| November 28th, 1969 |
(A Tribute to All Medical Personnel and Staff)
PART THREE
I am sitting in my grandmother’s backyard, thinking: about you, my inexistent mother, my grandfather, about myself. I hold within me the entire knowledge of my past and so much future, that I sit here trying to find a way to help this 9 year old understand that there is plenty of life ahead. I head inside and look at my grandmother, she is boiling milk; I feel the love inside overtaking me, I tiptoe out of there and I take off to school to see you...
On the way to the front door I see my grandfather, sitting there listening to his radio. Radio theater, about a woman who is killed and comes back from the grave to take someone's soul; it is scary. I watch my grandfather sitting here, quiet, and wonder what he’s thinking about. He is like you, Karla, always distant, alway thinking and eating chocolate, not my grandfather, you, my grandfather eats malagueta pepper. Hey, what do you know, a second memory.
I am standing now, marveled, to the left side of his table, my grandfather sits on the head of the table, the right side of it, and he has a plate in front of him now. He reaches inside…; I can't see where he’s taking them from but I can see them crystal clear; huge, red and scary. “Never put this in your mouth” my grandmother says. He takes his fork and squishes all the malagueta pepper on his plate while my grandmother gives him beans, black beans, which he mixes onto the pepper. He is eating and sweating. I am standing a foot away from him watching, “ Whatcha you doing there, Grandpa?”
Now I am standing in the sitting room. I think I know what my grandfather thinks about all the time, "Why in the world do I do that to myself? Now, if I can only figure it out what you, Karla, think, sitting there eating the “round chocolate” you brought from Niterói.
When death is around my mind scatters.
I walk around Rio de Janeiro with a girl I met at a party. I am about 19 years old. We have been talking from the moment we met, and I feel amazing. She likes Chico Buarque, she loves Dante, actually read Divine Comedy twice, and we have just spent the entire night talking about it. She plays the oboe. I sing her a song I wrote. It is dawn and we walk around the Rio de Janeiro's shoreline.
As a bit of cold air blows from the ocean, we talk about Quixote now and laugh at his insanities. Earlier in the evening I told her about my mother, how she gave birth to me, and how all the adults in her life put her in a mental institution and went on living their lives. Like the people in the pandemic, she died in that hospital many many many many years later. As if to torture me, once a year they would bring me to the mental hospital to visit her, and each year there was less and less of my mother and less and less of me inside. On the drive back, I listened quietly, as they patted themselves on the back for having taken the time to visit her.
Once, when I was around 20 years old, I had a nervous breakdown on the drive back, my father’s neighbors had taken me to see my mother. I was sweating, freezing, in the middle of summer, and all the windows were closed. Air conditioner blowing cold air. I couldn’t breathe. After they met with my father, it was decided that I was having an issue accepting the fact that I was going bald. My father sat me down for a lecture and I sat listening, aware of the futility of trying to explain anything to a man I didn’t know. Albert Camus was right. I tried to kill myself a couple months later; and when I survived, I walked away from God and his promises once an for all and I decided to live; and leave Brazil. I arrived in New York City when I was 21 years old. I could not have gotten out of Brazil soon enough.
I carry one memory of my mother, two actually, and I have tried shooting one of them with three actresses now, unsuccessfully. The director of photography couldn’t get the light right, I couldn't find a beat, and the AD kept nagging me trying to determine how important that scene was to my narrative.
When my mother was admitted, my dad went around looking for a place to put his twin sons. After we lived with a couple of people, before the age of six months, my grandmother put her foot down and we lived with her until I was 11 years old. My father lived an hour away and we saw him once a year, on Christmas. A few Christmases, he never came, but he sent a nice letter; he had beautiful penmanship. He was proud of it.
I look at the girl now. She has black hair, the most beautiful green eyes and she does not look away when I look at her. I kissed her hours ago so now there is only talking on my mind. I am listening to her explaining Camus to me. She can’t believe I haven’t read Camus and she is laughing hard now because I mistook Albert Camus for my favorite Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões. “Not Camões, you dope. Camus" and she laughs some more.
The moment the words come out of her mouth I remember my grandmother who beat me without ever putting her love aside. She said that in a warm tone of complicity, empathy and familiarity. This girl is pulling on all the right strings. The sun is about to rise and we sit to watch; this is going to be spectacular. We kiss again and watch the sunrise. We sit for the longest time, watching the sun rise in one of the most beautiful views anywhere in the world, Rio de Janeiro, a cidade maravilhosa. She asks me if I can take her home and I, “well, what do you think I said?”
We walk to the boat she must take to make it home. We sit in a place I don't quite remember, waiting for the boat. She lives on an island. I like her, it is obvious she likes me and we make the cross together to her town. We barely speak. We arrive on the other side and wait for everyone else to exit; and as we walk towards the ramp I pull her aside, and tell her goodbye.
I am as surprised about that as she is. She sells me on the walk to her house, a little coffee place where we can sit and talk some more; the conversation turns into an interrogation on whether or not she did something wrong. She is concerned she might have said something that offended me and I tell her that I really enjoyed meeting her but I must go.
I don’t have rhyme or reason but every single part of my being wants to turn around and go back to Rio de Janeiro. I see her standing there on dry land, in the city of Niterói, and I float towards Rio de Janeiro feeling empty inside. Many years later, during the Pandemic of 2020, I came to realize that, apparently, unbeknownst to me, I had made myself a promise never to step foot in Niterói and I was not about to break that promise for someone I just met. This time, I float around unable to understand what just happened. I like her, we spent the night talking. I feel disconnected from myself, as if a link inside of me is missing, a link that would explain why I walked away from a beautiful, nice, well-read girl that I obviously like. I come out empty. I feel empty. I never saw that girl again.
I am standing next to my grandfather, he’s listening to his radio. He doesn’t see me, I am a bystander in his time zone. I think about hugging him for the first time ever, but I don’t. Can't say why.
The links that don’t bind.
the Grand Canyons in our mind, that
swallow traumas whole; deep inside.
I arrive in school, except that I am not in school, I'm behind Marcelo’s house being led to a table where you sit, Karla, with Christiane and some out of focus people. We look at each other. You are playing a word game where you have to name different things with a particular letter, I listen to you…
Cor: preto. Animal: pato.
The links that bind
to erroneous sights
to places where we are
empty inside, but refuse to die.
Albert is right, “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that…”
I sit in our classroom, Tia Zelia is here as always, but this time I can’t stay. I can’t have you see me. There is something horrifying coming and you must pay attention in class. “I’ll be back.”
-----------------End of PART THREE ---------------