4
NO SOONER DO THE COLOURS reach my eyes in the dark corner of my studio than the past starts to dance in my mind. The way it did when I closed my eyes in bed after a night out walking. Here, surrounded by these frozen spaces, it’s even easier to lose myself in my imaginary journeys. Now that I’ve learned to tame these images by giving them form, I can draw much more from them.
It was difficult at first. When I first came here, I never expected to stay. I’d make a little money and move on again, that’s what I told myself. Here, in this foreign land. I hardly noticed the first winters. Everything was so new, so comfortable, so quiet. Slowly, I sank into the vast, enveloping whiteness. I had come from turmoil; peace won me over. Yet little by little, a curious, barely perceptible yet powerful process took over: I began to see myself as a foreigner, an exile. To consider everything as temporary, to be someone else behind what I appeared to be, to wander these clean, nearly deserted streets among strangers. To accept that all things around me weren’t real, that they were something else than what they were for me. Slowly, without any particular turning point, I got used to it all. Because, in truth, I was their foreigner. As if I were on a vacation that kept being extended.
I picture myself emerging from the airport, amazed at the huge size of the automobiles and the modern appearance of this great city where I could disappear at last, recognized by no one. Nothing tied me down, no memories, no suffering. The foreigner, to gain acceptance, must wear an emotionless mask. He’s not sure about anyone, and he’s unprepared to surrender his true nature. To fit in, he must play a game. Using what his eyes tell him, he tries to teach his body a new dance. He might imitate it, but he’ll never feel its rhythms. Like an African on a skating rink, I would flail about clumsily, awkward and off-centre, hoping not to look too ridiculous in their eyes. Just long enough, until things blew over back there.
Exile taught me that my suffering wasn’t like most people’s, and that I’d always been a foreigner, wherever I went. With the innate ability to imitate that’s shared by all people who come from nowhere, I put on a protective shell under which I could gaze out at will, and collect my visions. I began to let myself go, unaware of what I was doing, happy just to be doing it, surrendering to that most normal of urges. The inquisitive little boy of long ago was returning. Except that, now, the world had lost its substance. For me, it was still like an endless spectacle, but every time I looked upon it, I found it poorer than the images in my mind. Those images acquired a kind of freedom, they joined together to shape new ones, creating a new arithmetic as the years passed.
Perhaps my extended vacation in exile accentuated that process. Maybe sensory deprivation turned it into something definitive. That’s what I told myself in the beginning, when I still wanted to belong to a society of like-minded people, involved and empathetic. Not any more. Now I heed only my images, I surrender to their charm in hopes of discovering in them something tangible. I’ve devoted all my time and worldly goods to an activity that may seem absurd. But nothing else has captured my attention in this new land, as if I’d journeyed here to find the solitude necessary to my dream world, and give free reign to my past.
As time went by and my skills increased, my canvases grew larger. At first, I was just learning my trade, struggling with images that eluded me even as they haunted me. I was too much a captive of the world around me; I tried to copy it instead of escape it. But slowly, as I shed my appearances, my paintings took form, their structure grew in complexity, they were transformed into tightly linked groupings of interacting images poised to overflow the dimensions of my first efforts. Surfaces grew, often spreading across several panels too large to be assembled in my small studio.
Now, these externalized images have expanded to fill every available space. The effect is schizophrenic, but there is nothing I can do. I’ve considered destroying the canvases, each and every one of them. I would always destroy a few of them, those that strayed from the original image, especially at first. How pleasant it is to paint on a surface primed by a painting I no longer like. That gives the surface a real bite. I turn the paintings to the wall so they’ll stop tormenting me. At last the image is captive, pinned down, labelled, like a near-domesticated rat stripped of its true nature, displayed under glass: ratus ratus, or ratus norvegicus.
I hide them and keep them as memories of what was. If my paintings don’t sell, I can hardly blame the public. I don’t blame anyone. I’m the first to admit that they’re strange and aggressive, and hardly decorative. Why would someone who isn’t haunted by my images be forced to look at them, or hang them in his house? I decided to paint them. No one ever encouraged me — on the contrary. A painting isn’t like a poem you can read, then forget when your mood changes. A painting is an object. It becomes part of daily life and compels attention. This troublesome object also has a price tag, and doesn’t necessarily match the colours of the drapes. I know that, and I couldn’t care less. I used to be worried about communicating, back when I would show my work. But the disappointment was always the same, for me and everyone else. They weren’t prepared to see screaming faces, enormous hands, staring eyes. My emaciated, excessive, tormented people began to dance in spite of me, making the work more obsessive, its lines more violent. There was nothing nebulous that would leave room for escape; my work grabbed the gallery-goers like a wanted poster in a police station. Everything contrived to make my visitors ill at ease. I felt uncomfortable having to explain legends or historical references no one knew, the excerpts from poems no one had read. People’s comments were inappropriate, full of the kind of heavy silence that falls when someone wants to ask where the toilet is. Worse yet were the mindless declarations about the misery of the poor and the Third World. Sometimes, they became so ill at ease they’d stretch propriety to the point of suggesting wild interpretations about my own psyche. Painful business indeed. I didn’t know what to do. Should I stop talking? Show a few more canvases? How could I cut short the visit? Fortunately, most people knew how to react, they were sensitive enough to change the subject with a glance or a movement of their bodies, then turn in delight to an object in my studio that would shift attention away from the paintings. Knowing I come from Brazil, they would move on to Carnival or the samba.
“Beautiful beaches, eh? That’s how it is, you’re better off here ... I spent a week in Acapulco, or was it Jamaica, some Club Med, I don’t remember ... The people were friendly, lovely kids selling fruit juice right there on the beach. Did I tell you that my brother-in-law adopted a little Chinese girl? You have to know how to bargain. As soon as they see you’re a foreigner, they jack up the price. But we never saw any poverty, no beggars. Sunshine every day, all we could drink, and how they love to dance ...”
What am I supposed to do? Punch the guy in the mouth, start dancing the samba or rape his wife on the spot, the one who’s looking at me like she has to pee? Exile is a tough business.
5
THE ATMOSPHERE AT HOME is thick and heavy, and a vague threat hangs in the air. Our fights have no effect on the household routine; they’re a part of it. My father works hard and is rarely at home. He leaves early in the morning and returns late at night. No one says a word all day long. Then we go to bed. They wake me up the next morning when it’s time to make the beds. Maria hands me a hunk of bread for breakfast, and boredom reigns until evening.
I have no idea what everyone else does, starting with my father. Whenever he goes out it’s to work, even if he’s dressed up and wearing his white hat. He gives us a kiss, paying no mind to my mother’s insults. Going off to visit your whore, are you? she shouts after him. My mother