VIDAL, Juiz de Fora, June 2010
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Money is a bitch! After the success of that first bid—which the "gang" from that shady meeting ended up winning, even though they considerably lowered food prices—something I had never expected happened: my name began to spread among our friends and acquaintances, and suddenly, I became a household name in town, constantly buzzing with millions of dollars. The most ridiculous thing is that I hadn't actually made that much money—even though we'd charged a lot, K kept most of that windfall and paid us only what we initially thought was fair. And Juiz de Fora really is a provincial town, driven by mere appearances. Old friends, who hadn't contacted me for a long time, began to ask me out, and even to travel with them insistently – I couldn't ignore how much petty interest there was in all of that, although, in honest terms, I also understood that I had no choice if I wanted to live life "beyond my room." The people at the office we worked with, for example, were longtime friends, but our relationship had never been this close; and I have to be honest: I'd always been in love with the sister of our trusted man there, without ever being able to lucidly entertain any hope. As my contact with him and his family intensified after that job, I figured I wouldn't mistreat myself so much by having a little more faith in myself, and I took every opportunity to at least "reevaluate" my possibilities with the beautiful professor Letícia Arnault—a precocious authority on Civil Law who, according to my insider sources inside her home, had just ended her relationship with a longtime fiancé. Interestingly, she had recently taught K, and I'd been telling him about it:
"She's beautiful," K said the first time.
"And rich!" I added.
"And stuck up as hell! If your cupid doesn't mind me saying so. Disgusting! I don't really like her. I'm sorry. Good luck!" K then said.
"I understand what you're saying. But did she ever treat you badly during class?"
"Never! Quite the opposite... I mean, well, forget about it. Good luck!"
"What do you mean? (:"Quite the opposite"?
ResponderExcluir"Nothing! I just meant that she was always polite to me. And, in general, to all her students. But when she appears alongside another faculty member, she looks like a Roman Emperor standing next to a mob of begging Jews. Something within her radiates such a sense of stellar exclusivity that even the expensive clothes she wears seem to speak with a venomous fury against the mediocrity of the common professional plane. I was actually shocked the day she invaded the class of a labor law professor I had, whom I still like very much, and forced the poor thing to cower in a corner like a little mouse and endure the blinding radiations of her celebrity for almost an hour. And, I confess, it was a moment when I was discreetly flirting with that labor law professor, who sometimes practically went to class in her pajamas, it was a moment when a pleasant smell of an easy sexual encounter radiated from the images of a barbecue that the class had had the week before, with her presence, and, I don't know, I even noticed an expression of annoyance and something like "'Save me, Letícia!'' on her face while Professor Letícia gave that message that took up the entire class----------------
------------------------That Professor Letícia is Roni's sister is certainly an honor for me, because you always learn a lot from her, but from there to you hooking her is hard for me to know. I confess I've never thought of her with ulterior motives. I think there's no woman in the entire faculty more socially awkward for me than her. As for you, I can't say what your chances are either. It seems to me, roughly speaking, that you have almost no chance. There are plenty of beautiful women in Juiz de Fora. Why bother with one so unlikely to win? It's like falling in love with a woman you only see on television. Masochism!'' K said.
ExcluirI was certain that K's reaction to my platonic inclinations in the realm of love was undoubtedly healthy for my fate, but being so close to her brother made it difficult for me not to consider the remotest possibility of success. That lack of maturity in my instincts led me, during those days, to irresistibly persist in "attempting."
ResponderExcluirFirst, it was a somewhat informal encounter, by the pool at her house, where, besides her family and a friend of hers who also taught K, it was just Bob and me. Bob had already had too much to drink, and the fact that he became funny when he did so also put me, sitting next to him, in the spotlight. And that made me realize, at that moment, how Professor Letícia's constant spatial rearrangements around the table made her especially wary of my gaze, which occasionally sought hers. The first idea that came to mind, besides the idea that I was not a born Don Juan, was that the disturbing fascination of those few images of her that came to me, sucked my soul into a merely contemplative territory that wounded me precisely with that which hid itself from my vision, expressing in the fluidity of time a distance of designs that returned me, as if vomited, to the platform of domestic animals from which I had risen completely in love with her----------------------
ResponderExcluir----------------------Still unable to give in, I "rejected" the whims of an illusion as delirious as it was pitiful. And I defended myself from Professor Letícia's successive lapses by adopting a vaporous seriousness that gave my voice, in the discussion now taking place at the table, the gibberish grace of a desert at odds with itself. Thus, I indulged within myself a suicidal impulse of the soul that was at once inert lucidity and existential misery. The first meeting ended more or less on this note. Afterwards, I mentioned Professor Letícia to K again:
ResponderExcluir"I observe all this in myself, because it is natural for me to capture my own slowness; and the fabulous extension that my memory gains from gestures, evasions, words. Afterwards, I revisit every detail when I'm alone, and everything seems to be happening with an ungraspable speed, because, precisely because, perhaps, nothing happened, but it's a nothing different from yours, a nothing that is what remains in a memory besieged by larvae, limited by the slime of circumstances even in its shadow, in its theatrical aspiration," I said to K.
ResponderExcluir"It's like this because it's a nothingness without the intervention of the will. A passive nothingness, dominated by indecipherable fragments that wound you invisibly and want you tamed by a heavy gravitation, where the unreal can only be reiterated regrettably, inflamed by all the hopelessness of the commonplace and prone to the intoxication of the Platonic nightmare," K said.
"Could you get me one of those anti-anxiety medications he takes from time to time from your father? I can't sleep well. These romantic failures end up transferring an excessive nervous load to my study routine. They make me think I'm not able to seduce Professor Letícia because I'm not yet professionally distinguished enough." And within the improvised lingual impulse that then rises to my brain in the form of irrevocable memories, it is natural that, with the morbidity of my amorous imagination having reached such a degree of indistinction with death, I begin to sweat coldly and feel panicky palpitations, an invisible drip that in the darkness produces resonances within me whose source, in time, may come to be identified in the form of cancer," I said.
K laughed.
"Fear. I conjure fear. And with interest!" Cracking all your anxieties with your efforts at platonic discretion. If you persist in this, it's natural to feel all your vaporous essence liquefying in an emotional hemorrhage not entirely free of health risks. Indeed, beyond the incomprehensible sudden replacement of the erudite lens by the frisson of "corner gossip" in the social circle, it is also the capacity for self-criticism that begins to struggle with all sorts of descending whirlpools, where the intolerance of the sexualized materialist vacuum causes stamina to flow in place of dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. In Agni Yoga, they call this "Imperil." A very persistent type of blood fever that blurs the ab ovo vision of any human situation, indicating with chronic nervous oscillations the complete corruption of the body's humors. So I'm betting with myself how far you'll be able to go with this nonsense, penetrating like a blind man into the completely devastated fleetingness of every kind of scar on the heart, believing that this is the duration of an invincible platonic time to which only you have access'' K said
ResponderExcluirI often wondered to what extent those psychological autopsies K subjected us (his friends) to should be considered a demonstration of faithful friendship; I often found myself hating the ease with which he reduced the most precious designs of my being to a morass of useless subconscious larvae. I ended up choosing to change the subject:
ResponderExcluir
ResponderExcluir"Man, two days ago, Agnelo called me over to the NGO and we had a private conversation. You weren't there; I think you were traveling somewhere. I need to fill you in on some problems that are happening, even though I have nothing to do with it myself." He seemed desperate! He begged me to come talk to you. At first, I thought it was some kind of theater or exaggeration, because of the exorbitant "price" we charged for the bid, but no: he almost cried, begging me to do something, to try to control you, because no one there (at the NGO) knew what to do or what was going on anymore. I didn't bring it up before because, honestly, despite being convincing, in the desperate plea part, he was extremely confused when explaining himself; I didn't quite understand what he was complaining about. I asked him: "But what's really happening, Agnelo?" - and he replied: "Strange things that no one knows how or why." Things that might have to do with K's state of mind. You have to make him stop! – then I retorted impatiently: - Stop what, man?!
And he said: "You know, Vidal, that we will soon need to rely on your services again. Within a month or so, we will need to purchase a very large quantity of machinery to build the sports equipment factory here in Juiz de Fora, and it is distressing for me to receive such a responsibility from the government, with the NGO's environment in the current state. These are huge sums, the likes of which have never before appeared in our institution's path, and what we feel is that a climate of terror has suddenly settled among us, making us all feel unsafe to 'act.' Just yesterday, I was carefully reading my emails and identified the existence of an entire dialogue with the Ministry of Sports regarding the possibility of adding to the official document of the agreement between the NGO and the government a provision for legal fees for the upcoming bids. Furthermore, I found it very pertinent, especially because the Ministry of Sports understood the request as fair and promised to take action. "The only problem is, I don't remember being the one who proposed it. I don't remember thinking or writing this. It's absurd!" Agnelo said. So, perhaps I was a little insensitive, because all I could manage to do was murmur, in a cordial tone, "Brilliant!"
Excluir
Excluir"And then I think he gave up. He appealed one last time to the technical-legal influence I had over you, and ended our conversation by saying he prayed I would illuminate a point of equilibrium in your relationship. So, what do you think?" I asked K.
"Conversational despair a little fatalistic, too melodramatic. Maybe he'll survive if he opts for the slow-paced syllable in future conversations. There's no reason to get excited," K said, laughing.
And that was it.
Post script
ResponderExcluirLET'S AGREE (postscript)
ResponderExcluirLet's face it: PROGRESS IS SAD! Guilt replaces healing, rendering our melancholic prostration complete (clinically). We exist in the realm of global melancholy, where loss becomes abstract, I mean, often redoubled, justified by an economy of analytical remains without a cure. WHAT A SHAME! The first consequence of the abuse of the principle of authority: the dulling of the critical spirit! "Politics" then makes choices that implicitly modify the theoretical horizon: we position ourselves reflexively on socialism, indicating a new conception of conquest from many angles. We liquidate our transfer of hopes, sticking new stains on the skin of our relationship with the world in our brains. Without despair, our imagination burns underneath, like a barely extinguished fire. Creating embers again, the remains of a long, unwritten cry resurface. The economy's poorly sealed tomb: possessions, jealous speeches, appetites for everything that suggests a "last time" in our actions.