Читать книгу Funhouse - Sergio Kokis - Страница 11

THE ATMOSPHERE AT HOME is thick and heavy, and a vague threat hangs in the air. Our fights have no effect on the household routine; they’re a part of it. My father works hard and is rarely at home. He leaves early in the morning and returns late at night. No one says a word all day long. Then we go to bed. They wake me up the next morning when it’s time to make the beds. Maria hands me a hunk of bread for breakfast, and boredom reigns until evening.

I have no idea what everyone else does, starting with my father. Whenever he goes out it’s to work, even if he’s dressed up and wearing his white hat. He gives us a kiss, paying no mind to my mother’s insults. Going off to visit your whore, are you? she shouts after him. My mother goes out just to go out, alone or with her friends, telling us to behave ourselves and not cause trouble. She applies her make-up enthusiastically and carefully fixes her hair, her dress and her overflowing breasts. Most of the time we’re sound asleep when they get back. If she doesn’t go out, her friends come over to try on the dresses she’s sewn for them, or her customers who end up going out with her like her friends. We’re on our best behaviour because the customers don’t like noise. Her friends are just as heavily made-up and perfumed as she is. Looking at them closely, I can make out the layer of powder that cracks where their skin is wrinkled, the peroxided hairs of their moustaches, the rivulets of eyebrow pencil mixed with sweat that turn the bags beneath their eyes darker still. Sometimes they’ll redo their make-up or show Lili how to look more womanly. The final result depends on who’s doing the job, but it always reminds me of circus clowns or the evil spirit masks at Carnival. Other times they take off their clothes to try on their new dresses, showing off the bruises that mottle their thighs, and comparing their underwear.

Worst of all are the ones who like to kiss me. They’re regular witches. They start by poking and prodding me with their curved fingernails, then they grab me. Trapped, I endure the horror of their faces crushed against mine, smearing me with lipstick. I feel the wetness of their tongues, and smell their pungent, acid breath. One of them has to be crazy: as soon as she steps through the door, she starts shouting and singing. Her gaping mouth reveals huge gold teeth. She keeps licking the paint off her lips and smearing it across her chin. My mother respects her and doesn’t stop her, even when she starts bleating out a mixture of radio advertising jingles and operatic arias. This crazy woman loves to terrify me by staring at me with her evil eyes, which she can move around at the same time as her tongue. Once she pulled out a wrinkled breast and chased me, saying she wanted to nurse me.

Others are thin-lipped and dry as dust, with the grim-faced look of women in a hurry. If they don’t like a dress, they throw it on the floor. They don’t want to see us because they don’t like kids, so we get locked in our room. Sometimes we get shoved into the kitchen when they come with their gentlemen friends, because they prefer to try on their dresses in the bedroom.

That’s the way my mother’s friends are. They sit down with my aunts for a cup of coffee and begin gossiping about men. I’ve never seen my father’s whore because she doesn’t come visiting. I can hardly imagine what she looks like, but she must be beautiful and not need make-up. One thing’s for sure — my mother and my aunts don’t like her.

My father’s world is different. His workshop is crammed with fascinating things. Everywhere there are wires, tools and electrical components, resistors made of mica that glitter like jewels. The place is a welter of boxes and lamps, disembowelled radios, appliances stacked one atop another. When he works, he talks even less as he concentrates on the job at hand, his wispy hair disheveled. He has an apprentice, a weird-looking kid with a face like a monkey who smiles all the time, and who doesn’t look too swift. I’ve visited the shop a few times when my mother and Lili wanted to go to the Praça Republica. We’ve been dropping in more frequently lately, ever since the women came upon a spirit temple in the same building as my father’s workshop. He started talking about the place, and described the noise the worshippers make at night, during their ceremonies. He laughed about it, because he doesn’t believe in macumba. But these neighbours don’t bother him. They’re peaceful people who don’t tolerate immoral behaviour. They even hired him to install the lights on their altar that’s all covered with pictures.

His story caught my mother’s fancy, and she concluded that Praça Republica would definitely be a good place to go walking. She’s right. The Praça is a large, tree-filled park just across from the main railway station. In the evening it’s full of couples kissing or mounting each other, snorting and groaning as if they were breathing their last. Lots of beggars, girls waiting for someone, people lying down and drinking, old ladies feeding the cats. There are cats everywhere, thin and wild and jumpy from dodging the kebob vendor. Everybody knows the meat is grilled cat. The vendor says so himself, and meows. But the customers lick their fingers all the same. I never eat any because cats carry disease, and besides, it’s a waste to eat in the street when you’ve already eaten at home. The skewers of meat sizzling on the grill smell so good that the women stop to stare hungrily, saying all the while how disgusting it is to eat those filthy animals. Other wandering vendors have set up shop around the park, and clouds of moths congregate around their acetylene lamps. Couples amble over for a bite, then make their way back to the bushes.

At first, we could play wherever we wanted to in the park while the women visited the spirit temple. But my brother didn’t want to be alone. He was afraid of the dead bodies. And of the cats, too, because cats eat dead people. Often there are dead bodies in the park, stretched out like sleeping beggars, beginning to stink as they wait for the van from the morgue. Or people hurt in fights. I even saw a woman with her skirt pulled up to her belly, with black blood oozing out from between her legs. Only her head was covered with newspapers. People stood around talking, and no one tried to stop us from looking. A dead body is a funny thing: it looks like someone who’s asleep but you can tell they’re dead. Sometimes the position of the body is unusual, the mouth is open in a curious way, the eyes are half-closed, the whites have a bluish tinge. The colour of their skin is different, too, grey and yellow in the light of the votive candles.

The dead bodies interest me more than cats or beggars. I have to stop and look at each one of them, even if I know I won’t be able to get them out of my mind, and that at night I’ll be afraid one of them will reach up and grab my feet. My brother doesn’t like going anywhere near them. It’s dangerous, he says, the flies will swarm all over us, we might as well have touched the body ourselves. When you think about it, it is a little disgusting. But I can’t resist.

That’s the main reason he doesn’t want to come here any more. The dead bodies. We used to hide deep in the bushes and watch the men mount the girls. They’d squirm and writhe and I’d be terrified the men were going to choke them, or that they’d catch us spying on them. My brother said that if the women left us alone there one more time, he’d tell my father everything he saw. He stopped coming with me, which was worse. Now I have to wait in the lobby of the spirit house.

The room is big, bigger than my father’s workshop, and they’ve rigged up a makeshift lobby there. The plank partitions reach only halfway to the ceiling and let all the sounds through. It’s scary when the people in the room fall silent, and the hoarse voice of the priest takes on a sinister tone as he appeases the spirit that’s going to appear. Even crouching under the bench and covering my ears and pinching my eyes shut won’t help — sleep won’t come. I can hear the ghost screaming, just like a real ghost. I sneak a look to make sure it doesn’t slip out of the room and catch me hiding there. Shadows of figures play across the walls. My mother says that the shadows of the dead hang over the living until their spirit has been avenged. Which makes me think of the dead bodies in the park across the street. They know I looked at them, and now they’re watching me, thinking thoughts of revenge. Suddenly the people start singing again, dancing and knocking over their chairs. As the women wail and keen, the priest calls on other spirits. This can go on for a long time, since every woman has paid for the ghost of her choice to appear, but sometimes other ghosts turn up without warning, out of the blue.

The spirits have funny voices, like the groans men make when they mount the girls in the park. Like a cough stuck in your throat. It can’t be easy to be a ghost. It must hurt plenty. You can tell by the way they yell and scream. My mother says it’s important to talk to them, they know all kinds of things we don’t, they can help us if we help them by praying and doing other things that spirits do. My father thinks that’s all stuff for foolish women and ignorant niggers. She doesn’t like it when he talks about the spirits like that. That’s why he’s in the shit he’s in and our life is so miserable, she tells him. I don’t understand. We’re not as poor as tramps, but there’s obviously something not right in our house.

Crouching under the bench, I figure I can do without help from the spirits. Better they keep their distance. I promise to pray for them if they’ll leave me alone. They’re evil and I know it, slippery, shadowy, scary figures trying to catch me unawares. But the women seem to love those seances. They stream out happy and excited, and itching for a pee.

I get so scared at the spirit house that, when it’s over, I’m worn out and I sleep soundly the whole night. But I know I’ll return because the place draws me. As soon as the women leave me alone, I crawl under the bench for another session.

Sometimes my father reassures me by imitating the noises spirits make. I shouldn’t believe my book with the pictures of hell, they’re only images made to scare people. Dark pictures full of mountains, caves, water and fire, full of ghosts and demons scrambling all over like ants. He knows how much I like that book, even if I shouldn’t on account of the people aren’t wearing any clothes. He hid it the day my brother tore out the ogre page. But sometimes he lets me look at it. The shadows in the pictures remind me of the ones on the wall in the spirit house. It’s dark, and they’re suffering. My mother thinks the pictures are photos of hell. She’s afraid of the book. Not my father. He likes looking at the drawings even if he doesn’t believe what’s written on the pages. He says it’s all the priests’ doing, to exploit the women and make them go to mass.

Father is always making fun of my mother, but he doesn’t try to stop her from doing the macumba stuff. She prepares the little bundles when he’s not there, because he doesn’t like to waste. She and the fat black lady wrap up food, a bottle of cachaça, cigars and little cakes she’s had blessed at another spirit house. Then she drops off her bundle at a street corner in town, adding to the pile that the poor leave for the spirits.

My mother says they’re offerings that ask for something specific, messages, people call them. If the spirits are pleased with the gift, they’ll make the wish come true. People shouldn’t expect anything from a bunch of spirits drunk on cachaça, Father says. Besides, the women never ask for anything good, all they want is to hurt one another. My mother gets angry because she knows my father fishes out the bottles of cachaça from the bundles, and cigars, too, especially if they’re the kind he likes to smoke. I’ve seen him do it on our Sunday walks and nothing bad happened to him. Only you shouldn’t touch the food or the little cakes because women poison them or put dirty stuff inside them. It’s true.

Once I heard my mother ask the black lady to find her a placenta to send a special message in the name of one of her girlfriends. I don’t exactly know what a placenta is, but from listening to them talk, I figured it was something disgusting, a kind of octopus or intestine. The black lady’s neighbour caught a placenta and got very sick; she was all skin and bones from loss of blood. They say that anyone who kicks a macumba bundle will die within the year. Father doesn’t agree with that either. They say that just to keep people from practising their penalty kicks with messages, he says. Our country suffers from soccer fever, and it’s hard to resist a well-placed bundle.

My parents disagree about almost everything. But people respect my father’s opinion, while my mother has to wait for the black ladies to know what to do. My father knows how to repair all kinds of things: radios, toasters, heated cushions for women with tummy-aches, lamps, floor polishers, even lighted halos for the statues of saints. He also knows how to give shots if you’re sick. The women in the building use his services. That way they don’t have to show their behinds to the drugstore clerk who’s a hapless half-wit.

Once he took me to see a Portuguese woman because her husband wasn’t home, and it wouldn’t be right for him to be going there by himself. The woman lived a little further down the street. Her apartment overlooked a damp inner courtyard filled with bird cages. The verdigris of the stucco blended with the moss crawling between the paving stones and flowerpots. Under the pale yellow light filtering down from the glass roof, the place looked like a forest. But it smelled of boiled vegetables and toilets. The Portuguese woman was pretty, but she was nervous because she didn’t want my father to see her behind. She wanted him to give her the shot through her fluffy panties. He lost his temper, and she quickly obeyed. With a stern look on his face, he sterilized the needle by heating it without so much as a glance at her housecoat, which was gaping wide open. As precise as a watch, he snapped open the ampoule, filled the syringe, squeezed a few drops into the air and soaked a cotton wad in ether. The woman leaned over the table like she was going to get spanked, nearly lying down. She pulled down her panties and exposed her enormous ass. It was whiter than her half-spread legs, separated by a black, velvety slit. He rubbed her buttocks looking for a solid spot, and pow! Right in the meat. She grunted like a ghost. Some more rubbing, then he gave her another smack on the other cheek. Instead of crying, the Portuguese woman broke into laughter, as if she were happy, turning in his direction with her black hair on her white belly. She slowly pulled up her panties with her eyes averted and thanked him. It hadn’t hurt a bit, his shots were just fine. I was surprised she didn’t cry, especially after that good whack, but that’s how women are. She even wanted more shots after that. Now he goes there by himself because he knows her. The woman doesn’t look sick at all, even if my mother says she’s syphilitic.

Tuberculosis is the worst. Three of my mother’s brothers died of tuberculosis. She keeps repeating it to show she’s an expert. Since I cough a lot, she thinks I’m weak in the lungs, too. The more I cough, the angrier she gets. At night my coughing is terrible. It keeps everyone from sleeping and reminds her that it’s contagious. Her brothers used to cough at night, too. When I don’t cough, I stay awake anyway because I feel like I’m suffocating, and that’s when I think about ghosts. Sometimes she shakes me awake to give me coffee with butter to calm my cough, or herbal tea especially for the lungs that she buys in the herb shops her girlfriends tell her about. She loves herbal brews of all kinds, for the liver, the bowels, the head, to ward off worms, bad blood or the influence of the spirits. Even if it tastes awful, there’s no use making a fuss because she’s armed with her whip like a real witch, to protect us against the curse of the netherworld.

Because of my tuberculosis, I get a lot of special things, double doses of macerated leaves, dried fish skins and other things so disgusting that sometimes Father won’t let her give them to me. Maybe all these remedies have given me a strong constitution, because aside from tuberculosis, I’m never sick. Meanwhile, my brother and the baby are always coming down with earaches and stomachaches and fevers.

Thanks to tuberculosis, I know the public health clinic inside out, with all its sick people. I don’t like to go there, but my mother makes me. My brothers rarely come along because their skin puffs up after the vaccination, and that shows they’re not tubercular. Not mine. No matter how I scratch, I don’t get infected, not even a hint of irritation. My blood doesn’t fight germs, everything gets into my body and I don’t react, my mother says. It’s not true, the doctors say, the vaccination has taken. But nothing will change her mind, and a month later she takes me for a new one. The doctors don’t want to give me another BCG. It’s not good for me, they tell her, a vaccination isn’t like a dose of vitamins, and they get angry when they see her coming.

I dread those visits to the clinic. What a nightmare! She wakes me up early in the morning, irritated because we’re going to be late. I’m not allowed to eat anything. Half asleep, I pull on my clothes and before I know it we’re on the streetcar heading for the harbour. There are all kinds of things to see on the trip, but I’m worried. Not because the vaccination hurts. I know it’s only superficial, it itches a little and the way the skin puffs up isn’t pretty to look at, but that’s all. What I don’t like is the clinic. Maybe one day they’ll agree with her, and I’ll have to stay there for the rest of my life, the way they kept her brothers in the sanitarium until they died. I’m not tubercular enough for the doctors, and that disappoints her. She starts calling them good-for-nothings who only look after the rich, and who don’t know what they’re doing. Just look at me: no doubt about it, I’m like her brothers. Suddenly people start staring. They’re afraid because I’m contagious.

A throng of wretched souls is lined up at the clinic door. Mostly women and children, because men don’t get sick much, except old men and syphilitics. Inside, the place is filthy and the corridors are dark. Through the glass doors, you can see into the waiting rooms filled with suffering and fatigue, crying children and emaciated, greenish babies that their mothers try to suckle at their flaccid breasts. At my leisure, I observe legs swollen fat from the heat and the long road, toes protruding from too-short sandals, sometimes nothing but stumps of limbs. Groups of bent-over, vitreous-eyed old women who seem to be weeping continuously as they hide their coughing behind crumpled bits of fabric. Everything takes on the piss-yellow tint of the tiled walls. The nurses bustle about their business, irritated by the people waiting for them. The smells of ether, iodine and bitter substances mingle with sweat, mould and methane from the surrounding factories. From time to time a doctor walks by nonchalantly, with a superior look, not glancing at a soul.

We have a long wait until they call out our number. My mother plops me down and goes off towards the other wards, trying to find the nurses she knows who are aware of my problem. Nurses she trusts because they agree with her on the subject of tuberculosis. Some of them might even give me a BCG in secret, or maybe some other lung remedy that even the doctors have never heard of. It’s the same routine every time, ending with interminable arguments between my mother and the doctors. Finally we go home without my BCG, but weighed down with advice about plenty of rest, good, fresh food, sunshine and vitamins. She sulks while I hide my sense of relief behind the downcast face of a sickly child to help her save face. I keep my voice down, too, so no one’11 notice, since she still thinks I’ll end up infecting everybody.

All that matters to me is getting back on the trolley and heading in the opposite direction. The cars are big and green and filled to overflowing. Knots of human beings hang on wherever they can find a fingerhold. The steps are steep and hard to climb, and you’ve got to be fast on your feet because the conductor doesn’t wait long at the stops. Strange hands pull me up on board. I wiggle through the crowd to find a spot between the seats where I can look out. Streetcars are fun, like big fat insects rolling along the rails, hanging from a wire. At night they shoot out blue and green sparks at the crossings, and white smoke like from cigarettes. Cool breezes blow in from every direction. The streets and storefronts parade by slowly enough for me to see everything, and taste everything. Here’s the Mango Canal again, with its stink of sulfur and iodine, its algae and slimy water dotted with brownish refuse and oil slicks. All along the main street are fabric stores with their wares displayed on the sidewalk like the decorations at a fair. There are kitchenware shops with their shiny new aluminum and copper pots. Factories, warehouses, garages, strong-smelling breweries. Along the narrow sidestreets I catch a glimpse of the customers waiting outside the brothels of the district they also call the Mango. You mustn’t say the word “Mango” at home because it’s not a nice one. It makes my aunts titter and glance at each other, whisper and even want to pee. They don’t like to think that they live so close to the Mango. If any of their girlfriends live there, they say they come from the Zone. That sounds better. Lili is crazy to see what it’s like. From a distance. I want to see it up close because everyone looks like they’re out strolling, like at some kind of fair, but nobody can tell me what they’re doing there. My mother’s always saying that such-and-such woman will end up in the Mango. In the trolley, the passengers’ interest picks up, and sometimes they joke and whistle as we trundle by. Then we reach Praça Republica, full of people and not a ghost in sight. Next is Praça Tiradentes, crammed with small shops and so different when the dancehall lights are off. By now, we’re almost home. I’m happy to have escaped tuberculosis for another few months.

Our Sundays are a lot better, as if the sun shone on them. The weather’s always nice on Sunday. You can tell from the moment you open your eyes. My brothers and I go out with our father, just the men of the family. He fixes us breakfast his own way, perfectly organized, methodically laying out the triangular slices of toast spread with jam. He smiles as he watches us eat, as if he were seeing us for the first time, and he tells us to help ourselves to more. The women are careful, they keep their distance. We put on our Sunday best. Father brings along his camera, and he has a cigar in his mouth. The streets are empty and cool; a few Portuguese are washing down their bars. We walk along slowly, in no hurry, just looking around. Papa examines everything: the macumba bundles, the sleeping beggars, the dead bodies along the way. The shop windows, the passing automobiles, the posters on the walls, the overflowing garbage cans, the pigeons and the sugarcane press at the juice stand — everything is a subject for the minutest observation. If he buys a newspaper, we take a seat in the shade at the Avenida bar, near the trolley stop. He orders a gin and tonic for himself and lemon soda for us, with well-salted potato chips. His movements are slow and studied, there’s an absent-minded look on his face, his glance hardly ruffles the surface of things. He likes to watch life, he says, and see time go by. Well ensconced in my seat, I learn how to look at things. I watch him carefully as he leafs through his newspaper, but I have no way of telling what he’s thinking. He’s not thinking about anything, he tells me when I ask.

Our walk leads us towards Praça Quinze and the Niteroi docks. The fish warehouse gives off a powerful scent, and the surface of the water is littered with flotsam rising and falling with the swell. Overlooking the square is the public market, with its blinding colours, sugary smells and squadrons of flies. It’s a noisy, busy place, with awnings under which the vendors hawk their wares in shrill voices. The fish stalls attract me the most, and I can spend all the time I want watching the fishmongers hacking up flesh and weighing out slimy octopuses, the heaps of sardines and the baskets full of crabs with their vicious mauve and blue claws crawling among the seaweed. Then come the mountains of coconuts with their fuzzy brown hair, whole troops of soft bananas alongside piles of pineapple. The women bustle through the stalls, prodding and squeezing the merchandise and bargaining with the Portuguese, while letting themselves be prodded and squeezed in turn by wandering hands. Like flies, a legion of poverty-stricken children hovers nearby, volunteering to carry bags for the ladies. Some of the smaller ones scoot about in improvised wagons pushed by older children, making no attempt to hide their infirmities or their deformed limbs, their harelip mouths grinning broadly, their raggedy clothes barely covering their bodies. Others dash past, teasing the mulatto women, pilfering as they go. Astonished, I watch these vagabond children and silently compare myself to them, my mind filled with conflicting feelings.

Father has nothing to buy. He has come to watch the show, to mingle with the crowd and dive into this festival of the senses. Then he turns off towards the seafront where the fishermen’s boats are tied up. The boiled crab and grilled sardine vendors are cooking their wares in fat kettles full of seawater or on makeshift barbecues. My father loves crabs. He always stops here and takes a seat on a wooden crate to make small talk and eat a few, teaching us to like them, too. We never eat them at home; my mother says crabs eat the bodies of dead people. This is our secret. Later, if Mother throws a tantrum because she came across an old crab claw in my collection, he smiles at me and winks.

On the way back, he always stops to buy us candies. I like candy, but with Father it’s a real passion. He loves sugary things of all kinds. Even when we have fruit salad, he always sprinkles it with plenty of sugar. As he reads his newspaper after dinner, he devours all the candies, and homemade cakes with their molasses coating. That’s when his smile is at its craftiest.

Some Sundays he takes us to the Botanical Gardens. It’s his favourite outing, and mine, too. You can lose yourself in the woods and the endless trails. Here, no running or getting too excited. Father insists we pay close attention to everything. He loves showing us all the exotic stuff, from the plants, flowers and insects to the strange fruits he lets us taste. He notices the smallest details, as if this were his garden. Before taking a picture, he’ll seek out the perfect spot, studying the composition of his photograph carefully while we stand motionless. This is the high point of the outing for him. I like the cactus and the carnivorous plants best. We can stay as long as it takes to observe them. He’s never in a hurry, and he studies them, too. Sometimes we discover strange insects, or seeds for my collection, or ants’ nests. He likes feeding the fish in the pond with dry bread he brings along.

The Sunday meal is the only one that brings the whole family together: roast chicken in a greasy sauce. Papa makes himself a drink with cachaça and fruit, then sips it slowly as he listens to opera. The sound isn’t very good. He has to put his ear up to the radio to hear, particularly if his favourites, Gigli and Chaliapin, are singing. It’s complete silence at the table until desert. At the house, he seems to lose his voice, and he doesn’t like it if anyone else talks. Talk spoils your digestion, he says.

Then comes the long, humdrum, silent evening. My father reads his newspaper. My mother painstakingly deciphers the recipe pages, the dress patterns, the horoscope and other items for women. I lie on the floor, or nestle in the cave of the big bed, looking at the illustrations in the paper. The evenings are grey and interminable, the silence so thick I can see it, even hear it as I watch them read. Sometimes I’m sure they’re going to scream — but they only yawn. I shut my eyes and picture the city again, the riot of colours, the trees and insects that must be sleeping now. I try not to think of the macumba bundles: beware the vengeance of the spirits.