“[…] je saisis en sombrant que la seule verité de l’homme, enfin entrevue, est d’être une supplication sans réponse.”
“… I grasp while sinking that the sole truth of man, glimpsed at last, is to be a supplication without response.”
The cross on my brow
The facts of what I was
Of what I will be:
I was born a mathematician, a magician
I was born a poet.
The cross on my brow
The dry laughter
The scream
I discover myself a king
Sequined in darkness
Knives striking
Time and wisdom.
God? A surface of ice anchored to laughter. That was God. Even so he tried to cling to that nothing, sliding frozen somersaults until finding the anchor’s thick rope and descending descending in the direction of that laughter. He touched himself. He was alive, yes. When the child asked his mother: and the dog? The mother: the dog died. And so he threw himself on a patch of earth curdled with squash, hugged himself against one, a twisted cylinder with an ocher head, and choked out: died how? died how? The father: woman, this boy’s a fool, get him off that squash. He died. He fucked himself said the father, just like that, he brought the clenched fingers of his left hand down against the flattened palm of his right and repeated: he fucked himself. This is how he learned of death. Amós Kéres, forty-eight years old, mathematician, stopped his car on the top of a small hill, opened the door, and got out. From where he was he could see the University building. Whorehouse Church Government University. They all looked alike. Whispers, confessions, vanity, speeches, vestments, obscenities, brotherhood. The dean: Professor Amós Kéres, certain rumors have come to my attention. Okay. Care for a coffee? No. The dean removes his glasses. Gently chews one of their tips. Sure you don’t want some coffee? No, thank you. Well, let’s see, I understand that pure mathematics avoids the obvious, do you like Bertrand Russell, Professor Kéres? Yes. Well, you should know that I’ve never forgotten a certain phrase from one of those magnificent books. One of my books? Have you written a book, Professor? No. I refer to the books of Bertrand Russell. Ah. And the phrase is this: “obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.” Of course. Well then, what I know about your classes is that not only are they not at all obvious, they … excuse me, Professor, hello hello, of course my love, obviously it’s me, I’m busy right now, of course my dear, then take him to the dentist, I know I know … Amós passed his tongue over his gums. He should go to the dentist too (of course he had to go), with age everything gets worse he told me the last time I went, when was that again? it doesn’t matter, but he said Mr. Kéres there’s a tension all along your jawbone, the tension of a bankrupt executive, it’s amazing, don’t you wake up with pain in your jaw? I do. Then it looks like we need to adjust your arch. How much? Ah, it’s a difficult procedure. But how much? (but, my love, the boy’s just whining, he has to go, all dentists these days are hot babes, let me talk to him, just a second longer, Professor). Of course. Ah, it’s pricey, look, we need to align all the top teeth and almost all the bottom ones, and the bottom ones are extremely important, you should never lose a bottom tooth, they’re supports for future bridges, and yours down here are all worn away (hey kid, daddy wants you to go to the dentist, don’t start with that, sure I’ll buy those sneakers, candy, I know, what? shorts? ah, I can’t promise it, all right I’ll take you I’ll take you, okay kid, hello, obviously it’s me my love, yes he’ll go, I get home early yeah, bye-bye). Well now, where were we, Professor Kéres? I respond: the obvious. Ah yes. He put his eyeglasses back on: you don’t seem to be taking me seriously. How so? I noticed that you had a bit of a smile there, let’s say, Professor, a bit of a condescending smile, as if you thought I were … silly? Just your impression, I was also recalling a phrase. Go ahead, Professor. And so then I say the phrase: “Hence we invent some new and difficult symbolism, in which nothing seems obvious,” and he rather liked it. Who’s that? Bertrand Russell. Ah. Let’s proceed, Professor, I can’t stay much longer, so please just take a leave of absence, twenty days, relax. But sir, you still haven’t been clear with me about the rumors. Very welclass="underline" there are obvious signs of wandering off. Pardon? Of aloofness, if you like, yes, of aloofness on your part during classes, sentences that break off and only continue after fifteen minutes, Professor Kéres, fifteen minutes is too much, they say you simply disconnect. I disconnect? What sentences were they? It doesn’t matter, please just rest, take vitamins, tranquilizers. He takes off his glasses again, covers his top lip with his bottom one, sighs, smiles: come on come on, don’t worry yourself, you’ve always been impeccable, just excellent, but between us … The dean clasps me by the arm, squeezes my wrist in his fingers: between us, they’re not understanding anything anymore. Who? Your students, Professor, your students. Strange I say, in the last class we rethought diapers, beginnings … the square root of a negative number. I cited a mathematician from the twelfth century, Brahmin Bhaskara: “the square of a positive number, as with a negative number, is positive. Thus the square root of a positive number is double, positive and negative at the same time. There is no square root of a negative number, since the negative number is not a square,” nevertheless Cardan, in the sixteenth century … The dean bit his lower lip, or rather the right corner of the lower lip, stared at me for a while, and extended his hand: good luck, Professor, a leave of absence. I cross the patio. Then corridors, lawns. When I was a kid the writing teacher asked for three short stories. Short stories, boys and girls, do you know what short stories are? The nerds raised their hands. Very good, whoever doesn’t know can ask the others, very good. Two of my classmates showed me imbecilic little stories, the rustling of the fluttering leaves on the branches breezes on the face, etc. I wrote:
First tale (aka short stories) — Mommy, I’m sick and tired of your nonsense about morality and family at the dinner table. I’ve seen you sucking Daddy’s cock plenty of times. Leave me in peace. Signed, Junior.
Second tale (aka short stories) — My love, think it over, you’re fifty and I’m twenty-five. You say that it’s the spirit that matters. I understand, my love, but I gotta split. Don’t get depressed. We’ll run into each other now and then, okay? Signed, Laércio. All this was talk I overheard while drinking guaraná on a balcony at a department store. He was a big strong guy, and she was squat and black-eyed.
Third tale (aka short stories) — His name is Sun and Adultery. My husband’s is Elias. My children are named Enilson and Joaquim. I want them all to die. Except him. (That first one, light and bed.) I’m very sorry, my God, but there it is. Signed: Lazinha. I like this one a lot. Adultery seemed to him in adolescence a beautiful word. Now too. After AIDS, less so. Light and bed was an inspiration. The teacher slapped him in the face. All the rest with the rustling of the fluttering leaves on the branches breezes on the face were awarded with a picnic. Only tip-top writing grades for those nerds. Amós was expelled. He flunked the year. He caught pneumonia. His classmates sent him a short poem: He thought he was a smarty-pants, so slippery and sly / but then the one to fuck himself / was Amós, little wise guy.
Stuck between walls
I’m myself and the die:
I live separate from myself.
On all four sides
A taste for alacrities:
The chance to be thrown
Down your deep tunnel.
He had understood only in that instant. And now never again? He recalled everything perfectly. He had gone like always to the top of that little hill. He liked to be there, where you could still glimpse some dusky greens, a hurried lizard scurrying across a trail, and if he turned his back on the University building he saw fields of cotton and coffee. He would stay there just looking. Emptied. Sometimes he would ponder his modest destiny. Had he cherished any illusions? When he was younger, he wanted a nonobvious to be demonstrated, a short and harmonious equation that would scintillate the as-yet unexplained. Words. These were the fine veins that he had never managed to wholly extract from the mass of hard and rough earth where they lay deposited. He didn’t want deceiving effects, or empty sonorities. As a child, he had never figured out how to explain himself. A hurricane of questions whenever he’d taken an aimless walk, just over that way to see the neighbors’ dog or the flock of parakeets that came around in the late afternoon, I just went overthatway, that’s all. They’d say: Why? What for? What dog? At this hour? To see what about the dog, what parakeets? I’d respond: Over that way because they’re pretty. He’d blush saying the words over that way because they’re pretty. Later, he’d get furious, when they’d ask him about feelings. How to formulate exact words, various letters brought together, chained, short or long words, to extract from inside himself those fine veins that lay untouched there inside him? They were there, he knew it, but how to extract them? Everything would come undone. He liked reading Japanese poets. One of them, Buson, has a poem like this: