João Noll - Quiet Creature on the Corner

I ran a hand over my chin, summoned the elevator, the uniformed operator asked me smilingly which floor — everyone was smiling at me in that four-star joint — I remembered I wanted to have a whiskey in the hotel bar, asked for the first floor, the bartender treated me like a prince, yeah, I shaved, I told him, also smiling, a whiskey poured over the stones in my glass, and the bartender was saying he hadn’t recognized me with my face like a baby’s bottom, then turned back to the same chatter as always, recommending where to go later, at night, beaches, bars, women, I barely followed what he was saying, but it pleased me to confirm that someone behind the bar was capable of busying himself with my day’s itinerary just because I had the money to pay for the hotel and leave tips. I was discovering that it pleased me to pay for the world’s courtesies.

In the middle of the afternoon, I left to walk down Nossa Senhora da Copacabana. I stopped in front of a movie poster — there wasn’t much else to do — I entered, and in the cinema bathroom there were a few men standing around smoking. I started to take a piss — all the urinals were occupied and I could sense the eyes of the men standing there in urinating position were directed at me. I figured out what was happening: nobody was urinating here, they all had their dicks out but were staring at my dick, all of them middle-aged, the smell of urine ferocious, from the cinema came an uproar that must have been a violent car crash, the screech of brakes, and in front of the urinals those eyes wouldn’t stop staring at my dick, and when I looked down again I saw that it wasn’t pissing anymore and, without my having noticed, had gotten completely hard — someone tapped my shoulder, I turned, it was a guy behind me reaching his hand inside a greasy jacket at chest height, he said he was a cop and wanted to see my ID, working papers too — I was getting dragged out from my situation under Kurt’s wing: if I got thrown in jail again he’d never give me another chance and I’d find myself face-to-face with complete shit all over again, this time with two arrests — I put my instantly slackened dick back in my pants as the guy tried to act high and mighty, demanding my working papers again, the faggots all around were dying with laughter. I realized that I’d been ambushed, and as I zipped up I remembered that I had very little money with me and that it wasn’t likely I could strike a deal with the guy who said he was a cop — then a plan for escape suddenly sprang up inside me, I didn’t even have time to think it through before I’d already begun to execute it, my whole body collapsing onto the cold, piss-drenched floor, trembling from an attack that made me drool: dig my fingernails into the air, break out in a sweat, roll back my eyes until I could no longer see anything around me, all stiff, in my vision just dark and muddled shapes that I tried to break open with sweeping arms, like I was swimming breaststroke — I wanted to scream but couldn’t find my voice, flailing in the middle of those dark and muddled shapes, in vain, my strength having failed — a giant drain slowly swallowing me.

Suddenly my body calmed, normalizing my breathing. I didn’t understand what I was doing there, lying with my head in a puddle of piss, deeply inhaling the sharp smell of piss, as though predicting this would help me recover my memory, and the memory that had knocked me to the floor appeared, little by little, and I became fascinated, as what had begun as a theatrical seizure to get rid of the guy who called himself a cop had become a thing that had really thrown me outside myself.

And now I was returning, with a tremendous vertigo, incapable of understanding anything further: Who was this man helping me get up, picking me up by the arm and guiding me slowly, as slow as two insects going against the immensity of the others? Who was this man who guided me finally to a mirror, a mirror that didn’t verify my features or those of the atmosphere around me — didn’t permit me to know if I was still in the same place? Who was this man who continued to hold my arm and was asking me to splash my forehead and come with him, that he’d take me wherever I needed to go?…

Then, on the sidewalk outside the hotel, standing up straight again, touching the man’s shoulder, telling him something for the first time, saying goodbye, thanking him.

I wrapped myself in a towel and went to the hotel steam room. Kurt was there, seated, his head hanging toward his feet.

I came close and waved my hand in front of my face, trying to make a clearing in the steam: Kurt had gotten even older, I could see that now. How? I wondered, and shook my head without understanding this strange dose of aging. Hmm…since when?

He still hadn’t seen me, just a few feet away, wrapped in his mists.

Suddenly he saw me. I had the urge to retreat, to hide myself amid the steam.

I’m exhausted, he said. Tonight I’ll sleep at the hotel. I need you to stay at the hospital with Gerda. You should go soon, he concluded, and returned his gaze to the direction of his feet, absorbed in his thoughts.

I switched on the lamp, and saw Gerda sleeping, her breath blowing a few strands of blue hair near her lip. I swallowed a lump in my throat, not because of Gerda’s condition, but because I abruptly discerned how indefensible my presence there was: What was I doing in a Rio hospital room, beside a sick and practically unknown woman?

Wouldn’t it be better to leave the room and try to forget about the existence of Kurt and Gerda, and find some less blind situation, one as clear as my hand, which opened like a fan in front of the lampshade, my fingers the succinct verses I’d like to have?

But there was Gerda, under my care.

I touched the hand on the white sheet covering her, and she opened her eyes. She closed them again.

I opened the blinds. On the other side of the street was an abandoned lot. I felt a shiver, like something was about to happen, and went to see if Gerda needed anything from me.

It looked like she had touched up the dye job on her hair with a shade closer to purple. I noticed that she’d aged like Kurt had recently. How much time had passed? I asked myself this question as I watched shadows on the wall, making me drowsy.

Once more I put my hand on the sheet that covered her. Gerda opened her eyes again. I saw that they were very red, watery. She gazed at the ceiling for a few minutes — it took her a while to notice my presence.

Suddenly she suffered a shudder of pain, and then she saw me. I half smiled, not exactly because I felt obliged to force an air of consolation in front of a sick person, but because I barely knew Gerda, just as I barely knew anything in my life after the Glória neighborhood back in Porto Alegre, and aside from that, Gerda made me feel an embarrassment beyond what I was used to feeling around Kurt, and her presence seemed to demand a more ceremonious expression, because she was so quiet, distant, mysterious.

But that night Gerda was different: when she saw me a wide smile broke across her face, and I could see just how white her teeth were, and then she started talking, far more than I would have expected from her.

She asked me what time it was and how long she’d been there. I told her the time, and then confessed that I didn’t really know how long she’d been in the hospital — I’d think about it — I just knew that Kurt had given me the task of keeping her company that night.

Ah, Kurt, Gerda said to me, Kurt… She looked at me, without losing her smile, and at that moment I realized that the Gerda lying there wasn’t the one I knew, a decidedly different woman occupied Gerda’s body now, another woman who allowed herself to flourish in front of me for the first time, or maybe not, maybe Gerda was deliriously ill, but I didn’t want to call anyone, not the floor physician, not the nurses — I let her take my hand and sigh, Kurt, ah Kurt, she was speaking with such an enthusiastic tone, perhaps beyond what was appropriate — I knew nothing or next to nothing about the state of Gerda’s health beyond the cancer Amália told me about and the immense scar I saw cutting across her thorax — but at that moment Gerda seemed to come to the surface of whatever ailment was afflicting her, and told me that it was in Hamburg after the war that the two of them met, that they’d both been born and raised in Brazil by German parents, and in Hamburg they danced away the night, they would dance and the most foolish words would come to their lips — Gerda was sweating, her voice breathless, she was sweating a lot and holding my hand between hers, staring at me and repeating pained, choppy sentences with Kurt’s name.