João Noll - Quiet Creature on the Corner

I awoke on the hard floor, ran a hand through my sweat, looked at the closed door, suddenly remembered — but there was no sign of the presence that had come and gone.

I got up, turned on the lights, and sat on the bed. I looked at my legs, which appeared to be reasonably muscular. I was a man, not the spring chicken that had come here with Kurt. I was a man and I was not in love. Naíra’s scent was still clinging to my body, I was indecisive about which tack to take while the old German still breathed, that protector of a whole man like me, with well-formed muscles — how I acquired them I honestly didn’t know — I knew now that I’d been a man a long time, without adequate conditions for taking a position as long as Kurt existed, but I’d be able to start doing things, making certain preparations, though I still couldn’t say what they’d be — I stared at the muscles in my leg, I was a man and I was not in love.

I wore Naíra’s scent, and the best I could do was go back to sleep, this time on the soft mattress, hugging one of the pillows, the kind of sleep that maybe wouldn’t come from just lying in bed — maybe I’d rather just roll around and excite myself with Naíra’s fading scent, maybe just keep repeating that I was a man, and that the next day I’d see to things.

I’d barely hit the mattress when I heard a sob, which seemed at first like it was coming from inside the pillow — a rough crying, not that of a woman — when I opened the door to Kurt’s room, he was in bed all curled up, crying: I need to man up, I need to man up, was what my head then began to hammer, but I needed to think of something else, urgently — get close to Kurt’s body, not rest until I’d made a clear gesture to this man whom I’d known to be so proud and who was now crying this rough sob.

He had turned into a weak subject, old from head to toe, and now that the moment of my entrance had arrived, I didn’t know whether to divert or interrupt what was waiting there for me to find out.

I sat on the bed. I thought about what I should do, if anything, or if all this wasn’t much more than a comedy I’d better avoid. The sobbing continued, without pause, and I said to myself: maybe I’ll lie down, stay lying here beside him and wait, because he’ll get tired of crying, oh yes, crying is tiresome. Soon after, he slowly calmed: I was lying beside him and he was calming down — I wonder if I’m hearing right, as Kurt began to breathe deeply like a cat demonstrating satisfaction with something nearby — Kurt purring at my side, until he ended up exposing something unappealing to me, that old purrer, lying at my side uncurling, turning to me, looking at me with his eyes open only to the inside, as though he didn’t think there was anything to look at in my place, as though my body were nothing more than a continuation of the bed.

Suddenly Kurt whispered, Gerda. I pulled the cord on the lamp — I didn’t want to look at him, I wanted only to calm a vague sense of urgency inside, and tried to reflect: may he at least still have the time necessary for me to prepare a satisfactory life.

Because I deserved at least that, a satisfactory life — in old age I’d sit and watch the misty fields of my patch of earth, throwing feed to the birds nearby, a blanket across my knees — flannel like the one I was now holding in Kurt’s bed.

Kurt rolled onto my arm, and I thought about how useless I was with my arm already falling asleep beneath Kurt’s body, and he rolled up onto my chest, and his weight at first almost suffocated me, but I breathed deeply, settled myself, opened my arms, I opened my clenched hands too, and then I saw Kurt’s face from very, very close, almost up against mine, and Kurt’s face had begun to cry again, this time silently, a whorl of wrinkles, a mute but enormous wail, huge, and I wouldn’t know how, even with him so old and weak, there was anything I could do to evaporate that elephantine wailing that flattened me against the mattress — where were my reasonable muscles? — I thought I’d been a man for a while, but now I’d fallen into the net, through a trapdoor, this weight didn’t even allow me the possibility of saying anything but a faint it’s okay, it’s okay, and Kurt began heaving, bringing up from within him something I couldn’t contain, his samba-in-Berlin breath right in my mouth, and I kept repeating it’s okay, it’s okay, I couldn’t even see how atrociously ridiculous it was or anything: only a daze that left me repeating it’s okay, it’s okay.

Yes, at that moment I could say I was sad. Atop my body, Kurt was now just dead weight, pure survival, with his head buried in my shoulder, folded into the space where it met my neck. I was sad for having been a man who couldn’t oppose this advance, a full-grown man, with normal muscles, unable to react to that old mass, who couldn’t guarantee him anything but a roof, pocket money, tedious company, who guaranteed him nothing more than that.

I took pains to disentangle myself from the defenseless weight, the old man’s life was regressing to the wet farts he was letting out, continuously, miasmas of samba-in-Berlin — I slowly opened the blinds, noticed day was about to break through, not a moment too soon, not a single bird was singing, not even the usual rooster, still only the crickets — what suggested day was about to break was an almost invisible vibration behind the hillside, which is to say that it was as cold as that time of day required, and I was, by instinct, unsurprised when I saw a bonfire near the lake, only later did I say to myself: Why is Amália setting another fire, throwing all those things in it to burn?

I got dressed and went to the fire, didn’t find Amália: it looked like a party had just ended, at the base of the fire things were already unrecognizable, twisted, various flames around them, but one thing I recognized, the BEF beret — I first saw a tongue of flame licking the band, then the emblem was twisted upward by the tallest flame, Otávio’s beret had been thrown on the fire last, only now was it beginning to be destroyed — I took a rod, stirred the fire, and pushed what remained intact of the beret into the middle of the bonfire — I wondered what it was doing there, if Otávio knew about it, if for some incomprehensible reason it had been his idea, if he had come with Amália to admire the objects being consumed and had decided to toss in his expeditionary beret, or if not, if Amália had stolen the beret from him to destroy it in the dead of night, the night which was at that moment ending: there behind the hill a band of blue, above that violet, I could say for the last time before the daytime definitively arrived that there were stars in the sky, the moon full, or maybe say that I was a man and I wasn’t in love, for the tenth, eleventh time, but I preferred to remain silent, gaze at the lake filling with light, the dark and muddy lake that, in the timid start to morning, seemed to mirror another landscape, some sort of chalky plane, maybe from the thin mist, but a color so light that I began to doubt.

I went in. When my feet felt the cold, freezing water, the old rooster crowed. Then the murmur of birds, the crickets’ slow paralysis — no, it isn’t important, because this is what I want to say: the water was freezing cold and I kept going deeper.

Then I swam breaststroke, sliding, sometimes floating on my back and confirming that the day had already overtaken the entire sky, a clear December day — I flipped over to try the butterfly, and as I turned I noticed that Kurt was on the shore watching me.

Over his pajamas he wore a black overcoat, and in his hand, his arm outstretched, he was offering me some clothes I didn’t recognize as mine: I figured they must have been some of his.

I looked down, I was where I could no longer stand, I moved my legs like I was riding a bicycle, sometimes sinking a little toward the bottom, just until my head went under, then I’d return to the surface and see Kurt smiling at me in a way I’d never seen before, like someone who smiles because they feel themselves to be small before a situation — he was offering me clothes from the tip of his outstretched hand, and I kept returning to the depths, counting to find out how long my breath would last beneath the lake, on the next submersion staying longer, then opening my mouth to pull all the air into my lungs, submerging my head once more, and then emerging again, my eyes above water, Kurt smiling, not saying anything, he was showing me the clothes I should trade for these soaking wet ones, what he was offering me was a striped shirt and dark pants, there, on the shore of the lake, and I put my head underwater again, I thought about counting once more how many seconds I could withstand, but I said, no, I’ll go over there, I’ll take those clothes, I won’t even button the shirt, it will be hot today, then I’ll see about what to do — and then I came to the surface, took two or three strokes, then I started walking on the gelatinous lake bed, suddenly I was stepping on the pebbles of the shore — I needed to accept those clothes Kurt was offering in his trembling hand, and when I got close something came over me like a poison, and I yelled, I ripped the wet shirt from my body with one movement, I tore it, the buttons flying, in a fit I stripped off my pants and underwear, furiously kicking my leg to untangle myself from my pants, and now I’d dress in the dry clothes Kurt was handing me, and then I’d go to bed, calm myself, sleep, and maybe even dream.