And when they went over to see, wouldn’t you know the birthday girl was already devouring her last bite?
And so to speak the party was over.
Cordélia looked at everyone absently, smiling.
“I already told you: no shop talk today!” José replied beaming.
“Right, right!” Manoel backed down placatingly without glancing at his wife who didn’t take her eyes off him. “You’re right,” Manoel tried to smile and a convulsion passed rapidly over the muscles of his face.
“Today is for Mother!” José said.
At the head of the table, the tablecloth stained with Coca-Cola, the cake in ruins, she was the mother. The birthday girl blinked.
There they were milling about boisterously, laughing, her family. And she was the mother of them all. And what if she suddenly got up, as a corpse rises slowly and imposes muteness and terror upon the living, the birthday girl stiffened in her chair, sitting up taller. She was the mother of them all. And since her pendant was suffocating her, she was the mother of them all and, powerless in her chair, she despised them all. And looked at them blinking. All those children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of hers who were no more than the flesh of her knee, she thought suddenly as if spitting. Rodrigo, her seven-year-old grandson, was the only one who was the flesh of her heart, Rodrigo, with that tough little face, virile and tousled. Where’s Rodrigo? Rodrigo with the drowsy, conceited gaze in that ardent and confused little head. That one would turn out to be a man. But, blinking, she looked at the others, the birthday girl. Oh how despicable those failed lives. How?! how could someone as strong as she have given birth to those dimwitted beings, with their slack arms and anxious faces? She, the strong one, who had married at the proper hour and time a good man whom, obediently and independently, she respected; whom she respected and who gave her children and repaid her for giving birth and honored her recovery time. The trunk was sound. But it had borne these sour and unfortunate fruits, lacking even the capacity for real joy. How could she have given birth to those frivolous, weak, self-indulgent beings? The resentment rumbled in her empty chest. A bunch of communists, that’s what they were; communists. She glared at them with her old woman’s ire. They looked like rats jostling each other, her family. Irrepressible, she turned her head and with unsuspected force spit on the ground.
“Mama!” cried the lady of the house, mortified. “What’s going on, Mama!” she cried utterly mortified, and didn’t even want to look at the others, she knew those good-for-nothings were exchanging triumphant glances as if it was up to her to make the old woman behave, and it wouldn’t be long before they were claiming she didn’t bathe their mother anymore, they’d never understand the sacrifice she was making. “Mama, what’s going on!” she said softly, in anguish. “You’ve never done this before!” she added loudly so everyone would hear, she wanted to join the others’ shock, when the cock crows for the third time you shall renounce your mother. But her enormous humiliation was soothed when she realized they were shaking their heads as if they agreed that the old woman was now no more than a child.
“Lately she’s been spitting,” she ended up confessing apologetically to everyone.
Everyone looked at the birthday girl, commiserating, respectful, in silence.
They looked like rats jostling each other, her family. The boys, though grown—probably already in their fifties, for all I know!—the boys still retained some of their handsome features. But those wives they had chosen! And the wives her grandchildren—weaker and more sour still—had chosen. All vain with slender legs, and those fake necklaces for women who when it comes down to it can’t take the heat, those wimpy women who married off their sons poorly, who didn’t know how to put a maid in her place, and all their ears dripping with jewelry—none, none of it real gold! Rage was suffocating her.
“Give me a glass of wine!” she said.
Silence fell suddenly, everyone with a glass frozen in their hand.
“Granny darling, won’t it make you sick?” the short, plump little granddaughter ventured cautiously.
“To hell with Granny darling!” the birthday girl exploded bitterly. “The devil take you, you pack of sissies, cuckolds and whores! give me a glass of wine, Dorothy!” she ordered.
Dorothy didn’t know what to do, she looked around at everyone in a comical plea for help. But, like detached and unassailable masks, suddenly not a single face showed any expression. The party interrupted, half-eaten sandwiches in their hands, some dry piece stuck in their mouths, bulging their cheeks with the worst timing. They’d all gone blind, deaf and dumb, croquettes in their hands. And they stared impassively.
Forsaken, amused, Dorothy gave her the wine: slyly just two fingertips’ worth in the glass. Expressionless, at the ready, they all awaited the storm.
But not only did the birthday girl not explode at the miserable splash of wine Dorothy had given her but she didn’t even touch the glass.
Her gaze was fixed, silent. As if nothing had happened.
Everyone exchanged polite glances, smiling blindly, abstractedly as if a dog had peed in the room. Stoically, the voices and laughter started back up. The daughter-in-law from Olaria, who had experienced her first moment in unison with the others just when the tragedy triumphantly seemed about to be unleashed, had to retreat alone to her severity, without even the solidarity of her three children who were now mingling traitorously with the others. From her reclusive chair, she critically appraised those shapeless dresses, without any draping, their obsession with pairing a black dress with pearls, which was anything but stylish, cheap was all it was. Eyeing from afar those meagerly buttered sandwiches. She hadn’t helped herself to a thing, not a thing! She’d only had one of each, just to taste.
And so to speak, once again the party was over.
People graciously remained seated. Some with their attention turned inward, waiting for something to say. Others vacant and expectant, with amiable smiles, stomachs full of that junk that didn’t nourish but got rid of hunger. The children, already out of control, shrieked rambunctiously. Some already had filthy faces; the other, younger ones, were already wet; the afternoon was fading rapidly. And Cordélia, Cordélia looked on absently, with a dazed smile, bearing her secret in solitude. What’s the matter with her? someone asked with a negligent curiosity, head gesturing at her from afar, but no one answered. They turned on the remaining lights to hasten the tranquility of the night, the children were starting to bicker. But the lights were fainter than the faint tension of the afternoon. And the twilight of Copacabana, unyielding, meanwhile kept expanding and penetrating the windows like a weight.
“I have to go,” one of the daughters-in-law said, disturbed, standing and brushing the crumbs off her skirt. Several others rose smiling.
The birthday girl received a cautious kiss from each of them as if her so unfamiliar skin were a trap. And, impassive, blinking, she took in those deliberately incoherent words they said to her attempting to give a final thrust of enthusiasm to something that was no more than the past: night had now fallen almost completely. The light in the room then seemed yellower and richer, the people older. The children were already hysterical.
“Does she think the cake takes the place of dinner,” the old woman wondered in the depths of herself.
But no one could have guessed what she was thinking. And for those who looked at her once more from the doorway, the birthday girl was only what she appeared to be: seated at the head of the filthy table, her hand clenched on the tablecloth as though grasping a scepter, and with that muteness that was her last word. Fist clenched on the table, never again would she be only what she was thinking. Her appearance had finally surpassed her and, going beyond her, was serenely becoming gigantic. Cordélia stared at her in alarm. The mute and severe fist on the table was telling the unhappy daughter-in-law she irremediably loved perhaps for the last time: You must know. You
must know. That life is short. That life is short.
Yet she didn’t repeat it anymore. Because truth was a glimpse. Cordélia stared at her in terror. And, for the very last time, she never repeated it—while Rodrigo, the birthday girl’s grandson, tugged at Cordélia’s hand, tugged at the hand of that guilty, bewildered and desperate mother who once more looked back imploring old age to give one more sign that a woman should, in a heartrending impulse, finally cling to her last chance and live. Once more Cordélia wanted to look.
But when she looked again—the birthday girl was an old woman at the head of the table.
The glimpse had passed. And dragged onward by Rodrigo’s patient and insistent hand the daughter-in-law followed him in alarm.
“Not everyone has the privilege and the honor to gather around their mother,” José cleared his throat recalling that Jonga had been the one who gave speeches.
“Their mother, comma!” his niece laughed softly, and the slowest cousin laughed without getting it.
“We have,” Manoel said dispiritedly, no longer looking at his wife. “We have this great privilege,” he said distractedly wiping his moist palms.
But that wasn’t it at all, merely the distress of farewells, never knowing just what to say, José expecting from himself with perseverance and confidence the next line of the speech. Which didn’t come. Which didn’t come. Which didn’t come. The others were waiting. How he missed Jonga at times like this—José wiped his brow with his handkerchief—how he missed Jonga at times like this! He’d also been the only one whom the old woman had always approved of and respected, and this gave Jonga so much self-assurance. And when he died, the old woman never spoke of him again, placing a wall between his death and the others. She’d forgotten him perhaps. But she hadn’t forgotten that same firm and piercing gaze she’d always directed at the other children, always causing them to avert their eyes. A mother’s love was hard to bear: José wiped his brow, heroic, smiling.
And suddenly the line came:
“See you next year!” José suddenly exclaimed mischievously, finding, thus, just like that, the right turn of phrase: a lucky hint! “See you next year, eh?” he repeated afraid he hadn’t been understood.
He looked at her, proud of the cunning old woman who always slyly managed to live another year.
“Next year we’ll meet again around the birthday cake!” her son Manoel further clarified, improving on his business partner’s wit. “See you next year, Mama! and around the birthday cake!” he said in thorough explanation, right in her ear, while looking obligingly at José. And the old woman suddenly let out a weak cackle, understanding the allusion.
Then she opened her mouth and said:
“Sure.”
Excited that it had gone so unexpectedly well, José shouted at her with emotion, grateful, his eyes moist:
“We’ll see each other next year, Mama!”
“I’m not deaf!” said the birthday girl gruffly, affectionately.
Her children looked at each other laughing, embarrassed, happy. It had worked out.
The kids went off in good spirits, their appetites ruined. The daughter-in-law from Olaria vengefully cuffed her son, too cheerful and no longer wearing his tie. The stairs were difficult, dark, it was unbelievable to insist on living in such a cramped building that would have to be demolished any day now, and while being evicted Zilda would still cause trouble and want to push the old woman onto the daughters-in-law—reaching the last step, the guests relievedly found themselves in the cool calm of the street. It was nighttime, yes. With its first shiver.
Goodbye, see you soon, we have to get together. Stop by sometime, they said quickly. Some managed to look the others in the eye with unflinching cordiality. Some buttoned up their children’s coats, looking at the sky for some hint of the weather. Everyone obscurely feeling that when saying goodbye you could maybe, now without the threat of commitment, be nice and say that extra word—which word? they didn’t know exactly, and looked at each other smiling, mute. It was an instant that was begging to come alive. But that was dead. They started going their separate ways, walking with their backs slightly turned, unsure how to break away from their relatives without being abrupt.
“See you next year!” José repeated the lucky hint, waving with effusive vigor, his thinning, white hair fluttering. He really was fat, they thought, he’d better watch his heart. “See you next year!” José boomed, eloquent and grand, and his height seemed it might crumble. But those already a ways off didn’t know whether to laugh loudly for him to hear or if it was enough to smile even in the darkness. More than a few thought that luckily the hint contained more than just a joke and that not until next year would they have to gather around the birthday cake; while others, already farther off in the darkness of the street, wondered whether the old woman would hang on for another year of Zilda’s nerves and impatience, but honestly there was nothing they could do about it. “Ninety years old at the very least,” thought the daughter-in-law from Ipanema melancholically. “To make it to a nice, round age,” she thought dreamily.
Meanwhile, up above, atop the stairs and contingencies, the birthday girl was seated at the head of the table, erect, definitive, greater than herself. What if there’s no dinner tonight, she mused. Death was her mystery.
The Smallest Woman in the World
(“A menor mulher do mundo”)
In the depths of Equatorial Africa the French explorer Marcel Pretre, hunter and man of the world, came upon a pygmy tribe of surprising smallness. He was all the more surprised, then, when informed that an even smaller people existed beyond forests and distances. So deeper still he plunged.
In the Central Congo he indeed discovered the smallest pygmies in the world. And—like a box within a box, within a box—among the smallest pygmies in the world was the smallest of the smallest pygmies in the world, obeying perhaps the need Nature sometimes has to outdo herself.
Amid mosquitoes and trees warm with moisture, amid the rich leaves of the laziest green, Marcel Pretre came face-to-face with a woman who stood eighteen inches tall, full-grown, black, silent. “Dark as a monkey,” he would inform the press, and that she lived in the top of a tree with her little consort. In the tepid, wild mists, which swell the fruits early and make them taste almost intolerably sweet, she was pregnant.
There she stood, then, the smallest woman in the world. For an instant, in the drone of the heat, it was as if the Frenchman had unexpectedly arrived at the last conclusion. Undoubtedly, it was only because he wasn’t insane, that his soul neither fainted nor lost control. Sensing an immediate need for order, and to give a name to whatever exists, he dubbed her Little Flower. And, in order to classify her among the recognizable realities, he quickly set about collecting data on her.
Her race is gradually being exterminated. Few human examples remain of this species which, if not for the cunning danger of Africa, would be a dispersed people. Aside from disease, infectious vapors from the waters, insufficient food and roving beasts, the greatest risk facing the scant Likoualas are the savage Bantus, a threat that surrounds them in the silent air as on the morning of battle. The Bantus hunt them with nets, as they do monkeys. And eat them. Just like that: they hunt them with nets and Eat them. That tiny race of people, always retreating and retreating, eventually took up residence in the heart of Africa, where the lucky explorer would discover them. For strategic defense, they live in the tallest trees. From which the women descend to cook corn, grind cassava and gather vegetables; the men, to hunt. When a child is born, he is granted his freedom almost immediately. It’s true that often the child won’t enjoy this freedom for very long among wild beasts. But then it’s true that, at the very least, no one will lament that, for so short a life, the labor was long. For even the language the child learns is short and simple, strictly essential. The Likoualas use few names, referring to things with gestures and animal sounds. In terms
of spiritual advancement, they have a drum. While they dance to the sound of the drum, a little male stands guard against the Bantus, who will come from no one knows where.
It was, therefore, thus, that the explorer discovered, standing there at his feet, the smallest human thing in existence. His heart beat because no emerald is as rare. Neither are the teachings of the sages of India as rare. Neither has the richest man in the world ever laid eyes on so much strange grace. Right there was a woman the gluttony of the most exquisite dream could never have imagined. That was when the explorer declared, shyly and with a delicacy of feeling of which his wife would never have judged him capable:
“You are Little Flower.”
At that moment Little Flower scratched herself where a person doesn’t scratch. The explorer—as if receiving the highest prize for chastity to which a man, who had always been so idealistic, dared aspire—the explorer, seasoned as he was, averted his eyes.
Little Flower’s photograph was published in the color supplement of the Sunday papers, where she fit life-size. Wrapped in a cloth, with her belly far along. Her nose flat, her face black, eyes sunken, feet splayed. She resembled a dog.
That Sunday, in an apartment, a woman, seeing Little Flower’s picture in the open newspaper, didn’t want to look a second time “because it pains me so.”
In another apartment a lady felt such perverse tenderness for the African woman’s smallness that—prevention being better than cure—no one should ever leave Little Flower alone with the lady’s tenderness. Who knows to what darkness of love affection can lead. The lady was disturbed for a day, one might say seized with longing. Besides it was spring, a dangerous benevolence was in the air.
In another house a five-year-old girl, seeing the picture and hearing the commentary, became alarmed. In that household of adults, this girl had up till now been the smallest of human beings. And, if that was the source of the best caresses, it was also the source of this first fear of love’s tyranny. Little Flower’s existence led the girl to feel—with a vagueness that only years and years later, for very different reasons, would solidify into thought—led her to feel, in a first flash of wisdom, that “misfortune has no limit.”