Jose Peixoto - The Implacable Order of Things

WIFE. YOUR WHITE SKIN WAS A SUMMER I wished to live that was denied me. A path that didn’t deceive me. What deceived me was the light and the bleary eyes of relived mornings. What deceived me was a dream of being the son I used to be, running all day through open country and measuring the wheat fields by the breadth of my open arms; I was deceived by a dream of being the son I used to be in the person of your husband and in your eyes, in your son, our own. Now I know that old mornings can’t be relived. New days can’t be built on top of remembered mornings. Perhaps I invented you, starting from a star like one of these. I wanted to have a star and to give it July mornings. Those glorious July mornings in front of our house while my mother finished making lunch, those tasty lunches, and my father arriving home and chiding her, but not seriously, for the lunch not being ready, and I sitting in the dirt, perhaps digging a hole, perhaps playing with my cardboard horse. I had a cardboard horse. I never told you, I told you very little, but I had a cardboard horse. I played with it and it was beautiful. I liked it a lot. A lot. Lots and lots. When my father brought it home, inside genuine wrapping paper, I anxiously started undoing the twine. When I saw it, with its little raised ears and shiny eyes, I stood still in front of it. It was my world for a week, can you believe it? That simple cardboard horse was my world for a week. But on Saturday I left it outside. My father called me for something, my mother called me for something, and I forgot it. Can you believe it? I forgot my cardboard horse in the backyard. How was it possible? How could I not remember it? How do people forget, like that, the things they cherish? I forgot my cardboard horse in the backyard. How could I sleep? How could I pull the covers over my breathing and sleep? How could I just sleep? I forgot my cardboard horse in the backyard, can you believe it? And that night it rained. On Sunday morning I woke up with lightning flashing in my eyes and thunder roaring in my chest: the cardboard horse? My cardboard horse? I ran to the backyard, racing through the kitchen in my underwear, I ran barefoot and, amid the puddles of clean water and the wet earth and drops of water hanging from the leaves of trees, I found the cardboard horse in the backyard where I’d left it. It was an amorphous pile of pulp in which I could make out two sad, glittering eyes, its washed-out colors painting the ground and the stones. I knelt before it and cried. That morning I cried. It was my father who pulled me away from there. For you, for our son, for me, I wanted a cardboard horse, without any rain. I wanted an impossible fantasy, without the blame that’s inevitable. The blame that you and I didn’t have. The fact that we exist guaranteeing condemnation. Like a precipice at the end of a race: the runners having to cross the finish line and that finish line being on the edge of a cliff. Or like a knife hanging over us, a knife that will sink into our back at any moment, for no reason, a knife we sometimes look at and we know that it’s there ready to fall and that it will fall, at any moment, for no reason. A knife sunken in our back, to make us suffer or to make us die suffering. I didn’t choose this fate. I chose roads suspecting that they were all the same. And they were all the same. I chose no roads, including this one. I didn’t choose this night that makes me go back into town, that makes me go back to Judas’s general store in search of the devil’s false smile. This night that walks with my legs and that makes me, forces me, to go back to the giant. And you know very well that I don’t want to; you know, even as you know your own name and other obvious things, you know I don’t want and didn’t choose this. It’s true that I’m going. I walk and whoever sees me imagines it’s my will. The way I’m walking is precisely my way of walking. I didn’t choose this, don’t want this, but I’m not going unwillingly. I know it’s impossible not to go. It’s impossible not to go. Impossible not to. Impossible. The sheepdog follows me, and between the grinding of my own slow steps I can hear the dog’s quick, light paws. In the darkness the cicadas sketch the vastness of the plains with their song. I think: life is a punishment, a punishment with no sin or blame, a punishment without redemption; life is a punishment that nothing hinders and nothing authorizes. I imagine you watching this night from the balcony of my eyes and entering into this forest of a thousand uncounted stars, these stars that aren’t enough to light up the earth but that light up tiny circumferences of sky surrounding them. I imagine you listening to me as perhaps you lull the baby to sleep with the lullabies that your father put you to sleep with when you were little and that he whistled in the brickyard in the afternoon.

Son. I wish there were a breeze that would explain to me your smile and another breeze that would explain to you, without hurting you, my silence. I wish I could learn the grin on your lips, the look of your eyes, and remind you of them when you’re my age. I was your innocence once. And what it left me with was the huge innocence of believing. I believed I could give you a sky for you to play in and that life would be what we wanted. Just like that. Just by wanting, by trying hard, by working, we’d have what we longed for. I don’t mean grandiose things, fancy clothes or horse-drawn carriages, but food, tasty and wholesome food, and a new cardboard horse, should you happen to forget yours in the backyard on a rainy night. I believed that the joy of your eyes and smile could return to your mother’s and to my eyes, and remain intact in your own. I believed in so many things. I’m nearing the town, and I know what to expect: to die a little more. I’d rather you didn’t know, but unfortunately not even this can I hide from you, because one day, when they tell you the story of your life, they’ll tell you that on a starry night your father went into town and was beaten up; they’ll tell you that a few days earlier he’d already been beaten up in the fields and that he kept on his path, with a bandage around his chest, knowing what to expect. They won’t tell you that he thought about you while keeping on his path, and he told you secrets. They won’t tell you, because they can’t grasp this, that your father kept going for you, for you to have at least a sliver of what he dreamed of for you, for you to have some slight protection from what’s stronger than you, always much stronger. They’ll tell you that your father was beaten up, and beaten up again, and you’ll be ashamed of me. The years will gradually erase everything I thought was sure but never was, until all that’s left is what actually happened, and finally even that will be forgotten. The years will erase me, you’ll see. And this doesn’t make me sad, because I’ve always known that’s how it would be. But I have to tell you this: I never wanted to desert you. If I did so, it was against my will. Beautiful, tiny son, happy and free. I’ve just entered the town. The people look at me, uttering drawled good evenings. I know you’re too young to understand everything I want to tell you, but from all of this I’d like you to remember at least the word father, at least the word father. I’d like you to look me in the eye, even when I’m long gone and share with the earth its solitude; I’d like you to learn and discover what I thought for you on this night. I’m in the square. I’m in the general store. On one side of the counter: the devil’s smile. On the other side: the hunched giant, his head touching the ceiling.

YESTERDAY I HEARD A WAGON go by in the middle of the night, and I looked out my bedroom window. It was Paulo’s son, and he was hauling José. I put on boots and went outside, in my undershirt and long johns, to see in what state he’d been left this time. His eyes were wide open, as when I brought him from the fields in a wheelbarrow, and his body was beaten to a pulp. There was no blood on his face. I told Paulo’s son to keep going and sent my greetings to his father. I looked out my bedroom window, I saw the wagon reach José’s house and his wife open the door before anyone knocked. She didn’t seem shocked or upset. She didn’t speak. She grabbed under the arms, Paulo’s son grabbed the legs, and they carried José’s body into the house. The wagon headed back into town, its squeaky iron wheels occasionally making sparks against the stones and the mules walking faster than their age. José’s wife came to shut the door, and although my lights were out, she looked at me, as if she could see through the dark or had the eyes of a cat. She shut the door.