with my stomach. And Cristiano’s not coming. What if Cristiano doesn’t come? Our landlady, dear sirs, swears it’s quite common for young women with children to be abandoned. She knows of at least three cases. What are you all saying? Oh, don’t smoke right now.”
The waiter comes with the coffee. He has a beautiful blond mustache.
“If I were you, ma’am, I’d try to get rid of the soda. Plenty of people feel sick from coffee-flavored drinks. All you have to do is stick two fingers in the roof of your mouth. The
toilette
is on the left.”
Flora returns from there humiliated and doesn’t dare face the blond mustache. She leans back in the chair and feels miserably fine.
A cool breeze blows through the windows. “Declarations from Mussolini. Suicide in Leblon! Extra extra
A Noite
!” Faraway sounds of honking. Either Cristiano missed the train or he’s abandoned me forever.
The café has grown familiar to her eyes. The waiters are after all a bunch of silly, very busy men. They’re arranging the chairs on the bandstand, wiping the piano. Customers of another sort, the sort who after they’ve bathed and dined “must enjoy life while they’re still young men; and what else is money for?” settle at the little tables.
“Does that mean I’m lost,” Flora thinks.
She hears the start of muted drumming, rhythmic, singular and mysterious, rising from the bandstand. With growing effervescence, like little animals making bubbles in some unknown way, the rhythm intensifies. And suddenly, from the last black man in the second row, there rises a savage cry, sustained, until it dies in a sweet whimper. The mulatto in the first row twists all the way around, his instrument points into the air and responds with a hoarse, childlike “boop-boop.” The drumming resembles men and women springing side to side in a religious ceremony in Africa. Suddenly, silence. The piano sings out three notes, lone and serious. Silence.
The orchestra, in gentle movements, nearly at a standstill, crouching, slips into a pianissimo “fox-blue”, insinuating like a fugue.
A few couples leave intertwined.
I’ve been here so long, so long! Flora thinks and feels she ought to cry. That means I’m lost. She presses her hands to her forehead. What happens now? The waiter feels sorry for her and comes over to say she can wait as long as she likes. Thank you. She catches sight of herself in the mirror. But is that her over there? is that her, with the face of a scared rabbit, who’s thinking and waiting? (Whose little mouth is that? Whose little eyes are those? Yours, leave me alone.) If I don’t try to save myself, I’ll drown. Because if Cristiano doesn’t come, who will tell all these people I exist? And what if I, all of a sudden, shout for the waiter, ask for paper and pen and say: Dear sirs, I am going to write a poem! Cristiano, darling! I swear that Nenê and I are yours.
Look: Debussy was a musician-poet, but such a poet that just the title of one of his suites makes you lie down on the garden grass, arms beneath your head, and dream. Look: Bells through the leaves. Perfumes of the night . . . Look . . . a thin woman cried out at the next table, slapping the backs of her hands on the table, as if to say: “I assure you, now it’s evening. Don’t argue.”
“Nonsense, Margarida,” replied one of the men coldly, “nonsense. Come now musician-poet . . . Come now look . . .”
Flora would ask for a piece of paper and write:
“Silent trees
lost on the road.
Gentle refuge
of coolness and shadow.”
Cristiano won’t come. A man approaches. What is it?
“Huh?”
“I’m asking if you’d like to dance,” he continues. He blinks his nearsighted eyes in an idiotic and odd manner.
“Oh no . . . Really, no . . . I . . .”
He keeps looking at her.
“I, honestly, I can’t . . . Oh, maybe later . . . I’m waiting for a friend.”
He’s still standing there. What to do with this castoff? My
The waiter comes with the coffee. He has a beautiful blond mustache.
“If I were you, ma’am, I’d try to get rid of the soda. Plenty of people feel sick from coffee-flavored drinks. All you have to do is stick two fingers in the roof of your mouth. The
toilette
is on the left.”
Flora returns from there humiliated and doesn’t dare face the blond mustache. She leans back in the chair and feels miserably fine.
A cool breeze blows through the windows. “Declarations from Mussolini. Suicide in Leblon! Extra extra
A Noite
!” Faraway sounds of honking. Either Cristiano missed the train or he’s abandoned me forever.
The café has grown familiar to her eyes. The waiters are after all a bunch of silly, very busy men. They’re arranging the chairs on the bandstand, wiping the piano. Customers of another sort, the sort who after they’ve bathed and dined “must enjoy life while they’re still young men; and what else is money for?” settle at the little tables.
“Does that mean I’m lost,” Flora thinks.
She hears the start of muted drumming, rhythmic, singular and mysterious, rising from the bandstand. With growing effervescence, like little animals making bubbles in some unknown way, the rhythm intensifies. And suddenly, from the last black man in the second row, there rises a savage cry, sustained, until it dies in a sweet whimper. The mulatto in the first row twists all the way around, his instrument points into the air and responds with a hoarse, childlike “boop-boop.” The drumming resembles men and women springing side to side in a religious ceremony in Africa. Suddenly, silence. The piano sings out three notes, lone and serious. Silence.
The orchestra, in gentle movements, nearly at a standstill, crouching, slips into a pianissimo “fox-blue”, insinuating like a fugue.
A few couples leave intertwined.
I’ve been here so long, so long! Flora thinks and feels she ought to cry. That means I’m lost. She presses her hands to her forehead. What happens now? The waiter feels sorry for her and comes over to say she can wait as long as she likes. Thank you. She catches sight of herself in the mirror. But is that her over there? is that her, with the face of a scared rabbit, who’s thinking and waiting? (Whose little mouth is that? Whose little eyes are those? Yours, leave me alone.) If I don’t try to save myself, I’ll drown. Because if Cristiano doesn’t come, who will tell all these people I exist? And what if I, all of a sudden, shout for the waiter, ask for paper and pen and say: Dear sirs, I am going to write a poem! Cristiano, darling! I swear that Nenê and I are yours.
Look: Debussy was a musician-poet, but such a poet that just the title of one of his suites makes you lie down on the garden grass, arms beneath your head, and dream. Look: Bells through the leaves. Perfumes of the night . . . Look . . . a thin woman cried out at the next table, slapping the backs of her hands on the table, as if to say: “I assure you, now it’s evening. Don’t argue.”
“Nonsense, Margarida,” replied one of the men coldly, “nonsense. Come now musician-poet . . . Come now look . . .”
Flora would ask for a piece of paper and write:
“Silent trees
lost on the road.
Gentle refuge
of coolness and shadow.”
Cristiano won’t come. A man approaches. What is it?
“Huh?”
“I’m asking if you’d like to dance,” he continues. He blinks his nearsighted eyes in an idiotic and odd manner.
“Oh no . . . Really, no . . . I . . .”
He keeps looking at her.
“I, honestly, I can’t . . . Oh, maybe later . . . I’m waiting for a friend.”
He’s still standing there. What to do with this castoff? My
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