PIRATE FRAGMENT 5

 There was nothing left to do but return to the tent and lie in the hammock, flipping through my notebook until I fell asleep:

"Marília. I'd never slept with her. MAYBE YOU'LL BE HAPPY LETTING THE VERTIGO OF WANTING ME BUT HAVING ME GET IN YOUR THROAT, BECAUSE YOU'RE ALWAYS COMING AFTER ME AT THE WRONG TIME," she said. I was sitting with my back to the car in the front seat: LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU SUITCASE! I'd been wandering the beaches of the less populated part of Itaparica Island all weekend after returning from a gold mine in the interior of Bahia with my backpack full of green chrysoprase stones. And that image had stayed in my head: the lights of the port area of Cidade Baixa in Salvador, across the bay. Marília lived in my condominium, in Rio Vermelho, and had taken the scriptwriting course at the German Cultural Center with me. I BET YOU WERE SMOKING, DRINKING, AND WANDERING AROUND ALL WEEKEND, LIKE A HERMIT, she said. Smoking, staring at the lights, writing scenes. Je fixais des vertigo. I woke up and passed out on the sand. It was already night. What had happened to me? Acidic sensation in my limbs, glass cracked in several places, anomalous and schizophrenic. Still instinctive to movements and sounds. Out of time, however.

It must have been dawn. Through a crack in my tent, the mining camp was a series of orange angles cut by black canvas in various directions. Suddenly, bottles collided with bottles. My hearing, straining to hear the conversations, became a delirium stretched to its maximum. I read and read:

"CHRYSOPASIOS," Marília said. "We're on the couch in an apartment. I'm mentally confused, after sleeping with her. She hadn't shown herself the way I imagined. She was almost chaste. SO IS THIS WHAT YOU DO NOW? HUNT FOR TREASURES UNDER THE GROUND?" she asked. I took the cigarette from her hand. "I WRITE TOO," I said. "TO SCARE PEOPLE, I SUPPOSE?" she insinuated. "DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THE LIVING DEAD IN THE BOTTOMLESS NIGHT," I said. I LIKE SOME OF YOUR QUOTES, WE'RE ONLY SEVENTEEN. THEY'LL PROBABLY GET BETTER WITH TIME, she said. Then she answered the phone: PAGES AND MORE PAGES. WHAT? CUT.

*

It was impossible to tell if it was the Indians shooting. Probably. Four popcorns exploded in the water near the speedboat. We drew our revolvers and opened fire on the beach and the forest. Then we crouched down in the boat. Silence followed.

"Hurry up, start that damn boat!"

The speedboat headed toward Altamira, waves pounding the front ramp. Relief and satisfaction abounded, until... more gunshots!

"Get that speedboat out into the middle of the river, you son of a bitch!"

A black man stood near the stern, yelling at the pilot. A frightened black man. We started laughing at him. He couldn't keep still; he kept falling ridiculously flat on his ass, hearing the engine's exhaust pops.

"Begging to die!"

The concept of a boat at that time was very similar to that of a frontier saloon in the days of the American Old West. It all started because a boat en route to the mining camp sank with fifty kilos of mercury on board, sparking the anger of the Indians on the nearby reservation.

As we fled chaotically from there, we saw the camp in flames, a column of smoke rising high into the air. Then, a huge bonfire of black canvas tents, and that smell of burning plastic, and rafts and speedboats hurtling madly down the river.

I lit a cigarette and saw a helicopter coming toward us from the horizon.

"The Altamira shipping company is going to be a carnival. Federal Police, FUNAI, IBAMA, the press. Who knows what else! And all that gold on board. As far as I'm concerned, we'll go through the woods now," I said.

The ominous black dot in the sky advanced. Months of work at risk of seizure and arrest. Immediate disembarkation in the forest and march.

We stopped at the edge of a coconut grove and waited for the Federal Police helicopter to pass noisily over the beach. Perched on the door, an agent with a visor held an automatic machine gun slung over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the riverbank.

Hours of walking. Mosquitoes. Thirst.

"I'm so tired, if I were sitting on a fire, I'd be too lazy to get up and put it out with a piss."

"Stop talking and march!"

Only the next morning did we reach inhabited territory and travel to the city. In Altamira, I had a cup of coffee at the bus station. I reflected:

"The space traversed is divisible; movement, the act of traversing, is indivisible --- it only divides by becoming another movement. If there are intermediate stops, it is no longer a single movement. No, one cannot (apud Deleuze) reconstruct movement with immobile cuts or a succession of moments. Movement is a mobile cut of duration (apud Bergson), of the whole, of a whole. Movement refers to change, a vibration, an irradiation. As a mobile cut, it implies a qualitative change, it expresses duration as a mental, spiritual reality."

But that wasn't important. Understand? Peace! Perhaps now, during that summer in Bahia, as I searched my exhausted brain. Physiognomic whirlwinds, like something dumped into a map. And competing sources of sound, filling my mind as I flew thousands of kilometers to Salvador.

"Were you meditating?" I asked Joana when I arrived at her apartment.

"I don't know, it hasn't taken shape yet," she said.

She seemed numb, a final swirling exodus of stars in her eyes.

"Mignonne, allors voir si la rose---"

Then, a black glass flet. And a fillet of sole with lemon sauce, a light dish, with a taste of the beach: the dark skin of the fish peeling away from the white flesh.

I go to the kitchen cupboard and find packets of wheat germ, Swiss chard, gersal, granola, and quinoa: some of the exotics Joana brings back when she returns from the supermarket.

Talk to me?

Naw, fraga?

I wonder if it was still me when I started vacuuming the rooms---the same way you cross a bridge when you know one of the pillars is shaky, even though heavy vehicles keep passing over it.

My words.