She smiles. I remain solemn.
“Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, my child” (wouldn’t this be better: Good afternoon, sister? No, people don’t say that).
“I came here out of an excess of audacity, trusting in your goodness and understanding, ma’am. I’m seventeen years old and I think I’m ready to start living.”
She doubted she’d have the nerve. And anyway what did the doctor, after all, even have in common with her? But, no. Something would happen. She’d offer her a job, for example. She might send her on a voyage to collect data on . . . on infant mortality, let’s say, or on farmworkers’ wages. Or she might say:
“Gertrudes, you shall play a much greater role in life. You shall . . .”
What? What is greatness after all? Everything comes to an end . . . I don’t know, the doctor will tell me.
Suddenly . . . The young fellow scratched his ear and said, with that old air people insist on lending new and exciting facts:
“You can go in . . .”
Tuda crossed the room, without breathing. And found herself facing the doctor.
She was seated at her desk, surrounded by books and papers. A stranger, serious, with a life of her own, which Tuda knew nothing about.
She pretended to tidy up her desk.
“Well then?” she said afterward. “A girl named Gertrudes . . .” She laughed. “And what brings you to me, looking for a job?” she began, with the tact that had earned her position as a magazine advice columnist.
Diminutive, black hair curled into two coils at the nape. Her lipstick applied a little beyond her lip line, in an attempt at sensuality. Her face calm, her hands fidgety. Tuda wanted to flee.
She’d left home many years before.
The doctor went on and on, her voice slightly hoarse, her gaze unfocused. About all sorts of subjects. The latest movies, young women today, their lack of guidance, bad reading choices, who knows, lots of things. Tuda talked too. Her heart had stopped racing and the room, the doctor gradually took on a more comprehensible aspect. Tuda told a few secrets, of no importance. Her mother, for example, didn’t like her going out at night, claiming she’d catch a chill. She needed to have throat surgery and constantly had a cold. But her father always said every cloud had a silver lining and that tonsils were part of the body’s defenses. And also, whatever nature created had its purpose.
The doctor toyed with her pen.
“All right, now I know you more or less. In your letter you mentioned a nickname? Tudes, Tuda . . .”
Tuda blushed. So the stranger brought up the letters. She couldn’t hear so well because she felt dizzy and her heart decided to beat right in her ears. “A difficult age . . . they all are . . . when you least expect . . .”
“This worrying, everything you’re feeling is more or less normal, it’ll pass. You’re smart and you’ll understand what I’m going to explain. Puberty brings about certain disruptions and . . .”
No, doctor, how humiliating. She was already too old for these things, what she felt was more beautiful and even . . .
“This will pass. You don’t need to work or do anything extraordinary. If you like”—she was going to use her old trick and smiled—“if you like, get yourself a boyfriend. And then . . .”
She was just like Amélia, like Lídia, like everyone else, like everyone else!
The doctor was still talking. Tuda remained silent, obstinately silent. A cloud blotted out the sun and the office suddenly turned gloomy and humid. A second later, the dust motes started to float and glimmer again.
The therapist became slightly impatient. She was tired. She’d been working so hard . . .
“All right? Anything else? Speak up, don’t be afraid to speak up . . .”
Tuda thought confusedly: I came to ask what to do with myself. But she didn’t know how to sum up her condition in that question. Furthermore, she was worried about doing something eccentric and still wasn’t used to herself.
The doctor had tilted her head to one side and was doodling little symmetrical lines on a piece of paper. Then she surrounded the lines with a slightly crooked circle. As always, she couldn’t quite maintain the same approach for long. She was flagging and letting herself be invaded by her own thoughts. She realized it, got irritated and took out her irritation on Tuda: “So many people dying, so many ‘homeless children,’ so many unsolvable problems (her problems) and here was this little girl, with a family, a nice bourgeois life, inflating her own importance.” She vaguely noted that this contradicted her individualist theory: “Each person is a world, each person possesses his or her own key and other people’s keys don’t work; you can only look at someone else’s world for amusement, for some personal gain, for some other surface feeling floating by that isn’t the vital one; just knowing that others feel as you do is a consolation, but not a solution.” Precisely because she noted that she was contradicting herself and because a colleague’s statement about female inconsistency sprang to mind and because she thought it unfair, she grew even more exasperated, wanting, angry at herself, as if to punish herself, to plunge deeper into the contradiction. A minute longer and she’d say to the girl: why don’t you visit the cemetery? Vaguely, however, she noticed Tuda’s dirty nails and reflected: she’s still in too much turmoil to learn any lessons from the cemetery. And furthermore, she remembered her own days of dirty nails and imagined how she would have scoffed at someone who spoke to her back then about the cemetery as though about some reality.
All of a sudden, Tuda got the feeling that the doctor didn’t like her. And, like that, there with that woman who had nothing to do with all these intimate matters, in that room she’d never seen and that was suddenly “a place,” she thought she was dreaming. Why was she there? she asked herself startled. Everything about her mother, home, that last lunch, so peaceful, was losing its reality, and not only her confession but the inexplicable motive that brought her to the doctor seemed like a lie, a monstrous lie, that she’d gratuitously invented, just for fun . . . The proof is that no one ever made use of her, as of a thing that exists. They’d say: “Tuda’s dress, Tuda’s classes, Tuda’s tonsils . . .”, but they’d never say: “Tuda’s unhappiness . . .” She’d gone so far so fast with this lie! Now she was lost, she couldn’t turn back! She’d stolen some candy and didn’t want to eat it . . . But the doctor would make her chew it, swallow it, as a punishment . . . Ah, to slip away from that office and be alone again, without the doctor’s useless and humiliating understanding.
“Look, Tuda, what I’d really like to tell you is that one day you’ll have whatever it is you’re now so confusedly seeking. That kind of calm that comes from knowing oneself and others. But you can’t rush the arrival of that state of mind. There are things you only learn when no one teaches them. And that’s how it is with life. There’s even more beauty in discovering it for yourself, in spite of the suffering.” The doctor felt a sudden weariness, had the impression that wrinkle #3, from her nose to her lips, had deepened. That girl was doing her harm and she wanted to be alone again. “Look, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of happiness to come. Sensitive people are both unhappier and happier than others. But give it some time!” How easily banal she was, she thought without bitterness. “Go on living . . .”
She smiled. And suddenly Tuda felt that face digging deep into her soul. It wasn’t coming from her mouth, nor from her eyes, that gaze . . . that divine gaze. It was like a terribly friendly shadow, hovering over the doctor. And, just then, Tuda discovered that she hadn’t lied, oh, no! A joy, an urge to cry. Oh, to kneel before the doctor, bury her face in her lap, to shout: this is all I’ve got, this! Just tears!
The doctor was no longer smiling. She was thinking. Looking at her, there, in profile, Tuda no longer understood her. A stranger, once again. She quickly sought the other one, the divine one:
“Ma’am, why did you say:
‘what I’d really like to tell you is . . . ’? So it’s not true?”
The girl was sharper than she’d thought. No, it wasn’t true. The doctor knew you could spend your whole life seeking some thing beyond the mist, she also knew of the confusion that understanding oneself and others brought. She knew that the beauty of discovering life is small for those who primarily seek beauty in things. Oh, she knew a lot. But she was tired of the struggle. The office once again empty, sinking into the divan, shutting the windows—the restful darkness. Since that was her refuge, hers alone, where even he, with his calm and irritating acceptance of happiness, was an intruder!
They looked at each other and Tuda, disappointed, felt that she held a superior position to the doctor’s, she was the stronger one.
The therapist hadn’t noticed that she’d already betrayed herself with her eyes and added, thoughtful, her voice hesitating:
“Did I say that? I don’t think so . . . (What did this child actually want? Who am I to be giving advice? Why didn’t she just call? No, it’s better that she didn’t, I’m tired. Oh, if only everybody would leave me alone, that’s what I want more than anything!)”
Once again everything floating in the office. There was nothing left to say. Tuda stood, her eyes moist.
“Wait,” the doctor seemed to consider for an instant. “Look, why don’t we make a deal? You stay in school, and don’t worry too much about yourself. And when you’re . . . let’s say . . . twenty, yes, twenty, you’ll come back . . .” She was sincerely excited: she felt for the girl, she’d have to help her, maybe give her a job to occupy and distract her, until she outgrew this period of maladjustment. She was so vibrant, intelligent even. “Deal? Come on, Tuda, be a good girl and agree . . .”
Yes, she agreed, she agreed! Everything was possible again! Ah, it was just that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t say how much she agreed, how much she surrendered to the doctor. Because if she spoke, she might cry, she didn’t want to cry.
“But Tuda . . .” The divine shadow on her face. “You don’t have to cry . . . Come on, promise that you’ll be a brave little woman . . .” Yes, I’m going to help her. But now, the divan, oh yes, quick, plunge into it.
Tuda wiped her face with her hands.
Out on the street, everything was easier, solid and simple. She’d walked fast, fast. She didn’t want—the curse of always noticing—to recall the sluggish and weary gesture with which the doctor had held out her hand. And even the faint sigh . . . No, no. How crazy! But little by little the thought took hold: she’d been unwanted . . . She flushed.
She went into an ice cream shop and bought an ice cream.
Two girls in high school uniforms went by, talking and laughing loudly. They looked at Tuda with the animosity some people feel for others and that young people still don’t disguise. Tuda was alone and defeated. She thought, without linking her thought to the way the girls looked at her: what do they have to do with me? Me, who was there with the doctor, talking about deep and mysterious things? And even if they knew about the adventure, they wouldn’t understand . . .
All of a sudden it occurred to her that after having experienced that afternoon, she couldn’t go on in the same way, studying, going to the movies, hanging out with her little girlfriends, simply . . . She’d become distanced from everyone, even from the old Tuda . . . Something had unfurled inside her, her own personality that had asserted itself with the certainty that there was something in the world akin to her . . . She’d been taken by surprise: so she could speak of . . . of “that” as if it were something palpable, of her dissatisfaction that she’d hidden in shame and fear . . . Now . . . Someone had lightly touched the mysterious mists from which she’d been living for some time and suddenly they had solidified, formed a unit, existed. Until now all she had lacked was for someone to recognize her, for her to recognize herself . . . Everything was transforming! How? She didn’t know . . .
She kept walking, her eyes wide open, growing ever brighter. She was thinking: before, I was one of those people who exist, who walk around, get married, simply have children. And from now on one of those constant elements in her life would be Tuda, conscious, vigilant, always present . . .
Her destiny had been altered, it seemed to her. But how? Oh, not to be able to think clearly and if only the words she knew could express what she felt! A little proud, radiant, half-disappointed, she kept repeating to herself: I’m going to have another life, different from Amélia’s, Mama’s, Papa’s . . . She sought a vision of her new future and could only manage to see herself walking alone over wide, unknown plains, her steps resolute, her eyes suffering, walking, walking . . . Where to?
She was no longer hurrying home. She possessed the kind of secret people could never share. And she herself, she thought, would only participate in everyday life with a few particles of herself, just a few, but not with the new Tuda, today’s Tuda . . . Would she always be at the margins? . . . —Revelations came quickly one after another, flaring suddenly and illuminating her like little bolts of lightning. —Isolated . . .
She suddenly felt depressed, with no one to help her. From one moment to the next, she’d wound up alone. She hesitated, disoriented. Where’s Mama? No, not Mama. Ah, to go back to the office, to seek the doctor’s divine gaze, to beg her not to abandon her, because she was scared, scared!
But the doctor had her own life to live and—another revelation—nobody ever went entirely outside themselves to help . . . “Just” come back when you’re twenty . . . I won’t lend you a dress, I won’t lend you a single thing, all you ever do is ask for things . . . And it wasn’t even possible to be understood! “Puberty brings about certain disruptions . . .” “This girl isn’t feeling well, João, I’ll bet that her tonsils . . .”
“Oh, pardon me, miss . . . Did I hurt you?”
She almost lost her balance from the impact. She was stunned for an instant.
“Can you see all right?” The man had pointy white teeth. “There’s no need . . . It was nothing . . .”
The fellow walked off, a faint smile on his round face.
Opening her eyes, Tuda noticed the street in full sunlight. The strong breeze made her shiver. What a funny smile, the man’s. She licked the last bit of her ice cream and since no one was watching she ate the cone (the men who make those cones have dirty hands, Tuda). She frowned. Damn! (Don’t say damn, Tuda.) She’d say whatever she wanted, she’d eat all the cones in the world, she’d do exactly as she pleased.
She suddenly remembered: the doctor . . . No . . . No. Not even when she was twenty . . . When she was twenty she’d be a woman walking across an unknown plain . . . A woman! The hidden power of this word. Because after all, she thought, she . . . she existed! Along with the thought came the sensation of having her own body, a body that the man had looked at, her own soul, the soul that the doctor had touched. She pressed her lips together firmly, full of sudden violence:
“What do I need any doctor for! What do I need anyone for!”
She kept walking, hurriedly, pulsating, ferocious with joy.
Another Couple of Drunks
(“Mais dois bêbedos”)
I was surprised. Wasn’t he taking advantage of my good nature? Why was he acting so shrouded in mystery? He could tell me his secrets without any fear of judgment. My drunken state made me particularly inclined to benevolence and besides, after all, he was no more than a random stranger . . . Why didn’t he discuss his own life with the objectivity with which he’d ordered a beer from the waiter?
I refused to grant him the right to have a soul of his own, full of prejudices and love of self. One of those wrecks who, smart enough to know he was a wreck, shouldn’t have lights and shadows, like me, who could tell my life story going back to the time before my grandparents had even met. I had the right to be modest and not expose myself. I was conscious, aware that I laughed, that I suffered, I’d read books on Bud
dhism, they’d put an epitaph on my grave when I died. And I got drunk not just for the hell of it, but for a purpose: I was somebody.
But that man who’d never venture past his narrow circle, neither especially ugly, nor especially handsome, that fugitive chin, as important as a trotting dog—what did he mean by his arrogant silence? Hadn’t I asked him several questions? He was offending me. I wouldn’t stand for his insolence another second, making him see that he ought to be grateful for my overtures, because otherwise I’d never know he existed. Yet he kept mute, without even getting the least bit excited about the chance to live.
That night I’d already had quite a bit to drink. I wandered from bar to bar, until, excessively happy, I was afraid I’d outdo myself: I’d grown too comfortable in my own skin. I was looking for a way to pour some of myself out, before I completely overflowed.
I dialed the phone and waited, barely breathing from impatience:
“Hello, Ema!”
“Oh, darling, at this time of night!”
I hung up. Was it a lie? The tone was true, the energy, the beauty, the love, that craving to offer up my excess were all true. The only lie was that line I thought up with so little effort.
Yet I still wasn’t satisfied. Ema had a vague notion that I was different and credited everything strange I could possibly do to that account. She was so accepting of me, that I was alone when we were together. And at that moment what I was avoiding was precisely that solitude that would be too strong a drink.
I wandered the streets, thinking: I’ll choose someone who never would have imagined they deserved me.
I was looking for a man or a woman. But no one particularly pleased me. They all seemed fine on their own, spinning around inside their own thoughts. Nobody needed me.
Until I saw him. Just like all the rest. But so like them that he became a type. This one, I decided, this one.
And . . . there he is! Drunk on my tab and . . . silent, as if he owed me nothing . . .