Читать книгу The Marble Army - Gisele Firmino - Страница 7

TWO

WHEN HE ARRIVED in Porto Alegre that day, he didn’t hesitate on which streets to take, or which stop signs to ignore. The city was gradually becoming something familiar to him. He had been studying its paths with the similar intent he had devoted to the mine and its caves his whole life. My father created maps in his head. Maps of places, of people and the way they behaved. He was comforted by the illusion that he could tell how someone would react before that person even knew it. This would soon be the reason everybody around him became a disappointment.

He drove slowly past some of the taller buildings, watching them carefully as he waited for pedestrians to cross the street at a busy corner. People were everywhere, and they walked fanning themselves with their hands, a piece of paper, a notebook, anything. My father unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and loosened his tie just a little. He rolled down the car window and put his elbow out as he made his way to the back streets where he would reach a house he wanted to look at. Um formigueiro, was what he thought downtown Porto Alegre looked like. Given the vastness of the country, how could there be that many people in just one place?

When he was finally able to get through the crowds, he drove across Rua Duque de Caxias by the cathedral and went downhill until he turned right on Rua do Arvoredo, a small, quiet cobblestone street, strategically positioned between the city’s main church and its cemetery. One of the few homes with some land left downtown.

He had already seen this house’s interior with the broker the last time he’d been to the city. But he’d decided to go back and look at its exterior yet again; its windows, what you could see from the veranda, what the earth in the front yard felt like on the tip of your fingers, what kinds of birds stopped by, and what songs they sang. He parked his car across the street. On the sidewalk sat a pile of trash bags waiting for collection, and he wondered which days of the week he would hear the trash truck drive by, how long it took for the pack of dogs to bark at the workers. He slowly made his way across the cobblestones to the house’s front gate. The gate was closed but one could easily open the latch. He walked up the steps to the front porch, pushing his foot down with each step to test the wood’s condition. It seemed firm enough.

He thought about going around the house, checking its windows, finding out whatever flaws were exposed, but instead he took a seat on the top step and watched the road for a while. He wanted to learn about the type of people who would walk by, the noises his wife would hear, and the speed with which cars would drive through this street. He could hear the traffic coming from everywhere. Honks, cars coming to a full stop, buses and trucks picking up speed. It wasn’t loud, but it was a constant reminder that being there made you part of something much bigger than what we were used to.

He suddenly felt a light breeze kiss the back of his ear and swipe across his shoulders and he imagined it travelling all the way from Rio Guaíba to this house. To him. And that made him feel somewhat connected to this place. He was beginning to understand the way it existed with nature, the way it existed with this city, and the way it could exist once we were in it. He picked up an azedinha, and while munching on its stem, he looked back at the front window and pictured the living room he had seen not too long ago. He imagined my mother’s flower arrangements giving life to the place. He pictured himself sitting in that same living room, pulling up a chair to the window to listen to his radio while watching the life outside. He stared at that shut window for a while, then got up to make sure you could really lock it.

Finally, my father walked through the front yard, searching for anything that had survived the long months of neglect since the house had been vacant. There was nothing but weeds and one tangerine tree. He dug his fingers into the earth and scooped out a small amount which he brought up to his nose. It smelled of life. Of new life. He smiled and rubbed his hands together with that earth in between as it slowly fell back to the ground. It was as close to black as his hands would get from then on. This was his new coal. He suddenly saw his wife’s garden blooming there. He saw her sitting on the porch, knitting, while that same gentle breeze brushed her light brown hair. He saw Pablo and me playing soccer out on the street. My father had made his decision.

…

Pablo would disappear for whole days, meeting up with Rita or his friends after school. When he was around, he was so quiet that he might as well have not been there at all. Our mother didn’t mind his silence as long as he sat with us for supper.

One day, Mãe asked me to feed a chicken we kept separate from all the others to make a broth for Tia Mercedes, who had stopped coming to our house now that her baby was about to be born. Our mother had insisted Tia Mercedes should rest, and she listened. It was customary for neighbors to feed a new mother with the ‘cleanest’ bird in an effort to strengthen her body and her milk after going through labor.

It was late in the afternoon. The clouds could be so thick and low some days that one couldn’t even trace the sun behind them. It created a stillness in the air that almost felt as if we all lived inside an opaque bubble, where every sound and every smell lingered around us. I smelled tobacco and wondered if our father had taken up smoking again. He’d quit not long ago, after spending a whole month in bed with a cough that just wouldn’t let go of him.

I followed the smell quietly, knowing how loud things were on days like those. Pablo sat on the grass with his back against the rear wall of the tool shed. He watched the stillness in the mine. His eyes brooded across the meadow we used to play, over the mine and the horizon. I then saw a little spark and realized that a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. He took a drag, then held the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, the same way our father would do, while he contemplated the shapes he created with the smoke coming out of his mouth. I didn’t know that he smoked, but I wasn’t surprised. I thought about going up to him, about asking him what the hell he was doing, but since he didn’t notice me I figured it was best to just let him be.

Later that evening, I watched the rain run down the windowpane as I waited for our mother to call us at dinnertime. I wanted to cry, to seek some kind of release from all the fears I had, from this new life and this new family I sometimes felt stuck with. And just like that I became aware for the very first time of one’s loneliness. The entire concept of family suddenly seemed like nothing more than an illusion. In the end we were all alone. I craved my brother’s company. I needed him to explain things to me, all the things I could not know. And I resented his absence, his selfishness.

I put the downstairs mattress right by the window and lay down on it, staring at the water, gradually washing away the coal dust that couldn’t have been there for more than two days. I traced the fading gray streaks and listened to the sound of that tainted water hitting the earth. I imagined it gliding above the mud and slipping below our home, finding its own temporary home there, so that one dry windy day it could be swept up in between the wood planks of our floor for us to breathe it all over again. I folded my arms, resting my nape on top of my trembling hands, and crossed my legs as if I was a miner about to nap in a quiet cave. All the while pretending that life wasn’t scary, that I wasn’t afraid, because that was what I thought men did. That was what I thought that men should do.

…

We left Minas do Leão two days after Pablo’s graduation. The sun succumbed behind dense clouds, heavy with rain, threatening to release themselves on most of our furniture as we loaded Tio Joca’s truck with the few things our parents had decided on taking with us. We were mostly quiet. All we heard were the thumps and clacks and bangs of our belongings hitting the floor of Tio Joca’s dirty truck, while its radio hummed a highly inflected, almost theatrical speech, what I had begun to associate with political propaganda.

As we got through the morning, a few neighbors stopped by to say their farewells. They would wish us luck, and that God would guide us. Some would lament our departure, clasping their hands together, tilting their heads to the side or simply staring at the black dirt beneath us. But we knew my father had become a liability, and deep down they all must have felt great relief in seeing him go. Whenever someone came with a sad face, or a farewell gift, I went inside the house pretending to focus on the boxes, but eventually my name would be called, and I would have to show my face, my smiling and polite face, and say goodbye, and thank them for whatever it was that I had to thank them for.

As we were getting ready to leave, Pablo and I went around the house taking one last look at its empty rooms, silently saying our goodbyes. While I was still inside, Pablo had hid himself behind the shed once again. I found him kneeling down, and kissing the ground that stretched all the way to the mine. Pablo lit a cigarette and studied its quietness, while the cigarette burnt itself up to the filter. I walked up to him after I said goodbye to our chickens, that Tia Mercedes would keep, and Xuxa the stray dog I had adopted a couple months prior, when our parents didn’t care enough to say ‘no’. Xuxa didn’t like being petted all that much, but she enjoyed my company. She’d follow me around like a younger sister, watching my every move. I wondered what would happen to her. Xuxa was lucky that she got to stay, that she got to have such independent life.

When I went up to Pablo, it was as if my presence reminded him of how tough he had to be. He squinted as he looked at me, and took a long drag of his so far ignored cigarette.

“Big city, huh?” he offered.

“É.”

While Pablo took his time in the backyard, saying goodbye to the piece of land where we had always played, the shed, the meadow and its smells, our mother took some time inside the house. I could hear her clogs slowly thumping against the wood floor. I saw her through the kitchen window, staring at the vastness outside. Meanwhile, our father waited for us in the car.

We followed Tio Joca’s truck. Our father and Pablo took one last glimpse at the mine as we headed down the main road, without saying a word. Our mother gently caressed the rabbit foot she held in between her fingers with one hand, while bringing her golden São Jorge necklace pendant to her lips with her other. She kissed it gently. Her eyes shut.

The rain never came, much to our mother’s disappointment. She had spent the entire morning saying that a big heavy rain would be a blessing when anybody showed signs of concern for our furniture. She made herself believe the rain would clear everything out from bad spirits, negative energy, karma, whatever it was that shook people out of synch in their lives. And when we didn’t see a drop of water hit the windshield, I realized that my mother feared that the change of houses, of schools, of cities, was all for nothing. That regardless of where we were, the ghosts of who we used to be would be with us. Quiet. Dormant. Like uninvited guests.

Our father held firmly onto the steering wheel, looking straight ahead, without so much as glancing at the farms on the side of the road. He seemed relieved or hopeful to have succeeded in leaving that town and its mine behind. If anything, he looked determined. He watched our belongings sticking up from the truck, bouncing with the road’s unevenness, as though certain of a brighter beginning.

Pablo and my mother observed the side of the road, the scenery they knew so well, refusing to look ahead. They paid attention to every cow lying around, to every yucca plantation, to every strawberry farm. They watched some of the people who walked alongside of the road with a hint of jealousy in their eyes. Every once in a while my mother would remember to gently caress her São Jorge, hanging over her chest. Our father turned the dial on the stereo, while we all stared at his hand hoping that something would magically play itself. Any cheap melody to save us from ourselves. But nothing. None of the radio stations worked.

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, and the same thick clouds had followed us, covering the top of some of the city’s higher buildings. Pablo watched the commercial buildings go by, and streetlights change colors, and billboards announce movie premieres, cleaning products and beer.

The city seemed chaotic at first, but it wasn’t at all. Everything and everybody seemed to have a purpose, more so than where we lived. People were everywhere. There were more pedestrians in one block than habitants in the entire Minas do Leão. They spilled out from the sidewalks, taking over the edge of the roads. They walked in between the cars that waited on a red light. Our father didn’t hesitate despite the traffic. It was clear he knew the rules and knew where he was going. Our mother, next to him, looked as if she wasn’t there at all.

We pulled up to a one-story house, the second from the corner. It looked plain with its white stucco and dark brown windows. The front yard could have used some work, but it wasn’t bad. My mother watched it carefully, probably wondering which flowers she’d want blooming there in a few months. An iron fence circled the property. It was plain and not very tall, standing level to my twelve-year-old chest.

“This is it!” our father announced. He walked up the steps of the front porch and looked at our mother who still studied the garden.

“There’s a nice breeze here, Rose,” he said. He spread his arms to cover both sides of the porch. “I think you’ll enjoy sitting here to do your knitting.”

“I’m sure I will,” she said. “The house is lovely, dear.”

My father let a childish smile escape him, and we all went inside. In the living room sat a deep avocado-green rotary-dial phone. Pai pointed at it with the same excitement he’d shown before.

“Rose?” he called. “What do you think?”

It was our very first telephone. Whenever necessary, we’d use the mine’s. Our mother smiled at the gadget sitting by the fireplace mantel.

“That way you can stay in touch when Mercedes’ baby is born, or with whoever you want.”

“Wonderful, Antonio. Thank you,” she said while he gently kissed her forehead.

Pablo and I picked our rooms without much of a fuss. I kept the room between Pablo’s and my parents’. It was smaller but closer to the bathroom. I stood in the hallway that led to all of the bedrooms and looked for any signs of an incline. There was nothing. I wondered if given enough time, if this house would also become slanted. If it would ever feel as though it was ours. I remember thinking that a leveled house would probably be a good thing at that point. I was too old to play with marbles anyway.

…

Inside the mine is quiet. I walk by myself through the empty gallerias, and they look darker than I remember. Darker and vaster. There isn’t a worker in sight, but several abandoned wagons; some half-full, others empty. It’s all just sitting there, forgotten. I must have broken into it. I’m looking for something, or for someone. The mine’s paths are not as clear when nobody is working it. I must be looking for Pablo. I’m always looking for Pablo. I see one wall in the galleria to my right lighten up in a fading, almost imperceptible orange color. The light shifts around. I walk towards it and sense the smell of sulfur being overtaken by another smell. It’s tobacco. I must have found Pablo. Why does he insist on smoking? I keep my slow pace and study the light’s patterns. It moves up every once in a while, but it mostly illuminates the ground and lower sections of the walls.

My breathing weakens as I walk. Shorter breaths, as if my lungs are being consumed by poison. With his body leaning against the opposite side, I find Pablo staring at a wall, his right foot pressed against it as if he’s studying the horizon, as if he’s studying something beautiful. But there is no horizon. It’s just a black wall he’d seen many times. He looks as though he was expecting me, but he doesn’t notice that I’m standing right there.

I touch the rough surface with my right hand. My hand isn’t mine. It looks more like Pablo’s; wider and stronger.

“What are you doing here?” As the words come out of my mouth, I sense a kind of burnt wood taste rising in my throat, all the way to the insides of my cheeks and the tip of my tongue. I smell the cigarette smoke coming out of me. A dense cloud hangs in the air, and I can barely make up Pablo’s figure.

“What are you talking about?” My mouth makes up the words coming out of his mouth. He sounds like me. Or I sound like him.

“Why are you smoking?” That strange taste again. Another cloud forms in front of my face, my view of Pablo polluted.

“I’m not.” He’s smiling a smile I don’t recognize. Wicked almost.