Herve Le Tellier - Electrico W

The shower stopped, the sun dried the sidewalks, and I walked to the Brasileira. I wanted to see Manuela. In the previous night’s unfathomable nightmare she was the one I wanted. And perhaps that was all I needed to understand from that dream. That one fantasy was coming to an end, given that I was ready — at worst — to move on to another. If she hadn’t been there I would have kept on walking to the theater and demanded to see her. But she was at the Brasileira, sitting at a table with a woman with very short blond hair, an elegant, athletic woman, a little older than she was. Manuela was not wearing her provocative corset, just a dress that could have been demure if she hadn’t shortened it by pulling it up over a belt.

I waved to her and she introduced us: Anna, Vincent. The woman looked up at me and, with her cool reception, implied I was interrupting. I waited at another table and ordered a coffee. The blond woman looked annoyed, she squeezed Manuela’s hand and stood up, and Manuela sat still for a moment before giving me a little wave. I went to join her.

“I’m sorry, Vincent. Anna’s not very sociable. How’s the dragon Irene doing?”

“She’s — she’s fine.”

Manuela laughed. “I meant you and her.”

“I’m — I’m getting better.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. I didn’t see much of her, but I can tell you what does it for her, she’s desperate to be found attractive and terrified of being abandoned. She must have given you quite a runaround.”

“Because that was what I wanted.”

“Of course. When someone looks like a whipped dog, you want to hurt them. It’s the rule.”

“Do I look like a whipped dog?”

“With her you do. You look like you’ve lost before you’ve even tried. No one wants to be with a permanent loser.”

I looked at the dolphin on her wrist and felt like touching her hand. I took her fingers for a moment but she withdrew them immediately.

“Vincent … please. Don’t always put yourself in situations where you can be humiliated. Do you really misread things that badly?”

“I–I’m really sorry.”

“And stop apologizing the whole time. There’s nothing tragic about all this. You don’t know anything about me, I’ll tell you a bit. As you’re looking at the dolphin, I’ll tell you about that. You have to go back seventeen years, during the Angolan war. Portugal sent tens of thousands of soldiers out there, more even, and in among all those young conscripts was Francisco, my father’s best friend’s son. But Francisco had hardly landed before he was killed by a grenade, deep in the jungle, in an ambush near Luanda. His body was repatriated, and our whole family went to his funeral. It was snowing that day, that’s rare here but it was January. We all filed past the hole in the ground, to throw in a red carnation. The engraving on the marble gravestone read “1948–1968,” and when I saw those two dates, I started shaking and crying. I didn’t know Francisco, I’d never even met him, but I just couldn’t stop. A girl came over to me and took my hand, she cried with me. She was a cousin of Francisco’s, Delfina, she was just sixteen, almost the same age as me, she didn’t know anything about me, but thought I must be Francisco’s girlfriend. She didn’t let go of my hand for the whole ceremony. When we had to head back to Lisbon we quickly exchanged addresses and phone numbers and promised to meet up. We both already knew that we were in love. Yes, don’t look at me like that, Vincent, the great love of my teenage years was called Delfina. She was from a military family and went to school at the Instituto de Odivelas, a very strict, very Catholic boarding school with the motto Thought, Courage and Devotion. We had to hide. In 1962 when they wanted to put one of the leaders of the Communist Party in prison, they used the excuse that he was homosexual. The Odivelas district was a really long way from where I lived, but every evening I used to take the Eléctrico M, and then a bus, and I would meet Delfina in the Instituto’s old chapel, which had one door that didn’t lock properly. Sometimes we could even stay there all night, hiding in the refectory. One night, another girl gave Delfina away, and we were caught. The insults were appalling, there were physical blows, I was hounded out, the Mother Superior dragged Delfina up to her room by her hair, Delfina screaming, calling me to help her. I don’t know what happened after that but that night Delfina fell from the third floor. ‘She walked on the roof and slipped’ was the story given by the management, who never mentioned the earlier scene to her family. A tragic accident. But it wasn’t true. Delfina had also slit her wrists with a razor, I discovered that later. I can tell you what happened. They beat her, insulted her, belittled her, and humiliated her to the point where she slit her wrists and threw herself out of the window. Or maybe they even pushed her out to disguise her suicide. I went to see her father to tell him everything, and he was horrible too. His daughter couldn’t have been a lesbian, it was unthinkable, in fact he couldn’t even say the word. I wasn’t allowed to go to Delfina’s funeral. The following day, I went to my love’s grave with my sister who knew everything and hadn’t left my side since Delfina died because she was so frightened I would kill myself too. There were flowers everywhere, and even a bouquet of white roses from the Instituto de Odivelas, I spat on it and threw it as far as I could, and I screamed like an animal in that cemetery. Then I sang a song by Antonio Botto, you might know it, Delfina really liked his work. I can still remember it:

Envolve-me amorosamente

Na cadeia de teus braços

Como naquela tardinha …

Não tardes, amor ausente;

Tem pena da minha mágoa ,

Vida minha!

Wrap me lovingly

In the chain of your arms

As you did that evening …

Don’t be long, my absent love,

Take pity on my pain

Life of mine!

“I went and had the dolphin tattoo done that same evening. The guy refused at first, he didn’t do tattoos on women, I was too young, the skin on wrists is too thin, but I told him the whole story, in tears, and he eventually agreed. He didn’t want me to pay.”

I looked in silence at the dolphin as Manuela stroked it with her finger.

“I–I would never have known. You’re so …”

“Don’t, please. Without meaning to you’re going to say something stupid and offensive.”

I nodded. She was right. She smiled.

“You certainly don’t have much luck with women. You’re thinking: first a bitch, then a dike …”

“I–I never said that, Manuela.”

“No, I’m saying it. Anyway, Delfina was the only girl I’ve ever loved, the only girl I’ve kissed and touched even. It was because it was her. Things aren’t that straightforward, you see. I’ll tell you an important truth which you might find useful: having luck with women doesn’t exist. What does exist is knowing when a woman is giving you your chance, and seizing it. But you never see anything, Vincent. You should never have dared take my hand before I gave you a sign that meant yes, you can at least try.”

I looked away.

“And there you go again, with your hangdog expression. You’re—”

“Hopeless, is that what you were going to say?”

“I’m not that pessimistic anymore. But you’re too on edge to spot the tiny signs. You project your longing for love onto some poor girl, and the effect this has is inevitably the exact opposite of what you’re hoping. Because it’s monstrous and clingy, that longing imposed on someone when they haven’t done anything to provoke it. They want only one thing and that’s to get away. And believe me, I know a lot about women.”