{"id":154873,"date":"2021-09-28T15:59:31","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T19:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=154873"},"modified":"2021-10-04T10:42:39","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T14:42:39","slug":"three-letters-for-beyond-the-walls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2021\/09\/28\/three-letters-for-beyond-the-walls\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Letters for beyond the Walls"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Caio Fernando Abreu. Photo courtesy of Adriana Franciosi.<\/p><\/div>\n

First Letter for beyond the Walls<\/strong>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Something happened to me. Something so strange that I still haven\u2019t figured out a way to talk about it clearly. When I finally know what it was, this strange thing, I will also know the way. Then I\u2019ll be clear, I promise. For you, for myself. As I\u2019ve always meant to be. But for now, please try to understand what I\u2019m trying to say.<\/p>\n

It is with significant effort that I write you. And that\u2019s not just a literary way of saying that writing means stirring the depths\u2014like Clarice, like Pessoa. In Carson McCullers it hurt physically, in a body made of flesh and veins and muscle. For it is in my body that writing hurts me now. In these two hands you cannot see on the keyboard, with their swollen veins, wounded, bursting, with wires and plastic tubes attached to needles inserted into veins inside which flow liquids they say will save me.<\/p>\n

It really hurts, but I will not stop. Not giving up is the best I can offer you and myself right now. Because this\u2014you ought to know\u2014this which could kill me, is the only thing I know that can save me. Maybe one day we will understand.<\/p>\n

For now, I am still somewhat caught up in that strange thing that happened to me. It\u2019s so vague, calling it that, the Strange Thing. But what could it have been? A disturbance, a vertigo. A maelstrom\u2014I love this word that spins like a living labyrinth, dragging thoughts and actions into its ever-faster-spinning, concentric, elliptical coils. Something like that happened in my head, and I had no control over the coils\u2019 magnetic endpoints, which swirled out in new spirals so that everything would begin again. Later, everyone was discreet, and I didn\u2019t ask too many questions, either\u2014equally discreet. I should have screamed, and said seemingly meaningless things, and thrown things everywhere, maybe hit people.<\/p>\n

I can only remember fragments of what happened to me\u2014fragments so broken that. That\u2014that there is nothing after the that<\/em> of fragments\u2014broken. But there was the metal gurney, with hooks that clamped around the person\u2019s body, and my two wrists were firmly bound by these metal hooks. My feet were naked in the cold dawn. I screamed for socks, for the love of God, for all that is most sacred, I wanted a pair of socks to cover my feet. Even bound like an animal on the metal gurney, I wanted to protect my feet. Then there was the round spaceship-like machine where they stuck my brain to see everything that was going on inside it. And they saw, but they didn\u2019t tell me anything.<\/p>\n

Now I see cold, white buildings beyond the barred windows of this place where I find myself. I don\u2019t know what will come next\u2014it hasn\u2019t been long since the Strange Thing, the disturbance that crashed upon me. I know you don\u2019t get what I\u2019m saying, but understand\u2014I don\u2019t either. The only thing I care about is writing these words (and every word hurts) so that later I can slip them into the pocket of one of my afternoon visitors. They\u2019re so sweet, bringing apples, magazines. I think they\u2019ll be able to carry this letter beyond the walls I see separating these barred windows here from those cold, white buildings.<\/p>\n

I fear these others who want to open up my veins. Maybe they\u2019re not so bad, maybe I just don\u2019t understand the way they are yet, the way everything is or has become\u2014myself included\u2014since the great Disturbance. All I can do is write\u2014that is the truth I relay, if I can get this letter beyond the walls. Listen well, I\u2019ll repeat it in your ear, many times: All I can do is write, all I can do is write.<\/p>\n

O Estado de S. Paulo<\/em>, August 21,1994<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Second Letter for beyond the Walls<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the road to hell I met many angels. Throngs, flocks in flight, phalanxes. Fat, baroque cherubs with their little asses out; shrill seraphim with pale faces and satin wings; stern archangels, swords drawn to confront evil. So on the road to hell, naturally, I met demons too. And the entire hierarchy of the celestial servants armed against them. Weapons of good, weapons of light: no pasar\u00e1n!<\/em><\/p>\n

Not as celestial as you\u2019d expect, these angels. The morning ones wear white uniforms, masks, caps, gloves to fight infection. And there are those that carry brooms, pails of disinfectant. They collect their wings and scrub the floor, change the sheets, serve coffee\u2014while others take blood pressure, temperature, auscultate chest and abdomen. Meanwhile, the sneering midafternoon angels wear jeans, black leather, bleached hair, bring candy, newspapers, clean socks, copies of Renato Russo\u2019s cassette celebrating the Stonewall victory, news of the night (where all the angels are gray), messages from other angels who couldn\u2019t make it because of imbroglios, or laziness, or they lovingly feel no need to prove their love.<\/p>\n

And when I\u2019m alone, later, I try to watch the purple coloring of twilight beyond the cypresses in the cemetery behind the walls, but the angle doesn\u2019t allow it, so I contemplate the fury of the overpass instead, but it doesn\u2019t matter\u2014ugly or beautiful, everything in life and movement balances. I open windows for the electric angels of the night. They come through antennas: phones, batteries, wires. Sometimes they look like Cl\u00e1udia Abreu (both of them\u2014my brave sister and the Gilberto Braga actress), but they can have Billie Holiday\u2019s ruined voice, lost on FM, or the deepening creases around Jos\u00e9 Mayer\u2019s bitter mouth. Men, women, you know\u2014angels have never had a sex. And some work on TV, sing on the radio. In the middle of the night, fed up with ruffling wings, lyres, lace, and cornets, I plummet into the plastic sleep of tubes piercing my chest. But still the angels insist, having come from the Other Side of Everything. I recognize them one by one: against Derek Jarman\u2019s blue background, to the sound of a Freddie Mercury song, choreographed by Nureyev, I identify Paulo Yutaka\u2019s Noh dance steps. Laughing with Galizia Alex Vallauri peeks out from behind The Roasted Chicken Queen<\/em>, and oh! How I\u2019d love to hug Vicente Pereira and have one more Santo Daime with Strazzer and one more trip to Rio with Nelson Pujol Yamamoto. Wagner Serra pedals his bike beside Cyril Collard, while Wilson Barros rails against Peter Greenaway, with N\u00e9stor Perlongher\u2019s support. To the sound of Lory Finocchiaro, Herv\u00e9 Guibert continues his endless letter to the friend who did not save his life, while Reinaldo Arenas slowly runs a hand through his light hair.<\/p>\n

So many, my God, those who have gone. I wake with Cazuza\u2019s suggestive voice repeating in my cold ear, \u201cWhoever has a dream doesn\u2019t dance, my love.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wake, and say yes. And everything starts again.<\/p>\n

At times they all seem to be coming from the banks of the Narmada River, where the blind singer boy, the ugliest woman in India, and Gita Mehta\u2019s wealthy monk strode. At times, I think that they are all dogs carrying badges in their teeth, their front paws burned by cigarette butts so that they dance better, like in that story that Lygia Fagundes Telles sent me. And at the same time, I think how whenever I see or read Lygia, I am stunned by beauty.<\/p>\n

So I repeat, that which I thought was the road to hell is strewn with angels. That which seemed dismally cursed held a thread of light. On this narrow thread, stretched like a tightrope, we all balance. Umbrella held high, one foot in front of the other, fearless dancers at the end of this millennium hover above the abyss.<\/p>\n

Down below, a web of wings cushions our fall.<\/p>\n

O Estado de S. Paulo<\/em>, September 4, 1994<\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last Letter for beyond the Walls<\/strong><\/p>\n

Porto Alegre. Happy Port\u2014I suppose you found the two previous letters obscure, enigmatic, like those in almanacs of old. I\u2019ve always enjoyed mystery, but I enjoy truth more. And since I think it\u2019s superior, I am writing more clearly for you now. I feel neither guilt, nor shame, nor fear.<\/p>\n

I returned from Europe in June feeling sick. Fevers, sweats, weight loss, spots on my skin. I found a doctor and, in his absence, took the Test: That One. After an agonizing week, the result: HIV positive. The doctor had gone to Yokohama, Japan. Test in hand, I spent three days normally, telling my family and friends. On the third night, with friends over, feeling safe, I went crazy. I don\u2019t know the details. Maybe I don\u2019t remember out of self-protection. I was taken to the ER at Em\u00edlio Ribas Hospital with a suspected brain tumor. The next day I woke up from a drugged dream in a bed in the infectious diseases ward, my sister entering the room. Then there were twenty-seven days inhabited by frights and angels\u2014doctors, nurses, friends, family, not to mention our own\u2014and a current of love and energy so strong that love and energy welled up inside of me, until they became a singular thing. That from without and that from within united in pure faith.<\/p>\n

Life handed me misery, and I didn\u2019t know that the body (\u201cmy brother ass,\u201d as Saint Francis of Assisi would say) could be so frail and feel such pain. Some mornings I cried, looking through the window at the white walls of the cemetery across the road. But at night, from the right angle, when the neon lights lit up, Doutor Arnaldo Avenue looked like Boulevard Voltaire in Paris, where there\u2019s a Sufi angel who watches over me lives. In that moment everything felt right. Free of resentment or disgust, just the immense agony of that thing, Life, inside and outside the windows, beautiful and fleeting like butterflies who survive only one day after leaving the cocoon. For there is a cocoon breaking open slowly, a dry, abandoned husk. After that, the flight of Icarus chasing Apollo. And the fall?<\/p>\n

I welcome every day. I tell you because I don\u2019t know how to be anything if not personal, shameless, and being so I must tell you: I have changed but remain the same. I know you understand.<\/p>\n

I also know that others think only immoral people get this science fiction virus. For them, remember Cazuza: \u201cWe seek mercy, Lord, mercy for the cowardly and narrow-minded.\u201d But to you, I humbly disclose: what matters is Dear Lady Life, covered in silver and gold and blood and the moss of time and sometimes whipped cream and confetti from some carnival\u2014revealing her horrific and dazzling face little by little. We must accept it. And kiss her on the lips. Strangely, I\u2019ve never been so well. Armed with Saint George\u2019s weapons. The walls are still white, but now they are the walls of a Spanish colonial house, which makes me think of Garc\u00eda Lorca; the gate can be opened anytime to come or go; there is a palm tree, and pink roses in the garden. This place is called Menino Deus, as sung by Caetano, and I always knew the port was here. You never know how safe it is, but\u2014in the words of Ana C., who stops me at the window\u2019s edge\u2014since you can\u2019t anchor a ship in space, it is anchored in this port. Porto Alegre. Happy Port. Happy or not: Ave <\/em>Lya Luft, Ave <\/em>Iber\u00ea Camargo, Quintana and Luciano Alabarse, che<\/em>!<\/p>\n

I watch Dercy Gon\u00e7alvez, on Hebe<\/em>; I attend Gabriel Vilella\u2019s The Deceased<\/em> at the Teatro S\u00e3o Pedro; Maria Padilha tells me previously undisclosed stories about Vicente Pereira; I split sushi with the Ant\u00f4nia Bivar actress Yolanda Cardoso; I pray for Cuba; I listen to Bola de Neve; I burst out laughing with D\u00e9a Martins; I use all four hands to draw with Laurinha; I read Zuenir Ventura to understand Rio; I wear the red star of the Worker\u2019s Party on my chest (\u201cWho knows?\u201d); I open the I Ching<\/em> at random: Sh\u00eang<\/em>, the Ascension; I never miss my telenovela \u00c9ramos Seis<\/em> and I am grateful, grateful, grateful.<\/p>\n

Life screams. And the struggle continues.<\/p>\n

O Estado de S. Paulo<\/em>, September 18, 1994<\/p>\n

\u2014Translated from the Portuguese by Ed Moreno<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of the most influential and original Brazilian writers of short fiction of the eighties and nineties, Caio Fernando Abreu is the author of several story collections set and published during the military dictatorship and the AIDS<\/small> epidemic in Brazil. He has been awarded major literary prizes, including the prestigious Jabuti Prize for Fiction a total of three times. He died of AIDS<\/small> in Porto Alegre in 1996. He was forty-seven years old.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ed Moreno is a writer and translator from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a Lambda Literary Fellow and the recipient of a Bread Loaf Translators\u2019 Conference scholarship. His work has appeared in <\/em>Words without Borders, the <\/em>Nashville Review, <\/em>Foglifter, <\/em>Blithe House Quarterly, and <\/em>Cleis Press\u2019s \u201cBest Gay\u201d series. He is currently writing his first novel.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThree Letters for beyond the Walls,\u201d by Caio Fernando Abreu, translated by Ed Moreno, excerpted from <\/em>Cu\u00eder: Queer Brazil<\/a>\u00a0published by Two Lines Press, 2021, as part of the Calico series. Reprinted with permission from the estate of Caio Fernando\u00a0Abreu\u00a0and Ed Moreno.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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