Jose Peixoto - The Implacable Order of Things

ITHINK: PERHAPS SUFFERING is tossed by handfuls over the multitudes, with most of it falling on some people and little or none of it on others. Not pain, not my legs made stiff from black bruises, not my smashed ribs sticking together amid squished blood, not my head splitting like lightning into tentacles, not the skin of my thwarted passions opening up gashes as if from the blows of an absolute impotence, but suffering without respite, as if all my bones were exposed and piercing through my muscles and skin. My body hurts, and I suffer without feeling it. I know that my wife is pacing around the house. Our little boy has fallen asleep, she could rest if she wanted, but she’s anxious. She paces around the house, and I don’t know what she’s thinking. I don’t know her. I see her always as if for the very first time. Without hearing her, without feeling her, watching her movements that belong to no story I can grasp. I’ve often contemplated her small, girlish forehead and her deep gaze, but I’ve never been able to pass through her walls, which have no doors or windows into her essence, I could never walk through her rooms and light them up with a lamp, however dimly, however faintly. I’m as ignorant about her as I was on the day I decided that I wanted to know her.

AT THE TIME OF THE OLIVE HARVEST, when José’s wife began working at the rich people’s house, she had the body of a skinny and tired child. She walked from one corner of the house to another. With drooping shoulders that prolonged her neck, she was a thin blob to whom orders were given. Neither José, nor the other housekeepers, nor the cook, nor old Gabriel, nor anyone said anything to her or heard her utter a word, an exclamation, a sigh, a whisper, a breath. But whenever any of them got into one of the wagons that take field workers to and from the town, whenever they went to the square and into Judas’s general store, people asked them about her and said abortion, they all said: she had an abortion. And neither José, nor the other housekeepers, nor the cook, nor old Gabriel, nor anyone else replied.

Two summers later the cook, sick of preparing steaks and stewed lamb and steaks and stewed lamb, sick of seeing the steaks and stewed lamb get cold on the table without Doctor Mateus to pull back his heavy chair made of dark wood and leather and without Doctor Mateus to sit down and fill his glass of wine and sniff it and hold it up against the light and only then perhaps drink it, sick of seeing steaks and stewed lamb get cold on the table without the doctor’s wife to place a napkin on her lap with the embroidered coat of arms facing upward and without the doctor’s wife to sit down or even to arrive from the empty bedroom where she no longer slept, sick of seeing the platters of steaks and stewed lamb get tossed into the food for the dogs, decided to quit the farmstead and go live in a whitewashed house in town. And in the moment the cook took her leave, waving a farewell handkerchief to the farmstead and dragging picnic baskets tied with string and stuffed with flannel underpants to the wagon, in the moment the mules got tired of waiting for the cook as she wept over fifty years of service in that house, in that moment the housekeepers suddenly realized that they too were sick of making and unmaking and making and unmaking the beds already made up with the clean and ironed sheets of their employers, sick of dusting the furniture in the living room without the doctor’s wife reclining in the chaise longue and scolding them for not doing anything the way she, sitting in the chaise longue, ordered, sick of dusting the furniture in the hallway without Doctor Mateus sneaking up from behind and grabbing their breasts and breathing down their necks as their hearts jumped in fright. Suddenly sick of it all, the housekeepers rolled up in a handkerchief what they had in the drawer of their nightstand, because everything they owned fit into the drawer of their nightstand and into a handkerchief, and seized the opportunity to leave with the cook, who was grateful for their company. And neither the cook nor the housekeepers noticed José’s wife, camouflaged by a clump of mallows. The girl from the brickyard, who from that morning on took charge of the rich people’s house.

She cleaned the rugs when they were dirty, she dusted when there was dust, she didn’t make the beds since they were always made, she waxed the stairs if they needed waxing, she didn’t prepare steaks and stewed lamb, since housekeepers were only allowed to eat bread soup with an occasional egg added. She kept the house without expecting the owners to arrive at any moment, for there was no reason to think they would arrive at any moment. She spent her afternoons sitting next to the voice shut up inside a trunk, listening. Now and then she’d go into town on foot with the shopping baskets and she’d hear abortion, she’d hear: she had an abortion. And on her way home, before leaving the town, she’d cross paths with the devil, who looked at her and smiled, and smiled.

José would accompany his father, or perhaps by this time it was his father who accompanied him. José was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, and his father even older than his seventy years. José’s mother, bedridden, had died of a disease that made her wilt like a flower that gets yellower and yellower until she was just yellow and dead, a disease that had begun in her breasts and took over her whole body. The whole body of José’s mother was that disease. José’s mother died of a disease that was her whole body and she died on a Saturday afternoon, in the middle of a sweltering summer. José’s father became even older, as if with the passing of that afternoon and that moment in which his wife died, that precise moment when her heart stopped on a beat and left her chest waiting in an unremitting silence for the next, unarriving beat, that exact moment when she failed to breathe in again and her head fell in obedience to her muscles’ last will, as if with the passing of that afternoon his age had doubled, making him almost as old as Gabriel, and even deader. José couldn’t suddenly age like that. On that same afternoon he had to take care of the sheep and take care of the funeral. The next day, after the funeral, he again had to take care of the sheep. And again the next day. And the next day, the next day, the next day. José’s father didn’t return to the farmstead. He stopped talking and only ate spoon-fed soup. José’s sister, married to the blacksmith, lived in town, and she was the one who took their father in. Just look how pathetic, she said to the neighbor women. Their father would sit all day long on a stool in the backyard, in front of the chicken coop, looking at nothing, like a blind man. One day a week the barber would come by full of chitchat, good morning, wrap a towel around his neck and shave his beard, talking all the while, because of this and because of that, blah-blah-blah, believe it or not; every three weeks or so he would take a pair of scissors from his smock and cut José’s father’s remaining hair almost down to his scalp, talking all the while, because of this and because of that, blah-blah-blah, believe it or not, although José’s father was completely indifferent. His other most frequent visitor was José, who would sit next to his father, the two of them in silence. And José realized that, although they had spent day after day together driving the herd and seemed, at night, to have spoken a great deal, they’d never really said much to each other. And they sat there side by side, facing the chicken coop, as if the afternoon were what they wanted to say.

Without his father to help and with Doctor Mateus abroad, José found himself in charge of the properties and business concerns that the doctor maintained there; he was like a steward, though no one called him that. But these new responsibilities didn’t change his routine. He continued, as always, to tend the sheep, which was his main task. Sometimes he went into town to visit his father. Or to visit the cook. Or to stop briefly at Judas’s general store for a glass of red wine. It was during one of those brief visits that the devil appeared, smiling and greeting everyone there. José drank the rest of the wine in his glass and turned to leave, when the tempter smiled at him and asked about the girl who was to become his wife, saying so how is the girl from the brickyard doing? José said just fine, but he didn’t really know how she was doing, he just wanted to answer without answering and to go away. But all the men in the store were looking at them and listening. The devil, with a seemingly nervous smile still stuck on his face, said I hear that she hasn’t forgotten what she did and that she’d like to do it again as soon as the right man comes along. José walked past the men and their gazes and said, at the door to the general store, that’s her business, not mine, and left.