David Arioch – Jornalismo Cultural

I stopped walking for a few months, as soon as my body took control of my life

I still do not move and I can only think about the last time I stood up (Art: Mindcage, by Rodrigo Aviles)

I woke up one day and realized that my body was no longer mine. I tried to move myself on the bed, but it did not work. I belonged to him, but he did not belong to me. So, I kept lying there, watching the ceiling amid plaintive darkness. There were misshapen and oscillating traits. No! More than that! A dense and clear filth that reminded me of those awful bacteria that I saw in biology classes in my teen years.

I had never noticed how the liner could be so dirty. I think that concentrates the core of our rotting. Or, was it my imagination? Maybe, I was the bacterium itself, graced with a panoramic view of myself. Who knows! The truth is that my breath was still stinking and noisy. It was horrible! My nose simulated a landfill, spreading slurry every exhale. And what dripped from my nose, I didn’t feel or see. After all, I was relegated to a mere spectator of the repulsive spectacle that used my body as a stage.

How I struggled to silence my mind. Of course I could not! I closed my eyes for a few minutes, and the ambient temperature dropped to five or six degrees Celsius. I shivered more by hate than cold. I was covered with a white comforter, old and dingy, with some yellowish spots – circles of piss that damn neighbor’s cat gave me as a present when he invaded my wardrobe. What a bastard!

It’s alright! Soon I forgot the cat and wanted to get up to give a lesson in mother nature. How I wish to drag her by the hair. Maybe with each wad of hair pulled out, she would rise a degree of temperature. With 15 wads, I would leave her partially bald and we would have 20 or 21 degrees. And what a victory! And I could still use those hairs to make a duster or a little curtain for a puppet show.

Rhinitis, bronchitis and sinusitis, sinusitis, bronchitis and rhinitis, it was difficult to find out who wanted to screw me up. Dammit! Who am I trying to fool? I really smoked! And I smoked a lot! I’ve consumed four packs a day! I was a chimney more effective than any iron horse ever seen. I am the greatest collector of lung diseases that this world does not know. I should be in the Guinness Book! Holding my biggest trophy, the only lung I have left, so black it looks like a post-barbecue coal.

So what? My teeth were so blond, and my breath so grody that I could make cosplay of Beetlejuice. I loved to blow smoke on the people’s face, especially those who despised smokers. I came close, like someone who did not want anything. I concentrated on the smoke and I released it just when someone would open their mouth to say something. Then, I faked embarrassment – a pair of wide eyes, a deep breath and a nod of the head, I apologized and walk away. I had so much fun when there was a no smoke free environment. Oh! Never mind… I do not want to talk about this anymore!

Look! I had never noticed how the lining gets filled with dashed lines at dawn. They are like roundworms that dominate the backstage of the house. I think I am one because I no longer feel my vertebrae. I summarize myself to a dormant emaciated matter. It may be that all that I see and contempt is, in some proportion, a representation of myself.

I wondered how many creepy, hideous creatures inhabit this place night after night. I bet if I knocked it down, I’d find hundreds of nameless animals, never cataloged. They are beings that only exist for a few hours of the dawn, when we confuse reality, dream and nightmare. It may be that they feed of hopes, daydreams, and prolonged reflections.

Right! I still do not move and I can only think about the last time I stood up. It seemed so irrelevant, useless. “Watch your spine, correct your posture, one step after another,” How silly! I just wanted to sit and lie down, lie down and sit down. Maybe, I was born to be an armadillo. But rolling also takes so much effort that I feel shivers just imagining. And the abdominal pressure at the time of turning? Sad and painful! Being a slug is equally despicable because I’m impatient and want it all at the same time. Well, I do not feel represented by any animal, rational or not.

Dude, I love food! I fed my life so badly and it gave me the most unusual of pleasures. Where someone was feeding properly, I would approach and sit beside them. I wanted the person to be disturbed by my presence. I was a wake-up caller. I did everything I could to shock them, to see them astonished by my bad habits.

“That’s right! This is me! And I am against everything you believe in. I am here as the full proof that the world does not belong to you. The dictatorship of health will not prevail. We are still the majority and we will not be defeated. I will not allow it! Never! Never! Look! Look at his size, how much fat! I asked the clerk to put another 200 grams of bacon and 200 grams of cheddar cheese. The more industrialized the better! I demanded triple trans fat! Watch! Watch the oil trickling through the burrs of my snack. There is so much oil that we can fry a potato inside my mouth after I eat it. Do you accept it? “I suggested. Displaying my teeth caramelized by the churros that I ate before as an appetizer. Shocked, the girl next to me in the food court got up and left without a word.

Physical activities? I despised it from the first day I saw it! Wherever I passed, if someone invited me to exercise, I did not think twice before telling them to back off. What a shame! Fuck the damn thing! I will live and die as I wish! Why stand, walk or run? I hate all this with all my might! I do not even believe we were meant to walk! Whose idea was that? I hope the moron has died brutally!

Speaking of bipeds and quadrupeds, how I loved meat! I ate more than 15 pounds a week until I got atherosclerosis. Marvelous! What’s done is done. But there is no denying that it was one of the best phases of my life. When I walked through the downtown, people thought they were close to a butcher or slaughterhouse. No! There was nothing like that around us. It was the natural fragrance exhaled by my body. “What smells of raw meat, where does that come from?” “Wow! What a dead cow stink!”,”I think there’s a new butcher shop nearby”, I listened copiously.

My constant drinking also marked my life. Of course! I said it was just a social gathering. Funny! Fool of whoever believed. What I drank three times a week was what many did not consume in a month. I needed to be good at it. So I discovered an effective method to increase my tolerance for alcohol. Of course, I will not say what it is! Yes! I went so far, so far that my liver could not stay with me. Today we live in separate places.

Now, the memories of my transformation have come to my mind. I stopped walking for a few months, as soon as my body took control of my life. It was about where he wanted to go and when. So capricious, what a strong personality! If he did not like the idea, he turned off like a toy with a worn-out pile. Is he vindictive? Yeah! How can be so hateful? Last week, he allowed me to move my right leg and left arm for the last time.

I keep looking at the lining, aware of two lizards that feed on a beetle. Leaning on the open window, the neighbor’s demented cat, with its ears staring at the full moon, licks his own paws and watches them. I remember the Devil Scarab, so valuable and so useless, just as life is for so many people. I feel tired, oblivious to my body. My eyes close and I recognize that I am no longer human, only prey to who I was predator. “May your body not be the first grave of your skeleton”, wrote Jean Giraudoux in Notes et Maximes, Le Sport, 1928.

It was as if she tried to throw her essence beyond a shaky and noisy abyss

It was as if she tried to throw her essence beyond a shaky and noisy abyss (Photo: Copy)

I was eight years old. Henry and Rick came to call me on a Saturday to go to their house to play with a “different” animal. My mother allowed me to go, and we went down the street. Arriving there, I saw a goat, and she was so white and portentous that simply the fact that it exists seemed to be enough to convey the most enjoyable serenity.

She remained silent tied to a mango tree in the backyard, and since the first time I saw her, I noticed her melancholic tiny eyes. Some parts of her body had a lot of scars; the goat might have been hurt in escape attempts. While I was drawing my own conclusions, she got tired of standing and sat down on a portion of dried leaves, ignoring the rotting mangos messing up her fur.

Her head was moving slowly from side to side. At the same time, seven or eight people were shouting, laughing and talking. Dogs and cats were running around the yard. It was like a joke without time to finish. For fear of being scolded, I stayed in a corner watching the goat whom I called Angel – without telling anyone.

Henry’s father didn’t take his eyes off her. Between sips of beer, he approached the goat. And she remained indifferent to everything, didn’t react to subtle slaps she received, accompanied by a smile and a cliché phrase: “It’s toooodaay! Yeah!” I didn’t understand what he meant and I kept silent. When I coughed, Angel perceived I was sitting on the floor’s porch, resting my back.

In her eyes, there was an opacity that sometimes turned into a fortuitous shine. It was as if she tried to throw her essence beyond a shaky and noisy abyss. Fifteen minutes later, she closed her eyes, looked at the floor and stayed that way. I got up and walked up to her, then Henry’s father suddenly appeared and suggested that I should depart from the goat. “Go play over there, David! Don’t get near the goat!”

Sulky and startled, I went to my corner. Angel opened her eyes again. Even with dirty paws and its slightly turbid loin, in my ideas she was still the most unpolluted being in that place. I couldn’t associate Angel’s image to dirt. The countenance and everything emanating from her reinforced my opinion.

After a few minutes, a sudden breeze rustled the leaves of the mango tree. Angel rose, lifted her head skyward and felt the whiff of nature stroking her long thin beard. I had the impression of seeing her smiling while her fur swelled in their contemplative simplicity.

Once the zephyr left, the light gradually extinguished. The sun no longer shone on our heads. It was an early afternoon which seemed like an early evening. Worried, I ran to the house to help my mother to take clothes off the clothesline, believing that the rain would come soon, falling and dragging everything with rascality.

Back at Henry’s house, my legs trembled when I looked toward the mango tree. Angel had her throat cut and below it there were two buckets of blood splashing on the ground, painted red the leaves and mangos on the ground. I tried to touch her head with my hand, or at least the threads of her beard, but I was small and only could pet her legs.

I felt chills and cried when I saw her mellifluous rectangular eyes still damp. I knew she had been crying because her beard dripped transparency on my forehead. Angry, I walked to a men’s circle and asked why they killed the goat. “To eat! What a silly question!”, they responded as a chorus, making fun of my exasperation.

At night, before sleep, I knelt beside the bed, I prayed and asked God to put Angel in a good place, and do not let her wander aimlessly, because she died tragically and prematurely. In the morning, some people came to our house to offer goat’s meat, but my mom declined politely. Although angry, I didn’t say anything. Then, I was told that everyone who ate Angel’s flesh became ill.

Furthermore, four men who participated in the goat slaughter died in an accident in the same week, carrying cattle from one state to the other. Superstitious, Henry’s father never killed another animal. And I, over a month, continued with the same prayer: “God, put the friends of Henry’s father in a good place. But give priority to Angel because she died first.”

Within seconds, it turned into a euphoric little pig that grunted and turned around its tail

It was a landrace pig that ran through my face with his tongue (Art: Cari Humphry)

The memory still fresh of the last time I ate meat. My friends offered me a hamburger, something I spent even months without eating, and I accepted. After all, it was a friday night. “All right, just today”, I thought. I bit slowly, and without the pleasure I once had. The food that was brought had a variety of meats – chicken fillet, red meat and bacon slices. It was huge and barely fit in my hands, even though they are not small.

After eating, I looked the white paper surrounding the burger. I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash can. A long time ago, I got used to not overeating, because I see no sense in going beyond my needs. While sitting there, I lost interest in continuing to read a book that hitherto pervaded my thoughts and ramblings. I felt myself bloated, not by the amount of ingested food, but for some motivation that I believe is biologically inexplicable. Suddenly, my mouth went sour as if I had received a dose of gall. I went to my bedroom, looked in the mirror and I did not recognize myself. My eyes were translucent and in it I saw something suddenly moving, as if motivated by overblown discomfort.

I took my hands to my abdomen and I realized that my stomach had become unrecognizable, misshapen and soft. Involuntarily, it was distended in a careful concealment. It was incomprehensible because I had not eaten much. When I turned my attention to my face in the mirror, there were some risks in my carmine sclerotic. I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them had vanished. The same happened with the marks that appeared on my stomach, remembering paw touches. “What a strange thing! What’s happening to me? “, I questioned scared.

I turned off the computer, turned off the light and lay in bed. I was tired, but sleep overcame my desire to stay awake. I looked at the ceiling and I noticed that it was moving slowly. I could not be dizzy because my space notion persisted accurately. Beside me, I could see everything with precise clarity. As soon as the ceiling opened, as if it were moved from place without causing any kind of noise, clutter or dirt, the fresh rain threw diligent over me. I moved on the bed with the swiftness of those who were suffering from hypnic jerk. Standing and mesmerized by the moonlit sky that was lighting up my room with an azure light, I continued in silence, inert.

The beauty of autumnal morning offering a variegated aroma of leaves and flowers was overshadowed by miasma, brought by a flying little cow with a pig snout and crow’s feet. After all, it was a beautiful animal in its disharmonious uniqueness. I remembered the paintings of Corine Perier and Chris Buzelli. The difference was that they did not smell of death. When the little cow landed beside me, the pestilence intensified. “I didn’t drink! How bizarre is that? Am I freaking out?”, I thought. She watched me soundlessly. Her eyes grew and decreased. It looked like a heart beating. And the stench only increasing. Suddenly she gave a mooing, mixed with a cackle and groan. Then she leaned over to massage her head.

One of them jumped on my pillow and began to chirp as if he wanted something (Art: Dan Kosmayer)

Before I touched her, the little cow left the same way she arrived – flying and throwing from her breasts, some gushes of thick milk mixed with blood. A portion impacted on my head. I passed my hand and I perceived my greasy hair, with stench of curd and rust. I breathed deeply with closed eyes, trying to restore my calm. When I opened my eyes, everything was gone except the smell of death which was in fact emanated from my body, not from her.

I went back to bed suffering from a stomachache – gave me the impression that the hamburger was turning my stomach. I slept less than an hour because I heard an unusual noise which was repeated every five or ten seconds. Troubled, I bowed my head under the bed and I felt a damp warm thing caressing my complexion. It was a landrace pig that ran through my face with his tongue. In the dark, his eyes glistened as if they had their own light. He smiled and that was intriguing.

Paying much attention to me, the pig stepped back quietly, as if he was sorry. He tripped over his own feet and cried. His tears streamed down his muzzle. Cornered in a nook beside the door, his fear highlighted even more than his rosaceous skin. I was confused and startled when the pig asked me a question with a faltering voice: “Why did you eat my mother?”

The question was not repeated and I thought I was delirious. I did not answer. I preserved the silence until the sudden arrival of retching. Pale, I saw my hands turned diaphanous. Something rose in me while my body was warming and cooling. When I opened my mouth, the bacon bits were released as one-piece to the floor. They joined as if they were magnetized.

Within seconds, it turned into a euphoric little pig that grunted and turned around its tail. As he entered, the pig jumped on her and, eagerly, licked her. The two were there together, so close that I had the impression that they shared the same breath. When I looked away quickly, they disappeared. I lay in bed again. I slept for two or three hours until I saw an animal playing on my back. He was light and smelled like corn grits and soybean meal. There were three chicks walking over me.

One of them jumped on my pillow and began to chirp as if he wanted something. The animal started to scratch on me, trying to convey a message. I stood and watched him climb up my arm like a bridge. Over my shoulder, he chirped softly, communicating with the other two who repeated the path. In a burst, the retching came with everything. From my mouth, came out a few small pieces of chicken fillet. Before falling to the ground, won the shape of a chicken that flew short flapping her wings and making a scrannel shambles.

Only an ox who introduced himself as Pastiche spoke to me (Art: OuShiMei)

The chicks jumped on him and the four ran out the door in the silent darkness of the morning. I didn’t follow them. With my arms flat on the bed, I watched everything with battered and half-closed eyes. Exhausted, I fell into bed and fell asleep. In deep sleep, I saw myself eating the hamburger from last night. With every bite, I felt the pain of finitude, the uninterrupted scent of death. All the sadness of the passing was absorbed by my body, making me experience occasional chills.

There was fear, anxiety, stress, helplessness and agony. The dead animals concentrated all in their flesh wich fillled my lunch, vibrating inside me the agglutination of unintentional and solemn negative energy emanated by the certainty of decline. The pain ran through my essence and made me watch the final moments of cattle, pigs, goats and poultry. Many were weeping before the execution because they recognized that their vitalities were will be inhibited early.

Death created a tortuous path that subsisted in me. “See my pain, feel my pain. A world with so many animals and less lives. One day men will suffer like us. The meat shall remain, but there will be nobody to feed. So, the world will rot, surrendered to the unrestrained excesses of production”, echoed in my mind a voice that although well articulated simulated a syncretism of animal sounds of various species.

“I was born in these days. Just look at my size, I grew up. And tomorrow, I will have to die because that’s what my creator wanted”, said a resigned chicken in a plastic cage, before having his feet chopped off by a machete. The more gullible, who did not know their fate, fluttered in vain. They were badly wounded, but they were fighting for freedom with innocence and awkwardness, since unaware of another reality other than confinement.

In a large farm out of sight, the pigs commented that there was a great slaughter the next day. One of them managed to escape and reveal the plot to other animals imprisoned 50 and up to 100 meters away. “We were created to die! To die! Only that! Nothing more!”, shouted a young clumsy pig. During the night, the animals got together and dug a ditch mammoth. In sequence, they jumped on the hole and asked dozens of horses from the stud farm to cover them with soil.

“At least we’ll die with dignity”, argued one of the highest rated pigs of the property. They chose to kill themselves because they believed that they would lose their souls. when they were served as food to men. The next day, everyone was dead – the little ones, young adults and older animals, embraced regardless of species. In front of the huge makeshift tomb there was a scratched sentence on the earth – “The speciesism is like a snorting candle in the rain.”

I woke up again when I heard a scream. I found myself behind bars being transported on a truck. I searched my hands and I could not find them. I looked down and realized I was no longer a human being, except for my own conscience, psychological and emotional condition. Physically I was a sturdy black ox flanked by oxen. Most remained silent. Only an ox who introduced himself as Pastiche spoke to me.

The time is coming, my friend. Our journey came to an end. Pasture, feedlot and slaughter. It is our fate”, he lamented, articulating a mournful and prolonged bellowing. Suddenly, everyone was silent, with their bulky heads in their own paws. I heard a strange and unison sound. It was like a ritual I did not understand because I was not a real ox.

I recognized the weight of death when the truck driver lost control and fell from a cliff. Down there, where the grass penetrated my nostrils and reluctantly invaded my mouth, I saw the broken and open body  of the truck. Around me, my traveling companions were killed, including Pastiche that brought an expression of satisfaction in the midst of misery. There was a smell of narcotic blood, manure and feed based on corn.

With few injuries and abrasions, I got up and ran across the green meadow. My ears recognized the lofty oxytone sound of a flock of swallows. I kept running without stopping, for an infinite land where man could never reach me. Awakened again from a dream, I was startled, with my heart pounding, feeling in my lips a taste that seemed to be of my own flesh. Ensnared, I saw that there was still at my side the hamburger’s white paper, an unforgettable memory of an avalanche.

From a distance, he looked like a suspicious character out of one of the Charles Dickens stories

The first edition of David Copperfield, the greatest treasure of the John Romani’s family (Foto: Reprodução)

At least once a month, the bookseller John Romani came to our house at Artur Bernard Street, when I was nine years old. Through the branches of tropical almond, I saw him crossing the Silvio Meira Street, carrying the same brown suitcase, adorned with names of dozens of writers.

From a distance, he looked like a suspicious character out of one of the Charles Dickens stories. He was no more than 35 years old, medium build, olive skin, a peculiar walk and dressed as a man of the 1920s, with his fedora hat carefully aligned, and a slim fit coat. Next to the suitcase, he always carried an umbrella, that could be taken apart and used as a walking stick.

When I met him, he was in the house gate talking to my mother, offering a collection of 16 volumes of Barsa Encyclopedia. As the bookseller spoke, in a growing paroxysm, everything came alive and became more important than it really was. He smiled, gestured and moved his feet from one side to the other, making the encyclopedia presentation a theatrically didactic performance.

That was how John Romani persuaded her to buy the collection, in negotiations more motivated by their selling methods than the quality of the product. His power of persuasion only did not surpass his most virtuous human qualities. And that day, he asked permission from my mother to rest for a few minutes on the balcony. She consented without flinching.

Invited in, he sat in a chair with nylon strings and my mother went to the kitchen to bring a cup of coffee while the drizzle shone serene on our garden. Before opening the suitcase, he took off his hat and kept it on the umbrella’s tip, anchored on the window grid. He adjusted his brown wavy hair, and asked my name. I answered and he shouted excitedly:

“Wow! Stupendous! David! Do you know if your parents chose your name because of the young David Copperfield? Do you know his story?” I smiled and enthusiastically with his charisma, I asked if he spoke about the magic or the boy. “That’s right! The boy!”, he said. With the simplicity inherent in children, I told him that he was an orphan, and suffered greatly because he lived alone in the world. Nevertheless, he believed in humans, in a better world.

Very good! You know, David? I’m Romani, I have gypsy origin, and we never believe that names are chosen at random. I’m sure it says a lot about who you are and who you will be. David Copperfield was extremely persevering, a dreamer, and though I have known you today, I believe that you will be like him. Our meeting has a special meaning that one day may make more sense in your life – told the bookseller with an enigmatic expression, which further highlighted his square face and his velvety big eyes like a fruit of the tropical almond.

My mother did not take long to return with the coffee. John Romani thanked her and drank in silence, watching Happy and Chemmy playing in the garden, rolling on the damp grass, with the jasmine scent, and stubbornly jumping on the plant bed. With a curious look, the bookseller smiled at the spectacle of everyday life. He scrutinized so strictly the trivial things that even the most ordinary of scenes seemed to convey something surreal.

When I threatened to take off Happy and Chemmy from the grass, preventing them from becoming even more dirty, I heard a double and synchronized sound. The bookseller was opening the suitcase. At the same moment, I pulled away from the two poodles and approached him, intrigued to know what he was carrying.

“Look, I’ll tell you a secret. I usually do not show anyone the treasure I carry with me, but as I believe you are a genuine David Copperfield, I know that there is no problem”, he said, then asked me to close my eyes and extend my arms. Soon, I felt something plastic between my little fingers.

On my hands was a neat copy of David Copperfield. The cover was green and had provocative illustrations of the adventures of the young orphan. Although I did not understand in depth the importance of that moment, I was very happy to hold the work in my hands. And the countenance of Romani made me realize that I was faced with an invaluable opportunity.

“It’s different from the book of St. Vincent School. It seems that this is older and less colorful. Remember an old magazine, a hornbook”, I commented without hiding innocence. The bookseller gave a short laugh, took the work from a protective packaging and asked me to read what was written on the cover. “You forgive me, I am not good in English”, I justified. Then, he said I did not need to read everything, and showed me the year of the book – 1849.

This was the first edition of David Copperfield, the greatest treasure of the John Romani’s family. His great-grandfather Vladimir received a copy of the hands of Charles Dickens shortly after the release. “He fled to England in 1846, and later he met the author at the corner of the publisher Bradbury and Evans in London. My great-grandfather worked as a shoeshine boy, and one day Charles Dickens talked to him. If it does not fail my memory, he said the following, before handing David Copperfield: “Here’s a seed. Maybe becomes a gift”, recounted the bookseller smiling.

The young gypsy met Dickens three more times. In the last rendezvous, the author made the 15-year-old boy cry when he stated that he might have written a better story if David Copperfield was based on Vladimir’s life. Born in Romania, the great-grandfather of John Romani was a serf, slave of a wallachian boyar – transylvanian aristocrat. He was an orphan, and he spent most of his childhood doing housework and working in mining in exchange for food, until one day Vladimir managed to escape.

Even as a child, I was awestruck with the narrative, and the resourcefulness of the bookseller guaranteed more realism to the story. The copy of David Copperfield, who I held with both my hands, had a dedication, and Vladimir’s name written by Charles Dickens appeared on the protagonist’s name, a simple gesture of affection.

There was a moment that I noticed him with teary eyes, trying hard not to weep. He made so much effort that the veins of his neck stood out, and revealed a discreet and vivid tattoo near his neck. It was based on a combination of colors that I could not identify. There was no design, only two words – Pacha Dron. I discovered a few years ago which means the way of life.

As soon as the mist disappeared, John Romani packed David Copperfield and tucked it inside the suitcase, with the same care that a mother dedicated to her son to put him to sleep in the crib. When the suitcase was closed, I felt a warm and fleeting air caressing my cheeckbones. The bookseller stood up, said goodbye to my mother and I accompanied him to the gate. Outside, he snapped his fingers, pointed at me and said: “Goodbye, David Copperfield!” He gave a wink and went to Arthur Bernard Street as a singular character. If in coming, and by far, he seemed to me a kind of Uriah Heep, in turn, he resembled more a hybrid of Ham Peggotty and Dr. Strong.

John Romani visited me over a year. Regardless of climate and weather, he always returned. One day, when it was raining a lot, the bookseller clapped his hands in front of my house – he was soaked, unprotected by the umbrella which was useless by the violence of the water. “Commitment is commitment!”, he claimed smiling. After hearing a good scolding from my mother, the kind that parents give their rioters children, he watched, hid his laughter and, crestfallen, accepted the reproach, until we started to laugh.

Attached to a profession that came into his family through his great-grandfather Vladimir, his greatest satisfaction was through the streets selling books. And for him, nothing was more important than the pleasure of telling stories and arouse feelings. On one occasion, when he was robbed, he gave all the money and bent over the suitcase in the middle of the asphalt, protecting the books; until the bandits disappeared as if they had never approached him.

At our last meeting, next to Christmas, John Romani left me as guardian of a Fountain pen that his great-grandfather gave to his grandfather hours before he died. “David Copperfield, this pen was used by Charles Dickens in the draft of Great Expectations. And what is the greater example of hope that put in your hands something that exists since 1860 or even earlier? Yeah…”, he said. That was the last time I saw the bookseller to whom I still keep the Fountain pen.

Hopefully, when the reality ceases to exist for me, as the vaporous shadows that my imagination separates voluntarily this time, I can find what is truly most important next to me, with my raised finger pointing to heaven! – wrote Dickens in David Copperfield, in an excerpt modified by me.

Noah came behind me, tapped my shoulder twice and gave me an invitation

I was in the Municipal Cemetery of Alto Paraná talking to a stranger named Noah (Photo: Copy)

On a normal day, still far from the Holiday of Finados (Day of the Dead), I was in the Municipal Cemetery of Alto Paraná talking to a stranger named Noah. A short distance from the entrance, we were talking about life and death, while few people came in and came out of the place.

The weather was still mild and the sun had not shown up that morning, making me see everything in front of me as if I were surrounded by a gothic painting, where the low light lauded the shadows and showed, an in unusual way, tombs, crosses, people and animals that composed those typically christian scene.

For a moment, I rubbed my eyes and realized that the fact that everything look bigger was not an illusion, but a temporary manifestation of nature, able to belittle or enhance humans in many different ways, simply by manipulating the weather, time and spatial sense.

I noticed that it had been raining for the past few days, and the trees that surrounded the cemetery exuded perfume of bark and roots, a blended fragrance, that confused even the best apothecaries. One of them, occasionally swayed the branches and dripped on my head, as if to warn me about something.

I just rubbed my hands on my damp hair, and occasionally I heard Noah reporting his adventures while he was traveling on horseback on dirt roads, and sleeping on graves of abandoned cemeteries. Once, he woke up with phalanges of a corpse on his chest. He never knew how those bones ended up over his body.

In a moment of silence, I heard the song of a trogon with a bronze chest. On a lofty cross, he seemed lost in thought, watching me as the mist veiled his feet. “Have you heard of Pragueira Verduga?”, asked Noah, diverting my attention from the bird. I said no and he told me that it’s a worm that gnaws bronze plates whenever the humidity is too high.

When I left and walked toward the parking lot, where there was no one, Noah came behind me, tapped my shoulder twice and gave me an invitation: “Man, let’s go there to pick up some bronze plaques. I believe there is some very good stuff. Let’s go?” Astonished, I did not believe what I heard. Then, he insisted on the offer and I promptly refused.

His countenance changed quickly. The serene and thoughtful mien was replaced by a withering look and a wicked laugh. Noah tilted his head toward his feet and said with a sardonic smile: “Alright! But I have a present for you. I call it the Philosophy of Gunpowder. It burns instantly, allowing a new kind of understanding of life.”

Inert, I watched Noah showing a caliber .38 revolver wrapped in a piece of orange flannel inside his backpack. Without hesitation, he ordered me to give two thousand dollars kept in my wallet. “I don’t have this money in my wallet. Where did you get that idea?, I asked. Noah said he had a vision of someone with my profile come to the cemetery in the morning, carrying $2,000. I opened my wallet and showed that I had only $200.

I put the money over a short wall and threw my wallet at his feet, so that he looked at the content. Angered, Noah took aim the gun at me. I did not run or threaten to attack him. I simply kept my eyes toward him as my legs seemed to dissolve, wanting to immerse into the moist dappled soil. “Maybe I’ll become something that springs from the earth, or I will disappear as a fuse of the gunpowder that will invade me”, I thought, before I lose myself in a vacuum where existence and nonexistence look also like insomniacs.

Noah pulled the trigger, but there were no bullets, and he did not know that. He ran to the side of the road, entered in a hearse, and disappeared. My $200 was still on the short wall where the breeze moved everything, with the exception of the notes. After, I took my wallet and my money, I went to the landfill near the cemetery. There, I handed the money to the children who were looking for something salvageable from the debris. In the same week, I read in the newspaper that Noah returned to the Our Home Psychiatric Hospital, of Loanda.

It all transpired truthful, as an antithesis of artificiality of the concrete world that surrounded us

Lada, the goddess of love and beauty that I met through Sonya (Art: Igor Ozhiganov)

I have always considered it intriguing to meet people at random, without planning or intent. It seems that everything flows more naturally, since there is no concern to surprise someone. You see yourself in one place and start talking without expecting anything from the other person, nor she you. No tension, no anxiety, there is only the moment that can be ephemeral or lasting – and may or may not turn into something else.

There is beauty in unpredictability, and maybe it subsists in the absence of expectations, the fact that sometimes you can be in a place simply by being, with no intention of getting lost or finding a way.  Clarifying the introduction, I will relate a story to be taken into account.

One day, as I finished my college assignment, I stayed away from my classroom. I went down the third block staircase and I passed a group of young people who were talking so loud that conversation echoed through the building. Then, I sat on a bench in front of the first block. I was quietly, paying attention to everything around me. There was little movement in the courtyard, which was quite predictable, since most of the students were in classrooms.

Occasionally some people passed by me, heading towards the other blocks. The conversations ranged from backbiting to academic concerns. I thought it was funny to see girls dressed in such fine form. I started to think about how long they took to dress themselves. Expensive clothes, haughty posture, pointed nose and shaped hair almost geometrically, everything endorsed in my ideas the existence of a fatuous world, who aspires the most tangible of the fragile perfections. It was beautiful and sad. But I was not there to evaluate or judge, it didn’t mean much to me.

“What interest I had in the way people get dressed?” I always went to college dressed the same way, often in jeans, a heavy metal band t-shirt and sneakers or combat boots. I saw the world through the jet-black hair that lay on my forehead and lined on my eyes, dark as night.

At the beginning of the second millennium, I was wearing a large labret spike, an elongated pointed piercing that blazed between my lips and my chin. Even in the dark, it sparkled and attracted curious and nosy looks. I lost the count of how many people approached me over six years to ask questions about it.

Even after so many approaches, I continued explaining that it did not hurt, it was not difficult to sanitize and it did not hurt to put it. “But how do you kiss someone with it? It is not uncomfortable?”, some people questioned. At the time, it was not common to find people with such adornment. And it was precisely because of this labret spike that I met an Italian girl with Russian descent.

That night, in front of Block 1, it was more than ten minutes that I was sitting on the same bench. I left the classroom because I did not feel well. So, I was out there aspirating a bit of algid breeze that night fortuitously sent to me. Together, she brought a handful of leaves gathered around my feet, forming a mixed carpet of green and brown. Time passed, and the greenish balm anticipating the rain intensified.

“Today it does not come”, I predicted, observing the partially clear sky that confounded the forecasters for several days. It was at that moment, when I decided to get up to go to the bathroom, when a young woman approached me. Her voice was sweet and gentle, full of a strong and unfamiliar accent: “That must hurt, doesn’t it?”, she joked smiling, showing the ball of her labret. I replied that it only hurts when I fall with my chin on the floor – and I smiled briefly. Then she asked if she could sit. “Sure, no problem …”, I said. Her name was Sonya, and to my surprise, she brought a sudden autumnal warmth which appeased the abysmal cold night.

Although she was a foreigner, she spoke Portuguese with astonishing fluency. We talked about music and cinema. Without delay, the conversation turned into a philosophical and existentialist flame – filled with satires, aphorisms and bifurcated and meaningless comments. Human behavior, the meaning of life and our role in the world appeared ironically between topics, as well as the essence of the non-existent. “Things can make sense, but do not always, right?” “Nothing does not necessarily have to be only nothing, neither more than nothing.”

“How can anyone know what the taste of the night is if it is not able to absorb its flavor with closed eyes, recognize her from her perfume?” “I don’t want to have a mechanical existence, which does not allow me to take time for thinking and questioning. If I completely surrender to work, I’m afraid I can cease to exist. Maybe in a few years I will not see anything in the mirror. I will have to embitter the disappearance of my own reflection. ” “Ni ni ni ni ni. ”

Looking around us, we were like two strangers, scattered between comedy and drama of a variegated universe, such as those that mix real people and cartoon characters. We were ourselves – unveiled without the need for simulation – and that fed our noisy humanity in abstraction. You have the same feeling when you are a kid and go out to play with your first little friend. Within minutes, your eyes no longer see strange, and you realize the lightness of a contact on the threshold of life is so essential and substantial as to hold the maternal hand, feel the sublime and domestic warmth.

After that day, we continued to see each other. My fascination and deference by Sonya evolved to the proportion of all that we did not say, though we understood. Talking, as necessary as silence. I saw her as one of those rare people who can make someone dive within yourself to rediscover bigger, livelier, lighter, more transparent, more free and so much more.

She radiated joy; not the fake kind, ravishing, effusive or ill-considered, but placid, unfeigned and melic as their kabbalistic brown-green eyes; itself lights illuminating more than any light in our surroundings. Her almond long hair sparkled as gold thread outlining her fine and graceful features, further enhancing her beauty.

Even without lipstick, her lips blushed as fresh and wild strawberries. When she smiled, displaying exquisite niveous teeth, her dimples sprouted sweetly, more beautiful than the most portentous illuminated manuscript. It all transpired truthful, as an antithesis of artificiality of the concrete world that surrounded us. We learned more about life and human nature between the lines of our eyes. It was not difficult, if we saw ourselves in each other, in the completeness of spontaneity.

One night, when I did not have class, we met in her apartment. We went to the kitchen, and I helped her to prepare piroshki, buns stuffed by her with fruits and vegetables. We ate and sat on the couch to watch “Ladri di Biciclette”, by masterly neorealist Vittorio de Sica. In the scene where they steal the bike of the miserable paper hanger Antonio Ricci, I noticed my right shoulder wet. When I looked to the side, I saw Sonya crying, with inflamed eyes and eburnean skin made red. I smiled, nudged her with innocence and made fun of her sensitivity. She buried her face in her fine hands, changed her mien and gave me two pinches.

At the end of the movie, she told me the story of Lada, the goddess of love and beauty in slavic mythology. “She had similar attributes with Freya, Isis and Aphrodite. She had long, golden hair. She prefered it in braids with a grain wreath, which symbolizes abundance. But she could also change something in her appearance if she did not want to be recognized. Lada was very popular among the ancient slavs, because she was able to replace the winter cold embrace for the delightful pleasant heat”, she narrated.

Later, with the arrival of a young woman with whom Sonya shared the apartment, we walked to the elevator entrance, where we said goodbye with a hug that lasted nearly five minutes. Residents passed us complaining about the cold that we did not feel. They were surprised to see me wearing a t-shirt. My jacket was resting on my right arm, unconcerned with what awaited me on the streets. I smiled and closed my eyes, absorbing the organic balm of her hair and the predicates that life emanated from her body.

Outside, the drizzle was falling and disappeared before touching my skin. Many people walked quickly holding a purse or a briefcase on their heads, fearing of suspended water droplets. I walked for a few blocks, and felt my body so heated that even the wind gusts, that twisted the finer branches of the trees, didn’t hit me. I felt the warm arms of Sonya around me, softer than satin sheets. Halfway, the serene dissipated and the cloudy sky cleared for a moment. Some passersby pointed to the sky, where a moving woman’s face was smiling while in primacy crumbles.

I suspected that the inventor of the cigarette was confused when he was choosing the ingredients, and created something unpleasant

Me and my brother Douglas walked 100 meters to get one or two cigarette packs in a bar on Federal District Avenue

In my childhood, I bought cigarettes for my parents. Yes, I and all my friends and colleagues who were born in the 1980s and had smoking parents. My mother abandoned addiction in my teens, but my father, an inveterate smoker, died because of a lung cancer. He started smoking early, when Hollywood stars helped make the cigarette in an obtuse symbol of charm, sensuality and rebellion.

I never asked why he smoked. But one day, when I was a child, I said to my mother that “only the steam train had reason to smoke, because his move depended on burning coal.” Since childhood, I did not undestand the idea of putting something in the mouth just to smoke. I associated that image with the black smoke coming out of the tailpipes of old trucks we saw on the streets. Carbon oxide, sulfur oxide, nitrogen oxide and aromatic hydrocarbon, I learned later.

“Maybe people who smoke are like the exhaust of trucks, the difference is that they produce less smoke because they are smaller. And maybe it is less dirty because it comes straight from the mouth”, I wrote in a notebook when I was seven or eight years old. I never put a cigarette in my mouth. I do not boast about that. No! I am lying! I liked to pretend to smoke with a chocolate cigarette between my lips, like the black boy smiling on the package. After all, the idea of smoking, however bad it was, preserved his romanesque ruse in play.

At ten years old, I suspected that the inventor of the cigarette was confused when he was choosing the ingredients, and created something unpleasant. Perhaps, the original idea was to make something good come out of the mouth of the people, rather than a grizzly smelly smoke. The irony already subsisted in the fact that the smoke alone was suspected in its cloudiness, as a slacker veiling its true intentions.

At seven years old, I started buying cigarettes when we lived on Pernambuco Street. Me and my brother Douglas walked 100 meters to get one or two cigarette packs in a bar on Federal District Avenue. Because of the smoke in there, it was like a stage moments before a show. The difference was that the dry ice was not as dark as cigarette smoke. Nor stank like those bodies macerated by addiction to alcohol and tobacco.

Some men coughed as if they were about to throw or expel pieces of tissue from their bodies. That was the reality of the addicts, and I found myself in front of it in the early years of my life. I liked the place, witnessing the social salad composed of people from different age groups – where rich and poor people, vagrants and workers, mingled informally.

Actions, expressions and reactions of joy, sadness, dissatisfaction, anger, wisdom, ignorance, everything could be found in the Mistress Mary’s bar, mother of my friend Fabiano. However, no feeling seemed more deployable than a hybrid of illusion and disappointment. In that place, taciturn men arrived smiling and went away crying as soon as appearances uncovered their essences.

At the counter, Mistress Mary kept a baseball bat, nicknamed “judgment” to contain the rioters. She chided drunkards, gave advice and sometimes fed the miserables. It was visceral how her face changed from one second to another as if someone did something wrong. Stevedores, street vendors and street artists went there often. One day, I got a wooden frame with my image carved by Maneta, a sculptor who traveled throughout Brazil hitchhiking.

While some people sat on the side tables, others preferred the counter, feeling the smell of food preservation, listening to the sound of the freezer and from the TV with a wooden box. It  was unusual to find someone at the bar who did not smoke. I zigzagged through the spaces, trying to avoid inhaling the smoke that moved through the room like a snake trying to swallow me. Even worse was when my nose clogged because of allergic rhinitis.

At the counter, I sat on a stool, swung my legs, asked for two packs of cigarettes and watched the sweets in the showcase. Once, Mistress Mary gave me two packs. I paid, I kept the packs in the left pocket of my shorts and the change in the right pocket. I went out there away from the smoke and heard laughter and cries of three or four men entertained in a game of cards. “Thief! thief! That’s what you are, you rascal pig!”, yelled a bearded big man with such a deep voice that my eardrums throbbed. I felt like I was close to the devil himself.

He sat on two chairs instead of one, and his hand came to be bigger than the head of his opponents. Startled, I watched the little cards disappearing in his hands. It was as if they were miniatures on paper. Suddenly, the man looked at me and said: “What is it, boy? Did you lose something?” Without opening my mouth, I nodded no and walked away. Before stepping on the sidewalk, I saw him pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit one and swallowed so greedily that in a few seconds the cigarette was reduced to ashes, leaving only a tiny filter slipping in a wooden ashtray.

His mouth was also enormous. When he aimed his nose to the ceiling, and exhaled the smoke, it was as if a cloud too heavy to support himself formed over his head, like a glutton riddled fog. That was the Turpentine, a smoker and drinker professional, they said. He worked for the largest companies of tobacco and distillates in Brazil. In the 1980s, it was not difficult to find young people and even older people who dreamed of this life. Drinking, smoking and nothing else, yes, it was the ideal of many people. At home, while my mother was preparing a dough in the kitchen, I told her what happened at the bar. She had fun with my story, although she did not know the evil-looking giant.

At that time, I came to believe that the world was of smokers. Wherever I walked, people talked about cigarettes. TV, radio and billboards were always contributing to the glamorization of smoking. In the downtown, after school, I always saw empty packages and cigarette butts near the curb. They offered up free samples. And of course, some smokers were more educated than others. My mother, for example, avoided smoking near me and my brother. When he noticed that I was watching him, my father copiously passed the cigarette from the right hand to the left, trying to hide the smoke behind a book, and declared: “Do what I say, not as I do.”

In the morning, one time or another, I watched my mother changing the sheets burned by cigarette embers. Perhaps, those holes with black borders meant more than we imagined. After all, they were misshapen and uncertain as small tumors. “Yesterday, I told myself it was the last. I did not imagine that would be the end, I would not smoke more until my death. I preferred to think that if I stopped now, I would be able to smoke from time to time”, wrote Henri-Pierre Jeudy in” The Last Cigarette”.

Gave me the impression that they wanted to break through the roof and hit the skies

I stopped bothering them until the evening I met the tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”, by the english writer Benjamin Tabart (Art: Lindsey Bell)

One day, when I was six years old, me and my brother Douglas were at home, in the living room, flanked by colossal ornamental tassels of my mother. They were stained and so beautiful that we were around them, watching and touching: “It looks like hair corn, but much more colorful!”, I said.

The way they struggled to touch the ceiling, when the breeze invaded the living room, gave me the impression that they wanted to break through the roof and hit the skies. Their slender profiled shapes invited our tiny hands to tickle each other with their fringes. In a short time, and redder than one of the tassels, we rolled on the floor laughing, scratching our heads, faces and arms. The nudges on my ears intensified the guffaws.

The Shambles were so big that the parquet floor, freshly polished by my mother, vibrated and earned fingerprints and marks of elbows and foot soles. The truth is that the tassels served us up to play hide and seek. They suffered in our presence, and sometimes I suspected that they fluttered more by fear than by fortuitous incidence of light air.

“Here come these crazy little boys,” perhaps they thought, twitching timidly. It looked like they cowered with our arrival, as a girl committed to not be noticed. Often, when I came home from school, I threw my backpack on the bed and went to the living room. I ran around the tassels, imitating an indian warrior apprentice. Occasionally, I stuck my head between them, observing the absence of lamp’s light. I closed my eyes and I felt a chimeric and auspicious perfume.

I imagined a raging river, where I could flow like its waters, if I threw myself without fear. With the coloring pens, I made some scratches on my face. I howled with a fake voice and continued to bother the tassels until it was time to go to school. One day, I dragged the tassel to change its position and I felt a force pushing me almost to exhaustion. While people say that the tassels had no life, I was surprised to see a little water on the parquet floor, around and below the tassels.

I thought the tassels had been crying for me and I stopped bothering them until the evening I met the tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”, by the english writer Benjamin Tabart. In the evening, at home, I lay down on the bunk with swollen eyes. I digressed by the story told by teacher Agnes, and considered: “If they have no life, why do they look bigger? Strange… very strange… ”

The next day, my doubts increased exponentially when I saw that they were bigger than ever. I told my brother Douglas what happened and he also came to confirm my suspicion. The tassels were pretending they were a beanstalk.

A few minutes before lunch, came the certainty that something needed to be done. There were beans around the tassels. We smiled, we scratch our hands and looked at each other, mechanically moving the head up and down in agreement. “You mean, you can not pretend anymore? Uh-huh …”, I concluded.

The next day, while my mother and my uncle talked on the porch, my brother and I went to the living room. Before that we looked at the surroundings to make sure we would not be surprised by anyone. Douglas took out a lighter and I took another. Face to face, we nodded our heads, and lit the two – touching the tassels that burned like silent giant squib, who could not whistle.

Soon they became an incandescent nothing. The fire went up so fast that I fell back, feeling my body warm and my vision slightly blurred. Tilting my head back, I saw the ceiling glowing. The fire, alive as we had never seen, earned transfigured forms until the moment that Uncle Lu, with the help of my mother, came to prevent it from spreading.

We watched everything in our inertia. The rapid intervention did not prevent the liner from staying black. And so we earned our own mourner sky without moon or stars, just a static darkness that overshadowed the fortuitous glimmer trying to illuminate the tassels remained.

We were grounded for a long time. Nevertheless, we felt like heroes, believing that we avoided the giant people eater to ever come down the beanstalk transformed into tassels. “It would not be long until he comes. We did well”, we agreed. After a beating belt and a week without going out to play, my mother discovered the reason why we put fire in tassels.

On the day of revelation, I learned that before the fire, the vase of the tassels was replaced by another equal, but with shallow background, giving the impression that they were larger. And the water around the tassels was poured in the morning when my mother went to our bedroom with a bucket of water to clean the floor.

“The grain fell to the ground as I ran around the room with an open package of beans to answer the phone”, she told us. We listened in silence, we undersood and we acknowledged our guilt. Back to the bedroom, we smiled at each other. I threw a grain of raw beans at my brother and he did the same. It was not necessary to articulate words. “True innocence is ashamed of nothing”, said Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

How could it be gloomy if there are plants growing around the graves?

I didn’t consider a graveyard as a dark place. Quite the opposite (Photo: Copy)

In my childhood, I liked to go to the cemetery. I didn’t go there very often, but the experience quite pleased me, because it gave me the impression that I was entering another world, where the living meets the dead. I didn’t consider a graveyard as a dark place. Quite the opposite. How could it be gloomy if there are plants growing around the graves? If dogs and cats frequent the place?

It wasn’t hard to understand why. The calm, the preeminent silence on most days, allowed the most attentive beings hear the sounds of the earth, besides harmony and dissonance of the species in their insightful relationships with nature. I still remember a couple of chalk-browed mockingbirds singing a short distance from the grave of my great-grandmother, a few steps from the necropolis entrance.

The soft chirping accompanied the solemn breeze that came as a breath. It protruded from the top of a tree, where cotton, grass and dry twigs were a nest-shaped basket. “Hmm … one will be born”, I thought. Suddenly, a thrush leaned next to the white wall, renovated with lime, and started scratching the ground in search of food. He watched me without worry and continued scratching the soil, perhaps confident in his shrewdness, as he was at home, where the stranger was me.

I turned away and walked to the left to read the inscriptions and epitaphs written extemporaneously in concrete or engraved on bronze plates. “Why are the graves so different? They couldn’t be equals?”, I asked my parents. They explained that the greatest normally belong to the rich. Some people believe that the bigger the grave, the higher the level of importance of the deceased. Based on this pharaonic belief, it is assumed that even strangers will be attracted by the mausoleums. The impressiveness always helped them stand out among the rest, as a flourish that naively romanticize the inevitable fate of all beings.

In my reflections, tombs, however different they were, reminded me of product packaging or gift packages. I mean, no matter how sumptuous the grave was, the truth is that they are regarded with the same matter. Some mausoleums I saw as strongholds created to protect or ensure the fragile human transience. Doors, windows and large rings made me suspect that perhaps the family believed in the possibility of a return of the deceased loved one. “Do they think that one day the dead will get up and walk out the door?”, I asked.

I also learned that sometimes a homeric tomb may reveal a material form of affection, or delayed compensation to the dead for some misunderstanding or meager participation in your life. I heard stories of people moved by flagellant remorse spent small fortunes in the construction of tombs. Some works cost more expensive than a house. The materials were brought from other parts of Brazil and other countries, thus ensuring the catacomb a sui generis privilege.

“Did you know that Orlando’s family hired a mannerist artist to create the project of the grave?” I heard this one morning. Perhaps there was an intrinsic relationship with the memorial or human absurdity before the finitude, an exercise in symbolic perpetuation. “Let’s create something so that he is never forgotten. For centuries after his death he is still remembered. Even though none of us live long, others, even strangers, will be here to see him”, someone thinks, refusing to believe that the death of our always changes something within us, but the world will continue following his natural course, confirming our smallness, regardless of our pain.

Looking around, and seeing both assortment of colors, types, sizes and decorations, I remembered a lesson from teacher Babeto. He showed us photos of a graveyard in France, where death reaffirms the indistinctness of humans. On the green lawn was just white crosses in concrete. Everything seemed so uniform, harmonious, fair and consistent. After all, there is nothing to be proved when life fades, as we are what we do in life.

Perhaps some are too passionate to accept that their loved ones were also overcome by passing, like so many others. So, I don’t doubt that for some, the grave is now seen as an address, where the end is to be postponed until the time that the last brick or marble was wrapping the coffin.

Anyway, I never felt as intrigued by mausoleums, like how I felt for old graves, helpless, relegated to ostracism – which rarely receive visits from family and friends of the deceased. Curious and inquisitive, I found vaults abandoned for decades, built by families that no longer exist, with stories and surnames lost in time – obsolete and extinct as rare specimens. Some graves have vanished because they were not perpetual, mostly of peasants or humble people.

In the 1990s, for example, I visited the grave of two little girls that were ten years old, childhood friends of my mother. On a rainy day in the 1960s, they were struck by lightning while they washed dishes in the back of the house. They died in agony on a dirt floor that darkened the light hair that covered their faces.

The tragedy touched many ranchers who walked on foot for long distances to pray for the children, helpless, in the most allegorical of weaknesses, surrounded by coffee plantations that soon would cease to bloom and bear fruit. Mistress Mary visited her daughter and niece until the day that no perpetual tomb was destroyed to make way for another deceased child, who did not run the risk of having his remains relocated because they paid enough for that privilege. I received that news three years ago, after searching the vault in vain.

I have memories of how small the two tombs were. No bronze plates, photos, names or any information. Over time, and without fanfare, they continued to exist for a few to the full and figured fading material. “They were good girls. But the cycle of them in this place is over. Maybe it was better that way. The mother suffered too much”, said an old lady with a plaintive smile.

I walked to another grave, watching this old lady who introduced herself as Tania. Her glittering and vernal eyes contrasted with her skin and slender face pied by the action of the time. She had a sweet voice, from who accepts what life offers, and no matter how small the gift, she still grateful. Tania visited her husband once a month since 1957, which is when he died as a result of malaria.

He worked building roads in my town, until one day he became ill and could not get up anymore. He did not receive the last two months of work. “I went to the boss’s house to get the unpaid wages. Hence the man shouted: ‘I have nothing for you, woman! My business was with your husband. Get out of here!’ I was not angry because of it. I just left”, she told me. Years later, Tania learned that the man was shot to death because he sold a farm with two houses, and he tried to bring down one of those to resell the wood.

After her husband’s death, Tania never had another relationship with men. She still wears on her finger the wedding ring purchased in 1951. When I asked if she did not feel very alone, Tania argued that loneliness does not live in a heart in communion with the life. Also, I questioned why she kept visiting her husband after so long.

While she cleaned the grave with a piece of flannel, one of the simple ones of the graveyard, dedusting as if making caresses, she watched me with a candid smile and replied: “The human being who is not faithful to his promises can not be true to yourself. So how I do every month, I am here fulfilling my promise, not out of obligation, but because it invigorates my heart. Life is everywhere, in the earth entrails and in the uncertainties of the sky, and the cemetery is no different. I also see here the east, as well as the west. “

I saw his dark mustache, thick and long like the curtains of the sky

Crossing where Clement saved Beto (Photo: David Arioch)

When I was six year old, every day there was a guard waiting for us down the street to help us cross. Hundreds of children went through there every day. Clement smiled and reached out with such devotion that even the sunlight seemed more intense, illuminating his forehead and highlighting his snowy teeth.

He took the whistle to his mouth and emitted a short, but effective oxytone sound. It was enough for everyone to stay alert. So Clement held my hand firmly and led me to the school sidewalk, protecting me from motorcycles, cars, vans and trucks. Carefully, he always kept his body closest to the vehicles while my body was hidden by him.

The synchrony between the whistle and the instantaneous stop was surreal, as if choreographed. Few drivers dared to even touch a centimeter of the tire on the crosswalk. If anyone did, Clement took a pocket tape measure, crouched on the asphalt per second, walked to the driver and greeted him with a warm handshake.

“How are you? All right? It’s hot today, huh? I suppose you’re in a hurry, of course, who isn’t nowadays, right, my friend? So I understand why you have the two front tires on the track. It happens. The hurrying makes you commit these little slips. Take a look here, you just invaded 25cm. I believe that you, like me, know it will not guarantee that you get anywhere faster. Of course, now we don’t have many children on the street, but there are times when this small space has a lack you can’t imagine. Can I count on your cooperation? “, he said in early afternoon, returning the driver’s compliance with a nod and a frugal smile.

During the crossing with Clement, I raised my head, looking at the sky with his nose, and watched him. Small, I believed he could touch that wild blue yonder with the top of his cap. I saw his dark mustache, thick and long like the curtains of the sky. The clouds moved near his head, reaffirming the idea that at least during the crossing he was the supreme authority, and beyond him there was no one.

After 5.30 pm, when the school bell was triggered, warning that the classes were ending, we did the same path. Hours passed, and Clement kept smiling and extending his hands. He never showed fatigue, irritation or boredom. He was so polite, that sometimes drivers parked their vehicles and walked up to congratulate him for the good work.

That made him one of the most remarkable characters of my childhood, someone who could serve as an inspiration for me to become a worthy human being. It was not uncommon to see people giving gifts to him. Committed to his work ethic, he always thanked with brightened eyes and refused, unless gifts made by hand, a simple food or a homemade sweet.

At that time, I had never heard of racism until I asked my classmate Bob why he and other boys never held Clement’s hand. I remember one day that I saw him taking the guard’s hand over his shoulder. “Why? Because he’s black! My father said that black guards should not exist because these people are not reliable; because the only white part of their body is their palm. Furthermore, they have a bad smell and wiry hair”, he replied spontaneously.

Startled, I was silent. During recess, without knowing what it meant, I sat in a corner of the yard and thought about Bob’s words. I realized that Clement really was a black man, the first I have seen since I was born, but so what? A few days later, Bob gave me an ultimatum, saying that I could not walk anymore with him and three other classmates if I kept holding Clement’s hand. I ignored his advice, and over the next month I was excluded from the games on the playground. When it was time to play indoor football, Bob convinced all the other kids to leave me out.

A month later, I had not seen Clement at the crossing, wich was his workplace. He never returned. In his place, they put a blond and clear-eyed boy, who devoted his attention to teenage girls who circulated the vicinity. Bob’s father had intervened, and Clement was transferred  to another city. They invented an excuse for lack of guards and convinced him to leave.

Later, on saturday, Bob was walking and sucking a popsicle when he was surprised by a runaway car that invaded the sidewalk at the crossing of Pernambuco Avenue and Souza Naves Street. Stunned, he threw the stick, closed his eyes and cringed his body. Bob didn’t see Clement coming out of the market, throwing his bags and jumping with him on the asphalt.

The guard had superficial wounds throughout his body. Seeing Bob unharmed, he smiled, regardless of the torn clothes. Embarrassed and with haggard eyes, the kid remainded in the fetal position. He discovered that the rejected hand is the one that more should have been stroked.