Raduan Nassar: A Cup of Rage

sui generis , I was to put on a show without an audience, that’s why I challenged the once again bashful Dona Mariana harshly, asking her ‘where’s Antônio?’, this time making my voice as mean as the mask of my face, using both tools together, the pliers and the crowbar, to wrench a word out of her, not that I was about to demand that her husband compensate me for the gap, not that he could be made responsible for the ants’ fury, but — harnessed to my rage — like a horse, I only needed a starting shot, a reply, only a reply, any throw-away phrase from the housekeeper would be enough ‘Tônio’s just gone down there, but he’ll be right back’, or more cautiously Dona Mariana could justify his absence ‘he left very early to get the milk at the store and must be almost back by now’, or she could even, in one of her bursts of eloquence, say drily ‘Tônio was in one of the anthills and must be in his last convulsions now along with the leaf-cutters’, and even were she to say, with some truth as it happens, that it wouldn’t have made a difference whether her husband was there or not, explaining to me (as if it were news) that leaf-cutters tended to work in the black of night, the truth was it didn’t matter what she told me, only an idiot wouldn’t have seen that, and whether her reply was conscientious or aloof, I only know that no sooner had Dona Mariana opened her mouth than I came charging out: ‘I’ve already told you that the hours here are six to four, after that I don’t even want to see you in the house, nor to stumble across him, but within these hours I won’t allow it, do you understand? and you should tell that to your husband, are you listening?’ and my roar was strong, even if its only substance was its vibration (which isn’t to be scoffed at), and its effect was such that Dona Mariana didn’t know what to do, whether to call her husband so that he could do what I had just ordered (apart from the fact that I had only demanded he take care, it was perfectly well known that his hours started at seven, not six), or to go upstairs to the kitchen, or even whether she should stay to open the gate for the little miss, who in a provisional rebuke had just grasped her door handle, and the best that Dona Mariana rummaged out of her head, after much excited flapping about, was to stand a little to the side, wisely hidden by the corner of the house and near to the stairs, but she didn’t climb them or do anything else, and that was when she, still holding the handle, swallowing the perfect kernel of my bait, and putting on, as befitted the situation, the air of someone who discusses serious matters (she could act this role well), came on stage again of her own accord, and said to me fairly calmly, ‘I don’t understand how this change comes over you, suddenly you turn into a fascist’ and she said this in a more or less serious tone, a straight objective commentary, only adding a little more of a twist to the corners of her mouth, so that her expression ended up sketching how repulsive the thing was, and that got me in the balls, and it wasn’t my balls that deserved to get it, I was sure (in spite of everything), was sure that my rage would be washed clean in its fount, ‘you perplex me’ she added in the same serious tone, ‘perplex me!’, but I held steady, didn’t move for a while except to pick up two or three logs from the ground, feeding dry wood to the fire that I was just starting (I who was — methodically — mixing reason and emotion into an extraordinary alchemical amalgam), after all she still hadn’t got into her car, I knew her, she wasn’t the type to say something and then get in, on the contrary she was one of those women who only needle you in the greedy expectation of receiving a good beating, so much so that when she pricked me she already had her eye on the satisfying wood for my fire, in any case she had really got to me, or was I rather, an actor, only faking, to follow an example, the pain that I really felt, 1I who this time had gone right into myself and in the heat here inside knew what changes I was capable of (I wasn’t a monolithic block, no one is of course, and then there’s the fact that certain traits she attributed to my personality had more to do with the situation), but I wasn’t going to mention this to her, yes, I could take up her challenge and launch myself into a battle royal, comfortingly with shared content, knowing that in spite of her impatience she wouldn’t scorn a good preamble, I only had to pretend that I was falling into the trap, nibbling all the while at the bait, sucking at the kernel of sweetcorn as if sucking the nipple of her breast, while to pick a fight it was enough to hurl the classic words ‘you’re hardly the one to teach me how to treat a maid’, remembering straight after that nothing stops whoever’s stepping on someone else from protesting about the person stepping on them, but that you always need to start by looking at your own paws, your body before clothes, this heartfelt revelation that precedes communion, and, if I had wanted, I could’ve found plenty of reasons to trip her up, not that I was so naïf I demanded coherence, I didn’t expect that of her, I didn’t even boast of that myself, only idiots and bastards proclaim that they serve a single lord, in the end we are all beasts born of one and the same dirty womb, carriers of the most vile contradictions, but if someone were to flaunt their morals, then right from the start that person should admit to a complete lack of shame, the truth being that all these quarrels among the hand-wringing children of the petite bourgeoisie really got my goat, as they guilelessly vied for the most generously soft boots, even extracting from their comparisons an air of liberal virtue, and how she loved this purgative, just as she would purge herself by giving the middle class a good whipping, this class that is almost always hated, perhaps for this reason vacillating between soaring to the heights of the eagle or trudging the earth in humble sandals, sometimes so indecisive as to confuse the direction of those two poles, was it an ascent towards priesthood or a dive on prey? (and how not to arrive there, gloriously?), but it didn’t even enter my head to goad the fraud where she was most conflicted, I wasn’t going to confuse a fine needle with the immanently bruising power of my bludgeon, other motives would be needed to put me on a war footing, I was far from being interested in the common traits of a banal character, and nor was I going to pull on her hook and so encourage the usual veering of her reasoning, not that the claws she put in her words scared me, I too, besides my gentle face (with perhaps the odd sly look), knew how to give words their reverse, the grimaces and talons, incisive like her I knew the best way to bite with the teeth of ideas, since our intrigues tended to be made of these shards, not to mention that my hoofs — driven along a strict lane — knew how to invent their own logic, but all this discursive aggression was verging exhaustively on the monotonous, it was no longer about yawning over an uneasy night’s sleep, it wasn’t that annoying habit of stretching out your arms unnecessarily, in my fever the things here inside were rapidly melting together, I didn’t have any sand in my gizzard, let alone the gravel that was more suitable to digesting her talk, not forgetting that reflection is nothing more than the excretions of the drama of our existence, foolishly put on a pedestal by us, but as Antônio had already fertilized the vegetable beds the week before, what were we to do with this theoretical chaff? so, quick as lightning I found a way out, off on a tangent, and where I went was land she had staked out and fenced in, an area where she prided herself on being a free little bird, that was where I’d get her, only there would I open a gap in her defences (I who could simply dismiss her with a summary ‘get lost’, turn my back on her and go up to the conservatory), it was there that I’d exasperate her arrogant rationality, but nor was that what I wanted (to simply exasperate her), I was inside myself, in that instant I needed a prop, needed more than ever — in order to act — the screams of a supporting actress, and let me be perfectly clear: I didn’t want the bleatings of an audience, far from it, I was fully aware that I only wanted to get back my lost shriek, and she didn’t even have much to do with all this (yes, it’s confusing, but that’s how it was), I was inside myself, as I just said (chaos!), I was dealing with an imbroglio, with the colic, with terrible contortions brought on by this flush, with things that fermented in the tunnel of my stomach, all the things that existed outside and that my ants had carried, bit by bit, and were they ever great at carrying, the bastards, plain excellent at it, and the damned insects had found every possible entrance into me, my eyes, my nostrils, my ears, especially my earholes! and someone had to pay, someone always had to pay, whether they wanted to or not, that was one of life’s axioms, that was a natural prop for rage (and sometimes even the best relief from guilt), the fact is that even feeling eyes on me — Dona Mariana’s Protestant eyes were ready, and I had already found Antônio’s shaky legs behind a bush — even so I stuck my chest out a little and took two steps towards her, and she must have noticed some solemnity in how I approached her, she was an intelligent little miss, and fickle, the bitch, I only know that she suddenly put her hands on her waist, her face became two defiant eyes, the two ends of her mouth turned sarcastic, and she squandered other gaudy little gestures, most of them completely unnecessary, at this point I could no longer contain a violent ‘hey you, you’, I suddenly let fly ‘you, you shitty little journalist’, I continued expelling my bile in bursts, she stood quite still by the car, only her little bum rubbed against the door handle, and the bitch smiled, laughed a ‘ha ha hah’ that I had and hadn’t expected, she was trying to confuse me, but even so I continued to advance, ‘why insist on trying to teach me, you shitty little journalist? why insist on trying to teach me when the little that you learnt in life you learnt from me, from me’ and I hammered on my chest and was already raising my voice to a shout, but she said ‘oh! honourable master! …’ and with a swish-whoosh her venomous tongue came out and back, unbelievable how that well-oiled instrument worked, and hearing what she said I shook, not exactly because of her irony, which didn’t go beyond an amateurish attempt to defend herself, rather it was her obsession with castrating me, calling me ‘master’ yes, yet as always denying my access to knowledge because of my lack of titles, I was the ‘graduate odd-job man’ (what did the fraud know of my work and my affairs?), suggesting that I stick to my usual territory in our discussions, although I couldn’t care less by then, I mean, I wasn’t interested in being venerated in the field of ideas, and anyway I had said to her many times that the quality of someone’s thought wasn’t seen in their profession, nor in their head, but in their throat, in the stubborn girth of the gullet when they swallow, an anatomical defect that is just as rare among common mortals as it is among stupid intellectuals, and so it’s from a sickness — and only from there — that the bitter force of independent thought comes, obviously the prophets can’t be held responsible for the sensuality of their followers, but I used to go rigid when I saw the fraud, anointed with the spirit of the times, surrendering herself lasciviously to the myths of the moment, I used to go rigid when I saw the fraud, in spite of her affected rebelliousness, being pulled here or there by this or that owner, I tried many fucking times to slip a penknife in under her dog-collar, many fucking times I said to her that every chained dog hides a wild one, to her, who at every opportunity would refer me to her guides (she was as strong as iron, the fraud, it was impossible to harm her bone structure), despairingly I’d tell her that rather than esoteric ghouls it was I who held my existence in my hands, not knowing, apart from the womb, a mould capable of giving this raw material form, but it was always heresy to touch her idols’ tablets of the law, to draw a line in the dust, to scare off the ghosts, I even reminded her of the episode with that wanderer from earlier times (were he around now, she would be his spaniel, join his school, lick his feet in an obscene display of submission), who in his natural history incorrectly attributed a certain number of teeth to the horse, and whose slow but authoritative pace meant that his mistake passed down the centuries as if it were true, and also of many other absurdities, some there since primordial times, that continued to be idiotically carried on high litters, and that even in schools (the altars of dogma) people formed lines to let such litters pass, but it didn’t do any good to preach against them, it didn’t do any good to turn the key to unlock the door, I ‘an odd-job man’ (a graduate in odd jobs), I was not a ‘master’, much less ‘honourable’, I (the irony) was certainly not an authority and yet even so I had the sudden urge — and this wasn’t the first time — to put two fingers at each end of my lips, stretching them until the mouth of my forge was wide open, and at the same time winking in a clear admonition to ‘open my mouth and count this horse’s teeth for yourself’, thus giving a grotesque illustration of the force of empiricism, since I was no more to her than a ‘vaguely interesting animal’, this by the way, in her unconvulsive hours, was the most she granted me, but I didn’t say or do any of all that, I didn’t bare my teeth, or do anything comparable, the effort wouldn’t exactly be educational after all, and as I’ve already said, I didn’t want the bleatings of an audience, and as I’ve also already said, I wanted to get back my lost shriek, I only haven’t yet said — and this is the most important thing — that I wanted to stick to my usual territory, and so I tackled her viciously ‘it never occurred to you, did it? you shitty intellectual, it never occurred to you that everything you say and everything you vomit up is all stuff that you’ve heard from other people, that you haven’t done any of the stuff you talk about, that you only screwed like a virgin and that without my crowbar you aren’t any-fucking-thing, that I’ve got a different life and a different weight’, but there she interrupted me ‘go on, go on, say it once more, tell me that you aren’t the great hermit I imagine you to be, but that you have a ton of demons around you, go on, say it, say it again … ha ha hah … you demon … ha ha hah …’ she must have scoffed a whole tub of brilliantine for breakfast, I’d never said anything like that! it was clear that things were slipping out of control, I for my part was shaking, and so was on the way to losing it, to loosening my tongue much more than was acceptable ‘listen here, fraud, don’t talk about what you don’t understand, mouth off in your press, go and preach your sermons there, denounce repression, teach what is just and what is unjust, go and pour your drop on the torrent of words; waste the paper of your newspaper, but don’t poke your maw into the leaves of my privet’ I said, angry as hell with myself for suddenly being simply on the defensive after my sharp and crude attack, allowing crafty her to stab me with absolute precision ‘quite understood, sir, I’m more than capable of gauging your fears … such modesty, such a need for security, all this oh-so-suspicious concern for your hedge, and by the way it’s unbelievable how you are mirrorizing yourself in what you say; go on, talk, don’t stop all those words, don’t stop your portrait, but afterwards come and see your face from here … ha ha hah … disgusting!’ and she said it as if she were catching me in the act, and took advantage of my confusion to twist the blade in further ‘build a wall, a fort, protect what you own behind a thick wall’ ‘don’t draw easy conclusions’ I managed to squeeze in, ‘it’s what the people conclude’ she retorted, making it clear that the only thing left to do was pronounce sentence, probably the medieval wheel, ‘do you know who you remind me of, do you, you fraud?’ I said in a level voice, unable to believe in the sudden calm of each word (all of them still nervous inside), pretending you see that I was going to get into the battle royal, use her methods (she insisted on the preamble, wanted, before the beating, for me to light up the buttons of her body), but I rode off on my own calculations, simmering away under the pot’s lid you could see my numbers jiggling around in the bubbles ‘you remind me of a man who dresses as a woman for carnival: he straps on enormous conches of rubber as breasts, paints two scarlet circles on his cheeks and heavy eyeliner over his lashes, pads out his buttocks with cushions, and then he’s off, with enough swing in his hips to make even the most flexible dark girl envious; his figure is so striking that the guy manages — although the hair on his arms and legs betrays him — to be more of a woman than a real woman’ ‘and? …’ ‘and that makes me think about how dogmatism, caricatures and depravity often go together, and that privileged people like you, dressed up as Читать дальше