Contrarieties & Synchronicities

 

Virinha stretched out on the hard, plastic chair. We have reached the so-called third age and it seems that we carry the decades on our backs, in an accumulation of dilemmas and, in our pockets, a handful of strategies to push us forward, to the damn chair that supports our spine. I read that these chairs were made of recyclable material and coffee grounds. I always smiled when I realized that we, humans, created and recreated reality like gods from Olympus. Even if it was grotesque or magnificent. Especially when the hostile headlines of environmental destruction alarmed us, clashing with our way of life, cut short by easy resources and, then, in the shock, the surge between madness and creativity, led us and provided us with solutions. These only emerge when, instead of focusing on the problem, we focus on the solution.

The meeting would have been merely casual, if casualness did not dictate, along with them, synchronicities. I was waiting for an estate agent. My stomach was almost empty, fed by synthetic parts, such as coffee, bread with butter and water in small sips. The dish of the day was rice and peas with marmot. I couldn't have any picanha or chops. I ordered a water. Fresh, 75 cl.

Elvira was from Barcelos, a widow for fourteen years and with a daughter who was almost my age. She already had a grandson, Pedro. Preconceived ideas lead us to souvenirs, typical ornaments, ex libris, specifically, in this case, to Barcelos and, therefore, also to imperial lands, in England, where I discovered the Barcelos rooster franchise chain, to be even more specific, Nando's. I smiled, my thoughts immediately taking me there, as it was the first place I had ever seen that only charged for the small dishes, but not the drinks that accompanied them. It was the year of grace two thousand and sixteen. In Aldershot.

I remember thinking about that orderly place, with its somewhat exotic decor, and imagining this restaurant in Portugal, with people plundering the drinks, barely eating, just as a way of satisfying their gluttony through the opportunism of drinks. In Portugal, on the other hand, everything worked in a disciplined manner, with civility. Of course, among the more conservative, the shadow of British imperialism always loomed over any other people on the planet. That was, in short, my experience in the English countryside. But not with the youth, the mass of these new generations who promised to eradicate prejudices and with regard to miscegenation, which was the freest and most concrete way of, more than just existing, living fully. Freedom was more than a cliché, it was a concrete and abstract attribute, not only possible, but implicitly obligatory, for us to achieve new civilizational upgrades. I looked at Virinha, still thinking that this life process, which I call a game and which is an enriching experience, must have authenticity and will on the part of the living being, even if, for that, it is necessary to activate constant struggles and face up to stupid and illiberal conservatisms.

Between some gesticulations, I listened to her tell me the story of her life. I felt a bit like Sylvia Plath. In the appropriation of raw material, without the intention of collecting it, but still open, declared within me, the shadow that kept me hostage to this form of human study that had always been part of my shadows and light. The correct connotation for this form of pleasure that I obtained from the lives of others was not called voyeurism, insofar as the pleasure I obtained was not sexual in nature, but rather the satiating of an understanding of traumas and ailments that we carry throughout life, like stored stains, Pandora's boxes, often not very liberating, when we don't know what to do with all this material. The human in me was not diminished in the aspect of empathy. It was another item in the game that I had come equipped with. I never saw such a quality absent, no matter how critical, analytical, or biased a character was, who was like me, in the way we are most similar, as instruments of the divine game.

Her hair was down to her shoulders, a little dull, which had once been that of a "bad-haired Russian woman" as she herself had said, she was so blonde, with a few white hairs wandering here and there. She was well-groomed, lightly made up, wearing loose, comfortable pants and a white t-shirt, where one could read in red paragonal letters: I love my cats! She sat down at the table occupied by a gentleman she knew, asking permission to do so, since it was the chair on the shaded terrace, all the others were flooded by the merciless one o'clock sun, despite the parasols. I asked her if the area was quiet, and I saw her sip her coffee in small sips and leave the ash from her cigarette, either accidentally on the table or in the ashtray shared with the man who was there before she arrived, fingering her cell phone and not seeing or hearing anything else around her, completely focused on that device. Virinha answered me, at over seventy-six years old. - I've lived here since I was twenty-eight, when I married Rudy. Rudolfo is my deceased brother. He didn't like his name, or rather, he liked it as much as anyone with a long name, like that of his own twin brother, Timóteo. They never shortened his name. To simplify things, since he was young everyone called him Rudy and that's how I got to know him. It's always been a pleasure to live here in this city. Until I was twenty-three, I lived in Barcelos, then I was in Anadia for almost six years, until I got married. I got married in this city. This city used to be a whirlwind, because it seems to me that everything happens in phases, if you know what I mean.

I understood what Virinha meant. The social and economic fluctuations that bothered most people. For example, corruption is discovered today and it's more of the same, things become normal, as if it were natural, more and more, to fall into the opposite direction of lack of ethics and morals. This agitates the minds of some and the city may eventually suffer, eventually the bill will come. But not as much as the rise in fuel prices, or the collapse of a bank where people were robbed. Or a pandemic that isolates everyone socially, politically, geographically and economically.

I looked at her and she seemed thoughtful. With her round glasses, her skin with some age spots, her manicured nails, the bracelets adorning her wrists and two rings on her ring finger, a sign of widowhood that was somewhat distant but always present. In a guessing tone, I heard her say, sounding like an acknowledgement and, at the same time, a question: - You're not from here. Are you looking for something special!

I told her in the most casual tone I could muster that no. I wasn't from there. In fact, I didn't know the area and was looking for a property where my mother and I could move and start from scratch. A new stage in life. A new cycle. A property ready, furnished, to rent and to take a break from the hustle and bustle of the past and the anxiety of the future that was pointing at my chest, from the outside, like a twenty-two caliber gun. She looked at me and must have wondered about many other things. I could read her curiosity in her eyes and, in some way, her longing for her own mother.

-You know, Virinha, my mother is eighty-one years old, just a few days ago, but she is in poor health. She is a rational, analytical woman, with a friendly and curious personality, always thirsty for knowledge. She spent her whole life dealing with the early grief of being a complete orphan, full of siblings who did not want her as a responsibility, as another mouth to feed; at most, they used her as two more hands to work and spare their own children from the daily grind.

-Your mother's life was difficult! - she sighed - I was luckier, I grew up with both my parents until I was eleven. It was then that I got my first beating in life. My great-aunt had passed away, but since we were not very close, the event only really affected my mother, who considered her a dear aunt from her childhood. My father didn’t like cemeteries, but my mother had asked him to meet us at the entrance of the church to pick us up. My two siblings, Cândida and Artur, and I were distracted outside the church, next to the flower beds, watching a line of ants carrying food on their backs, doing the hard work that, at the time, for us was physical exercise and a lot of adrenaline. Artur was looking at the entrance of the church, perhaps counting the few people who entered with wreaths of flowers. But Cândida and I didn’t. We were counting the army of ants among the gerberas and dahlias. At that moment, I heard helpless screams and I believed that our relatives were crying for their great-aunt in her coffin. Uncle Vilaça, who was my mother's brother, and Aunt Alice, along with Clarice, who was the only cousin my age, supported my mother and I ran into her arms and she, desperate, covered her face with her hands and I said to her: - Mommy, God is with her, don't cry, mommy.

That was when Uncle Vilaça sat on the wall, next to the flowerbed with us, and asked us to pay attention. His eyes were watery, from which large tears were falling, without him being able to stop them, and he said: - My nephews, you have to be strong. I realized, with my eyes searching for understanding of the adult world, that illness, bankruptcy and death were abstract themes, with our young age and limited experience, ugly and sad, after we had matured with the paths of life. That was not the case with us at all. And with the tips of my fingers, I walked over the path of those tiny beings who carried the world on their backs, waiting for the result of the enigma to happen. A taxi arrived. I saw Aunt Alice get in with her mother and Delfina, the car leaving quickly and my heart pounding.

- Where is mother going without us, uncle? - I asked, trying to understand how much suffering I had never seen on my mother's face had completely contaminated her, to the point that she had forgotten about us. My uncle explained to us that my father had had a serious accident, that he had gone to the hospital in Viana, and that we had to wait to hear news.

- Serious, how so, uncle? asked my brother Artur, who was sixteen at the time and the oldest of the three. - Serious, but we don't know anything else. We'll have to wait to find out more... - I heard him mutter a "God help us" and stand up, telling us to wait there, that mass had already started and that we would be leaving with him and Clarice in a little while. Artur followed his uncle and the three of us stayed, my sister and I, together with our cousin who was studying in Viana, living in Darque, far away from us, because Uncle Vil was stationed at the port of Viana.

While Virinha chatted and smoked, sipping her glass of water and coffee, I ate the rice and peas with the marmots, returning a glance at her every now and then, so that she would know that I was following what she was confessing to me. I deduced from the "beating" of her eleven-year-old life that she had lost her father, at that time, so young. A daughter without a father is like a garden without flowers, but I didn't say that, I kept it to myself, that it was my pain being chewed and diluted by others, just like me. Elvira apologized for not letting me have lunch in peace, but she felt a sudden urge to pour out her pain and, perhaps, she missed an impartial ear other than that of her daughter or her grandson. I believe that strangers are personas placed by above, in order to ease our souls. I believe that many of us, in times of pain, sense and think exactly this. But there are those who enter empty churches, who bend their knees, who raise their hands in prayer, who weep alone, who look up, muttering curses and prayers, who sniffle for hours on end, who feel sad when they see the sea or the river, when they see parents and children, couples in love, who do not understand how the world dares to continue on its course, ignoring the salt of the tears of the anonymous in suffering, of those who experience unexpected mourning. Isn't that all of us? Isn't it enough for everyone?

After telling him that there were twenty minutes left until the appointment with the real estate agent, he summed up his life story, telling me that he had lost his father and with him the joy that was inherent in him, which made Artur grow up faster and, perhaps for that reason, he had left us prematurely, at the age of forty-two, he and his wife, with one of their children, when they were returning from a holiday in Benidorm, that Cândida had become an isolated and elusive woman after the divorce, had fled to Lousã and still remained there, with few words and few friends, and she, the only one who had had a husband until she was sixty-two, who had given her a loving and devoted daughter and a grandson, Pedro. That she had lost her mother right after Rudy, and that, as they say, when it comes to losing, there are always two things that happen; her old dog, Estrela, had died six months earlier and that her landlord was excellent; that when Rudy died, she had kept the rent at seventy euros and only increased it to one hundred euros about a year ago because she had to do some work on the building; but that she had a large, sunny, two-bedroom apartment with two fronts in the same area, where she had lived and walked with Rudy, and now she did so with her grandson when he came to spend the weekend there, when her asthma and bronchiolitis got worse.

I asked her if she had ever tried to quit smoking, because any bronchiolitis or asthma was made worse by smoking. She shook her head, telling me that it was just a habit she had, socially, and that she only smoked when she left the house, because she didn't even remember to do it at home. That she had had a serious asthma attack and had had to resort to bronchodilators thanks to the handyman who had come to fix a pipe in the kitchen and had used an intoxicating product that gave off smoke and smell, and that she left the house more often, just to forget the smell that she still felt every time she cooked or spent more time in the kitchen. That it must have been psychological. That she was thinking a lot about Rudy, as the dates they had celebrated throughout their lives were approaching. She wished me luck and I wished her luck. I asked that invisible and ever-present God to keep her smiling and in good spirits, because my mother was similar to her, in her desire to be well and in her natural curiosity. She told me about extraterrestrials, ideologies and the faith she had in this invisible God who was neither Catholic nor Evangelical, who was the god of love and tolerance and that the hours were coming, but only God would decide to go and hug Rudy who I could smell every day, his presence and his inexhaustible patience to wait for her and take her for walks, telling her the names of the flowers, the birds and stories that he still remembered from his childhood, with Timóteo, in Vila Real de Santo António.

I had already paid the bill, left a fifty cent coin for the young man who had served me and had gotten up to say goodbye to Virinha, when I saw an illustrious figure that I had met in the year of nineteen hundred and ninety-six. The world was a neighborhood, where every now and then, half-turns, we crossed ports and corners, alleys and the high seas, but the characters always reached the coast, still stained by the past or a promised future.

I headed to the street where I had parked my car, opened it and took a briefcase out of the dead man's parking space, locked the doors again and crossed the street, which was somewhat hollowed out in that part, to think again about the person who had crossed my path and who had not even recognized me. I thanked progress, that I had sunglasses on my face and that time had crossed my path, leaving marks of its passage here and there.

That's when I came across the number on Waze, of the address I wanted and there was the real estate agent who, in the nineties and sixties, had pomp and arrogance and believed that perhaps the world had his name as its owner. A huge king in the belly, and empires were at the price of death. In my case, I was unlucky. The real estate agent who, even though I hadn't seen him, knew that he would not be of any use to me.