Amália came out from behind him, filled a glass of cold water, and took it to Otávio, who was still standing in the same place, not having budged from the threshold.
Maybe it was visible, the sacrifice that was being imposed on me by who knows whose designs — accepting the nauseating contact with these creatures until I was completely consumed — and so yes, instead of being a man ready to act.
While Otávio was gulping down the water, Amália stared at me. She had a thread of blood along her lower lip. I saw Kurt staring at her, caught off guard. Otávio handed the glass back to her and also stared at her, until she asked if he wanted more.
“No,” Otávio mumbled, now staring at me.
No, I repeated without knowing why. Sometimes a word slips out of me like that, before I have time to formalize an intention in my head. Sometimes on such occasions it comes to me with relief, as though I’ve felt myself distilling something that only once finished and outside me, I’ll be able to know.
Otávio doesn’t want any more, I concluded with an indecisive tone.
“No,” Otávio reaffirmed.
“No,” said Kurt, returning his gaze to the refrigerator.
I yawned, looking at the white of the refrigerator.
Then I belched a little from the sardines.
I said goodnight and withdrew.
As I made my way out I paid attention to the abnormal silence in the kitchen. I wanted to go back and see what was happening there inside the inertia the whole atmosphere seemed to have fallen into, but no, tomorrow I’d finish out another whole day with them, and if the three were to drown in that silence, then tomorrow I’d declare my conspiracy finished, finally, hallelujah.
I closed the door to my room and I wasn’t sad. You might say that the two old men and I don’t know what else left me limp with sadness, but it was nothing like that: when I took off my clothes I caught a whiff of Naíra’s scandalous scent on my body, it was nice to slip my hand across myself and sniff it, as though that sultry odor were coming from my own skin.
No, I wasn’t sad, and when I turned off the light something came over me: I fell to the floor on all fours and began to feel a strange momentum first to crawl, then drag, myself, in silence, as though the floor were a battlefield swamp, guessing where the next bomb would go off as they flashed closer and closer.
In the morning, when I awoke, I would remember: I had submitted to this like a man, and I was prepared to master these events, which had confused me before.
I could sense that someone had opened the door to my room, there was no noise, only the light from the hall washing over me a little — I considered sitting up and turning my head to look at whoever was watching me. But it wasn’t worth it: that presence was incapable of threatening my submerged state, bordering on sleep. I blacked out completely.
I awoke on the hard floor, ran a hand through my sweat, looked at the closed door, suddenly remembered — but there was no sign of the presence that had come and gone.
I got up, turned on the lights, and sat on the bed. I looked at my legs, which appeared to be reasonably muscular. I was a man, not the spring chicken that had come here with Kurt. I was a man and I was not in love. Naíra’s scent was still clinging to my body, I was indecisive about which tack to take while the old German still breathed, that protector of a whole man like me, with well-formed muscles — how I acquired them I honestly didn’t know — I knew now that I’d been a man a long time, without adequate conditions for taking a position as long as Kurt existed, but I’d be able to start doing things, making certain preparations, though I still couldn’t say what they’d be — I stared at the muscles in my leg, I was a man and I was not in love.
I wore Naíra’s scent, and the best I could do was go back to sleep, this time on the soft mattress, hugging one of the pillows, the kind of sleep that maybe wouldn’t come from just lying in bed — maybe I’d rather just roll around and excite myself with Naíra’s fading scent, maybe just keep repeating that I was a man, and that the next day I’d see to things.
I’d barely hit the mattress when I heard a sob, which seemed at first like it was coming from inside the pillow — a rough crying, not that of a woman — when I opened the door to Kurt’s room, he was in bed all curled up, crying: I need to man up, I need to man up, was what my head then began to hammer, but I needed to think of something else, urgently — get close to Kurt’s body, not rest until I’d made a clear gesture to this man whom I’d known to be so proud and who was now crying this rough sob.
He had turned into a weak subject, old from head to toe, and now that the moment of my entrance had arrived, I didn’t know whether to divert or interrupt what was waiting there for me to find out.
I sat on the bed. I thought about what I should do, if anything, or if all this wasn’t much more than a comedy I’d better avoid. The sobbing continued, without pause, and I said to myself: maybe I’ll lie down, stay lying here beside him and wait, because he’ll get tired of crying, oh yes, crying is tiresome. Soon after, he slowly calmed: I was lying beside him and he was calming down — I wonder if I’m hearing right, as Kurt began to breathe deeply like a cat demonstrating satisfaction with something nearby — Kurt purring at my side, until he ended up exposing something unappealing to me, that old purrer, lying at my side uncurling, turning to me, looking at me with his eyes open only to the inside, as though he didn’t think there was anything to look at in my place, as though my body were nothing more than a continuation of the bed.
Suddenly Kurt whispered, Gerda. I pulled the cord on the lamp — I didn’t want to look at him, I wanted only to calm a vague sense of urgency inside, and tried to reflect: may he at least still have the time necessary for me to prepare a satisfactory life.
Because I deserved at least that, a satisfactory life — in old age I’d sit and watch the misty fields of my patch of earth, throwing feed to the birds nearby, a blanket across my knees — flannel like the one I was now holding in Kurt’s bed.
Kurt rolled onto my arm, and I thought about how useless I was with my arm already falling asleep beneath Kurt’s body, and he rolled up onto my chest, and his weight at first almost suffocated me, but I breathed deeply, settled myself, opened my arms, I opened my clenched hands too, and then I saw Kurt’s face from very, very close, almost up against mine, and Kurt’s face had begun to cry again, this time silently, a whorl of wrinkles, a mute but enormous wail, huge, and I wouldn’t know how, even with him so old and weak, there was anything I could do to evaporate that elephantine wailing that flattened me against the mattress — where were my reasonable muscles? — I thought I’d been a man for a while, but now I’d fallen into the net, through a trapdoor, this weight didn’t even allow me the possibility of saying anything but a faint it’s okay, it’s okay, and Kurt began heaving, bringing up from within him something I couldn’t contain, his samba-in-Berlin breath right in my mouth, and I kept repeating it’s okay, it’s okay, I couldn’t even see how atrociously ridiculous it was or anything: only a daze that left me repeating it’s okay, it’s okay.
Yes, at that moment I could say I was sad. Atop my body, Kurt was now just dead weight, pure survival, with his head buried in my shoulder, folded into the space where it met my neck. I was sad for having been a man who couldn’t oppose this advance, a full-grown man, with normal muscles, unable to react to that old mass, who couldn’t guarantee him anything but a roof, pocket money, tedious company, who guaranteed him nothing more than that.
I took pains to disentangle myself from the defenseless weight, the old man’s life was regressing to the wet farts he was letting out, continuously, miasmas of samba-in-Berlin — I slowly opened the blinds, noticed day was about to break through, not a moment too soon, not a single bird was singing, not even the usual rooster, still only the crickets — what suggested day was about to break was an almost invisible vibration behind the hillside, which is to say that it was as cold as that time of day required, and I was, by instinct, unsurprised when I saw a bonfire near the lake, only later did I say to myself: Why is Amália setting another fire, throwing all those things in it to burn?