THE HERITAGE: The Blood of the Earth (Alma Welt)
ALMA WELT
THE HERITAGE: The Blood of the Earth
Novel
PREFACE
By Guilherme de Faria
This is Alma Welt's first novel, and it seems grandiose to me. An autobiographical novel. A family saga. Set in the pampas of his native land, this book deserves the name of a novel like few others. A romance... romantic, in the great tradition of romanesc literature.
The last great liric the 20th century, as I usually call her, the poet Alma Welt, approaches her narrative with the lyricism that is characteristic of her, often torn like a song, poetry in prose at various times, musical as a rhapsody, at others like a symphony. We listen to the music she wants to offer us, to make us heard. Like the noise of the Minuano wind, like the creaking of doors and walls that turn. We feel the mystery and beauty of its land, its home, its origins. We are moved by her love for her land, for the Pampa that extends like the world around her house and where she gallops accompanied by her Aline, like two “centaureses”, naked and graceful. I have rarely seen such beautiful moments in a novel as in these paragraphs. Alma Welt is not ashamed of being romantic, because she knows she is heir to a great tradition of her Germanic blood. She leads us like Hoffmann through the corridors of her house, through the underground of the mysterious cellars. Like Goethe, she takes us for a walk in the gardens around the house, in an idyll with that other beautiful woman, Aline, crowned with flowers. The children, like bees, flutter around us, boisterous, and adorable. We immerse ourselves in this “Weltian” universe with a rare pleasure, following the flights, the ramblings, the daydreams and the real memories of the author-character. Or the author-protagonist. She seduces us with her universe through the lens of beauty with which she sees her daily life, which is not strange to us because it is true, subtle, human, without fancy, without artificiality. Alma Welt doesn't want to be sofisticated. She is so because of the height of her clear thinking, the evident purity of her romantic heart. She loves passionately. And with explicit eroticism at the same time elevated, by the superior aesthetics with which she naturally describes him, without ulterior motives. She bumps into sex like we do in life, and she doesn't swerve. She stares at him with voluptuousness. She loves love and sex and invites us to partake of her enchanting intimacy with a captivating freedom that seduces us. As a modern heroine of the freedom and pleasure of sex enjoyed with dignity and with the hint of mystery that sex always hides with those attractive little perversions of which she makes us see the beauty, allowing us, therefore, to recognize them in ourselves . This is her delicacy: to love the human being so much, that her acceptance by him is full, almost total. Only evil does she refuse, she denounces as something outside the human that intrudes and shocks this life. Heir to German idealism, she moves us to a high degree of humanist vision, which dignifies man for his unconditional commitment to his original purity, in his beauty inherited from the gods, if not from God.
In addition, she still moves us with a rare quality, the candor that she does not give up, even in her critical lucidity. How, then, could this little Eve maintain her purity having bitten the apple of reason without being compelled to even cover her sex with her hand? That's what impresses me most about her text. The pride with which she exposes herself as a nymph, often as a mischievous girl filled with delicious innocent malice. Alma loves a certain ambiguity, certain paradoxes, elegant as she is too. She must therefore like Oscar Wilde, that she reflects not so much in style but in the spirit of certain attitudes. But there is no dandyism in it. It is simple, never far-fetched. Never art-nouveau, except for its less formal symbolist aspect. She is more reminiscent of Emily Brönte of the heaths than the English of salons and casinos. She loves Turner on her prairies more than the Impressionism that is her descendant. We hear Schumann, but above all Schubert in his orchestrations of words evocative of beautiful landscapes. Alma Welt enchants us. Finally, all that remains is to evoke the tribute she pays, consciously or not, to the great author of “O Tempo e o Vento”, our Érico Veríssimo, which she cannot deny as an author from Rio Grande do Sul. Get ready to enter the heart of this fabulous land, the Pampa, in an estancia, a rather haunted mansion, beaten by the Minuano, loaded with heroic and tragic memories of revolutionary battles, and where we think we can see the shadow of Anita Garibaldi projected at a glance on the ghostly white walls.
Sao Paulo, 08/12/2004
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THE INHERITANCE
Preface by GUILHERME DE FARIA ...........3
First part
The Inheritance in Peril ..................................................... ...............7
Second part
The Pampas Ara ................................................................... .....................31
Third part
The Blood of the Earth ..................................................... ...................64
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(Title):
"I squeeze the tubes onto the palette
I put these verses on paper
and the paints and the words refer me
to our resort
that is still there
like a ghost
sailing
in the vastness of the Pampa
like a ship
the mansion beaten by the minuano
refuses to sink."
(Final lines of the poem Pampa, by Alma Welt)
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Chapter One
The Inheritance in Peril
Rôdo, my brother, wants to sell our ranch. I can't even bear the thought of that happening. I pack my bags hastily, not forgetting, however, to throw my poetry and note-books over my clothes.
During the bus trip, I found myself in a state of great anxiety and so I made an effort to tune in to that present, even though it was a transitional present, with the landscape rushing through the windows. After a whole day and two transfers, I finally arrive at the little station to catch the old train that crosses our lands, in the middle of the pampa. My beloved Pampa, eternal, unchanging.
When at last the buggy comes to pick me up at the little station, I am already back to my childhood and early youth. Moved and tense, I greet our caretaker, Galdério, whose wrinkles now emerge from an immense gray mustache, and whose pumps remind me of my true universe. I am home.
On the way, rocked by the thighs, and by the singing voice of our housekeeper, I find myself in a kind of dream, in which, in the background, I hear the noises and music of the fandango and the song of the Nau Catarineta, which I used to hear in childhood, like a anti-calanto, if I may say so, that took me out of bed and made me run to the balustrade, to observe the adults' party, to follow that wonderful story of the almost cursed ship, which finds its redemption through the unshakable faith of its captain.
Now, the ship that is in danger is our own mansion, which seems to be sailing, motionless, on the astral plane of the Pampa, beaten by the Minuano, in the cold season.
But we are in the middle of summer. And the days would be wonderful if that threat didn't hover inside, in my soul. Our ranch in jeopardy, our home about to be lost. What's going on with Rhodo? How can my brother betray me like this? Was he not self-appointed as the faithful guardian of our father's estate? Of our sacred heritage, of our roots?
I long to meet him right away, and fear coming in screaming like a rage, which is definitely not my thing.
When I see Rôdo, however, on the porch, standing, with his breeches, and his black hair tousled, majestic in his youthful beauty, my heart softens, warms up, and I relax. I run to hug him. He holds me against his heart, and I go back to our childhood, when our hugs were more frequent than usual. Her scent, her perfume, the softness of Rôdo's black hair, my first love, in fact...
But soon I let go, move away from him at arm's length and look him in the eye, shooting him.
"Rôdo, what's going on?" How can you think about it? Selling our estancia...I prefer death, you know. Do you want to kill me? Do you want to kill us all?
"Soul, don't exaggerate!" You are always extreme in your feelings. See: we have no way out, it's either that or a mortgage, which we'll never pay. We're broke. This is the truth. I can't get another dime off the property. Times have changed. You're an artist, you don't know anything about this universe, the practical world, the immense debts we've accumulated since even before Vati's death. You delude yourself. We have no way out.
—But, Rôdo—I almost shouted—You promised, you swore to defend our heritage, the legacy of Vati, our library, the piano, the garden, the vineyard, the orchard, our apple tree, but above all this house. Oh, Rôdo, I can't bear the thought of losing everything!...
I fell into a huge weeping. I felt faint. Rhodo supported me. He then took me in his arms, as he did when we crossed the marsh, and carried me like a child, to deposit me on the sofa in the living room. I abandoned myself for a moment, as if that would soften him, take him away from his intention, which I felt powerful, since the idea of the blindfold had been installed in him for a long time, I realized.
I sobbed until I fell asleep, exhausted, in a torpor of accumulated pain and fatigue, from the journey and the fear that accompanied me.
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I woke up to my brother's face, very close to mine, with his eyes resting on my lips. Had he kissed my mouth in my sleep? Oh, Rôdo, it's too late...
I ran my hand through her beautiful black hair, silky, slightly wavy, as if the pampeiro were always shaking it. My brother, my little brother... I need to talk to him, convince him. There must be a way out. I don't consider myself a person attached to material goods. But, the resort? It is our spiritual heritage...materialized. No, it's not possible, it will be my death, our death. I will be condemned forever to those empty Gardens, in São Paulo, where I can only have my studio, with comfort, surrounded by art galleries, just to provide my livelihood, to continue creating from the internal source of this heritage, of this soil, where my roots are. No, Rhodo, I won't allow it. I will fight everything and even you, if you betray me, if you betray us.
I get up and ask Galdério to saddle a mare. I gallop across this vastness, the infinite meadow. I gallop for a long time, accompanied from afar by the gaze of my brother, who watches me as in the past, when this gallop was happy. Oh, what can I do but gallop? How can I fight, what do I know about life, papers, debts... in this sordid and sad world of the commonplace realities of the practical, real world? I am an artist, I am a poet, alas! Am I then so vulnerable? I didn't know that it could be achieved in this way, in my core, where my creative forces spring up, in my heart, in my soul. They will kill me! They will kill me if all this is lost, this house, these books, Vati's Steinway, with its music that still resonates. Will my memories survive? Without their gold backing, will they not be devalued? I know, this question contradicts the essence of memory, its permanence in spirituality, but... is matter, then, nothing? Why is there then? And it's so beautiful! As much as the spirit, no less. That's the truth. As an artist, I love matter as much as the soul that resides in it. That's why I describe it, I paint it, I root it in the canvas and in the verses. I describe the beloved beauty, of all, my own beauty. I want to fix it. I want it eternal. I want to believe in the resurrection of the flesh, with God, or among the gods of Olympus, I don't know anymore! Among the gods of Pampa!
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At dinner, at the table, Rôdo, at a great distance, that we are seated, father and mother, who are at the same distance, in their great distance. Matilde, our cook sends her niece to serve us. Matilde is very quiet, after we cried a lot, hugging each other. Now a shadow and she doesn't have the courage to approach this empty table, with her children (as she says empty) sitting like this, separated by the table itself, empty, forever.
Where are Lucia and Solange, our sisters, so silent? They already love the loss of our stay. Indeed, they craved it, full of rancor and greedy for the spoils of our heritage, like harpies. They will arrive soon, Rodolfo said. Soon we will be here, pumping the sale, claiming, disputing. There! I will not offer. I will fight, I won't let them ruin everything. They won't take a book, a record! Don't you dare covet the piano. Nothing must come out of here, now I see.
Yes, I myself would never have imagined myself defending these things tooth and nail. But I know Vati wants me that way! I know he was more attached to his books, to his piano, to his paintings than to our lands! They are your spiritual heritage. Symbols of his love for the culture of all peoples. For universal art, for the music of the Masters. There! I can't let this go. The essence of a collection is the personality, the spirit of the collector, which is thus shaped. A scattered collection is the betrayal of a life, an act of cannibalism, of mutilation, of depredation. A shattered soul, like a body!
Vati, Vati, I will defend you! But how? As? What can I do?
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Lucia and Geraldo arrive, with my nephews, the Twins, Christian and Hans. Then Solange and Alberto. Patricia, almost a girl, runs to hug me, then Pedro, handsome, quiet, sensitive. How do all these wonderful children come out of the womb, that's what they ask, in their parents' house already fighting for carrion. Solange hugs me, however, with apparent emotion. she likes me a little, in her own way. Perhaps out of sisterly duty. She is like that, and soon starts complaining about her husband's drunk, who is already there, trying to get something to drink. Our wine, of course, our cellar is still there, we remember, since Vati's death. But not Albert. He returns with a half-dusty bottle, looking with satisfaction at the label, designed by me. Handing out as cups makes a quick, cynical toast to our resort. For the money I was expecting on hand, actually. Oh, how pathetic all this is... and painful. I go out with Patricia, hand in hand. This young woman wants to open her little heart to me, I see. She is in love (maybe) and her mother naturally watches over her, forbidding her to approach the boy. All so predictable! But the truth is, my spirit is no longer serene, centered, there. I'm disturbed by the threat hanging over my house. Can my brothers live so easily plucked from our ground? And Rod? The resort felt as vital to him as it did to me. And it was he who fought for her, on the occasion of the division of the spoils. After all, they all remain together in possession, by my influence. If the Rôdo were of the goods, by agreement, in the division we would have nothing, now we see. It's all lost. My brother became a star. His sports car, his Ferrari, reveals this.
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I sit under my apple tree and daydream. Far away images begin to come to my mind, from a time other than mine, but which are in my roots, perhaps as deep as those of this tree that contains my heart, not only engraved in its bark, but in its core.
They transport me rural images of a "German" Moravia, yes, of the Sudetenland, well before the Second World War. My grandparents, German farmers, returning to their cottage, Bavarian but humble. They have hoes on their backs, and I can see their thick calloused hands. The scarf covering my grandmother's head, rough-looking, her face puffy, from which small blue eyes emerge, amid the reddish fat of her round face. My grandfather, very tall, thin, with huge bony hands, holding a pipe that goes with him to work in the fields. Her blue-green eyes seem obtuse, but at the same time obstinate. The same obstinacy that will pull him out of this land where he feels oppressed, like all the farmers who wanted to feel like a German, in the heart of Bohemia and Moravia. This revolt will bring him, long before the war, to the south of Brazil, the promised land, which he had heard about, a certain valley of the Itajaí, an exotic word that they barely knew how to pronounce. That nefarious Hitler would take advantage of this, with pretext, to invade Poland and Czechoslovakia and destroy them. His struggle, his ascendancy to power campaign already insisted on this dubious theme.
My grandparents, I accompany them in my sleepwalking retrospect, there under that ancestral tree, whose first branches correspond to this couple of rude peasants, brave after all, who would first stop in the region of Blumenau, in Santa Catarina, in a German colony, not so far from another, Azorean, where the young Ana Morgado would be born, ardently loved, since childhood, by my father, the young Werner Friedrich, a dreamer, who wanted to study, leave this agricultural life, be a musician or a doctor and rescue the beautiful Azorean , as he said, from that universe, restricted to him, and carry it with him to the world, so vast. He dreamed of returning to Europe, he who had been born there, in that ideal valley, somehow Brazilian, German, Portuguese, Italian. Typical rural courtship had not been the predestined cosmopolitan spirit of the young Werner, whose rebelliousness was tolerated by the rude Germans, because he revealed the heir of a wider tradition, which included the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and the wisdom of Goethe and Nietzsche, whom he had discovered practically alone, in the library of the parish priest, the pastor of the Lutheran church in that valley.
I like to think that the embryo of this Soul here, was already in that valley... and in that dream of the young couple with half-clandestine boyfriends. Yes, because this union was not easy, and there was an escape, because the two colonies did not get along, and the families, so different, apart from their rural roots, that this was the only common point. Ana, little Catholic, churchgoer, devotee of the virgin, of whom she carried the image on a medal around her neck, how could she have fallen in love with the young German-Brazilian? In fact, more German than anyone else, in its cultural universalism that foreshadowed an erudition that was to become astonishing. How can he fall in love with the naive “Portuguese girl”, but at the same time austere and hard, whose religiosity still contained so much fetishism, with so many venerated images, and so many moral restrictions, which in fact were the only meeting point of the two cultures?
But my father, this one was libertarian, far-sighted... and adventurous. I would kidnap the “girl”, the beloved daughter of the Azores, with very white skin and black hair, which would only reappear in my brother Rudolf, the most beautiful of all, in my opinion. But before me would come Solange and Lúcia, names dear to Brazilians.
How many adventures, indeed, preceded this stage! Young Werner had managed to get sent from the old men to Germany to study. That Germany of the rise of the future Führer, which, thank God, produced an immediate dislike in the enlightened young man.
But this stubborn young man concentrated on his studies, despite everything, the social disturbance of that irresistible rise, that tyrant, whose screams would echo to that ideal valley, back in Brazil, and make my grandparents put on armbands to parade in honor of the fanatic who promised to liberate the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and Poland as well as annex Austria. My dad wouldn't see this depressing scene, of my grandfather with that swastika armband, and his right arm outstretched, yelling "Heil!" while they marched through the streets of Blumenau, tolerated even with some condescension by the rest of the population, in a political moment under the aegis of Getúlio, who until then, did not disguise his sympathy for his colleague from the Third Reich. It took the war to end, and the lurid secrets of Nazism to come to light, for my grandfather to reconsider his positions and renege on that ideology. At least he did. And he laid a stone on the matter, as, it seems, all the German people.rom those years, I learned much later about my father's footsteps, from the letters to my mother, which I discovered in his vaults. Letters and postcards, passionate, romantic, with an increasingly elaborate language, denouncing a growing culture, which, without knowing it, would distance him from the poor Azorean girl, more used to a park bench, simple, in front of a small village church, like the one you chose to marry on your return.
The young man, tall, with blond hair and brilliant blue eyes, would return with an unusual baggage: an immense library, which he seemed to have digested perfectly, such was the extent of his knowledge and the foundations of an erudition that he would grow each time. more throughout your life. And the piano? A wonderful black Steinway that he had brought back by ship and that he played with refined technique, learned who knows where and how, with what time? How could he accumulate so much knowledge, and still play in that romantic way, having graduated in Medicine, and even become a surgeon (an activity that, in fact, he almost never practiced)?
What would have impressed me most in my childhood would be his absolute musical ear and his knowledge of the works of Romanticism, including the world of German, French and Italian opera, above all. Yes, my father was a romantic and he would pass this innate tendency on to me, his favorite daughter. But before that, a lot would happen on that return of his, on the eve of the conflagration that would change the world.
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This retrospective dive of mine is interrupted by the adorable voices of my nephews who come running and playing. Especially beautiful preteens maintain a pleasant harmony between them. It is beautiful to observe the sweetness of the relationship between Patrícia and Pedrinho, their complicity, the result perhaps of the need to unite, in a home troubled by an alcoholic father and an excessively controlling mother. I can imagine the conflicts and scenes, of which I have already witnessed some, that these children are forced to live with. As for the twins, Christian and Hans, they are two sweet conundrums. All that's left is for them to speak in unison, like those twins in Bergman's film “Wild Strawberries”. I join them, who surround me offering me fruit and beautiful smiles. We walk together, entering that orchard, and I surrender to the immense pleasure of that moment, until the moment I remember the threat that hangs over all this. The imminent loss of this paradise, of these moments that I wanted to immortalize for generations. I run out suddenly, crying, towards the mansion, much to the children's astonishment. I needed to see Rhodo, urge him, somehow dissuade him from his intent.
I find Alberto's rubbish in the living room with another bottle in his hand, looking for a glass. Soon he'll be drinking from the bottle, dirty or not. Solange, who appears immediately, looking irritated as usual, looks at my tear-stained face and opens her arms slightly to let them fall over her broad hips, in a gesture of “patience”.
“There you are again bursting into tears. Have you become a crybaby now, Alma? You weren't like that... What do you want? You don't accept reality, do you? You never accepted her, did you? You and Vati, two dreamers. They never knew that families need money, money, do you hear? You don't raise children with just books and music, you know? No, you don't. And bla, bla, bla...
I run out of that room, and go knock on the door of Rôdo's room. I don't find it. I go to the library and there he is cleaning a gun, a hunting rifle that my father never touched and kept only as a souvenir of my grandfather. It caused me immediate revulsion to see that weapon at that moment. Why didn't I find him with an open book? One of the many illustrated books by Vati, so dear to our childhood?
"Rôdo, I need you to listen to me." Put down that weapon and reason with me: there must be a way out. How much is the resort's debt? Why don't you sell your Ferrari? Why do you need such an expensive car? Isn't it the most important resort for you, for both of us at least? And the children, Rhodo? Can't you see that they cannot be deprived of these gardens, this orchard, this all? The Pampa, Rôdo, the Pampa!
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I burst into tears, shaking him by the collar of his shirt. I hugged him tightly and he pressed me deep against his chest before pushing me away in exasperation.
“Alma, stop it. You are making everything more difficult. Aren't you the one who always spoke of detachment? And your philosophy? What about Tao? Are they just bullies? Words? See, Alma, this too is fate. Our stay, this house, our childhood has come to an end. So don't you see, Alma? Ended.
"No, no, Rhodo!" Don't try to confuse me. I know, I know it's not over. I feel Vati hovering over this house, and the music emanating from his fingers on the piano wakes me up at night. He's here and he wants us together, at least the two of us, under this roof, in this library, rereading these books... or simply worshiping them. His piano, Rôdo, the Steinway... we can't, Rôdo, he's still alive!
Rôdo looked at me desolately, now with tears in his eyes, and hugged me again, both sobbing. Rôdo had also collapsed, his strength was fictitious. I knew it.
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At dinner, everyone at the table, our big table, whose heads were now occupied by Rôdo and Solange, since the latter would never let me occupy that place, Alberto, inopportunely, made a point of making a toast with another bottle from our cellar. Everything was a pretext for the drunkard, notwithstanding the lack of real joy at this family gathering, in which the children themselves were more silent, as if sensing something, the imminent end of those meetings. His little antennas were already catching the disaster, the dispersion, the end of the dream. I knew how important the mansion and ranch were to them, they were a kind of safe haven anchored in their ancestral land. They lived in the city, but they were always here every year, during school holidays, and here they grew up, stretched out, every wonderful season. His eyes searched mine, instinctively seeking safety. I realized that I was for them the stability reference of this place, despite everything, despite being just an artist. But my love and my joy were the thermometer of the continuity of that grandparents' house, of its roots. Solange, I could see, was irritated by this, since it seemed to her that this role, as the eldest, belonged to her. But how could this arid woman, without true love, as it seemed to me, be able to take the place of Vati? He was pure love and complacency, combined with rare strength and wisdom. He was the true spirit of this estancia that my grandparents bought, in the midst of the decay of an old breed of authentic gaucho ranchers, but so old in this Pampa that they have rotted away.
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When my grandparents, farmers who had so prospered, out of sheer Germanic effort and discipline, bought this farm, perhaps the situation was analogous to what it is now. There must have been a Pampean Soul there and... a Rhodo. Also a hard and dry Solange. And children who lost everything. I can imagine the burden of pain and resentment in the change of hands of this property, whose stability depended on enormous dedication and love. Perhaps the property itself had a spirit that conditioned us, that directed us, and that did not forgive our own decadence... and finally expelled us. But not! I haven't resigned yet! I'm not ready, I thought, at that table, at that sad dinner indeed, where a drunkard's toast sounded strangely inopportune, and in which no one was interested. However, when touching the glass after the toast, my lips first tasted the wonderful land of this pampa, the cold smell of minuano, the aroma of jerked beef, mate in the gourd, and the endless vines. Then I realized the excellence of that wine that I hadn't noticed before. And it seemed to me a heavenly flavor, which somehow pointed the way, in a language or code that I could not then decipher.
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Evening ride with Rôdo after dinner in our glowing garden of fireflies. Patricia and the children, delighted, run after the lights trying to catch them. This scene would etch itself on me forever, I knew, but I didn't believe it would be the last nighttime image of that wonderful garden of my childhood extensively extended there by those beautiful children. Rhodo and I in our boyhood had done this so much! He would put hundreds of fireflies in a jar of jam or even an empty bottle of wine, to shine in the night, concentrated, while I protested, until I took the bottle from him to free the bugs. Rôdo, in fact, let me do it, because he was loving by nature, at least to me. He would then charge me in return, just kisses on the lips, which I naively haggled over, excited, half fearful. Once he made me lie down behind a flowering hedge, there in the dark, and surrounded by the twinkling of a thousand stars in the sky and on the earth, he kissed me for a long time on the lips, awkwardly but sweetly, while his little hand roamed my body, groping -me. There I felt those things for the first time, when his small hand covered my shell, under my skirt. Only… he had broken the spell, bringing his fingers up to his nose and grimacing. “Smells like pee,” he said, and I, bewildered and embarrassed, ran into the house.
Now, there, with him, this scene popped up from the back of my memory and made me smile in the dark, a smile he hadn't seen. Maybe he thought about it too and smiled in the dark, remembering my smell and how he had been obsessed from that moment on, and had sought so many times to renew that experience, until the bitter day when, denounced, we were caught by our mother, under our apple tree.
Rhodo took a deep breath, perhaps from the depths of his memory, and said:
-Alma, I don't want, as much as you, to lose all this. Here our memory is alive, I know. I'll do what you want, but have an idea, for God's sake. I will sell the Ferrari if need be, but I warn you that the debt is much, much greater than what I can get out of this sale. At least double. And my car is not new anymore, you know how I run on these roads. The mileage is very high. You remember how I once destroyed a Porsche... and almost died. Can I live without speed? Maybe not... but I know, we're on edge, and there are more people at stake. The children... But remember: Solange and her brothers-in-law are dying to get rid of the house, the ranch, everything. They hate our roots, with the exception of Lucia, who I think we can count on, the others are barren people, with no real roots, except for the beautiful children they had, surprisingly. So, Soul, think, think! But get a better idea, because I... I don't know what to do anymore.
“Rhodo,” I said. “I will pray, I will have an inspiration, I know. But I will pray to the gods of Olympus and Pampa, as Vati taught me. He wanted his girl to be pagan... and he got it. I'll look for our apple tree, do a ritual tomorrow night. Only you should know this. Keep everyone away. disguise. For all intents and purposes I will be locked in my room. You know me, I don't play with certain things. Thou shalt see. Something must happen that will get us out of this impasse.
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I'm getting ready for the ritual I've managed to do next to my apple tree. I stealthily gather herbs throughout the day. I don't forget to add to my collection the sacred yerba mate of the pampas, and leaves from our vineyard. I spend the day concentrating, having given Rôdo the task of avoiding the gossip of Solange and Geraldo, Lucia's husband. As for Alberto, he is too busy with the bottles, decimating our cellar. I'm only afraid that he will soon start to embarrass, shocking the children, and Patricia, that precious flower that remains untouched like a lily of the pampas, or like a seraph. How could these kids preserve themselves like this, so pure, with parents like these? Well, I leave it at that, I can't help but keep my arms always open to welcome these wonderful children.
At dusk, I sneak in with my herbs and other accessories, to hide them in the orchard and get back in time for supper. Rôdo kept entertaining the children so they wouldn't see my maneuvers. At dinner, Patricia expressed how much she missed me, slightly hurt. I caressed her a lot, under the sideways glance of her mother. Her father was already so drunk that he didn't sit at the table. So we drink water from the spring during this dinner. However, as I touched the glass of pure water, I felt again the surprising and delicious taste of the wine from the night before.
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I cross the garden, whose daisies, under the moon's glare, have a phosphorescent and spectral aspect. Trees, bushes, and hedges cast shadows that blur my vision, and make me feel like I'm in a dream. In the silver-topped orchard, the more compact shadows on the ground highlight an area of light soil around my apple tree, all of it looking magical, silver, shimmering.
I carry with me a three-legged stool, which will be my makeshift tripod. I install it next to the apple tree, in front of the heart engraved on it with our initials. This is for me the face of my tree. As the bench is rather low, I try to keep it on piled stones that raise it to my chest. I hope that the connection of my tripod with the ground is assured by these stones, and they do not isolate it. It is necessary that the link between heaven and earth is perfect in its flow of energies. So says my instinct. I am the Pythia, or the pythoness of this temple: my orchard. I am taken by this feeling, rare in me, of the intermediation of occult forces and vague esoterism, like a terrain that, in fact, I don't know. However, an unknown instinct in me guides me. Ancestral powers, very ancient, come together for me, I feel them, coming from a distant antiquity. Perhaps a druidess acts, or a Greek pythoness, or even a fusion of these oracles, from their Celtic, Germanic and Greek strands, gathered in me on this solemn night.
The chorus of crickets, frogs and other nocturnal singers like the nightjar, and even dogs in the distance, howling at the moon, prepare the moment of absolute silence that will install, I know, at the moment of the magical invocation.
I am seized with a sacred fervor in relation to forces that I sense, without knowing them well. They are not the fruit of reason, and I am already in a semi-delusional state that mysteriously settles in me in this propitiatory night. It certainly couldn't be another night. Only this date awaited me, priestess of a single moment, vestal of virginity remade for a few hours that will never be repeated.
I start to burn the herbs I gathered during the day and which I had hidden nearby. I start with the yerba mate of the pampas, invoking, while the smoke rises, the pampeiros, including that tender and tragic little black from the grazing, emerged from the memory of my childhood. I invoke the holy captain of Nau Catarineta and the gaucho of Salamanca do Jarau, I invoke Martim Fierro, or his model, a real gaucho, the mold of all brave and telluric gaucho pawns. I continue, then, with the burning of the smoke of our estancia, very strong and forgotten. Finally, I add leaves from our vineyard, invoking the eternal Dionysus, who appears in my spirit with my father's face. So, at this moment, the orchard seems saturated with presences. Each nume brings with it its procession of aggregates. Dionysus presents himself with the blond beard of my young father, crowned with vine leaves, carrying his wine glass in his hand, and with him the entourage that always accompanies him. I see them, all of them: satyrs, nymphs, and the bustling little fauns. Soon this orchard erupts in an immense sacred bacchanal. I find myself in a hyperesthetic state, of confluence of all spirits. My hair stands on end and I feel the radiance that exudes from me through my pores, through my fingers, which manipulate the conclamatory herbs. All the gods, some witches, sorcerers and druids converge there. I see the Wizard Merlin, from King Arthur, and the fairy Morgana, also Queen Mab* in her nutshell, followed by all the faerie. Deirdre*, daughter of ancestral Ireland, follows her, with Fingal* and Ossian*. My saturated orchard becomes a great “Night of Walpurgis”*, with the wandering presence of Faust accompanied by his Mephistopheles; and that of Eros and Psyche, and Helen of Troy “she whose face threw a thousand ships into the sea”. I see Thor and Odim out of their Walhala* and the Valkyries on horseback. In a kind of Alef moment, I see everything and everyone, around Leonardo da Vinci's immense beard, on this universal Sabbath, before collapsing, fainting, with my sweater torn apart by my own claws, half naked on the floor carpeted with dry leaves. and small skittish beings, a space silvered by an immense moon that makes me levitate horizontally, one meter off the ground.
Rôdo, screaming my name, arrives, running, and picks me up in the air, stupefied, as he would later tell me. He had to put me down on the dry leaves forcing me down. Never again, he said, would he look at me with the same eyes.
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I spent the next two days soaking in bed, exhausted, to the point of suspecting that all this, gods and numbers, had come from within myself, and not from the surrounding nature, from my orchard, the earth and the air, anyway.
But never mind, I had summoned them... and they appeared. They came together, alive, somehow. They were all there, they did not miss the meeting, which made me sure that I was not alone, and that they would not abandon this land. And I would always be in their midst, for my roots were solid, and somehow, my faith was so powerful, that I wouldn't be defeated by the lesser deities of money...or lack thereof.
My sisters and brothers-in-law attributed my condition to an understandable depression given our financial situation. The children surrounded me with affection, climbing up to the bed and coming in, at night, under my covers to hug me. I realized how much I was loved by these children, and I was sure that I was on the right path. Patricia, the little maiden, said to me:
—Aunt Alma, I understand that Mom and Dad want to sell the ranch. I can also see that you suffer more than anyone else for this, and that you are fighting, in some way, to save her. Tell me, aunt. I will do what you want. I won't let that happen, either, without a fight. Daddy just wants to drink, I see. He will drink all the money that falls into his hands. He'll drink the whole place if we let him (a tear ran down his face) — But, Auntie, you must tell me what to do. I will obey you, whatever your instructions. Tell me, Aunt Alma, what can I do?
—Patricia, my love, you are my favorite girl. I knew I could count on you. But I don't know how you can help. When the time is right, when I find out, I'll let you know, stay tuned... and tell me everything you hear from strangers. I just didn't want you to be a little spy. But the time is war and we must take our positions. I am infinitely grateful for your words. You are a golden girl.
On the third day, regaining strength, I left the bed and participated in the dinner, when Alberto took the opportunity to open another bottle to make me a toast. And once again, the wine seemed too delicious to me. Alberto spent dinner drinking, without touching the food, very excited, as if it were a party time. And, one way or another, he distracted us from our worries.
Rôdo, that night, after dinner, he arranged for me, in whispers, as a child, to meet me in the office. I arrived there, at the agreed time, and found him with his boot on the desk and with the gaucho knife of carved silver, in his hand, in his favorite scene game, since childhood. He was the gauchão type, with a smile halfway across his mouth. But soon he composed himself and said:
-Alma, I don't know what you did, but you scared me. How could you stay like this, hovering above the ground? What happened? What are you up to? You're crazy, I'm almost afraid of you. What are you up to?
“Rôdo,” I said, “the details are none of your business, although you arrived at a good time to interrupt the ritual, which I really don't know how it could end. All I know is that the pact was made, if I can call it that. We are not alone. Have you seen the hosts with which we are accompanied?
—Alma, I saw nothing but enough: you lying in the air, your hair almost touching the earth... and it was too much. I don't ever want to see that again, you sorceress. You scare me. Since childhood you have had your mysteries, which I cannot share. Is not fair. But what did you do? What is the practical result, come on, say it!
“Look, brother, I can't tell you everything. I myself find it hard to believe what I saw now. Nothing was said, properly speaking, but the presences I invoked, and who appeared brought or not by our herbs, were enough to know that we are not alone, but accompanied by powerful beings, who watch over us and this land, this house. . This has given me confidence, and the result, for now, is just this: confidence. I know that a sudden inspiration will come to me, from them. Just wait.
“Well, Alma, let that inspiration come soon. We do not have much time. The economic pressure, from our creditors, doesn't let up, you have no idea... Until now I wanted to spare you the details, since you are an artist, for whom all this would be even more painful than for me and the sisters. . Our brothers-in-law, you know, are two zeros on the left, especially Alberto, the king of bottles.
We were talked. Quietly, I began to caress his hair, which I had loved since childhood, and he nestled his beautiful head against my breasts.
I walk in the morning among the flowers in our garden, picking daisies, dandelions, violets, and making a bouquet. Patrícia accompanies me, delighted, and we decorate our hair with the girls. As we wear white, airy dresses, we must certainly look beautiful. Our brothers-in-law watch us and even Alberto, the numb one, is sensitive to this scene. I am aware that things like this, which are at the heart of everything, give meaning to this rural property, whose ultimate goal is also beauty. Nothing would have meaning without it, this is the tradition of this gaucho land, in the end, the tradition... of beauty, of this pampa and of our people. I am convinced of that, and don't accuse me of being an artist... as if that meant a partial, subjective view. The Greeks knew, as in the urn poem by John Keats: “Truth is beauty, beauty is truth. This is all there is to know.”*
From inside the house comes the sound of a Chopin prelude. One of the “five easy pieces”, which Rôdo knows how to play with unparalleled delicacy, although he never thinks of himself as an artist. The musical bent inherited from Vati is present, in him, as in me. I can't play like that, only dance, paint and write under the influence of this wonderful music. For the past few days I have been chronically moved, as if my life was at its limit, which may well be true. It's time to mount my bay horse, and even with this dress and these flowers in my hair, gallop across these prairies, across the infinite pampa. Well, that's what I'll do, after asking Galdério for the saddled mount. Solange appears on the porch trying to stop me, scandalized.
"Soul, you crazy one!" When are you going to stop behaving like this? You were doing very well picking flowers with Patricia. Will you have to gallop once more, like when you were a child? You've grown up, stop it! You can get hurt, can't you see?
I'm already mounted and I hear their screams in the distance. I shoot across the meadow, as if I were the pampeiro itself, humming in the crotch. Rôdo will then mount and pursue me, I know, as before, as before...
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I inform Rôdo that I need a female companion, a friend, here, at this moment, and that I am thinking of inviting Aline, who has always wanted to visit our resort. Now is the time. We are separated, but as friends, and I know that she will not miss this opportunity, besides the fact that she wants to be with me, I know, with a pretext that that Pedro will not be able to resist. Rôdo agrees, of course, he doesn't need to know the timbre of this friendship, which doesn't concern him. As for Solange, I don't even think about giving her any satisfaction.
Soon I start phoning Aline's house, until I get to talk to her. I tell her to come, that I need her…desperately. That this is a delicate moment, that I need your support, your confidence, even your advice. In fact, your love. She, touched on the phone, says yes, she will come. That I expect her within three days at the most.
While waiting for her, out of my anxiety and excitement, I wrote this frantic letter, as if we hadn't already spoken on the phone:
.Not far from here are the ruins of the missions, “Seven Peoples”, that my father took me to know when I was still a child. The grandeur of those wreckage strengthened my conviction of the grandeur of this land, whose Indians, guided by the Jesuits, were able to build such portentous walls. There are those who say that the Indians should not build anything out of stone and lime, and that all this is nothing more than violence and distortion of their culture, wonderful when in its primitivism. But the truth is that everything was destiny, and it is an integral part of this land, whose history cannot do without any of its dramatic fragments: the colony, the Empire, the Farroupilha revolution, with Bento Gonçalves, Neto, and Garibaldi. And that wonderful Anita, whose integral Brazilianness I envy, in love with an Italian hero and dying in a foreign land. The German blood, which runs in my veins, is also assimilated by the sap of the Pampas, and our wine of so many strains tends to become one of the best in the world, second only to the French. Who knows, maybe we will unseat it in the distant future, when that exhausted soil of ancient Gaul will be completely exhausted.
So meditating, I make my way to our vineyard, almost ashamed to prioritize our orchard on my arrival. There I find Rôdo supervising the work, conscientiously, as if, for him too, there was still hope. I admired him to see him like this, as he had confided in me his despair, his defeat. Perhaps he wanted to hand over productive land, in order to get a better price, in the sale he planned.
Rôdo offered me a bunch of grapes, which gleamed perfectly, and placed vine leaves on either side of my head, exclaiming cynically:
—Hail, Anima Mundi, morituri te salutant!
That sounded ironic, but auspicious at the same time. I removed the leaves and putting a single grape in my mouth, I placed the bunch in the basket to be taken with the others. It was my affirmation of the need to go on, to continue the production of our wine, and that we would never die. This is what life wants: that we live as if we were eternal, disdaining the deceitful offer of the gods, as if immortality were in the present moment, eternalized. Thus Odysseus had rejected Circe's offer, and therein lay his immortal human honor. He did not deny his mortality because he knew it was relative: the sublime moment, of courage, adventure and curiosity, already configured an eternity, and he would not allow himself to be corrupted by the temptation of the gods, who tested souls, as the Devil would later do to Christ. , and Mephistopheles, incarnation of that one, who would tempt Faust, the penultimate modern hero, since the last ones were Garibaldi and Anita.
The taste of grape blood in my mouth gave me, for a long time, the sensation of the indistinct embryo of an idea that had not yet found its configuration. What would it be? What, then, was insinuating itself into my spirit, so still amorphous, faceless?
Aline came to meet me in the vineyard, and we walked around for a long time, sucking grapes and waving at the harvesters, with their headscarves, which looked at us curiously. Two girls so tall… leggy, they must think. That's weird! But they knew me. Maybe they didn't imagine there was another girl like me, like me.
Aline, with her jeans, which did not take away from her femininity in the slightest, with her breasts whose nipples protrude from her white shirt, must cause a slight scandal in the minds of these peasant women. But I'll never know... Talking to them was almost impossible. His thoughts seemed hidden, by reserve or natural isolation in an unfathomable world of restrictive traditions and customs. I never really knew what the peons and their wives and daughters thought of me, of us, of the big house. The Germans, the Boches? How did they refer to this family? From Galdério and his sister I knew their loyalty beyond measure. Matilde, former nanny, now cook, loved me more than anything and I compared her to Desdemona's nurse, Othello's, who would have died for her mistress. Oh! The Willow Song, by Shakeapeare and Verdi, was for me the best portrayal of the fidelity and sadness of the world of these peasant women, which a poet could never describe so well. It reminded me of Vati, who showed me for the first time, this aria by Othello, by Verdi, who won me over in the right way for the opera world. Oh! Vati, I owe it all to you, the world of art and this vineyard, which I now promise never to dry up.
I ran out of there, followed by Aline, amazed. Facing the porch, my friend grabbed me and pulled my head to her chest.
-“Alma, Alma, calm down. You'll get it, I know, you'll get an idea. I know you. But don't suffer like that. I can't see you suffer. It breaks my heart. When I left her, that time, her cry, as a child, she wouldn't let me sleep anymore. My friend, you are a girl, deep down. And you already carry the weight of an entire vineyard. Now I know you better, here, in your land. Come, come, I'll pack you, my dear...
Aline's immense tenderness made up for almost everything, and I then felt that without her, I could not bear the threat, the fear, the imminent loss.
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In our room, Aline laid me down on the bed and began to caress her. She had left the door open, and that was disastrous. Lucia was passing in the hallway, at that moment, she stopped, and saw the scene. We don't notice its sneaky shadow presence. Was Lucia a spy for Solange? She witnessed our kisses, Aline's hand that roamed my body, lifted my skirt, roamed my thighs and plunged into the confluence of my legs. Lucia, unable to contain herself, ran in that corridor, when we then noticed her fugitive presence, and we were sure of the scandal. Solange would know everything...I was lost. I would lose what little moral strength I had left in this house, in front of her and my brothers-in-law.
At lunch, Aline and I, wary, approached the big table. But surprisingly, nothing happened. Lucia just kept her eyes down, while Solange remained the same sergeant as ever.
The meal went on normally, with its pleasant bits, others not so much, but with laughter at Alberto's inconveniences, and Geraldo's snobbery. Noticing this brother-in-law, I imagined the horror that this lunch would be if he already knew everything. And Solange, then? This one would throw me off the table, screaming, and forbidding me to ever approach her daughter. I would die of pain... and of shame. No, nobody knows yet. Lucia kept it a secret. Because? What does she want? A mystery, for now.
After lunch, I call Lucia, surreptitiously to the hallway. I question her with my eyes. She, with downcast eyes, raised them and, taking hold of my shoulders, with firm delicacy, to my surprise, pulled me to her and said:
“Alma, my sister, fear nothing. I admire you, I love you. No one will ever know from my mouth, anything. Solange thinks I'm her spy, but I'll never be loyal to her. She doesn't deserve us. Alma, I will keep your secret, and Geraldo will never humiliate you, that arrogant one. Rest easy, my little sister... and love your friend as much as you like.
I knelt, then, suddenly, at Lucia's feet, and humbly and sincerely kissed her hands. I was saved.
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End of Chapter first
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CHAPTER TWO
the ARA
"Shoemaker's Wife
(see Maria Bonita)
It's adventurous arrival
Like that brave Anita
Leaving Poltrom Husband
Not caring that we hurt
One was with Lampião
Another was with Garibaldi
I will go back to my South
What better will I ever have
There's Garibaldi and Anita
Which is better than having a king"
(Quadras by cordelist Guilherme de Faria, from his
“Maxims of the Sertanejo Trovador” published in pamphlets
in his “Romances de Cordel.”)
the ARA
In my little patent-leather shoes, I ran through the fields around our big house, often losing sight of it. With an old-fashioned, useless apron over my very long skirt, I looked more like a girl from the previous century: long hair, with a ribbon, sometimes braids. I ran or just wandered around, picking flowers, blowing the grass seeds in the wind, daydreaming, until I heard the sound of Vati's piano, which was the way to return to earth... to continue dreaming. I ran to the library, to get under the big Steinway (which now, on my return, seemed much smaller). I would stay there, lying on my stomach on a very soft rug, which Vati would place for me. With my chin in my hands, I watched her feet on the pedals, whose usefulness seemed to me a mystery, and let myself be lulled by the wonderful sound of Chopin, Shumann, Shubert, Lizst, Debussy, Scriabin, Satie and Poulenc. I would then get up so that, beside him, I could observe her hands, her nimble fingers, skillful as an old musician-surgeon. When he was finished, I would sometimes pick up his resting hands, inert on the keyboard, and watch them carefully, examining the smallest details, which seemed to amuse him. One day I kissed them after their concert for me. Yes, because I thought it was just me he played for... and he let me think so. Then he would put me on his lap so we could talk about music, about composers. He told me stories and anecdotes about their lives, and I transported myself to that world, where I saw myself as their companion, and precociously, their loved ones. Yes, all of them. I identified with his muses, which my father described with reverence, denouncing his fascination with women... with the beauty of the woman-muse, which he himself did not enjoy, I later realized. My mother was anything but that... Her unyielding rectitude, her gradual bitterness, her practical outlook on life, ruled by an excessive sense of duty, devoted to her family and the man who had chosen her. Yes, because she had been passively chosen, and I could never feel in her a great love for Vati, as I projected it, in my imagination fired by the romantic world of artists: musicians, poets and painters of that wonderful 19th century.
Then he would pick up the large volumes from the shelves to show me the illustrations by Gustave Doré, or by Flaxman (in the case of the Iliad and the Odyssey), and he would often read to me selected passages from those works. And I shed tears of enchantment, and more, because that was being transmitted by him, with that affective charge, with that feeling of identification and donation that he had for me. I was his hope, now I know, his repository of dreams, and if possible, of the artistic culture that he had no one else to bequeath, since my sisters were not moved by that universe, and lived stuck in the kitchen, or in the practical work around Mutti. Rhodo was a different case. But they were excellent soulless embroiderers, and their work did not interest me. I preferred to imagine Penelope's endless web at the loom, reconstructing the adventures of her beloved Odysseus, as she imagined them from the vague narratives of the returned soldiers, to follow him on his bumpy path towards herself. I identified with her, this queen that I knew held true fidelity: that of the complicit imagination, and of true devotion, that of the passionate soul, which I did not see in my mother.
Fortunately, she, Ana Morgado, had the common sense, at least, not to interfere in this father-daughter relationship, whose affinities were almost absolute, with the exception of the obscure world, for me, incomprehensible, of Medicine, which I rejected from my life. imagination, as a bloody, ugly, raw thing. I could never understand, with my senses, the fascination he had for what I considered the demystification of the flesh, since I saw it and wanted it that way: a perfect envelope of the soul, full of beauty and personality, of brightness and sensuality.
My mother feared this above all: the precocious sensuality she saw in me. And she tried to repress it, without succeeding, since she exuded from me through my pores, through my movements, a little student of eurythmy and ballet, two opposing disciplines, which Vati was trying to combine in me. But, even without that, this sensuality, above all, was innate in my movements, and coming from the beauty that always accompanied me, as everyone said, since my birth.
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I walk around the house now, appeased, on the one hand, by Lúcia's surprising complicity, but restless, my mind agitated, looking for a solution to our impasse. The ritual I had presided over in the orchard would bear fruit, I hoped. There was, as it were, an embryo of an idea, still formless, planted in my spirit, or in the back of my mind.
At meals, we would get together painstakingly, always under Geraldo's nitpicking, Rôdo's sarcastic answers, Solange's scoldings and teasing, Lucia's downcast silence, and Alberto's sometimes amusing nonsense, emptying the bottles, which he, with difficulty, shared with us. The delight of these wines ended up relaxing, minimizing the rough edges of this family mismatch. Blessed wine! I understood in those days the catalytic function of this nectar of the gods, given to men by Dionysus, to soften our fate, although often, I know, it overloads it, such is its fascination.
Alberto, our Bacchus, with a reddish nose, was the one who stood out the most in our repasts. Yes, drunks, in general, channel to themselves, in one way or another, the attentions, caricatures that become of all of us, human beings. I remember, however, the shock that my father took me to a circus as a child. The clowns caused me horror, and a painted face, which sank into an immense collar, with a turtle, made me turn my head in revulsion, as in a nightmare. The slaps and false, clattering blows resonated to me as real and brutal. I wanted to run away, but I hugged my father, closing my eyes and turning away from that grotesque spectacle, which left me forever with this repugnance for the poor clowns, caricatures of the drunk, with their red noses, their loose, flowing pants, their oversized shoes, made for stumbling.
Solange insisted on leading the meal ritual, but we paid no attention to her. We knew not to take her seriously, or she would bully us. In childhood, Rôdo and I had managed to escape their oppression, through this tacit attitude of humor and relaxation, which we found in our own temperaments, supported by Vati, who enjoyed it enormously. I can imagine how much resentment Solange had built up all these years against the three of us.
Speaking of Solange, I have just remembered, with nostalgia, our Christmas and New Year parties, at the estancia, during my childhood. Glorious days, those, when I got up early, on splendorous summer mornings, almost screaming with joy to exist, and to feel... so happy! The parties, for me, started with the preparations, in the kitchen, and in the prepared room, especially with the assembly of our big Christmas tree. Matilde was the great party girl, responsible for the wonderful roast turkey, side dishes, salads and sweets. Vati took care of the choice of wines, of our own production. Mutti managed everything, starting with the decoration of the room and the decent preparation of the big table that would bring us all together. Solange and Lúcia helped them, while Rôdo and I had fun watching and clapping, or simply picking flowers and enjoying the lovely atmosphere of Christmas preparations.
But I particularly remember the Christmas when I was thirteen years old, when Rôdo, in a great restlessness of his pre-adolescent libido, decided to create an excuse for me to visit him in his little attic room, on the eve of Christmas, at midnight. , when everyone was asleep.
There I was, as so often, in that cozy environment of a boy's room, which fascinated me with its virile mess, where all their tastes showed themselves: cars, model airplanes, miniatures of motorcycles and boats, photos and posters of mountains and beaches, some typical Pampas photos, of cowboys lassoing or launching the bolas at full gallop, wonderful horses, everything that an adventurous boy loved, and... a beautiful photo of me, my best photo, which touched me to be there, among the your beloved things. I hugged him in a more emotional way than usual, although I knew that Rôdo didn't like sentimentality. But that night, in particular, for some reason I wanted to cry with happiness at having him as a brother, I, who didn't identify with my sisters at all, and wasn't even sure I loved them. I pulled him over me, instinctively, like a little lover, but we were sleepy and we fell asleep like that, dressed and cuddling, dreaming of ourselves, cuddling, dreaming...
We woke up startled by Solange's high and aggressive voice. The fat little shrew, in front of us, with her hands on her hips, glared at us:
—Oh! You bastards. Already hooked up again! Mom will know about it! You'll run out of turkey at Christmas and no dessert! They won't even sit at the table, you'll see!
I was embarrassed for her, not myself. For the pettiness of my sister who insisted on tormenting my life, conspiring against my happiness, which, after all, for me, it was right there, next to my brother. I retorted, extending my arms to her:
"Solange, jealous little sister!" Do you want to hug me too? Come, come Sun, I'll make you happy!
Solange flushed with confusion and anger, but ran away. I had disarmed her. I looked at Rôdo and he was rolling with laughter, panting. He finally managed to say:
—Alma, you have each one! You are always unexpected. You, hugging the Sun! Can't imagine!
-Well... she wouldn't let it. I would hug her and even kiss her if I won her over and she stopped chasing us. By the way, are we out of turkey and dessert?
We laughed once more together, and I was so happy there, with Rôdo, romantically in my little brother's arms, that I began to hear the sounds of Christmas Eve, the noise of crystals, wine glasses, and silverware, from the happy laughter of the family members I loved so much, which I wouldn't exclude Solange, whom I saw smiling at me, chubby and... even nice. I didn't even need Christmas Eve. I was so full and happy, that I heard its crystal sounds, and I didn't need the eve to arrive anymore. My Christmas was right there, in that moment, present forever, feeling with my little nascent breast, the beats of my brother's beloved heart.
But going back to the present time, Lucia, who I thought was the helpless victim of our older sister, now revealed another face to me, albeit an equally resentful one. She would get even, secretly supporting me, and I would be grateful for that.
Exercising the security that this certainty gave me, she took advantage of meals to cuddle my dear Patrícia, the twins, and Pedrinho, as never before. The keynote then became the children and their untouched world. They would be the focus of attention, and not even Geraldo dared to exercise his corrosive poisons anymore. Once, he just said:
“Alma, you are still childish. You will never grow up, will you? Not even in the face of the limit situation in which we find ourselves.
“My brother-in-law,” I replied, “let's leave the adult conversations to the office. Children are serious too. Laughter and joy... are serious business, aren't they, children?
They shook their heads in bursts of laughter, and we continued talking pleasant nonsense, with the exception of Patricia, who was daydreaming with a lost gaze. Taken by her first love, she was at that timeless age of lovers. I thought of Romeo's Juliet and her simultaneous maturity and naivete. Maturity, yes, because Julieta understood the real tragedy of her situation. Can we imagine the rape she was destined for by her parents, the rape that awaited her at the hands of a hateful older man under the circumstances? The being in love cannot even imagine being touched, taken, but by the object of his passion. Juliet would be dead forever in her heart, in her flesh and in her soul, if defiled by that Count Paris.
Thinking like that, I would hand Patricia over to her love, hand in hand, if she were my daughter, at most, as a representative of our time, she would present them with a dozen condoms. But I still didn't have children, and maybe I saw things with too much detachment. The fact is that I moved my spirit at will, between the centuries, positioning myself at the end of the millennium when it came to the sexual question. I had always been a libertarian, with the encouragement of Vati, and being an artist, I could not accept any oppression, at any age. I could barely understand the subjection people had to authority and hierarchy. I would never give an order: I would never order anything from anyone in my entire life, even an employee. I would ask please, as I always have. A human being should never exercise power over another human being, I think so. And the one who submits to tyranny ends up legitimizing it, or becoming its accomplice.
Alberto, drinking our wine, tried to be childish, like us, but he didn't, that's the truth. It was out of tune. We then ran away right after dessert, leaving the adults entertained with coffee, cigars and liqueurs. We would run to the garden on a tag full of laughter, or stroll peacefully, hand in hand. With these beautiful children, I truly feel like family.
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Days passed and I, safe again, took a chance on caresses with Aline, but with a little more care. We didn't want to shock the kids either, of course, and at most we strolled hand in hand, like two good friends. I knew Solange was watching us all the time. It bothered me, of course, and I wanted to be able to stand up to her. If it weren't for the children I would kiss Aline on the lips, everywhere, and make her sit on my lap on the benches in the garden. With that reproach, my love and desire increased... and I felt like a Juliet too. Oh! Why don't people just leave each other alone? Why so much intrusion and disrespect to other people's individualities? I know that there are those who think that the attitudes of others also disrespect us, even when they are not directed at us. I don't think so. I wouldn't even report a thief. And I would never be part of a jury to convict anyone. I wouldn't judge anyone in that sense. The human being, I believe, must never usurp the prerogative of destiny. The wicked will be punished by time, and by their own wickedness. The good will pass through their faults unscathed, for their hearts will preserve them. And the innocent are already in paradise. That's how I've thought since I was little. I don't believe in a punitive God. This would not match the immense love that is the reason for the universe, for God himself.
For me, the evident proof of God's love, the closest configuration of his immense power, is the sun. A small displacement of a few thousand kilometers would be enough for it to roast us or freeze us. But no, it remains careful, looking at us and warming us, from the exact distance, to produce this beautiful nature, contemplating us with countless gifts, particles and mysterious effects, to create life... and beauty. His love is evident.
With that in mind, I pull Aline by the hand, all the time to all the gaps I find, or behind the trees in our orchard, to kiss her on the mouth, greedily. I can not take it anymore. I want everything from my love.
I then take her to our old shed, after losing the children. There, in the midst of hay and tools, empty barrels and harness, I toss it onto the straw and dispose of it at last. Oh! I miss that beautiful body! I also get ready, and naked, we surrender to our ardent caresses. We are soaked, and we drink our fluids, thirsty, ecstatic. Your perfume, your liqueurs, I love everything that comes from my love and... I wanted to swallow you whole, if possible. I can never get enough. That's the curse: a permanent taste of the unfinished, the incomplete, the lack. The human being can never feel complete, finally unified! Here is evidence of the original unjust punishment, if not the incomprehensible sin.
And behold, we were caught once again. This time by the twins, who blushed simultaneously. They remained static before our nakedness. We then got up at the same time and slowly... carefully put ourselves into a beautiful statuesque pose. The boys laughed, and ran away happily. I'm sure they understood, or were touched by the beauty of the scene we forged. It was an inspiration.
From then on, when we were alone, they sometimes repeated our pose together, and smiled beautifully at us.
We knew, then, that they would not tell adults about what they saw.
____________________________________________
Rôdo comes to show me a proposal for the purchase of the estancia by a farmer tycoon. I do not want to see. Solange and Geraldo are furious, encouraging the sale, putting pressure on Rôdo. Alberto is more concerned with drinking. I approach him to co-opt him to my side, that is, against the sale. I tell him, in cryptic, indirect language, that the bottles will run out for him, naturally, if the estancia is sold. But they will be inexhaustible, if we keep our vineyard and all. That argument sounded logical. Drunks seem to have a very simple logic: there is no life outside of bottles. This ends up taking them completely, no matter how smart they are. It's amazing the power of alcohol over them. It is something that renews the meaning of life for fleeting fractions of a second, but under constant use allows them to remain alive, with a certain sense of fleeting pertinence, in a chaotic world. I will never judge them. But at that moment I allowed myself to manipulate that poor specimen, which was the only ally I had left, since Aline and the children didn't have a vote. The sad thing was not being able to count on Rôdo, who simply didn't believe it was possible to keep our property anymore. I was trying to buy time. I felt that something was going to happen that would change the course of events if we put off the sale for another month. Faced with this deadline agreed with Rôdo, he also felt he had the right to call a friend, a girlfriend, to assuage his loneliness or the thirst of his body.
In a few days Laís arrived, a dark, beautiful, mysterious young woman who made him lose his mind. Rhodo was transformed. When he returned from the station with the young woman, his face was different. That night the house reverberated with the girl's moans and squeals coming from the bedroom, and a kind of howls from my brother. It was really funny for me and Aline, but scandalous for others. Solange dawned more frowning than ever. Oh! If she only knew that Aline and I, we would tiptoe to observe the couple's fantastic maneuvers through the keyhole! We could barely contain our laughter and the excitement it produced, of course. The girl was versed in the Kama-Sutra, or at the very least in Yoga. She put herself upside down, and expected the same jugglery from poor Rhodo. Her sex was exposed at 180 degrees, and we couldn't help but admire the beauty of her rosy orifices, with carefully shaved hairs. Aline and I fought over the keyhole, almost bursting to keep from laughing. Then we run to our bed and try to replicate the exploits. That was hilarious... and a little frustrating. I remembered Freud and his penis envy theory, and for a moment I thought he was right. But, I wanted to be complete! To possess and be possessed simultaneously by my Aline. Yes, the perfect Hermaphrodite was the ideal being, lost forever in us!
................................................................ ...................................
Solange was waiting for us on the porch, and with her cold, cutting tone, she immediately said (and brandished some sheets of paper):
—Girls, where were you? Alma, we were waiting for you to sign these proposals. We are all in agreement. The proposal is great. Read and sign, please.
“I won't sign anything, my sister,” I replied, “I won't even read those papers. I'm not ready for that yet. Everything is too sudden for me. I knew nothing about what was happening here, while I was there, in São Paulo, working. Now they want me to agree, like this, all of a sudden, with this nonsense. No, never!
—Oh! Working, isn't it, dona Alma! Painting, yes, and raving over there! You're crazy, always have been, and now you're stuck in a business we're all interested in. Besides, can't you see we don't have a choice, you alien! Can't you see that while you were painting your comics, come on, we were struggling with the debts left by Vati, that other dreamer, who would bury us all in his debts, if there hadn't been at least the patrimony left, still liable to cover the debts, and some left over, to support ourselves, each one for himself, from now on. Are you going to ruin everything?
“Solange, my sister, I won't do it again. All is not yet lost. I know, I feel it. I have faith... in fate. Don't ask me how I know, but we are close to a saving solution for our resort. You owe it to Vati, and to our grandparents, who created not the estancia itself, but the vineyard. The old man made the vineyard grow and made our wine, our brand, known. Since I was a child I designed the labels that became famous. I do not accept defeat. I know what moves you. Yes, you and your husband never loved the land. But the same does not happen with Patrícia and Pedrinho, with Christiam and Hans. These beautiful children love this land that is vital to them, you have to know. The land, the Pampa is our sacred heritage, you cannot dilapidate it, destroy it. I will not allow it! I will not allow it!
I ran out of there, followed by Aline. In the room, very nervous, I was soothed once again by my wonderful girl. I took her hand again and across the hall we went out through the kitchen and out the back to reach our orchard. I took with me the old Swiss army knife that had belonged to Rôdo in our childhood and that I had used to engrave our apple tree. In front of her, solemnly, holding Aline's hand, I would begin to engrave the initial of her name, her A, after the R for Rhodo. And when she finished, she said to him:
“Aline is now part of our alliance. If before our initials expressed air, inspiration, breath, soul in short, now they make up the altar, the ARA of our sacred pact. Swear to me, Aline, that you will not abandon me in this fight and that you will participate with me in the final battle. The land will be yours, too, since you are mine, as I believe. You will not return to São Paulo, you will stay here with me forever. With you I will face everything, I will have the necessary strength, with you. Promise me, honey. Look, the altar is our tree, the apple tree of my happy childhood, yes, despite some pains, despite my poor misguided mother, despite my initially misguided grandparents, but who got it right by planting this orchard, this apple tree and the vine, the vine, now I see! I'm not sure yet, but something will come from the wine, from the blood of the earth that I will sacrifice on this altar. Aline, we'll be back here tomorrow night. We will sacrifice to the gods, you will see!
Aline looked at me a little scared, I realized despite being in a state of almost delirious over-excitement. She remained speechless and her whole body trembled. She was almost fainting when I realized she had a fever, and her forehead was sweating. Then I hugged her and supporting her led her to bed. I would take care of her. It had all been too much for this delicate flower of the city. I had gone too far, perhaps. I needed to be careful with my love.
____________________________________________
Aline remained feverish and delirious for two days and nights. I stayed the whole time by her side, with a heavy heart, drying her whole body, and putting compresses on her forehead. In her delirium, she struggled and screamed my name, but in a strange context:
“Alma, Alma, you are among us, after all, set me free, Alma! Take me with you to your kingdom. To the palace, Alma, I don't want to live here anymore, it's dark... Soul, soul, free me from the dark, I want to see, Alma, I want to see! Soul, take me! I will cling to you, you can fly, I will not touch your wings, I will cling to your belly. The light, Soul, the light! It's your kingdom, we're coming!"
I was in tears, which burst from time to time, in copious weeping. My lover moved me more than ever and I would do anything for her. I was afraid that she would die, and I felt that I would rather die than her. Aline's fragility, her vulnerability that I hadn't realized until then, like the wings of a butterfly, like a very fine crystal, like the gold blade of a micron, which could crumble in the slightest breeze. This portentous being, whose beauty was the expression of the ideal nobility, possible for all women. My precious Psyche, projected from my own soul, from myself. We were two faces of the same anima. I wouldn't know how to name them: Sofia...Eva? Or Helena... Such?* I wanted to merge with my love, but I needed to live and take her out of the prison of her delirium, of that darkness she referred to and which I sensed. We would go together to sacrifice on the altar of our apple tree. We would save the ranch and the vineyard, we would save the sacred orchard, the immortal apple tree from our undying happiness. Aline, Rôdo and I would transform ourselves into the immortal, perfect Hermaphrodite, unattainable by solitude, eternally. In the realm of being, where material possession would no longer exist, where all symbols expressed by matter would have their purely spiritual revelation, all codes finally revealed. We would finally know what the tree, the house, the vineyard and the pampa are, in immaterial, infinite Eternity. I would know what pure Art is, devoid of its visible signs, of its rudimentary, material expressions. I would know what the gods are. I would know, perhaps, who He is!
______________________________________________
Aline is fine now. The fever stopped. She sleeps peacefully, peacefully. I can move away from her bed to confront Rhodo, who owes me an explanation. He can't be betraying me, and our pact. I find him in the office, busy with papers, with Laís beside him.
"Rôdo, what's going on, what papers were those Solange wanted me to sign?" Didn't you say you'd give me time? What pressure is this? Rhodo, are you with them or with me? I already told you I won't sign anything. I prefer death, I told you. I'm sorry Laís, you hear such things. You have nothing to do with it, I hope.
-Alma, I've known everything for a long time. I'm with Rhodo above all. That means I don't oppose you. I learned to respect you through him, Alma, and I would not be foolish to defy you. But you don't seem to know what your brother has been through. How much he's fought to save this resort. Now he is willing to sell Ferrari. But it's too late and it won't do any good. The fight is lost. However, he says he will wait for the deadline he has given you. This is all an enigma to me, Alma. How do you intend to save the resort?. As for me, I just want to leave with your brother, take him with me... and make him happy, far from all those lost dreams.
“Rhodo,” I said, turning my eyes to him. “The deadline hasn't passed yet. Tomorrow I will make one last sacrifice that will bring to my mind the revelation I have been waiting for, and I know will come. Counting on you. If Laís wants to come too, I won't object. I hope Aline can be there with me, too. The four of us will make a strong chain, if Laís is not opposed, deep in her heart. But this I will know right there, in front of our altar. I'll see you tomorrow... at the cafe, and then only in the evening, at our time.
Rhodo was looking at me enigmatically, intensely. But he said nothing. I withdrew from the library.
................................................................ ...................................
The place of my childhood seems distant, or underlying this one of the present. I can still hear the echoes of the sheds, in the fandango, the peonada parties, which Rôdo and I would attend, dazzled, sometimes hidden, late at night, fleeing our beds. There I heard for the first time the Nau Catarineta, sung, accompanied by the accordion and the clapping:
“Listen all my lords,
an astonishing story!
Here comes the Nau Catarineta
that has a lot to tell
More than a year and a day ago
Who roamed the sea:
They no longer had anything to eat.
They no longer had anything to eat!
Cast lots of luck
which one was to kill
Then the luck fell
On the Captain-General!
...................................................
The dances, where the thump of boots, accompanied by the jingle of spurs, produced a shiver of pleasure, and the grace of the “chinocas”, evolving around the bombshells of their peers, made me deeply understand our feminine essence, cultivated in this south. , as in few places in our current world. Perhaps only Russian peasant women, in their folk dances, express the male-female opposition so clearly and expressively. The dance of the handkerchiefs enchanted me greatly... and I wanted to be a “china”, with all the ambiguity that this word carried. In the past, she expressed an intermediate category between a prostitute and a pawn's girlfriend. Or even vivandeira, the woman who accompanies the soldiers, in the rear of the armies in displacement. Hearing and seeing our people, our dances, I wanted to integrate myself into the past of this land, in all the women, in that wonderful Anita, a gaucho woman par excellence, and I saw myself as the chinoca of all the peons, a kind of sacred Hetaira of the Pampas. I've always been delusional...
However, it's as if I wasn't born here, in this south, because my Germanic blood confuses me when I think of the gaucho and the pampa, the mate and the charqueada. My grandparents planted this vineyard, in a very European tradition, looking for a French wine, and my father's library threw me in all directions, expanding my mind, and overloading my heart with a universality conflicting with the ingrained spirit of this Earth.
But my happy childhood is the childhood with Rôdo, the one of our escapes and discoveries. That of our apple tree and the galloping ones; of the Minuano that made us shiver under the pala and made us shiver not only from the cold, but above all from fear and respect for the mysterious power of that wind, which swept the plain and entered through the cracks in the doors and windows, howling, and haunted us like the breath from the past of this mighty land, filled with the spirits of the dead from so many battles.
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I find myself in the deserted room with Geraldo, who I wanted to avoid. I salute him quickly to escape the confrontation. But in vain. He holds me back, touching my arm and looking me in the eyes, with contained aggression:
“Alma, it's time we had a conversation. I know you don't like me, but I don't care. You are in my way. In fact you are in the way of all of us. You're the only one who wants to keep this bankrupt property. Can't you see that you're stalling everyone's lives? What do you want anyway? Do you have any trump cards? Some hidden capital to pay off our debts? Yes, because you're some kind of sorceress, say your sisters, and you might have a magic wand...maybe.
“My brother-in-law,” I answered him, “unfortunately I don't have a wand, and I'm not a player like you, to have an ace up my sleeve. But something tells me that the resort will be saved, that it will itself point the way. It belongs to us, or rather, we belong to it. At least me and Rhodo. The children too...
–You really are a dreamer, can't you see that Rôdo is the first to want to sell? He is the one who showed us its infeasibility. Why do you artists never accept reality? They live in a dream, fantasy world, which ends up throwing them into the gutter. Good thing you don't have kids...
This comment, pure commonplace, just pissed me off. I looked Geraldo in the eye and I could see all his hatred, his spite. He and Solange looked alike. The pairs were mismatched. I immediately thought of the twins, those angels, and thought of them as my children. I didn't see in those children the slightest vestige of that father. Oh! I wanted them for myself, and more Patricia and Pedrinho! The world was, after all, unfair.
– Geraldo, from now on, let's avoid talking to each other. It's no use. There is no possible dialogue between us. You're a practical man, I know, and I'm a dreamer, like my father. Let's stop here.
I walked away quickly, feeling my brother-in-law's spiteful gaze, his pent-up anger. On the balcony, I come across Alberto, staggering. As for this one, it's also a hopeless case. Now he doesn't hide it anymore, he's a full-time drunk. I know this is a disease, I am well informed, but I do not easily see salvation for him, as he is happy in his unhappiness. Drinking still gives him pleasure, may God keep him that way. He hasn't seen the wolf's face yet. But what about the twins? These two cherubs, little Cosme and Damião, Christian and Hans. This one came out first and then Lúcia paid tribute to the great Andersen, which for me is a sign of his poetic sensibility, to which I should have paid more attention, I now see.
Lucia, my sister, I am so sorry to have underestimated you for so long. It comes from you, now I know, the kindness, perhaps the sweetness of these children. You were so quiet in my childhood. You seemed so dominated by Solange... and I was wrong after all. You are on my side, I know, like Rôdo, that you will not disappoint me, or all will be lost. We are a force of eight, including Aline and the children, who are opposed to the sale. On the other side are only Solange and Geraldo. Alberto, I don't know, is on the fence, like Humpty Dumpty, and he's going to break like an egg at any moment. Will I be able to co-opt it? Lucia, with your benevolent attitude, you proved to love me, and therefore you will be with me at the last moment.
Alberto also held my arm as he passed, but in another way. He wanted to show me an unlabeled bottle, but I paid him no attention and shrugged it off. He needed to walk alone, to think. That night I wanted to gather the four of us, counting on Laís, in front of my apple tree. Would Laís be an unbalancing force, a dissonant mind, in this encounter? I needed to get to know this girl better. I decided to look for her and sound her out before our ritual. She seemed to have too much personality to be simply a "nice girl". And he wanted so much to take Rhodo with him far away from here. My brother! Will you be in danger? Will you betray your land to go with that love...doubtful? No, I can't imagine you cheating on me.
I went back to the big house when I was almost at the edge of our garden, on the border of our endless prairie. I'm going to look for Lisa.
I meet her at the end, in Rôdo's room. Seeing her through the half-open door, I tap my knuckles on the wood so as not to invade her space. She looks at the crack from afar, notices me and invites me in. She is in lingerie, and how beautiful she is. She wears a provocative bodice that emphasizes her perfect, round breasts. She seems content to let me see her like this. That's very womanly. Don't you say, after all, that it's for other women that we dress, us women? Maybe it's the same thing with undressing. And lingerie is the exact halfway point in both directions. I look at her all over, what magnificent legs! My brother has always been picky about his delicacies. The bon-vivant, the gourmet, the expert in women, the hustler too. Lover of speed and clear pleasures but with a certain refinement, Rôdo chose this luxury filly. Or was she the one who did it...
– Laís, soon we will meet for a ceremony that will certainly be attended. But I'm not sure where you stand. It wasn't clear to me. You love Rhodo, don't you? And you mean well, so I presume...
– Soul, fear nothing. Yes, I love your brother and I know he loves me. I also know what the resort means to him. He told me his whole life, his childhood with you in these pampas. So I don't want to force anything. If they manage to keep the property, he will not be physically tied to it as he is no longer. There are ways to do this. A good administrator, for example. Or will you bear it yourself? Yes, because we like to travel and we have many plans to visit the four corners of the world. Only... I'm still not sure they'll be able to pay off those debts and save the property. How are you going to do it? Your brother is convinced that he is some kind of sorceress, pardon my expression, and he tells me amazing things about you. I don't doubt anything, but I confess that I'm afraid of these things. What are you pretending this time? Do you really need my presence? I'm afraid I'll get scared and lose sleep.
I smiled, more reassured. Laís was, after all, a normal girl in a good way, and she couldn't have harmed my brother. In addition, Rôdo was educated in life and was never naive. He had a lot of experience around the world. He was a man of the world and the last thing anyone should do is worry about him. Independence from him was so much that he hadn't even attached himself to the land of our childhood. He was perhaps freer than I am. But that was precisely my concern: he seemed to be able to live without our stay, without our roots. I saw him around the world, at high speed in his Ferrari, stopping only at casinos for quick games, like in the distress calls he went through, poor Laís... Or was she also an adventurer, asking for beds? It didn't matter, this beautiful woman didn't have Lilith's mark, her rictus in her brows, and that was enough to reassure me.
-Lais, I'm happy. You've been honest with me, and that's enough for you to participate in tonight's ritual. I know something tolerant that will provide me with a weapon or a lifesaving idea. Why do I know this? I don't know, that's who I am... I feel close to a solution that hasn't yet taken shape in my mind but that is close, I feel it.
Laís hugged me and kissed my cheek delicately, smelled her, her French perfume and thought: she is a little lady of luxury, but as honest as it is possible for a beautiful woman to be in this world. Beauty in our society is worth so much per square centimeter, that it is impossible not to sell or buy it, somehow, since the face of Helena “launched a thousand ships”.
I walked away and went looking for the children. I found the twins and Pedrinho playing. They surrounded me and I, disguising myself, led them to the garden, where in a corner, in a small arbor, we were able to talk alone without danger of being observed.
–Hans, Christian, Pedrinho, I need you. Let's play spies, shall we? I want you to keep an eye on everything that goes on in this house from now on. In the conversations of adults, mainly, and also in their steps, where they go, what they do. He is well? It will be fun.
— Aunt Alma — said Pedrinho — I know what you want, and I'm with you. I'm going to follow Dad, okay? He's very mysterious, he disappears all the time and it's not just to drink, I know. He never hid it from us, he can't. But I think you should put Patricia in the game too.
–I know, Pedrinho – I replied– Patricia will also be a special agent like you. Comrade Pati. Come on, come on, go out playing normally. But no getting out of their beds at night to play that, eh? I know you. Leave now, I'll go later because Aunt Solange and Uncle Geraldo might be watching our movements.
The boys left. I had formed my network of little spies. I just hesitated to put Patricia in this game. She looked very vulnerable to me in her purity, or too passionate to play spy. I quickly headed back to my room to see Aline. I already felt homesick and longed to find her well and restored, cured. I found her standing there in her nightgown, a little hesitant.
“Go back, go back to bed, you crazy girl. You shouldn't get up yet – I said – hugging her and leading her to the bed. I laid her down as carefully as if she were made of glass, my heart filled with tenderness. I couldn't resist and kissed her lips, which seemed very warm to me.
-Alma, I'm glad you're back. I missed you so much... how much time has passed? You went to get me there, where I was, in the dark, you saved me from the dark. Then she left me in the light, but alone, I don't know which was worse. Where did you go?
I looked at Aline's beautiful face, her wonderful mouth, and I felt overflowing with love. I wanted to rock her like a little child. I realized that she was, after all, a woman-child in the best sense of the term. I was very lucky, I fell in love with a woman whose femininity has the sacred imprint of a Psyche. And she loves me. She loves Me.
I stayed for a long time caressing her, caressing her, kissing her beautiful hands. She had her eyes on mine, tenderly, and she began to abandon herself, half-closing them, until she finally sank into a peaceful, serene sleep.
I got up and went out, tiptoe. I was going to prepare everything for when Aline is ready, healed, to participate in our apple tree ceremony. I'm in a hurry, but I'll wait for her to recover. The nights are hot, they can't hurt her. Afterwards... what she had doesn't seem to have been the flu or a cold or anything. I suspect a kind of emotional burnout. My girl is hypersensitive and so involved with me that it was beyond her strength. I must be careful. I will not call the gods and numbers as before. I just want to pay homage to the spirit of my apple tree and focus on a stream together with my companions to receive an inspiration. I will be fertilized by an idea, I know that.
______________________________
Days passed, and time seemed suspended. My network of little spies constantly brought me news, mostly superfluous. But certain pieces of information, stitched together, built a frame of conspiracy in which Lúcia no longer participated. Solange and her brother-in-law seemed to be plotting against me to overturn my vote. They also spied on me. They wanted to find something that would allow them to block me as alienated or something. They conferred with a lawyer they brought from Livramento who looked like a fox. Danger was imminent, but how could they achieve that? Had my relationship with Aline transpired? No, it wouldn't be enough. What are the arguments of this conspiracy? I couldn't plant a child spy in these closed-door meetings of yours. I myself tried to listen behind the doors, but in vain. The house has thick, solid woodwork. They met frequently in the library, which to me sounded like sacrilege. I wish I could shoo them out of there. There was, for me, a sacred place. My father's throne room. They were defiling her. Solange and Geraldo were usurpers, and poor Alberto, a court jester, the little opportunist of the moment. For some reason, I came back to remember another episode referring to Solange, in our childhood:
I had a diary when I was a kid, given to me by Mutti, and it had a secret lock that I considered safe. It was a nice little book with a hard leather cover, and I had engraved my monogram on it with a pyrograph. In its pages I began to exercise my gift of recording the impressions of my day, my feelings and fantasies, which were part of my reality that I already valued so much. I loved the idea that my records were secret, so I could dare anything and go unnoticed in my daring, mental and spiritual, under the scrutiny of my own mother and Solange, the enemy.
My older sister naturally hated that object at first sight. Soul's diary! What things would there be? What boldness, what transgressions, what sins? I was perhaps more vulnerable to it, with the existence of my diary. My mind could be invaded after all, violated. My secrets, my treasures... looted!
And that's what really happened. Solange discovered the hiding place of the album and managed to break the lock. I caught her red-handed reading it and laughing. I was furious. I walked towards her and she ran with the book in her hand to the pool, threatening to throw it in the water. All would be lost, the book would be smudged and useless, and I stopped dead in my tracks. I begged her to give me back my diary. She then threw it to me, saying:
–Here, I already know your thoughts and they are worth something especially for Mutti, you understand? Now you are in my hands. Come kiss my foot or I'll tell her mostly the third page. Come, kneel and kiss my foot, slave!
And I, trembling with rage and humiliation for the fear I really felt, knelt down and I kissed her fat little weight, which I unfortunately washed away with my tears. It would take me a long time to feel ready to tell everything... to the world.
So, now, this new character joined the meals: Solange and Geraldo's lawyer. This weasel face was not able to face me. He understood the sordidness of his acting and wouldn't dare look me in the eye. Oh! But I needed to act fast. How could they embargo me? What legal arguments would they forge? No, it wasn't possible! And Rodo, why is he so inert? He would defend me, I know, but with what arguments? I was unsure, I knew that their attack would happen at any moment... when they solemnly summoned me to the library. If they dare to touch Aline's name, I don't know what I'll be capable of...
What if they saw something of what went on in the orchard? Could they admit me like crazy? No, no, it's unlikely... they would have already betrayed themselves, made some allusion to that. I had become defensive, which is a sign of weakness. I'm not helpless. I have my spy network and I have to be combative. Aggressive, if possible.
At the table, Solange, one night, threw her barbs:
-Alma, soon we will be signing the sale papers, with you or not. You'd better prepare your beautiful handwriting. Doctor Lucena has already prepared all the papers. We have a great offer that we have already accepted. It fully covers the debts and still has enough left over for all of us to start a new life away from the ghosts that only you, around here, appreciate.
The lawyer looked me in the eyes, but before the fire of my gaze he lowered his, and raised his napkin to his lips. I realized that this fox had trump cards that he would pull out of his sleeve at the last moment. I had to be careful. If any unknown doctor, with or without a nurse, came through here, I would know the danger of a low blow. They might well be able to. As a last resort, I had to flee with Aline, not to sign anything and gather forces far from here, as a war strategy for the final battle.
As I thought so I realized that I was, after all, rather childish in my imagination, and that they would latch onto that. The adults... Ah! Being an adult is hateful, I always thought so. That's why I've always dialogued in imagination, or even in life, with artists, geniuses, poets of all times. The so-called adult man is, for me, a degeneracy. He created the world's ugliness, bureaucracy, laws, prisons, and asylums. I will never be an adult. I'm an artist. I am a child.
______________________________
I remember the day my father died. We were already tiptoeing around the house, and I hadn't been called to bed for three days. It hurt. I didn't realize that Vati was dying, although that thought occurred to me sometimes, then dismissed. So he called me. Solange, who managed that door, that room, conveyed the old man's wish, it seems that against her will, I don't really know why. She thought he shouldn't wear himself out, get tired. And the old man was dying...
I entered, slowly, I was already a girl if not an adult. It's only been six years. The old man, lying in the big bed, propped up by huge pillows, with his white beard and well-worn blue eyes, looked to me much older than I usually thought. But it seemed to me that his eyes lit up as I entered, and I saw that his hand made a slight movement which I took as a signal for me to come over and sit at his bedside.
With difficulty, her head immobilized, sunk into the big pillow, she only looked at me sitting on the edge of the bed holding her hand.
– Alma, – he said in a whisper – daughter of my heart… I want to ask you to watch over the ranch, the pictures, the books… and the vineyard. Don't get rid of the piano, I'll come and play for you on nights when the pampeiro doesn't blow. You will hear me, I know. Only you will cry remembering me. Maybe Rudi will too. But I want you to cry only for the joy of good memories, which I taught you are the salt of life. I don't regret anything, don't regret it either. My life was beautiful, especially with you, Alma, and I am deeply grateful to you, my girl. Now I'm going to leave... and I want to do it looking at your green eyes and that golden hair that lit up my life.
Having said that, he began to rattle. Frightened, I thought of running outside and calling everyone, calling Rôdo, but he held my hand, holding me back. I understood that it wasn't just a spasm, but that he wanted me there, only me. And I watched him go. I was the only one who saw him leave his noble tired body and I felt his soul leaving, I almost saw it or had this impression that it would never abandon me. I would cry for him, perhaps not just for the good memories but for his loss that seemed catastrophic to me, despite everything he taught me. I would cry daily for five years. Until I went to São Paulo, to those anodyne Gardens where I would set up my painter's studio, in a vain attempt to uproot myself from the Pampa, which had become an open wouded.
ALMA WELT
THE HERITAGE: The Blood of the Earth
Novel
PREFACE
By Guilherme de Faria
This is Alma Welt's first novel, and it seems grandiose to me. An autobiographical novel. A family saga. Set in the pampas of his native land, this book deserves the name of a novel like few others. A romance... romantic, in the great tradition of romanesc literature.
The last great liric the 20th century, as I usually call her, the poet Alma Welt, approaches her narrative with the lyricism that is characteristic of her, often torn like a song, poetry in prose at various times, musical as a rhapsody, at others like a symphony. We listen to the music she wants to offer us, to make us heard. Like the noise of the Minuano wind, like the creaking of doors and walls that turn. We feel the mystery and beauty of its land, its home, its origins. We are moved by her love for her land, for the Pampa that extends like the world around her house and where she gallops accompanied by her Aline, like two “centaureses”, naked and graceful. I have rarely seen such beautiful moments in a novel as in these paragraphs. Alma Welt is not ashamed of being romantic, because she knows she is heir to a great tradition of her Germanic blood. She leads us like Hoffmann through the corridors of her house, through the underground of the mysterious cellars. Like Goethe, she takes us for a walk in the gardens around the house, in an idyll with that other beautiful woman, Aline, crowned with flowers. The children, like bees, flutter around us, boisterous, and adorable. We immerse ourselves in this “Weltian” universe with a rare pleasure, following the flights, the ramblings, the daydreams and the real memories of the author-character. Or the author-protagonist. She seduces us with her universe through the lens of beauty with which she sees her daily life, which is not strange to us because it is true, subtle, human, without fancy, without artificiality. Alma Welt doesn't want to be sofisticated. She is so because of the height of her clear thinking, the evident purity of her romantic heart. She loves passionately. And with explicit eroticism at the same time elevated, by the superior aesthetics with which she naturally describes him, without ulterior motives. She bumps into sex like we do in life, and she doesn't swerve. She stares at him with voluptuousness. She loves love and sex and invites us to partake of her enchanting intimacy with a captivating freedom that seduces us. As a modern heroine of the freedom and pleasure of sex enjoyed with dignity and with the hint of mystery that sex always hides with those attractive little perversions of which she makes us see the beauty, allowing us, therefore, to recognize them in ourselves . This is her delicacy: to love the human being so much, that her acceptance by him is full, almost total. Only evil does she refuse, she denounces as something outside the human that intrudes and shocks this life. Heir to German idealism, she moves us to a high degree of humanist vision, which dignifies man for his unconditional commitment to his original purity, in his beauty inherited from the gods, if not from God.
In addition, she still moves us with a rare quality, the candor that she does not give up, even in her critical lucidity. How, then, could this little Eve maintain her purity having bitten the apple of reason without being compelled to even cover her sex with her hand? That's what impresses me most about her text. The pride with which she exposes herself as a nymph, often as a mischievous girl filled with delicious innocent malice. Alma loves a certain ambiguity, certain paradoxes, elegant as she is too. She must therefore like Oscar Wilde, that she reflects not so much in style but in the spirit of certain attitudes. But there is no dandyism in it. It is simple, never far-fetched. Never art-nouveau, except for its less formal symbolist aspect. She is more reminiscent of Emily Brönte of the heaths than the English of salons and casinos. She loves Turner on her prairies more than the Impressionism that is her descendant. We hear Schumann, but above all Schubert in his orchestrations of words evocative of beautiful landscapes. Alma Welt enchants us. Finally, all that remains is to evoke the tribute she pays, consciously or not, to the great author of “O Tempo e o Vento”, our Érico Veríssimo, which she cannot deny as an author from Rio Grande do Sul. Get ready to enter the heart of this fabulous land, the Pampa, in an estancia, a rather haunted mansion, beaten by the Minuano, loaded with heroic and tragic memories of revolutionary battles, and where we think we can see the shadow of Anita Garibaldi projected at a glance on the ghostly white walls.
Sao Paulo, 08/12/2004
__________________________________
THE INHERITANCE
Preface by GUILHERME DE FARIA ...........3
First part
The Inheritance in Peril ..................................................... ...............7
Second part
The Pampas Ara ................................................................... .....................31
Third part
The Blood of the Earth ..................................................... ...................64
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(Title):
"I squeeze the tubes onto the palette
I put these verses on paper
and the paints and the words refer me
to our resort
that is still there
like a ghost
sailing
in the vastness of the Pampa
like a ship
the mansion beaten by the minuano
refuses to sink."
(Final lines of the poem Pampa, by Alma Welt)
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Chapter One
The Inheritance in Peril
Rôdo, my brother, wants to sell our ranch. I can't even bear the thought of that happening. I pack my bags hastily, not forgetting, however, to throw my poetry and note-books over my clothes.
During the bus trip, I found myself in a state of great anxiety and so I made an effort to tune in to that present, even though it was a transitional present, with the landscape rushing through the windows. After a whole day and two transfers, I finally arrive at the little station to catch the old train that crosses our lands, in the middle of the pampa. My beloved Pampa, eternal, unchanging.
When at last the buggy comes to pick me up at the little station, I am already back to my childhood and early youth. Moved and tense, I greet our caretaker, Galdério, whose wrinkles now emerge from an immense gray mustache, and whose pumps remind me of my true universe. I am home.
On the way, rocked by the thighs, and by the singing voice of our housekeeper, I find myself in a kind of dream, in which, in the background, I hear the noises and music of the fandango and the song of the Nau Catarineta, which I used to hear in childhood, like a anti-calanto, if I may say so, that took me out of bed and made me run to the balustrade, to observe the adults' party, to follow that wonderful story of the almost cursed ship, which finds its redemption through the unshakable faith of its captain.
Now, the ship that is in danger is our own mansion, which seems to be sailing, motionless, on the astral plane of the Pampa, beaten by the Minuano, in the cold season.
But we are in the middle of summer. And the days would be wonderful if that threat didn't hover inside, in my soul. Our ranch in jeopardy, our home about to be lost. What's going on with Rhodo? How can my brother betray me like this? Was he not self-appointed as the faithful guardian of our father's estate? Of our sacred heritage, of our roots?
I long to meet him right away, and fear coming in screaming like a rage, which is definitely not my thing.
When I see Rôdo, however, on the porch, standing, with his breeches, and his black hair tousled, majestic in his youthful beauty, my heart softens, warms up, and I relax. I run to hug him. He holds me against his heart, and I go back to our childhood, when our hugs were more frequent than usual. Her scent, her perfume, the softness of Rôdo's black hair, my first love, in fact...
But soon I let go, move away from him at arm's length and look him in the eye, shooting him.
"Rôdo, what's going on?" How can you think about it? Selling our estancia...I prefer death, you know. Do you want to kill me? Do you want to kill us all?
"Soul, don't exaggerate!" You are always extreme in your feelings. See: we have no way out, it's either that or a mortgage, which we'll never pay. We're broke. This is the truth. I can't get another dime off the property. Times have changed. You're an artist, you don't know anything about this universe, the practical world, the immense debts we've accumulated since even before Vati's death. You delude yourself. We have no way out.
—But, Rôdo—I almost shouted—You promised, you swore to defend our heritage, the legacy of Vati, our library, the piano, the garden, the vineyard, the orchard, our apple tree, but above all this house. Oh, Rôdo, I can't bear the thought of losing everything!...
I fell into a huge weeping. I felt faint. Rhodo supported me. He then took me in his arms, as he did when we crossed the marsh, and carried me like a child, to deposit me on the sofa in the living room. I abandoned myself for a moment, as if that would soften him, take him away from his intention, which I felt powerful, since the idea of the blindfold had been installed in him for a long time, I realized.
I sobbed until I fell asleep, exhausted, in a torpor of accumulated pain and fatigue, from the journey and the fear that accompanied me.
___________________________________________
I woke up to my brother's face, very close to mine, with his eyes resting on my lips. Had he kissed my mouth in my sleep? Oh, Rôdo, it's too late...
I ran my hand through her beautiful black hair, silky, slightly wavy, as if the pampeiro were always shaking it. My brother, my little brother... I need to talk to him, convince him. There must be a way out. I don't consider myself a person attached to material goods. But, the resort? It is our spiritual heritage...materialized. No, it's not possible, it will be my death, our death. I will be condemned forever to those empty Gardens, in São Paulo, where I can only have my studio, with comfort, surrounded by art galleries, just to provide my livelihood, to continue creating from the internal source of this heritage, of this soil, where my roots are. No, Rhodo, I won't allow it. I will fight everything and even you, if you betray me, if you betray us.
I get up and ask Galdério to saddle a mare. I gallop across this vastness, the infinite meadow. I gallop for a long time, accompanied from afar by the gaze of my brother, who watches me as in the past, when this gallop was happy. Oh, what can I do but gallop? How can I fight, what do I know about life, papers, debts... in this sordid and sad world of the commonplace realities of the practical, real world? I am an artist, I am a poet, alas! Am I then so vulnerable? I didn't know that it could be achieved in this way, in my core, where my creative forces spring up, in my heart, in my soul. They will kill me! They will kill me if all this is lost, this house, these books, Vati's Steinway, with its music that still resonates. Will my memories survive? Without their gold backing, will they not be devalued? I know, this question contradicts the essence of memory, its permanence in spirituality, but... is matter, then, nothing? Why is there then? And it's so beautiful! As much as the spirit, no less. That's the truth. As an artist, I love matter as much as the soul that resides in it. That's why I describe it, I paint it, I root it in the canvas and in the verses. I describe the beloved beauty, of all, my own beauty. I want to fix it. I want it eternal. I want to believe in the resurrection of the flesh, with God, or among the gods of Olympus, I don't know anymore! Among the gods of Pampa!
___________________________________
At dinner, at the table, Rôdo, at a great distance, that we are seated, father and mother, who are at the same distance, in their great distance. Matilde, our cook sends her niece to serve us. Matilde is very quiet, after we cried a lot, hugging each other. Now a shadow and she doesn't have the courage to approach this empty table, with her children (as she says empty) sitting like this, separated by the table itself, empty, forever.
Where are Lucia and Solange, our sisters, so silent? They already love the loss of our stay. Indeed, they craved it, full of rancor and greedy for the spoils of our heritage, like harpies. They will arrive soon, Rodolfo said. Soon we will be here, pumping the sale, claiming, disputing. There! I will not offer. I will fight, I won't let them ruin everything. They won't take a book, a record! Don't you dare covet the piano. Nothing must come out of here, now I see.
Yes, I myself would never have imagined myself defending these things tooth and nail. But I know Vati wants me that way! I know he was more attached to his books, to his piano, to his paintings than to our lands! They are your spiritual heritage. Symbols of his love for the culture of all peoples. For universal art, for the music of the Masters. There! I can't let this go. The essence of a collection is the personality, the spirit of the collector, which is thus shaped. A scattered collection is the betrayal of a life, an act of cannibalism, of mutilation, of depredation. A shattered soul, like a body!
Vati, Vati, I will defend you! But how? As? What can I do?
____________________________________________
Lucia and Geraldo arrive, with my nephews, the Twins, Christian and Hans. Then Solange and Alberto. Patricia, almost a girl, runs to hug me, then Pedro, handsome, quiet, sensitive. How do all these wonderful children come out of the womb, that's what they ask, in their parents' house already fighting for carrion. Solange hugs me, however, with apparent emotion. she likes me a little, in her own way. Perhaps out of sisterly duty. She is like that, and soon starts complaining about her husband's drunk, who is already there, trying to get something to drink. Our wine, of course, our cellar is still there, we remember, since Vati's death. But not Albert. He returns with a half-dusty bottle, looking with satisfaction at the label, designed by me. Handing out as cups makes a quick, cynical toast to our resort. For the money I was expecting on hand, actually. Oh, how pathetic all this is... and painful. I go out with Patricia, hand in hand. This young woman wants to open her little heart to me, I see. She is in love (maybe) and her mother naturally watches over her, forbidding her to approach the boy. All so predictable! But the truth is, my spirit is no longer serene, centered, there. I'm disturbed by the threat hanging over my house. Can my brothers live so easily plucked from our ground? And Rod? The resort felt as vital to him as it did to me. And it was he who fought for her, on the occasion of the division of the spoils. After all, they all remain together in possession, by my influence. If the Rôdo were of the goods, by agreement, in the division we would have nothing, now we see. It's all lost. My brother became a star. His sports car, his Ferrari, reveals this.
_____________________________________________
I sit under my apple tree and daydream. Far away images begin to come to my mind, from a time other than mine, but which are in my roots, perhaps as deep as those of this tree that contains my heart, not only engraved in its bark, but in its core.
They transport me rural images of a "German" Moravia, yes, of the Sudetenland, well before the Second World War. My grandparents, German farmers, returning to their cottage, Bavarian but humble. They have hoes on their backs, and I can see their thick calloused hands. The scarf covering my grandmother's head, rough-looking, her face puffy, from which small blue eyes emerge, amid the reddish fat of her round face. My grandfather, very tall, thin, with huge bony hands, holding a pipe that goes with him to work in the fields. Her blue-green eyes seem obtuse, but at the same time obstinate. The same obstinacy that will pull him out of this land where he feels oppressed, like all the farmers who wanted to feel like a German, in the heart of Bohemia and Moravia. This revolt will bring him, long before the war, to the south of Brazil, the promised land, which he had heard about, a certain valley of the Itajaí, an exotic word that they barely knew how to pronounce. That nefarious Hitler would take advantage of this, with pretext, to invade Poland and Czechoslovakia and destroy them. His struggle, his ascendancy to power campaign already insisted on this dubious theme.
My grandparents, I accompany them in my sleepwalking retrospect, there under that ancestral tree, whose first branches correspond to this couple of rude peasants, brave after all, who would first stop in the region of Blumenau, in Santa Catarina, in a German colony, not so far from another, Azorean, where the young Ana Morgado would be born, ardently loved, since childhood, by my father, the young Werner Friedrich, a dreamer, who wanted to study, leave this agricultural life, be a musician or a doctor and rescue the beautiful Azorean , as he said, from that universe, restricted to him, and carry it with him to the world, so vast. He dreamed of returning to Europe, he who had been born there, in that ideal valley, somehow Brazilian, German, Portuguese, Italian. Typical rural courtship had not been the predestined cosmopolitan spirit of the young Werner, whose rebelliousness was tolerated by the rude Germans, because he revealed the heir of a wider tradition, which included the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and the wisdom of Goethe and Nietzsche, whom he had discovered practically alone, in the library of the parish priest, the pastor of the Lutheran church in that valley.
I like to think that the embryo of this Soul here, was already in that valley... and in that dream of the young couple with half-clandestine boyfriends. Yes, because this union was not easy, and there was an escape, because the two colonies did not get along, and the families, so different, apart from their rural roots, that this was the only common point. Ana, little Catholic, churchgoer, devotee of the virgin, of whom she carried the image on a medal around her neck, how could she have fallen in love with the young German-Brazilian? In fact, more German than anyone else, in its cultural universalism that foreshadowed an erudition that was to become astonishing. How can he fall in love with the naive “Portuguese girl”, but at the same time austere and hard, whose religiosity still contained so much fetishism, with so many venerated images, and so many moral restrictions, which in fact were the only meeting point of the two cultures?
But my father, this one was libertarian, far-sighted... and adventurous. I would kidnap the “girl”, the beloved daughter of the Azores, with very white skin and black hair, which would only reappear in my brother Rudolf, the most beautiful of all, in my opinion. But before me would come Solange and Lúcia, names dear to Brazilians.
How many adventures, indeed, preceded this stage! Young Werner had managed to get sent from the old men to Germany to study. That Germany of the rise of the future Führer, which, thank God, produced an immediate dislike in the enlightened young man.
But this stubborn young man concentrated on his studies, despite everything, the social disturbance of that irresistible rise, that tyrant, whose screams would echo to that ideal valley, back in Brazil, and make my grandparents put on armbands to parade in honor of the fanatic who promised to liberate the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and Poland as well as annex Austria. My dad wouldn't see this depressing scene, of my grandfather with that swastika armband, and his right arm outstretched, yelling "Heil!" while they marched through the streets of Blumenau, tolerated even with some condescension by the rest of the population, in a political moment under the aegis of Getúlio, who until then, did not disguise his sympathy for his colleague from the Third Reich. It took the war to end, and the lurid secrets of Nazism to come to light, for my grandfather to reconsider his positions and renege on that ideology. At least he did. And he laid a stone on the matter, as, it seems, all the German people.rom those years, I learned much later about my father's footsteps, from the letters to my mother, which I discovered in his vaults. Letters and postcards, passionate, romantic, with an increasingly elaborate language, denouncing a growing culture, which, without knowing it, would distance him from the poor Azorean girl, more used to a park bench, simple, in front of a small village church, like the one you chose to marry on your return.
The young man, tall, with blond hair and brilliant blue eyes, would return with an unusual baggage: an immense library, which he seemed to have digested perfectly, such was the extent of his knowledge and the foundations of an erudition that he would grow each time. more throughout your life. And the piano? A wonderful black Steinway that he had brought back by ship and that he played with refined technique, learned who knows where and how, with what time? How could he accumulate so much knowledge, and still play in that romantic way, having graduated in Medicine, and even become a surgeon (an activity that, in fact, he almost never practiced)?
What would have impressed me most in my childhood would be his absolute musical ear and his knowledge of the works of Romanticism, including the world of German, French and Italian opera, above all. Yes, my father was a romantic and he would pass this innate tendency on to me, his favorite daughter. But before that, a lot would happen on that return of his, on the eve of the conflagration that would change the world.
................................................................ ...................................
This retrospective dive of mine is interrupted by the adorable voices of my nephews who come running and playing. Especially beautiful preteens maintain a pleasant harmony between them. It is beautiful to observe the sweetness of the relationship between Patrícia and Pedrinho, their complicity, the result perhaps of the need to unite, in a home troubled by an alcoholic father and an excessively controlling mother. I can imagine the conflicts and scenes, of which I have already witnessed some, that these children are forced to live with. As for the twins, Christian and Hans, they are two sweet conundrums. All that's left is for them to speak in unison, like those twins in Bergman's film “Wild Strawberries”. I join them, who surround me offering me fruit and beautiful smiles. We walk together, entering that orchard, and I surrender to the immense pleasure of that moment, until the moment I remember the threat that hangs over all this. The imminent loss of this paradise, of these moments that I wanted to immortalize for generations. I run out suddenly, crying, towards the mansion, much to the children's astonishment. I needed to see Rhodo, urge him, somehow dissuade him from his intent.
I find Alberto's rubbish in the living room with another bottle in his hand, looking for a glass. Soon he'll be drinking from the bottle, dirty or not. Solange, who appears immediately, looking irritated as usual, looks at my tear-stained face and opens her arms slightly to let them fall over her broad hips, in a gesture of “patience”.
“There you are again bursting into tears. Have you become a crybaby now, Alma? You weren't like that... What do you want? You don't accept reality, do you? You never accepted her, did you? You and Vati, two dreamers. They never knew that families need money, money, do you hear? You don't raise children with just books and music, you know? No, you don't. And bla, bla, bla...
I run out of that room, and go knock on the door of Rôdo's room. I don't find it. I go to the library and there he is cleaning a gun, a hunting rifle that my father never touched and kept only as a souvenir of my grandfather. It caused me immediate revulsion to see that weapon at that moment. Why didn't I find him with an open book? One of the many illustrated books by Vati, so dear to our childhood?
"Rôdo, I need you to listen to me." Put down that weapon and reason with me: there must be a way out. How much is the resort's debt? Why don't you sell your Ferrari? Why do you need such an expensive car? Isn't it the most important resort for you, for both of us at least? And the children, Rhodo? Can't you see that they cannot be deprived of these gardens, this orchard, this all? The Pampa, Rôdo, the Pampa!
_____________________________________
I burst into tears, shaking him by the collar of his shirt. I hugged him tightly and he pressed me deep against his chest before pushing me away in exasperation.
“Alma, stop it. You are making everything more difficult. Aren't you the one who always spoke of detachment? And your philosophy? What about Tao? Are they just bullies? Words? See, Alma, this too is fate. Our stay, this house, our childhood has come to an end. So don't you see, Alma? Ended.
"No, no, Rhodo!" Don't try to confuse me. I know, I know it's not over. I feel Vati hovering over this house, and the music emanating from his fingers on the piano wakes me up at night. He's here and he wants us together, at least the two of us, under this roof, in this library, rereading these books... or simply worshiping them. His piano, Rôdo, the Steinway... we can't, Rôdo, he's still alive!
Rôdo looked at me desolately, now with tears in his eyes, and hugged me again, both sobbing. Rôdo had also collapsed, his strength was fictitious. I knew it.
................................................................ ..........................
At dinner, everyone at the table, our big table, whose heads were now occupied by Rôdo and Solange, since the latter would never let me occupy that place, Alberto, inopportunely, made a point of making a toast with another bottle from our cellar. Everything was a pretext for the drunkard, notwithstanding the lack of real joy at this family gathering, in which the children themselves were more silent, as if sensing something, the imminent end of those meetings. His little antennas were already catching the disaster, the dispersion, the end of the dream. I knew how important the mansion and ranch were to them, they were a kind of safe haven anchored in their ancestral land. They lived in the city, but they were always here every year, during school holidays, and here they grew up, stretched out, every wonderful season. His eyes searched mine, instinctively seeking safety. I realized that I was for them the stability reference of this place, despite everything, despite being just an artist. But my love and my joy were the thermometer of the continuity of that grandparents' house, of its roots. Solange, I could see, was irritated by this, since it seemed to her that this role, as the eldest, belonged to her. But how could this arid woman, without true love, as it seemed to me, be able to take the place of Vati? He was pure love and complacency, combined with rare strength and wisdom. He was the true spirit of this estancia that my grandparents bought, in the midst of the decay of an old breed of authentic gaucho ranchers, but so old in this Pampa that they have rotted away.
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When my grandparents, farmers who had so prospered, out of sheer Germanic effort and discipline, bought this farm, perhaps the situation was analogous to what it is now. There must have been a Pampean Soul there and... a Rhodo. Also a hard and dry Solange. And children who lost everything. I can imagine the burden of pain and resentment in the change of hands of this property, whose stability depended on enormous dedication and love. Perhaps the property itself had a spirit that conditioned us, that directed us, and that did not forgive our own decadence... and finally expelled us. But not! I haven't resigned yet! I'm not ready, I thought, at that table, at that sad dinner indeed, where a drunkard's toast sounded strangely inopportune, and in which no one was interested. However, when touching the glass after the toast, my lips first tasted the wonderful land of this pampa, the cold smell of minuano, the aroma of jerked beef, mate in the gourd, and the endless vines. Then I realized the excellence of that wine that I hadn't noticed before. And it seemed to me a heavenly flavor, which somehow pointed the way, in a language or code that I could not then decipher.
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Evening ride with Rôdo after dinner in our glowing garden of fireflies. Patricia and the children, delighted, run after the lights trying to catch them. This scene would etch itself on me forever, I knew, but I didn't believe it would be the last nighttime image of that wonderful garden of my childhood extensively extended there by those beautiful children. Rhodo and I in our boyhood had done this so much! He would put hundreds of fireflies in a jar of jam or even an empty bottle of wine, to shine in the night, concentrated, while I protested, until I took the bottle from him to free the bugs. Rôdo, in fact, let me do it, because he was loving by nature, at least to me. He would then charge me in return, just kisses on the lips, which I naively haggled over, excited, half fearful. Once he made me lie down behind a flowering hedge, there in the dark, and surrounded by the twinkling of a thousand stars in the sky and on the earth, he kissed me for a long time on the lips, awkwardly but sweetly, while his little hand roamed my body, groping -me. There I felt those things for the first time, when his small hand covered my shell, under my skirt. Only… he had broken the spell, bringing his fingers up to his nose and grimacing. “Smells like pee,” he said, and I, bewildered and embarrassed, ran into the house.
Now, there, with him, this scene popped up from the back of my memory and made me smile in the dark, a smile he hadn't seen. Maybe he thought about it too and smiled in the dark, remembering my smell and how he had been obsessed from that moment on, and had sought so many times to renew that experience, until the bitter day when, denounced, we were caught by our mother, under our apple tree.
Rhodo took a deep breath, perhaps from the depths of his memory, and said:
-Alma, I don't want, as much as you, to lose all this. Here our memory is alive, I know. I'll do what you want, but have an idea, for God's sake. I will sell the Ferrari if need be, but I warn you that the debt is much, much greater than what I can get out of this sale. At least double. And my car is not new anymore, you know how I run on these roads. The mileage is very high. You remember how I once destroyed a Porsche... and almost died. Can I live without speed? Maybe not... but I know, we're on edge, and there are more people at stake. The children... But remember: Solange and her brothers-in-law are dying to get rid of the house, the ranch, everything. They hate our roots, with the exception of Lucia, who I think we can count on, the others are barren people, with no real roots, except for the beautiful children they had, surprisingly. So, Soul, think, think! But get a better idea, because I... I don't know what to do anymore.
“Rhodo,” I said. “I will pray, I will have an inspiration, I know. But I will pray to the gods of Olympus and Pampa, as Vati taught me. He wanted his girl to be pagan... and he got it. I'll look for our apple tree, do a ritual tomorrow night. Only you should know this. Keep everyone away. disguise. For all intents and purposes I will be locked in my room. You know me, I don't play with certain things. Thou shalt see. Something must happen that will get us out of this impasse.
____________________________________________________
I'm getting ready for the ritual I've managed to do next to my apple tree. I stealthily gather herbs throughout the day. I don't forget to add to my collection the sacred yerba mate of the pampas, and leaves from our vineyard. I spend the day concentrating, having given Rôdo the task of avoiding the gossip of Solange and Geraldo, Lucia's husband. As for Alberto, he is too busy with the bottles, decimating our cellar. I'm only afraid that he will soon start to embarrass, shocking the children, and Patricia, that precious flower that remains untouched like a lily of the pampas, or like a seraph. How could these kids preserve themselves like this, so pure, with parents like these? Well, I leave it at that, I can't help but keep my arms always open to welcome these wonderful children.
At dusk, I sneak in with my herbs and other accessories, to hide them in the orchard and get back in time for supper. Rôdo kept entertaining the children so they wouldn't see my maneuvers. At dinner, Patricia expressed how much she missed me, slightly hurt. I caressed her a lot, under the sideways glance of her mother. Her father was already so drunk that he didn't sit at the table. So we drink water from the spring during this dinner. However, as I touched the glass of pure water, I felt again the surprising and delicious taste of the wine from the night before.
................................................................ ...................................
I cross the garden, whose daisies, under the moon's glare, have a phosphorescent and spectral aspect. Trees, bushes, and hedges cast shadows that blur my vision, and make me feel like I'm in a dream. In the silver-topped orchard, the more compact shadows on the ground highlight an area of light soil around my apple tree, all of it looking magical, silver, shimmering.
I carry with me a three-legged stool, which will be my makeshift tripod. I install it next to the apple tree, in front of the heart engraved on it with our initials. This is for me the face of my tree. As the bench is rather low, I try to keep it on piled stones that raise it to my chest. I hope that the connection of my tripod with the ground is assured by these stones, and they do not isolate it. It is necessary that the link between heaven and earth is perfect in its flow of energies. So says my instinct. I am the Pythia, or the pythoness of this temple: my orchard. I am taken by this feeling, rare in me, of the intermediation of occult forces and vague esoterism, like a terrain that, in fact, I don't know. However, an unknown instinct in me guides me. Ancestral powers, very ancient, come together for me, I feel them, coming from a distant antiquity. Perhaps a druidess acts, or a Greek pythoness, or even a fusion of these oracles, from their Celtic, Germanic and Greek strands, gathered in me on this solemn night.
The chorus of crickets, frogs and other nocturnal singers like the nightjar, and even dogs in the distance, howling at the moon, prepare the moment of absolute silence that will install, I know, at the moment of the magical invocation.
I am seized with a sacred fervor in relation to forces that I sense, without knowing them well. They are not the fruit of reason, and I am already in a semi-delusional state that mysteriously settles in me in this propitiatory night. It certainly couldn't be another night. Only this date awaited me, priestess of a single moment, vestal of virginity remade for a few hours that will never be repeated.
I start to burn the herbs I gathered during the day and which I had hidden nearby. I start with the yerba mate of the pampas, invoking, while the smoke rises, the pampeiros, including that tender and tragic little black from the grazing, emerged from the memory of my childhood. I invoke the holy captain of Nau Catarineta and the gaucho of Salamanca do Jarau, I invoke Martim Fierro, or his model, a real gaucho, the mold of all brave and telluric gaucho pawns. I continue, then, with the burning of the smoke of our estancia, very strong and forgotten. Finally, I add leaves from our vineyard, invoking the eternal Dionysus, who appears in my spirit with my father's face. So, at this moment, the orchard seems saturated with presences. Each nume brings with it its procession of aggregates. Dionysus presents himself with the blond beard of my young father, crowned with vine leaves, carrying his wine glass in his hand, and with him the entourage that always accompanies him. I see them, all of them: satyrs, nymphs, and the bustling little fauns. Soon this orchard erupts in an immense sacred bacchanal. I find myself in a hyperesthetic state, of confluence of all spirits. My hair stands on end and I feel the radiance that exudes from me through my pores, through my fingers, which manipulate the conclamatory herbs. All the gods, some witches, sorcerers and druids converge there. I see the Wizard Merlin, from King Arthur, and the fairy Morgana, also Queen Mab* in her nutshell, followed by all the faerie. Deirdre*, daughter of ancestral Ireland, follows her, with Fingal* and Ossian*. My saturated orchard becomes a great “Night of Walpurgis”*, with the wandering presence of Faust accompanied by his Mephistopheles; and that of Eros and Psyche, and Helen of Troy “she whose face threw a thousand ships into the sea”. I see Thor and Odim out of their Walhala* and the Valkyries on horseback. In a kind of Alef moment, I see everything and everyone, around Leonardo da Vinci's immense beard, on this universal Sabbath, before collapsing, fainting, with my sweater torn apart by my own claws, half naked on the floor carpeted with dry leaves. and small skittish beings, a space silvered by an immense moon that makes me levitate horizontally, one meter off the ground.
Rôdo, screaming my name, arrives, running, and picks me up in the air, stupefied, as he would later tell me. He had to put me down on the dry leaves forcing me down. Never again, he said, would he look at me with the same eyes.
................................................................ ...................................
I spent the next two days soaking in bed, exhausted, to the point of suspecting that all this, gods and numbers, had come from within myself, and not from the surrounding nature, from my orchard, the earth and the air, anyway.
But never mind, I had summoned them... and they appeared. They came together, alive, somehow. They were all there, they did not miss the meeting, which made me sure that I was not alone, and that they would not abandon this land. And I would always be in their midst, for my roots were solid, and somehow, my faith was so powerful, that I wouldn't be defeated by the lesser deities of money...or lack thereof.
My sisters and brothers-in-law attributed my condition to an understandable depression given our financial situation. The children surrounded me with affection, climbing up to the bed and coming in, at night, under my covers to hug me. I realized how much I was loved by these children, and I was sure that I was on the right path. Patricia, the little maiden, said to me:
—Aunt Alma, I understand that Mom and Dad want to sell the ranch. I can also see that you suffer more than anyone else for this, and that you are fighting, in some way, to save her. Tell me, aunt. I will do what you want. I won't let that happen, either, without a fight. Daddy just wants to drink, I see. He will drink all the money that falls into his hands. He'll drink the whole place if we let him (a tear ran down his face) — But, Auntie, you must tell me what to do. I will obey you, whatever your instructions. Tell me, Aunt Alma, what can I do?
—Patricia, my love, you are my favorite girl. I knew I could count on you. But I don't know how you can help. When the time is right, when I find out, I'll let you know, stay tuned... and tell me everything you hear from strangers. I just didn't want you to be a little spy. But the time is war and we must take our positions. I am infinitely grateful for your words. You are a golden girl.
On the third day, regaining strength, I left the bed and participated in the dinner, when Alberto took the opportunity to open another bottle to make me a toast. And once again, the wine seemed too delicious to me. Alberto spent dinner drinking, without touching the food, very excited, as if it were a party time. And, one way or another, he distracted us from our worries.
Rôdo, that night, after dinner, he arranged for me, in whispers, as a child, to meet me in the office. I arrived there, at the agreed time, and found him with his boot on the desk and with the gaucho knife of carved silver, in his hand, in his favorite scene game, since childhood. He was the gauchão type, with a smile halfway across his mouth. But soon he composed himself and said:
-Alma, I don't know what you did, but you scared me. How could you stay like this, hovering above the ground? What happened? What are you up to? You're crazy, I'm almost afraid of you. What are you up to?
“Rôdo,” I said, “the details are none of your business, although you arrived at a good time to interrupt the ritual, which I really don't know how it could end. All I know is that the pact was made, if I can call it that. We are not alone. Have you seen the hosts with which we are accompanied?
—Alma, I saw nothing but enough: you lying in the air, your hair almost touching the earth... and it was too much. I don't ever want to see that again, you sorceress. You scare me. Since childhood you have had your mysteries, which I cannot share. Is not fair. But what did you do? What is the practical result, come on, say it!
“Look, brother, I can't tell you everything. I myself find it hard to believe what I saw now. Nothing was said, properly speaking, but the presences I invoked, and who appeared brought or not by our herbs, were enough to know that we are not alone, but accompanied by powerful beings, who watch over us and this land, this house. . This has given me confidence, and the result, for now, is just this: confidence. I know that a sudden inspiration will come to me, from them. Just wait.
“Well, Alma, let that inspiration come soon. We do not have much time. The economic pressure, from our creditors, doesn't let up, you have no idea... Until now I wanted to spare you the details, since you are an artist, for whom all this would be even more painful than for me and the sisters. . Our brothers-in-law, you know, are two zeros on the left, especially Alberto, the king of bottles.
We were talked. Quietly, I began to caress his hair, which I had loved since childhood, and he nestled his beautiful head against my breasts.
I walk in the morning among the flowers in our garden, picking daisies, dandelions, violets, and making a bouquet. Patrícia accompanies me, delighted, and we decorate our hair with the girls. As we wear white, airy dresses, we must certainly look beautiful. Our brothers-in-law watch us and even Alberto, the numb one, is sensitive to this scene. I am aware that things like this, which are at the heart of everything, give meaning to this rural property, whose ultimate goal is also beauty. Nothing would have meaning without it, this is the tradition of this gaucho land, in the end, the tradition... of beauty, of this pampa and of our people. I am convinced of that, and don't accuse me of being an artist... as if that meant a partial, subjective view. The Greeks knew, as in the urn poem by John Keats: “Truth is beauty, beauty is truth. This is all there is to know.”*
From inside the house comes the sound of a Chopin prelude. One of the “five easy pieces”, which Rôdo knows how to play with unparalleled delicacy, although he never thinks of himself as an artist. The musical bent inherited from Vati is present, in him, as in me. I can't play like that, only dance, paint and write under the influence of this wonderful music. For the past few days I have been chronically moved, as if my life was at its limit, which may well be true. It's time to mount my bay horse, and even with this dress and these flowers in my hair, gallop across these prairies, across the infinite pampa. Well, that's what I'll do, after asking Galdério for the saddled mount. Solange appears on the porch trying to stop me, scandalized.
"Soul, you crazy one!" When are you going to stop behaving like this? You were doing very well picking flowers with Patricia. Will you have to gallop once more, like when you were a child? You've grown up, stop it! You can get hurt, can't you see?
I'm already mounted and I hear their screams in the distance. I shoot across the meadow, as if I were the pampeiro itself, humming in the crotch. Rôdo will then mount and pursue me, I know, as before, as before...
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I inform Rôdo that I need a female companion, a friend, here, at this moment, and that I am thinking of inviting Aline, who has always wanted to visit our resort. Now is the time. We are separated, but as friends, and I know that she will not miss this opportunity, besides the fact that she wants to be with me, I know, with a pretext that that Pedro will not be able to resist. Rôdo agrees, of course, he doesn't need to know the timbre of this friendship, which doesn't concern him. As for Solange, I don't even think about giving her any satisfaction.
Soon I start phoning Aline's house, until I get to talk to her. I tell her to come, that I need her…desperately. That this is a delicate moment, that I need your support, your confidence, even your advice. In fact, your love. She, touched on the phone, says yes, she will come. That I expect her within three days at the most.
While waiting for her, out of my anxiety and excitement, I wrote this frantic letter, as if we hadn't already spoken on the phone:
"You're on your way, Aline, I can already see you coming back. You received my letter and replied with a laconic note, but so suggestive that it was enough: my heart lit up. Am I dreaming? Did I interpret your few words from the perspective of my passionate hope? I don't think so. I feel your steps on the road, on the long road that separated us. And my heart follows the pace of your walk towards my arms, to my recovered joy.
Do you remember, Aline, our endless nights, when we would shed tears of rapture and pure joy at our meeting in this life? How we held each other in our arms crushing our breasts, areola against areola. How did our pubes stick together, our bellies, our lips? How did we exchange our fluids, like sister-lovers? How else to define our intense symbiosis, our indescribable passion? And yet, you left... almost killing me for how much I had confused myself, lost myself or... gained myself in you. The ecstasy, Aline, the ecstasy, we know it in this life. And that is holiness, Aline, true holiness! Nothing was lacking in our carnal love: we seized everything, without reservation, and possessed ourselves as woman to woman, man to man, man to woman and androgynous to androgynous, with the help of artifacts, imagination and ardor, Aline. Soul and carnal passion!
Come Aline, I have open arms and so I will remain like a crucified person, waiting and hoping, on the threshold of my door on the veranda of the mansion on my farm, until you arrive and place yourself between my hardened and sleeping arms, which will finally fold about you. They already want to admit me, Aline, but they don't dare. Something in me, in my eyes perhaps, makes me believe I'm right, that you're on your way. And the others wait for the confirmation of an announced miracle, like those who want to see to believe. O beings of little faith! So they don't hear your footsteps? They think I'm crazy...
When you return, I will take you in my arms so that you can discover my flowering garden, my orchard and my apple tree engraved with an AR penknife, where I will add your A, transforming air into sacred stone. Ara of the Pampas, will be your chapter. I will take you with me with the apple finally harvested, to my river, and to my grove. And you'll ride on the rump of my pampeiro in an endless dash across the coxillas, clinging to me from behind that I'll feel your body forever, even dismounted, naked, you glued to me, in front, behind. I won't leave you anymore! You won't leave me because I'll make you so happy that you won't risk losing me anymore! I will possess you and you will possess me to the point of blood, until we form the sacred Hermaphrodite with our bodies and our minds on fire. The salamander will govern the nights of our bonfires in the middle of the prairie, preparing the mate that we will share, the bitter that will taste sweet to us and that will warm us under a shared pala in the sacred and cold night of Minuano. They will no longer be able to separate us; they will no longer dare, though terrified!
Oh! Everything we will do when you return!
What long days, the ones that followed, until it was time to pick her up at the station. Galdério transported us in the buggy, me and Patrícia, who is euphoric at the prospect of living with yet another young woman, who she knows is beautiful and sweet, according to my description.
When she saw her, on the platform, with her backpack, her indefectible jeans and T-shirt, her sneakers, so modern and at the same time so timeless, Patricia liked her at first sight, and wanted to help her with the backpack. But Galdério took care of that and we got into the buggy, Patrícia moving to the back with her ears attentive to Aline's soft voice, who whispered as was her way, with that softness that had won me over from the first meeting. Before her, my heart stretched, I wanted to hug her never to let go of her. Her sweet smell invaded me and tears came to my eyes. She knew. She continued, generously, to let herself be loved by me, and I... would be capable of anything for this girl who had completed my life, the gap in my insatiable heart of love and beauty.
The return journey would never leave my memory. I laid my head on Aline's shoulder, unconcerned with any possible judgment by the faithful Galdério, who remained discreetly silent, and we sang together, accompanied by Patrícia's high-pitched, youthful voice, a beautiful lullaby that my nanny, Matilde, the driver's sister, sang. to me in the cradle, at bedtime, and who spoke of wonderful things, like a blue horse, a golden bird and a maiden who sang all that, in an endless circular meta-language.
When we arrived in front of the porch of the manor house, I was half asleep, my head in Aline's lap, in an old snuggle, which I wished would never end. Awakened by her, I wanted to be tiny so that she could carry me on her lap, put me on the couch or in bed, and continue to sing so I could fall into a perfect, deep sleep. Oh! But Aline longed to know everything, what was going on and I... had forgotten all about my problems, as I always did when I was with her, my love.
“Darling,” I said, “I almost forget about my problems, as if I just called you to rest on your lap. But that's it. I need your affection more than any advice, because I know you can't do much, since the problem is basically financial and you understand it as much as I do. But we will have time for you to find out what is happening . I'll arrange for Rôdo to tell you everything. The important thing is that you are with me, for if my heart is supported, the inspiration of the gods I invoked will be more likely to come, to save our place, which is everything to our family, or at least to myself, and to the children, who live half their time in the city. Aline, I'm involving you in this problem, in terms, but if you support me with your company, complicity and affection, this land will be yours too, I promise you. Do you accept?
“Alma, I want nothing. You know I love you as much as you love me, and if I haven't left Pedro, it's also for consistency, because I don't love him any less. You know you can love like that, two or more people alike. I know how you feel about your brother, and you made me understand and accept that from the beginning of our relationship. We are open, it is a fact, and our complicity is tacit. You can trust me, but tell me, what have you done, whose secret I see in your eyes? What's happening?
I told Aline everything, the threat that loomed, and my adventure, the pact with the numbers and gods, who descended, or appeared in an avalanche on that amazing night. Aline's big blue eyes widened, startled, shaking her head. I feared she was thinking I was going crazy. But she didn't let me down. She grabbed my hands saying:
"Little sorceress!" You never deceived me. I've always suspected your powers, ever since you tangled me in your web that first day. You seduced me, and there is no greater power than that: that of seduction. You trapped me forever in your beautiful heart, where your power actually comes from. Your purity, Soul, is your strength, do not doubt it, and never lose it. Such purity can do anything, and will assure you of the continuity of possession of this land, which you love so much.
With tears streaming down my face, I brought my lips closer to her wonderful mouth, missing her kisses and caresses. She wrapped her arms around me and pressed her lips to mine, breathing in my soul.
.Not far from here are the ruins of the missions, “Seven Peoples”, that my father took me to know when I was still a child. The grandeur of those wreckage strengthened my conviction of the grandeur of this land, whose Indians, guided by the Jesuits, were able to build such portentous walls. There are those who say that the Indians should not build anything out of stone and lime, and that all this is nothing more than violence and distortion of their culture, wonderful when in its primitivism. But the truth is that everything was destiny, and it is an integral part of this land, whose history cannot do without any of its dramatic fragments: the colony, the Empire, the Farroupilha revolution, with Bento Gonçalves, Neto, and Garibaldi. And that wonderful Anita, whose integral Brazilianness I envy, in love with an Italian hero and dying in a foreign land. The German blood, which runs in my veins, is also assimilated by the sap of the Pampas, and our wine of so many strains tends to become one of the best in the world, second only to the French. Who knows, maybe we will unseat it in the distant future, when that exhausted soil of ancient Gaul will be completely exhausted.
So meditating, I make my way to our vineyard, almost ashamed to prioritize our orchard on my arrival. There I find Rôdo supervising the work, conscientiously, as if, for him too, there was still hope. I admired him to see him like this, as he had confided in me his despair, his defeat. Perhaps he wanted to hand over productive land, in order to get a better price, in the sale he planned.
Rôdo offered me a bunch of grapes, which gleamed perfectly, and placed vine leaves on either side of my head, exclaiming cynically:
—Hail, Anima Mundi, morituri te salutant!
That sounded ironic, but auspicious at the same time. I removed the leaves and putting a single grape in my mouth, I placed the bunch in the basket to be taken with the others. It was my affirmation of the need to go on, to continue the production of our wine, and that we would never die. This is what life wants: that we live as if we were eternal, disdaining the deceitful offer of the gods, as if immortality were in the present moment, eternalized. Thus Odysseus had rejected Circe's offer, and therein lay his immortal human honor. He did not deny his mortality because he knew it was relative: the sublime moment, of courage, adventure and curiosity, already configured an eternity, and he would not allow himself to be corrupted by the temptation of the gods, who tested souls, as the Devil would later do to Christ. , and Mephistopheles, incarnation of that one, who would tempt Faust, the penultimate modern hero, since the last ones were Garibaldi and Anita.
The taste of grape blood in my mouth gave me, for a long time, the sensation of the indistinct embryo of an idea that had not yet found its configuration. What would it be? What, then, was insinuating itself into my spirit, so still amorphous, faceless?
Aline came to meet me in the vineyard, and we walked around for a long time, sucking grapes and waving at the harvesters, with their headscarves, which looked at us curiously. Two girls so tall… leggy, they must think. That's weird! But they knew me. Maybe they didn't imagine there was another girl like me, like me.
Aline, with her jeans, which did not take away from her femininity in the slightest, with her breasts whose nipples protrude from her white shirt, must cause a slight scandal in the minds of these peasant women. But I'll never know... Talking to them was almost impossible. His thoughts seemed hidden, by reserve or natural isolation in an unfathomable world of restrictive traditions and customs. I never really knew what the peons and their wives and daughters thought of me, of us, of the big house. The Germans, the Boches? How did they refer to this family? From Galdério and his sister I knew their loyalty beyond measure. Matilde, former nanny, now cook, loved me more than anything and I compared her to Desdemona's nurse, Othello's, who would have died for her mistress. Oh! The Willow Song, by Shakeapeare and Verdi, was for me the best portrayal of the fidelity and sadness of the world of these peasant women, which a poet could never describe so well. It reminded me of Vati, who showed me for the first time, this aria by Othello, by Verdi, who won me over in the right way for the opera world. Oh! Vati, I owe it all to you, the world of art and this vineyard, which I now promise never to dry up.
I ran out of there, followed by Aline, amazed. Facing the porch, my friend grabbed me and pulled my head to her chest.
-“Alma, Alma, calm down. You'll get it, I know, you'll get an idea. I know you. But don't suffer like that. I can't see you suffer. It breaks my heart. When I left her, that time, her cry, as a child, she wouldn't let me sleep anymore. My friend, you are a girl, deep down. And you already carry the weight of an entire vineyard. Now I know you better, here, in your land. Come, come, I'll pack you, my dear...
Aline's immense tenderness made up for almost everything, and I then felt that without her, I could not bear the threat, the fear, the imminent loss.
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In our room, Aline laid me down on the bed and began to caress her. She had left the door open, and that was disastrous. Lucia was passing in the hallway, at that moment, she stopped, and saw the scene. We don't notice its sneaky shadow presence. Was Lucia a spy for Solange? She witnessed our kisses, Aline's hand that roamed my body, lifted my skirt, roamed my thighs and plunged into the confluence of my legs. Lucia, unable to contain herself, ran in that corridor, when we then noticed her fugitive presence, and we were sure of the scandal. Solange would know everything...I was lost. I would lose what little moral strength I had left in this house, in front of her and my brothers-in-law.
At lunch, Aline and I, wary, approached the big table. But surprisingly, nothing happened. Lucia just kept her eyes down, while Solange remained the same sergeant as ever.
The meal went on normally, with its pleasant bits, others not so much, but with laughter at Alberto's inconveniences, and Geraldo's snobbery. Noticing this brother-in-law, I imagined the horror that this lunch would be if he already knew everything. And Solange, then? This one would throw me off the table, screaming, and forbidding me to ever approach her daughter. I would die of pain... and of shame. No, nobody knows yet. Lucia kept it a secret. Because? What does she want? A mystery, for now.
After lunch, I call Lucia, surreptitiously to the hallway. I question her with my eyes. She, with downcast eyes, raised them and, taking hold of my shoulders, with firm delicacy, to my surprise, pulled me to her and said:
“Alma, my sister, fear nothing. I admire you, I love you. No one will ever know from my mouth, anything. Solange thinks I'm her spy, but I'll never be loyal to her. She doesn't deserve us. Alma, I will keep your secret, and Geraldo will never humiliate you, that arrogant one. Rest easy, my little sister... and love your friend as much as you like.
I knelt, then, suddenly, at Lucia's feet, and humbly and sincerely kissed her hands. I was saved.
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End of Chapter first
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CHAPTER TWO
the ARA
"Shoemaker's Wife
(see Maria Bonita)
It's adventurous arrival
Like that brave Anita
Leaving Poltrom Husband
Not caring that we hurt
One was with Lampião
Another was with Garibaldi
I will go back to my South
What better will I ever have
There's Garibaldi and Anita
Which is better than having a king"
(Quadras by cordelist Guilherme de Faria, from his
“Maxims of the Sertanejo Trovador” published in pamphlets
in his “Romances de Cordel.”)
the ARA
In my little patent-leather shoes, I ran through the fields around our big house, often losing sight of it. With an old-fashioned, useless apron over my very long skirt, I looked more like a girl from the previous century: long hair, with a ribbon, sometimes braids. I ran or just wandered around, picking flowers, blowing the grass seeds in the wind, daydreaming, until I heard the sound of Vati's piano, which was the way to return to earth... to continue dreaming. I ran to the library, to get under the big Steinway (which now, on my return, seemed much smaller). I would stay there, lying on my stomach on a very soft rug, which Vati would place for me. With my chin in my hands, I watched her feet on the pedals, whose usefulness seemed to me a mystery, and let myself be lulled by the wonderful sound of Chopin, Shumann, Shubert, Lizst, Debussy, Scriabin, Satie and Poulenc. I would then get up so that, beside him, I could observe her hands, her nimble fingers, skillful as an old musician-surgeon. When he was finished, I would sometimes pick up his resting hands, inert on the keyboard, and watch them carefully, examining the smallest details, which seemed to amuse him. One day I kissed them after their concert for me. Yes, because I thought it was just me he played for... and he let me think so. Then he would put me on his lap so we could talk about music, about composers. He told me stories and anecdotes about their lives, and I transported myself to that world, where I saw myself as their companion, and precociously, their loved ones. Yes, all of them. I identified with his muses, which my father described with reverence, denouncing his fascination with women... with the beauty of the woman-muse, which he himself did not enjoy, I later realized. My mother was anything but that... Her unyielding rectitude, her gradual bitterness, her practical outlook on life, ruled by an excessive sense of duty, devoted to her family and the man who had chosen her. Yes, because she had been passively chosen, and I could never feel in her a great love for Vati, as I projected it, in my imagination fired by the romantic world of artists: musicians, poets and painters of that wonderful 19th century.
Then he would pick up the large volumes from the shelves to show me the illustrations by Gustave Doré, or by Flaxman (in the case of the Iliad and the Odyssey), and he would often read to me selected passages from those works. And I shed tears of enchantment, and more, because that was being transmitted by him, with that affective charge, with that feeling of identification and donation that he had for me. I was his hope, now I know, his repository of dreams, and if possible, of the artistic culture that he had no one else to bequeath, since my sisters were not moved by that universe, and lived stuck in the kitchen, or in the practical work around Mutti. Rhodo was a different case. But they were excellent soulless embroiderers, and their work did not interest me. I preferred to imagine Penelope's endless web at the loom, reconstructing the adventures of her beloved Odysseus, as she imagined them from the vague narratives of the returned soldiers, to follow him on his bumpy path towards herself. I identified with her, this queen that I knew held true fidelity: that of the complicit imagination, and of true devotion, that of the passionate soul, which I did not see in my mother.
Fortunately, she, Ana Morgado, had the common sense, at least, not to interfere in this father-daughter relationship, whose affinities were almost absolute, with the exception of the obscure world, for me, incomprehensible, of Medicine, which I rejected from my life. imagination, as a bloody, ugly, raw thing. I could never understand, with my senses, the fascination he had for what I considered the demystification of the flesh, since I saw it and wanted it that way: a perfect envelope of the soul, full of beauty and personality, of brightness and sensuality.
My mother feared this above all: the precocious sensuality she saw in me. And she tried to repress it, without succeeding, since she exuded from me through my pores, through my movements, a little student of eurythmy and ballet, two opposing disciplines, which Vati was trying to combine in me. But, even without that, this sensuality, above all, was innate in my movements, and coming from the beauty that always accompanied me, as everyone said, since my birth.
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I walk around the house now, appeased, on the one hand, by Lúcia's surprising complicity, but restless, my mind agitated, looking for a solution to our impasse. The ritual I had presided over in the orchard would bear fruit, I hoped. There was, as it were, an embryo of an idea, still formless, planted in my spirit, or in the back of my mind.
At meals, we would get together painstakingly, always under Geraldo's nitpicking, Rôdo's sarcastic answers, Solange's scoldings and teasing, Lucia's downcast silence, and Alberto's sometimes amusing nonsense, emptying the bottles, which he, with difficulty, shared with us. The delight of these wines ended up relaxing, minimizing the rough edges of this family mismatch. Blessed wine! I understood in those days the catalytic function of this nectar of the gods, given to men by Dionysus, to soften our fate, although often, I know, it overloads it, such is its fascination.
Alberto, our Bacchus, with a reddish nose, was the one who stood out the most in our repasts. Yes, drunks, in general, channel to themselves, in one way or another, the attentions, caricatures that become of all of us, human beings. I remember, however, the shock that my father took me to a circus as a child. The clowns caused me horror, and a painted face, which sank into an immense collar, with a turtle, made me turn my head in revulsion, as in a nightmare. The slaps and false, clattering blows resonated to me as real and brutal. I wanted to run away, but I hugged my father, closing my eyes and turning away from that grotesque spectacle, which left me forever with this repugnance for the poor clowns, caricatures of the drunk, with their red noses, their loose, flowing pants, their oversized shoes, made for stumbling.
Solange insisted on leading the meal ritual, but we paid no attention to her. We knew not to take her seriously, or she would bully us. In childhood, Rôdo and I had managed to escape their oppression, through this tacit attitude of humor and relaxation, which we found in our own temperaments, supported by Vati, who enjoyed it enormously. I can imagine how much resentment Solange had built up all these years against the three of us.
Speaking of Solange, I have just remembered, with nostalgia, our Christmas and New Year parties, at the estancia, during my childhood. Glorious days, those, when I got up early, on splendorous summer mornings, almost screaming with joy to exist, and to feel... so happy! The parties, for me, started with the preparations, in the kitchen, and in the prepared room, especially with the assembly of our big Christmas tree. Matilde was the great party girl, responsible for the wonderful roast turkey, side dishes, salads and sweets. Vati took care of the choice of wines, of our own production. Mutti managed everything, starting with the decoration of the room and the decent preparation of the big table that would bring us all together. Solange and Lúcia helped them, while Rôdo and I had fun watching and clapping, or simply picking flowers and enjoying the lovely atmosphere of Christmas preparations.
But I particularly remember the Christmas when I was thirteen years old, when Rôdo, in a great restlessness of his pre-adolescent libido, decided to create an excuse for me to visit him in his little attic room, on the eve of Christmas, at midnight. , when everyone was asleep.
There I was, as so often, in that cozy environment of a boy's room, which fascinated me with its virile mess, where all their tastes showed themselves: cars, model airplanes, miniatures of motorcycles and boats, photos and posters of mountains and beaches, some typical Pampas photos, of cowboys lassoing or launching the bolas at full gallop, wonderful horses, everything that an adventurous boy loved, and... a beautiful photo of me, my best photo, which touched me to be there, among the your beloved things. I hugged him in a more emotional way than usual, although I knew that Rôdo didn't like sentimentality. But that night, in particular, for some reason I wanted to cry with happiness at having him as a brother, I, who didn't identify with my sisters at all, and wasn't even sure I loved them. I pulled him over me, instinctively, like a little lover, but we were sleepy and we fell asleep like that, dressed and cuddling, dreaming of ourselves, cuddling, dreaming...
We woke up startled by Solange's high and aggressive voice. The fat little shrew, in front of us, with her hands on her hips, glared at us:
—Oh! You bastards. Already hooked up again! Mom will know about it! You'll run out of turkey at Christmas and no dessert! They won't even sit at the table, you'll see!
I was embarrassed for her, not myself. For the pettiness of my sister who insisted on tormenting my life, conspiring against my happiness, which, after all, for me, it was right there, next to my brother. I retorted, extending my arms to her:
"Solange, jealous little sister!" Do you want to hug me too? Come, come Sun, I'll make you happy!
Solange flushed with confusion and anger, but ran away. I had disarmed her. I looked at Rôdo and he was rolling with laughter, panting. He finally managed to say:
—Alma, you have each one! You are always unexpected. You, hugging the Sun! Can't imagine!
-Well... she wouldn't let it. I would hug her and even kiss her if I won her over and she stopped chasing us. By the way, are we out of turkey and dessert?
We laughed once more together, and I was so happy there, with Rôdo, romantically in my little brother's arms, that I began to hear the sounds of Christmas Eve, the noise of crystals, wine glasses, and silverware, from the happy laughter of the family members I loved so much, which I wouldn't exclude Solange, whom I saw smiling at me, chubby and... even nice. I didn't even need Christmas Eve. I was so full and happy, that I heard its crystal sounds, and I didn't need the eve to arrive anymore. My Christmas was right there, in that moment, present forever, feeling with my little nascent breast, the beats of my brother's beloved heart.
But going back to the present time, Lucia, who I thought was the helpless victim of our older sister, now revealed another face to me, albeit an equally resentful one. She would get even, secretly supporting me, and I would be grateful for that.
Exercising the security that this certainty gave me, she took advantage of meals to cuddle my dear Patrícia, the twins, and Pedrinho, as never before. The keynote then became the children and their untouched world. They would be the focus of attention, and not even Geraldo dared to exercise his corrosive poisons anymore. Once, he just said:
“Alma, you are still childish. You will never grow up, will you? Not even in the face of the limit situation in which we find ourselves.
“My brother-in-law,” I replied, “let's leave the adult conversations to the office. Children are serious too. Laughter and joy... are serious business, aren't they, children?
They shook their heads in bursts of laughter, and we continued talking pleasant nonsense, with the exception of Patricia, who was daydreaming with a lost gaze. Taken by her first love, she was at that timeless age of lovers. I thought of Romeo's Juliet and her simultaneous maturity and naivete. Maturity, yes, because Julieta understood the real tragedy of her situation. Can we imagine the rape she was destined for by her parents, the rape that awaited her at the hands of a hateful older man under the circumstances? The being in love cannot even imagine being touched, taken, but by the object of his passion. Juliet would be dead forever in her heart, in her flesh and in her soul, if defiled by that Count Paris.
Thinking like that, I would hand Patricia over to her love, hand in hand, if she were my daughter, at most, as a representative of our time, she would present them with a dozen condoms. But I still didn't have children, and maybe I saw things with too much detachment. The fact is that I moved my spirit at will, between the centuries, positioning myself at the end of the millennium when it came to the sexual question. I had always been a libertarian, with the encouragement of Vati, and being an artist, I could not accept any oppression, at any age. I could barely understand the subjection people had to authority and hierarchy. I would never give an order: I would never order anything from anyone in my entire life, even an employee. I would ask please, as I always have. A human being should never exercise power over another human being, I think so. And the one who submits to tyranny ends up legitimizing it, or becoming its accomplice.
Alberto, drinking our wine, tried to be childish, like us, but he didn't, that's the truth. It was out of tune. We then ran away right after dessert, leaving the adults entertained with coffee, cigars and liqueurs. We would run to the garden on a tag full of laughter, or stroll peacefully, hand in hand. With these beautiful children, I truly feel like family.
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Days passed and I, safe again, took a chance on caresses with Aline, but with a little more care. We didn't want to shock the kids either, of course, and at most we strolled hand in hand, like two good friends. I knew Solange was watching us all the time. It bothered me, of course, and I wanted to be able to stand up to her. If it weren't for the children I would kiss Aline on the lips, everywhere, and make her sit on my lap on the benches in the garden. With that reproach, my love and desire increased... and I felt like a Juliet too. Oh! Why don't people just leave each other alone? Why so much intrusion and disrespect to other people's individualities? I know that there are those who think that the attitudes of others also disrespect us, even when they are not directed at us. I don't think so. I wouldn't even report a thief. And I would never be part of a jury to convict anyone. I wouldn't judge anyone in that sense. The human being, I believe, must never usurp the prerogative of destiny. The wicked will be punished by time, and by their own wickedness. The good will pass through their faults unscathed, for their hearts will preserve them. And the innocent are already in paradise. That's how I've thought since I was little. I don't believe in a punitive God. This would not match the immense love that is the reason for the universe, for God himself.
For me, the evident proof of God's love, the closest configuration of his immense power, is the sun. A small displacement of a few thousand kilometers would be enough for it to roast us or freeze us. But no, it remains careful, looking at us and warming us, from the exact distance, to produce this beautiful nature, contemplating us with countless gifts, particles and mysterious effects, to create life... and beauty. His love is evident.
With that in mind, I pull Aline by the hand, all the time to all the gaps I find, or behind the trees in our orchard, to kiss her on the mouth, greedily. I can not take it anymore. I want everything from my love.
I then take her to our old shed, after losing the children. There, in the midst of hay and tools, empty barrels and harness, I toss it onto the straw and dispose of it at last. Oh! I miss that beautiful body! I also get ready, and naked, we surrender to our ardent caresses. We are soaked, and we drink our fluids, thirsty, ecstatic. Your perfume, your liqueurs, I love everything that comes from my love and... I wanted to swallow you whole, if possible. I can never get enough. That's the curse: a permanent taste of the unfinished, the incomplete, the lack. The human being can never feel complete, finally unified! Here is evidence of the original unjust punishment, if not the incomprehensible sin.
And behold, we were caught once again. This time by the twins, who blushed simultaneously. They remained static before our nakedness. We then got up at the same time and slowly... carefully put ourselves into a beautiful statuesque pose. The boys laughed, and ran away happily. I'm sure they understood, or were touched by the beauty of the scene we forged. It was an inspiration.
From then on, when we were alone, they sometimes repeated our pose together, and smiled beautifully at us.
We knew, then, that they would not tell adults about what they saw.
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Rôdo comes to show me a proposal for the purchase of the estancia by a farmer tycoon. I do not want to see. Solange and Geraldo are furious, encouraging the sale, putting pressure on Rôdo. Alberto is more concerned with drinking. I approach him to co-opt him to my side, that is, against the sale. I tell him, in cryptic, indirect language, that the bottles will run out for him, naturally, if the estancia is sold. But they will be inexhaustible, if we keep our vineyard and all. That argument sounded logical. Drunks seem to have a very simple logic: there is no life outside of bottles. This ends up taking them completely, no matter how smart they are. It's amazing the power of alcohol over them. It is something that renews the meaning of life for fleeting fractions of a second, but under constant use allows them to remain alive, with a certain sense of fleeting pertinence, in a chaotic world. I will never judge them. But at that moment I allowed myself to manipulate that poor specimen, which was the only ally I had left, since Aline and the children didn't have a vote. The sad thing was not being able to count on Rôdo, who simply didn't believe it was possible to keep our property anymore. I was trying to buy time. I felt that something was going to happen that would change the course of events if we put off the sale for another month. Faced with this deadline agreed with Rôdo, he also felt he had the right to call a friend, a girlfriend, to assuage his loneliness or the thirst of his body.
In a few days Laís arrived, a dark, beautiful, mysterious young woman who made him lose his mind. Rhodo was transformed. When he returned from the station with the young woman, his face was different. That night the house reverberated with the girl's moans and squeals coming from the bedroom, and a kind of howls from my brother. It was really funny for me and Aline, but scandalous for others. Solange dawned more frowning than ever. Oh! If she only knew that Aline and I, we would tiptoe to observe the couple's fantastic maneuvers through the keyhole! We could barely contain our laughter and the excitement it produced, of course. The girl was versed in the Kama-Sutra, or at the very least in Yoga. She put herself upside down, and expected the same jugglery from poor Rhodo. Her sex was exposed at 180 degrees, and we couldn't help but admire the beauty of her rosy orifices, with carefully shaved hairs. Aline and I fought over the keyhole, almost bursting to keep from laughing. Then we run to our bed and try to replicate the exploits. That was hilarious... and a little frustrating. I remembered Freud and his penis envy theory, and for a moment I thought he was right. But, I wanted to be complete! To possess and be possessed simultaneously by my Aline. Yes, the perfect Hermaphrodite was the ideal being, lost forever in us!
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Solange was waiting for us on the porch, and with her cold, cutting tone, she immediately said (and brandished some sheets of paper):
—Girls, where were you? Alma, we were waiting for you to sign these proposals. We are all in agreement. The proposal is great. Read and sign, please.
“I won't sign anything, my sister,” I replied, “I won't even read those papers. I'm not ready for that yet. Everything is too sudden for me. I knew nothing about what was happening here, while I was there, in São Paulo, working. Now they want me to agree, like this, all of a sudden, with this nonsense. No, never!
—Oh! Working, isn't it, dona Alma! Painting, yes, and raving over there! You're crazy, always have been, and now you're stuck in a business we're all interested in. Besides, can't you see we don't have a choice, you alien! Can't you see that while you were painting your comics, come on, we were struggling with the debts left by Vati, that other dreamer, who would bury us all in his debts, if there hadn't been at least the patrimony left, still liable to cover the debts, and some left over, to support ourselves, each one for himself, from now on. Are you going to ruin everything?
“Solange, my sister, I won't do it again. All is not yet lost. I know, I feel it. I have faith... in fate. Don't ask me how I know, but we are close to a saving solution for our resort. You owe it to Vati, and to our grandparents, who created not the estancia itself, but the vineyard. The old man made the vineyard grow and made our wine, our brand, known. Since I was a child I designed the labels that became famous. I do not accept defeat. I know what moves you. Yes, you and your husband never loved the land. But the same does not happen with Patrícia and Pedrinho, with Christiam and Hans. These beautiful children love this land that is vital to them, you have to know. The land, the Pampa is our sacred heritage, you cannot dilapidate it, destroy it. I will not allow it! I will not allow it!
I ran out of there, followed by Aline. In the room, very nervous, I was soothed once again by my wonderful girl. I took her hand again and across the hall we went out through the kitchen and out the back to reach our orchard. I took with me the old Swiss army knife that had belonged to Rôdo in our childhood and that I had used to engrave our apple tree. In front of her, solemnly, holding Aline's hand, I would begin to engrave the initial of her name, her A, after the R for Rhodo. And when she finished, she said to him:
“Aline is now part of our alliance. If before our initials expressed air, inspiration, breath, soul in short, now they make up the altar, the ARA of our sacred pact. Swear to me, Aline, that you will not abandon me in this fight and that you will participate with me in the final battle. The land will be yours, too, since you are mine, as I believe. You will not return to São Paulo, you will stay here with me forever. With you I will face everything, I will have the necessary strength, with you. Promise me, honey. Look, the altar is our tree, the apple tree of my happy childhood, yes, despite some pains, despite my poor misguided mother, despite my initially misguided grandparents, but who got it right by planting this orchard, this apple tree and the vine, the vine, now I see! I'm not sure yet, but something will come from the wine, from the blood of the earth that I will sacrifice on this altar. Aline, we'll be back here tomorrow night. We will sacrifice to the gods, you will see!
Aline looked at me a little scared, I realized despite being in a state of almost delirious over-excitement. She remained speechless and her whole body trembled. She was almost fainting when I realized she had a fever, and her forehead was sweating. Then I hugged her and supporting her led her to bed. I would take care of her. It had all been too much for this delicate flower of the city. I had gone too far, perhaps. I needed to be careful with my love.
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Aline remained feverish and delirious for two days and nights. I stayed the whole time by her side, with a heavy heart, drying her whole body, and putting compresses on her forehead. In her delirium, she struggled and screamed my name, but in a strange context:
“Alma, Alma, you are among us, after all, set me free, Alma! Take me with you to your kingdom. To the palace, Alma, I don't want to live here anymore, it's dark... Soul, soul, free me from the dark, I want to see, Alma, I want to see! Soul, take me! I will cling to you, you can fly, I will not touch your wings, I will cling to your belly. The light, Soul, the light! It's your kingdom, we're coming!"
I was in tears, which burst from time to time, in copious weeping. My lover moved me more than ever and I would do anything for her. I was afraid that she would die, and I felt that I would rather die than her. Aline's fragility, her vulnerability that I hadn't realized until then, like the wings of a butterfly, like a very fine crystal, like the gold blade of a micron, which could crumble in the slightest breeze. This portentous being, whose beauty was the expression of the ideal nobility, possible for all women. My precious Psyche, projected from my own soul, from myself. We were two faces of the same anima. I wouldn't know how to name them: Sofia...Eva? Or Helena... Such?* I wanted to merge with my love, but I needed to live and take her out of the prison of her delirium, of that darkness she referred to and which I sensed. We would go together to sacrifice on the altar of our apple tree. We would save the ranch and the vineyard, we would save the sacred orchard, the immortal apple tree from our undying happiness. Aline, Rôdo and I would transform ourselves into the immortal, perfect Hermaphrodite, unattainable by solitude, eternally. In the realm of being, where material possession would no longer exist, where all symbols expressed by matter would have their purely spiritual revelation, all codes finally revealed. We would finally know what the tree, the house, the vineyard and the pampa are, in immaterial, infinite Eternity. I would know what pure Art is, devoid of its visible signs, of its rudimentary, material expressions. I would know what the gods are. I would know, perhaps, who He is!
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Aline is fine now. The fever stopped. She sleeps peacefully, peacefully. I can move away from her bed to confront Rhodo, who owes me an explanation. He can't be betraying me, and our pact. I find him in the office, busy with papers, with Laís beside him.
"Rôdo, what's going on, what papers were those Solange wanted me to sign?" Didn't you say you'd give me time? What pressure is this? Rhodo, are you with them or with me? I already told you I won't sign anything. I prefer death, I told you. I'm sorry Laís, you hear such things. You have nothing to do with it, I hope.
-Alma, I've known everything for a long time. I'm with Rhodo above all. That means I don't oppose you. I learned to respect you through him, Alma, and I would not be foolish to defy you. But you don't seem to know what your brother has been through. How much he's fought to save this resort. Now he is willing to sell Ferrari. But it's too late and it won't do any good. The fight is lost. However, he says he will wait for the deadline he has given you. This is all an enigma to me, Alma. How do you intend to save the resort?. As for me, I just want to leave with your brother, take him with me... and make him happy, far from all those lost dreams.
“Rhodo,” I said, turning my eyes to him. “The deadline hasn't passed yet. Tomorrow I will make one last sacrifice that will bring to my mind the revelation I have been waiting for, and I know will come. Counting on you. If Laís wants to come too, I won't object. I hope Aline can be there with me, too. The four of us will make a strong chain, if Laís is not opposed, deep in her heart. But this I will know right there, in front of our altar. I'll see you tomorrow... at the cafe, and then only in the evening, at our time.
Rhodo was looking at me enigmatically, intensely. But he said nothing. I withdrew from the library.
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The place of my childhood seems distant, or underlying this one of the present. I can still hear the echoes of the sheds, in the fandango, the peonada parties, which Rôdo and I would attend, dazzled, sometimes hidden, late at night, fleeing our beds. There I heard for the first time the Nau Catarineta, sung, accompanied by the accordion and the clapping:
“Listen all my lords,
an astonishing story!
Here comes the Nau Catarineta
that has a lot to tell
More than a year and a day ago
Who roamed the sea:
They no longer had anything to eat.
They no longer had anything to eat!
Cast lots of luck
which one was to kill
Then the luck fell
On the Captain-General!
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The dances, where the thump of boots, accompanied by the jingle of spurs, produced a shiver of pleasure, and the grace of the “chinocas”, evolving around the bombshells of their peers, made me deeply understand our feminine essence, cultivated in this south. , as in few places in our current world. Perhaps only Russian peasant women, in their folk dances, express the male-female opposition so clearly and expressively. The dance of the handkerchiefs enchanted me greatly... and I wanted to be a “china”, with all the ambiguity that this word carried. In the past, she expressed an intermediate category between a prostitute and a pawn's girlfriend. Or even vivandeira, the woman who accompanies the soldiers, in the rear of the armies in displacement. Hearing and seeing our people, our dances, I wanted to integrate myself into the past of this land, in all the women, in that wonderful Anita, a gaucho woman par excellence, and I saw myself as the chinoca of all the peons, a kind of sacred Hetaira of the Pampas. I've always been delusional...
However, it's as if I wasn't born here, in this south, because my Germanic blood confuses me when I think of the gaucho and the pampa, the mate and the charqueada. My grandparents planted this vineyard, in a very European tradition, looking for a French wine, and my father's library threw me in all directions, expanding my mind, and overloading my heart with a universality conflicting with the ingrained spirit of this Earth.
But my happy childhood is the childhood with Rôdo, the one of our escapes and discoveries. That of our apple tree and the galloping ones; of the Minuano that made us shiver under the pala and made us shiver not only from the cold, but above all from fear and respect for the mysterious power of that wind, which swept the plain and entered through the cracks in the doors and windows, howling, and haunted us like the breath from the past of this mighty land, filled with the spirits of the dead from so many battles.
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I find myself in the deserted room with Geraldo, who I wanted to avoid. I salute him quickly to escape the confrontation. But in vain. He holds me back, touching my arm and looking me in the eyes, with contained aggression:
“Alma, it's time we had a conversation. I know you don't like me, but I don't care. You are in my way. In fact you are in the way of all of us. You're the only one who wants to keep this bankrupt property. Can't you see that you're stalling everyone's lives? What do you want anyway? Do you have any trump cards? Some hidden capital to pay off our debts? Yes, because you're some kind of sorceress, say your sisters, and you might have a magic wand...maybe.
“My brother-in-law,” I answered him, “unfortunately I don't have a wand, and I'm not a player like you, to have an ace up my sleeve. But something tells me that the resort will be saved, that it will itself point the way. It belongs to us, or rather, we belong to it. At least me and Rhodo. The children too...
–You really are a dreamer, can't you see that Rôdo is the first to want to sell? He is the one who showed us its infeasibility. Why do you artists never accept reality? They live in a dream, fantasy world, which ends up throwing them into the gutter. Good thing you don't have kids...
This comment, pure commonplace, just pissed me off. I looked Geraldo in the eye and I could see all his hatred, his spite. He and Solange looked alike. The pairs were mismatched. I immediately thought of the twins, those angels, and thought of them as my children. I didn't see in those children the slightest vestige of that father. Oh! I wanted them for myself, and more Patricia and Pedrinho! The world was, after all, unfair.
– Geraldo, from now on, let's avoid talking to each other. It's no use. There is no possible dialogue between us. You're a practical man, I know, and I'm a dreamer, like my father. Let's stop here.
I walked away quickly, feeling my brother-in-law's spiteful gaze, his pent-up anger. On the balcony, I come across Alberto, staggering. As for this one, it's also a hopeless case. Now he doesn't hide it anymore, he's a full-time drunk. I know this is a disease, I am well informed, but I do not easily see salvation for him, as he is happy in his unhappiness. Drinking still gives him pleasure, may God keep him that way. He hasn't seen the wolf's face yet. But what about the twins? These two cherubs, little Cosme and Damião, Christian and Hans. This one came out first and then Lúcia paid tribute to the great Andersen, which for me is a sign of his poetic sensibility, to which I should have paid more attention, I now see.
Lucia, my sister, I am so sorry to have underestimated you for so long. It comes from you, now I know, the kindness, perhaps the sweetness of these children. You were so quiet in my childhood. You seemed so dominated by Solange... and I was wrong after all. You are on my side, I know, like Rôdo, that you will not disappoint me, or all will be lost. We are a force of eight, including Aline and the children, who are opposed to the sale. On the other side are only Solange and Geraldo. Alberto, I don't know, is on the fence, like Humpty Dumpty, and he's going to break like an egg at any moment. Will I be able to co-opt it? Lucia, with your benevolent attitude, you proved to love me, and therefore you will be with me at the last moment.
Alberto also held my arm as he passed, but in another way. He wanted to show me an unlabeled bottle, but I paid him no attention and shrugged it off. He needed to walk alone, to think. That night I wanted to gather the four of us, counting on Laís, in front of my apple tree. Would Laís be an unbalancing force, a dissonant mind, in this encounter? I needed to get to know this girl better. I decided to look for her and sound her out before our ritual. She seemed to have too much personality to be simply a "nice girl". And he wanted so much to take Rhodo with him far away from here. My brother! Will you be in danger? Will you betray your land to go with that love...doubtful? No, I can't imagine you cheating on me.
I went back to the big house when I was almost at the edge of our garden, on the border of our endless prairie. I'm going to look for Lisa.
I meet her at the end, in Rôdo's room. Seeing her through the half-open door, I tap my knuckles on the wood so as not to invade her space. She looks at the crack from afar, notices me and invites me in. She is in lingerie, and how beautiful she is. She wears a provocative bodice that emphasizes her perfect, round breasts. She seems content to let me see her like this. That's very womanly. Don't you say, after all, that it's for other women that we dress, us women? Maybe it's the same thing with undressing. And lingerie is the exact halfway point in both directions. I look at her all over, what magnificent legs! My brother has always been picky about his delicacies. The bon-vivant, the gourmet, the expert in women, the hustler too. Lover of speed and clear pleasures but with a certain refinement, Rôdo chose this luxury filly. Or was she the one who did it...
– Laís, soon we will meet for a ceremony that will certainly be attended. But I'm not sure where you stand. It wasn't clear to me. You love Rhodo, don't you? And you mean well, so I presume...
– Soul, fear nothing. Yes, I love your brother and I know he loves me. I also know what the resort means to him. He told me his whole life, his childhood with you in these pampas. So I don't want to force anything. If they manage to keep the property, he will not be physically tied to it as he is no longer. There are ways to do this. A good administrator, for example. Or will you bear it yourself? Yes, because we like to travel and we have many plans to visit the four corners of the world. Only... I'm still not sure they'll be able to pay off those debts and save the property. How are you going to do it? Your brother is convinced that he is some kind of sorceress, pardon my expression, and he tells me amazing things about you. I don't doubt anything, but I confess that I'm afraid of these things. What are you pretending this time? Do you really need my presence? I'm afraid I'll get scared and lose sleep.
I smiled, more reassured. Laís was, after all, a normal girl in a good way, and she couldn't have harmed my brother. In addition, Rôdo was educated in life and was never naive. He had a lot of experience around the world. He was a man of the world and the last thing anyone should do is worry about him. Independence from him was so much that he hadn't even attached himself to the land of our childhood. He was perhaps freer than I am. But that was precisely my concern: he seemed to be able to live without our stay, without our roots. I saw him around the world, at high speed in his Ferrari, stopping only at casinos for quick games, like in the distress calls he went through, poor Laís... Or was she also an adventurer, asking for beds? It didn't matter, this beautiful woman didn't have Lilith's mark, her rictus in her brows, and that was enough to reassure me.
-Lais, I'm happy. You've been honest with me, and that's enough for you to participate in tonight's ritual. I know something tolerant that will provide me with a weapon or a lifesaving idea. Why do I know this? I don't know, that's who I am... I feel close to a solution that hasn't yet taken shape in my mind but that is close, I feel it.
Laís hugged me and kissed my cheek delicately, smelled her, her French perfume and thought: she is a little lady of luxury, but as honest as it is possible for a beautiful woman to be in this world. Beauty in our society is worth so much per square centimeter, that it is impossible not to sell or buy it, somehow, since the face of Helena “launched a thousand ships”.
I walked away and went looking for the children. I found the twins and Pedrinho playing. They surrounded me and I, disguising myself, led them to the garden, where in a corner, in a small arbor, we were able to talk alone without danger of being observed.
–Hans, Christian, Pedrinho, I need you. Let's play spies, shall we? I want you to keep an eye on everything that goes on in this house from now on. In the conversations of adults, mainly, and also in their steps, where they go, what they do. He is well? It will be fun.
— Aunt Alma — said Pedrinho — I know what you want, and I'm with you. I'm going to follow Dad, okay? He's very mysterious, he disappears all the time and it's not just to drink, I know. He never hid it from us, he can't. But I think you should put Patricia in the game too.
–I know, Pedrinho – I replied– Patricia will also be a special agent like you. Comrade Pati. Come on, come on, go out playing normally. But no getting out of their beds at night to play that, eh? I know you. Leave now, I'll go later because Aunt Solange and Uncle Geraldo might be watching our movements.
The boys left. I had formed my network of little spies. I just hesitated to put Patricia in this game. She looked very vulnerable to me in her purity, or too passionate to play spy. I quickly headed back to my room to see Aline. I already felt homesick and longed to find her well and restored, cured. I found her standing there in her nightgown, a little hesitant.
“Go back, go back to bed, you crazy girl. You shouldn't get up yet – I said – hugging her and leading her to the bed. I laid her down as carefully as if she were made of glass, my heart filled with tenderness. I couldn't resist and kissed her lips, which seemed very warm to me.
-Alma, I'm glad you're back. I missed you so much... how much time has passed? You went to get me there, where I was, in the dark, you saved me from the dark. Then she left me in the light, but alone, I don't know which was worse. Where did you go?
I looked at Aline's beautiful face, her wonderful mouth, and I felt overflowing with love. I wanted to rock her like a little child. I realized that she was, after all, a woman-child in the best sense of the term. I was very lucky, I fell in love with a woman whose femininity has the sacred imprint of a Psyche. And she loves me. She loves Me.
I stayed for a long time caressing her, caressing her, kissing her beautiful hands. She had her eyes on mine, tenderly, and she began to abandon herself, half-closing them, until she finally sank into a peaceful, serene sleep.
I got up and went out, tiptoe. I was going to prepare everything for when Aline is ready, healed, to participate in our apple tree ceremony. I'm in a hurry, but I'll wait for her to recover. The nights are hot, they can't hurt her. Afterwards... what she had doesn't seem to have been the flu or a cold or anything. I suspect a kind of emotional burnout. My girl is hypersensitive and so involved with me that it was beyond her strength. I must be careful. I will not call the gods and numbers as before. I just want to pay homage to the spirit of my apple tree and focus on a stream together with my companions to receive an inspiration. I will be fertilized by an idea, I know that.
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Days passed, and time seemed suspended. My network of little spies constantly brought me news, mostly superfluous. But certain pieces of information, stitched together, built a frame of conspiracy in which Lúcia no longer participated. Solange and her brother-in-law seemed to be plotting against me to overturn my vote. They also spied on me. They wanted to find something that would allow them to block me as alienated or something. They conferred with a lawyer they brought from Livramento who looked like a fox. Danger was imminent, but how could they achieve that? Had my relationship with Aline transpired? No, it wouldn't be enough. What are the arguments of this conspiracy? I couldn't plant a child spy in these closed-door meetings of yours. I myself tried to listen behind the doors, but in vain. The house has thick, solid woodwork. They met frequently in the library, which to me sounded like sacrilege. I wish I could shoo them out of there. There was, for me, a sacred place. My father's throne room. They were defiling her. Solange and Geraldo were usurpers, and poor Alberto, a court jester, the little opportunist of the moment. For some reason, I came back to remember another episode referring to Solange, in our childhood:
I had a diary when I was a kid, given to me by Mutti, and it had a secret lock that I considered safe. It was a nice little book with a hard leather cover, and I had engraved my monogram on it with a pyrograph. In its pages I began to exercise my gift of recording the impressions of my day, my feelings and fantasies, which were part of my reality that I already valued so much. I loved the idea that my records were secret, so I could dare anything and go unnoticed in my daring, mental and spiritual, under the scrutiny of my own mother and Solange, the enemy.
My older sister naturally hated that object at first sight. Soul's diary! What things would there be? What boldness, what transgressions, what sins? I was perhaps more vulnerable to it, with the existence of my diary. My mind could be invaded after all, violated. My secrets, my treasures... looted!
And that's what really happened. Solange discovered the hiding place of the album and managed to break the lock. I caught her red-handed reading it and laughing. I was furious. I walked towards her and she ran with the book in her hand to the pool, threatening to throw it in the water. All would be lost, the book would be smudged and useless, and I stopped dead in my tracks. I begged her to give me back my diary. She then threw it to me, saying:
–Here, I already know your thoughts and they are worth something especially for Mutti, you understand? Now you are in my hands. Come kiss my foot or I'll tell her mostly the third page. Come, kneel and kiss my foot, slave!
And I, trembling with rage and humiliation for the fear I really felt, knelt down and I kissed her fat little weight, which I unfortunately washed away with my tears. It would take me a long time to feel ready to tell everything... to the world.
So, now, this new character joined the meals: Solange and Geraldo's lawyer. This weasel face was not able to face me. He understood the sordidness of his acting and wouldn't dare look me in the eye. Oh! But I needed to act fast. How could they embargo me? What legal arguments would they forge? No, it wasn't possible! And Rodo, why is he so inert? He would defend me, I know, but with what arguments? I was unsure, I knew that their attack would happen at any moment... when they solemnly summoned me to the library. If they dare to touch Aline's name, I don't know what I'll be capable of...
What if they saw something of what went on in the orchard? Could they admit me like crazy? No, no, it's unlikely... they would have already betrayed themselves, made some allusion to that. I had become defensive, which is a sign of weakness. I'm not helpless. I have my spy network and I have to be combative. Aggressive, if possible.
At the table, Solange, one night, threw her barbs:
-Alma, soon we will be signing the sale papers, with you or not. You'd better prepare your beautiful handwriting. Doctor Lucena has already prepared all the papers. We have a great offer that we have already accepted. It fully covers the debts and still has enough left over for all of us to start a new life away from the ghosts that only you, around here, appreciate.
The lawyer looked me in the eyes, but before the fire of my gaze he lowered his, and raised his napkin to his lips. I realized that this fox had trump cards that he would pull out of his sleeve at the last moment. I had to be careful. If any unknown doctor, with or without a nurse, came through here, I would know the danger of a low blow. They might well be able to. As a last resort, I had to flee with Aline, not to sign anything and gather forces far from here, as a war strategy for the final battle.
As I thought so I realized that I was, after all, rather childish in my imagination, and that they would latch onto that. The adults... Ah! Being an adult is hateful, I always thought so. That's why I've always dialogued in imagination, or even in life, with artists, geniuses, poets of all times. The so-called adult man is, for me, a degeneracy. He created the world's ugliness, bureaucracy, laws, prisons, and asylums. I will never be an adult. I'm an artist. I am a child.
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I remember the day my father died. We were already tiptoeing around the house, and I hadn't been called to bed for three days. It hurt. I didn't realize that Vati was dying, although that thought occurred to me sometimes, then dismissed. So he called me. Solange, who managed that door, that room, conveyed the old man's wish, it seems that against her will, I don't really know why. She thought he shouldn't wear himself out, get tired. And the old man was dying...
I entered, slowly, I was already a girl if not an adult. It's only been six years. The old man, lying in the big bed, propped up by huge pillows, with his white beard and well-worn blue eyes, looked to me much older than I usually thought. But it seemed to me that his eyes lit up as I entered, and I saw that his hand made a slight movement which I took as a signal for me to come over and sit at his bedside.
With difficulty, her head immobilized, sunk into the big pillow, she only looked at me sitting on the edge of the bed holding her hand.
– Alma, – he said in a whisper – daughter of my heart… I want to ask you to watch over the ranch, the pictures, the books… and the vineyard. Don't get rid of the piano, I'll come and play for you on nights when the pampeiro doesn't blow. You will hear me, I know. Only you will cry remembering me. Maybe Rudi will too. But I want you to cry only for the joy of good memories, which I taught you are the salt of life. I don't regret anything, don't regret it either. My life was beautiful, especially with you, Alma, and I am deeply grateful to you, my girl. Now I'm going to leave... and I want to do it looking at your green eyes and that golden hair that lit up my life.
Having said that, he began to rattle. Frightened, I thought of running outside and calling everyone, calling Rôdo, but he held my hand, holding me back. I understood that it wasn't just a spasm, but that he wanted me there, only me. And I watched him go. I was the only one who saw him leave his noble tired body and I felt his soul leaving, I almost saw it or had this impression that it would never abandon me. I would cry for him, perhaps not just for the good memories but for his loss that seemed catastrophic to me, despite everything he taught me. I would cry daily for five years. Until I went to São Paulo, to those anodyne Gardens where I would set up my painter's studio, in a vain attempt to uproot myself from the Pampa, which had become an open wouded.
But it didn't take me long to reconcile with the stay, with the memories, which the more beautiful the more painful they seemed to me.
Now I was here to look after, as he asked me, our true heritage: the sense of beauty that only the two of us saw in all of this.
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The memories I have of Ana Morgado, my mother, are not exactly pleasant. We lacked affinities, that's the truth. I know that this is not usually decisive in the issue of affection between mother and children. Sons love their mothers, more or less unconditionally, and vice versa. But in my case, due to my nature as an artist, this produced an enormous distance, since my mother did not accept the artist in me. She was, poor thing, narrow-minded, and she wanted only "normality" for all her children. This means a gray mediocrity, because a Catholic descendant of Azorean Portuguese feared prominence, passion, notoriety, in short, talent. The artist for her was a strange being who showed off, who didn't behave well. A being who loved life and beauty too much, which for her was a kind of sin because she was convinced of the doctrine of the “valley of tears” that she had inherited from her upbringing and from her Portuguese grandparents.
I remember early arguments I had with her and how it hurt. Above all, she was afraid of the sensuality she sensed in me, which nevertheless, I believe, did not compromise the purity of my heart... and even that of my mind. Due to these characteristics, I would become a lyrical poet, a sonnetist, as well as a confessional short story writer who would hide nothing from the public. On the other hand I was encouraged, fortunately, by my father whose affinity with me was almost total. This produced a strong attachment and mutual admiration between the two of us. I had the privilege, after all, of being totally accepted, believed, incensed even by the old artistic surgeon whose talent for music and enormous literary, philosophical and artistic erudition was a source of wonder and learning for me.
My mother sometimes tried to repress my outbursts of joy and even a few tears of beauty sensitivity, and this produced small wounds of frustration in me and even a certain resentment that I had to fight to overcome.
However, the most serious episode was really the one when he caught Rôdo and me naked under our apple tree. That, I agree, may have marked me more than I realize. Once I was young, I would give myself over to passions with an intensity that was perhaps immeasurable; and a certain slightly masochistic timbre which I must recognize in my sexuality and which gives me so much pleasure is certainly due to that incident in my childhood.
But I was talking about my mother. The poor thing died when I was thirteen years old, I think it was due to a pure lack of élan vital, of love for life, for love. However, she wasn't bad. I could write a tragic poem about her and her life, arid, colorless. Or at least a pathetic poem. It is up to the poet, always, to reveal the poeticity of beings and things. And my mother, after all, would not escape deserving of a poem. But I think she would be embarrassed, where she is, to be placed for a moment in the spotlight, I mean, in the minds of some outsiders: the readers. In addition, he lacked (serious lack) the wonderful sense of humor that distinguishes the human species. I remember an episode in which, as a child, at the table, I uttered a comic tirade truly inspired, it seemed to me, by the sudden burst of laughter from Vati and my brothers. My mother, however, frowned and gave me a small slap, saying:
“Shameless! You always want to show off, don't you?"
It hurt me very much, and I laid my head down on my arms on the table and sobbed bitterly. But I was soon consoled by my father who scolded Mutti and took me in his arms with enormous affection and carried me in his arms even though I was already a big girl. That made up for everything. And I, as a child, could not help but show my mother my tongue surreptitiously.
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