João Noll - Quiet Creature on the Corner

“The samba-in-Berlin went down harsh.”

Well, I won’t be seeing Berlin this time, I reflected as Kurt passed some bills to the cabbie. But I need to man up, was what I whispered into my shirt collar, turning to see Rio for the last time, an arm’s length away from the open airport door.

I took the napkin from that airport lunch counter and started to take down the poem, tapping on the bar with my fingers to the rhythm of the last lines I’d put on paper: A shot in the yard out front / A hardened fingernail scraping the tepid earth — and I went on like that for six or seven more lines.

On the plane, the only open seats were separate from each other. I sat down and took a deep breath. Poor Kurt, I thought as the plane took off, poor everyone who had such a heavy burden. Kurt slept the whole way, seated three rows in front of me.

About halfway through the flight, with my tray all messy and up against my chest, a glass of wine washing down my dessert, the flight attendant passed and smiled at me, and since we were going through some turbulence I gave her a bit of a yellow smile. When she passed by again maybe I would tell her I wrote poems — the start of a conversation that might interest her in me, since I ought to have kept in mind that I was no longer a young boy, but a man in the fullness of my functions in need of a woman to keep me company — Kurt would need to give his blessing to this union, preferably with a blonde girl like Gerda seemed she’d once been, he’d be so satisfied he’d give me half his fortune, opening the way not only to Germany but to who knows what other quadrants, and once I’d divorced the dumb blonde, a different woman in every hotel room.

While we were waiting for our bags near the escalator in the Porto Alegre airport, I looked out the window onto the runway and saw our plane disgorge Gerda’s casket from the lower compartment of the plane, near the tail — the chestnut coffin was lowered down with ropes, as if it were being birthed from the entrails of some gigantic animal, the coffin, and inside it Gerda, whom I’d savagely bitten the night before — I don’t know if the person who washed and dressed her noticed the marks my teeth left on I don’t remember what part of her body, all I know is that she moaned, cried, seconds later shouted, My God, looked me in the eye for the first time, deeply, then died.

Across the runway, two men were pushing a sort of litter onto which they’d place the coffin.

It was a sunny day, just one or two clouds.

A man in a white jumpsuit was coming down the runway, obviously some sort of airport official, he looked at me and seemed to understand, because he closed his eyes when he saw me, then threw his glance to the side, as though he’d already seen enough — I could still see that his expression had turned a bit nauseated, and when he looked in my direction again his gaze looked numbed, refusing to see.

The late afternoon shadows had already insinuated themselves among the branches of the Protestant cemetery, the discreet headstones engraved almost exclusively with German names. Kurt and I were walking down a path and our steps made a cadence on the flagstones. Ahead of us, a gravedigger was pushing a little cart that carried Gerda’s casket. The wheels could’ve used an oiling, they made an infernal noise. From time to time the vision of an iron cross, stark, made my head pulse. Gerda’s grave just wouldn’t arrive. The gravedigger was really putting an effort into pushing the little cart, steeply bent over, his ass sticking out at us, pants straining at the seam between his enormous buttocks. I noticed it was getting darker. And the gravedigger started down another path.

At that time of day it was hard to discern the bottom of the grave. The gravedigger asked Kurt if he’d like to open the casket one last time. Kurt shook his head no, and nearby a bell began to toll.

I threw a shovelful of earth into the hole.

We caught a taxi right there on what they called the melancholy hill, the city lights shining below, passing down the avenue with grave after grave on both sides of the road, I remembered the times I’d spend whole days up there, back when I lived in the Glória squat. All that seemed to have ended a long time ago, so long, but at the same time the memory galled me, made me want to vomit, stick my finger down my throat and expel all that detritus from my memory.

Our arrival at the manor.

The power was out. We lit lanterns.

I found a horrible bug underneath the stove. It could have been a spider but it looked more like a hangman. I was on my knees and I smashed it with the base of my lantern. The moon was full. The low sky, clotted with stars, was coming in the kitchen window. December, but the night couldn’t be called warm — because it was windy. I was crawling along the kitchen tiles with lantern in hand, looking for something that Kurt couldn’t find. I was crawling across the kitchen without much hope for my search: he didn’t have the faintest idea of where I could find it. It was a December night, bright, so bright that I almost didn’t need a lantern.

I knocked three times on the half-open door to Kurt’s room. I still had the lantern in my hand. In Kurt’s room there was another lantern. The lantern in Kurt’s room was on top of the nightstand. Kurt thanked me, said he’d already found what he was looking for. Do you need anything else? I asked. He said no, he didn’t need anything, he was going to sleep. If you need anything just give a shout, I said to the outline of his face.

The night was also entering through my bedroom window. Kurt didn’t just listen to Bach in the car, he liked to hear Bach all day long, preferably while closed up in his room. That night he couldn’t listen to Bach because the power was out. The truck with no muffler passing by on the road belonged to a guy I knew, the son of the owner of a small farm on the other side of the tall hill. One time he rolled the truck nearby and messed up his leg. Of all the stars that one is the brightest, my eyes tear up when I face it, like now. Kurt’s already snoring. The power’s back on.

I pick up the radio, pull the antenna way up. I turn out the light, lie down with the radio on my chest. I hear noises, interferences, spin the dial this way and that, voices from all over the world: a show in Portuguese coming from Moscow, Asian languages, French, English, German. One among the voices catches my attention, it speaks in Spanish and says: if you can hear me don’t change the station, stay where you are, keep everything intact and I’ll arrive in seconds to remake you, you will become another. Then comes a sort of ethereal music, the half-open door creaks like someone is pushing it, trying to get in, and the hand that’s now touching my arm suppresses me, and I know that I should annul myself in this way, without sorrow, so that another can come and take my place, I no longer exist here, I lack.

I awoke in the morning clutching the radio to my chest, low music badly tuned in. In the mirror I saw that during the night a zit had formed above my eyebrow. Big, very red and inflamed. The first thought I had was if Kurt had brought Gerda’s things from Rio — what I wanted to know: if I could find her makeup things, foundation, that’s what women call the flesh-toned paste I needed to see if I could find to blot out my zit.

Kurt was listening to Bach in his room. From six a.m. onward, he began to move implacably through his morning routine. So Kurt was in his room listening to Bach. I knocked three times on the closed door. He opened. I saw there was a woman inside with her back to the door. Leaning against the wall, looking down, like someone who felt sad, or maybe embarrassed — but from the thick black hair that fell down her shoulders and the way her left foot was resting on her right knee I had no doubts — is that Amália? I asked, and only later realized I’d pried into something before confirming what it was. Kurt said nothing — she turned and I saw her, fatter, her hips much wider — who knows where this penniless woman could have gone to return so corpulent, having left here a petite girl, almost unsatisfying, now returning so full of flesh.