We faced the situation with some elegance, as long as the dinner lasted. I listened as she spoke of her new professional prospects (the official theme of our meeting), and forced myself to pay attention, make comments that were, well, if not intelligent, at least pertinent. She, meanwhile, struggled to sound spontaneous, suffering the artificiality of the subject, however important it really was, in the light of what was not being said. It was difficult for us both to hold back the gestures, the looks… not reach out to touch a hand, the face, the hair. Difficult not remember everything that had happened in that short space of time. Even so, barely restrained, those gestures, looks and memories acquired a daunting, subterranean presence. It was extremely hard to cool the affection, shake off the sadness and the anger, not get lost in nostalgia and, finally, not surrender our bodies, now hollow, to a parallel existence prolonging those happy moments we had decided to consign to the past.     

The first time I saw her was at the opening of an exhibition. She was crossing a corridor lined both sides with paintings, her head moving in slow-motion, this way and that, on the pivot of her neck, in perfect transitions; she gazed at the paintings without flinching, moving slowly, but in a firm straight line, unhurried. Her majestic expression was framed by scintillating blonde locks, like a beautiful crown. Her strong, even harsh beauty, with her imposing nose and chin, allied with the potent way she wore her hair, always gave me a feeling of unworthiness, of vulnerability, ready to scuttle away into my own insignificance. But this first slap of beauty, a beauty so distant and threatening, was offset by her pale skin, the welcoming, tender whiteness of milk; and by her flesh, which from a distance I reckoned soft, creamy, fresh as cologne; but most of all, by her clear green eyes, contrasting starkly against her dark eyebrows, hinting at a humanizing solitude deep inside. All of this somewhat softened the impression of hostility and distance. I was disjointed too, though in a different way. My automatic, awestruck surrender surmounted my fear.         

It was an ambiguous dinner; an amicable separation, an end/beginning, full of conflicting feelings: here, right here, of love and guilt; in her, love and anger. Not to mention a common dose of suffering. Watching her there, on the other side of the table, I admired her like a fading landscape, a sunset on the horizon, something slipping away from me, being slowly erased after a glorious day.        

It had been decided that we would not be lovers. 

She chose the restaurant, in Horto, her part of the city. She lived nearby, on Nina Rodrigues Street. At the very beginning, when I first took her address, the street name brought to mind a caricature of some prim 1920s type, petulant, seductive and flighty, in a shiny, frilly dress, sequined skull-cap or plumed tiara atop a small, almost childlike head, a little red mouth, well-drawn, and a beauty spot at the corner of her upper-lip, chainsmoking cigarettes on those long filters. Red nails, of course, her manicured fingers pinching a flute of French champagne. Trying to be funny, I described this image to her later that distant day, when I went to pick her up at her house. She laughed out of politeness before explaining that the real Mr. Nina Rodrigues was what could be classified as a “nineteenth-century intellectual bulldog”. Translation: a Francophile reactionary convinced of the inferiority of the Brazilian race and doubtful that the country would ever amount to anything…   

Of course she was neither racist nor reactionary, in fact, her consciousness was comfortably installed on the left (“In other words, I live on a street that pays tribute to a lunatic”). And there was nothing at all coquettish about her either. In short: it was a big mistake telling her what the name of her street had made me think of. I had foolishly run the risk of offending her twice, not to mention given a totally unnecessary demonstration of my general cultural ignorance.      

It was drizzling outside. A waiter was keeping our beer glasses busy. In the restaurant, thin air. It was suddenly my turn to speak. Off I went, pretending that I had some retrospective understanding of the two or three times I’d been in the same professional dilemma, whether or not to delve entirely into one’s career, put it above everyone and everything else. I said I was probably the wrong person to listen to, as I had always turned from the challenge in favor of a more, shall we say, “horizontalized” lifestyle, despite my innermost sense of humiliation before productive society. She laughed at my self-deprecation, she found it enchanting, and I laughed along with her, happy to have pleased her.    

I never imagined I’d let someone like that go. Especially not when I was still crazy about her. After this passion, which for all the various reasons had been lived in such a short span of time, squeezed into so few opportunities, into brief windows in our daily lives, even now, at the end, this unnatural end, we still didn’t know each other all that well. Basic elements of my biography were news to her, and even some very old jokes recovered a surprising freshness. As for her, it was endless learning on my part. Temperament and beauty together are too much to commit to memory. Only the intensity of our affair was capable of stretching the span of time, creating the sensation that the beginning was something distant and that we understood each other very well.      

The lapses in concentration were clear indication that while one spoke that night, the other only pretended to listen. In fact, we’d be planning ahead to the next topic, just not to let the conversation flag. The purpose of our dinner was precisely that: between us, the decision had been made to keep the conversation alive.   

So many decisions had been made…

“A load of people who didn’t know each other, at a sidewalk table of some dingy bar Downtown, listening to various lousy songs at once and exposed to cold blasts of wind” – that was how her e-mail described that night, after the vernissage where we had first met. It was a few days later and I was already back in São Paulo. It was a shock when the message arrived from Rio, blowing away a whole afternoon of work. She’d been sitting at the other end of the table, talking to other people about other things, it was only when we were leaving, taking a ride in the same car, that we managed to exchange a couple of words. I didn’t think I had made any kind of impression.   

We had felt so much between that night and this. This waste… But the end donned the first of its masks. Whether to go on, or to break it off, I was never quite sure, but I had to tell “the truth”. I admitted that I was caught between her and another, four hundred kilometers away, likewise beautiful and strong, though an altogether different beauty and strength. I thought that by explaining that duplicity she would understand why I was totally incapable of seeing even a month ahead, much less envision a long term future. Incapable, therefore, of answering that dreaded question that had been put to me so often by my closest friends over the course of those two interminable months: “So then, which of them do you want?”    

I was being sincere, but she? How would she react? What would speak louder, her sense of self-worth or a generous understanding of all things human, despite the value we may possess?  Sharpened features or saddened eyes? Perhaps a glass of beer splashed in my face? What would it be?  

“Never lie to me”. It was good to hear that. She seemed to appreciate my sincerity, sense my need to recompose. I think she really did understand my torment at being caught between two loves that can never be integrated, two irreconcilable biographical promises. In fact, “integral” is an adjective with a double meaning. We met a few times after that, with me openly pulled in two directions, but she couldn’t go on that way, and I had to admit it was the healthiest alternative. If I was crazy – because being torn between two women is the most acute form of schizophrenia – at least she was capable of making a rational decision. Of course, the best thing to do at first was to stifle the passion, preserve the friendship and the respect.  Salvage “something good”. Of course. If she couldn’t accept being my part-time lover, nor could I have handled the contradiction indefinitely. Not to mention the betrayal, as I could absolutely never tell the third point in the triangle (the lie being an unconscious admission of preference, my cruel proof of love.

*

Looking back at it now, it’s even funny how naive I was to really believe that the fact that I was torn between the two was the source of the impasse, of my paralysis. To find myself desiring things I didn’t believe in, speculating on realities that, if materialized, would bring only pain and complication: it really was funny, as I tended to underestimate my capabilities, not the contrary. On the other hand, I’d had my fair share of tribulations on that score. I should have been smarter. Should have. But I failed to see the real tragedy hidden in it all. I still find it hard to accept, even today.   

The other in the other city – at the end of the day, the one I lived in -, however much I loved her, was only a pretext for that forced contention, that tense dinner and the awkwardness between us. Having another woman was a sad, ugly reason, but one that played subliminally with a hope; the bond, after all, might break. The distance between the two points on the map, however, would never disappear… The most concrete impediment in itself. Insurmountable, when you consider the professional demands that awaited her there, the reconstruction of my life here, in short, there was a gaping furnace both here and there, our insatiable routines in the nation’s two largest metropolises. I kept kidding myself for as long as I could, but reason, pure and simple, or cold and calculating, after sixty days with her, and fifteen years after our parting, has shown that the best thing to do was to have stifled the first new connection with my old fantasy of building a home.    

It was the old tale of two cities; once again at the best and at the worst of times, in the age of wisdom and in the age of recklessness, in the springtime of hope and in the winter of despair; once again we had it all before us, and absolutely nothing. The same as ever.   

The reason was four hundred kilometers of distance, no matter how hard she resisted, clinging to the existence of the other as the chief impediment. However firmly she might have denied it, claiming to be willing to overcome the boundaries of space. So convinced was she that she even managed to forestall the realization in me. But one day… what about the routine? What about the nights having dinner in front of the TV, the casual company that makes the real difference? What about the aggregate value of the day-by-day?  

I was getting old. Not cynical or conformist, just impatient. I couldn’t stand projecting my happiness into the distance any longer, whether in space or in time; or even into that other city. 

One good son-uv-a-bitch, that Nina Rodrigues! 

“Where do you want to go now?”

That question, which she uttered in the car as we were buckling our seat belts after leaving the restaurant, though throwaway in intent (an art in itself in that kind of situation), caused a shudder inside my head. I immediately thought of a metaphysical bed. Was there some blessed remedy for the emotional instability of my generation? If only I had one, every time I went to bed with someone, leaving an indelible mark on my life…    

I smiled and sighed: our original levity was committed. I suggested a walk on the beach. Horto is close to Leblon… 

As we drove there, my good performance over dinner, thanks to which I had not only resisted impulses that would have certainly hurt us even more, but also managed to make her laugh at our predicament, was beginning to make my stomach churn. I had not spurned it, far from it, I had lost it. Lost my lightness. I was becoming rigid, silent, drifting off at intervals. That ambiguous night, a synonym of ending or the last chance to start again, was drawing to a close. When would we see each other again? And how would it be?  

She helped out, making conversation. But when we reached the shore I was still afraid of the hypothesis that had welled inside me. My eyes took refuge in the view of the silent city, the fresh night. On the asphalt, traces of rain. Our closeness in the car made it impossible for me to relax. I wasn’t secure, not even with the seatbelt holding us back from a collision. So close, but necessarily distant. I watched her small white hands on the steering wheel.  In a dive, I saw the seafoam shimmering in the dark.   

What was I running from anyway? The loneliness of having a girlfriend in another city? What loneliness was that? The loneliness of seeing my hometown transform without transforming along with it? What loneliness was that? The loneliness of seeing my parents age from such a distance? Of seeing my childhood slip further and further away? What loneliness was that? The loneliness of a man who can’t tell which is the woman of his life? What loneliness was that? The loneliness of the passage of time? What loneliness was that? Loneliness faced with the expectancy of death? What loneliness was that? The loneliness of a life not lived to the full? What loneliness was that? The loneliness that comes of the awareness that a single lifetime is far too little (especially when you love two women)? What loneliness was that? The loneliness inherent in the fact that you have to make choices, with destiny narrowing further and further? What do all these forms of loneliness actually consist of? In the loneliness of having arrived at such a point?     

And if beyond the other woman, beyond the other city, there was a correspondence between those two women, those two cities, and between my past and my present? In that case, the third face in the drama would coil various dimensions of life around me, like those monstrous snakes that squeeze and suffocate, crushing our poor little bones.   

I looked out to sea and imagined what it would be like to live in Rio again. We strolled, almost in complete silence. The waves broke before us in a gentle flux. Wet cars passed by. She, lovely, more natural than me. 

The first time I’d gone into her room – sixty days, three hours and twenty-three minutes earlier, to be precise -, I noticed the strange mementos she kept of places she’d visited: bottled Parisian air; a piece of the Wall in a glass case; a little bag of salt from Cabo Frio, a pink bag, at that; mist from Amsterdam, also bottled; smells of Portugal in an obscure libretto; the feather of a frigate bird from Búzios, and so on. The female passion for delicateness.   

“And from Rio? You’ve nothing? 

“Do you need something?”

She could also be tough, but it was she who made me sit down beside her, on a street bench. Our gentle way of prolonging the sadness. The fresh night, the breeze, the perfume of the sea, the white sand, the traces of the light in the distance. With such beauty before me and beside me, knowing that I could never have it – that I could at best admire it every now and then, in passing, in the spare time of my spare time -, I couldn’t hold back  the sigh, one of those heart-pinching sighs that empty the chest and make the head drop. She smiled and asked me, half affectionately, half condescendingly:  

“What’s wrong my boy?”

As I tried to find a reply (she was six years my junior), the words popped out of my mouth: 

“I’m struggling…”

I just didn’t want to hurt her any more, and I couldn’t, alone against so many solitudes, against the minimalist and radical massacre of time, love someone at a distance. And anyway, what was the point in being happy at weekends if this would cut me off from my world as I had recreated it, far from there? If this happiness, even accidentally, should dilute my recent biography into a nostalgic illusion of times past, in truth unlived, unrealistically desired.   

“Still struggling?”

We went back to her apartment for tea. The sense of parting throbbed beneath the friendship we were pretending to have started. I didn’t have the strength for much, never mind resist. In the absence of a remotely satisfactory closing, she was deliberately stretching everything out. I couldn’t imagine what might that have been satisfactory, but she was waiting with a little more dignity.

When we went inside and she turned on the sitting-room lamp, I revisited the environment for what I reckoned was probably the last time – that fake friendship was never going to work, I thought, gripped in a moment of pessimism. I had thought I had already said my goodbyes to those walls. In the semi-darkness, the place opened its eyes under heavy lids and stretched and yawned. I stood there as she went into the kitchen to boil some water, and I felt loved, welcomed, but a cheat, hurting someone I loved. Why was she being so kind? She crossed the sitting-room and lit an aromatic candle. She brushed passed me on her way to put on some music. She went into her room and came back with her body loose beneath a long white camisole, wearing nothing else. She was like a fairy, the enchanting fairy of a distant city which belonged to my past, and perhaps to my future, but not, with the saddest certainty, to my present. That woman was not supposed to still exist.       

I could have suggested that she leave behind her burgeoning career. But in our day, people no longer make that kind of proposal. I could have moved back to Rio, but would I have managed to muster enough generosity to love her even then?  

Is it these life decisions that structure and determine happiness? Or, like the music trickling in the half-light, like an audible caress, is it the little things within everybody’s reach that bring inner peace? … the delicate guitar, the soft voice, the bossa nova way of walking, talking, moving that changes our actions and perception, the view from the window, arms outspread … the simplicities that transcend and survive the structural changes.. the moment that can never be repeated and that wasn’t planned, the hot tea, served in ceramic cups she had made herself (another of her talents), the loving face turned toward me, two green points shining in my favor, the flickering candle, the mountain’s presence, the scent of sea on our clothes, the smell of the forest, the fact of having been born in a given city, a given country, living a certain life in another place, and making no excuses for it, for nothing, to no-one, because there’s no point, because it doesn’t change anything, it never stops: it’s all part of a much larger cogwheel.   

It was no longer possible to restrain the gestures, the looks; nothing. And our bodies, finally, could take their leave.  

This piece originally appeared in the short story anthology Aquela canção, Publifolha, SP, 2005.