Lord Read online

  I spent days in bed. The secret gang who seemed to be keeping me in London gave no signal. One day I woke up with something being injected into my veins. It could only have been an IV because I didn’t put solids in my mouth yet did not die. In the afternoons, a girl of about eight years old would come and offer me nuts, grapes. Eventually, I accepted. I don’t know who she was. She would come in and out, jumping around the room. From time to time the Englishman who brought me to England showed up. He’d lift my blanket. He’d look either unfazed or disgusted. If disgusted, he’d take off the giant diaper I was wearing, continuing to look disgusted, and throw it in the trash. Then he’d come back with a damp cloth and clean me. These acts of cleansing lasted much longer than one might have expected from only his sense of duty. His features would normalize. He didn’t leave any bruise on me unattended; he examined them, touched them, to the point where I’d get to look at my tree and wonder when it would start blooming again. Nature was starting to take on a new meaning for me. Enough of London, what I needed now was to go to the remote English countryside, be a fugitive among the cattle or a beast in a grotto, until I was shot by one of the locals who were frightened by my nakedness and colossal filth. The Englishman was still cleaning me, now obsessing over a little wound that wouldn’t heal between my sack and anus; there, he ran his fingers over it, using the foam from some bathroom cleaning product, as if I were really made of the hard crust of an animal; such an animal like I truly aspired to be as he rubbed my wrinkled glans, my stinging asshole. My gaze kept returning to the bare tree, to the sky that never cleared, and I let this man in his warlike costume shuffle among my body parts as if he wanted to take the life from them, and not just semen.

  Only once did I hear the voice of the child who sometimes fed me. It was certainly her, yes, calling someone named Bob. Was Bob the Englishman whom I only knew from his initials and whose last name was now lost from my brain? She called twice, three times, but no one answered. Was he a father who didn’t like his offspring to call for him—therefore ignoring his daughter’s voice? That day, I know the girl didn’t show up in my room, leaving me slightly hungry for the little food I was gradually getting used to having. Then I realized it was night, and he came in with some of those pills that put me fast asleep. After he’d given me a glass of water to swallow the miscellany of medications, I remember feeling a joy…more…a euphoria, even while realizing that I was going to interrupt the thread of life that I mildly sustained in my hours of clarity. I no longer felt trapped by a fear of waking up in Brazil. I felt that this place was mine, these sheets that he cleaned badly and sporadically with a cloth dampened with kitchen cleaner, all this was mine. It wouldn’t be long before more of this country also belonged to me. I could be seen as a refugee without a cause. They’d end up seeing my case as urgent: I would only know how to survive if I stayed. He’d come with the medication in one hand; in the other, the glass of water. I was saved again. For him, I would do anything. Except get on a plane and leave.

  There are so many planes in the London sky, I said, looking through the window. Counting them makes me tired on these sleepless nights. Dozens framed by my window. Oh, and what happened to the Vietnamese man who took the window measurements and never brought the curtains for the room? I was speaking again after being silent for such a long time, and I know he was quietly surprised. He was rejoicing without showing it. I could feel it when I looked directly into his eyes. If someone from the armed forces could read his eyes, they would fire him from his position immediately. His clear eyes were all he had at the moment with which to speak his mind: Everyone expects you to come back, you little shit, and you’ll come back, yes! It was then that I leaned on his shoulders and said the name I thought was his: Bob… He answered that his name was not Bob. I let go of him and fell back onto the pillow which he had sprayed with some cologne to disguise the thousands of missed washings. When he switched off the light, I saw a plane pass the window again, this one going south. Before sleep knocked me out I played with my cock. It was a part independent of my body: always willing. True, it had been well washed—it didn’t smell bad, nothing about it was diseased. It had been so long since I’d known what it was to have sex with someone. Or no? I got up without much difficulty. I supported myself on various things on my way to the living room. Bob—or whatever his name was—was standing there, fiddling with his pipe. What is it? he asked. And then he looked at my hard dick. That was something two men don’t do: look at each other’s dicks as one looks at a vase of flowers in a desert. He looked like that. On his face was a performance of mild surprise at seeing a man as weak as me being able to maintain a full erection. He told me to go to sleep; otherwise, the drugs would knock me down in the middle of the room. Yes, I gladly accepted. I was going to stay in London, damn the rest. As I went into my room, I looked back. He was staring at my ass.

  The next morning he came to wake me up. He said we were going to visit someone who’d be good for my overall recovery. He took me by the shoulders and lifted me from the bed little by little until I stood. You’re already better, he said. And this person will be able to improve your situation here. He opened the closet and took out my pile of clothes, which I hadn’t worn the whole time I’d been bedridden, as I’d been either in diapers or naked. The clothes smelled bad, but even if I had any others, I wouldn’t exchange them for anything: that shirt, those pants, the thick coat, all this had come so far with me in England; they were part of my way of being in this country, I wouldn’t give them up for anything. He watched me dress as if it were part of his job to take note of what I wore or check to see that I was not carrying anything dangerous or compromising with me, who knows. He continued to watch me dress like he could see in me the true meaning of his days, that if he were alienated from my existence he’d become worse than unemployed—he’d be unable to even have the companionship of a woman, to bring her here to show her his prey, yes, this one, this Brazilian who can’t guess his next move. Barton Street, he told the taxi driver. I was sitting next to him in the car, trying not to fall asleep. The pomp of London passing by—Trafalgar Square, Parliament, Westminster—made me dizzy, made me feel inadequate to the cause they might still be inclined to include me in. The car stopped on a street where the silence was golden. No, no one came to look through the window to see whose car was daring to disturb their distinguished ghosts. Yes, the bells of Westminster tolled, not far away. Before we entered the house the cab had stopped in front of, the man gestured for me to look at who had lived a few houses ahead: There, in a building just like the one in which we would be welcomed. I saw the plaque: HERE LIVED T. E. LAWRENCE – LAWRENCE OF ARABIA – 1888–1935. Without anything to do, I straightened my collar. One leg shivered, almost buckled. He rang the bell. An albino woman answered the door. She had the look of a servant. Mister… He didn’t complete the phrase before she cut him off: He’s waiting for you in the office, come in. He was a big man in a coal black wool suit. He didn’t get up from his desk to greet us. He stretched his arms. Only then did he approach us. Me, in particular. He looked at me with such intensity it was as if he could see me inside. But there was no real transparency in his expression. Only a concentration in his gaze, which one usually doesn’t have unless one is faced with the presence of someone of dubious quality. The man being observed was me. But as long as that condition served to keep me in London, then fine, let him continue to look. But what exactly was the meaning of this gentleman’s gaze? He seemed all-powerful to me. What was it he was examining so intently? I have always been an ordinary man, have only written seven books, that’s all… The two of them looked at each other. From their exchanged gazes I couldn’t deduce anything. It was a beautiful afternoon outside, the winter sending signs of giving in, but behind the man in the fireplace a fire still smoldered, almost dead. In the giant frame beside him, an image of hunting: several gentlemen mounted, a dog with a rabbit between its teeth. In the figure of the old man—who continued to examine me—there was imprint
ed a portrait of pain, perhaps pain from having known the memory of an ancestor’s glory without being able to recreate it in his own skin, which now seemed to him to be deteriorating, yellowish, like that of the dead. What he wanted from me, I suspected, was to attempt to drain my essence from me to him; I don’t know how…my resistance is worthy of a god. And I would resist even more strongly with his greed on top of me. Everything that happened to me would be advantageous, and I’d become invincible. In this improvised visit, I tried not to look at the young Englishman in his dark civilian suit. Yes, he could destabilize my moment of silent victory, unlike the old gentleman, who no longer had any kind of human fortune to battle my maniacal perseverance. So I stared at the old man. I began to wish for the meeting to end. If I stared at him hard enough, like a daring lover asking for everything or nothing, he would no longer be able to find what was in his pockets, his past would rise with all its mold, his spirit would tremble more than his hands; if I kept my gaze steady, staring back at him, he would bow his head, as he in fact did. And then he withdrew.

  We left the house and went down the deserted street. I felt the albino maid throwing a last glance after our slow steps. We turned onto Great College Street and walked through an archway leading to a vast courtyard surrounded by beautiful, ancient buildings—one of them was an alternative entrance to Westminster Abbey. There, the schools were as old as the buildings. Teenagers in suits and ties were playing with a soccer ball on the lawn and using terrible curse words. The ball landed at my English companion’s feet. He kicked the ball and got into the game with the kids. He kept the ball near his feet until the boys came at him in a solid block and stopped him from using his arms. They took him down, shouting vile obscenities at this man twice their age, now a hindrance to their game. In a matter of seconds, there were several teenagers on top of my companion’s body in a mix of anger and joking. Then they suddenly backed off. There he was, his suit all muddy, his face dirty, his hair disheveled. And he smiled. He looked at the blue sky and smiled, absorbed in that hiding place of the old British aristocracy, a neighbor of Westminster. No one passed; it was a rather semi-private place… Just the tie-clad gang of students, and he, who was now standing up and cleaning himself off. And I—a stranger who had once been invited to participate… in what? The boys gave up their game and dispersed… and my companion on our walk continued to trot ahead, finding a way out that led us right to the front entrance of the Abbey. We looked at each other. Then I remembered that I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror in a long time. What was he staring at? Forget it, I said to myself. It’s only a man with no external qualifications but the congenital idiocy to take the initiative to leave this place, to try his luck someplace else, preferably in the English countryside; to turn into an animal, to eat with his hands, to cause fear, to sleep before people even begin having dinner or arranging their parties, to wake up in the dark and let out a loud fucking scream, to throw himself from a rock, to bruise himself all over, to thus languish for days, and not survive the first blooming—turning as blue as the flowers until he blends in with everything and nobody notices him anymore. We had already walked a little way and now we stood looking at each other in front of Parliament, with people passing by all around us. We had to decide: Nothing was right; it was no use for him to keep me under house arrest in Hackney again. If he would at least tell me what he really wanted from me, I would try, I swear. If the council that governed him came to me and asked me to do the worst…who knows, I would do it, yes, I would, even if it implied my death. I would die happy in London, I swear. What I couldn’t do was go back to Brazil. I would even kill to keep that from happening. I was baring my cowardice, I swear. My hands were free, waiting for the gun. I didn’t give a shit about the consequences. Or did they think a man couldn’t snap out of being a coward? It’s not just a snap, man: it’s being stuck in this limbo between staying in England and going back to South America that made me unrecognizable to myself anymore, it didn’t let me transfigure myself, it wouldn’t let me leave this stupid little body here, vomit myself out in disgust, or turn me into someone else. He was looking at me in front of Parliament. He looked like he had never seen me before. He was in danger, too. He had failed, man, he had failed—I wasn’t the guy. Is there any other conclusion to come to? And was he who they thought he was? And that’s why he was staring at me in front of the British Parliament now, in the middle of that crowd of tourists. Our instants coincided, finally. We were two men who now had found themselves on a seriously wrong path. Was there any way to get out of this mess painlessly? For me, maybe, I might be able to, with less pain than him. Well, everything had conspired to bring me to a new country. Why not another new city, another new region now? Could anything possibly cause me more pain? Could things get even worse? I sighed in relief. He understood. Understood everything. He understood that the condemned man here was not me. But I also understood that he wouldn’t make things any easier for me. That the case was not over for him yet. He’d do anything to reinvent the potential he had seen in me, which I had always been unaware of. I saw in his sharp eyes, as if they lassoed me, that nothing else but me interested him. I wondered if our roles couldn’t be reversed; if I could become his master. I looked up at Big Ben high above, its bells ringing, and realized that this reversal was impossible from where we stood. I could continue my stay in England, which would be the only way for me to continue carrying on with what I still had left, but I had to get away from this little shit of an Englishman, and fast. I had almost done it before, managing to take the train as far as Hither Green—still a London suburb—when I first thought of running away, hadn’t I? How far would I be able to get this time? I mean, to leave it all behind: to get out of the train station; to see the village; to stay in a little hotel with the rest of the money from the “grant” that the little Englishman had given me; to meet an Englishwoman from the region; to nest with her; to take her children, if she had them, to the nearest amusement park; to run and rejoice; and this time, to really transform myself into a good-looking Latin man working at a cafe, a man completely trusted by the boss until one day he leaves everything to me and returns without heirs to Italy while his business prospers here. So, what do we do now? I ask the Englishman in front of Big Ben. The Englishman is speechless. He has contracted the same disease as the old man, the neighbor of T. E. Lawrence whom he took me to visit earlier that day. They are all mute. The moon appears behind him. A full moon. He’s lit up in the moonlight. Mute. Hardened. He’s made of stone, he’s made of bronze, like the many statues of heroes that populate this city. Rush hour has passed. Few people are around. The moon has changed position but still illuminates him. He remains the same: all hardness and silence. He seems to want to say that from now on it will be like this: he’ll just be an inspiration for those who accept him as bigger than he is—the specter of his success, an apparition. A few policemen circled around us, that’s for sure. I walked away, crossing the street; I was quick, it’s always good to remember that one is Brazilian at times like these. When I reached the other side, I turned. He was still standing there, near the Parliament gates, a police officer approaching. Suddenly he begins to walk, he sees me, yards away, and comes toward me, whistling. He’s become someone else—sweet like I’ve never seen him. He seems to have forgotten that he’s in trouble, that he chose the wrong guy for whatever part he had envisioned for me. But he won’t give me his arm to twist so easily; he’ll resume the plan and finally say what he had wanted, but only up to where it doesn’t undermine his power. Now he will say what he thinks a true Englishman should be: an illusionist of propriety. Is that it? I want to ask him, but before I do an idea comes to me: I should take advantage of this chivalrous situation with the little Englishman until the end, until he pays me another subsistence installment, as he likes to call it. We walk along the edge of the Thames, sitting sometimes on benches that are high up so we can better appreciate the landscape. He no longer looks like one of the city’s uncontested guard
ians. It seems like he’s following me this time. He appears to have lost his way, to not know where he is. We sit on one of the elevated benches. I take his hand. I say: This is the Thames. Look at the moon over there. I take his hand in mine and kiss it. I’m suspicious of his reserved kindness. In a little while he’ll lose control and show me again who’s really in charge here. I unlock my hand from his and put it on his leg, patting his thigh. And I move to the edge of the bench. I begin to suspect that this man has lost the mortar that kept him so hard, strange, and oblique. Maybe he has fallen in love with me, that’s all, and now he just wants to be with me. Maybe he’s the one man for me and has simply arrived late in the game, when I don’t even want to look at myself in the mirror anymore. This is happening on the banks of the Thames, under bright fucking moonlight. Who could say no? Is there anyone out there emotionally repressed enough to suggest that a pair of enraptured fags on the banks of the Thames is something laughable? Well, look, I’m going to take his hand again and he won’t say anything; he’ll just close his eyes and accept it. But, of course, I don’t do any of this—I don’t want to lose the reluctance that should exist in cases such as this. Reluctance on both sides, understand? Here and there. And of course, it’s London and begins to drizzle. And like two good Londoners, we don’t speak of getting out of the dampness to stay dry. I take his hand again, and…no reaction again. But I don’t overdo it. I return his sweet hand to his leg that’s covered by his impeccable, marine cut trousers. I pat it twice. And I stop bothering him. The day breaks. And people show up in their rush-rush. Traffic everywhere. I ask him if he remembers that today is payday, as was stated in the invitation letter. I tell him I have an envelope in my pocket full of receipts to give to him. His answers are more decisive now. Ah…he’s waking up. Is it today? Yes it is, I answer.