A MEETING, AT LEAST, STRANGE…

Lucy Salete Bortolini Nazaro[1]
I looked to the fire that burned on the fireplace, while outside the snow fell smoothly. Wrapped on a blanket, just the tip of my white socks could be seen and hinted on an old and red blanket. I thought… remembered lived hours, while the firewood burned and become coal.
The homemade were on vacation, with snow the work were bigger to the foreman who lived thousand meters of the main house, he doesn´t have a purpose to come here, I was alone, like I always liked to stay and everybody knew that, and so no one bother me on the fifteen days that I hibernate on that magic place in the middle of the nature. The snowy fields, the silence of day and night, the noise of the animals that prowl around the house, were everything I could listen. I, the books, the fire and wine made our own company.
The fire was putting out, smoothly too, slowly. I didn´t want to stand up to put more firewood, I leaned even more on the old couch, it was one more of that lonely nights that just miss howls of wolfs to complete the gloomy and mysterious landscape.
The door sat ajar, with a blast of wind, maybe a cat came in disguised and laid down with me. Curiously, he was white like a beauty snow ball, rolled up itself on my blanket like we were friends for a long time. I rose myself, closed the door, now with the key and I put pine´s knot on the fire (it heat and lat more than guamirim) I came back and laid down… the cat was there, with me. Now he was heating my legs, my feet, purring under the red light that the fire produced, I had turned off the lights, because the night was high. I fall asleep.
Other blast of wind, it seems a beat on the door, I didn´t give attention, but…other beat, light now, I until went there to open the door. That time? So far? Who will dare? Maybe the foreman, it happen something special. The livestock, the snow, who knows? I opened the door.
A guy with a black cloak, like this one to use on rainy and cold days, long, closed until the neck asked me shelter. He lost himself on the way, and the snow impeded that his car could continue. He saw some smoke and then follows until here. I didn´t know him. But I left that he entered, something didn´t allow me felt any fear, he was alone, like me. He broke my loneliness routine, but at last, I must sheltered him. It will just be a night. “Please, come in.”
He took off the cloak, he was just wearing white. With the lights, I could see it was a young Apolo visiting me. It seems a bride who lost himself on the trip until the church, certainly he left a fiancée waiting in the altar. His black hair hung a little on his eyes, stubborn, given him a naughty and insinuating appearance. He was frozen, arrived very fast near the fire, rubbed his hands very anxious, I offered him a cup of wine that he drunk slowly, like on a ritual, without words, just an excuse on the snow and cold. We stayed there for a long time. I lent him a blanket and a pillow, and he fit himself there, on the room´s sofa. I don´t know when we felt asleep, I know I started to like that complicity of silence. It doesn´t need presentations, after all soon he will go away, one ghost more in my life. I looked at length to him, talked about my poetries, the scripture´s anxious that insist to hide in the hidden of an anxious soul. He liked poetries too. He was a poet! The day dawned, the clouds were gray and hide the sun and it seems the snow choose that special day to leave the sky and visit the poor humans. I turned on the fire again. He was still sleeping, or he was faking and was watching me. I heat the water, made a coffee, and arranged the table. I prepared a chimarrão and started to drink my first gourds, when he stretched and gave me a large smile followed by a “Good morning” He stood up, wet to the bathroom, came back and sat beside me. He didn´t have the custom, but he wanted to drink chimarrão with me. It wasn´t a good day to travel, he´ll have to stay here.
He, wearing those white clothes, those green eyes and the disheveled black hair didn´t need word to show the danger that surrounded my pleasant loneliness. But there wasn´t other way. I agreed that he stayed here. I lent him clothes that were in the house, and old big sweater made with sheep wood, maybe it was from my father, my brother, I don´t know. Some pant like pajamas, old slippers, but they heat very well. I discomposed him. But Apolo was still in front of me. The beauty wasn´t from the clothes, it was from the face, the eyes, the soul, the mystery of the meeting. The snow was still kissing and painting of white the soil that has already been green.
We drunk coffee, washed the dishes, our hands touched for the first time and our eyes crossed. I disguised very fast and ran to put firewood in the fire. I looked for the white cat, but it wasn´t there anymore. “When stay cooler at night, I´m sure it´ll come back!” “Who?” asked Apolo, this was his name. “The cat”, I answered. And he said “Há!” I got out and run to the shed to pick up more firewood, fill the box for the cold day that was swearing and he went to help me.
Our hands crossed, new touches, our eyes and a firewood fell down and we ran together to take it, approached us from the ground, from ourselves, a look more lengthy and a furtive kiss. I ran from there, I didn´t bring anything on hands, but on heart a sudden throb, a strange fear from what I was feeling my soul was exploding and wanted to get out of my body and tell to the world what it was feeling.
“Where do I out the firewood?” He asked me with the firewood on his arms, “Over there”, I answered. He returned to pick up more and more firewood until he filled the box. His hair was white and wet, his hands were red, hardened. I called him near the fire, “you must heat yourself, or you´ll freeze, come here”. He answered “near you, impossible” “Don´t fool me, come here”. He came, but instead of arrives near the fire he held me very strong on his arms and kissed me. I didn´t remember how long was that kiss, one day, maybe two, I don´t know. I felt asleep on his arms with his hugs.
The snow was the accomplice of this strange meeting. It was still blocking the exit of someone who didn´t want to go away anymore. The days and nights already didn´t count, man and woman were confused in one just body, they heat themselves and changed words that just after a long time we dare to say. The hours became happy for me, the loneliness so necessary before it didn´t seem very important now, I pulsated, discovered life, I wanted that the snow that pushed him to me didn´t stop never more.
We rode together on the snowy field, we went out with hands given, and changed kisses while from our mouths got out sweet words and smoke because of the cold. Just one horse was enough for us. Our meal were served and eaten like Olimpu´s delicacy. Our nights became days for we could love like it was the last time. No promises. No future worried us. Just the moment. It seemed that tomorrow won´t exist anymore, therefore, today was very important for us. We stayed looking each other, wanting to last forever that moment. Nothing mattered more. Just he and I.
I became a child again, sat on his lap, received pampers, cares, we rolled together on the mattress that separated us from the cold ground. Intense moments full of passion that satisfied our life´s hungry. Were four, six, seven days? I don´t know how to count. I know they were until I wake up with the sunshine shinning me while a stubborn itch showed me I was hugged on the white cat that returned and slept with me and rubbed itself on me with its soft fur.
“Apolo, look who came back!” no answer. I looked for all house, on shed. I waited, maybe he had gone out alone. The horses were there, he went on foot, certainly. The time lingered to pass. Apolo didn´t come back that day. Have I dreamed all that? Didn´t Apolo exist? But everything seemed so real! I suffered. I cried, closed myself on my world of nothing. I wrapped me on the mattress, if everything were a dream, I wanted to sleep again and dream once more. We stayed alone, I and the cat snow´s ball, all white. The sun insisted to drill the clouds, it had stopped to snow. There were rumors of work long away, the foreman started his routine, soon he´ll visit me.
Passed a night, other day, now the shiny sun woke me up to the reality. The cat was still with me, it didn´t went away anymore. Where was it all those days? It didn´t matter because now he was there. It became my friend. I hugged it and we stayed together, I drunk chimarrão, it meowed and looked me while jumped from my lap and twined on my legs.
I decided to go out. It was cold yet, but the snow was melting. I walked a little and soon I realized a movement on that other side of the farm. A car was approaching. “Good morning”. “Good morning, are you looking for anything?” “Yes, I am.” I decided didn´t talk about the company I had. “Didn´t you listen anything strange? A car´s horn, maybe?” “No, here everything was on silence, snowed too much, there wasn´t how to arrive here but… horn? Why?” “Please, come with us.” “Where?” “Near here, we´ll already bring you back again.” I entered in the car, quiet like I am always. I didn´t ask where he´ll go, he said it was near and we´ll come back soon. We went out of a land´s little road, arrived in the asphalt, a car was stopped, beside the road. We came down. “We want you see if it´s someone known, maybe it has come here.” Said the highway police. I came down, we arrived in the car, looked and fainted. The man was frozen, dead. A terrible scene, in spite of been a little shrunk, someone have already moved on him and he was with his face turned down. I recovered the consciousness. The police asked me if I recognized him. There was six, seven days he was dead, frozen, who knows, or a heart attack, maybe. I answered on a drought way, “No, I never saw him.” I was on a shock shape. He took me back home and left e there. The white cat ran to my lap, I dried my tears, caressed the cat. I´m crazy, wit was him! That man was with me on the last seven days.

A MEETING, AT LEAST, STRANGE… de Lucy Salete Bortolini Nazaro é licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons Atribuição-Uso não-comercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Brasil.

THE SCRIPTURE

I had started the scripture again. Wanted to write tales, chronicles, it´s enough of poetry. After all poetry doesn´t feed anyone, no one reads, no one buys. We live on a practice world, to supply an immediately necessity, where the bread and beans are urgent on a family home. (It´s a sin because the poetry is the living soul of people, it´s the action´s movement with emotion, it´s the fragment´s register of a time that peter out an flow like a slippery liquid on a crack on the stone.) In this context, on really, I must stop to write, open a supermarket. Há! I don´t have enough money to do this! But, a bar with cachaça will give more money than write, and a leisure night house. Don´t talk!
But no, I wanted to write. It´s an insistent stubbornness! I remembered Affonso that after a long time, was just dedicated on that. “I´m wanting too much!” I remembered Bandeira who needed to write to survive. I remembered myself “if I don´t write, I die!” So, I go on. My project now, was a tale book. I´ll mix the magic with real and I´ll put the lyrical, a sadness mix, suffering, joys, curiosities, I´ll retract my routine. At last, there are the curious, people from world with the feet on the moon, there are the healthiest, the crazies, the dreamers, the defeated, the liars, the saints and the sinners. Yes, I must continue writing.
I was on bed. The lights were on, the thought was flying, the hand on the button, to turn it off, stop in the air when I discover: I had started the scripture again! I opened the bed table´s drawer, took a pen, paper, there was always a pen and a paper there. Under side … books. I took a book, put a white paper that was supported on the mattress on the book and I started to write.
I wanted to tell a beautiful love history, but the emotion still haven´t touch me enough to do that, I crossed out the few words I had written. My love history must be very very special, very different, but that night the moon wasn´t inspiring too much and the day hasn´t been the best one. So, it must be a real history. I started again. But the wasn´t desire on the ink to paint that white paper. I remembered Macabéa, I think my character is as insignificant as her, but the problem is that my verb isn´t as good as Clarice´s verb. I stopped. I crossed out everything again. I yawned, it seems the slumber wanted to corrupt that moment I wanted to be magic. I insisted it.
The book that supported the paper was from literature, I was always surrounded of literature books. I leafed it through lengthy. Nothing. It wasn´t what I wanted. I still was too poor to do literature. I sat down in bed, the windows were opened, a delicious wind blew on my face, lighted a cigarette, put the leaf on the book and the book on my lap and I started to think again. Yes… to think. First, I needed to build a history on my head and after put it on the paper. I thought on the last two or three tales I read, I wrote. They were born on a simple way, nature, and now I need an obstetrician, a caesarean?!! Incredible!
I crossed one´s legs, put the leaf on the book, the book on my knees. It´s now. It will have a history and it will be magic, like that little smoke that I didn´t understand why I insisted to produce at my mouth, despite all the grieves hat follow it. I remembered other lives, in others centuries. My witch´s time. It was just rescue this time. I remembered!
There was a story that from that boy who came from Itararé to Palmas, looked for help to solve some heart´s problems, from passion, from wizardry. It was bewitched, according to the legend, his father brought him searching his salvation. Just listen…
Jose has been enchanted by Bianca. Allow that union was impossible. He was still a boy on his twenties. She was an experienced woman, despite been too on her twenties. She started early on the seduction and bane games. Jose was from a wealthy family. A good and promising marriage, despite drugs that involved his itararense´s life. The family on their wandering and suffering, have already done everything, Jose sank himself more and more. Then they discovered a powerful witch at Palmas, in the south of Brazil, it was the last appeal, they got the address and gone, Jose and his father.
Bento Stingelin Street number 401, a white house with black eaves. There were Jose sat and in front of him Lucka, the famous witch of the place. The boy trembled his reddish and opened wide eyes, with fear and the desire of the magic potion that smell everyday. He must go out, his father will talk to her before. Outside he lay down on a hammock while he was waiting. His father out of there after a long and endless hour. “Now you come and talk to her”. It was all what he listened from his father. He went to the room. Sat down, and one more time he was in front of her. A lady a little curious, full of plait and garnish on hair, on arm, on the neck and big and round earrings drooped on her ears. A reddish veil covered her face and made her more curious yet. The father liked her.
Result, Jose must pass fifteen days with the witch, and then his cure will start. He will leave the drugs and with them the famous Bianca. The father went out like Jose who traveled to a small farm, in the middle of the bush on the brink of a river, with Lucka. They will wait the full moon the start the work. It was what the witch told to Jose´s father. “Come back here in fifteen days and I´ll have an answer.” The father came back to Itararé. José, despite of the spots, was a beautiful guy. The eyes and the hair were black like the mysteries of a night without stars, he left fall a lock that seems a stubborn quiff. Her cooper skin covered her meter and eighty, very well distributed on her eighty kilogram. His body follow that witch without any wish that wasn´t hallucination. He needed doesn´t disobey.
Finally they arrived at the such magic place, but they needed wait the full moon. The night arrived with them, remained them to sleep. The silence follows them during the hiking. That night Jose has slept very well, the witch give him a mysterious tea that took him on a travel over the dream´s world and on it the old witch on a red veil left view that big nose full of warts. Jose felt fear.
The day dawned with the bird´s singing and the rumor of leafs that fell from the trees. The witch wasn´t there but there was a big breakfast on the table. He sipped each sip with curious and went out, he wanted to walk and know that place, maybe he could go home. There weren´t fences. And then, Jose saw Lucka´s face for the first time without the veil. She bathed herself on the river edge, while her clothes rested on the morning´s turf. Was it hallucination? Fantasy from a head lost in the bush? Lucka was a beautiful witch who danced on the water´s flavor, it seems she danced on it, after submerged and turned back and wriggled on a magic frenzy of sensuality. Jose spied everything and he was liking what he was seeing.
“Há! Are you there? Come here, enter on the water with me, it´s very good today”. Jose preferred stay on the shore. He looked the landscape disguising his curiosity and enchantment. Lucka went out very calm, put her clothes on, sat beside Jose, took on his hand started reading to him, massage them. Suddenly stood up and pushed and pulled him for a run between the unsettled trees. She laughed loud, danced, involved him on her arms and hugs, left him on his luck, and come back to save him and so the time passed. They become accomplices on a silence talk. Every night she told him stories, laughed, massaged his body with special oils, a soft music involved them and on the ecstasy of the emotion she left him to the slumber and to the dreams. Jose liked all that, while waited the full moon.
The first scene of the moon arrived. They walked bearing a clearing, over there was a magic circle that will involve them to open their way. The ritual demanded just a transparent garb falling on their body. Jose lay down in the middle of the circle, Lucka enchanted him with magic words, with gestures, with laugh and soft hands sliding on his smooth body. He got undressed of the world and now get undressed of his garb. Both them were just wearing the breeze and were starting the biggest wizardry in the universe. Jose gives one self up to her. Lucka sat under her knees, started to pronounce incomprehensible words to him, caressed him staring for his face, his hair, his shoulder, his chest, smearing him with scented oils, while incenses burned around. Jose received everything like a dry and eager plant that receives water. The moon attested everything, running between the tops of the trees like if it wanted look for the best angle to enjoy the landscape. Lucka caressed him and talked, talked and caressed him, the moon´s heat made it more intense, she started to suck her breast, stroll her magic hands on her alive and hot body and Jose in an impetus pull her for him and sucked that mouth lengthy that doesn´t pronounce anything. The witch became a panther and bit him and instigates the fight not equal. He a ferocious animal, insatiable now goes above the panther pricking as he could. The fought for hours until both them, winners were defeated by the tiredness and downcast felt down side by side, embraced on that magic circle that involved them. The moon, tired on its hike by the sky went away and the sunshine and the bird´s singing waked up hunt and hunter. The break of the spell started.
The witch concentrated herself during the day, spent hours and hours on the river´s side, on her oracle and wearing her long and red garb. Jose wanted too much that the night arrive to start the ritual again. And then, days and nights passed by, and the 15ª night, the last one arrived. The two delighted rolled on immensity of green of their body on a frenetic fight, laugh, screams were listened by the forest, but no one has never seen nothing.
Jose´s father turned back to Palmas to fetch his son to continue his treatment in Itararé. He looked for Bento Stingelim Street. It was a small side street, between two avenues and there weren´t more than thirty houses. He searched, desperate searched, after all he had left his son there. There wasn´t mistake, he was on that house. But, according to the dwellers of that place there wasn´t the house number 401. This number didn´t be found. It had never existed.
People tell, that even after ten years the father search his son. And, near the Iguaçu River, there are two animals that grabbed themselves every full moon screaming and fighting like they will hurt to die, but no one can get near.


[1] Writer. Palmas-Paraná/Brasil (lucynazaro@hotmail.com). English version by Dayane Souza.

THE SCRIPTURE de Lucy Salete Bortolini Nazaro é licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons Atribuição-Uso não-comercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Brasil.