Categoria: English

23. Chump

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz

Wasn’t there a king of the beggars at the Courtyard of Miracles?
At the Devil’s dorm, the cramped and smelly extension of the kingdom of agony, the King of Pissers was elected.
He was not named King, the promotion was not mentioned. He was not crowned either with gold or thorns. He received neither the jeweled scepter nor a cane. Instead of purple the overall from where, night and day, slipped little angels of stench.
He was elected king by chance, in silence, by tradition. It was suddenly found out that he pissed more than anyone, that he had been spanked more than anyone, that he smelled worse than anyone. From that tragic fact, Chump ended up by being the target of all of the focused and neurotic attention of the supervisors. The correction paddle looked for him eagerly, if ten boys were punished, and he was among the ten, why wouldn’t he?, he received double punishment.
I remember someone being punched in front of the graduates. A cold silence gripped the breath of all. This person was, thrown into the air and caught by the point of a cleat. Did I imagine that? Was it true that people were beaten like that? It’s all mixed up in my mind. I’m almost sure that what I remember it’s true. And I’m almost convinced that it was him, Chump, that fell on his stomach onto the point of the cleat, or his mouth or his testicles or his back, does it make any difference?
I remember him in the center of the pissers pyramid and, to the agony of my memory I witnessed the collapse of the temple. A murmur, a kind of uncontrolled howl, one leg braking the symmetry, someone rolling over the others, arms and legs tangled, an octopus dying or mating desperately, and Sinuca’s belt flying fast and hissing, an iron tongue snake biting like crazy. They hunkered in despair, they rebuild the pyramid but the buckle menaced the eyes and they tumbled again, tangled.
I wonder if all of this is true.
My eyes are watery, my heart threatens to explode and I want to stop to remember.
But in the depths of my soul, a vulture laughs and whispers with evil: I was there. And a heron in agony dies, sending in its death the most painful groan: nobody has the right to forget such things!
I think I see Sinuca suddenly stop and throw to the door a bright look filled with blood; the look of the Archangel on the day of the expulsion from Paradise. And we, the children, who were there for some sadistic curiosity, fleeing in a fretful run towards the beds, where for a long time, the heart triggered by the life and death race, pounded in the chests, warmed up or distracted from the cold.
What kind of colorful dream would be possible after that?
I have already spoken about the hand that took fresh paint from the wall. Chump was mentally retarded and he didn’t notice that the wall had been repainted. Or was it the fear that always accompany him?, causing him to stumble everywhere, choke on any word or urinating all over, even when awake. That was more than fear, has the appropriate word already been created? I also wonder if he was indeed mentally retarded. His behavior could have been the result of the constant surveillance and constant beatings. He had an enormous head and I think that he was retarded, because the skull extended at the back like the one of the Egyptian princesses, daughters of Akhenaten. I think this physical deformity was what transformed him in Jesus Christ, against his will. He was an ugly mulatto. There were many. He pissed his bed. There were so many! But that gigantic, heavy and monstrous head…
They shouldn’t stand the presence of that strange creature. Once, he spent a long time talking to my small group and I have the vivid memory that, deep in his eyes, there was a great gentleness and his voice was tender. But that big monstrous head, stinking, was a piece of moving piss, sun-dried piss, accumulated for several days, an overall bumpy and rotten.
How would pisser be, in Latin?
Jesus Chump, Rex of Pissers!
If the antique god appeared in front of me, I would ask him to give me back my past. And, in front of Chump, I would throw at his face the sacred sign:
    ECCE HOMO!

I haven’t finished yet!
Who gave the world the right to spank him? Who gave the supervisors the right to kill him? The mother of this unhappy creature, what did she do to the world?, to have her son kicked and bloodied until his last breath.
Which god would have the shamelessness of asking for forgiveness from this woman?

I don’t know if it was because of the milk candy, the collective pandemonium of the bowels and the flushing of poop, I don’t know if it was because of that he deserved the horrible beating. I don’t know if it was for his hand dirty with paint or exactly when the incident occurred. He was ferociously beaten. In the mist of this terrible landscape of my memory, I hear groans of horse, wolf, cat, rat until a final bloody squeaking. Then he disappeared. My little friends whispered softly in my ears that Chump is very ill at the priest’s house, the vulture would have finally had his feast, the king-vulture would spread his wings and stroll happy.
Though I don’t remember the funeral, I keep a fade picture within me. A beheaded heron, a vulture with a torn bill, legs and wings quartered. There’s a light and cheap coffin. There are silent steps over the dusty floor. There are trembling hands of the older students that bear the light weight of that fatal warning. There’s a downcast priest, walking with eyes full of kindness.
There’s also for sure, the sound of a bell, trying to say that birth-rate and funeral have the same music and one only resonance.
This happened in 1950. One thousand nine hundred years of an era that is said to be civilized, a few thousand years of written history. I don’t know how many millennia since the emergence of homo sapiens.
    Homo sapiens.
Homo dementissimus.

to be continued on next sunday.

22. The pissers

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz

Or maybe they didn’t ridicule because that was such a common show?
Every morning, an older student was assigned to sniff at the pissers. He would approach the row of the younger ones, put the back of his hands on top of their thighs and put aside the poor one that was wet. If he had any doubts, he would touch the place with his nose and smell it. Gradually, a small group of pissers was formed. Paddle of correction. Depending on Antonio’s or Sinuca’s mood, they used the smooth one, otherwise the one full of holes. One day, two mother smacks, the wooden spoon down slowly and pious, another day, using the violence of an executioner. If the victim bent his arm for fear, the fingers would snap. And for each fearful withdrawal, a more furious and insensitive smack. The hands swelled, turned blue.
The one who was considered to be a chronic pisser, having been plundered several times with the wet suit, went to sleep in the pisser’s dorm. That place was the reconstruction of a piece of hell, with chosen but not different torments.
All mattresses were no longer mattresses. In the middle with almost no filling, there was a huge hole in the rotten cloth that showed moldy and stinky smelling straw. Manger for the Son of Man. Thin mangers having underneath the bed wire frame, the poor children tried to sleep on the edge of the mattresses but ended up inside that hole.
What about the smell? When we passed by the door of their dorm, before entering ours, we trembled. I didn’t know how to overcome it. That’s why I don’t believe in hell. All the imaginable torments, since Sisyphus punishment to the circles of Dante and the four walls with no way out of Sartre, it would hurt less on the second day, therefore it would soon be part of the routine. And do they wish that this routine extend to eternity? Unless, suffering after today’s sorrow would go out of my memory. Then of course, on the next day, it would turn into a horrible novelty. The idea that everything would be repeated for eternity would be the only torment for these victims. I give this idea with gratuity to the zealous theologians.
Let’s move from the theologian’s hell and return to the hell of the King Vulture, the pope of the scavengers. I saw once the torment and from time to time everyone commented on it. However, needless to say how often this kept repeating.
Before sleeping, the boys would be grounded. Imagination didn’t go too far. It was needless. The most famous pisser had to stand up. The others had to stand upside down around him, resting the weight of their bodies on the one in the center, with their feet leaning on him. Then, a disjointed cone was formed. They needed to keep themselves in balance for a given time.
The variant was to reverse everything. The middle one had to be upside down and all the others standing up, supporting each other.
Sleep made them stagger and, if one shook the whole pyramid would crumble like a thunder. The Babel Tower would spread on the ground and they would never reach the kingdom of heaven. And yet all spoke the same language muted by terror.
Due to the mattress, the stench and the pyramid, no one desired to be demoted as a pisser. The morning routine was an ordeal.
Although it was not frequent, I pissed on my bed until the age of ten years old. By distraction or not, going to bed with a full bladder and waking up during the night with the need to run to the bathroom, that weird, tiny, damp and dark, but adequate bathroom. We released the urine which spread hot under the body. To wake up soon after and find out that it was a dream and the bathroom was just a bitter lie.
Two things allowed me to escape the dorm of horrors. Firstly, my bladder exploded as soon as I felt asleep long before dawn. I was already or almost dried when morning came. Secondly, it was due to that general protection that kept me inside a sturdy wall. I recall that sometimes my clothes were a bit damp and the sniffer would stop quickly and then continue his inspection. Moisés, again! Maybe it was, maybe I’m confused. Every time he went straight, without including me in the group headed to the correction paddle, each time, I felt a cool relief on my whole body.
My friends adopted a strange method. I tried it once but woke up frightened at night and went to the bathroom without having to carry out the horrible experience (maybe it was at the beginning because I didn’t get lost in the darkness).
They tied the foreskin of their penises with a string, putting a lot of pressure. They stayed that way all night. In case they pissed the string prevented the urine to escape and they woke up in pain. Then, they had time to run to the bathroom without wetting either mattress or overalls.
Once, Zé da Silva woke up late, opened his fly and showed it. His little penis was swollen, a huge ball at the edge and the dark skin taunt and shiny like a balloon to be blown. He went to the bathroom and returned completely dried, smiling with victory.

to be continued on next sunday.

21. Darkness and diarrhea

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz

If that God hadn’t been born, nasty stuff would not have happened.
I woke up during the night with a terrible tummy ache. The dream turned into a nightmare. I knew that if I got up I would not find my bed again. I don’t know why I found myself again in the little ones dorm. I tried badly to cope with the cramps, hold the waters that wanted to flow with a pressure of many vapors, there was no other way. I got up and began to bump my head on the walls and beds as a bull with gouged eyes. In desperation, the urge to go diminished and someone took me back to bed. I didn’t understand how they could move themselves in the darkness. I also didn’t understand that there was darkness only in front of my eyes.
Sleep came and left, there was confusion, rumors and muffled footsteps. The cramps disappeared taking me in it. I woke up surrounded by light and voices. There was something wrong with me. I didn’t fully understand what was happening. After smelling the horrible strong stench I understood. I sat on the bed, curled up and shivering and while I sat, I felt something sticky and soft spread all under me. They all talked very loud, it looked like a riot.
Moisés, the nice black man mentioned in one of the previous chapters was bickering with one of the younger ones.
You’ll pay you chicken shit. You’ll have to wash the overall and be punished with the correction paddle. You’re all a bunch of shitters. I had to wake up at dawn because of the stench!
I curled more and more. I wanted to lie down, I wished that the day would turn upside down and night would come so yesterday would come back and I wouldn’t have eaten that sweet, the cause of the stupid revolution inside my unaccustomed body. That sweet was a big punishment, imposed by force to a believer who knew nothing about Christmas or deities.
You shit ones! It’s pure shit!
The tiny one: I didn’t shit the bed…
And you’re also a liar! Turn your ass up! Turn you ass up!”
The poor one twisted and desperately hid himself. The privileged ones who managed to pass the awful ordeal of eating a sweet without shitting all over, the privileged ones approached slowly in a closed circle.
Look at the stink! And there you are saying that you didn’t shit in your pants! What about this smell, what about it!
I began to get scared. I knew that something was about to happen. But the afterwards didn’t interest me. The now was what interested me. The new test summarized in confessing the crime to the victim sniffers. I watched the anger and the taunting of all, around the agonizing unfortunate, crooked, eyes bulging with fear. I needed courage, if I at least spoke to someone, if I told someone that also smelt that stinky smell, everything would be easier. Smell of the sweet of the birth of the god.
The tiny boy kept denying but everybody kept insisting. There was a group further away, all of them naked holding their overalls and the legs filled of dripped filthy and already dried shit. I think the showers were all below.
With a whisper and tearful breath I called for Moisés. He approached my bed and became aware. I think he quickly understood but didn’t say a word.
Throughout my life, I don’t have another memory of being so humble, so afraid to talk. I was profoundly marked by that memory, a clear vulture, no haze, a wounded vulture that flew over a swamp, my voice full of awe and fear:
I also pooped in bed.
I don’t know if he heard me so low I had spoken. The fact is that seconds later, the circle was already surrounding me. The black boy was tall, I suppose maybe thirteen years old, all the others between seven and eight years old. They waited for Moisés reaction to strike the unmerciful mockery to the new shitter. And he was quick:
That’s the way I like! You shit in your pants and warns that you shit, tells that you shit. Why to lie?, damn it! Like this one here, he shitted all over and keeps denying.
He turned to the unfortunate boy and everyone followed him, leaving me to my amazement.
I don’t recall the results of the unpleasant adventure. Many felt the same tummy ache and by being six-seven-eight years old they couldn’t prevent the sweet from the Lord from rotting and dripping like liquid during the rough sleep. The dorm smelled horrible. Someone ordered that everybody went downstairs but the shitters should stay. The next scene that comes into my mind is that we had to go slowly into the showers, naked and holding our overalls, passing along the line of all the students. We should head to the showers and, after that, wash the overalls. I thought of hiding myself behind someone, we all wanted to hide behind one another. However, the line of students was unrelenting, dripping as drop by drop, painfully slowly, it was never over…
I have the impression that they didn’t laugh at us. It’s my present guess. Maybe based on some behavior during a similar situation or perhaps through a haze and odd reminiscence. They should realize that they escaped by sheer chance. The night blindness, the cramps, the control of the sphincters, what did they know about them? No. It was enough that they remembered the night to find out that they had been awarded. There wasn’t one gut that didn’t exorcize that sacred sweet that disturbed the monotony and peace of the usual rice and beans. That delicious Satan’s consecrated bread.
If they didn’t feel the cramps, even so, I believe that they didn’t have the courage to ridicule. We were all dominated by the same fear, us being the target of a possible mochery, and them, the eventual mockers. We all knew that there, with our two supervisors, nobody had a life of their own.

to be continued on next sunday.