I lower the blinds to keep from being disturbed. Mine is clandestine work. Beneath the raw glare of the spotlights, I surrender to my secret vice. That’s how I’ve tamed the images that are so powerfully resistant to the artifices of reason: I paint them. I turn them into chimeras. The underlying rot loses some of its energy as it burns into pale light. Once these images held me captive; I was their creature. They would appear whenever they wanted to, without warning, and there was nothing I could do about it. The fine dust of time that obscures the details of memory wasn’t enough to relegate them to the past. That’s true no longer. As they turned into objects, my images grew disciplined. True, I’m still a little scattered. Behind the outward calm, my inner world is in constant movement. Possessed, for the images refuse to fall silent, they won’t slip behind me like a guilty conscience haunting the present, or a depression in reverse.
In my studio design, I sit in a dark corner at my table and receive the full reflection of my paintings. Everything is illuminated in my eyes. Cigarette smoke helps give contour to the frozen surfaces, the way heat rising from the earth seemed to moisten the shapes in the sunlight back home. The paintings leaning against the wall are like the masks I wear to capture fleeting visions that are revealed to me even as they vanish. Of course this light, an entirely reñected light, is not real life. It’s a kind of theatre, a pure abstraction. But the images of ghosts can step onto that stage, and cease to haunt me. I’ve found no other way.
Making peace with the blinding light that pursued me came at the expense of everything else. But the price wasn’t too high because, for as long as I can remember, I have been a man of memory. A prisoner of the cinemas of the imagination with no desire to escape. I carry the walls within me. Though I attend to the present, I always compare it with images of the past, to such a powerful degree that new things quickly lose their interest. Once I wanted to escape from solitude. Now I’m happy to go unnoticed, I turn down invitations, play the chameleon and take the intensity of my fellow beings with a grain of salt. Solitude behind a puppet’s congeniality is the only bearable position for someone like me. Meanwhile, the images I have put on the painted surface become less foreign to me, almost mine, ultimately benign, for I am serving them.
When I lower the shades of my studio, it’s like closing my eyes and slipping into a more brilliant reality. I disappear into a world where greyness has disappeared, where the colour of my canvases sharpens and warms the surroundings.
What stunning confusion surrounds me! Throngs of real images crowd around me everywhere like a giant carnival. Against the wall stacked atop one another, rolled or stretched, piled up, stored in boxes, filed in folders, drawn, engraved, painted, pencil-sketched, washed, dried or still gleaming with fresh oil, on panels of wood or zinc, on canvas or paper or huge sheets of particle board. I have moved from the confused scribbling of my childhood into this florid jungle inhabited by multitudes of human reflection. My basement has become a pyramid’s crypt, holding within it a funeral procession of images transformed into simple, harmless, colourful mummies.
As I create in solitude, other apparitions arise through mutual excitement. I have become a maker of images, and by channelling this flood of stagnant waters, I have transformed it into a virtual torrent. What does that matter, as long as I work, without thinking, my mind empty, letting one thing follow the other, automatically.
Sometimes I tap the brakes lightly to avoid losing control. Creation happens by itself. I surrender to the movement just as, long ago, I drifted downstream, lying on the bottom of a rowboat, touching the oars only to steer clear of the riverbank or the rocky shoals.
3
MY FATHER DOESN’T WANT TO KNOW about niggers and priests. That’s why I can’t talk to him. No one else wants to answer my questions either. I’m too little. If I keep talking about things like that, I’ll get the hiding I deserve. Brazen little brat!
The women don’t really care what I do. They yell at me half-heartedly, without real anger. They’re too happy to be visiting the monastery, sure that they’ll find a husband in the coming year. A real husband, a church wedding, something to last forever. With a white gown, a virginal wedding night and envy etched on the faces of the other women who will turn into old maids or worse. Yesterday, the toothless old black lady predicted that a man would come — so it has to be true. Mother plies her with questions, digging for details, burning to know whether the lover promised the day before is the same as the husband St. Anthony will surely send. She wants to know everything. Her friends chatter on endlessly about the tiniest details: the urge to pee, the way they felt when they touched the saint’s thighs, what they were thinking about during prayer service, the colour of the eyes of the monk who held the collection plate, was he good looking or not, hairy or not ... All this talk is shot through with nervous giggling and shrill cries, and interrupted by frequent trips to the toilet. Lili can’t stand it any more. She has to have a sip of sugar water. Her fatigue, the sharpness of her desire, those sudden impulses, are going to set her on fire.
“Quick, the sugar water! Some herb tea! No, bring the ether. We’ve got to calm her down ... Quick! The poor kid, she’s dying. Ah, men, what a curse, what ingratitude ... Get out of here, you nosy little worm, what are you up to, spying on us all the time? Good for nothing! You’re always underfoot. Keep on sticking your nose into other people’s business and you’ll see what’ll happen to you ... Shifty little devil!”
They box me on the ears, just a couple of smacks to move me out of the way. Nothing serious, really. They’re not upset with me; they’re afraid of being let down again, despite the new dreams that have sprung up after last night. The toothless black lady doesn’t mess around. With her it’s serious business, she’s on intimate terms with the macumba spirits, in direct contact with the earth. She can see the man of your dreams at the bottom of her glass. I saw it with my own eyes once when they got all worked up during one of their rituals. It was a little scary, but not as bad as the women outside the convent. Stranger though, like being scared of ghosts: suddenly the old woman’s eyes began to roll, she started speaking some bizarre language and her breasts came to life as she danced.
Starting with my mother, the women in my house believe in her more than in the monk. I don’t know why, but the visit to the convent frightened me more. The old woman makes me laugh. Yesterday, they spent the whole day waiting for her, cooking and keeping an eye on the clouds. The moon’s got to be out, that’s for sure. Rain will ruin everything, wetting and softening things up too soon. The old woman won’t be able to see. Or the man of their dreams won’t be able to pass through. I’m on my best behaviour so they’ll forget I’m there.
When the old woman arrives, that’s exactly what they do. She’s huge, black as a telephone with big eyes that bug out when she looks at me. Her eyes are red, almost brown, but she’s not mean, especially when she laughs and shows her rare, blue-blotched teeth. A big, resonant laugh that startles you and makes you jump. I look at her only from a distance. Her pink gums are enormous, too, standing out against her black skin like a rain-drenched flower. Everything else about her is white, the colour of the spirits: her dress, her shoes, her panties when she shakes her skirts to air herself out. Everything, even her tapioca bread. Funny-looking little loaves that the women heat up in the frying pan until they turn completely dry. They taste like the host, my mother says. White, too, are the sheets they lay on the floor to walk barefoot during the ritual.
The ceremony will be held on the rear balcony, where we hang out the laundry to dry, next to the ice-box and the little room where Maria the maid sleeps. Out of doors, so they can see the stars. Everybody is happy,