Quiet Creature on the Corner Page 3

  From then on we met every night in the shed. On the first night it felt like springtime, as soon as I got there Amália leaned up against me, put her arms around my neck, and whispered that she knew I wanted a son. She told me she’d read in a report that I confessed the desire for a child moments before entering my cell, and on that occasion Amália wanted to write me a letter, so that if she’d known how to find the right words, she’d write to offer to be the mother of my child.

  Amália told me more, that one drunken night I’d babbled in my sleep about the story of a child who woke up crying as I went through the dark on a cold morning to do the milking—I was sitting on a little stool beside the cow and had put a cloth over my legs so I wouldn’t wet my pants with milk, the child still crying.

  After that night I started taking every precaution: when I was about to cum I’d pull my dick out from inside Amália and cum on her stomach, just like in porn flicks, the guy ejaculating outside the woman, who then rubbed herself with cum and in some cases licked it.

  Other times I preferred Amália from behind—it was more relaxed because I didn’t need to worry that as soon as I got to the edge I’d have to pull out, and Amália had started to like it more and more when I did her from behind, telling me she’d never done it that way before, but then it became frequent that in the middle of our caresses she’d turn over and ask me to get inside her.

  She never breathed another word about a child.

  I don’t know if any of the other residents at the manor found out about my nocturnal absences. One morning as I was returning from one of my encounters with Amália, I ran into Otávio, seated at the kitchen table drinking, pulling hard from a bottle of gin. I sat in front of him and looked at his bulky features, his sometimes jowly habit of chewing on nothing, as if ruminating on some gory predilection that prohibited mention—Kurt and Gerda seemed to prefer things left unsaid, the intervals—so that he was obliged to remain there, turning things over, turning that strength, perhaps already useless, deteriorated, between what remained of his teeth.

  But when I sat down he stopped chewing, looked at me, and said:

  “It was always like that.”

  “What’s that, Otávio?” I asked.

  “Like that…”

  “What?” I insisted.

  Otávio, without stopping:

  “Ever since I saw him for the first time, riding his horse, when he looked at me half-cockeyed from above and asked if I wanted work, ever since then I’ve become his trained bloodhound, the one that tries things first, to save his master from falling into any traps, so on any trip, in any unknown place, if he thought the smell of the food was off, he’d ask me to take the first forkful and see if everything was all right, same with women, some of them I’ve tasted first, before him, like wine; it was the fear that poison could be hidden anywhere, so I tried first—this lethal mistrust always afflicted him, he kept me fed and housed to try to cure it, he took me on some trips, never once let me off my leash.”

  The next morning, on one of my walks, I once again happened upon Kurt and Otávio going at it. I watched from behind a tree, only this time everything looked worse: there came a moment when, with a blow to the chin, Kurt fell and didn’t get up. Otávio hovered around Kurt for a bit, then finally decided to drag him by the legs back to the manor.

  Kurt disappeared for a few days, at meals Gerda would say that it was another attack of the flu, the beginnings of bronchitis, but later she’d just enter in total silence.

  During Kurt’s long disappearance, Otávio barely touched his food, staring fixedly at a photograph beside the window, blotted by patina: a little naked child, lying on its stomach.

  Never before those days had I felt so acutely the monotony of the noises plates and silverware make at mealtime. I kept wondering whether, if Kurt never came back, they would still let me live on the estate, comfortable, without a care, as things had been until then.

  I awoke to a gorgeous Saturday, and the first sound I heard when I woke up was Kurt’s voice. I went quickly to the hallway, the door of the couple’s room was open, Kurt was saying that the stock market was down, he needed to call Miguel, Gerda told him that on TV they said that the depression was just transitory—that was when I heard steps and went back to my room.

  I had affixed to the wall of my room an image that appeared nothing like the one I imagined when I first arrived at the manor: I’d recently found an old engraving in Amália’s shed, rolled up in a corner, yellowed in spots, likely by the drops of rain that came in through the slats, depicting a boat setting sail. It was signed by the name of Wilhelm Müller.

  Kurt let me hang it up.

  “That engraving evokes, with impressive realism, a farewell to one’s homeland,” he said, as if half asleep.

  The poem I was writing then spoke of a farewell, and in that farewell exploded a hatred that tore through everything: ripped curtains, the walls to sawdust, blood on the lapel. Something was missing at the end of the poem that for three days I labored in vain to find.

  In a little while, I’d have breakfast, and hoped Kurt would be there, for no other reason than to feel secure. I thought that to keep up my form I’d need to believe with more conviction every day that Kurt was my protector.

  At breakfast Kurt was occupying his place at the table, he had his right arm in a sling, and sometimes Gerda leaned over to help him raise his cup to his lips.

  Otávio was talking a lot, recalling that the anniversary of his return to Brazil from the war was approaching.

  “It was a day like this, sunny,” he mentioned, staring at the pattern on the tablecloth.

  Amália was making her rounds of the table, asking if anybody needed anything, dissembling and stealing chances to wink at me furtively—the night before she’d remained for hours sitting on the ground, leaning against the bed: it was raining, there was a leak, the whole shed damp, and Amália, nude above the waist, told me that Gerda had cancer, she and Kurt had already gone to Rio de Janeiro a few times to see a famous doctor, one time Gerda stayed there for weeks, checked into a clinic, I told Amália that out here with her I didn’t want to hear anything about illness, and I went to her and started licking her breasts, sucking, started unbuttoning my pants, asked her to touch me, and she touched me, a drop of rain got through the shaft in the roof and wet my nose, I was about to cum in her hand, her breasts seemed very full, swollen, I was afraid she was pregnant, but my dread lasted only a second, and then I returned to sucking and biting her two breasts, because I remembered it had been a long time since I came inside her, so I could keep on sucking and biting her two breasts with peace of mind, the rain drumming on the zinc way up high, and suddenly Amália let out a yell, and shouted, murderer, murderer, twice, and I, who was wrapped in her arms, got up, took her hand, and saw deep in her eyes a sign of alarm, but concluded that I didn’t feel like deciphering it.

  I passed Kurt in the hallway, and for the first time he showed me a real smile. What’s happening? I wondered, what am I doing that could make him so decisively happy?

  I left the manor and went through the surrounding fields, racking my brains to see if I could understand that smile: What trait of mine could bring such a pleasured look to his eye? I needed to discover what it was so I could broaden my access to this strange benefactor.

  I sat on the highest part of the low hill and looked down to see Amália throwing things on an enormous fire—papers, cardboard boxes, wood, broken springs—it was making a lot of smoke, and I got down low so that she wouldn’t be able to see me.

  I stayed there, lying on my belly in the tall grass, hidden in a war trench, daydreaming that I was entering an unknown world, and that to remain in it I’d need skills.

  The strong burning smell left me a little stupid, and into my head leaped the hypothesis that Kurt had set me up, that he’d never give anything up. I turned my belly to the sky, exhaled slowly. Overhead, an airplane was heading south.

  Days later I wrote a whole poem in one
sitting called “Scenes of War”—the distant stamping, surrounding quake, a hemorrhage running from the nostrils of a boy as he woke.

  The poem, written on that paper…even if I slipped away, the poem would still be there, and I thought about how they gave me very little to do besides write poems, and that, until that day, I hadn’t really determined anything about my new situation—in that huge house, surrounded by fields.

  Someone knocked on the door. I got up and opened it, it was Kurt, he asked to come in, I felt weak in the knees: perhaps now I would learn the worst of it.

  Kurt stepped in slowly, went up to my desk, looked over it, brought his hand to rest on the dark wood, stroking it, letting his head fall gently, his voice low:

  “You’re coming with me and Gerda, we’re going to Rio de Janeiro, Gerda is sick, she’s going to check into a hospital in Rio for a while, for observation. If she doesn’t need more intense treatment this time, the three of us will go to Germany. Gerda has some things to attend to in Berlin.”

  My head spun.

  “Yes,” I remembered to say.

  The next morning I went with Kurt to apply for a passport in Porto Alegre. I’d forgotten that the manor wasn’t far from the city. We got there in a little more than an hour.

  After we took care of the passport we walked around a bit downtown. When we passed by the door of the Sulacap Building, on Borges, Kurt stopped, made an expression like he’d remembered something, said he had to make a quick visit to a friend’s office, that we’d meet up again in an hour at the McDonald’s on Alfândega Square. Then he took his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and gave me money. I stood there watching as he entered the Sulacap Building.

  I started walking again, lazily, without feeling like it, as if Porto Alegre no longer interested me. If only there were a way for me to remain in Rio permanently, or even in Germany, in Europe, without losing the setup Kurt had provided me.

  I perused the same used bookstores as always, looking at everything reluctantly, I couldn’t avoid grimacing at the gazes that crossed with mine, somebody walked by staring at me, I cussed, he stopped, he yelled for me to be a man and repeat what I’d said, curious bystanders surrounded us, just a lunatic in my way I said, and turned and made my way through all those people, the guy looked like he was about to punch me in the back but hands reached out to stop him, I saw him held back by a thousand arms, staring at me with his shirt all unbuttoned, panting, red, hair strewn across his forehead.

  People at McDonald’s were noisy. I tapped my foot to the tacky music that was playing softly, preferring to make an effort to listen and follow the music than to sit there listening to conversations that made me want to pick another fight: Kurt was ten minutes late, and when he arrived I took a deep breath and got up without realizing it, I asked what he wanted, and he said just a Coke, and when I came back with the Coke Kurt was smiling and completely absorbed by watching me. As I sat down I forced a smile to go along with his—my smile was half crooked and I let it fall, but since Kurt kept smiling, still rapt, I tried again, but this time what came out was a cackle that you could hear thirty yards away, and Kurt looked at me and let out a coarse laugh—he had perfect enameled teeth, dentures or maybe implants, and Kurt was much older, older than I could tell before. Otávio still had a certain stiffness to his face, Gerda looked like she’d had a little work done, but Kurt, this man laughing his low laugh right here in my face, he was the one who looked the oldest of the three, and he laughed, and I laughed, and we kept at it for a while in that McDonald’s.

  When Kurt’s thin lips finally closed, I concluded that never again would I see him laugh so effusively, I could barely believe how genuine his laughter had been—I wondered if he hadn’t had a fit of hysteria or something—and as the car descended the parking garage ramps the mood that came over us was the same one as always, reserved, sometimes bored, other times not, a silence from which a verse might spring, like in the car now, with Bach on the stereo, a lumberjack having a nap, holding the ax against his chest like a child.

  I looked sidelong, examined Kurt’s profile, and without being able to contain it I let out a silent but stinky fart. I rolled down the window, said that the temperature wasn’t so bad, though the wind blowing against my ear was super cold—maybe Kurt hadn’t even noticed the smell, he seemed to be listening to the chorale, enjoying his German choral music. For my part I had no complaints, I was going to put up the window as soon as the smell went away, and then I’d pretend to rest my eyes, take a nap, dream that I was in Rio, or in Berlin, or maybe even Amsterdam.

  I was awakened by Kurt’s voice calling me. In front of us was a huge line of stopped trucks with people piled on top of them. Farther ahead was a beautiful sunset, the teeth of a rake held up against the light. I rubbed my eyes, Kurt told me they were landless people who wanted to occupy a farm that was up around the next curve.

  A soldier holding a pistol appeared. He leaned into the car on Kurt’s side, said there were a bunch of encampments already on the farm, but the Brigade had intercepted more than half of them—those who were in the trucks in front of us wouldn’t advance any farther.

  The soldier told us we could drive along the shoulder.

  Kurt started to drive along the shoulder, the car passing by those people perched on top of the trucks, crying children, a pregnant woman holding her belly, placards asking for a plot of land, settlement, agrarian reform. The car went along with some difficulty over holes and muddy patches, but as though to compensate, the landless people didn’t say a word to us, good or bad, and getting through them didn’t take long since we were already close to home.

  Amália had once again thrown some junk on a fire—with a piece of wood she went about stirring it into the flame: a chair with a partial backrest and missing a leg was beside her, waiting its turn. I thought about whistling from the car, giving her a sign, but for the past few days Amália wouldn’t even look at me, lowering her eyes when she passed by, and I actually felt relieved that the thing with her had ended this way, without any effort on my part.

  As Kurt parked, three huge dogs I’d never seen before ran up to the car, barking out their fury—one of them put its paws against my window. Kurt told me that in situations like this Otávio let the dogs loose. He asked me not to get out for now, then went in front of the car and started to scold the animals in German—slowly the dogs stopped barking and sat down around Kurt. He signaled for me to get out.

  Otávio was on the porch, in a straw chair with a wide back, his hands nervously trying to cover a gun resting in his lap, he didn’t want to look at me as I went by.

  I went to my room, night had already fallen, and up the road the landless people were striking matches, a pitiful flame would extinguish and then another would light up nearby. I leaned out the window and remembered a song that kids used to sing back in my Glória days, but I couldn’t get past the first verse, and even that single verse began to dilute in my head and came undone within minutes—it actually seemed like suddenly my destiny had overtaken me, along with all the songs that used to flow from my lips by heart, such that there would come a time when I’d look back and wouldn’t be able to recognize anything. Soon I’ll no longer need to lift a finger to evade my past, I thought with relief.

  The dogs were perturbed, they wouldn’t stop barking, and I threw myself in bed with a deep fear of finding myself outside this situation which provided me a bed and everything else.

  I rolled around on the mattress for hours on end—I found it strange they hadn’t called me to supper—the dogs were quiet now, but they weren’t sleeping, I could hear them pacing nearby, the cavernous respiration of beasts, a voice from up on the highway, certainly someone transmitting a warning across the distance, others responded, every now and then a child’s cry, then suddenly a shout, but this shout had come from the manor, and it was a woman’s, it was Gerda’s, and someone knocked on my door, Kurt asking me for help, Gerda was lying on the bed breathing with difficulty, Ku
rt said he was going to open up her nightgown a little, to alleviate the feeling of asphyxiation, and he opened the nightgown, and from between her shriveled breasts to beneath her navel was an ugly cut, and Kurt asked me to help him carry her to the armchair, I said I could do it myself, and I took Gerda in my arms, and as I carried her she put her arms around my neck and began to hiccup, I stopped, saw through the window in front of me that they were still lighting matches up on the highway, only now there were fewer flames flaring and extinguishing, and Gerda hiccupped while clasped to my neck, Kurt pointed to the armchair, I put her there, she wiped her hands across her eyes, stopped hiccupping.

  The dogs had begun to bark again.

  I went to the kitchen for a drink of water and found Otávio, who was seated with his hands on the table, a glass tipped over, a bottle of red wine without a label. I brought a glass of water to the table and sat down in front of him.

  “So, Otávio?” I attempted.

  He coughed, said that he was going back to his homeland, Jaguarão, to stay with his elderly mother—she couldn’t live by herself anymore, and he was tired of it here.

  A few days went by in a downpour of rain, the landless wouldn’t budge from the highway. Sometimes troops of military police would get down from the Brigade trucks in nylon slickers that came almost down to their feet and stand there talking with a group of occupiers—one afternoon a lightning bolt struck nearby, rumbling everything, but it caused only a few shouts to ring out, children bawling, coughing, they must be drenched to the bone—my trip with Kurt and Gerda never materialized, I thought, because of the stalemate with the landless people practically on our doorstep.

  After the thunderbolt, in the middle of all the commotion, I noticed that some of the children were slipping through the wire fence and running down to Amália’s shed. A lot of kids had gone in, and it surprised me that there wasn’t any noise coming from down there, as though when they entered the shed they lost their tongues or fainted or maybe made a pact of silence, the fact is that it intrigued me, and I decided to go take a look.