state every time, except for the toilet which she never touched. She ate with her hands, slept on the floor; it was impossible to get her to break her habits. She was unable to sit on chairs and pronounce the simplest of words. She was utterly incapable of calling her ‘mother’. How difficult was it just to say ma-ma? But still, she was unable to do it… One day, she finally learnt that the girl’s name was Zoeh, and soon thereafter went about changing that; perhaps things would be easier then. She christened her Maria, like the mother of God, and beside her she recited the rosary every day, hoping, by way of imitation, the Holy Spirit would reach her. Her unrelenting compassion, which she took pride in, appeared to be tested to the limit with this one single conversion. But she didn’t give up. God bore witness to the immense difficulty of that one conversion.

The victories were small and the objectives modest, but they were still encouraging. Within a few weeks, her little daughter had learned how to use the toilet and eat properly, even if she still squatted and only used a fork. She still slept and woke very early and still preferred the floor, although by now she had learnt to prepare for her prayers: she would take her place, bring her palms together and close her eyes while the Ave Maria and Our Father resonated around the hostel room. She never let the girl out, seeing as dressing her was an especially difficult challenge to overcome: she only wore underwear and a large t-shirt which made her feel very uncomfortable. And the shoes! The victories were modest, attained by nothing save her faith which was renewed every day by feverous prayers, always intense, in which she asked for her daughter Maria to accept God into her heart. He was the centre of all, couldn’t the name keeper see? It looked to her as if all the children which she had taught how to pray, all the banners she had made for events, all her fasting and novenas, the record numbers of raffle tickets she sold, the women’s group meetings she organised, it would all have meant nothing if she was unable to save her soul. That poor soul. Now she understood the episode of Christ and the devil in the desert: she tried to warn the little girl that if she resisted, she would have to go back to the village. She wanted to declare that she had done her best and the decision was ultimately the girl’s. She knew, however, that these ideas were not her own: it was the other one that told her to give up. She was unrelenting compassion.

She asked her husband for a money order and arranged for the driver to take them to her hometown in the truck, along the same back roads, abandoning the other missionaries. As she packed her bag with the few possessions she had, she explained to her daughter Maria that they were about to set off on a long journey, an important journey, and that they would have to pray more than ever before, pray until their knees hurt for everything to go well. She was driven by unrelenting compassion, a quality which had no place in the world: the driver charged a lot of money and warned her that they could be arrested for kidnapping. Nobody understood. The girl was her daughter, her daughter Maria, and she’d rescued her from a life of barbarism. What wouldn’t a mother do for her daughter? Mothers and mothers alone are sacred. The little girl Maria was only fourteen years old: she dreamt of taking her home and organising a dance for her next birthday. A beautiful dress, the Fifteen Waltzes… before this, she would have to convince her daughter to wear a single outfit, but, as mothers do, she could only dream.

When she’d received news of the payment order, she thanked the Holy One effusively. She asked her daughter to stay in the room for an hour at most. She explained with gestures and sweet words, as if talking to a baby, that mummy would be back shortly, that she should wait for her on her knees, praying to Our Lady of Navigators that they would have a safe journey. She delicately closed the door, watching her until the doorway became a crack: an angel, totally naked, with her hands together and her eyes closed, on her knees. She spun round and trotted off, determined to complete her tasks and come back as quickly as possible, fearing that her daughter would hurt herself, or start crying, for it was the first time she was left alone.

While out in the little town to pay the driver at the bank and buy supplies for the long journey ahead, she prayed, repeating the Our Father, the Ave Maria and various hymns to ask that the Lord look after her lonely daughter, for the little soul’s departure and salvation was so close, just a few more minutes, for she would be on her way back.

When she returned, the receptionist gave her a look, and her heart began to race. She ran up the stairs as quickly as her knees allowed her, breathless, hopeless. The look in the receptionist’s eyes had been enough to tell her that her prayers were insufficient. The door to her room was wide open. Her legs buckled. When she entered, she was horrified to find the room completely destroyed: clothes and curtains torn to shreds, the radio shattered to pieces against the wall, faeces and urine everywhere, the suitcase flung out of the window and onto the courtyard, the toilet bowl cracked—how did she have the strength?!—pieces of the Holy Bible torn up and strewn across that apocalyptic scene. No sign of her daughter. She felt her skin freeze, her breath failing, and after that, nothing… She woke to the receptionist shaking her and calling her name as she slurred, ‘daughter, daughter’, suffering the girl’s loss more than any other in her life. 

—My little daughter… I can still see her there, praying with her little hands together, a little angel, a gift from God which I let escape…

The driver helped clean the room and salvage what was possible. He negotiated the damages with the hostel owner then took her to the edge of the jungle. There the missionaries took her in, always so gentle, and wept along with her as they listened to her story. She had done all she could to save that soul, but she had free will, they said in an attempt to console her. It was not meant to be, she must trust in the ways of God, they repeated to her, she who had attended every mass and novena like clockwork. She asked herself where she had gone wrong, whether she had forced things at some point, condemning herself for having left her daughter alone. She was so close… she just had to bring her back.

News had arrived from the jungle: the Indian Zoeh, the witch Zoeh, was organising shamanistic ceremonies. She had taken the shaman’s place after the smallpox had incapacitated him, and had taken on two more husbands when their respective wives had died. She took the survivors to the depths of the jungle, where the wild animals lived, urging them to find their common ancestor—the one which had taught them which fruit they could eat—and to live in commune with him. She watched over them as they went through their ceremonies, she unearthed the dead so they could eat their remains, she initiated the boys by plunging their hands into anthills. She forbade the tribe approach and interact with any white person, to watch them from afar and not ward them off or kill them. The missionaries’ guides went in pursuit of them, but only one came back, with a mutilated nose and driven permanently insane. The missionaries insisted on abandoning the project and going home, terrified they were planning an attack. She resisted as much as she could, seeking refuge in her prayers. Finally, she gave up and returned with the other missionaries, in the sorriest state she had ever been in, weeping for her daughter, her fugitive angel.

Once she had returned to her hometown, her house, her chapel, her husband and her children, she did all she could to return to her usual activities with the same passion and intensity as before, but something had broken inside of her. She confessed her pains to the priest, wept on the deacon’s shoulder, asked the women in her prayer group to dedicate an Ave Maria to her every night. She fasted, though her weight loss worried everyone. She promised the Holy One she would walk a thousand kilometres if her daughter returned, to no avail. One morning, now devoid of all hope, the idea came to her to find the name keeper, and her first reaction was to make the sign of the cross. She daren’t! She would never give herself to such heresy! Lord forbid the name keeper judge her, but she’d heard stories which haunted her, certainly he knew of what she spoke. However, her relentless compassion was greater than her fear: here he was, the one who still gave her hope. In order to save her daughter, she was willing to do anything, even commit a sin. Finally, she drew her hands together in supplication and affirmed the reason for her visit:

—I need for sir to write the name of my little daughter in that book, register her Christian name. It’s my last hope for her to come home, back to Christianity, back to me…—she dried her tears with the backs of her hands and brought them back together—Please…

The name keeper looked at her for a long time, his upper lip ever so slightly curled upwards. He smoothed the page he was on, picked up his fountain pen with a fluid motion and positioned his hand to inscribe her name, deliberately, unequivocally. Accompanying his movements, she gave a mirthless smile of satisfaction, grateful for her success in dealing with this wizard. Suddenly, however, her expression changed, became one of horror: he hadn’t inscribed her Christian name, the name she herself had chosen for her daughter, but her indigenous name! The scoundrel had written Zoeh in his record book instead of her proper name! How could he?! The audacity! It made a mockery of her motherly instincts! He’d disregarded the determination she had shown to save her daughter and had condemned her to live forever lost in the depths of the jungle!

Now panting, he raised her glare and her index finger ready to protest, but she saw the name keeper staring at her fixedly, his fountain pen in his hand. She felt her stomach drop. Had he stolen her name? She shot up onto her feet and fled the house, heading home in floods of tears, ranting all the way for her daughter who was lost forever. She realised that she had dropped her wooden rosary: let it stay there, at that sorcerer’s.

Once alone, the name keeper observed the recently-inscribed name and caressed it delicately, once he’d made sure the ink had dried. Then he closed the enormous book.

Translated by Emyr Humphreys

From the novel O Guardião de Nomes

Photo: Igreja da Imaculada Conceição, Curitibanos, Brasil, by Mateus Campos Felipe, Unsplash.

When I was a boy and lived in a small country town, I witnessed a rather strange episode involving a professor and his family. Although many years have passed since, the details of the events, or at least those that made the strongest impression on me, still live on in my memory. Nobody alive during that time seems to remember what happened, and many doubt that such things even did—even the professor’s own daughter, whom I had seen running around, crying and begging for help, looked at me in astonishment and swore she remembered nothing when I spoke to her about the matter two or three years ago—and so I’ve resolved to put into writing everything I remember, before my own memory begins to falter as well. If my testimony one day falls into some diligent investigator’s hands, it’s possible that the incident, already so old and so completely forgotten by everyone but myself, will be dug up, discussed, and at last understood.

Naturally, my hopes are very precarious. I depend on luck cooperating and, as we know, if history is rich with lucky triumphs, it’s also full of defeats explainable only by the interference of this unforeseeable factor. So I do as the traveler does when he finds an injured bird on the road: I place it on top of a stump and head on my way. If the bird straightens itself and flies again, it will be saved—though the traveler won’t be there to see it. If it dies, it was already condemned anyway.

The professor of whom I speak taught high school before the Normalistas reformed the schools. He was a sad, skinny man who lived on the edge of town in a house with a dirt floor. He took on all sorts of work to provide for his wife and children: He sold chickens and eggs, braided reins from thread, collected debts, searched for missing animals, and now and again killed a pig or butchered a cow. Seeing him doubled over from so many different activities, it was difficult to understand how he still managed to find the time to write articles for the newspaper in Pouso de Serra Acima, twelve leagues south of our town. To tell the truth, nobody ever discussed these articles. We vaguely knew he wrote them, but few people made the effort to learn what they were about. Public indifference never bothered him, however, nor did he stop sharing his publications whenever a subject excited him. Everyone knew Pulquério as a hard-working man. 

Now and then, I would find some newspapers from Serra Acima strewn around our house. My father bought these papers, but I never had much interest in them and never read any of the professor’s articles until much later. I found them dull, filled with old dates and the names of priests. It seemed the principal focus of his scholarship were the monographs of one Santiago de Alarcón, a Dominican friar who studied the history of our state and published his works at a printing press in Toledo. 

Notwithstanding the lack of interest in his articles, Professor Pulquério ended up our town historian. Whenever someone wanted to know the origins of a family, building, or old road, they only had to consult the one man who found it impossible to remain ignorant. Though I never had much interest in these subjects, I myself felt reassured knowing he was always on hand. It was hard to pay attention to the stories he told me, since he was so tedious and slow in speaking, but I still treated him with deference so he wouldn’t turn me away in case I ever needed him. When I ran into him on the street or at my Uncle Lucílio’s store, I asked about his family or business and avoided talking about history. If I committed the imprudence of bringing up his favorite subject, I’d be stuck forever listening to that lazy voice of his and its long explanation.

One day, right after our usual greetings, the professor caught me off-guard and asked me if I knew the story of the Austrian’s treasure. I had to be tactical. If I told him I knew this story, hoping to shorten the conversation, my strategy could backfire; he might want to compare dates with me, and my ignorance would betray my intentions. If I said I didn’t know the story, I would have to listen to it from beginning to end, with all its tangents and tributaries.

“I see you don’t know,” he said. “This is no surprise, since young people these days aren’t interested in the past. Don’t think I’m criticizing you. It’s an easily understandable phenomenon, here and everywhere else. There are innumerable causes. In the first place…”

At this point, he must have noticed my impatience because he stopped himself and apologized: “Please forgive my rambling. I wanted to talk about the Austrian’s treasure and it looks like I’m already wandering down another path. If you want to hear the story, let’s go to your uncle’s store. It’s a fascinating subject for a young man like you. Who knows, maybe you’ll find the treasure one day yourself? You’d be rich for the rest of your life!”

Sitting on a sack of beans at the back of the store, Professor Pulquério told me of the vast treasure buried in a mine at the top of one of our hills. An Austrian engineer had explored the mine in secret and left sacks and sacks of gold buried in the mine itself. The mother lode was so rich he sent for his son in Austria to help him take it out. But owing to the distance and difficulties of communication, the boy took years to arrive and, when he suddenly appeared at the top of the ravine, the father mistook him for a robber and shot and killed him. Realizing his error, the Austrian engineer decided to build his son the richest tomb in the world: He buried him in the mine, alongside all the gold he’d extracted. The Austrian left behind only a hopelessly complicated map, which the professor had managed to obtain. Now Pulquério was looking for the mine. He was stuck on the map’s final phrase, which came only after much circumlocution and many false clues: “When you arrive at such heights, look from belt to head and you’ll find pure gold and riches like you’ve never seen.” 

But nobody should take Professor Pulquério for an ambitious man. He didn’t want to keep all the treasure for himself, but was ready to divide it with whomever took part in the search, and even suggested the more the merrier.

Did such treasure really exist? It seemed people no longer believed in it. Goldrush fever had already passed through our town and left us feeling cheated. There was hardly an old corral, chunk of foundation, or pile of timber in the surrounding area that hadn’t been mistaken for the mute call of treasure. Once the site was dug out and turned back into earth, all the excavators had to brag about were the calluses on their hands. By the time the professor appeared with his map, people were already sick of hearing the word treasure. 

The professor’s obsession might have passed over time without stirring up too much trouble, had the enigmatic language of the map not fascinated him. He spent entire mornings and afternoons in my uncle’s shop, interrupting business and customers, running over the map in his mind, searching for a way to parse the occult meaning of its phrases and disregarding his duties. More than once, his wife had to send one of his children to come find him so he could attend to some task that couldn’t wait or to ask him for money for some urgent expense. But I should say that the professor was always considerate towards his children. He never became irritated when they interrupted his ruminations and even asked my uncle to sell some candy to his boy, promising to pay him back later. 

As long as he didn’t talk too much about the map or his treasure hunt, we saw no reason to complain. It was just a harmless new mania, a distraction from his problems at home. We liked seeing the professor calculate the number of sacks of gold in the mine, taking into account the time the Austrian worked alone, the amount of gravel a man could sift through in a day, and the percentage of gold in each pan. Afterwards, he calculated the number of people necessary to dig up the gold in the shortest time possible, the quantity and type of tools, and finally the number of mules required to transport the cargo downhill. He had measured everything precisely.

The professor wanted all of us in town, or as many of us as possible, to chip in for the expedition’s costs. He would then redistribute the treasure proportionally to our contributions, after deducting a percentage for himself as the expedition’s organizer. While everyone thought the plan reasonable, the contributions never arrived. Some said they were waiting until later, others that they were expecting a paycheck, still others that they’d think about it. Was it skepticism about the expedition’s success or doubt about the professor’s honesty? The professor opted for the second hypothesis and naturally felt offended. Since we were already tired of listening to him, we invented excuses to avoid him, so much so that many people no longer went to my uncle’s store so they wouldn’t have to find him there.

After countless attempts to explain the soundness of his project, the professor decided to write an open letter on four unfolded sheets of foolscap—“To the honest citizens of this town,” it began—and nailed it to the jail door.

I don’t think many people read it. I tried to read the letter out of curiosity, and as a kind of amends to the professor, but when I reached the end of the first page and saw that I still had seven to go—all of them written in a fine handwriting without paragraph breaks—I took my pencil and marked the point where I stopped with an X, planning to leave the rest for another day. But that day never arrived because some kids destroyed the letter, scribbling on it with coal in some places and tearing it in others. It was one more blow for the professor, who suspected the children’s parents had ordered the vandalism.

Getting no attention from the town, the professor tried to interest the state Magistrate, but this attempt failed as well. It seemed the treasure was cursed to never leave the top of the hill. The Magistrate was a man who lacked finesse, more adept at dealing with animals than people—he once broke a horse’s neck with a punch because it bit him when he removed its harness—and he refused to hear the proposal, laughing in the professor’s face. Those present said the professor left the Magistracy with tears streaming from his eyes, which didn’t surprise those who knew the professor’s gentle temperament.

I pitied him when I saw him around town, growing thinner and thinner, having no one to talk to. He didn’t deserve such malice and, if we couldn’t help him, I thought we should at least do something to distract him. But when I tried talking to him on the street, he glared at me and continued on his way. I felt guilty and decided to swallow my pride and go visit him at home that night. Dona Venira, his wife, greeted me with sticky hands. She was making rice balls she’d sell early the next morning for breakfast. Judging from how embarrassed Dona Venira was, I figured my name had been mentioned in that house and not favorably.

“Pulqué is writing,” she said at last. “I don’t know if he…”

I heard the professor call her from the veranda, where the lamplight threw outsized shadows into the alley. Could he have heard my voice or was it coincidence? From my spot at the door, I saw Dona Venira’s shadow arguing, shaking its arms and wagging its chin. But the two of them spoke quietly and I couldn’t hear anything.

Dona Venira looked sheepish when she returned. She begged a thousand pardons for her husband. He couldn’t see me that night because he was writing a petition to the state governor. When she mentioned the petition, her voice carried a different tone to it, though I didn’t know whether Dona Venira mocked her husband’s naivete or meant to impress me, as if to say, “Now you’ll see.” 

After such treatment, I was able to say anything I wanted about the professor without being called unfair. But I decided not to tell anybody about his petition to the governor; I still had some sympathy for the poor man and didn’t want to see him ridiculed.

The professor was afraid that the postman planned to sabotage him, so he invented a reason to visit a nearby town and sent the petition from there in secret. Since nobody knew he’d done this, we couldn’t understand why he acted so nervous all the time. He hurried everywhere, rushing even through my uncle’s shop. He entered, smelled the roll of tobacco on the countertop, took a pinch of grain from some nearby sack, threw a couple into his mouth without paying attention to what he was doing, and asked to see something or other. Before my uncle could attend him, he changed his mind and bolted. The same thing happened at the market. At home, he took out his impatience on his children. The only place he lingered was the post office, no doubt so that he could wait for the mail to arrive. 

Evidently, the professor knew nothing about the paths bureaucracy took. He imagined the governor himself would receive his petition, read it that same day or the next at the latest, and dictate a response at once on official letterhead, imploring the professor to go ahead with the expedition and giving him the power to enter the tax collector’s office and request the necessary funds, while we, the unbelievers, stood there watching him in admiration and envy, desperate to be included, even if it were just as glorified pack mules.

Instead of damaging his hopes, the delay made the professor more inclined to act. After waiting a few days, Pulquério sent the governor a long telegram, respectfully calling his attention to his petition and asking for the governor’s immediate response. 

When the response arrived, the telegraph operator delivered it personally. The professor wasn’t at home and Dona Venira was out as well, delivering her sewing to a neighbor’s house. The operator returned to the city to look for the professor, accompanied by a band of curious onlookers. They passed the market, my uncle’s store, and the pharmacy, but no one had seen Pulquério. Finally, a boy dragging a load of firewood told them the professor was down by the riverbank, skinning a pig. We ran there, clogging the streets, tripping over each other’s feet, and causing women to come to their windows.

The professor was wearing a ploughman’s straw hat and old patched-up clothes and stirred a fire beneath a can of water. One of his oldest children came out of the brush with an armful of sticks. When he saw the telegraph operator, the professor abandoned his fire, jumped over the pig carcass, and walked up to him, wiping his hands on his pants.

The response was far from what he’d expected. Naturally, we all predicted this, but we still wanted to see how he’d act. The message, signed by a secretary, said only that his Excellency still hadn’t read the petition, but would make a decision as soon as the petition came across his desk alongside his advisors’ recommendations.

The professor let the paper fall to the bloody grass. He sat on top of the pig carcass and began to cry. It was as if he had suddenly perceived reality. We didn’t expect this type of reaction and, unsettled, we broke into small groups and returned to the city in silence. No one had the courage to talk about the professor’s tears. I don’t know if we were ashamed of him or ourselves. 

The situation had reversed. Now everyone wanted to talk to the professor and distract him from his suffering, but he didn’t want to speak to anyone. He still visited my uncle’s shop out of habit, but sat there and stared at the ground, scratching his ears with little wicks of paper he had twisted meticulously, as if this job was of the utmost importance. 

But if we’d known the truth, we would have learned he was still waiting. He had only given the authorities a deadline and was waiting for that to pass before taking the next step. On a Monday morning, Pulquério entered the telegraph office with his head held high and ordered a new message sent to the governor, stating that he the professor would begin a public protest against this official neglect in exactly ten hours. Word spread quickly and the town started to keep an eye on him. From the telegraph office, he walked to my uncle’s shop and bought brown sugar, flour, dried beef, tobacco, rolling straw, matches, and a thick coil of rope. If the rope suggested he had some foolish idea in his head, the other items soothed our nerves. We watched him as he left the shop, crossed the square, entered the cobbler’s alley, and headed home. At this point, practically everybody was following him. Children ran back and forth, gathering information to report back to their mothers who were stuck at home tending pots on the stove.  

The professor entered his house with the items he’d bought. Soon he appeared again at his window, leaning over the sill and smoking peacefully. Each minute more people gathered outside his house and the crowd grew more impatient. But the professor was the calmest man in the world. He had his plan and wouldn’t rush just to please us. 

When the clock at the jail struck ten, he came to the door and invited the crowd to enter through his yard, where there would be space for everyone. The only thing he asked was that people not damage Dona Venira’s plants. People shoved their way through, stepped on toes and cursed one another since the alleyway was narrow and everyone wanted to enter at once. Some entered through the house’s windows, scuffing the walls with their boot tips, while others jumped the back wall, cutting themselves on the shards of glass on top. They squeezed against the back door with such force it took them only a minute to warp it.

In the yard there was a dry well, covered by an old door with an enormous block of stone on top of it. The professor asked for help removing the stone, then pushed it to one side and tied the end of the rope around it. Until then, nobody suspected what his intentions were. Once the knot was firm, he said goodbye to his wife and children, who were all dressed in new clothes and had their hair combed to a shine. He slipped down the rope without any delay until he reached the bottom of the well. From there, he shouted up to his wife:

“Sugar.”

“Flour.”

“Tobacco and straw.”

“Meat.”

Dona Venira threw him a scarf and umbrella as well, recommending that he wrap himself up well at night. The crowd ran to the well’s edge, in such a rush that the first to arrive had to jump across it so as not to fall down the hole. I wanted to see if the professor was sitting, standing, or squatting at the well’s bottom, but there was no way to squeeze through and see.

Each morning, Dona Venira wrote the number of days her husband had been at the bottom of the well on a school slate she hung on a stake to its side. The yard was always full of people, as if this were a picnic or festival. They brought baskets of food, lit fires at night, and roasted potatoes. Two of the professor’s daughters sang to entertain them. Dona Venira set up a stall to sell drinks and cakes.

The festival lasted a little over a week before a delegate arrived, decided enough was enough and ordered the professor to come up. The professor responded that he was exercising his right to protest, and he would continue protesting until he achieved his objective. The delegate responded that this wasn’t a protest but a circus. He gave the professor an hour to comply. The professor’s only response was a confident laugh.

We were eager to learn how the delegate would force the professor to climb out of the well. People shouted suggestions from all sides. Some thought the best thing to do was to toss buckets of water down—boiling water, somebody suggested—while others said that torches soaked in kerosene were more suitable. One short fellow, a man with the lively eyes of a rabbit, recommended they slide the door over the well and send smoke inside, the way you’d flush an armadillo out of its burrow. When she heard this, one of the professor’s daughters, a girl of twelve or fourteen, ran from one side to the other, crying and begging us to have pity. Nobody was moved. Everyone wanted to see something out of the ordinary happen and nobody wanted some hasty gesture of mercy to ruin the outcome.  

But the delegate didn’t need any suggestions because he had already made his plan. He was only waiting for the deadline to pass before he took his next step. And maybe deep down he wanted the professor to disobey his order, so he’d have reason to impose his authority in dramatic fashion. When he consulted his watch and announced that the sixty minutes had passed, the crowd at once opened a path between him and the well. They expected him to descend by the rope and haul the professor out over his back. But instead of walking towards the well, the delegate walked towards the house. We couldn’t understand why. Was he bluffing when he made his demand? It was clear the crowd’s disappointment didn’t come from any desire to see the delegate preserve his authority, but from fear of missing out on some funny or sensational event.

When the delegate returned from his carriage carrying an enormous wasp’s nest from the end of an avocado branch, the crowd gained new life. Here was proof that an experienced authority knew better than a hundred curious onlookers. Walking slowly, so as not to upset the branch, the delegate arrived at the edge of the well. Without any warning, he threw the branch in.

Naturally, everyone expected the professor to shoot out of the well like a rocket and run raving through the yard, tearing at his clothes and patting himself down on all sides. But nothing happened—we didn’t even hear a yell. We looked at one another in astonishment, as if the explanation could be found on our neighbor’s face. Finally, the more daring among us tiptoed to the well’s edge. When these described what they saw, nobody believed them. The entire crowd had to form a line and see it with their own eyes.

The only thing visible within the well was the avocado branch caught on a stone, and some cheese rinds that the wasps swarmed.

We returned home with our heads lowered, feeling ourselves vilely tricked.

Translated by Thomas Mira y Lopez

From the book The Little Horses of Platiplanto, originally published in 1959 as Os cavalinhos de Platiplanto

Photo: Nayani Teixeira, Unsplash.

*

In short: it was the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. All of them Sons-of-Bitches. 

*

Deposition given by an historian from the Taedos’ Ministry of Propaganda: I made a mess of it when the time came to tell the story, I ended up telling it differently from what had actually happened. I made a mess, mistook two names, one date and one place, so it ended up being different from what had happened because I mistook one name, two dates and two places. I ended up mixing some things, changing a name for a date, a place for a quote. I promise I won’t mess up again. I will pay attention so that, when it’s time to tell the story, it will be just as it happened. I mean, promises are serious things, so I only kind of promise, since sometimes, when it’s time to tell the story, a better word pops into my head and I end up telling it differently from what happened. What I can really promise is not to change too much, just some insignificant names, some minor date or place. Really, I promise to change very little. I think, though, that it might be better to not promise even that. One of our own historians has given a similar deposition—the only differences are some two names, a date and a place. 

*

The Taedos were our neighbors, a fact that swayed public opinion in favor of the war. Behind this apparent paradox—a paradox since there are those who cultivate good will among neighbors, those who might even invite neighbors for a barbecue—was a great strategy. Sociological studies of the time revealed the perception that a neighbor made for an ideal enemy. The evident proximity of living in the same neighborhood proved to be a clear advantage when shooting and bombing on target. Some called this a lazy idea. But soon the sociological studies were replaced by the militaristic studies, which showed that this supposed advantage in fact worked both ways. This served to show us that to consider a neighbor as the ideal enemy was not so much a lazy idea as much as a, well, another type of idea altogether. 

*

A hero will never rest while on his chest there is still room for a medal. This worked so well that we had to update it: A hero will never rest even when on his chest there is no longer room for medals because we can always overlap them 

*

A Taedo weapons manufacturer was producing more arms than their army needed, so he came to our army to try and push us their surplus. We made quite a deal. We would buy their extra weapons on the condition that 20% of everything they sold to the Taedos had a manufacturing defect. He got so enthused with the idea that his counter offer was 25%.  

*

Leaders from various countries offered themselves as mediators in trying to end our war against the Taedos. One of them, I can’t remember if he was English or French, though I quite remember a rather strong German or Japanese accent, managed to bring together both our and the Taedos’ representatives for a peace talk. But the discussions on how to hold the meetings postponed the actual start of the negotiations. The argument about the shape of the table lasted seven years. The matter of the backrest on the chairs took another long while. Years and years over who would get to sit near the window. Such were the delays that, when the talks started, the war had already ended and maybe it was time to start another—since peace was already within reach and the talks had already begun. I don’t recall which war that was—we had nine wars against the Taedos, as many wars as there are Beethoven symphonies. I have obliterated the fact that there have been nine wars and am simply telling it as one single war. If one war causes trouble, imagine nine. Beethoven failed to consider that. 

*

A good portion of the war’s history was written before the war even started. Neither we nor the Taedos were crazy enough to enter a conflict without some precautions. 

*

Let’s pretend this is a movie. It’s not happening to you at all. This argument made the war more bearable for a lot of people. That bombing around the corner was just a movie, just a neighbor with his TV playing excessively loud. Dead family members and friends were just actors who had left this plot but, after the war, would be back in other movies. It would have caused trouble after the war, but by then it was enough to pretend you had nothing to do with it.

*

How did the war begin? This question has troubled historians ever since the very beginning of the war. Many were the stories about which episode provoked the declaration of war—according to some historians it happened in unison. Both sides, in a perfect duet, went: war!! (With two exclamation marks, in order to avoid further conflicts). But historians who are partial to official history have solved this question by picking one of the many episodes which could have provoked the war and turning it into the dogmatic beginning of the war. At times it interested us to claim to have started the war, sometimes it didn’t. When it did, we espoused the claim that a general slipped on a banana peel and recognized among the laughter the distinct accent of a Taedo. 

*

Our prime-minister once said: It is in the nature of war to end in death, though we are making war in search of peace. However, there are many dead, too, in times of peace. It is in the nature of peace to end in death, for when we are at peace, we have war in mind. The queen did not like this and had the prime-minister’s speechwriter killed. 

*

Allies are always a problem. They don’t understand that it’s not their war. The role of an ally is to provide soldiers, arms and money. They may also, when the war is over, carry the trophy around for a bit, allow their soldiers to loot for, let’s say, six hours, and then take part in the reconstruction, though nothing over 5%. The ally is just hitching a ride. During the war against the Taedos we had allies who didn’t know their place. One ally took it so far as to suggest they should give opinions on strategy, claiming military knowledge. And sent a list of military tomes they had at their national library. Allies are like that, they think they are so important, don’t even dream they can someday become enemies. Allies are potential enemies. There are all those unresolved issues from those allied days and there you find good reasons to start a war. The Taedos were our allies in many wars, both before and after the war against the Taedos. 

*

The Taedos invented a joan of arc of their own and sent the girl to the front. She returned after the war was over. Married, three kids. 

*

The news on TV always had a soft spot for mothers, since images of women crying for their dead children were a good way to end news footage about bombings, attacks, battles, explosions, firing squads… They decreased the martial tension and prepared the viewer for the commercial break. This was true, though, only for part of the war, because we adopted a clever solution—later copied by the Taedos—in order to avoid the damage caused by these crying episodes being broadcast on television—and it was serious damage, since all those tears were starting to convince a lot of people that the war should end so that the mothers wouldn’t have to suffer so much. The solution was really simple: the mothers were also sent to war. They started fighting and therefore no longer had the time to cry for their children, they didn’t even know where their children were. There were even some cases where the children stayed home while the mothers went to war, according to a news segment exhibited right before the commercial break. 

*

We shared a border with the Taedos and this made for lots of excitement during the war. Excitement on account of the rather varied geography along the border. We were separated from them, at one point, by a river, at another by mountains, and at yet another by a bay; we were separated by roads, cities, barbed wire fences, and also by countries so small that it was like there was nothing between us and the Taedos but an imaginary borderline—no offense meant to those other countries by calling them imaginary, it is not a good time to start a war over that. But the most delicate of borders with the Taedos was the one on the desert, somewhere out there, no one knew exactly where. The desert ended up being good for military exercises. For example: we waited for a long time for the Taedos to invade us through the desert. We waited for them, they never came and, because of that, whenever we look at the desert, even after the end of the war, we keep imagining that, since they haven’t come by desert… maybe the tartars will come. So, we are waiting for the tartars. And also making use of the opportunity to wait for the barbarians, since they might be an answer. Two things can fit a single space of waiting. Or three things. We are also waiting for Godot. 

*

On our national civic calendar, V-Day falls a week before the Taedos’ V-Day does on their national civic calendar. 

*

Officials treated soldiers as enemies. This was guaranteed to work. 

*

The only influence here from the Napoleonic wars is the Gallicism in the title. 

*

We were not the first ones to change the date of a revolution. Many Histories have done this before. But we changed it out of an understandable necessity: to make schoolchildren’s lives easier when they cracked open their History books. The revolution had happened in ‘11. But what intensity does the Revolution of ‘11 have? No one can deny that the Revolution of ‘44 is more powerful, more consistent, more believable. Our historians trial-tested ‘22 and ‘33, but the Revolution of ‘44 doesn’t even need an exclamation mark to mark it as exclamatory, and thus ‘44 it became. This story has no Taedos in its cast of characters. It is in this Journal only because it goes right into another story, this one with Taedos in their usual supporting roles. We changed the feast of Our Lady of Whatsername—our patron saint—for an even simpler reason than the historical necessities of the ‘44 Revolution. The first apparition of Our Lady of Whatsername took place during a ministerial meeting, when she made some suggestions for the improvement of our country. One of these suggestions was to finish off the Taedos in order to open up new commercial prospects, to take over their businesses. This ministerial meeting and apparition had taken place on April 1st, but we later changed it to August 13th. Why August 13th? That was also Her Lady’s suggestion, offered to the president while he was in the bathroom, shaving his beard. The saint said to him: August, 13th. There was never any doubt about the date since, even in the rather emotional state of having just faced the apparition of Our Lady of Whatsername, the president had, in his bathroom, while shaving his beard, the presence of spirit, the self-control, the historical awareness to write down the date on the first piece of paper he put his hands on. This is made clear in all of our History books, except for where he found the pen. Our Lady of Whatsername never showed herself again, not even to claim her ministerial wages. 

*

A terrible hail fell during the war, though it fell only on our side, and caused much damage. Two Taedo generals wanted to claim for themselves the credit for the destruction. One alleged he performed a rain dance that caused the phenomenon. The other claimed to have asked God to make it hail, and to have had his request granted. We do not know how this story ended between the generals, as the Taedos did not let the details become known. All I know is that one of our own generals took it upon himself to do both things, the rain dance and the request to God, but his wish was not granted with hail. Instead the Taedos, damn them, had the sunniest week ever. Many of the Taedos we killed had impressive suntans. 

*

It took us a while to grasp the idea. The Taedos suddenly started building pyramids. They went mad, we thought. Or maybe they would use the pyramids to launch missiles from. Now, whenever we go to their territory to do some tourism, we finally understand it, we are even a bit proud of it: those magnificent pyramids were built by us, by our prisoners of war, imprisoned by the Taedos. There’s a sort of pride about it. 

*

The Conscription of Cowards. It was a good way to increase our troops. But for the cowards to enlist, a campaign was necessary in order to show that cowardice was  really just an easy way towards heroism. When immobilized, the only possible movements a soldier could do were to chitter, piss himself, cry in fear, and, without enough courage to move, face the enemy. Thus were formed the coward battalions, and this scene would repeat itself: immobile soldiers frozen with fear stood their ground and ended up facing the Taedo enemy with bravery. There are thousands of instances of recorded bravery, though it has never surpassed what one would call a moderate level of bravery. 

*

Some guy showed up at our armed forces and offered a copy of a Taedo document that contained all of their military tactics. He asked for a lot of money in exchange. Our army said that this was an issue for the intelligence agency and the agency, considering how much money he wanted, informed the guy that buying secret documents was actually the purview of the ministry of war. The minister was the most upfront of them all. He said the office was financially unstable and told the guy to go sell that copied document to the president, or the prime-minister, or the king or queen, or whoever was on duty. The guy must have set that document on fire. But that doesn’t mean the story ends there. They all had the same idea—the chief of the armed forces, of the intelligence agency, the war minister, the president, the prime-minister, the king and queen. The very same idea: they created a fake Taedo document and sold it to themselves. 

*

We had a stretch of border on the south—or maybe the north—which was really unguarded, a quagmire we had no interest in populating. The area was very hard to protect—or not. The Taedos knew this—or not—and we had intelligence that an offensive would come from there—or not. It was necessary to protect that border on the north, or maybe it was the south. It was during a patriotic celebration at the Army Museum that someone came up with the idea. We transferred one of the museum’s most precious jewels—the Quintain Battalion—which we used to teach children about ancient warfare—or not—to that unguarded front. With those wooden-mannequin soldiers on the border, the Taedos kept waiting for our invasion. Why won’t they move?, the Taedos said, it must be psychological warfare, the Taedos said, they won’t last long standing still like that, the Taedos said, they look like statues, the Taedos said. This lasted for a few years. The Taedos tell the story with a few variations.

*

We had so many prisoners of war that we didn’t know what to do with them all. There were more Taedos imprisoned by us than there were free Taedos over there. We ended up finding a good solution for both sides: we sold the prisoners back to the Taedos. We used the same price charts from the old slavery days. The number of prisoners was so high we didn’t even entertain the thought of just receiving the payment and not delivering the goods. 

*

The war started to grow boring. It became necessary to create interesting novelties. We created new, more daring designs for the tanks’ panels. New colors for the nuclear warheads (acqua, ochre, desert sand). A new rifle model every year. Bombs with pyrotechnics set to an orchestrated soundtrack. Airplanes dropping color-coordinated bombs so they could be better seen on TV. Flame-throwers in popper bottles. Thematic hand grenades: the four seasons, the five senses, the four elements (at one point a fifth element was considered, money, but by then the thematic hand grenades were on their way out, it wasn’t worth it). This scheme to generate interest back into the war worked because the Taedos understood the gravity of the situation and also took up the idea. 

*

Everyone remembers how the peace negotiations first stalled when discussing the shape of the table. Then on the issue of who would sit close to the window. There was also no understanding about what time to schedule the coffee break. The talks ended up happening over a round table in a windowless room with no catering. And what was meant to be a drag dragged on. But not for long enough. Suddenly it dawned on us that the armistice talks were going in a dangerous direction and the representatives on both sides didn’t quite understand the spirit of a peace summit. Before the worst happened, we joined with the Taedos so that we could put an end to all of that before they could put an end to all of this. The Taedos provided the cannon and we provided the ball. The location where the peace negotiations were taking place ceased to exist. The meeting during which that site turned into a target has passed into History as the Gate to the Beyond.  

*

The Taedos were very backwards, they only learned about writing through the Very New Testament. And even that happened by chance, thanks to the passengers of an unidentified flying object shaped like a saucer that landed on a plantain field. 

*

The Taedos had the practice of praying for their dead. Every afternoon at six o’clock they gathered together to pray. It made things simple for us. All we needed was to find where this meeting was taking place and then bomb it. Still, the Taedos insisted on continuing their prayers every day at six o’clock. Each bombing only gave them more reason to keep praying. They called this free will. 

*

There were petitions both for and against the war. The biggest argument in favor of the war was the divine origin of all martial states. Pacifists would yell slogans that it was love we needed, not war. As if it weren’t possible to make love during war. 

*

There was no missile crisis. A bilateral attempt was made in order to create suspense and lift up both of our media out of an economic crisis, but it did not work because negotiations only went as far as one of the sides having to play the bad guy. Neither we nor the Taedos wanted to play that part, and so the missile crisis was canceled. The media got out of their economic crisis by diversifying their activities into loansharking. 

*

Make war, it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do. Our propaganda worked so well that even the Taedos copied it—without asking for our permission, the bastards. 

*

Our Social Security system did not consider being a soldier during wartime as counting towards retirement. If the soldier thought his time on the front counted as work then he could go to the Taedos and ask them for his pension. 

*

Eventually the war grew old and boring. It was time for it to be over. Maybe we could take it up again later, who knows. Anyway, one day we all became fed up with the war. It didn’t sell any more newspapers, it wasn’t reported on the news, and some radio stations seemed to have forgotten we were even at war with the Taedos. Instead, they would report the record-breaking numbers of our agricultural production. For God’s sake, it was time for the war to be over. However, you can’t simply end a war like that, without a probable cause. No, something symbolic, even historic must happen in order to end a war, like the assassination of a duke, a baron, a prince or a prime minister. Now that would be an adequate end to a war, an incident where humanity would surpass all other issues. So we made a deal with the Taedos: we would assassinate a duke, a baron, a prince and a prime minister and use their deaths as reasons to end the war. We contributed a duke and a prime minister, they collaborated by contributing a baron and a prince—we each killed our own to save time. Some other strong memories about that period were the many record-breaking numbers of our agricultural production.

*

Once, the Taedos’ air force attacked a chicken farm. They thought it was an arms manufacturing plant. Some twelve thousand chickens died that day. The Taedos deny it, though we know it happened, we even have the numbers to prove it: they killed exactly 12,033 chickens. What bothered the Taedos most about this incident was that we started observing one minute of silence every day in honor of the chickens. According to them, it was a mockery, but to us it was a sincere way of remembering all of the lives lost in that odious chickenslaughter.

*

“Who’s winning the war?”
“We are!”
“We are!”

*

Our soldiers invaded Taedo territory from the north. Riding bicycles. The Taedos were so humiliated by this show of contempt that there wasn’t even a battle. They preferred to spend their time trying to deny the news that our soldiers had invaded their territories riding bikes. They decided to pay back the humiliation, but ended up only plagiarizing us: they invaded our territory from the north. Riding camels. We were so humiliated by their complete contempt—attacking us with camels?—that we preferred to spend our time trying to deny the news that the Taedos had invaded our territory riding camels. 

*

It was determined by law that, in order to make communications more expedient in times of war, the word “battle” could now be written or pronounced with only a single “t”. These are the sort of attitudes that help us to win the war, said the Army’s spokesperson. Does the same rule apply to your butt? said the spokesperson for Grammar.^{1 2}

*

The Army took care that all soldiers’ families remained as stable and normal as possible while they were away fighting the war. This prevented their life stories from becoming movies produced by the Taedos. 

*

One of our most bellicose-friendly activists wrote a book defending peace. It was called, of course, The Art of Peace. Some copies must still exist in some library or Army museum. On the cover you see a cannon; from its mouth protrudes a flag with the word bang written on it. Next to the imprint you can read, only by squinting, that all profits from the sale of the book would be used in buying ammunition to kill Taedos. Some people are still fooled by the small print. 

*

The conscription notice was delivered by telegram, post, phone, e-mail, fax and in person. The officer who knocked on my door was missing an arm and both legs. He informed me of what I already knew by telegram, post, phone, e-mail and fax: the narrator of this journal had been called on to fight in the war. The officer told me it had been only fifteen days since he himself had returned from the front and that now he was employed in bureaucratic services. With a certain drama, he told me he was living proof that there was a chance you might come back alive from the front. My conscription would come sooner or later. Eventually someone would have thought about it, maybe even me. I boarded the train for the front wondering what sort of bureaucratic service would await me when I came back. In fact, it was writing the Journal of the War Against the Taedos, though I didn’t know it at that point. 

I took the train while my fiancée stood on the platform, waving me goodbye. I did not have a fiancée, but there was a law demanding that every soldier on his way to the front must have a fiancée waving him goodbye from the platform. If the soldier did not have a fiancée, it was the government’s job to provide one. Mine was actually very cute. 

The train ticket was very clear. Destination: FRONT. Front. As simple as Paris, New York, Rome, Mars. Presumably it was a one-way ticket for economic reasons; to buy a round-trip might be a waste of money. The instruction booklet told me to get a return ticket if necessary. It also gave other important information. Objective of Journey: KILL TAEDOS. Faced with that, I wondered if the appropriate reaction to my mission would be: hurray! or fuck! I patriotically opted for hurray! The booklet also told me of the advantages of having fast food in the trenches, how to clean up my butt without toilet paper and what to write home about (it already came with a pre-written letter, all we needed was to fill in the names). On the last page of the flyer there was³

*

We captured a Taedo spy. It was while being lightly beaten up that he gave us the following testimony: Since I was a little boy, whenever they asked me “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I would say “I want to be a spy.” That’s the only reason I’m here, ok? Can you stop with the beating now?

*

Our general—who always plagiarized Churchill—never compiled his speeches into a book. Churchill had already done that for him. 

*

One of our secret service staff once forgot his briefcase on the backseat of a taxicab. His defense: In every single war someone from the secret service has to forget his briefcase on the backseat of a taxicab—have you never seen a war movie?

*

“Which side were you on during the war?”

“The arms industries’… Is there any other side?”

*

During the time in the war when we were a monarchy, we brought down the king. We preferred to have a queen, just like the Brits—they had a queen at the time. Another king took the throne, but he had his own preferences, he was a republican and so during that period of the war we became a republic. But the monarchists still had power and, with the help of the Taedos, they brought down the president and reinstituted the monarchy, this time with both king and queen. Then the queen organized a coup, dethroned the king and brought back the republic. Etc. 

This note on politics is necessary so that no one, in reading this journal that mentions kings, queens and presidents, might think the Historian is confused. The confusion, in this case, belongs to History. 

¹ The words were actually war and ass, which both had double t’s in the language of the writer of this Journal. The translation was made with two words with double t’s in Portuguese so that it made sense. (Translator’s Note)  

² The above footnote is not actually a Translator’s Note, but an authorial joke. The original was written in Portuguese and not translated from an imaginary Taedan language. This is the actual Translator’s Note. (Actual Translator’s Note)

³ The reader of the original text is also left wondering what was on that last flyer page… (Translator’s Note)

Translated by Livia Lakomy

Excerpts from the book Jornal da Guerra Contra os Taedos (Kafka Edições, 2008)

Photo: Mert Kahveci, Unsplash.

Three Short Stories from The Elders

Editor’s Note: This text is available to read in the original Portuguese and in English translation. Scroll down to read in English, and click here to read in Portuguese.

Legacy 

My grandfather is a tactless old man who asks all the questions he shouldn’t ask at family events. 

Apart from asking terrible questions, he stares at me and says I’ve put on weight, my girlfriend is a lesbian, I’ll never get a job with the course I’m taking at university, but that’s okay because I’m a failure like my father, and he says it with that sarcastic smirk of someone determined to interfere.

My grandfather can ruin any family gathering. He starts arguing and offending. He insults and upsets. Everyone.

He has blue eyes, grey hair, he is a bit fat and hobbles when he walks. From a distance, whoever sees him thinks he is a sweet old man. Those who live close to him can’t wait to go to his funeral.

He is cruel to grandma. Calls her an invalid, decides on what clothes she should wear and where she can go, if she can go and when she can go. And with whom. He throws his plate on the floor if he doesn’t like the food. She never reacts.

He used to beat up his kids when they were small—my father and my uncles. And now that they are adults, he always addresses them with sarcasm or swearing. 

He never gave us a hug. He calls me Breno and my name is Bruno. Carla, he nicknamed Fatso!. She’s my cousin with weight problems. She’s already tried to kill herself, she’s depressed. My aunt is devastated. He calls my twin cousins ​​“the two” and my cousin Gil, “the boy.” My cousin Cassia, oh dear! this one he ignores. She’s covered in tattoos and piercings, for him she doesn’t exist. She says, “Hello, Grandpa!” He turns his face.

We are at the police station. My parents, uncles, aunts, cousins ​​and grandma. After that awful, horrendous Christmas lunch. Grandma is the only one crying and she repeats bless him, bless him.

My grandfather will never hurt anyone again. He was stabbed whilst he was sleeping after lunch, with the brand-new knife for carving the turkey. During the lunch he offended, mocked, and cursed everyone.

My grandfather’s ability to belittle, condescend and humiliate was shocking. He was a master at being mean.

There are many of us and we are all suspects, but the chief of police has already accepted some cash and next week everybody will find out about the failed attempt at burglary. And, astonished, everyone will praise the courage of my grandfather, who, alone in his bedroom, fought back. Unfortunately, he wasn’t strong enough to resist the injuries caused by the violent attack from the intruder.

Life will go on. And the wickedness of the family, which was only in the old man, is now in all of us.

Excuses

I’m black and I’m old. Unlike most black people in Brazil, I’m rich. I live in a luxurious apartment building, in a neighbourhood of white people who find it very strange that my black family lives there.

I’m seventy years old and I practise a lot of sports. I especially like running.

The other day I went for a run on the beach. At the second block after my building, I ran past the petrol station. Just as I was passing, there was a robbery. 

Two chipped teeth, three fractured ribs, the cheeks grazed, a bleeding nose, and a broken left arm. Spit on the face, smacks to the ear, and several punches in the stomach.

Some thugs grabbed me, dragged me along the road, and took me to the police station as a suspect.

My white lawyer came to help. I am a doctor, I have my own medical practice, I specialise in three medical fields, I teach, I’ve got several books published, I speak four languages.

So far no one has come to apologise. They keep saying I’m black, I don’t look like an old person, and I was running, so how were they supposed to know I was not a criminal?

Gains

I’m seventy-seven years old and I am very fat. I have a heart condition, multiple varicose veins, high blood pressure, and asthma.

Last week something terrible happened. I broke the weighing scale in the pharmacy across the road from where I live. I was on my way back from the bakery, where I’d eaten five cheese pasties, four meat ones, and drank two bottles of coke. I saw the new scales from the pavement, they looked beautiful. I was eating the last crisp from my tub of Pringles when I went in to check my weight.

A kid filmed everything on his iPhone. It’s on YouTube.

It went viral.

The title of the video is “Big Old Man Breaks Everything.” The soundtrack is Brazilian funk. The scene repeats and repeats, it’s on a loop. So embarrassing. My children and their friends saw it, my grandchildren and their friends saw it. My neighbours and their friends saw it. Everyone I know has seen it. It has over one hundred and fifty thousand views.

In the video edit, as well as breaking the scale in the pharmacy, I break the Rio-Niterói Bridge, I break the Alvorada Palace, I break Christ the Redeemer and loads of other famous landmarks.

Some boys took a selfie with me in front of the supermarket. At the bakery I was greeted with whistles, applause, laughter, and shouts of “Bravo Big Old Man!”.

I became famous for this humiliating exposure. The barber didn’t even charge me for my haircut.

I paid Mr Osorio, the owner of the pharmacy, for the damage to the scale.

The iPhone kid filmed the moment I paid and exited the pharmacy, eating a medium-sized bag of peanuts. The title of this video is “Big Old Man Pays Everything.” In this edit, I pay the teachers’ salaries that are late, I pay the old people’s pensions that are late, and I pay off all of the foreign debt. The soundtrack is samba. The “break-all” video earned me a free haircut, whistles, applause, and “bravos!”. I hope the “pay-all” video earns me much more.

Translated by Elton Uliana
Originally published in Velhos (São Paulo: Editora Reformatório, 2020)

Photo: Three old cars in Embu-Guaçu, Brazil, by Rustyness, Unsplash.

Portrait 1

A waiting room. Made for waiting. Dozens of upholstered chairs are spread throughout the room, in which 27 animals await their turns. Impatiently, but not ferociously, they wait between orange walls, flowerpots with graceful, blooming manacá bushes and other bigger ones with dwarf umbrella trees and philodendrons, oval mirrors, and coffee tables with magazines about fashion and architecture. In the middle of the room, a square fountain made of green stones has been switched on by the secretary chewing strawberry gum behind the counter. The fountain is splashing a milky stream of water from a cherub’s mouth.

Portrait 2

A giraffe is filing her nails. She slowly chews a bag of gummies. She’s making a lot of noise, and a strand of yellow drool drips from her mouth. In fact, she is provoking the secretary, whose own noisy chewing is also a provocation—perhaps to get the animals to give up on their appointments and go away. The giraffe has torticollis and difficulty seeing her black nails.

Portrait 3

A ladybug is jumping repeatedly from her chair. Actually, she isn’t jumping; she is throwing herself down. With each fall comes a new disappointment. She knows it’s not the best place to commit suicide, but she doesn’t know who can help her. Everyone else is focused on their own tasks, sinking into their precious moments of boredom. And she respects that. The only thing she does not respect is her life, which keeps prevailing and fighting against her. The ladybug throws herself from the chair with her wings closed. She doesn’t feel anything when she falls. She hates herself, but her body is as indestructible as is her pride that unconsciously challenges all her wishes.

Portrait 4

An otter is knitting. She wears glasses with thin, golden rims, her upper front teeth are prominent, and she peers suspiciously at the nearest animals. Now and then she sneezes loudly but continues knitting. The wool is the color of her fur, and the piece is already bigger than her. Perhaps she’ll wear it in the winter, or maybe she’ll donate it to homeless otters.

Portrait 5

A chameleon is meditating. Every minute, he changes his color. When he was younger, he could camouflage himself wherever he wanted. Now he’s lost part of his power, but he can still hide on the blue armchair. He’s afraid someone will sit on him, so he turns himself yellow and white like a python. He meditates with his eyes closed tight. The bags under his eyes are bags of rough times, full of wrinkles, as if the whole history of animalkind were accumulated there.

Portrait 6

A hyena is checking between her legs. Her period began this morning, and she’s afraid she will start bleeding again and the blood will cover the floor. The other animals would be disgusted and judge her female condition. Her panties are still pink. She crosses her legs insecurely and relaxes her body. Perhaps an ice cream would attenuate the menstrual pain. Since morning, she hasn’t stopped licking her teeth, as if she were about to go out on the hunt. She’s all smiles, and her laugh makes the ladybug fall from the chair, frightened—but she still doesn’t die. 

Portrait 7

A snake is trying to dance to the Latin beat that comes from the secretary’s small speakers. She doesn’t care about anyone. She wants to dance the “Macarena,” but she needs a mirror for that, and none of the mirrors are available—some are covered up by pots full of tawdry plants. She remembers the arm movements, bending down with hands on head, and she tries not to cry over her lack of limbs. Still, she moves her body and tail in opposite directions, and feels a bit happier.

Portrait 8

A flamingo is admiring himself in a mirror. He’s one of the few animals standing; he prefers the mirror to the rest the chairs offer. He thinks he’s handsome and he could be on the Internet talking about books he hasn’t read or wines he hasn’t tasted. He puffs out his chest—not like a pigeon, because he hates them—and flaunts his thin legs. He feels that the pink on his neck is undoubtedly getting whiter, almost gray. He’s afraid of aging, so he smiles to stretch his face. The beak gets in the way. Perhaps a little Botox? He blows a kiss to his reflection in the mirror. It answers back, and they keep doing this indefinitely. 

Portrait 9

A pig is applying lipstick. She’s very small, so she almost smears her face in red. She has put a string of pearls around her thick neck just for the doctor. She shakes one of her hooves nervously, envying the chameleon’s obnoxious tranquility. If possible, she would jump off her chair to admire herself in the mirror as well, but she’s too lazy. She feels exhausted just from closing her lipstick, whose lid is caked with dry mud.

Portrait 10

A dragonfly is flying back and forth between her chair and the fountain. The movement makes some of the animals feel dizzy, but she has a morbid need to fly. When tired, she sits on the cherub’s head and watches the time pass on the clock hanging on the wall above the secretary. 

Portrait 11 

A dog is scratching his balls. He does this elegantly, looking from side to side to make sure nobody is watching. When the dragonfly seems to notice the slight movement of his paw inside his pants, he blushes. He’s a Dalmatian, whose dark spots turn from black to brown. He smiles roguishly and smells his paw. He thinks about taking off his clothes, but only at home, where there’s beer and TV. 

Portrait 12 

A cockroach is reading Kafka. She’s focused and sweating. Her antennae spin around, disturbed, but she can’t do anything about it, since she’s concerned about the end of the story, maybe about her own destiny. Nevertheless, there’s no concern worse than waking up one day with two arms, two legs, and a migraine, believing the Earth is flat.

Portrait 13

A cat is picking her teeth. She flicks small wet fish pieces onto the other animals, who glare at her. She doesn’t do it to everyone, only those who seem fun to annoy, the ones more susceptible to provocation. Then she throws the toothpick into the fountain’s small hole, but it doesn’t stop up the milky stream of water as she’d imagined. Disappointed, she starts licking herself: first her paws, then her intimate parts, clearly trying to look seductive. She’s desperate to have sex.

Portrait 14

A penguin is reading a magazine about architecture. He’s fascinated by the different kinds of igloos that were presented at an architecture conference in which he didn’t participate. He deeply regrets not going. Flipping the pages, he learns about not only the new materials used in igloo construction but also their new functions and prices. He’s surprised. Inflation has made ice more expensive. He closes the magazine and takes off his glasses; he’s clearly concerned about the new risks in the economy. 

Portrait 15 

A skunk is holding in a fart, his eyes popping out, almost dropping out of his head. He’s afraid of being killed right there—trampled by the giraffe, crushed by the snake, or torn apart by the Dalmatian. Anything could happen, except a moment of relaxation. He can’t even go to the bathroom, fearing that something might escape from him and enter him into the waiting room’s annals. 

Portrait 16

A fly is reading the Bible. She is wearing tiny flat metal glasses on her round face. She has thirteen diopters of myopia in both eyes and one-and-a-half of astigmatism in the right one. She reads faithfully, fervidly. Her wings rustle while she flips through the Gospel of Luke. She’s so emotional and so excited that she even thinks of starting a TV channel just for flies, but only for the ones who think like her. Let the other ones burn alive on electric swatters. Amen.

Portrait 17

A pony is smoking a clove cigarette. He’s on his third one. Smoking isn’t allowed in the waiting room or on the clinic’s premises, which extend to the corner of the street. But he doesn’t care. Both times the secretary scolded him for smoking, condescendingly calling him “Sir,” he told her to go fuck herself and added: “Don’t you Sir me, I’m a racing pony. Better than you.” He smokes slowly and thinks of standing up to kick the flamingo, but he doesn’t want to be thrown out of the clinic.

Portrait 18

A crow is drinking a glass of Syrah. Fermented alcoholic beverages are allowed in the waiting room. The wine smells like gunpowder, but it’s good. She brought it from a party, where she also stole some silver earrings and a dozen diamonds that are now hidden under her body. She keeps looking at the otter’s glasses, glittering like a seething gold mine. She likes this wine, but she’d prefer something lighter, softer. A Riesling, perhaps.

Portrait 19

A cross-eyed platypus is wondering what he is doing there.

Portrait 20

A rabbit wearing a blue hat is cutting out all the dresses he can find in the fashion magazines. The secretary watches him, but she doesn’t do anything. She doesn’t know where he found the scissors; maybe he brought them in the silver fanny pack squeezing his furry belly. She’s not sure. He cuts hurriedly, biting his tongue and stamping his feet each time he finishes a dress. He cuts out the models’ heads and puts them on new dresses, switching the bodies and sometimes the limbs.

Portrait 21

A turtle is doing nothing. She contemplates neither her own waiting nor others’. She doesn’t pretend to be dead or think that she is alive. She blinks involuntarily and avoids thinking about her trip back home when she’s done, when there won’t be any taxis available.

Portrait 22

An owl is trying to put a spell on the clock to speed it up. She’s a witch, and she knows what to say, how to say it, the names she needs to invoke, and how much she needs to roll her eyes. Her eyes are choleric. She thinks several times of burning up the fountain or ending the ladybug’s suffering. Perhaps eating her would be a better idea.

Portrait 23

A cicada is spinning herself around, emitting sparks. Nobody knows if she’s doing this to call attention to herself, or if something is bothering her. Her spinning is constant, boring, like an uncontrollable top. She feels dizzy and suddenly stops, letting out a howl that draws some disapproving glances. Then she apologizes and starts spinning again.

Portrait 24

A hippopotamus is staring at the plants and analyzing the color of the walls. He has an enviable posture. Maybe he’s the most elegant animal, the most emblematic presence in the waiting room. He wears an ocean-blue Italian cardigan, covering part of his dark and oily skin, whose luster involuntarily provokes the crow. He’s the only one who’s satisfied with the time and the wait. He’s only bothered by the fact he doesn’t fit in the fountain.

Portrait 25

A frog wearing a beret is thinking of leaving. The smell of wine and clove cigarettes disturbs him. He hasn’t drunk or smoked for 4,129 minutes, a victory for him, a relief for his family. He used to do harder drugs, he was engaged in smuggling, but he doesn’t miss any of that, only the cheap wine and the cigarettes. His eyes are red, and with a smile on his face, he imagines unfurling his tongue to steal the pony’s cigarette.

Portrait 26

A bee is talking to herself. Her buzz is irritating, high-pitched, and protracted. She pronounces disjointed words, sometimes only half of them, and it seems she’ll explode at any moment. She wears tight gym clothes, black and yellow polyester, and occasionally flies to the fountain to drink the milky water. 

Portrait 27

A ram is writing his autobiography in a ruled notebook. His expression seems suspicious at times, as if he’s salvaged some unexpected, forbidden ideas from the waiting room. He likes privacy but doesn’t respect it. He’s already written about the dog, the fly, and the rabbit. He loves gossip. The more he writes, the more heated he becomes. He remembers with sadness that he needs to be shorn.

Portrait 28 

An albino monkey, who has been chewing coca leaves and doing crosswords, leaves his chair and steps on the ladybug.

Portrait 29

Outside the waiting room. The street is engulfed by the purple of twilight. Night is falling and the clinic is still open. The front of the building, clean and clear like a spa entrance, looks out onto a street full of cars. Inside them, humans are waiting, leaning on the windows, sweating through their open mouths. Others are on leashes outside, tied up to metal bars that were put in place exclusively for that purpose. Men and women, naked, wait for their owners. They’re hungry and thirsty. They lick their armpits and the space between their legs. They drool over their feet, poop wherever they can, pee on the already-dead plants. They wait with their hearts racing, dreaming of colorful little balls, sardine cans, juicy pieces of meat, and jars full of food.

Translated by Ademar Soares Jr.

Photo: Flamingos, Laguna Colorada, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, by Elizabeth Gottwald, Unsplash.