Paulo Scott - Nowhere People

And now, on the stage and in the mask, in the important role of male lead, Donato imagines being Henrique, and this doesn’t frighten him as much as it should.

At the Rolling Stones’ concert on Copacabana Beach, Luisa hugged Donato and said, her mouth right up to his ear: ‘Have you got any idea what it’ll be like in Recife?’ He turned his face towards her, taking advantage of the deafening noise, and, under the effects of the five cans of Itaipava beer he’d drunk, he laughed cockily, in the way he thinks he would have laughed at Rener — had Rener been there, obviously, and had he not persuaded her he was never again going to write letters to her or send messages and that he was going to try and forget her forever. His feet in the sand (and more distant than he has ever before felt from the French girl; he used to think he existed only for the French girl) he pulls Luisa towards him and, surrounded by a mass of one million three hundred thousand euphoric people, brings his mouth to hers and bites her lips, his hands slide round her waist and stop firmly on her ass, she puts her own hands on his and encourages him to squeeze her as hard as would be expected of a man who knew women. Donato could never have imagined what it would be like, this detachment from every other gaze. As soon as Keith Richards finished singing ‘This Place Is Empty’ Luisa invited him to leave and they walked to the apartment on Joaquim Nabuco where they were staying. He wanted to wait at least till ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, but the Stones and all the cultural memorabilia he had been able to accumulate in thirteen years can’t compare to what he’s feeling now; any information right now is useless. Luisa and her muscular body and her sharp sense of humour that many twenty-year-old women would envy, confidently leading him by the hand through the maze of crazy people that Avenida Atlântica has become, leave no room for doubt: she is the final thing of his stepfather’s that remains for him to take.

metals protecting metals

After Recife. (Recife as a place of transit.)

The first thing that upset Luisa was the trip to Goiânia in eight days’ time being brought forward. The news arrived mid-morning, carried by the electronic sound vibration in her phone reproducing, at thousandths of a second’s difference, the serious voice of the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Goiás; and what really knocks her off her feet once and for all is this call made to her landline, notifying her that the removal van which left Recife fourteen days ago with her things (and other people’s, too, in keeping with the common practice of transporting two or three removals at once to reduce the freight costs to the client) had overturned less than four hours ago in Santa Catarina, on one of the widened stretches of the 101, fifteen kilometres from the entrance to Tubarão, and had, unfortunately, caught fire and destroyed all the furniture, carpets, mirrors, dishes, porcelain, silverware, household appliances, ‘all of it, madam, regrettably, all of it … ’ says the employee of the Pernambuco company, impassive, distressing her so much that she loses her balance, stumbles, knocks over the luxury hundred-litre silver-model Samsonite she has just rolled in from the bedroom to the living room. The weight of the clothes set aside for several days and the nearly two dozen essential books she needed to take mean that the plastic structure crashes hard onto the laminated wooden floor with a noise that can, no doubt, be heard even outside the house, even considering that the house is on Avenida Cristovão Colombo, one of the busiest roads in Porto Alegre. At that moment, as is to be expected, Donato comes running down the stairs. Barely moving her lips Luisa says that she’s ok, starkly belied by the hate radiating from her eyes. He nods, folds his arms, waits. And what could have been a brief conversation lasted more than half an hour; she had to speak to the employee, the manager and the owner of the removal firm, and it only didn’t take even longer still because, in her argument with the owner of the firm, Luisa yells all the insults she possibly can and hangs up on him. ‘Bad news?’ Donato asks. ‘The removal van … There was nothing left. Can you believe it? … The dressing table that belonged to my grandmother … ’ she says sadly, ‘God, there’s no way that can be replaced.’ He is silent. A few minutes pass before she says, ‘And what about your things? They’ve gone, too.’ Without looking at her, he says: ‘We’ve lost so many things already, Luisa … ’ and looks over towards the kitchen, probably considering that this would be a good time to fetch a glass of water with sugar, a kindness that Luisa would refuse. ‘You did insure everything, didn’t you?’ She doesn’t answer. ‘We will be able to buy more furniture, won’t we?’ he asks. ‘It isn’t going to be that simple,’ she says. ‘Then you’re going to have to postpone your trip to Goiânia.’ He used just the argument she was most afraid of hearing. ‘Don’t even think about suggesting that again, understand? They want me there tomorrow afternoon, and tomorrow afternoon is when I’ll be there. Our money’s run out. There’s no way I can ask my parents for more.’ She is firm. ‘I can’t afford the luxury of chucking away another research grant.’ She hadn’t noticed how low the living room ceiling was. ‘And the insurance payment for the removals they didn’t deliver?’ he says. ‘I’ll sort it out from there,’ she replies, determined. ‘What about the idea of my going out there to visit you?’ And here, in this thought process of his, begins what she might call the second phase of the game of death. ‘That’s the millionth time you’ve asked me that today,’ and she walks away. ‘And it might not be the last.’ He follows her and touches her shoulder. She turns to face him. ‘You know that we’ve fallen into a hole, and I’m not referring to our little financial disaster. You know we need a break from each other.’ He sinks down, his hand slides down her arm, he sits on the floor; he remains silent (which is his answer). Luisa, Luisa , and a series of things run through her head that she will have to sort out with the greatest possible amount of emotional stress, negotiations that will lead to legal wrangling and years of waiting for a final result. Some of her emotions are rushing out of control, their boundaries are no longer clear, they are the normal behaviour of someone in a dangerous gear, because not long ago she was young and adaptable. Damn. She watches him, she doesn’t know what exactly the plan is, all she decided was that she needed to nudge her life forward, which is why she forced herself to move to Porto Alegre, to this house that isn’t even hers, the only possession remaining from Henrique’s inheritance (he was able, fortunately, to make a legal arrangement, keeping the house in Donato’s name and far from the reach of the creditors who seem to have increased following his death; she was his business partner, she is answerable for a part of the debts). The house is the monument to the ruins of a dream, with its two storeys and its southern precariousness. And Porto Alegre, even after everything she’s lived through in the city, is scarcely better than the end of the world, where, now that Donato is so surprisingly capable, she can abandon him and forget about him for a time. And then, by chance, he looks up and his gaze meets hers, making her stop thinking, making her go up to the bathroom where she forgot her washbag, fetch it, bring it down with the intention of going into the kitchen to get some filtered water, but the moment she walks through the living room, finding him there prostrate, she decides not to take the medication in secret; on the contrary, she will pour herself a glass, come back to the living room and crouch down beside him. And at that moment there they are, the two of them, side by side, in the living room of the house where their removals are no longer going to arrive, it is a sub-phase within the second phase of the game of death. Luisa puts the washbag and the full glass down on the floorboards, lies on her back. ‘Let’s make a deal,’ she says, her green eyes looking up at the ceiling, aggressive. ‘Let’s spend those forty days … ’ she’s cautious. ‘And forty nights,’ he interrupts her. ‘Right … ’ Interrupting the conflict that is already emerging. ‘Let’s spend that time a long way from each other and then we’ll do that therapy we agreed on … ’ The living room ceiling seems even lower now. ‘And then we’ll decide together.’ Don’t do it, Luisa. ‘Together … ’ he ventures. Don’t. ‘Of course. Together … ’ she interrupts him (her rejoinder) and, not getting up, she takes the washbag, unzips it, pulls out the strips of Valium and Rivotril, pops out two pills of the former and one of the latter, then she pauses (leaving him ample time to react), then puts the pills in her mouth, and after feeling around next to her as though she were blind, takes the cup, lifts her head, drinks. She raises her back off the floor, sits up. Do it Luisa. ‘All I know is I’m going to bed, my flight leaves at eight,’ she says, and settles her hands between her outstretched legs with the strips held between her fingertips. And before Luisa realises what’s happening, he takes the strips from her hands, puts down the Rivotril, pops out a pill from the strip of Valium, puts it in his mouth, swallows. ‘What are you doing, Donato?’ she asks, grabbing the packaging out of his hand. ‘Me? Nothing. It’s going to be no problem … No problem … Isn’t that right? All of it no problem at all and rent a DVD. A no-problem DVD, no problem at all in this no-problem life,’ he retorts. ‘We don’t have a DVD player.’ She won’t allow him to make a scene. ‘Oh, that’s right, Luisa … and we don’t have a table and we don’t have chairs … Or an oven, or a fridge, or beds … all we have are the mattresses … the mattresses you bought no problem with your no-problem money, the money that’s going to come from the research grant from your new university and, of course, my computer, oh, and my clothes, and my owl, and … let me see what else … yes, nothing.’ She knows this is not the moment to lose it. ‘I’ll transfer money for you to buy a fridge and a microwave … And you also have that new credit card … I’m sure this handsome boy won’t get himself into any trouble.’ Do it Luisa. ‘I’ll use it to book a few days in the most expensive hotel in Goiânia … ’ he gets up with a threat, ‘you just wait.’ Already on his way to the staircase, he starts singing: ‘ I’m not saying it was your fault … Although you could have done more … ’ ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she says. ‘ Oh you’re so naive, yet so … ’ ‘Come back here,’ Luisa shouts. ‘You’re such a smiling sweetheart.’ It’s no use. ‘You’re just pretending you can’t hear me.’ It’s really no use. ‘ That every time I look inside I know she knows I’m not fond of asking … True or false it may be … ’ and he stops on one of the last steps, turns to her and says: ‘I’m going to the club to swim.’ Luisa brings a hand up to her mouth. ‘You can’t. The Valium you just took … ’ And this is only the beginning. ‘ True or false it may be … ’ he goes on, ‘ she’s still out to get me … ’ She hears the bedroom door closing upstairs, tells herself that she has done what she was supposed to do. Soon she will write a note, a note containing a set of instructions, that she imagines leaving in the middle of the living room when she goes to get into the orange taxi, flaming orange typical of Porto Alegre, that will take her to Salgado Filho airport, where she will check in her huge suitcase and go up to the cafés (yes, that’s what she has planned) and ask for a green tea or a fennel tea and drink it with half of one of her tranquillisers, she’ll take a couple of deep breaths, look at the other people, oblivious at their tables, and only then will she feel relief.