There I was, with the flashlight shining right in his face, but I forgot to say something, and by the looks of it he had, too.
“You need to go back,” the man said finally.
“And Mariana? And my son?” I asked.
The man came closer, shook me lightly, telling me the day to leave the clinic had come, and now I’d be going back home.
I took a few steps back, recoiling — I didn’t want to return.
The man came and touched me on the face, and made me look around a room with gray walls that it took me a moment to recognize.
He was beside my bed, wearing a dark suit, hatless: he had very white hair, seemed much older than before.
He showed me some new clothes folded on a chair. The wool shirt was too big, the velvet pants fit like a glove, the shoes too — I remembered my busted old sneaker, at the moment the only thing from my past that would come to the surface — and I felt forgotten, foolish, dumbstruck.
I didn’t see a mirror in the room, I pushed a button, they opened the door, I asked for a mirror. The only mirror was in the bathroom, shared by everyone on that floor. In the bathroom there was a man in a white smock, seated, discreetly watching how close the patients got to the mirror.
I had long hair, a full beard — I’d never let it grow before. Some time had passed, I could now see, and not a little: those long hairs and that thick beard were signs of its passing.
When I returned to the room it was empty. On the dresser were some books, all of them hardcover — I took one with a red cover, opened it: on one side poems in German, the other side translated to Portuguese. Various poets…Hölderlin — the name was pleasing to me.
Then I picked up some of the loose-leaf paper from under the stack of books, on them were poems written in my hand, all with my signature, a bit shaky, but I could tell it was my writing, they weren’t forgeries.
I liked one of them as soon as it caught my eye; it spoke of some lucid drops.
The man opened the door, now dressed like he was the first day I saw him — black overcoat and hat. He said that I’d be accompanying him to a religious ceremony right there in the clinic.
We went into the room for religious functions, people were standing around talking in groups, it seemed more like a party. There were no chairs, the walls were smooth, nothing that recalled an altar. I didn’t understand what was about to happen, everybody was speaking German.
I heard them call the man Kurt. Sometimes Kurt would turn to me and say something in Portuguese. He told me that these were all the latecomers. Yes, latecomers, I heard the words distinctly. And that they were getting together for a very special moment. With every new piece of information I nodded my head, trying to demonstrate respectful interest.
When I was about to ask what this moment would be, they tugged Kurt by the arm and everyone began to sing. By the sound of it, a German religious hymn.
The pastor, dressed in something that looked like a nightgown, black, over his suit, was in front of everybody else — young, very blond — except he wasn’t singing, he seemed to be awaiting the end of the hymn so he could speak.
Obviously, the pastor’s speech was in German. At the beginning it gave me the impression of a mild homily. However, he slowly elevated his voice until he reached a hard vehemence.
I whispered in Kurt’s ear that I had a headache, I was going out to the garden to see if that would help.
I walked down a narrow path, listening to my steps on the flagstones.
Inside they’d started singing in German again.
I’d arrived at the gate to the clinic, slightly ajar. I didn’t see anybody guarding the entrance.
Why not escape? No…it didn’t seem like by going it alone I’d be able to facilitate the unfolding of things.
I asked a guy who was passing on the sidewalk for a cigarette. I took two drags and threw the cigarette on the ground. The German hymn was going strong. The guy who’d given me the cigarette turned around and looked at me like he was wondering what my deal was.
What’s up? I muttered, and turned back down the path. Everything was very quiet, the singing had stopped, as I got closer to the clinic building, I began to hear the pastor’s speech once more, this time less exalted.
Suddenly I was very dizzy. I steadied myself on a tree, managed to estimate the distance between myself and the building, and decided to sit on a bench in the garden instead.
The murmur of water coming from the amphora… The participants in the ceremony began to say a collective prayer. O Father — it came to me involuntarily, like a poem — O Father, when will I be with you, at last? I looked at my new shoe stepping onto the wet earth — it made me want to laugh. I swallowed the laugh, but the mere thought of laughter caused the vertigo to recede. I remained seated there a while longer, breathing deeply, staring at my new black shoes.
Kurt was now driving his car, I at his side, on the tape deck a German chorale — Bach, as I read on the tape case — Kurt seemed to follow along, moving his lips almost imperceptibly. At the moment the car was passing through the streets of Porto Alegre, finding its way out of the city — for a while a highway with half-potholed asphalt, countryside all around, few trees, until we turned onto a dirt road with more vegetation. It wasn’t long before a large estate appeared at the end of the road.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“It’s our house,” as he was parking the car.
On the porch was a man, a relative a few years younger than Kurt.
This is the boy, Kurt said to the man, and then he introduced me to him — Kurt said rapidly: Otávio.
We went down a hallway, Kurt opened a door.
“This is your room.”
The room was spacious, the walls nude, I thought later about filling them up with posters, and the image came to me: a man in black and white with a dangerous scar on his temple, his face enraged, covered in sweat.
I saw a desk, knocked on the wood to make sure it was real, thought that here I’d write my poems…maybe it would be nice to move the desk closer to the window, so I could write while looking outside. Out front was a row of eucalyptus trees.
I opened the drawer, there were blank sheets, I sat down.
I began writing a letter to my mother. The first idea that crossed my mind when I picked up the paper was that I wouldn’t let her know where I was. If this house where I was staying was offering me, as they say, a new home, then fine, I’d stick with it as long as they didn’t give me a hard time, and I was sending a letter only to inform her that I was doing fine and that she wouldn’t hear from me any time soon, since the time I had would now be devoted to writing my poems, and writing letters would rob me of my time for poetry, and I was doing well, much, much better than she could ever have imagined.
In another drawer there were envelopes, and as I folded the letter and stuffed it in an envelope I felt the pleasure that I usually felt when I told a fat lie, the feeling of completely pulling the wool over somebody’s eyes — a thing I knew how to do in writing but not speaking — into which would creep the compulsion to be caught lying: I guess I’d get a cunning glint in my eye, look askance, I guess my face burned with a fire I could extinguish if I really wanted to, but this time, since I was writing someone a lie that I had the feeling they were ready to believe, I got swept up in euphoria, as if I were close, very close, to a state that would represent for me, just maybe, a kind of emancipation.
At the lunch table there were three people besides me: Kurt at one end, Otávio at the other, and a woman with blue-rinsed white hair across from me. Kurt introduced me: Gerda, his wife, silent most of the time. She asked me my age then drank a sip of white wine from her glass.