All right, then the struggle started up again even worse: she was determined to get out and didn’t know how or where. And again that man showed up in the passage who was searching for those people and who again assured her that he’d find them because they couldn’t have vanished into thin air. That’s exactly what he said:
“Those people can’t have vanished into thin air!”
The woman informed him:
“You don’t have to take the trouble to look for them, all right? Thank you very much, all right? Because the place I’m supposed to meet those people isn’t in Maracanã.”
The man halted immediately to look at her in bewilderment:
“So what exactly are you doing here, ma’am?”
She wanted to explain that her life was just like that, but since she didn’t even know what she meant by “just like that” or even by “her life,” she said nothing in reply. The man pressed the question, somewhere between suspicious and cautious: what exactly was she doing there? Nothing, the woman replied only in her mind, by that point about to collapse from exhaustion. But she didn’t reply, she let him think she was crazy. Besides, she never explained herself. She knew the man decided she was crazy—and who ever said she wasn’t? because didn’t she feel that thing she called “that” out of shame? Even if she knew her so-called mental health was every bit as sound as her physical health. Physical health now failing because she’d been dragging her feet for years and years walking through that labyrinth. Her via crucis. She was dressed in very heavy wool and was stifled sweating in the unexpected heat that belonged to the peak of summer, that summer day that was a freak occurrence in winter. Her legs were aching, aching under the weight of that old cross. She’d already resigned herself in a way to never making it out of Maracanã and dying there from a heart bled dry.
Then, and as always, it was only after she had given up on the things she desired that they happened. What occurred to her suddenly was an idea: “oh I’m such a crazy old bat.” Why, instead of continuing to ask about the people who weren’t there, didn’t she find the man and ask him how to get out of those passages? Because all she wanted was to get out and not run into anybody.
She finally found the man, while rounding a corner. And she spoke to him in a voice slightly tremulous and hoarse from exhaustion and fear of hoping in vain. The wary man agreed in a flash that the best thing for her to do really was go home and told her cautiously: “Ma’am, you don’t seem to be thinking straight, maybe it’s this strange heat.”
Having said this, the man then simply accompanied her down the next passage and at the corner they spotted the two broad gates standing open. Simple as that? easy as that?
Simple as that.
Then the woman thought without coming to any conclusions that it was just for her that the exit had become impossible to find. Senhora Xavier was only slightly taken aback and at the same time used to it. Surely everyone had a path to follow interminably, this being part of destiny, though she didn’t know whether she believed in that or not.
And there was the taxi passing. She hailed it and said to him controlling her voice that was becoming increasingly old and tired:
“Young man, I don’t know the exact address, I’ve forgotten. But what I do know is that the house is on a street—I-don’t-remember-which-anymore but something with ‘Gusmão’ and the cross street if I’m not mistaken is Colonel-so-and-so.”
The driver was patient as with a child: “All right now don’t you get upset, let’s calmly look for a street with ‘Gusmão’ in the middle and ‘Colonel’ at the end,” he said turning around with a smile and then winked at her with a conspiratorial look that seemed indecent. They took off with a jerk that rattled her insides.
Then suddenly she recognized the people she was looking for and who were to be found on the sidewalk in front of a big house. Yet it was as if the goal had been to get there and not to listen to the lecture that by then was completely forgotten, since Senhora Xavier had lost track of her objective. And she didn’t know in the name of what she had walked so far. Then she realized she’d worn herself out beyond her own strength and wanted to leave, the lecture was a nightmare. So she asked a distinguished lady she was semi-acquainted with and who had a car with a driver to take her home because she wasn’t feeling well in that strange heat. The chauffeur would only arrive in an hour. So Senhora Xavier sat in a chair they’d placed in the hallway for her, she sat bolt upright in her tight girdle, outside the culture being dissected across the way in the closed room. From which not a sound could be heard. She didn’t really care about culture. And there she was in those labyrinths of 60 seconds and 60 minutes that would lead her to an hour.
Then the distinguished lady came and said: that there was a car for her out front but she was letting her know that, since her driver had said he was going to take a while, considering that you, ma’am, aren’t feeling well, she had hailed the first taxi she saw. Why hadn’t Senhora Xavier herself thought to call a taxi, instead of readily subjecting herself to the twists and turns of time spent waiting? Then Senhora Jorge B. Xavier thanked her with the utmost refinement. The woman had always been very refined and polite. She got into the taxi and said:
“Leblon, if you please.”
Her brain was hollow, it seemed like her head was fasting.
After a while she noticed they were driving around and around but that they kept ending up back at the same square. Why weren’t they getting out of there? Was there once again no way out? The driver ended up admitting that he wasn’t familiar with the Zona Sul, that he only worked in the Zona Norte. And she didn’t know how to give him directions. The cross of the years weighed ever more heavily on her and yet another lack of an exit merely revived the black magic of the passages of Maracanã. There was no way for them to be freed from the square! Then the driver told her to take another taxi, and he even flagged down one that was passing by. She thanked him stiffly, she was formal with people, even those she knew. Moreover she was very kind. In the new taxi she said fearfully:
“If it’s not too much trouble, sir, let’s go to Leblon.”
And they simply left the square at once and took different streets.
While unlocking the door to her apartment she had the urge, just in her head and fantasizing, to sob very loudly. But she wasn’t the sort to sob or complain. In passing she told the maid she wouldn’t be taking any phone calls. She went straight to her bedroom, took off all her clothes, swallowed a pill without water and then waited for it to take effect.
Meanwhile, she smoked. She remembered it was August and they say August brings bad luck. But September would arrive one day like an exit. And September was for some reason the month of May: a lighter and more transparent month. She vaguely pondered this until drowsiness finally set in and she fell asleep.
When she awoke hours later she saw then that a very fine, cool rain was coming down, it was cold as a knife blade. Naked in bed she was freezing. Then she thought that a naked old lady was a very curious thing. She remembered that she’d been planning to buy a wool scarf. She looked at the clock: the shops would still be open. She took a taxi and said:
“Ipanema, if you please.”
The man said:
“Sorry? Jardim Botânico?”
“Ipanema, please,” the woman repeated, quite surprised. It was the absurdity of total miscommunication: for, what did the words “Ipanema” and “Jardim Botânico” have in common? But once again she vaguely thought how “her life was just like that.”
She quickly made her purchase and found herself on the already dark street with nothing to do. Because Senhor Jorge B. Xavier had traveled to São Paulo the day before and wouldn’t be back until the next day.
Then, back home again, between taking another sleeping pill or doing something else, she opted for the second scenario, since she remembered she could now go back to looking for that misplaced bill
of exchange. From what little she understood, that piece of paper represented money. Two days before she had exhaustively searched for it all over the house, even in the kitchen, but in vain. Now it occurred to her: and why not under the bed? Maybe. So she knelt on the floor. But she quickly got tired from putting all her weight on her knees and leaned on her two hands as well.
Then she realized she was on all fours.
She stayed that way awhile, perhaps meditative, perhaps not. Who knows, maybe Senhora Xavier was tired of being a human. She was being a bitch on all fours. Without the slightest nobility. Having shed her last bit of pride. On all fours, a little thoughtful perhaps. But all there was under the bed was dust.
She stood with concerted effort from her discombobulated joints and saw there was nothing else to do except realistically consider—and it was with a painstaking effort that she saw reality—realistically consider that the bill was lost for good and that keeping up the search would be never making it out of Maracanã.
And as always, since she’d given up the search, upon opening a little drawer of handkerchiefs to take one out—there was the bill of exchange.
Then the woman, tired from the effort of being on all fours, sat on the bed and completely out of nowhere started crying softly. It sounded more like some Arabic gibberish. She hadn’t cried in 30 years, but now she was so tired. If crying was what that was. It wasn’t. It was something. Finally she blew her nose. Then she had the following thought: that she would force the hand of “destiny” and have a greater destiny. With willpower you can accomplish everything, she thought without the least conviction. And all this about being bound to a destiny had occurred to her because she had already started, without meaning to, thinking about “that.”
But then it so happened that the woman also had the following thought: it was too late to have a destiny. She thought she would readily trade places with another being. That’s when it occurred to her that there wasn’t anyone to trade places with: no matter what she was, she was she and couldn’t be transformed into another unique individual. Everyone was unique. So was Senhora Jorge B. Xavier.
But everything that had happened to her was still preferable to feeling “that.” And that came with its long passages without an exit. “That,” now with no shame at all, was the gnawing hunger in her guts, hunger to be possessed by that unattainable television idol. She never missed a single show of his. So, since she hadn’t been able to keep from thinking about him, the thing to do was let herself think and recall the ladylike girl face of Roberto Carlos, my love.
She went to wash her dusty hands and caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sink. Then Senhora Xavier had this thought: “If I really want it, really really want it, he’ll be mine for at least one night.” She vaguely believed in willpower. Once again she had become entangled in a desire that was twisted and strangled.
But, who knows? If she gave up on Roberto Carlos, that’s when things might happen between him and her. Senhora Xavier reflected a bit on the matter. Then she slyly pretended that she was giving up on Roberto Carlos. But she was well aware that the magic of giving up only produced positive results when it was real, and not just a ploy to get her way. Reality demanded a lot from the woman. She examined herself in the mirror to see if her face would become bestial under the influence of her feelings. But it was a subdued face that had long since stopped showing what she felt. Besides, her face had never expressed anything but good manners. And now it was merely the mask of a seventy-year-old woman. Then her lightly made-up face looked to her like a clown’s. The woman faked a smile to see if that might improve things. It didn’t.
From the outside—she saw in the mirror—she was a dried up thing like a dried fig. But on the inside she wasn’t shriveled. Quite the contrary. On the inside she was like moist gums, soft just like toothless gums.
Then she searched for a thought that would make her spiritual or shrivel her once and for all. But she’d never been spiritual. And because of Roberto Carlos the woman was enveloped in the shadows of that matter in which she was profoundly anonymous.
Standing in the bathroom she was as anonymous as a chicken.
For a fraction of a fleeting second, she almost unconsciously glimpsed that all people are anonymous. Because no one is the other and the other didn’t know the other. So—so the person is anonymous. And now she was tangled in that deep and fatal well, in the revolution of the body. A body whose depths were unseen and that was the darkness of the malignant shadows of her instincts, alive like lizards and rats. And everything out of season, fruit out of season? Why hadn’t other old women warned her that this could happen up till the end? In old men she’d certainly witnessed leering glances. But not in old women. Out of season. And she, alive as if she were still somebody, she who wasn’t anybody.
Senhora Jorge B. Xavier was nobody.
Then she wished for nice and romantic feelings in relation to the delicacy of Roberto Carlos’s face. But she couldn’t manage it: his delicacy merely led her to a dark passage of sensuality. And her damnation was lasciviousness. It was base hunger: she wanted to devour Roberto Carlos’s mouth. She wasn’t romantic, she was crude in matters of love. There in the bathroom, in front of the mirror above the sink.
With her indelibly sullied age.
Without at least a sublime thought that might serve as her rudder and ennoble her existence.
Then she began taking her hair out of its bun and combing it slowly. It needed to be colored again, its white roots were already showing. Then the woman had the following thought: in all my life there’s never been a climax like in the stories you read. The climax was Roberto Carlos. She reflected, concluded that she would die secretly as she had secretly lived. But she also knew that every death is secret.
From the depths of her future death she thought she saw in the mirror the coveted figure of Roberto Carlos, with that soft wavy hair of his. There she was, trapped in desire out of season like that summer day in midwinter. Trapped in the tangle of passages in Maracanã. Trapped in the fatal secret of old women. It was just that she wasn’t used to being nearly 70, she lacked practice and hadn’t the slightest experience.
Then she said out loud and all alone:
“Robertinho Carlinhos.”
And to that she added: my love. She heard her voice in wonder as if making for the very first time, with no modesty or guilt whatsoever, the confession that all the same should have been shameful. The woman daydreamed that Robertinho might not want to accept her love because she herself was aware that this love was too sentimental, cloyingly voluptuous and greedy. And Roberto Carlos seemed so chaste, so asexual.
Were her lightly tinted lips still kissable? Or was it disgusting to kiss an old lady on the mouth? She studied her own lips up close and with no expression. And still with no expression she softly sang the chorus from Roberto Carlos’s most famous song: “I want you to keep me warm this winter and to hell with all the rest.”
That was when Senhora Jorge B. Xavier abruptly doubled over the sink as if about to vomit up her guts and interrupted her life with an earth-shattering silence: there! must! be! an! exiiiiiiit!
The Departure of the Train
(“A partida do trem”)
The departure was from Central Station with its enormous clock, the biggest in the world. It showed six o’clock in the morning. Angela Pralini paid the taxi and took her small suitcase. Dona Maria Rita Alvarenga Chagas Souza Melo got out of her daughter’s Opala and they headed toward the tracks. The old woman was dressed up and wearing jewelry. Emerging from the wrinkles that disguised her was the pure form of a nose lost in old age, and of a mouth that in times past must have been full and sensitive. But no matter. You reach a certain point—and it no longer matters what you were. A new race begins. An old woman cannot be communicated. She received the icy kiss from her daughter who left before the train departed. She used to help her board the train car.
Since there was no center, she’d placed herself on the side. When the locomotive started moving, she was slightly taken aback: she hadn’t expected the train to move in that direction and had sat facing backward.
Angela Pralini noticed her stirring and asked:
“Would you like to change places with me, ma’am?”
Dona Maria Rita gave a genteel start, said no, thank you, she was fine where she was. But she seemed to have been shaken. She ran her hand over her gold filigree brooch, pinned to her breast, ran her hand over the clasp, took it off, raised it to her felt hat adorned with a fabric rose, took it off. Stern. Affronted? Finally she asked Angela Pralini:
“Is it on my account that you’d like to change places, miss?”
Angela Pralini said no, was surprised, the old woman surprised for the same reason: you don’t accept favors from a little old lady. She smiled a bit too much and her powder-covered lips parted in dry furrows: she was charmed. And a bit worked up:
“How nice of you,” she said, “how kind.”
There was a moment of disturbance because Angela Pralini laughed too, and the old woman kept laughing, revealing her well-polished dentures. She tugged discreetly at the girdle that was a little too tight.
“How nice,” she repeated.
She regained her composure somewhat quickly, crossed her hands over her purse that contained everything you could possibly imagine. Her wrinkles, as she’d been laughing, had taken on a meaning, thought Angela. Now they were once more incomprehensible, superimposed on a face that was once more unmalleable. But Angela had taken away her peace. She’d already seen lots of nervous girls telling themselves: if I laugh any more I’ll ruin everything, it’ll be ridiculous, I’ve got to stop—and it was impossible. The situation was very sad. With immense compassion, Angela saw the cruel wart on her chin, a wart with a sharp black hair poking out. But Angela had taken away her peace. You could tell she was about to smile any moment now: Angela had set the old woman on edge. Now she was one of those little old ladies who seem to think they’re always late, that the appointed time has passed. A second later she couldn’t contain herself, rose and peered out her window, as if it were impossible to stay seated.