Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga? Read online

  Dulce Veiga, I said to the darkness.

  What, asked Patrícia.

  I didn’t answer, the lights came on.

  The director shouted:

  “Five minutes, we’re going to shoot the reverse angles next.”

  Márcia came out from among the trash cans, walking toward me. From somewhere Patrícia produced a Coke with a straw in it, which she handed to her. Very close to me, Márcia took off her jacket. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. She had small, firm breasts, with hard nipples, as if she were aroused. Between them there was a tattooed butterfly. Transformed into a mammy, Patrícia began to cool her off with a straw fan. I couldn’t take my eyes off her breasts.

  “Sorry about the scene,” she said, her voice a little hoarse. Her eyes were indeed green. “I can’t concentrate when there are strangers around.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  “Hunky-dory,” the Japanese chick said behind me, running her hand over my ass.

  “That song,” I said. “That song you sang.”

  “It’s called ‘Nothing More.’”

  “I know it.”

  “So what? Everybody does. It’s an old hit by Orlando Silva, we just.”

  I asked, abruptly:

  “Do you know Dulce Veiga’s recording?”

  Márcia made the straw gurgle with the last sip of Coke.

  Without answering, she handed the empty bottle to Patrícia. In a corner, the three Toothed Vaginas were eagerly crowding around a mirror placed on the knees of a short guy. From where we were we could hear the rack-rack of the razor blade hitting the glass. I felt a cold wave in my intestines. Márcia blew the cigarette smoke upwards theatrically, like a third-rate diva. Stretched out like that her long neck had faint blue veins, pulsing. I thought of Lestat the vampire: he’d go crazy.

  The Japanese chick called out:

  “Don’t you want some? Come quick before these sluts snort it all up.”

  Márcia invited me:

  “Wanna do a line?”

  The short guy passed the mirror, Patrícia handed Márcia a rolled bill. She leaned forward. When she raised her head, her eyes looked even shinier. She passed me the bill. My share—almost a hand’s width, a generous line—consisted of the i of her name written on the mirror. Half in the left nostril, half in the right: I snorted, a shiver in my stomach. I raised my head and asked again:

  “Do you know Dulce Veiga’s recording?”

  She brushed her nostrils with the back of her hand. I was afraid she might wound herself with the spiked bracelet. I sniffed, small bitter grains rolled down the back of my throat. It was good stuff.

  “Of course I do. Dulce Veiga was my mother.”

  “What do you mean, was? She’s dead?”

  Márcia gave me a searching glance, then lowered her head.

  “No, she didn’t die. She disappeared one day, suddenly, many years ago.”

  “What do you mean, disappeared? Nobody vanishes like that, without a reason.”

  Márcia bit her lip long and hard, staining her teeth with red lipstick. She seemed annoyed.

  “She disappeared, dammit,” and she shoved her fist in my face. I thought she was going to punch me, like in a movie. But she opened her hand in the air, near the tip of my nose, making a popping sound with her lips. “Poof! Like that, she vanished. Just like that. I was still a baby. It was twenty years ago.”

  Then, I didn’t say. The green armchair, the room with the high ceiling, the round ashtray, the strand of pearls. And a baby. Among the ruins of the buildings, one of the cameramen began to clap his hands.

  “Come on, everybody. Take your places.”

  I said:

  “I met your mother.”

  I don’t know if she heard me. She gave me a cold kiss.

  “Tomorrow, for sure. Call us at home, we’ll set up the interview.”

  But, I started to say. I needed to talk about Dulce Veiga. About her, about me, about that time. Slowly, in a studied manner, Márcia began to walk back to the set, putting on her jacket at the same time. Halfway, she turned, eyes flashing, violently pulled up the zipper, and screamed loud enough for everybody to hear:

  “Hasn’t he gotten the fuck out of here yet? I can’t work with this guy staring at me.”

  The short guy who’d held the mirror pushed me outside. I was too dazed to react and yielded. Outside, far away, anywhere, maybe where the green armchair, the bloodstained syringe, the cradle in the dark corner were. I don’t know how I could have forgotten it all, but now I didn’t know the right way, if there was one, to remember either. So many things, so many years after Dulce Veiga. Before being shoved outside, I turned back and managed to catch one last glimpse of Márcia. She was standing, with her back turned, next to the lamppost, the guitar slung across her body, her right arm raised like a spear, her hand closed in a fist, only the forefinger pointing upwards.

  Then, I didn’t say after the door closed, then I met you too, baby.

  6

  It was getting late. The clouds were rolling across the sky, torn by flashes of lightning in the distance, near Cantareira. The wind dragged empty cans and newspapers down the street, windows slammed, people hurriedly closed the doors of shops and houses, men were briskly rolling down the metal shutters of the newspaper stands. A clap of thunder struck far away, then another, closer. A dog yelped, then howled. A storm’s coming, I thought, and began walking quickly toward Ibirapuera Park, in search of a cab or a bus, before the streets got flooded, impracticable, the city a disaster area, like every summer afternoon.

  From a balcony someone cried out:

  “Eparrê, eparrê-i, Iansã!”

  That’s when I saw her.

  On a street corner across from the park, in the midst of the strong wind, standing beneath the princess flower tree covered with purple blooms, was Dulce Veiga. All in red, a full-blown white rose pinned to her lapel, a purse the same color hanging from one of her crossed arms, white gloves. Parted exactly in the middle, covering her temples and high cheekbones, her straight blond hair fell in two points in the space between her thin lips and rather proud chin, which she held up, without a smile or a gesture, to see better, her eyes fixed in the direction I was coming from. Blown by the wind, the only thing that moved in her body was her hair. It covered and uncovered her face, blew around it, so straight that it always fell back in place when the wind subsided. She stood there, indifferent to the strong wind and the first drops of rain. Watchful, patient. As if she were waiting for me after all those years.

  When I reached the opposite corner I waited for the light to turn green, so close I could see the strand of pearls around her neck. On the other side of the street she raised her right arm, her forefinger pointing to the sky, in a gesture identical to Márcia’s before she began singing. At the same time, a silver flash of lightning fell among the trees in the park. I closed my eyes, blinded. When I reopened them, searching through the spaces between the passing cars and the first cold rain pelting my face, Dulce Veiga was no longer there.

  Maybe she’d gotten into a car, maybe she’d gone into the park. I ran across the street and went into the park after her. The rain was getting heavier and colder, and I thought I saw her disappearing around the curve of the tree-lined walk, among the bamboo, the high heels of her red shoes sinking in the wet ground. I called out her name, inaudible even to me, muffled by the noise of the passing cars, of the rain turned into hail incessantly pounding on the warm ground. My clothes were soaked, I’m going to catch a cold, I thought—and no, I couldn’t, the paper, the interview, the fever in the empty apartment again, my fingertips searching for the ominous signs on my throat, the back of my neck, in my groin. I took shelter under a tree, sat on the ground, put my arms around my knees. I huddled like a dog afraid of thunder, watching the granules of ice falling diagonally. The wet earth gave off a penetrating, secret, intimate scent, like sex or s
leep. I leaned my cold forehead against my legs and closed my eyes again.

  7

  The first time I saw Dulce Veiga, and there were only two times, she was sitting in a green velvet armchair. A bergère, although in those days I didn’t even know that was what they were called. I knew so little of anything in those days that, later, when I tried to describe it in my mind and on paper, I said that it was one of those classic armchairs, with a high back and something like two wings jutting out at the height of the head of the person sitting. For some reason, even today, when I think of it, I also inevitably think of a black and white movie from the forties or early fifties.

  Dulce’s head was thrown back, sunk between those wings. As if she couldn’t see me, as if I weren’t there. Standing under the arch that divided in two the high-ceilinged living room, I could only see her very white neck, a strand of pearls gleaming against her skin. In the dim room—it was probably almost night and, besides, the curtains always remained closed, I would find out later, without anyone telling me—the shadows falling upon the armchair and her blond hair prevented me from seeing her face. I could only see her long, thin hands, with red lacquered nails, standing out like moving silhouettes in the bluish afternoon penumbra. In one hand she was slowly swirling a glass of cognac. In the other she held a cigarette.

  Dulce Veiga only drank cognac—to soften her voice, she said. But since she smoked constantly, especially when she drank cognac, which was very often, I no longer think that was the reason. In those days, when I met her, I believed everything I was told. I was very young, twenty, and I possessed the absolute certainty of eternal youth, like a little vampire or demigod.

  I’m not absolutely certain if it was the first notes of Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Crazy, He Calls Me” that came from somewhere inside the apartment, it could also have been “Glad to Be Unhappy,” “Sophisticated Lady,” or any other of those husky, moaning songs. In those days I didn’t know them, but I’m sure that either on that occasion or the other I asked who it was and she said Billie, and I made a note of it, ever so diligent. All this that now seems a banal cliché, in those days—I repeat without ever tiring of it because it’s beautiful and magical in its melancholy: in those days—everything was new, I didn’t even suspect the difficulties that lay ahead. I say there was music, without fear of lying, since even if there

  was none and the silence of the apartment was only broken by the sound of the cars down on Avenida São João—even if there was not, any, ever, I repeat: it would be so perfect if it were exactly as I think I remember it, so many years later, that it’s become the same as if it had been.

  I didn’t see her at first when I entered the room. But I must have felt somebody’s presence, something like a heavy breathing, a sweetish perfume of jasmine, moonflower, manaca, or another of those old-fashioned, overly scented flowers. I stood still in the dark until I began to perceive more definite shapes in the corners. Behind the armchair, the cradle covered with the Indian cloth, then the coffee table with the round marble top and some objects to which, that first moment, on that first day, I paid no attention. I was only looking at her.

  When my eyes had adjusted to the scarce light I was able to see all of her, sitting in that green velvet armchair, legs crossed, dressed completely in black. She never used more than two colors, but this, like many other things, I would only learn later. The ember of her cigarette moved up and down in the dark, at times brighter, when she inhaled. I must—and I say must because I can’t remember exactly the gestures I made, the things I said or thought—I must have reached to turn on the light in the high-ceilinged room. Because, of this I am certain, suddenly a thick voice, a voice that only countless cognacs, cigarettes, and coffees could have made that way, a voice of green velvet, as thick as the armchair’s, arose in the midst of the shadows to ask querulously:

  “Don’t turn it on, please. It’s fine like this.”

  I think I pressed the tape recorder against my chest. I was very skinny, I don’t think I was even twenty, and filled with so many illusions. I think I asked if we could begin the interview, and she said yes, or maybe she didn’t say anything for a while, I don’t remember. But I’m sure that, before raising her face, she reached out to put the glass of cognac down on the marble table, then she picked up a little black round box, opened the top with a sharp snap, and balanced her cigarette on it. Only then did Dulce Veiga raise toward me her face with high cheekbones, her green eyes, and I was able to see her straight blond hair, parted in the middle with millimetric precision, falling in two points in the space between her thin lips and her rather proud chin. I don’t know if that was the time the baby cried, and she got up, leaning on the worn arm of the chair to slowly rock the cradle. But that wasn’t in character, and I know that I don’t know for sure because my memory has retained an image of her completely motionless, looking straight into my eyes the moment she said with a sigh:

  “All right, we can begin.”

  8

  It was almost night when it stopped raining. Near Pinheiros the sky had crimson tones higher up which gradually dissolved into orange and then more intense and luminous, golden near that horizon you never saw. I slowly crossed the empty park, hearing in the distance the sirens of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks, and went around the lake, where a solitary boat made me think, once again, of that word whose meaning I didn’t know for sure. Pentimento, I repeated: pentimento, a sentiment with pain. The wet clothes were drying against my skin, water from rain and sweat.

  Near Avenida Brasil I suddenly turned, as if someone were calling my name, but there was no one else in the park, and then, looking up at the sky, near Interlagos, I saw a rainbow. A faint rainbow, barely visible. I had to strain, squint a little to see better the lilac and blue almost lost in the night beginning to fall, only the green and the yellow clearer, like the Brazilian flag. I could make a wish, I remembered, but I no longer believed in that. I turned and went on.

  I looked up at the patches of sunset, turning more and more golden all the time, and then I saw it, blazing silver, slightly above the violet strip over the tallest buildings, the first star, it must be Venus. First star I see tonight, I remembered, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight, we used to play hopscotch scratched with pieces of brick on the sidewalks of Passo da Guanxuma, I always stepped out of bounds in the sky block when it was time to turn around, with a hop, eyes closed, repeat it seven times, eyes open and fixed on the star until the last wish, then never look up again. Standing at the intersection of four corners, the first star on my left, the rainbow on my right, the city ahead, the park behind me, I took a deep breath of air washed clean by the rain and made a wish. I repeated my wish aloud seven times, there was nobody around to stare and maybe laugh, a man not so young, soaking wet, talking to himself, asking for who knows what.

  Strength and faith, which I had lost, were what I asked for.

  9

  There were no buses on the flooded streets, the cabs went by full, splashing muddy water on the crowds of people waiting for transportation. I decided to walk home, but first I went into a bar and ordered a cognac. The radio was talking about the storm, collapsed favelas, cars washed away by the flood waters, congested traffic, a building evacuated. It wasn’t unlikely that it would be mine.

  A man on crutches selling tickets for the animal lottery offered me the butterfly, last tickets, guaranteed to win, my friend. But I’m not the lucky type, I said, and the man replied never say that, you’ve got to take a risk, who knows some day. I told him to get out of here, took the opaque glass, smell of wet clothes, gulped down its contents. It hit my head and stomach at the same time, a thread of fire strung them together at mid-chest, then moved down my legs, spread to my arms.

  I rubbed my hands briskly. From the radio came the first notes of The Voice of Brazil, announcing the government news broadcast. Someone swore, the guy at the cash register turned it off. I paid, lit a cigarette, and began to walk across
town.

  10

  It was a sick, contaminated building, almost terminal. But it was still in its place, it hadn’t collapsed yet. Even though, judging from the cracks in the concrete, by the ever-widening gaps in the indefinably colored tile facing, like wounds spreading little by little on the skin, it was only a matter of months.

  Beloved old hovel, I thought with some fondness, the kind of fondness you feel for a blind, mangy old dog, as I ran my hand over the perpetual under repare sign hung on the door of the broken elevator by the Northeastern doormen.

  Once again I went up the semi-flooded stairs, which always reminded me of some hospital I’d never been to. A hospital under quarantine, isolated by some unknown and deadly pestilence, in the heart of Rhodesia: Karen Blixen would bring food and vaccines. I had done it so many times that, even with my eyes closed, without counting the steps, I could identify each floor just by the smells and noises of the hallways. On the first—fried onions, beans, cat piss—lived the little old ladies, so identical in their black dresses and umbrellas that I never knew for sure how many of them there were—half a dozen at least—and those dialogues from the soaps they watched non-stop.

  “Leda, you have no right to do this to me. After all, it’s been seven years. Seven years of devotion, more than love!”

  “Love? You talk of . . . love? Only if you’re speaking for yourself, Rogério. As far as I’m concerned it’s been seven years of bitterness and imprisonment.”

  “I must know the truth, Leda. As unbearable as it may be. Look me in the eyes and answer me, if you still have any dignity left. Is there . . . is there another man?”

  I didn’t hear Leda’s answer. The awful truth. Or the freeze-frame of an impenetrable face, flaring nostrils: scenes from the next episode.

  On the second floor I was submerged in that smell of gyms, cheap cologne, and used rubbers. The apartment of the two Argentinean guys who did body-building, weights, and—I suspected—also hustled through the newspaper. From my apartment I could always hear one of them rushing out right after the phone rang, on the exact days—I had been watching the paper—the massage section of the classifieds offered the pleasures of “Argentinean stud, athletic superendowed for insatiable men and women.” On Sundays, when they must have felt homesick for Calle Florida and there were no clients, you could hear Carlos Gardel’s voice from the open window, nostalgias de sentir junto a mi boca como un fuego tu respiración. Gardel was silent now, replaced by the moanings of some porn video interrupted by nearly unintelligible exclamations, except for a coño or mira que conchuda, hombre.