Categoria: herons and scavengers… (novel)

17. Ear pain and night-blindness

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz

How many times did the nice figure of a doctor with charitable hands come to the orphanage? I don’t remember one. Did a nurse? Not one. Did a pharmacist? One never came.
Our medicine consisted of purges. That thing was so bad that it should expel all the viruses that would be lodged in our malnourished and starving bodies. Even the devil itself couldn’t cope.
Sanitary conditions offered excellent research material. Guinea pigs at will, cold, hunger, lack of vitamin, all barefoot, unpleasant sleep, unfiltered water, sometimes even from the toilet bowl. We all had swollen and cracked lips. I know because I remember that my sisters, for a long time, mentioned many times after our departure, that they were horrified at the appearance of our lips. Our skin was dry resembling a peach with white spots. From all the noses ran forever the green and watery phlegm. We cleaned our noses on the straps of our overall, at the end of the week they were starched and filthy.
Sometimes, one of us couldn’t keep food in our stomachs. It was like a quick tide, going and coming, going and coming that ended up by causing the beans and rice to spread around the room, lying there until dry.
Besides all this there was thinness.
Regarding our health, I remember one episode that happened with Geraldo and two with me. Besides the beneficial tuberculosis of Little Marcos, that earned him envied holidays at the priest’s home.
One night, Geraldo let no one sleep. He had a toothache. I remember that many children had toothache, swollen cheeks that were tied with a cloth nobody knew where it had come from. His pain either hurt more or was used as a pretext for a violent rebellion. He screamed, howled, the supervisor didn’t know what to do. Knowing that everyone was aware, he took the opportunity to begin to curse the priest. To curse the priest represented more than a sacrilege. Sacrileges may or may not attract the bolt of lightning, the bolt of lightning is expected but never comes. But in that place, to curse the priest posed a scale of growing physical pain and decreasing humiliation. Correction paddle, shoves, kicks, culminating in clumsy flights and falls like packages.
The pain gave him strength. I was horrified because to curse someone looked terrible to me and I was like a little puppy filled with fear. Meanwhile, I was proud that it was my brother the one that faced the power, throwing upwards that inverted rain of destruction.
That son of a bitch, bastard, fag, it’s because of that priest son of a bitch.
Then silence came, everybody looked at the supervisor.
Geraldo, come with me.
Shit, I’m not going! I’m in pain because of these sons of a bitch, that bastard of a priest!
The night didn’t end badly. Against the odds, Geraldo was taken to de principal-priest who gave him medicine and took care of him. He returned triumphant.

One morning, I woke up not feeling well. The world had lost its meaning. The porridge seemed to me disgusting and I didn’t want to eat it. I lied down on the small cement bench and let myself forgotten. Lunch time came. They called me, it was Sunday. It wasn’t reasonable to miss the Sunday lunch: the rice was not sticky and they gave us a piece of lamb. I had no courage and stayed. I had the impression that the universe was still. I slept. The sun was hot, it was confusing because I was feeling very cold, the cement bench was icy but one side of my head which was under the sun was burning. A distant rumor began to trouble me like an endless water fall. The sun was unbearable, harsh and hoarse. The noise grew louder and I realized that the ear that was close to the cement hurt too much.
Someone talked to me, tried to lift me. I looked and didn’t understand a thing. The figures shined in front of me like angels in the twilight of paradise. Someone spoke about Geraldo, I heard my brother’s name in the middle of a thunder. He soon arrived, worried and held me. Among the huge sparkles and pops I realized that he had warned me about having missed lunch and for being in the sun. In the shade, the brightness decreased but the crazy noises of the infernal factory continued for a long time.

There’s a point related to my health worthy of mentioning. I couldn’t see at night. When I was attending the Pedro II School, much later, I found out in a Science book that the lack of vitamin A causes night blindness. Therefore, that strange disturbance was explained. Until then, the fact filled me with astonishment, I didn’t know if I was different from the others, if I was going blind, I didn’t understand anything at all…
One painful memory is when it was time to go to the dorms upstairs. I believe that as soon as darkness fell we were lined up to go up. The darkness killed me. I was incapable to see a faint glow, a light spot. I could hear everyone, know what was going on around me nevertheless I felt isolated from the rest. Once, I left the line unintentionally. They started calling me, I lost track of the voices, many at the same time, I tried to go back and hit the walls. I could hear the anguished voices of Valdemar, Hermes, Bucket, Zé da Silva but couldn’t find out where they were coming from and kept doing goofy turns with my arms stretched out to protect my face. Suddenly, I felt that one hand held my shoulder and that I was being taken, I was guided to the bed.
Thereafter, when the line started to move, I grasped the clothes of the one in front of me and kept walking…
One other time, I woke up wanting to go to the bathroom. There was one bathroom next to the dorms. I started to grope carefully my way through the wood bunk beds. With some difficulty, I figured out the cold tile, urinated somewhere and looked for my bed. I started to grope my way, felt bodies, curly hairs full of sand, muddy feet, struck my head on the grids, coming and going and again found myself back at the bathroom door without finding my bed. In desperation, I lost myself in the middle of that forest of bunk beds extremely dark and my body began to hit everything. Someone called my name,
I can’t find my bed,
and took me like magic straight to the empty and cold bed.
What would have become of me in a night like that, if I weren’t skinny and had fearful eyes and shy and loved by all?

to be continued on next sunday.

16. The church

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz

It shouldn’t have been very large or very rich. But necessarily there must have been some gold, some flower, some lit candle or lamp hanging from a long wire, some stained glass because it would look nice. I feel that there was a row of small paintings, depicting the Way of the Cross, what wonderful paintings! Today, they would be a vulgar repetition of David academic style, perhaps not so.
However, what impressed me the most was the statue of that woman. With bright eyes, watery, real hair and with a dagger stuck in her chest. The flesh of her breast, the small amount of breast to be seen, an opened wound like two virginal lips, a stain of blood and the huge dagger. It was Our Lady of Sorrows. Nobody explained me that it was a symbolic dagger, I took it as real and perhaps I had already related that to deflowering.
That image haunted me, the impression of having it before my eyes is too vivid and you can evaluate the horror that it brought me. This happened in 1949 and 1950. In 1961, eleven years later, I dreamed of that statue. Naked from the waist up, having the dead Christ on her lap, somewhat in the same position as the Pieta by Michelangelo. There was no dagger, but the two breasts were cut horizontally. In 1973, the dream changed. The woman has a child on her lap, like a Madonna by Raphael. Naked as the previous one, but in this dream it’s a painting. A very beautiful statue of an Egyptian priest holding a dagger stands next to the painting. The statue goes towards the painting and I attempt to stop it but decide to let myself watch to see what is going to happen. It pierces the heart of the figure in the picture and a blood fillet runs.
That church, like all the others, inspired me, for a while, more terror than any other emotion. The saints dressed in red had real hair, looked at me like resurrected corpses, still green, still motionless. But the most terrible were those real, bright and piercing eyes, looking at a point in front of them, standing inflexible and at the same time eternally alive and eternally dead.
We all would sit on a long bench, swinging our dirty feet. I kept watching the environment imitating the standing up, the kneeling down and the sitting down movements. I kept watching.
I don’t think we went to church much; fortunately because of my dreams. I have but two memories of these heavy visits. Very bitter memories, two vultures come and go forever inside of me. They stop, look at me for a while, shudder and continue with the comings and goings. Could these two events have happened during the same Sunday? Whatever. At this point in time, it doesn’t matter.
We went to regular Mass but none was especially prayed for the students. We sat more or less piled up on some benches and the city occupied the rest.
It was He who officiated.
What difference does it make?, if there are also Black Masses.
I found out that the little boy in front of me ate a coconut candy. He was with his father, a man that left a hat next to him on the bench. There are therefore, imprisoned inside me, in a prison cell of the memory, a father who has a hat and a boy who eats coconut candy. He ate slowly, bit by bit, and the delay was agonizing. Everything disappeared around and the only thing that existed in the universe was a piece of candy that kept going up and down, disappearing and reappearing. White, irregular and crumbled. If he had swallowed the whole thing, cleaning his hands on his pants perhaps the coconut candy would be gone from my mind, even with more reason, he and his father too. But it wasn’t what happened. He, unwittingly, went on with the torture, he didn’t know about the excessive salivation. He didn’t know about the panting, He didn’t know about the close surveillance.
He wore shoes and his clothes were clean.
Here my fantasy eludes me, blurs the consummation of the episode. Sometimes I see the boy leaving with his dad, leaving on the bench, a piece of the candy that I eat. Sometimes, at the exit I see, the man approaching me with a candy in his hand, offering it to me.
Which one of the two? There shouldn’t have been any of this. When He released us, we all stood up, I had to leave in the middle of the turmoil and my vision was gone.
But my fantasy insists and also shows me some crumbs of coconut scattered on the bench, forgotten.

The other memory is of the day of confession. We were wonderfully prepared. The teachers had told us that people that didn’t confess all of their sins the consecrated bread would bleed or would be vomited with an unbearable stench. The strangest one was about the little girl,
innocent like him
who wanted to receive communion and wasn’t allowed because she was too small and at the time of the communion, the consecrated bread fell off the priest’s fingers, flew through the temple and landed on the little angel’s head. Like a holy spirit.
We were wonderfully prepared. I would prefer that the ground opened up and I disappeared. I hated to think that I could forget some sin, those sins, they were so complicated…
mortal sins are so many
deadly sins are so many
venial sins are so many
and there was that silent eumenide stuck in my soul, that was called the original sin.
I was wonderfully prepared.
My turn came up and I stumbled until I got there. I stammered the first words and, at a glance, listed my horrors:
to behead the crickets
to fight with my friends
to do evil.
What evil?
I hit a crippled boy.
That’s all?
I tore his cards, was angry with him and cursed him.
What else?
That voice imprisoned me. I remember that voice. It was soft, kind of hoarse, had no owner. It was a demonic voice coming out of the confessional grid, I talked with a grid.
I was silent and he asked me again what else. What else did he want? Some mortal sin? That I had dishonoured father and mother? That I had coveted the Neighbor’s wife?, that unknown guy that had such a funny name!
I beat him, damage his toys.
The grid was silent, but didn’t release me. I started to sweat cold. The silence was demanding that I continue for I needed more sins!
I killed birds! (I had never killed birds!)
I cursed the teacher!
He remained silent.
And after that…
What kind of ugly things do you think?
I would ask him today, what kind of ugly things a seven-eight year old child thinks. Son of a bitch! Terrorist! Son of a bitch!
Terrorist son of a bitch!

Ancient people liked allegories. They painted the Innocence, the Anger… Botticelli has a Calumny. Durer has a very expressive Melancholy. Someone would have painted or sculpted the Sancta Mater Church? Would that allegory have been similar to that woman of sorrows, with the hymen-breast, in the most sadomasochist form, pierced by the phallic dagger?
I wonder the allegory that would exist in the mind of a seven-eight year old boy, due to his experience in an orphanage run by a priest. I remember the movie Roma by Fellini. In the mid of the mist is a whore. It’s a huge woman dressed in black. She displays huge breasts that could be the redemption of all the hungry babies in the world. Before that she disappears from the scene, she cleans the gums with her tongue in a grimace… No, a poor whore? Just think of the treasures of the Vatican.
There’s another one more at the end of the movie. This one is in a luxurious brothel… No, it’s better to abandon these images, one, very beautiful face and the other, so human…
I would like to imagine a witch with a pierced breast. Here she embodies the Great Harlot of the Book of Revelations, who sits on waters. With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication. The Church.

to be continued on next sunday.

15. Jorge de Souza Félix

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz

    It’s very strange to remember.
At the beginning of my attempt to penetrate in the labyrinths of my memory, images of herons and vultures emerged. The herons would be the pale memories of pleasant facts; the vultures any more frightening scene. In some moments it seems that they get mixed up.
To remember can also be as the image of a landscape in ruins. Here, a totally isolated wall, but on it very colorful frescoes of a whole scene, sharp and full of meaning. Further, a decapitated statue, would this creature be a good deity or a horrible rage? A solitary column tells me of some learning. A shattered column on the floor suggests some cause for shame.
I know well that there was a moment in my life when all of these architectural details were part of a coherent whole. It was my present time. In there, I breathed my fears and my hopes and my heart was learning slowly, little by little, the great amazement that means to live.
Years and years later, we can only manage to remember that something existed, much more in the likeness of a huge lie. And, by trying to redo the ride of the past, we discover that that city is dead.
My steps are headed to a small temple. I’m sure that I’ll find something awful. I see destroyed murals showing claws. There are scattered pieces of a broken sculpture with eyes full of pain. The basin supposed to have holy water is broken; I cannot see, therefore, a reflection of my melancholic face. It’s a pagan temple. I’d rather think it’s a pagan temple.

Some time after my arrival, a new class was introduced to us. They were put in front of us and their names read aloud, for everybody’s knowledge. For a moment I shuddered. My name was shouted, shouted in the middle of the confusion. It was all very weird. I approached Geraldo, full of astonishment and told him that I was afraid. He spoke with Antonio. The surname was not Teles. It was Félis. Jorge de Souza Félis. It should have been Félix, maybe they misread it.
Curiously, he had arrived in the company of an older brother. Geraldo looked for both of them. I don’t remember the other one’s name. Both had dark skin, almost mulattoes. Then, my namesake approached. He had deep eyes, dry skin with white spots, huge ears. He looked like the little skull of a monkey. He was skeletal, malnourished. One of his hands faced backwards by a deformed paralysis. He also had one foot facing backwards. The little cripple writhed around to walk, unbalanced and wobbly.
What a pity! What kind of suffering didn’t he go through! I cannot reconcile the act of creation having that as a result. Any god would be ashamed of such cruelty. To think about an indifferent chance, a dispassionate nature, an unpredictable destination… I still think it’s cruel.
The boy gradually approached my group. He was accepted, mingled in, but yet my friends moved quietly away. But I’m almost sure that no one made a mock of him.
One day, I don’t know why, I realized that we were playing together. Isolated from all, segregated, I don’t know if exiled under the pressure of others, for fear or by his own volition, the little crippled clung to the only lifeline he found: someone with a name almost identical to his. It was as if I were condemned to accept him because I had such a name.
I don’t know about our first games. What has marked me profoundly was that I got frightened when I found out that our friendship wasn’t similar to what we had with the others. I ordered and he obeyed. Humbly, he asked me what to do. I ordered with anger. He looked at me with eyes full of horror and I have the impression that I used to beat him. I’m not sure about that. He was a little slave, submissive, morbidly docile and desperately obedient. It bothered me a lot that he didn’t react, that he accepted my injuries and continued to sniff for my company. I redoubled my wickedness, tearing up his cards, destroying his toys.
He returned like an unwanted dog, looking at me with those eyes that I only recognized when I saw once more in the documents of the Nazi concentration camps. I exaggerate for sure. My regret filled with terror must, now, be adding Expressionists brushstrokes to this shredded memory.
I don’t know what bothered me most: the fact that he was a cripple, not giving me the opportunity to abandon him; or if by the growing regrets that my actions created later in me. I returned to him prepared to finish it all, I beat him, he would keep himself a little far from me, head down and then, full of pity I would decide to talk to him. However, I would not admit any mistake, I scolded, I swore, I felt as his owner.
I don’t recall how it all ended. I think the other boys returned and he left quietly, I don’t know. I don’t see him playing with me anymore, after that dark time. Maybe he joined an unhappier group, the pissers, who knows?, being received as an equal. For there, happiness had reached the minimum limit. At ground zero, it wouldn’t matter one crippled more or one crippled less.
The last memory of that unfortunate creature comes to me as if I were seeing a bloody bird on a mosaic full of soot.
On the eve of my departure, one day so far like any other day, we were gathered for the reading of the names of those that were going to “leave” the school. Geraldo was called. When the next name was heard, I didn’t get it right, I was sure they read Félix. They started pushing me out of the line, it’s not me, it’s him, he walked out awkwardly, they pulled him, pushed him, I returned to my seat, Geraldo took me out of the line and the crippled boy stopped, faltering, looking at me with his huge eyes deep inside those eye sockets.
I don’t recall the rest.
No… I don’t recall the rest…
I think the intense and complex feeling that followed, erased that boy from that scene. Much later, recalling the fact was when I suffered for him.
Poor boy, poor crippled boy, whom unfortunately, at least at that moment, poor the one who wasn’t me.

to be continued on next sunday.