The Girl in the Photograph. Lygia Fagundes Telles

Dr. Hachibe? The ass.”

      It wasn’t yenom he wanted, it was really money. Bastard. Group analysis. Just imagine, how could I be open with those lousy pricks? she thought rolling her hair around her finger. Either they complain about their sex life all the time or hash over their doubts, shall I become a queer? Shan’t I? What the hell, who cares?

      She rolled herself up, closed her hands and hid them against her breasts. Very easy to attribute everything to one’s childhood, he had wide shoulders this one here. How shitty, that Dr. Batista went on a trip and that crazy doctor had to take his place, he’s worse off than I am. What was he called that fetus? He looked like a fetus. A long name but short legs. Legs and all the rest. A sorry excuse for a man. Shit I got worse with him. A crazy.

      “He didn’t charge but then how could he?” she asked massaging the back of her neck. “After him I started treatment with an old man, so old he was falling apart and the whole time he talked about his wife who had terminal cancer and was going to die. What did I have to do with that? I went there to relax a little and I had to listen to the old man in love with his wife who was dying of cancer. I felt sorry but at the same time I got mad as hell because even for that he charged. Childhood. In reality everything becomes simpler when you discover way back there some aunt that wanted to poke her fingers in your eyes. With me they wanted to poke other things in other places but didn’t I get out all by myself? So. They all stayed there in the cellar. Only me.”

      She stretched out on her stomach. She was taking things, right. But who could stand anything without some trips and a shrink to talk to?

      “Who?” she asked staring fixedly at the pillow. “Even those flowers with the broken stems. Didn’t even they need wire? So. Life is hard to put up with. Bending under from problems. But next year, my sweetie, a new life. Do you hear me love? A new life.”

      Married to money she wouldn’t need any more help, shit, analysis. No more problems in sight. Free. She would go back and open her canceled registration, she would be a brilliant student. The books she would read. The discoveries about herself. About others.

      “Even those things that we … I grew rich from the experience, didn’t I? A bourgeoise intellectual. Very chic. And that terrorist, still so underdeveloped. Worthless talk, my sweetie. Freedom is security. If I feel secure, I am free.”

      She drank from Max’s glass. He was sleeping with an affable expression, his hand raised in the gesture of one who invites some visitor to come closer. With a bag of gold, you could be cured easily. Or could you? Even if she went through one or two crises, what would it matter if they took place inside a Jaguar? The hard thing was to fall apart in a public bus. And Lorena saying that it was some minor French authoress who wrote that. Why minor? Not at all. Shit, you can’t be minor if you discover something like that. I agree, it’s not very original. But it’s like the story of the egg that nobody could make stand on end, very easy very easy, but nobody thought of it until after Galileo. Wasn’t it Galileo?

      She shook her friend.

      “Max, answer me, isn’t it better to trip out in a fancy car than in a bus on its way to the outskirts? The hoods pistol-whipping us to death inside?”

      So. In December I’ll get myself sewed up and in January. Waldo will make the dress. I want white. Medieval style, pearls, a string of white pearls. Enormous ones.

      “Max, what time is it? Your watch, where’s your watch?”

      “I bought a Swiss one that has a little movie theater, I press one button and get my horoscope, press another one and get my bank balance and the day I’m going to be betrayed, neat, hanh? What a watch! The trips, Bunny! The red button is for a five hour dose, the blue one gives you a day-long trip with transfers included, I get off the train and onto another one. And the black button, eeeh, what a button. What fear! The crazy woman in white comes with a black armband, she comes in mourning, the old bag.”

      “Who did you sell it to, answer me, Max!”

      “To my grandpa.”

      I pound his chest but he bites my neck. Not my neck! I try to say but I’m laughing so much I can’t talk all I can do is clap my hand over his mouth, and then he bites my hand. My hand is OK, but you can’t bite my neck because the scaly one will see it right away what’s that mark? He asks about everything, wants to know everything while he keeps eating the crust of the bread, sickening peeled that way. “I’ll have dinner at Nona’s house and then we can go out to Zuza’s afterward.” As if I would get really excited about the idea. Taking his fiancée to a joint like that. Why didn’t he invite me to have dinner at Nona’s house, why? Bastard. Always flaunting his family in my face.

      “I don’t have any family,” I said. “They all died in an airplane crash. An international flight. They were coming back from Scotland where they had gone to spend Christmas with my uncles.” Ah, your uncles live in Scotland? They used to. They all died when one night that lake monster rose up and swallowed my uncles and cousins and their house and all. A Scottish monster, Lorena knows its name, she knows all about these monsters. Rotten chic, to be swallowed by a monster in a Scottish lake. “There was no one left no one, no one, no one,” I repeat and drink out of the glass Max hands me. I drink it all down. To the bitter end, wasn’t that a movie? Where did I run across that title?

      “I want to buy an island, Bunny. You know it isn’t hard to buy an island? There’s gobs of islands around.”

      And he has enough family to fill up a ship. The hell with them. The hell with them because the corset is melting there was a bitch of a corset closing off my lungs. Now I can breathe, live. Shit it’s good to live. Who said that. I’m beautiful brilliant I’m going to be on ten magazine covers. Super-important magazines. Success. Leave the lousy others behind howling with envy. Miss nha-nha is right one needs to breathe deeply all the time and then you feel fine. He could have invited me the bastard. That Nona with her little leather house slippers. All the grandchildren dying to show off how rich they are and her. She could have invited me. Aren’t I his fiancée? It doesn’t matter next year stop. It’s close.

      “Dragon-fly wings in green sauce, hanh? Fabulous that restaurant. Lightning-bug sauce blinking off and on, flick, flick! Hanh?”

      I turn into a Roman matron. Respect I want respect. That’s what Mother Alix doesn’t understand. A saint. I’ll do everything you say my saint. A sainted grandmother. Lots of milk very good lots of milk and that medicine and I beat my breast never again, never again! We’ll see about it tomorrow. If you love me.

      “The saints are transparent just like water. There used to be lots of tubes of water, all different colors. At that chemical lab where I worked. I used to clean and the little old Jew who liked me would come up and give me an apron to put on and let me play with the tubes. He would explain to me about the colors blue red green. The water would change colors. The smell. I still remember the smell but this was a smell I liked because it had nothing to do with people. The little glass tubes changing color just like us. Look, love, I drink them and I turn into a rainbow, blue, yellow, ay! Don’t touch me or I’ll spill. I used to know a song, how did it go?”

      “She taught me to dance. Madame Lamas. Mama wanted us to learn to dance because of this or because of that, Madame Lamas, that’s it, my little sister and I learned everything. Fun, hanh? All day long there were little parties, a crowd of little girls and parties. We used to dance like crazy, Madame Lamas taught me, La Madame Lamas. Good manners, oh, what a nice boy, you should have seen it.”

      “I love you, love.” I can howl with pleasure but no. Never mind.

      “I saw in a crystal window … upon a proud pedestal … how does that go? I have a passion for that song, I get hysterical, here, come on, sing, in a crystal window, a charming doll …”

      She doesn’t understand because she is a saint. In reality I grow clean here with him. Cleansed from all those things, cleansed. Don’t you see how happy I am? Not even when I had analysis with that Turkish guy, what was his name? It doesn’t matter. I lied about everything. Good for me. Good night and we’ll tell the truth. We don’t