Raduan Nassar: A Cup of Rage

the people , generally look to me like carnival trannies’, and what I said was absolutely clear, without any interruption that might disturb my illustration, but her agility was amazing, it wasn’t only in her use of populism, in her style too she achieved a transcendent mimicry ‘every citizen has the right to paint two scarlet circles on their cheeks, why not! decorate their nose with a red ball, hang a thick, crooked stick from their arm as a walking stick, put on a pointy hat, and, once they’ve done that, go and joke around on the main square … ha ha hah … ha ha hah … ha ha hah …’ I ought to have congratulated the fraud, I didn’t have her talent, my cynicism didn’t go that far, to put on a show of indifference so close to a bonfire, to guffaw with laughter just before the sacrifice, I had to acknowledge her skill at imitation, my head was a little blank for a moment, I felt my legs had suddenly been amputated, I fell into a total paralysis, and noticed out of the corner of my right eye Dona Mariana — peering round the corner of the house — quickly pull her head back, and out of the corner of my left eye I could clearly see — stuck between the bush’s branches — Antônio’s slow face, oh, she was enjoying having an audience all right ‘take it easy, fraud, people like you fulfil a function’ I said bitterly, ‘take it easy, know-it-all, people like you fulfil a function too — with your arms crossed you’d just be a conniver, but now I see that’s not enough, you’ll be judged as a perpetrator!’ ‘I didn’t ask your opinion’ I said, leaning on this set phrase, a lazy cliché but, to compensate, one able to stir up what remained of my muscles, I felt that two gigantic balls were bursting here on my biceps as I reconquered — highest adventure! — my conscience that had been occupied, thus sickness and sovereignty came together of necessity ‘to judge what I say and what I do I have my own courts, I don’t delegate it to third parties, I don’t recognize in anyone — in absolutely anyone — the moral power to weigh my actions’ I said, with a sudden change in rhetoric (I had struck the tuning fork and picked up a suspect tone, but simple instruments that they were — even the unutterable ones — how could words be guilty, considering that everything depends on context? what we had were useless solutions), and reversing the proportions once and for all, tossing in three shovelfuls of cement to each one of sand, mixing a different bond into the discourse, and reserving for myself a chaste communion wafer and a superb goblet of wine I began firmly and cohesively (as well as masterfully, like an actor) to intone the liturgy of a black mass ‘I was thirteen when I lost my father, never did I don mourning clothes, nor did I even then suffer any feeling of abandonment, and so I’m not looking for a new father — son bond now, my history would have to be remade for me to give up being an orphan’ ‘congratulations on that fine deed’ she said casually ‘only you manage to be an orphan and an old man at the same time … ha ha hah …’ and as well as diverting the course of what I had said, her sarcasm forged a subtle addition: a suggestion that her lumping me in the grey generation would annoy the hell out of me, I of all people, I, who even cultivated old age prematurely, and the fraud knew it, she wasn’t unaware of what she herself called my ‘superfluous pretension’, which only set off the daring contortionism of her reply all the more, even more so bearing in mind that I had some white hairs, which had been appearing chronologically, by force of time, but that I was far from having salt-and-pepper hair (the twists and turns of her logic were brilliant, without a doubt she deserved to be complimented on them), in truth, brilliance aside, her mockery hid as always a fog of sensuality, the same plaintive, provocative and redundant appeal, in short the little miss could never get enough of this ‘old man’, I only know that I continued in the saddle of my calculations, although, while in full control, I must admit that she was still tugging on my numbers’ ear, for in spite of the time being up that I had allowed myself for the battle royal, I saw myself quickly binding — tying one end to another — the thread she had just cut ‘I said and I repeat: my history would have to be remade for me to give up being an orphan, I know that’s impossible, but that would be the very first condition; the time has gone when I saw living together as viable, only demanding, piously, my share of the common good, the time has gone when I consented to a contract, leaving out many things, although not what was most vital to me, the time has gone when I recognized the shocking existence of imagined values, the spine of all “order”; but I didn’t even have the air I needed to breathe, and with that denied me, I was suffocating; being conscious of this frees me, it drives me on, I dwell on other things, today the universe of my problems is different; in a world without rhyme or reason — definitely out of focus — sooner or later everything gets reduced to a point of view, and you, spending all your time cooing over the humanities don’t even realize that you’re cooing over a joke: it’s impossible to tidy up the world of values, you can’t clean the devil’s house; so I refuse to think about what I don’t believe in any more, whether that be love, friendship, the family, the church, humanity; I couldn’t care less about all that! my existence still terrifies me, but I’m not afraid of being alone, exile was a conscious choice, I’m satisfied with the cynicism of those great people who are indifferent towards everything …’ ‘oh, he’s metaphysicalizing now, is Mr Speculation … if I slacken the reins he immediately shoots off into asinine twaddle … don’t come with that, you’re out-of-date’ she said brusquely, dismissing any criticism, sealing my protests, filing them away without consultation, slipping a solid iron ring over my bundle of ideas, perhaps there was something of the bull about me (my long, languid eyelashes?), but you also have to admit that in committing such violence to my horse’s nostrils she went too far, while insisting on her own frivolous rights, taking a delicious pleasure in stretching the elastic words, chewing on this one or that as if it were a rubber band or her dad’s dick, ‘mirrorizing’, the dirty bitch, ‘metaphysicalizing’ in her special way, I needed to call a halt to this whole farce, it had already gone on far too long as a preamble, I’d groped her bait too long, the fraud, I had a feeling that the moment was approaching when her hook would tear my mouth ‘you’re impossible, Ms Bureaucrat, but I’m not going to resist this statement, it’s important: it was with great effort that I learnt to wear my stigma elegantly, now I feel my hands are powerful and free, can do things, obviously with one eye on the policeman on the corner, and one eye on clandestine orgies; this is the enlightenment that can be revealed to excluded people, along with the will to use a spark of that light to set fire to the pages of any rulebook’, and that was when she had a brainwave, ‘I’ve had’ she said, adding in English, ‘ an insight ’, as if she were having a eureka moment, ‘I think I’ve worked out the puzzle, I’ve finally discovered what our odd-job man’s real “occupation” is, what I’m saying is, it’s only now that I finally understand why you were so loath to speak about your “work”, why so much “mystery”, only now do I understand your affairs, now that all the clues lead me to deduce that you are no more than a no-good conman, a rat, a forger’ before adding a final snub ‘you’re not any old forger, you’re a graduate forger …’ and I have to confess that my legs started to shake again, in that precise moment I saw Bingo cut an electric line through the space between her and me, his shiny black fur stringing another wire in the air, and in his wake I stretched the cord of my nerves even further, carefully avoiding the suspicion of being a forger, which by the way I didn’t know whether it was said in jest or not, or if, being the one, the other wasn’t prudently part of the mix, I only know that I passed over it, I refrained from discussing the merits of what she said, didn’t permit her to gauge the seriousness of her supposed discovery, left the fraud clutching at nothing as, with a magician’s sleight-of-hand, I made the apple of her insight vanish ‘today I feel relieved of obligations, of course I would have preferred the weight of duties to that of freedom; I didn’t have a choice, I was chosen, and if on the one hand my destiny was revealed to me, on the other hand destiny took it on itself to reveal me: I’m responsible for absolutely nothing, I’m no longer master of my own steps, the path I walk is the broad one, all I do, I already said, is to keep one eye on the policeman on the corner, the other on clandestine orgies’ ‘oops, better pay attention, else he’ll send his words into orbit again … cut the pomposity and descend from your heights, learn O Stratospheric One that going up is easy, the real trick is how you come down afterwards; so don’t come with talk of your destiny, fate, karma, scar, mark, branding, stigma, all this paraphernalia that you bizarrely christen as your “history”; if our metaphysician here would put his feet on the ground, he would see that this messed-up world only needs rational solutions, it doesn’t much matter that they have their limits, what matters is that they are the best ones at the time; only an idiot would refuse controls on something so precarious, and don’t forget that in life’s rough and tumble motives aren’t the point — although this little question seems to be doing your head in — it’s all about moving the ball forward, history is pushed onwards by the friendly hand of assassins too; the heights you aspire to, by the way, your perfectionist fancies, they had to lead to this: the authoritarian drivel of a scummy iconoclast — the old elephant in the china shop, and to top it all, you talk in those tragic tones, like the prototype of some class in its last agony … get lost, carcass!’ and she immediately wrote my performance off as cathartic (‘pure catharsis’ she mumbled), a terrifyingly destructive word and which — through its imprudent use, its abuse — transformed the fraud’s very brain into an atomic mushroom cloud, but again I passed over it, even leaving the ‘paraphernalia’ behind (move the ball forward!) and was pushing my own history onwards, working out a tropical algebra, as heated as its origins (blood and sand), a perfect operation that didn’t dispense with the fraud’s positive values nor give up my negative values (or the ‘friendly hand of assassins’): ‘I already said that the margins of society used to torment me, the margins are now a saving grace, I was repelled when I wanted to take part, let the world go to the dogs now! let cities fall, let people suffer, let life and freedom perish, when the ivory king’s under threat, who cares about the flesh and blood of sisters and mothers and children? the soul isn’t heavy though sons are dying in the distance’, 2‘ha ha hah … he’s lost it … ha ha hah … you crook!’ ‘everything can come tumbling down, I’ll turn my back on it; meet absurdity with madness, and there could be no other response — yes, it’s a bitter one, but at least it’s appropriate, and it doesn’t depend on what you decree, because it’s easy to see now what your future holds: as well as meeting all the requirements to be an excellent journalist, you are perfectly suited for the women’s police; oh, and one more thing, as an abuse of power I can’t see any difference between an editor-in-chief and a chief of police, just as there’s no difference between a newspaper boss and a government boss, and both are in cahoots with other kinds of bosses’ ‘it’s not me you’ll have to deal with one day, you pompous crook, but the people’ ‘just once, you fraud, look at what’s staring you in the face, even if it is at odds with your folklore, even if your ears aren’t made for such dissonant tones: the people will never take power!’ ‘village idiot! … he’s really having convulsions now, who knows what else will come of this fit …’ ‘the people will never take power! so it won’t be them I have to deal with one day; hurt and humiliated, the people are only, and always will be, a ruled mass that, by the way, says stupid things which you exalt, without realizing that in general the people say and think what the powers-that-be allow; they actually speak for themselves when they speak (as I do) with the body, which doesn’t help much, because their identity never blends with their supposed representatives’ identity, and because the shitty strong arm of authority is necessarily the basis of all “order”, a rather shrewd word, as it happens, that simultaneously incorporates an unbearably commanding voice and a presumption of where things should be; of course the people can reap some benefits, but always only as the mass that emerging leaders manipulate; so, forward, fraud, forward — with the people in your mouth, parroting their simple if picturesque speech, stuffing your mimicry down the throats of the already suffocating sheep, just like the impassive ventriloquist who puts the little ones on his knee like a good father, and even uses his art to reveal some tricks, while still tricking them by concealing his own voice; but don’t worry, fraud, you’ll get there … riding, naturally, your usurped revolt, riding your second-hand revolt; but as for this crook, this lost son here, I’ve just got one thing to say: nobody guides the one whom God has led astray! which is why I accept neither this pigsty we’ve got nor any other “order” that might be established, so listen —’ I said reaching the zenith of my liturgy and, thinking of the supposed ascent of my words, I lowered my tone dirtily to compensate: ‘I’ve got balls, fraud, I don’t need a higher power!’ ‘hosannah! behold the man! Narcissus! always remote and fragile, anarchy’s offspring! … ha ha hah! … he’s dogmatic, a caricature and depraved … ha ha hah!’ ‘get this, fraud, all “order” privileges some people and things’ ‘get this, you crook, disorder does too — it privileges brute force, for starters’ ‘plain brute force, without any legitimizing law’ ‘I’m talking of the law of the jungle’ ‘which doesn’t put on a show of modesty, doesn’t allow space for hypocrisy, and doesn’t unjustly call on aseptic reason as a crutch’ ‘so put on a loincloth, or do without one, gorilla-boy’ ‘I’ll do without your advice, you stay there, in your circle of light, and leave me here, in my thick darkness, I didn’t start wallowing in this blackness yesterday; I haven’t cultivated a seraphic paleness, I don’t lend my eyes a pious look, nor do I ever put a saintly mask on my face, nor nourish the hope of seeing my image enthroned on an altar; unlike good Samaritans I don’t love my neighbour, nor know who that would be, to be short about my preferences: I don’t like people; after all, fraud, someone has to — and now I’ll use your magic little word — “assume” the role of the story’s shadowy villain, someone has to assume it at the very least so you can keep your bright halo hovering above the back of your head; so I’ll take on all evil, since the divine is as much in evil as it is in holiness; and then, fraud, if I can’t be loved, I’ll be most content to be hated’ ‘with reason out of reach, he now ridiculously resuscitates himself as Lucifer … ha ha hah … sound and fury … ha ha hah … you’re nothing more than a by-product of hidden passions, and all this mumbo-jumbo that you go into such detail about, only serves, by the way, to confirm some old suspicions of mine … between ourselves, a moral aberration is always the offspring of unconfessable aberrations, only that can explain your “whims” … along with, of course, why an active woman like me scares you … and as for your arrogant, contemplative “exile”, it’s clear as day now: banished by the collective consciousness that never tolerates weaklings, you had to live out in the country; in our ecologist’s favour, however, it will be remembered that he didn’t wheel in pollution as his reason for leaving, thus imitating those master swindlers who — to better hide their real motives — let fools grasp their own despicable conclusions from what looks obvious, a perfect game to play as it happens: it leaves everyone happy — while the first, playful lot enjoys its trick in silence, the other, noisy lot celebrates its shrewd judgement; but that’s not the case with you: a swindler but not a master, what should have stayed hidden ended up obvious too, it backfired, as this was your only possible “destiny”: to live in a hideaway with someone of your kind … Lucifer and his rabid dog … that could be turned into a film … ha ha hah … one of the them closing the little gaps in the hedge, the other standing guard until night arrives, both of them doing their utmost to secure their private sphere, and then afterwards, on the quiet … mutually … between scratching and licking … elaborating with their little muzzles their clandestine orgies … ha ha hah … ha ha hah … ha ha hah … it makes me sick!’ her words hailed down on me, picking up more with a steady hand, she flung reason in my face again and stabbed me with sharp spines, I held back my slobber, but my teeth were clacking, for that reason alone I started punching holes in the haemorrhagic discourse of my cerebral stroke, ‘yes, me, who’s been led astray, yes, me, the enraged individualist, me, the enemy of the people, me, the irrationalist, corrupted me, with my epilepsy, delirium and madness, passionate me …’ ‘burn me, O Fiery Mouth! … ha ha hah …’ ‘… me, the convulsing wick, me, the spark of confusion, me, inflamed matter, me, perpetual heat, me, the destroying flame …’ ‘transform me into your glowing embers! … ha ha hah …’ ‘me, the experienced handler of my trident, me, who cooks up a giant pot of sulphur, me, always licking my lips at children’s sweet flesh …’ ‘oh sweet and violent fire! … ha ha hah …’ ‘me, the cyst, the sore, the canker, the ulcer, the tumour, the wound, the body’s cancer, me, all this without any irony and much more, but I don’t hide my own appetites behind the hunger of the people; and know this too, that I don’t give a shit for all your blather, and it’s only my good hygiene that keeps me from wiping my arse on your humanism; I already said I have a different life, a different weight, you dwarf of a woman, you just can’t get that into your head’ I said, pouring my bile into the blood of my words, feeling I’d knocked a bone or two of hers awry, I’d hit home about the disguise, not to speak of the pre-emptive rejection of her humanism, but her agility was just amazing, seeing that there wasn’t room for more words in this fight the dwarf, although she was annoyed, quickly grabbed the tail end of my rocket and simultaneously — with an eloquent cock of her hips — started inciting me to fight, saying ‘a little boy, magnificent in all he does … you old fascist!’, she pronounced her sentence in two clearly distinct tones, and where the first implied a forced mockery, with a feral bit of evil curled round it, the second implied a final seriousness, with a wisp of hurt coiled round it, and so I, although shaking, started to advance more confidently, and get my breath back without her noticing, and since I was recovering the calm of each word (all of them still nervous inside), I risked saying ‘just one question: do you know what I think of you, compared to me?’ ‘you are incapable, absolutely incapable of having an opinion’ ‘all right, but do you know what I think of you and of me, comparing us?’ ‘spit it out, you little crook’ ‘I admit that in certain moments I turn into a fascist, I do and I know I do, but you turn into one too, just like me, it’s just that when you do, you don’t know it; that’s the only difference between us, just that; and you only don’t know that you’ve turned into one because — although this is hardly new — nothing is more fashionable today than to be a fascist in the name of reason’ ‘so can I conclude that our fascist who’s confessed is actually better, compared to me’ ‘not at all, if on the one hand it’s a saving grace, on the other hand confession can also liberate me: to be more of a fascist than ever …’ ‘what are you trying to say?’ and her eyes pecked at me, challenged me, ‘are you threatening me?’, but from the corner of my eye I noticed that Bingo was stiffening his body to a statue, his eyes boring into her, his tail straight as a length of wood, his ears two antennae, a mongrel yes, but in the poised position of a dog that’s found its prey, ‘keep out of it, Bingo’ I ordered, hurting his sense of loyalty, ‘don’t get involved’ I murmured as well, dismissing his help without any consideration, after all, he hadn’t been very loyal in letting the fraud incite my furious calculations, she had gone so far that my fire was one crackling roar (it’s easy to work out that two plus two makes four under the shade of a fig tree, but I’d like to see someone right in the fires of hell draw lines and segments, create a perfect circle, and even prove theorems), I only know that I collected myself and, determined, took another step forward, scorching her, saying ‘types like you drool for a boot, types like you drool for a foot’, perfectly balancing the ambivalence of what I suspected — her will to power mixed with the sensuality of submission — but she was flexible, this little miss, throwing her shoulder bag inside the car she rested her hands on the car’s bodywork as if asking me to hit her, and it was obvious what she wanted, but I didn’t really want to smack her ‘you think I’m into hitting you, do you, idiot?’ and seeing in this perhaps a step backwards, a weakness, or who knows what, and making her own associations, she sparked back, metallic, and her scornful laugh cut me ‘ha ha hah … you queer!’ was the sharp bite the piranha gave me, trying to castrate me with a single swipe of her knife (‘obviously! …’), yet, like the carnival trannie, the thick hairs of her ideology gave her away, she who trumpeted her protest against torture while at the same time being a shameless torturer in daily life, just like the people, made in her image there in the football stadiums, 3just like the government, the oppressor, that she fought tirelessly, I only know that’s what stopped us in our tracks, the circus caught fire (a mask lay on the ground in the ring), my architecture collapsed in flames, including its iron structure, and burning myself I said ‘whore’, it was an explosion in my mouth and my hand flying another explosion in her face, and the good smack in the face wasn’t part of a ritual, I now intentionally used the palm of my hand together with the repressive weapons in her arsenal (yes, I’d give her both an outburst and a beating!), so I said ‘whore’ again and again my hand flew out, and I saw her rosy skin stain red and her whole face be covered suddenly by a swarm of ants, tears welled up in her eyes, I watched closely, my eyes burning into her face, she didn’t move, supported herself on the car, I had steel in my backbone again, she, savouring the lascivious recoil from the smack, skilfully crystallizing a complex system of gestures, her hair dishevelled, enjoyed, almost to the point of orgasm, the sensual drama of her own position, but none of that surprised me, after all I knew her well, the calibre of the thrashing didn’t matter, she had never had enough, just what would do, at that moment it was clear that I held the pendulum that had sure control over her movements, it was clear that I had decisively changed the way time went round, knowing, as I knew, the immense realms of her gluttony still left to explore, knowing, as I knew, what changes I was capable of, and it was right here in me that I thought ‘just wait, you’ll see’ ‘just wait, you’ll see all right’ was what I thought as I realized that the shit filling my mouth was already leaking out at the corners, but I didn’t lose any of this intimate substance, I caught on my tongue whatever was about to drip, what’s more the moment’s billowing smoke was extremely favourable to occultism, and I wasn’t going to waste this chance to practise the sorcerer’s fine arts, so it was like this: combusting drops of fat appeared on the metal of my cheeks, my face started to change, first the surface of my eyes, and right afterwards the obscene mass of my mouth, in an instant I was the bastard I was in bed, and in the glow of her eyes I read ‘yes, bastard, you’re the one I love’, and always attentive to the signals of her flesh I started to use my tongue silently, sinuously it worked its way into the most inconceivable of positions, and it wasn’t long before she moved her lips softly and said an ambiguous ‘you dirty man’, you needed to know her mouth up close to get what she was saying, and you needed to know this girl and her various moods to get her suggestion, I pretended that I’d forgotten everything and that the world had been squeezed down to that one metre in diameter, I was still the bastard I was in bed and she said ‘you dirty man’ again in a more salacious way, it was the same as saying ‘ask me to lie down on the lawn’, she who in her bucolic raptures would always ask me to screw in the woods, so I formed a viper from the slimy muscle of my tongue, gave it a head and a mean arrogance, ‘m’ ‘m’ ‘m’ I said, with a flick of its salacious tip, ‘dirty man, dirty man’ she said with hypnotized abandon, perhaps already entering a state of grace, still keeping her nostrils flared, her noisy breath rippling over her body, her pert breasts rising and falling, all the feathers of her body at the ready, in this situation it made no difference if you said that the bird was prepared for flight or that the bird had spread its wings on the ground, and it was to make her even more drunk with desire that I lifted my hand close to her face, and began to run my middle finger along her lower lip, and first there was a trembling, then an intense burning, slowly her mouth was opening for a perfect performance, and we started to say things to each other through our eyes (this language that I also taught her), and attentive to her mouth, I got it to fake as if it were … I was clearly saying with my eyes ‘you’d never imagined that your body had a spot so perfect for this finger of mine until I penetrated you and you moaned’, and immediately her eyes screamed back at me ‘dirty man dirty man dirty man’ as if they were saying ‘tear me open bleed me step on me’, and I felt the tip of her tongue touching my finger, furtively licking my nail, and felt her teeth, that were no longer sharp, nibbling the humid pulp, she sucked greedily on my bait, we were watching each other, and birdlime oozed from her pupils, and it was just as if I were hearing what she’d said so often in that ambivalent way ‘I never met anyone who works like you, you’re the best craftsman for my body, no question’, and so I carried on modelling a wantonness in her mouth, and then my hand slid down to the plaster of Paris of her throat, and it didn’t take long before her ravenous sucker-pores swallowed my fingers, and with my dirty mouth I said ‘I’m barefoot’ and saw how a stark despair took control of her, but without rushing I said ‘I’m not wearing socks or shoes, as always my feet are clean and moist’ and suddenly from her eyes I heard a crazed cry for help ‘loose all your demons on me now, it’s only with them that I can come’, and listening to this strangled moan I, the bastard, whispered ‘you remember the foot I once gave you?’ and here she said ‘my love’ as if she were suffocating, and I, the old man, reminded her ‘it was a foot as slim and white as a lily, remember? …’ and slowly closing her eyes she said ‘my love my love’, and I, the bastard, even asked ‘what did you do with the foot I once gave you? …’ and now in agonies she sighed ‘my love my love my love’ and that’s when I saw I really had my foot on her, and that — in my forge — I could turn the supposed rigour of her logic upside down, because if I said with a sigh ‘you see how many things I’ve taught you?’ she would have to say ‘yes my love yes’ and if I also said ‘why persist so much in trying to teach me?’ she would have to say ‘forget it my love forget it’ and if I said to her ‘it’s day already, your common sense stretched its limbs long ago, which path is it wandering down now?’ she would have to say ‘no idea my love no idea’ and seeing the sacred and obscene heat simmering in her flesh I would be able to say ‘be more careful in your judgements, put some of this burning material into them too’ and she would agree without hesitation ‘of course my love of course’ and remembering the scorn which she had heaped on me I, still the bastard, could get the last word, saying ‘and who is your only man, the clay of your clay?’ and she as loyal as ever would reply ‘you my love you’ and I’d even be able to put my tongue in her earhole, until it reached the little uterus deep in her skull, and spitting my blood in a well-aimed fiery gob, say ‘the one who uses reason incorporates his passions into it’, imbuing the grey hydrangea hidden there with a deep red, sending that anaemic flower mad for good, making a new species germinate with my thick sperm, a new species that for all I cared could live or die, because in fact it was only to save a few moments that, notwithstanding my huge turmoil, I was rioting, she got on my nerves with her visits, getting in my way every day, but I didn’t say or do any of this, and for a while I just continued to look at her numbed, crushed face beneath my feet, examining without any mercy, almost as a doctor would, the by-product of my sorcery (hadn’t I told her a hundred times that pious prostration and the erection of a saint are mutually dependent?) as I listened to her anointed lips stripping in an obsessive delirium ‘my dirty love my dirty love my dirty love’, and when I felt her little hand trembling as it slid under my shirt, become a finch that has flown from a nearby thicket to nest in my chest hairs, it was only then that I washed the bastard from my face and in a flash pounced, she was a white sheet of fear as I roared ‘take it! take the other one too!’ and held out the foot like a soldier would ‘at least take the big toe and put it between your legs, since it so tickled your clit’ I was shouting ‘go on, fucking bitch, it’s the only thing I’m leaving you, cut off the big toe while you’ve got the chance’ and I saw her dumbstruck face, the free and easy turtle, I’d known how to make her feel the weight and torture of a shell again, I’d reduced her reaction to an agony, I saw the terror in her eyes, it’s not enough to sacrifice an animal, you need to send it off with the right ritual prayers too ‘snap out of it, not a bit of my body ever again, nothing! nothing! you’ll go to the dogs too!’ I was also shouting, knowing that I was digging a deep pit in her memory forever ‘nothing! nothing of my body ever again’ ‘you’re not human’ she said coming out of her daze ‘you’re not human’ ‘out! out! you’ll go to the dogs too!’ ‘you’re not human, you’re a monster!’ ‘get out, get out of my life once and for all!’ ‘you’re a monster, you scare me’ ‘so fuck off, fraud’ ‘I’m scared’ ‘fuck off’ ‘scared scared’ ‘fuck off fuck off’ I screamed almost happily, as her car slithered crazily in reverse, not finding the way out, although the gate was open, I hadn’t even noticed, and sticking her head out she was still shouting ‘you’re not human’ and I was there pushing her car further out of control, kicking her out with a mixture of anger and laughter ‘fuck you, you little closet fascist’ ‘your mother’s a fat sow’, ‘your mother loves dick’ ‘you degenerate cum’ ‘you piece of short-billed pipit shit’ all of that ladled out with true pleasure, not to mention that Bingo was backing me up fully in the brawl, barking like he never had, carrying out dangerous leaps and spins, even throwing himself at the wheels, and then there came a terrible ‘limp dick!’ that she shouted from the road before hunkering down behind the steering wheel with the usual extras: the wet, red cheeks and the big, generous tears rolling down them, and the girl that she was, just like most of them, she wanted me as her son, but (being emancipated) wanted me much more as her man, I only know that to drown out the fury of her car accelerating away I almost tore my mouth with a ‘fuck you’ and no longer seeing Antônio’s legs, but only the bush rustling, I gathered my strength and bellowed a ‘fuck the whole world!’, ripping my chest open, bursting my jugular, having a grand old time with my scandalous behaviour, noticing a demure window on the hillside opposite open and close with a single gust of wind, but I screamed ‘fuck you all! fuck you all! fuck you all!’ and with this was bringing up offal, pluck and tripe, I was surprised and touched to see the other side of me, I even felt like turning somersaults on the lawn (only then realizing that I’d misjudged her size, she wasn’t even a dwarf, she was an insect, an ant), but instead of abandoning myself to monkeying around gleefully, I stood there for a while, looking at the ground like a hanged man, my body tangled in the threads of this swindle, my innards shredded by the acid’s action, an actor in the raw, in absolute solitude — without an audience, a stage or lights, under an already glorious and indifferent sun — struggling with a din of bloods and voices and with more distant gravel, and suddenly my thoughts drifted to her, and to the forlorn seclusion of her house at this breakfast hour, by now she’d certainly be sat looking to the side, that was what she always did after her frugal breakfast, one elbow propped on the table, her head cupped in her hand, her eyes fixed on the past, her advanced widowhood trickling by for hours on end, reliving day by day the old times of our unity, ruminating from early in the morning on the remains of the myth, having silently witnessed, year after year, the noisy destruction of all principles, and I also remembered the most intense page in her book of wisdom (next to the sermon against egoism), for even though her offspring had been scattered she was still the spiritual keeper of a rare heritage, the lesson that she always repeated on the rare occasions she saw me, a son only abandons his home when he takes a woman as his wife and raises another house in which to beget children, and his children more children, and this was nature’s spontaneous course — procreation and providing for the family through work (‘love is the only meaning in life’), and from that I passed straight to the old photo, mother and father sitting down, she’s resting her hands in her lap and has a pious look in her eyes, one foot crossed behind the other, he looks solemn, his chest thrust out, a kernel of silver holds his collar closed without a tie, and then there’s his angular face, befitting a tough farmhand, his thick moustache, his iron gaze, and the small crowd of their children standing around them, mineral, well-behaved, the odd mouth twisted in a rictus, an unsuccessful attempt to meet the photographer’s frivolous demand, and there I lingered among the foundations and the supports and the unshakeable beams of our greenhouse, we had short legs back then, but under that roof every step we took was safe, the soft hand that guided us seemed always to be lucid, and without a doubt there was something gratifying about the solidity of the chain, the joined hands, the simply laid table, the washed clothes, the measured words, the cut nails, everything within its limits, everything occurring in a circle of light, in strict opposition — no patches of half-light — to the dark place of sins, yes-yes, no-no, the stain of imprecision was of the devil, it was in childhood (in mine), no doubt about it, that the world of ideas was found, complete, perfect, undebatable ideas, which I now — in my turmoil — barely glimpsed in memory (even though the reverse side of each one was inscribed with ‘guilt improves man, guilt is one of the world’s driving forces’), while at the same time I believed piously that words — impregnated with values — each of them carried, yes, in its core, an original sin (just as a passion is always concealed behind every gesture), it occurred to me that not even the tub of the Pacific would have enough water to wash (and calm) such vocabulary, and there, empty-handed in the middle of that devastation, with nothing to lean on, not even a cliché, I only know that I suddenly let myself drop like a load, I literally ended up prostrate there in the courtyard, my head buried in my hands, my eyes an itching swarm of ants, shaking all over from a terrible explosion of sobbing (hoarse moans pulled from deep inside), until my arms were lifted by heavy peasant’s hands, Dona Mariana on the one side and Antônio on the other, he clumsy and silent, she casually at ease in spite of her bulk, straight away trying to distract me with what she was saying, cajoling me gently that I couldn’t not pass by the hutches before ‘running off to São Paulo’, saying she was ‘perplexed’ with Quitéria’s young, ‘the girl had thirteen in her first litter, thirteen! who’d have thought?’, and reminding me that ‘Pituca sired them, that naughty old rabbit, still at it at his age’, ‘perplexed!’ repeated Dona Mariana in her lullaby, only altering her tone to give a half-whispered scolding to her husband, who wasn’t pulling his weight, the two of them trying to lift me off the ground as if they were lifting a boy. 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