João Noll - Quiet Creature on the Corner

The girl kept singing a while longer, then suddenly stopped and said, with the sky the way it was tonight, so full of stars, with the moon so high, it was likely the Druidesses would be descending in droves. This girl was like that, always talking about Druidesses and other strange beings — she said she never went to school, that she went every day to her hideout on the top of a hill, and stayed there singing all morning long.

When she started up with the thing about Druidesses my first reaction was to think of how sleepy I was, that I’d go to bed, or maybe get back to that poem.

But a second later, when she began to sing once more, I saw that, no, it wouldn’t be so bad to hang out a while longer, it wasn’t cold, so I stayed, wandering through the ruins, and she started singing a song that wasn’t half bad. The night was clear and the ruins were yellowed by the moon.

Suddenly I realized I was so close to the singing girl that I could almost feel her breath — I didn’t say anything, she stopped singing, I noticed there was a speckled wall that hid us from the building — I hit her with a kiss, and she fell with me onto the wet earth, my tongue passing through a murmur stifled in the girl’s mouth, for sure a scream if I were to take my mouth off hers, and it was too late, I needed to suffocate that scream — I came right as my dick went in, and that dry murmur, the shout I suffocated by crushing my mouth against hers stopped — and I got up.

I went back to the apartment. My mother was sleeping on the shredded sofa with the light on. I went to my room, threw myself on the bed, and fell asleep.

I awoke in the middle of the night to voices outside, got up, went to the corner of the window, and saw the military police talking to some guys that were getting out of a red Escort, and a station wagon with a spinning light on top. The wagon had parked diagonally in front of the Escort, one of them started cuffing the guys, the other pointing his gun.

It was routine to be awakened during the night by troubles like these in the neighborhood: police, car thieves, drug traffickers, even on a calm night like this, it wasn’t strange for shots to ring out, and there I was, like on so many other late nights, peering from the corner of the window, not wanting to be seen, because if I were I’d certainly fall under some kind of suspicion.

I sat down on the bed, listening to the police siren. Then the silence returned. In the living room my mother was snoring, tomorrow she’d go to São Borja.

I saw a bolt of lightning cut the sky, everything went blue, then came the thunder. I returned to the window and another lightning bolt illuminating the sort-of clearing where they were constructing the building next door: the Escort was still there. I doubted I’d be able to sleep with a downpour starting to rail against the window, the water blocking my view outside. I thought how my life was really taking its time figuring things out, and my mother snored as if saying don’t even start — and there I was, staring at streams of raindrops that wouldn’t let me see outside, unable to sleep, without even a way to take a walk in the street due to the rain, so I went to the living room, the light was still on, and I could’ve stolen my mother’s wedding ring right off her finger, and even taken my time rolling out since she wouldn’t wake up, but that wedding ring probably wasn’t worth a nickel, and I was a coward anyway: I called out to her, asked her to make me a tea because I was feeling woozy, ready to vomit.

Early the next morning I took her to the bus station, she was leaving at eight, the rain had stopped, but the sky hadn’t opened up, clouds were moving along lashed by a wind that seemed to come from the south, the temperature had fallen, my mother kissed me, I said that she was doing the right thing by moving to another city, and the bus left.

I went up Borges and jumped on the bus back home, and right when it was passing along the ridge of cemeteries, I looked down again at Glória, the church towers, coughed, spat out the window, crossed myself furtively, laughing to myself, pulled the cord for a stop, got off, said hello to a neighbor with a kid on his lap, took a shortcut that led over to my building, I was already in the clearing around the building and could smell the eucalyptus, I saw a paddy wagon and two military police talking with a guy who saw me and said: that’s the guy.

There were five prisoners in the cell they stuffed me into. I’ve never seen people as ruined as those five, there were scars and sometimes holes all over their entire bodies, mouths completely toothless, one of them with a harelip that had never been sewn, but even worse than the toothless guy was the one with a single rotting, snaggletoothed canine, bleeding.

But before that I had waited hours for the sheriff — the police searched me all over, took a wad of papers with my poems on them from my pocket, spread the papers over the sheriff’s desk, and when he arrived they started asking me if I had brothers, a mother or a father still living, and when I told them how my father took off and my mother and I had fallen into poverty, that I had to leave school to eke out a living for us both, the sheriff seemed to take a real interest: he leaned in close, thumped me on the shoulder, and yelled for me to tell him all about that time, that was the reason for everything, that was where it all had started.

Go ahead, he finished, impatiently.

So then I told him about those days, an assortment of things from here, leaving things out there, and when I got to the previous night, his eyes bulged at me, another thump to the shoulder when I said I’d stayed at home, that I’d gone to bed early, early because I had to take my mother to the bus station. He called over a police reporter, a completely blond man — the tufts of hair coming out of his ears, even those were super blond.

“Let’s hear it,” the reporter said, gathering up the papers with my poems.

Then came the jailer to take me to the lockup. When I got there one of the prisoners asked me what time it was, another if I had anything to give him; another said he’d strangle me at night, another that he knew I was a poet, and that I should write a poem in charcoal beside his mattress. The fifth one didn’t say anything.

That night the five of them made a big racket masturbating, the bunks squeaking, the guys slapping the walls, their labored breathing audible when they came, nearly bursting. I was the only one lying on a mattress directly on the slab floor. Waiting out the sleepless night, I knew that if I stayed there much longer I’d end up taking part in the communal jackoff session.

Then they were snoring and it was dark, the only light a single bulb that was swaying in the drafty corridor. The window in that little hole had iron bars that left such a narrow space between them that not even an arm would fit through — I took a stool from under one of the beds, pushed it against the wall, got on top of it, and peered out at the night through the bars. A guard was passing hurriedly in the distance in front of me, a rooster began to crow.

While I waited for daylight I’d stay put, seeing if maybe some verse might emerge — maybe I’d have to get used to this, get close to these guys, figure out a way to escape. Or maybe it wouldn’t be so rough — I’d at least have some company with those five guys, if I stayed with them through what would come, with those five spent and stinking bodies, so I’d need to see them without repugnance, be able to put an arm around them, talk to them, hatch a plan or something with those ugly, spent men.

When it gets light out I’ll turn to the interior of the cell, and the newspaper with the story about me will be passing from hand to hand, and this will calm me, restore my sleep, because the five will see proof that I am one of them.