Kurt disappeared for a few days, at meals Gerda would say that it was another attack of the flu, the beginnings of bronchitis, but later she’d just enter in total silence.
During Kurt’s long disappearance, Otávio barely touched his food, staring fixedly at a photograph beside the window, blotted by patina: a little naked child, lying on its stomach.
Never before those days had I felt so acutely the monotony of the noises plates and silverware make at mealtime. I kept wondering whether, if Kurt never came back, they would still let me live on the estate, comfortable, without a care, as things had been until then.
I awoke to a gorgeous Saturday, and the first sound I heard when I woke up was Kurt’s voice. I went quickly to the hallway, the door of the couple’s room was open, Kurt was saying that the stock market was down, he needed to call Miguel, Gerda told him that on TV they said that the depression was just transitory — that was when I heard steps and went back to my room.
I had affixed to the wall of my room an image that appeared nothing like the one I imagined when I first arrived at the manor: I’d recently found an old engraving in Amália’s shed, rolled up in a corner, yellowed in spots, likely by the drops of rain that came in through the slats, depicting a boat setting sail. It was signed by the name of Wilhelm Müller.
Kurt let me hang it up.
“That engraving evokes, with impressive realism, a farewell to one’s homeland,” he said, as if half asleep.
The poem I was writing then spoke of a farewell, and in that farewell exploded a hatred that tore through everything: ripped curtains, the walls to sawdust, blood on the lapel. Something was missing at the end of the poem that for three days I labored in vain to find.
In a little while, I’d have breakfast, and hoped Kurt would be there, for no other reason than to feel secure. I thought that to keep up my form I’d need to believe with more conviction every day that Kurt was my protector.
At breakfast Kurt was occupying his place at the table, he had his right arm in a sling, and sometimes Gerda leaned over to help him raise his cup to his lips.
Otávio was talking a lot, recalling that the anniversary of his return to Brazil from the war was approaching.
“It was a day like this, sunny,” he mentioned, staring at the pattern on the tablecloth.
Amália was making her rounds of the table, asking if anybody needed anything, dissembling and stealing chances to wink at me furtively — the night before she’d remained for hours sitting on the ground, leaning against the bed: it was raining, there was a leak, the whole shed damp, and Amália, nude above the waist, told me that Gerda had cancer, she and Kurt had already gone to Rio de Janeiro a few times to see a famous doctor, one time Gerda stayed there for weeks, checked into a clinic, I told Amália that out here with her I didn’t want to hear anything about illness, and I went to her and started licking her breasts, sucking, started unbuttoning my pants, asked her to touch me, and she touched me, a drop of rain got through the shaft in the roof and wet my nose, I was about to cum in her hand, her breasts seemed very full, swollen, I was afraid she was pregnant, but my dread lasted only a second, and then I returned to sucking and biting her two breasts, because I remembered it had been a long time since I came inside her, so I could keep on sucking and biting her two breasts with peace of mind, the rain drumming on the zinc way up high, and suddenly Amália let out a yell, and shouted, murderer, murderer, twice, and I, who was wrapped in her arms, got up, took her hand, and saw deep in her eyes a sign of alarm, but concluded that I didn’t feel like deciphering it.
I passed Kurt in the hallway, and for the first time he showed me a real smile. What’s happening? I wondered, what am I doing that could make him so decisively happy?
I left the manor and went through the surrounding fields, racking my brains to see if I could understand that smile: What trait of mine could bring such a pleasured look to his eye? I needed to discover what it was so I could broaden my access to this strange benefactor.
I sat on the highest part of the low hill and looked down to see Amália throwing things on an enormous fire — papers, cardboard boxes, wood, broken springs — it was making a lot of smoke, and I got down low so that she wouldn’t be able to see me.
I stayed there, lying on my belly in the tall grass, hidden in a war trench, daydreaming that I was entering an unknown world, and that to remain in it I’d need skills.
The strong burning smell left me a little stupid, and into my head leaped the hypothesis that Kurt had set me up, that he’d never give anything up. I turned my belly to the sky, exhaled slowly. Overhead, an airplane was heading south.
Days later I wrote a whole poem in one sitting called “Scenes of War”—the distant stamping, surrounding quake, a hemorrhage running from the nostrils of a boy as he woke.
The poem, written on that paper…even if I slipped away, the poem would still be there, and I thought about how they gave me very little to do besides write poems, and that, until that day, I hadn’t really determined anything about my new situation — in that huge house, surrounded by fields.
Someone knocked on the door. I got up and opened it, it was Kurt, he asked to come in, I felt weak in the knees: perhaps now I would learn the worst of it.
Kurt stepped in slowly, went up to my desk, looked over it, brought his hand to rest on the dark wood, stroking it, letting his head fall gently, his voice low:
“You’re coming with me and Gerda, we’re going to Rio de Janeiro, Gerda is sick, she’s going to check into a hospital in Rio for a while, for observation. If she doesn’t need more intense treatment this time, the three of us will go to Germany. Gerda has some things to attend to in Berlin.”
My head spun.
“Yes,” I remembered to say.
The next morning I went with Kurt to apply for a passport in Porto Alegre. I’d forgotten that the manor wasn’t far from the city. We got there in a little more than an hour.
After we took care of the passport we walked around a bit downtown. When we passed by the door of the Sulacap Building, on Borges, Kurt stopped, made an expression like he’d remembered something, said he had to make a quick visit to a friend’s office, that we’d meet up again in an hour at the McDonald’s on Alfândega Square. Then he took his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and gave me money. I stood there watching as he entered the Sulacap Building.
I started walking again, lazily, without feeling like it, as if Porto Alegre no longer interested me. If only there were a way for me to remain in Rio permanently, or even in Germany, in Europe, without losing the setup Kurt had provided me.
I perused the same used bookstores as always, looking at everything reluctantly, I couldn’t avoid grimacing at the gazes that crossed with mine, somebody walked by staring at me, I cussed, he stopped, he yelled for me to be a man and repeat what I’d said, curious bystanders surrounded us, just a lunatic in my way I said, and turned and made my way through all those people, the guy looked like he was about to punch me in the back but hands reached out to stop him, I saw him held back by a thousand arms, staring at me with his shirt all unbuttoned, panting, red, hair strewn across his forehead.
People at McDonald’s were noisy. I tapped my foot to the tacky music that was playing softly, preferring to make an effort to listen and follow the music than to sit there listening to conversations that made me want to pick another fight: Kurt was ten minutes late, and when he arrived I took a deep breath and got up without realizing it, I asked what he wanted, and he said just a Coke, and when I came back with the Coke Kurt was smiling and completely absorbed by watching me. As I sat down I forced a smile to go along with his — my smile was half crooked and I let it fall, but since Kurt kept smiling, still rapt, I tried again, but this time what came out was a cackle that you could hear thirty yards away, and Kurt looked at me and let out a coarse laugh — he had perfect enameled teeth, dentures or maybe implants, and Kurt was much older, older than I could tell before. Otávio still had a certain stiffness to his face, Gerda looked like she’d had a little work done, but Kurt, this man laughing his low laugh right here in my face, he was the one who looked the oldest of the three, and he laughed, and I laughed, and we kept at it for a while in that McDonald’s.