“I don’t have Wagner, dear, will milk do?” murmured Lorena going to the small refrigerator built into the wall. Apathetically she eyed the white pitcher beneath the cold light and bit into an apple. The warm froth of the milk in the stable. Warm smell of cowshit and hay. The little apples from the orchard were sour but they had so much juice. Once Remo climbed up onto the highest branch and ripped his jeans at the knee, he would get himself dirty and torn in the same furious way he tore fruit off the trees. Or played sheriff and bandits, he was always the bandit carrying the sun that was too big for him. So big.
“Study?” she invited, bringing the pile of books and notes from the bookshelf and spreading them on the table. She put her glasses, her pen and the transparent plastic ruler on top of them. Squinting, she read the underlined passages through the clear plastic. She already knew that part. And the rest. She knew everything. If the strike was over and they were to have exams the next day, it would be glory. “Music absorbs chaos and orders it,” she said and grew alert. Mozart. Musicalia. Carelessly she examined the book that Lia had returned to her with various pages marked in red, Lião had the habit (awful) of underlining what interested her not only in her own books but in other people’s as well. She paused over a passage indicated by an especially vehement cross: “The Nation holds a man with a sacred bond. It is necessary to love it as one loves religion, obey it as one obeys God. It is necessary to give ourselves to it completely, turn everything over, give everything back to it. One must love it whether it is glorious or obscure, prosperous or disgraced.”
Obey the nation as one obeys God? wondered Lorena, perplexed. Why had Lia marked this? She didn’t believe in God, did she? And wasn’t the Nation, for her, synonymous with the people? She opened the bathtub faucets and sat down on the tub’s edge, her hand playing in the water. She laughed softly, remembering the day Lia had arrived with her two huge bursting suitcases and Das Kapital under her arm, wrapped in brown paper that showed more than it hid. “Her mother is an oliveskinned woman from Bahia married to a Dutchman,” Lorena thought as soon as she saw her. It was a woman from Bahia and a German, Herr Paul, ex-Nazi who became Mr. Pô, a peaceful businessman in love with music and with Miss Dionisia, Diu to her intimates, Diu with that long drawn-out uuuu that seemed to go on forever, Diuuuuuuuuuu … the result was Lião. What madness, imagine, a Nazi with an eagle on his chest, understand, to turn up in Salvador and there, I can’t explain it, to fall in love with young Miss Diu. The product is Lia de Melo Schultz, who packs up her necessaire and comes to finish her courses while living at Our Lady of Fatima Roominghouse. Half Bahia, half Berlin. Conga tennis shoes. “When my father, who is very absentminded, actually saw what Nazism was all about, he ripped off his uniform and came trotting off to Salvador.” Difficult, very difficult to understand that kind of desertion, if it weren’t for the movies. In the movies hadn’t Lorena seen all those actors go across the Red Sea which opened before them like two arms? Total madness, this German to flee from that faraway inferno without his uniform. And to demonstrate, moreover, his complete disdain for racial prejudice upon proudly entering an honorable and blessed local family, the Melos, whose youngest daughter Dionisia was available. Ah, Lião! From her father she inherited the Germanic vigor, the adventurous spirit capable of enduring hunger, frostbite and torture in crocodile-choked rivers. But her glorious proportions she inherited from her mother, proportions and hair like a black sun spreading its rays in all directions, what hairpins, what comb could manage to hold it in place? The sugar in her voice when she grows nostalgic also came from Bahia. Jaca-fruit compote. But Herr Karl firmly under her arm, hidden and exposed, camouflaged and exhibited, “nobody must find out this is my Bible!” Did she read it through to the end? Her German half was solidly rational but what about her Brazilian half? “I’ve read it,” said Lorena pointing to the book. “I’m very smart even though I don’t look it; if you want I can explain it to you.” Then Lia laughed, the teeth of a German fanatic but the laugh itself tropical, as she tried to gather her sunburst hair into an elastic band. Which snapped, they all snap, there is no elastic in the world that could resist such an explosion.
“Afro type. There are hymn women and ballad women,” thought Lorena as she took off her pajamas. Perched on the edge of the tub, she dabbled her fingertips in the water and decided, “I’m a medieval ballad.” And Ana Clara? And Lia? What kind of music were they? The only way to help them was to offer them things they didn’t have, introduce them to things they didn’t know. Lia’s surprise when she arrived in her open sandals, a straw bag hanging over her shoulder, it was only later that she bought the leather one at the big market. “Great, understand? Great,” she repeated examining the bath accessories in the bathroom. She opened the jar of bath salts, sniffed them. And in the midst of her ecstasy tapped her cigarette ashes onto the floor. Pretending to straighten the bathmat, Lorena gathered up the little roll of ashes as one would a butterfly. “Would you like to take a bath? This tub is so restful,” she suggested when, upon leaning over, she saw her friend’s sandaled feet at close range. “Oh, may I?” asked Lia, throwing the cigarette butt into the commode. I flushed it and prepared a luxurious bath for her. I offered her cologne for a body massage, she was wearing sandals but it was cold. The talcum powder. The impeccable comb. Tea with biscuits. To culminate, poetry; I read poetry well. When I looked up, she was drowsing in the armchair. Later I discovered that she doesn’t like poetry or music. Even so, I turned on the record player and put on the music of her fellow Bahians: Bethania, Caetano. And if I didn’t turn on the television for her it’s because I simply can’t bear TV. Although I’m thinking of getting one just for the sake of the old films. And the long-run ones about vampires and monsters. As Lião was leaving, she made her first ironic remark. I didn’t even answer it. I may yet put up a sign in my shell: Excuse the order, excuse the cleanliness, excuse the style and the superfluity but here resides a civilized citizen of the most civilized city in Brazil. Will they pardon me? Ana Clara gives me an ambiguous answer and asks me to loan her some yenom. Lião doesn’t answer but asks me to loan her the car. You may take it, dear. Pardon me, moreover, if I loan you a Corcel and not a jeep, everybody has to contribute what they can, understand. I dive into the golden bathtub with its golden salts. How startled Lião was when she got in and the water began spilling over on all sides, oh! Lião. I had calculated a bath with my amount of water. She begged my pardon (for the damage) while I saved the bathmat from the waterfall. When things settled down, she gazed smiling at the foam: “A bath like this every day would ruin anybody’s backbone. I came prepared for a hard life, understand.” About the masses themselves she started talking later on. I love these masses too, Lião, you needn’t look at me that way. A cerebral love, I recognize, what other kind could it be? If I don’t mix with them (they frighten me to death) at least I don’t play the snob like Annie does. Which is natural, she must have been dirt poor. If she were already driving her famous Jaguar do you think she’d lend your group so much as a bicycle? Imagine. She’ll pass us by like a transatlantic cruiser, her hipbones parting the waves. And her empty magazine-cover face, “Have we by chance met before?” A white satin turban with an emerald to match her green eyes, which are so much more beautiful than emeralds, she has beautiful eyes she’s beautiful all over. Oh Lord. I could