David Arioch – Jornalismo Cultural

The more I walked inside the shop, the more I felt like walking through Nell Trent’s grandfather’s antique shop

I walked to the back of the shop and showed her an old small brown wooden chest (Photo: David Arioch)

It happened in my town when I was 14 years old. As I walked down the street on Christmas Eve, the rain was thin on the busy downtown. I looked at the turbid sky and didn’t understand how the water that touched my body could be warm while it dampened my head in a solemn short cold interval.

I was intrigued and I saw a purpose. The drops that crashed against my scalp and my forehead, dripping between my eyes, sliding down my nose, and making the contours of my mouth before jumping from my chin to my chest, reduced my drowsiness and sent me warning signs, it demanded my attention where I walked.

Until then, I walked like a peculiar kind of incorrigible sleepwalker. I had slept less than five hours and I felt my eyes warm, tired and flushed. My reflection in the shop window revealed a tangled and abstract aspect. I heard acute, mild, severe and oscillating voices on all sides, but I couldn’t identify words. “Are they really speaking English?” This question protruded from my consciousness.

Mixed with rain, sometimes violent, sometimes calm, falling from the branches of trees that shaded the narrow sidewalk, the unexpected smell of wet earth in Mine Street inebriated me. The fairy lights colored the drops that returned to natural transparency when it released from its plastic and glass hosts. The truth is that I noticed just what glittered or amplified my senses.

People talked to me. I didn’t know who they were or what they said. Confused, I limited myself to smile as much as possible, without showing too many teeth. I felt very tired and my bleary eyes didn’t help me deal properly with human interaction that morning.

After a long walk, I scratched my eyes and stopped in front of a mirror of an antique shop. “Hmm, now I’m getting better. Soon I’ll feel 100%”, I concluded. A nice lady invited me to visit the place. The entrance was narrow, but the interior space was big and seemed so inviting and mysterious, that I had a sudden urge to spend hours there.

Fragrances of cloves, vanilla, amber, sandalwood and musk, distributed in various antiquarian points, leading the visitor to feel like part of a divided reality into fragments, with perfumes that enriched objects, the shop owner asked if I would like to see something special. I said no, and she left me at ease. Previously, she told me that she devoted many years of her life buying and collecting objects from 1910 to 1970.

“My father passed away over 30 years ago. He was a collector of things that people considered obsolete or of little value. ‘How something that marked a period and demanded days and even months of effort, may someday be seen as insignificant? There is nothing in the world that deserves such depreciation”, he told this to Martha, the owner of the antique shop before leaving to meet a client who was looking for a music box.

The more I walked inside the shop, the more I felt like walking through Nell Trent’s grandfather’s antique shop, immortalized by Charles Dickens. For a moment, it also reminded me of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” by Frank Capra. Well, in my case and at that time, happiness could be purchased.  However, the reality was a destroyers desire. I opened my grizzly and battered wallet, counted the notes and coins which bobbed into my pocket, and I quickly made sure that nothing there fit in my budget.

The sadness hit me hard. It made me perspire, moistening my hands and the few notes of low value that I looked crestfallen. The coins have lost their luster, as if they were powerless, destroyed by circumstance. By far, Martha noticed the moment I quickly cringed to put money in my pocket and left the antiquarian.

She interrupted me and asked if I appreciated anything. I said yes. “Ok, then why won’t you take anything?” I hesitated for a few seconds. I felt trapped, like a helpless animal. Seeing in her face a comforting expression of benevolence, I just told her that I didn’t have money to buy anything in her shop.

“Why not? How much do you have?” Reluctantly, my hands were shaking when I took the notes and coins from my pocket. Marta smiled and asked me to show her which object pleased me most.

I walked to the back of the shop and showed her an old small brown wooden chest that cost more than double of my savings. “Who will you give it to? It’s a nice Christmas present! You have good taste!”, commented Martha, making me blush. I explained that it would be for my mother. Then she asked if there was something in my pocket. I took a piece of white paper that carried a little poem of mine called “Faience Child”.

Martha read it carefully, smiled and, to my surprise, declared that “my work” covered the rest of the amount. Before leaving, she asked me to autograph the poem and to help her put it in a golden frame of baroque inspiration . “Now we have a valuable framework,” she emphasized.

We said goodbye and she accompanied me to the shop’s entrance, where I saw her smiling graciously until the time that I disappeared from her sight. Excited, I walked through Vargas Street and I returned home watching the sun clearing the cloudy morning, drying the asphalt and illuminating the scene, vehicles, people and animals which were covered by the same warm and lilting mantle.

The following month, I took my mother to the antiquarian. When we got there, there was nothing, only a rent board. “A glimpse of passing faces caught by the light of a street-lamp or a shop window is often better for my purpose than their full revelation in the daylight”, wrote Charles Dickens in “The Old Curiosity Shop”.

It was 7:50 a.m., and the sun lit up the room with an intensity that relegated the lamps lit to uselessness

After having my chest pressed several times and in several positions, I left the examination room (Photo: Copy)

Today, I went to a clinic for an examination. Once there, I gave the health plan request to the receptionist and she asked: “Who’s the patient? Where is your wife?” I answered that I was the patient. Embarrassed, the girl apologized. For a moment, I wanted to laugh as I remembered her saying: “Where is your wife”, but I didn’t want to leave her embarrassed. Once she confirmed my data and handed me a pink badge written MAMMOGRAPHY, I understood why she asked “Who’s the patient? Where is your wife?”

With the identification of the examination in my hand, I walked to a quiet waiting room. It was 7:50 a.m., and the sun lit up the room with an intensity that relegated the lamps lit to uselessness. When they saw me, three women could not take their eyes off of my badge written MAMMOGRAPHY. And I was thinking, inert in a veiled smile and wordlessly: “Yes! I’m a man and I will do mammography. That’s it! Draw your conclusions. I can also have fun interpreting your thoughts.”

My pink badge sparkled even more with the warm incidence of the sun. It was aiming more strongly where I sat. No problem! It did not take too much time for the three women to be called to an exam room. Alone, I changed my place, because there was sunlight everywhere, warming my back, arms and face. I felt better when I could hide myself under a white wall.

I was standing there with my badge while the TV showed stories of corruption and cheating. I watched a guy saying that the electricity theft in Brazil corresponds to the energy consumed in the state of Paraná. OK! At that moment, everything seemed to revolve around energy, including the sun that was still sneaking in the window.

Soon the room began to fill, and no one avoided looking at my badge. “It’s all right! It’s all right! That’s right! I will do MAMMOGRAPHY”, I thought again. In the meantime, a friend, Rafael, saw me and came to congratulate me for my texts, which pleased me because it helped distract me from all the inquisitive looks.

I was at least 40 minutes waiting for my turn, which was unusual, since I saw people who arrived after me were being attended to before me. I got up, I went to the reception and I asked if it would take a long time for me to be attended. All around me, more people looked at my pink badge. In another waiting room, I saw someone pointing at me and commenting: “That boy will do mammography. That’s weird!”

They pronounced my name: “Davi”, not David, wich I hadn’t been called since I was a baby. I walked to the technical assistant in mammography and she apologized. She told me that the examination, in the way requested by the mastologist, required adjustments on the machine, explaining the delay. “Someone with breast cancer in the family?” I said no. I was there to make bilateral mammography with the intention to evaluate the disappearance of a mild gynecomastia.

After having my chest pressed several times and in several positions, I left the examination room feeling my marked chest and I walked to the exit. Before entering the streets, I heard a whispering woman close to the door: “I didn’t know men can also get breast cancer.” Without bothering to explain the reason for my visit to the clinic, I replied: “Well, lady, tell you husband and your sons to be very careful. The greatest danger comes when milk suddenly drips from the nipple. “Startled, she cowered in a corner with glazed eyes.