What was he doing there, in the kitchen, with his arms crossed over the table, the low lamp brightening his rope-veined hands? What was he doing there, at that time of night, when I got back to the manor? What was he, Kurt, doing there like I’d never seen him before, it looked like he’d shrunk, yes, he who had been so imposing before was now a man diminished in stature, sitting there in the kitchen under the low lamp — ah, there was a glass, and beside it a bottle of a cachaça called Isaura, beside that a Coke, empty. Long live the samba-in-Berlin, I growled, pulling out the paper napkin with the poem that I’d kept in my pocket ever since we got on the plane in Galeão — a name for it still hadn’t come to me, I wondered if “Quiet Creature on the Corner” wasn’t the title the poem was asking for — Kurt followed me with his eyes, raised the glass like he was toasting me, ah, so he was drunk, I didn’t know how drunk, only the silence of the glass in his hand. I, in the doorway of the kitchen, thinking it was the first time I’d seen Kurt drunk, I stood in the kitchen doorway wondering if I really wanted to go in and continue with the farce that was unfolding, Kurt tremblingly raising the glass, toasting me, I couldn’t stand him drunk, not Kurt, I could tell the night was hanging by a thread, I could tell what I was observing was an invitation: an old man widowed just hours prior beckoning me into the tavern to keep him company, to drink, drink until dawn with an unhappy man, that was the idea — but if someday a miracle were to burst over me, that miracle would come from him: that was what I needed to believe in, a chance I couldn’t throw away because it would never be repeated, but I wondered, I wondered what this man could have besides the skeleton of a cow, a peeling mansion, a sad piece of land, whatever business Gerda had in Germany…
I took a few steps, tried to say gently: let’s go to Germany, let’s not let Gerda’s death keep us from going.
Kurt lowered the glass, said his plans were kaput, his body diseased — for years now — and from now on he didn’t think he’d be in any condition to travel, for a while now he hadn’t been able to urinate right, he showed me his swollen feet, darkly swollen, he was getting headaches that drove him near to the point of despair, said it was an abscess, definitely, but keep it a secret because I hate doctors, no doctor is going to touch me, they see everything here inside, and inside here there’s nothing worth seeing, what’s interesting lives out in the light of day, I’ll unbutton my shirt and show you the blotch on my chest, every day it spreads, for a long time I didn’t let Gerda see my bare chest, she didn’t know about the blotch, she always believed I was a strong man, but I’m not going to die, not now.
I sat down at the other end of the table and thought, I don’t want this: What good did it do me to have him bail me out of jail just to get caught up in illness and old age? First Gerda, then Otávio, and tonight I get home and find him drunk and besides that all rotten, telling me he’s not going to die. What do I get out of this?
Or, if I wasn’t going to get anything from it, why was he telling me all this? Wouldn’t I be better off among the prisoners, who lacked any appetite for reward? Or in that clinic where nobody demanded my company, where books of poems appeared without me asking for them, where I couldn’t expect any more than that, maybe I’d be better off there?
But then came this man who brought me here to lick his wounds.
I stuck my tongue out of my mouth, in the direction of my chin — for the first time in my life I thought that I had my own heart, which beat so many times per minute — I thought about touching the vein in my wrist, counting, I thought about the occult organization of those to whom obedience is owed, I thought that being here before this old man was to obey this same organization — my tongue was now prowling up above my mouth, frightened by the prickle of the mustache that had begun to form, my tongue was passing all around my mouth. Kurt had a dim stare, and I was sure that in that moment he couldn’t distinguish me from the surroundings, but a breath would bring the exact word to my lips, capable of reactivating the senses of the man in front of me, the exact word flowering on my lips would bring him back to my image, my company, and I’d try to swallow everything again, as if this were all a game of patience:
“Kurt!” I called out.
“Huh?” he tried to straighten up, “you’re back?”
“Listen to the hoot of that owl,” I said devilishly.
“The owl’s hoot, I’d like to hear the owl’s hoot,” he said, looking around, searching.
I got up, opened a can of sardines. I went back to sit in front of Kurt. I emptied the can of every last morsel and wiped it clean with a hunk of bread.
The dogs were barking in the distance — I had no interest in knowing where those beasts were imprisoned.
He told me he’d heard a voice calling for Amália. He said: God knows who’d be calling her, maybe some stranger who’s trying to use her to take charge around here, invading little by little until not a trace of me is left.
“Plot by plot,” I remarked, without a clear idea of what the words meant.
“Plot by plot,” he emphasized.
Kurt seemed blind. He was staring at the refrigerator, but beneath his gaze the refrigerator appeared as a shape without any likeness, strange even to itself, on the verge of dissolving.
I got up, took a few steps toward Kurt: if as long as all this lasted I stayed close, not letting anything escape me, yes, I wouldn’t regret it later — it was in this difficult thing that I needed to believe.
Otávio appeared at the kitchen door. There was silence. Only Otávio’s huffy breathing. He was wearing pajamas that were all frayed at the edges, suspiciously stained, a beret on his head, I could tell now it was a uniform beret, a Brazilian Expeditionary Force beret.
Kurt was still staring at the refrigerator — it was possible that he’d found a way to fill the dead hours before dawn.
Otávio, in his dirty pajamas and expeditionary beret, and right behind him just then, right on his tail, appeared Amália with half-indecisive steps, Amália avoiding my eyes, as though she were trying to convey her shame — following Otávio out from some hiding place I might not know about, I thought to myself. Otávio looked at me and said:
“I put on my BEF beret and came to get a drink of water.”
“You sleep in that beret?” I asked.
“No,” he was shaking like he wanted to laugh at my question, but was obviously too weak.
“No?” I insisted.
“It’s just a little obsession,” he said softly, “I bring the beret to bed with me. Ever since I got back from Italy, I go to sleep with the feeling that during the night the enemy will come and I need to be prepared.”
I noticed the beret was really worn out, misshapen, saturated by the kind of care that children show the ragged things they won’t get rid of.