Jose Peixoto - The Implacable Order of Things

JOSÉ APPROACHED THE GNARLED HOLM OAK, the only one on the hilltop. It was a holm oak whose trunk zigzagged this way and that. José patiently made a slipknot in the rope, then tied the rope firmly around a strong bough. He climbed to one of the steps in the trunk. He placed the noose around his neck and tightened it. He didn’t look at the world for one last time. He jumped forward. His neck made a cracking sound of bones separating. He swung for a few moments until coming to a standstill, as still as the un-stirring breeze. A sparrow that flitted about looked at him and saw his eyes emptied of hope, saw his hands empty, and swooped up into the sky. José became smaller, smaller, and when the sparrow looked down from on high, José was just the gnarled bough of an oak tree against a bloodred horizon.

THE EARTH WAS ITS OWN SILENCE on fire. The sun was a blazing heat lighting up the flame-colored air: the aura of a fire that was the aura of the earth, that was the light and the sun. The small stones and weightless pebbles dotting the skin of the plain were hot embers in a closed fist. José and his sheep, the sheepdog, the big old cork tree, and the smaller corks were figures etched into an exhausted asphyxia, shapes frozen in the blaze of an instant that was a very long time and no more than an instant. The south wind blew through a wheat field, and its blowing shriveled the stalks of grain, suddenly old and dry, because that slow breeze was a sweltering hell that filled the atmosphere, forcing all breathing things to breathe it, since there was nothing around them but that heavy, scorching breeze. And the south wind was the horizon advancing, slow and inevitable. Inevitable. It blew past the last stalk at the end of the field, drying it out even more, then past a clump of thistles that withered beneath and inside its heat. José could be seen in the distance, standing in the shade of the big old cork tree, and the sheep could be seen, gathered into little bunches of many little bodies in the shade. The south wind advanced within the light and over the earth. José and the sheep were slowly drawing closer together. Closer and closer. And the south wind blew past José and past the sheep and past the big old cork tree and the smaller corks. In the south wind every gaze persisted, skin scorched, blood seething.

I KNOW THIS STILLNESS. I know this afternoon. The sheep lying, as if dead, under the cork trees. The sheepdog lying at my feet. The thin grass bending at the slightest breeze. The sky meeting the earth, which mirrors the sky’s languor, which mirrors the earth’s languor. I know this afternoon, for I’ve lived it many times, for I’ve listened many times to this stillness and this calm certainty. I think: perhaps there’s a light inside men, perhaps a clarity, perhaps men are not made of darkness, perhaps certainties are a breeze inside men, and perhaps men are the certainties they possess.

A burning where my heart is tells me that he’s coming. He’s walking this way. I feel in my body his body walking, his footsteps neither fast nor slow. I feel in my body his simple ideas and sincere intentions. I feel in my face his manly and boyish expression, the expression of a boy who had to hurry into manhood. He’s coming. And when the afternoon relents and the heat becomes milder, he’ll arrive. Coming from the direction of the farmstead, he’ll arrive and, seeing me, he’ll start running, the way a fearful child runs to his mother’s arms. And as if we were embracing, he’ll look at me with his forever sincere eyes. He’ll believe in me. And he’ll go away with the peacefulness of simple souls. While I, as the dying afternoon slips into an almost nocturnal transparency, will be the torment I’m used to, the chaos of my sorrows and hopes. And here, under this sky touching me with its fire, I already know that’s how it will be. A burning where my heart is tells me so.

JOSÉ WAS THE SON OF JOSÉ. He had his father’s name and knew the few things he’d been told about him in answer to the few questions he’d asked. He knew he was just like him, forever since he was a little boy old Gabriel had told him you look and act just like your father. No one ever had the courage to tell José how his father had died, and he’d learned from his mother’s doleful mourning that it was something he shouldn’t talk about. José hadn’t heard much about his father, but he’d figured out everything. On afternoons like that one, in which he waited for Salomão while tending the sheep, José had realized he was the son of a great and sad love. He’d discerned his father’s face when he saw his own face reflected in the pool on the farmstead. You look and act just like your father, old Gabriel said when he played in the dirt in the yard, when he arrived from the fields in the afternoon, when he visited the blind prostitute for the first time. And José knew it was true, for he’d discerned a force within his force, identical gestures within each of his gestures.

And José, the son of José, waited for Salomão. The big old cork tree tried to wrap him up with its tiny leaves, as it had tried to wrap his father thirty years earlier; the earth all around him burned, as it had burned around his father thirty years earlier; the hazy, sad sheep looked at him from out of the corner of their eyes, as they’d looked at his father thirty years earlier, but José didn’t know or even think about this. Holding the staff with his left hand, he repeated to himself what he knew: he’s coming. The sheepdog, the big old cork tree, and the sheep were so utterly familiar with that afternoon that they remembered it even before it happened. They knew at precisely what moment Salomão would appear on the horizon. Stretched out as if sleeping, the very old sheepdog remembered the night when, thirty years earlier, she’d seen her owner hanging from the gnarled holm oak on Gallows Tree Hill; and she remembered going back to the town and rounding up all the dogs on the square; she remembered how they waited patiently, how they waited, waited, and how, when the massive figure of the giant emerged from Judas’s general store, they followed him down the dark streets, scarcely lit by a starry night. Under the darkness of her eyelids she remembered that night from thirty years ago, she remembered how her body and the bodies of all the other dogs pounced on the giant and knocked him down, she remembered the deafening sound of all the dogs growling, she remembered the sensation of her teeth ripping into an ear, her teeth ripping out an eye, her teeth opening a hole in his chest, tearing open a corner of his mouth. She remembered the giant’s body in pieces on the ground, the warm taste of his blood; she remembered the solitary road to the Mount of Olives, and the night; she remembered lying down and waiting at the door of José’s house; she remembered hearing the little boy cry now and then. The very old sheepdog waited for Salomão, as she had waited for the giant thirty years earlier.

The sheepdog raised her head, which had been resting against her front paws. The heat in the air slowly mingled with the earth’s coolness. The sun no longer yellowed the sky. The light was now ethereal. A worldwide silence loomed on the horizon. The moment had arrived. José shifted his sharp gaze, fixing it in the direction of the farmstead.

MY FOOTSTEPS DREW NEAR JUDAS’S GENERAL STORE, and the hubbub of the men playing cards and drinking and talking formed a ball of voices that slowly rolled across the square, as if pushed by the slow breeze. I went in and said good evening before reaching the counter. Yes, I said good evening. The men from this corner and that corner, all with the same face, answered good evening, Salomão. I distinctly remember that sputter of good evenings, for it was the first time I’d noticed it. It sometimes happens that I suddenly notice something that was always there, and the time of my noticing becomes for me the first time, which I always remember later, should I think about that thing. And so it was with that disparate outburst of voices, some soft and others loud, some lively and others bored, some quick and some sluggish. I went up to the counter. A glass of red wine. Next to me four men stood around an enamel plate with a thin strip of fried bacon; they were drinking wine, and each time one of them wielded the dull blade of the jackknife to cut a paper-thin sliver of bacon, he did it with great ceremony as the others looked on, feasting their eyes. Judas’s son, sleeves rolled up, went from group to group, clearing away empty glasses and participating in all the conversations. I caught his attention. A glass of red wine. I set my empty glass on the counter. And in that isolated moment there was a fearful silence. The men who were talking hushed. The men picking at food stepped back. Behind me stood the devil. I felt his warmth and smile against my back. Two glasses of red wine, he said, smiling. The glasses, full to the brim, appeared before us. He raised his glass and drank it down, looking and smiling at me with his eyes. My glass stood there untouched, gleaming. The men looked at me. The devil looked at me, looked at me, smiling, and said I haven’t seen your wife around, where is she? I moved three steps down the counter. He moved with me. The silence was the suffocation one must feel before dying. Before dying from choking, and you want to breathe, to grab air with your arms, to stuff globs of air into your mouth, to stick your fingers down your throat, and it’s blocked, you’re choking to death. You know, said the tempter while smiling, your cousin José told me he knows better than you where she is, at this very moment and always. I took two steps backward. The men looked at me with speechless astonishment. The devil looked at me and smiled, he smiled. With a broad grin, as big as the whole store, he said your cousin José told me he has more control over her than you do. Is that true, Salomão? A dim cloud of luminous smoke cast a pall on the light, and a whirlwind of mirrors rose up and showed me to everyone everywhere, when all I wanted to do was hide. Is it true, Salomão? The men looked at me. The devil looked at me. My legs were a pile of loose sand, holding up a brick house being thrashed by high winds. Is it true, Salomão? I ran out fleeing across the square. The devil’s smile at the door of the general store. The night darker than before. The streets empty. I entered my house, entered the bedroom, took off my clothes, and lay down next to my wife, trembling.