LIFE WAS THIS AND THAT

 

I was still a boy, very young, the last time that smiles and joy were resting in my body, in my room, between the walls that were, after all, the false promise of security. Childhood is the sweetest stage of a man's life, when unconsciousness goes hand in hand with play. Then it was all so fast, of Dantesque proportions, the control of which was not up to me, which was too small to be able to stop the danger, escaped from the hands of the adults and came to fall just at our feet. 

My sisters were tiny. I was the oldest. The news of our mother's death spread quickly and left us all perplexed. The surgery had gone badly, which I heard they did everything humanly possible, but we never know if there is a peak for that whole, when we are children, because for the tender age between two and ten, life should be a fluffy and smooth carpet, warm and cozy, where we can spread our toys, together with other children just like us and there should always be an adult voice to make the snack, to call for lunch, to reprimand for the excess of dirt, in short, to make us realize that life needs to be contained, in some way and that rules serve to instruct us, just as habits help us to learn healthy behaviors.  to avoid slip-ups and negligence. At the age of thirty-four, our father had been widowed, had lost our mother when she was twenty-nine, and had been entrusted with the education of three minor children. No father is prepared for this. The mother was not sick and the leukemia had arrived without warning. And in seven months, she had finished it off. And our father, at the same time. No one could have guessed this outcome. We lost our father and mother that same year, although I tried to deceive myself until I was thirteen. Our mother was thin and fearless, but our father was steel. Strong as a bull and always in a good mood. I heard him tell Thérèse's husband that he wasn't ready for that. That if they told him that he was going to die, that he had an illness and a short time to live, he would still fight. But he didn't know how to live without mother. That he didn't know how to treat the boys like she did. The father abandoned himself to self-pity, I can assess coldly now, that he has already gone to keep his wife company. Of rigid politeness behaviors, cohesive standards of morality, only that shadow on the sofa remained, between cushions, my sisters' teddy bears and the empty bottles that helped him numb his senses and die in droves after that. I saw my father cry so many times. Not like a child who cries out of mischief, who manipulates adults to achieve his pretensions. No, the father wept like a big man, without consolation. I am also a man, and I also weep, but I do not remember ever seeing a man who wept with such despair as he did, and whose grief conquered him so quickly into the darkness. It would be a lie if I said that I was not revolted by his complacency and apathy. I was combative in spirit, just as I remember seeing my father be, and if losing my mother was very painful to me at the time, losing my father was a relief, an act of mercy that came from heaven. Even today, I feel the sweat on the palms of my hands and the same sweat on my forehead, trying to straighten myself on the wall, and the same sweat dripping down my back on my shirt and pressing against the same wall, giving up, as helpless was his pain, as was my revolt. I struck blows against those walls that should have protected our family, that covered all feelings, along with the hunger for affection. Exhausted by the spread of the situation and not seeing, at the time, an airy way out. And since neglect arose in the mother's departure, there was some wisdom in the father's request for help with the little ones. He already knew that he would not be able to overcome that monster that entered our house at the time of our mother's death, and that stood by and watched the sad collapse of our family, like dominoes, one by one. With sneers of sarcasm, I dare say. Lena, the youngest, who was named after our mother and our mother's godmother, went to Aunt Aurora, our mother's older sister, who was not yet two years old. Margarida stayed with us until she was six years old. Afterwards, Uncle Miguel came with his wife, they spoke to our father and said that the girl would grow up better accompanied by them, that they could not have children and could give her a watchful eye and a pertinent education.  And I know that she went to school in the city and that she completed the compulsory school path. In all these years, if I've been with both of them at the same time, two or three times it was a lot. They came to visit us at Christmas for three years in a row, but then our father didn't even make an effort to make them feel well, and he hardly realized they were going to see him. I stayed with the father, watching his whole process of grief, of losing his job, in the same year that our mother left, of attempts at new jobs, of alcohol, of the women who came to live with him, sometimes circumstantially, at fifteen days, at three months, but I believe that even they could not stand that stagnant pain in our father's chest. They didn't even know how to hold him. They didn't even like me, who was his son, the child of that pain that kept him sober for a short time, and this process went on beyond comprehension. Five years later, the father was admitted to the hospital, diagnosed with cirrhosis. While he was in the hospital, Teresinha, our neighbor across the street, helped me with clothes, some meals, changing the sheets, taught me how to make some healthier meals. My school life was terrible. At the age of eleven, i was still repeating the fourth grade. At that time, I was still trying to get rid of the pain and dreamed that my father, when he got home, would come with a new face and a new disposition, to fight, as he would do, before our mother left. That he would get a better job, that he wouldn't feel like drinking. That I too would get a better job than the one I got at thirteen, close to home, in a grocery store, stacking boxes of fruit, hanging newspapers, accommodating bottles of milk in the fridge and on the shelves, sweeping the warehouse, dealing with all kinds of complaints from the parish, running errands to anyone who asked me. And it was that same job that taught me to fight and not give up. And eating, me and dad. Because the money he earned, when he was willing to go to work, was almost all spent on wine. Margarida wrote me letters and I kept the end of Saturday, sometimes Sunday, to answer her, and within my writing skills, I told her some things, which she insisted on knowing. Not even to my own sister was I able to tell all the things that were stuck in me, until they dug into me this fear of life.  Which was a flurry of challenges that I lost count of. None of us went back to the way we were before. Neither I was a child, nor was my father a man. Closed countenances. Sadness drew a wall of hostility against life, and of guilt and sorrow that took up residence with us, in those years that defined my personality, my life, my conduct, my depression. In the early years, both Uncle Michael and Aunt Aurora still visited us, but they left in a hurry and distressed, who did not want my sisters to see the state of siege in which we had plunged. They felt sorry for me, I remember, but I refused to abandon my father. I was the oldest. It was up to me to take care of him. Life was also the sacrifice. 

From the diagnosis of cirrhosis to the death of our father last year, a lot has happened. The father went back to the same, he didn't stop drinking, he drank at meals between a job or a side job, he came home, pretending to be sober, I believe he still tried, so as not to disappoint me. There were gambling nights, when some of my father's friends would come to the house, while I was trying to watch TV or do the math, bring drinks and stay up until dawn talking and playing. The father didn't even go to bed. He slept on the couch. First on Fridays, then for the whole weekend. One of my father's friends tried to be nice to me and went to the kitchen while I made a sandwich for my father to eat, between the bottles of wine, and started a conversation. Mario. He was a widower like my father. And postman. That he didn't know how I could hold up. So young and so man. I confessed to him that even I didn't know how to do it. That it should be my mother upstairs to keep my head between my shoulders and life to put the obligation in my hands. Caring for our father, who was an alcoholic. Weak. I managed to get employed in a restaurant where I did everything, cooked, cleaned the kitchen and even waited tables when I had to. I worked all week until four in the afternoon and on the weekend, stayed until ten at night and had the following weekend off. I didn't fight anything, that was the way it was. 

On one of those weekends, he told his father he was going out. I believe he thought he was going to abandon it.  I had gone to help at a christening, a few extra hours on my weekend off, and I had arrived around eight o'clock with my feet aching and very tired. Those days when, even though I was tired, I wanted everything but to go home. But off I went, on autopilot. Shortly after, the father arrived and asked me if there was anything to snack on. That's when I decided to go to the movies. I told him that I had brought puree and meat and that he should help himself, that he was not hungry. That i was going to come out. I went to take off my sneakers and put some shoes on my feet. He sat on the edge of my bed while I put on my shoes and began to cry. That he was a loser. That he didn't remember seeing my sisters. To forgive him, to forgive him this and that. He was visibly intoxicated. I told him i wasn't steel. I told him that there was no need to apologise. That I needed to go out, go to the movies or something. I couldn't stand that life of working from home and the alcohol routine had tired me out. Bitterness felt like everything to me. I remember he asked me if I still remembered my mother. From her face. That he dreamed of her every day and that he wanted to keep her company. I asked him if his friends would go, he told me that in principle they would. I left him sitting there on the edge of the bed and left. It was already November, the leaves of the trees in the square were carpeting the ground and the sky was clear. I had a coffee and decided to go to the first movie session of the night. The film was a co-star and I quickly got tired. I came out in the middle of the second half and felt cold. I passed by the restaurant where I work and saw two customers at the door who greeted me and asked me if I didn't have a girlfriend. They had never seen me with anyone. I wasn't in the mood for conversation, but I was polite and headed for the square. The people, the conversations, the joy made me confused. I felt disappointed with everything and everyone. My moral and physical obligations, work and taking care of my father kept me alive, but I was actually tired of the survival I was leading, between sacrifices and sacrifices. Crafts. Margarida had called the restaurant during the week and told me that she had started working part-time in a laundromat, which was an extra, so she could buy things for girls. That her uncles were very generous to her, but wanted her occupied, they said that she thought less of the sorrows of life. Leninha went to high school and played sports. Swimming pool and basketball. Lives were busy with this and that and there were no breaks. I went back home. The father was at the table in the living room, with Artur and Resende, in the middle of a few bottles of beer and wine, and he looked at me sideways and asked me if I had eaten anything.  I told him no. Who would later make a sandwich. Mario was on the couch, his face of concern that he couldn't disguise. And he said curtly, as if he didn't take anything seriously, that he was fed up with the Swedish marathon. I went into the bathroom, I took off my shirt and took off my shoes. I grabbed my pajamas and went to my room. I was still putting my clothes on the chair and my pajamas on top of my clothes, when I saw Mario at the window. Sitting in our mother's chest, looking outside. When he saw me, he apologized for coming in and if he could talk to me. I nodded. I turned my back on him as I undressed and put on my pajamas. He began by saying that they had all drunk too much that night. That my father had confessed to him that he was preparing how to say goodbye. That he knew was a burden to me and that I didn't deserve it. That I had worked hard up until then to keep him sober and work to pay the bills, but that he felt like I was giving up. And my father had long wanted to give up. I didn't say a word. I stretched out on the bed, while Mario looked out the window and told me all the content of the few hours of my absence. When I realized that he was waiting for me to say something, I replied. That I agreed that my father was a burden in my life. That I had already thought about joining the army. That for sure, even if I didn't earn what I earned at the restaurant, I would save more, not having to take care of that weak adult and the expenses of the house. I told Mario everything I thought about my father. I added that if he wanted to quit, he should do it, but not make me sick, not be able to work properly and have to consider leaving aimlessly. And I went to the kitchen to make a sandwich and have a glass of milk. When I got back to the room, Mario was in the living room, next to the gaming table, smoking a cigarette and talking to Resende. Dad was snoring on the couch. I heard them saying goodnight and leaving. I went to my father on the couch and took off his shoes. He woke up and staggered with sleep, thanked me and went to his room. The next day, he wouldn't remember anything, he would feign astonishment when he counted the bottles stacked in the corner of the kitchen and repeat the feat. And so it went, until I came and went from the troops. 

Then, when I returned, still in the uncertainty of the decision I had made, I found him another man. Of course, he never went back to being the man he was as Magdalene's husband. That one died with her. He had stopped drinking. He didn't drink milk, but he drank cold teas and lots of water. He lost about three kilos, the job he had when I went to the army was the same. He was clean and cared for, though his countenance remained circumspect. That same day, at dusk, I asked him what was the reason for his move. He replied that I had fought so hard for him and that he didn't want to leave without him trying to do the same for me. That he had called Uncle Miguel and that Margarida was already flirting with someone, look at you, the girl is already dating, one day I'm a grandfather and I didn't even realize it! And you uncle, have you thought about it? That he had called Aurora and that she had told him that Lena was in France, with some of her husband's cousins. Tell me what plans do you have for life? And I didn't know how to talk to this new man, who I only went away for a year and found someone different, who had struggled to stay afloat, who had to pay bills and work hard, who gave up drinking weekends and clung tightly to a goal, which he said was me. And that's how it came into my life and into my father's, Maria. That was the reason for all that change. She was twenty-two years younger than my father, and twelve years older than me. She was in her mid-thirties, I was almost twenty-three, and my father was fifty-six. I believe she was already living with my father a few months before I arrived, but for all intents and purposes, Maria didn't move there until a week after I returned from military service. I had lived a lifetime fighting for a father and during all those years I felt that not a single leaf touched his maturity, his will to fight and even talked about suicide to Mario. And in just one year, the father was a very different man. There was no alcohol in the house. The first time I saw her, I felt like we were both destined to live it. And I, who had so many doubts about the purpose of life, about God, about the Devil, about everything, hope was born in me there, in that five-by-two kitchen of dark green tiles on the floor and on the walls sweet spring flowers. I had never realized that the same house where my mother, Margarida and Leninha, my father and I had lived, could be so beautiful. So, when I met her, after my mother left, I saw spring coming, mixed with autumn, of all the seasons that cross the ages, I gained such strength that I started to eat with appetite and to see my father, flushed and happy, come home from work and help with the household chores again. Not as it was with Magdalene, he said, and no, because he was no longer a cheerful bull, just the happy shadow of what he had once been, in his youth. A woman in a man's life made a lot of difference, is it like that or not, Zé? And I didn't have time to answer. Someday, you'll get a Mary too. I blushed and was forced to reach for the kitchen sink and renew the glass of water before both of them. I didn't even know what was going on inside me, with so much hope overflowing. I also felt like a bull, with an enormous desire to respond to life, at the same speed that it had brought me back a goal to fight for. And it was with Maria that I learned to recognize the pain of the father when he saw his wife disappear, younger than that Maria, into the earth, after falling into bed. On one of those winter nights, when the cold made my teeth tinkle, I had come home early, after having tried to talk to Margarida and not answered. The house smelled hot, it must have been almost ten o'clock at night. The father had the TV on in the room, I peeked and tried to get him to answer me, but he was asleep. I found Maria in my room. Putting another blanket on my bed. She wore her straw-colored robe over her dark nightgown. Her smiley face and her hair tied up. I approached her to ask her about my father and she hugged me. It smelled like rose water. The face washed and fresh. She was a very beautiful woman. And life brought surprises. And I wasn't prepared. Or was it?

I believe that the destruction has made room for it to grow uglier and more inhumane. I fell in love with my father's wife. And we fucked like animals, the virginity I carried with me, as if there was no eros in me, died that evening. And my father, after all, was a verb to fill, for me and for her. For some time, so it was, we made love in secret, as if experimenting with the word forbidden, and I gave up trying to understand the sudden accidents, the blows and the reasons of the Most High, and trying to guess what the future has to offer me. I'm still combative, because I still force myself to go to work, pay the bills, I've given up my medication, and I'm still trying to talk to my sisters, at least once a week or every fortnight, depending on them. But a little less than before, that the fatigue is winning, that the pains are no longer hidden, except behind my jaws, inside my hands and especially in my chest. And to all the questions and ifs of Margarida and Leninha, I never knew how to give answers, if there are any answers, in the games of make-believe that accompany us throughout life. And these vultures accompany us to the fullest moment, to the most soothing, that always watch over us, if we experience that audacity that is to dream, even I have no patience for dreams. No child is a child if there is no room for dreams. And it would be hardly, very hardly, for a man like me, who has seen the shadows take over the daylight, would dare to dream after all. That would be sloppy. And God knows I tried. But I'll let you in on a secret. I believe that anything goes, overcoming values and fears, ghosts and obscure means, but loving is, for me, today, the most beautiful way to fight for tomorrow. My father killed himself. Some say that because he couldn't get over the pain of grief and I know that it was that day, that November night, where he found us fucking like animals. Perhaps he did not understand that the burlap and the fire were enemies that, once together, would be impossible to separate.

I fell in love with my father's wife and when one day, without even thinking, he came from the street, and found us in the bedroom, in mine, like two, and we didn't even realize that he was watching. Life took place between the intoxication of desire and the destructive atom. This and that, without even knowing it. 

He committed suicide after writing a letter, wishing us the best, which we deserved, after all we had experienced, in agony for the love we had for him. He killed himself with beetle medicine. I don't know if I hate my father or if I'm disgusted with myself. Maria, after we bury him, tells me that she is pregnant. That life wanted it that way. That none of us was to blame, that the burlap and the fire are the arguidos of this mud in which we lived. And I say yes and I ask my mother, from above, that guilt is enough for me, but that I didn't know how to be strong and fight the passion that took me inside, That burned me as the core of the breath, of the greater pain of believing in God, of the vain hope of dreaming. I'm going to be the father of my father's mistress's torn womb. To each one their pains, their karma, their inability to fight against the tide. My mother forgave me, I just need to forgive myself. And hopefully, before the child is born.  Maria has now begun the pains of childbirth. And I abandon the thoughts of shame, I want to start life now, now, that the child agonies on the way out to know the sad story of the generation of grief and fear and alcohol and fascination. That life is this and that, it is fire and pimping, urgent dream and martyrdom. And I'm there, seeing the creature that I already love, without knowing, and that I don't want, I just don't want, I can't and I don't even allow to come into the world to suffer as much as I was allowed to suffer. I want my son to be a child as much as he can be. And it will be named after my father. Like a totem, a good luck charm, like asking for forgiveness from life for everything that has been drawn, against my will. No, I didn't dream of betrayal, it happened in a way that I couldn't and didn't want to say no. Because that's what life was all about, with no programs, no agendas, and no extrapolations. This and that. And we, obedient, lived what came, in any condition. And all was right, obeying something greater than guilt, fear, shame, and combat.