CLOWN, Salvador-Itambé, January 2015
Uncle K is strong, he packs a punch. Uncle K came from far away, my mom said. He's here now. He drinks beer with my dad and buys things at the mall. He bought me a Joker shirt. My dad is stronger than Uncle K. He beat him in arm wrestling.
Uncle K took me to the bakery on the corner and stared at the butt of a girl in a bikini.
"Look," Uncle K said. She walked past him, looked at him. Then she looked at me. He laughed at her. She laughed at him. He laughed at me. I laughed at her.
Then Uncle K said softly to me:
"Very hot. Coming back from the beach right here."
Uncle K said that Aunt B has a bunch of people inside her head.
"Who?" I asked Uncle K.
"I don't know." Many.’’
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do they smoke?”
“They smoke, they smoke a lot.”
“Does everyone in her head smoke?”
“They smoke.”
“Is that why she asks for cigarettes all the time?”
“Exactly.”
Aunt B is screaming in her room. Begging for a cigarette. Uncle K sneaks a cigarette into Aunt B's mouth to stop her screaming. Uncle K smokes. He doesn't like screaming.
"You have a bunch too?"
"A bunch of what?"
"Of people inside your head?"
"I do."
"And they smoke too?"
"Not all of them. Just one."
"Who?"
"Hahaha ME!"
Uncle K is A's father. He wrote a book. He punches people really hard. And kicks them.
ResponderExcluirUncle K went out last night. He didn't come back until I fell asleep. He hadn't come back this morning. He's back now. It's already afternoon. There's lunch. He's hungry.
"Where did you go yesterday?" I asked.
"To a party."
"What were there?"
"Hotties."
"Like the ones at the bakery?"
"Yes."
"In bikinis?"
"No, with clothes on."
"How many?"
"A lot."
"Did they have them too?"
"What?"
"A lot."
"A lot of what?"
"Of people inside their heads?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because yesterday they were all inside each other's heads. That doesn't count, it's normal.''
''Just because of that?''
''Yes.''
Uncle K talks to my dad about girls. The ones he meets at parties. When my mom hears, she yells at my dad.
ResponderExcluirUncle K said that when people yell at each other, they get sick. That it's better not to yell.
I once saw Uncle K yelling at his mom, but he didn't get sick. His mom cursed, yelled too, and called him a "tyrant." "What is a tyrant?" I asked Uncle K.
"A tyrant is someone who always prefers to do what they want (or think is best), without listening to others."
"And you are a tyrant?"
"I'm a good tyrant."
"And don't tyrants get sick when they yell?"
"They get sick, not exactly when they yell."
"When then?"
"When they are forced to listen to people who don't know what they're saying."
"Why?"
"Because they waste time and energy."
"Why?"
"Because people talk too much. The less they know, the more they talk."
"Am I a tyrant?"
"Every child is a little tyrant."
Uncle K said yesterday that I was "telluric." He said that being tellurian meant liking animals, plants, and landscapes more than the things people do to each other.
ResponderExcluir"Are you tellurian?" I asked him.
"A little."
"Like me?"
"No. Less, much less."
"Why do you read so many books? Are the ones in your room all yours?"
"They are. I read so I can SEE."
"SEE what?"
"That which no one SEES."
"And what is it?"
"Secret. I'll show you later."
Uncle K decided to go to the farm with us, in the car. He drank beer the entire trip, looking at the view. He said almost nothing, very little. Every time I looked at him, there was a strange gleam in his eye. One time, my father looked in the rearview mirror and didn't see him. "What a scare! I thought I'd forgotten him drinking at the gas station back there," my father said, and we laughed.
One time, I looked at a mountain in the distance and saw a strange glow passing over it, like an animal.
ResponderExcluir"Constantly half-asleep," Uncle K said, almost at the farm gate.
"Swatting flies?" I asked.
"They're not flies, they're lights," Uncle K said.
And was it?
"Remember the gypsies?" my father asked Uncle K.
"Everything traded and resold over and over again, right? For good and bad prices. Friends, and friends of friends."
"Hahaha! That was before! Today, corpulent, almost obese men. Jail and lots of fighting going on. Rich for five generations."
"They're still worth what they say, if we summarize history," Uncle K said.
Dust blew in the air.
"What lights! "I said after taking a good look, "It's a botfly, a green lucilia, a striped blowfly, and a blue-bellied one. Ask my dad."
It was a sweltering heatwave inside, right there at the farm entrance.
"Someone turn on the air conditioning, quick, or I'll melt!" I said.
"The cattle. LOOK!"
Continue in one mimute
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ResponderExcluir"And, fanning out a fan of folds across the neck, the square flesh rumbles. Horn! A multitude of horns! A thousand angles with the axes of the carapace, like elephant tusks; or in half-moons, cactus branches or crossbars; candlestick crosses, deadwood forks, crab spikes, Satan's ornaments, all cracked like the end of a fire. The drowsiness of the hot hour pulls the cattle to the pond under the trees, in a heavy, eunuch-like aloofness; there, where to be more without commotion, with their upper lips like trunks in the water, balancing their horns high while they lap the wetness below --- have you never read Guimarães Rasa?" Uncle K said.
I didn't understand a thing! The herd slurped the water in gulps, in the nearby lowlands.
"Hey, ox, Hey, boo-hoo!" "Go away!" my father shouted, and the rest of them went down to drink too, clearing the way for the car on the road.
"Your Uncle K is quite the inventor of fashions," my mother said, laughing.
That night, at the Big House, we had a barbecue, and my father, mother, and Uncle K drank beer with the cowboy.
Guimarães Rosa.
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ResponderExcluir"Hungry beef herds, straggling in the little stations of this dry land at the edge of nowhere. Biannual mobilization here. In between, they have to empty the pasture quickly to avoid losing money. Lease distant breeding centers to round up what's left of the lean cattle. Here, rest. On the way back, lots of salt, salt until the pasture slowly returns," the cowboy said.
Uncle K looked at him sideways, then said: "Out of the corner of his eye, so as not to miss the kick when speaking."
My father grumbled at the cowboy:
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrraaaaa! A cow's sigh won't tear down a fence. What a hideous gypsy group controlling the butcher shops here. When they see us coming to negotiate, they immediately become friends with their own knives."
"They never get tamed." "Just get used to it and that's it," the cowboy said.
"Look, it's going to thunder. It's rain!" Uncle K said.
Yikes! I blew into my horn and it started to rain like a fury.
The next morning, we saddled our horses and rode to town—my father, Uncle K, and I. A day later, Uncle K left alone, suddenly.
ResponderExcluir"He went to Ilhéus," my mother said.
"He's my uncle." The sun wasn't hidden. Just in the distance, warming, warming. He went to Ilhéus. Alone. He's my uncle.
There were lights this time too. Yes, in the pasture around. It wasn't the sun.
"There," Uncle K said.
"The spinning lights." We galloped.
"Hold the gate," I said.
"By bus to Ilhéus," my mother said.
"Why don't we go too? There's a beach there," I said.
"Uncle K is my uncle." He was a little crazy, someone said. My father said.
"That day, we rode into town on horseback. Uncle K tied his to a post and drank coffee outside, smoking, looking around. His hat was that old one.
"Malboro country," he said, but the pack said Belmonte.
He was there. We could SEE him.
ResponderExcluirHe suddenly went crazy. He went to Ilhéus. I hear the cow moo.
We rode into the town square. Clop clop clop.
Nothing in the square.
Clop clop clop.
Nothing in the town.
In front of the market, a person sat, staring at the ground.
Clop clop clop.
Uncle K was crazy when we entered the town. He said he was in the wrong movie. That the girls had left town.
"Where to?" I asked.
"I don't know. Ilhéus, I think," he said.
He was crazy when he ordered the coffee. Crazy when he smoked the cigarette. Crazy when he laughed.
He was crazy when he came. Crazy when he left.
My father looked at me.
It's no use, I thought. We're not crazy like Uncle K.
We didn't look at anything else after that.
Nothing on the street, nothing in town.
"Let's go that way!" Uncle K said.
"Where?"
"Just for a peek!"
"What?"
"The imprecise political contours. Webs of invisible intrigue," Uncle K said.
Crazy with that little pastry in his hand.
In the corner bar, a radio blared loudly. The voice called for new laws in the countryside. Weapons. Security. Means to defend private property and public morality.
"Return to the countryside the idea stolen from the countryside," Uncle K said, laughing.
End here!
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