she repeats.
She leans farther out the window and, in the middle of a laugh, turns sideways, puts her thumbs in her head, and wiggles her hands like ears, oh! it takes patience to put up with this girl.
“Lorena, it’s serious. I need the car tomorrow,” I say.
She doesn’t hear me. Suddenly she becomes angelic as she waves to somebody inside the big old house, Mother Alix? Mother Alix who opens the window and is exactly the same height, her hand raised in the manner of the Queen of England. But as soon as the nun goes away, she makes a worse face, the one she reserves for last. Oh, Miguel, “stay cool,” you said, and that’s what I’m trying to do. But at times I go hollow, don’t you see? I can’t explain it but it’s just too hard to go on in the routine, I wish I were in jail, in your place, why couldn’t I go in your place? I wish I could die.
“The university is still on strike,” groans Lorena, yawning. “What have you got there? A machine gun?”
She straightens up as if she were using one, squinting down the sights, shoulders shaken by the discharge, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat … She aims at the house, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, and fires at Sister Bula who pretends to play with Cat but whose attention is riveted on us. I am grinning because I know that Miguel would react exactly that way.
“Loreninha, don’t start in, I don’t like this game. Are you going to get the car? I’ll give it back the next day, like the last time. No problem.”
“You guys should kidnap M.N., Lião. Why don’t you kidnap M.N.? He could stay hidden under my bed per omnia seculum seculorum, Amen.”
I light a cigarette. What do I care if I sleep beside the drunks, the whores, the live coal against my breast, yes it hurts, but if I knew you were free, sleeping beside the road or under the bridge—! Only free. I can’t stand other people’s suffering, understand. Your suffering, Miguel. Mine I could stand all right, I’m tough. But if I think about you I get flaky, I feel like crying. Dying. And we are dying. One way or another, aren’t we dying? Never have the masses been so far away from us, they don’t want anything to do with us. We even make them angry, the masses are afraid, oh, how afraid they are. The bourgeoisie resplendent at the top. Never have the rich been so rich, they can build houses with door handles of gold, not just the cutlery but the door handles too. The faucets in the bathrooms. All pure gold like the Greek gangster had them on his island. Intact. Watching out the windows and thinking it’s funny. There’s still the mass of urban delinquents left. Urban neurotics. And half a dozen intellectuals; the friendly sympathizers. I can’t explain it but the intellectuals make me sicker than the cops do, the cops at least don’t wear a mask. Oh, Miguel. I need you so badly today, I feel so much like crying. But I don’t cry. I don’t even have a handkerchief, Lorena wouldn’t think it was nice to blow my nose on my shirttail.
“Lorena, lend me a handkerchief, I’ve got a cold,” I say, wanting to wipe my face which is wet with tears. Handkerchief, hell, what I want is the car. “I want the car, Lorena. Can I count on you?”
“I have white, pink, blue and light green. Ah, and turquoise. Look how beautiful this turquoise one is. So, Lia de Melo Schultz, what color does Madame prefer?”
I gaze at the box of handkerchiefs she brings. She keeps everything in little boxes covered with flowered cloth, this one has red and blue poppies on a black background. Plus the silver and leather boxes which sit on her shelf. And bells. Wherever her brother travels he sends her a bell. Other people collect stamps, or ties. Still others get in line to go to the movies. Maurício grinds his teeth until they break. He doesn’t want to scream so he grinds his teeth when the electric rod goes deeper into his anus. In the cartoon, the cat takes a walloping that makes its teeth and bones splinter. But in the next scene they glue themselves together and the cat comes back in one piece. It would be nice if it were like in the cartoons. Sylvia Flute-player. Gigi. Jap. And you, Maurício? When the electric rod goes deeper, you faint. Faint quick, die! We ought to die, Miguel. As a sigh of protest, we should all simply die. “We would, if it would do any good,” you said, remember? I know, nobody would pay the slightest attention. We could rip our hearts out, look, here’s my blood, here’s my heart! But some guy shining shoes nearby would say, What color shoe polish does the gentleman prefer?
“Green.”
I take the pale green one, which is third down in the pile, from the box. So delicate, the handkerchiefs Remo sent from Istanbul, farewell, my little hanky. Lião is capable of cleaning her big old shoes with you but think about the “if” for hankies: dust is just as noble as tears. It won’t be moon dust, so white and fine, earth dust is heavy, especially that on my friend’s shoes. But never mind, BE A HANDKERCHIEF. I drop it into space. It opens lightly like a parachute which Lião grabs impatiently.
“Are you depressed, Lião? Existential anguish?”
“Exactly. Existential.”
Oh Lord, she’s furious with me. She’s changed so much, poor thing. Meaning Miguel is still in prison? And that Japanese guy. And Gigi. And others, they’re all going, what madness. Suppose she’s next? Ana Clara did see somebody suspicious looking hanging around the gate; Aninha lies all the time, of course, but that could be true. Yes, Our Lady of Fatima Roominghouse, a name above investigation. But whenever nuns or priests come onto the horizon, everyone’s ears perk up.
“I’ll give it back tomorrow,” she says, folding the handkerchief.
“Not at all, keep it. Would you like another one?”
I throw her the pink handkerchief which doesn’t open as the green one did. Why does my heart stay closed too? Romulo in Mama’s arms, I looked for a handkerchief and couldn’t find one, a handkerchief to wipe up all that blood bubbling out. Bubbling out. “But what happened, Lorena!” A game, Mama, they were playing and then Remo went to get the shotgun, Run or I’ll shoot, he said taking aim. All right, I don’t want to think about this now, now I want sunshine. I sit in the window frame and stretch my legs toward the sun.
“I get red, and I want to get tan, look at me, Fabrízio told me my nickname in the Department is Fainting Magnolia, can you imagine?”
“And the old guy? Nothing yet?”
I count to ten before answering, grrrrr! Why does she call M.N. old? First of all, he is not old. Second, she knows I’m the complicated type, with me things just can’t be resolved so fast. Third—what was the third thing? I am making an effort to seem unshakable.
“He said he’d call me for dinner. Want to come?”
“What I need is a western movie.”
Imagine, the movies. A danger zone, there are thousands of danger zones where his wife or his cousin … I think the best place for us to meet is in the hospital because if the world is big, that hospital is even bigger. Is Dr. Marcus Nemesius in? I ask and the head nurse speaks to the subordinate nurse who speaks to the subordinate subordinate, who in turn speaks to another one far on down the line, the one who escaped the current, her shoes white, her memory white. “By any chance are you the one who’s waiting to see Dr. Melloni?” she comes and asks after two and a half hours. No, not that doctor. By any chance I’m waiting for Dr. Marcus Nemesius, is he in? “He just left,” she answers. “Won’t another doctor do?”
“If he doesn’t phone, let’s go together, Lião. I’ve got yenom enough for caviar.”
“Russian?”
“No, from Iran, dear. The best caviar in the world. My brother Remo sent a can.”
“I’m moved. But I’ll grab something on the corner.”
Here there’s the soup, the de-sexed meat the nuns fix, but still it’s better than the things she eats in the street. And she doesn’t even take baths any more, poor thing. Before, she would fill up my bathtub and soak so happily; one day she even asked for the bath salts.
“You’ve changed, Lião.”
“For the worse?” she asks,