Monica,
Seeing you at Lojas Nipon was a big moment for me. I have been alone of late with no one to talk to. I was glad to meet your little one and seeing you is always a marvelous experience for me. You are so very maternal and caring that I always wonder how you ended up a scientist: they tend to be a little cold as a species although heaven knows that Marilia isn't.
"If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife." When I married Dadau I thought I was home free and that there was no chance of problems in that she is a veritable dragon after having been a school principal and supervisora de ensino and is also rather long in the tooth at 66. Did I ever get blindsided when she turned out to be anything but respectable and nothing but indifferent and autocratic. Our marital agreement has meant less and less to her as the years have passed and evidently my condition has deteriorated due to her constant nagging and relentless abuse and her unquestionable infidelity. She's horrible. Where does she find men willing to do anything with her? I still can't figure it.
However, in addition to this marital fiasco, more or less along the lines of some others I have been in the middle of, I have a much more important problem to relate that you should be able to understand. I've known Bel for 20 years. We've gone through more together than I have in my marriages. I know more about her life, I suppose, than anyone else having heard about her relationships in great detail even for a therapist. I think I've lost Bel and I'm desparate and heartbroken. How I cry. It's not like she knows I love her but seeing her a couple times a year has always meant more to me than I am willing to talk about. I think I must have some Portuguese blood somewhere or maybe I'm just a grandmother at heart. I look at next year and I don't have those two or three hours with Bel to look forward to, the only time I find anything I'm particularly pleased about in that when I'm with Bel I feel like there is somebody there that matters. She is a deeply suffered being and that's what I love about her and how her beauty has grown over the years. The last time I saw her it was puppy love: she was so lovely and sweet, my dear moleca. This was before she went to China. When she got back I invited her to see my artistic project on the web (I would like to invite you too) and then later I asked her to come see my house and garden and bring her pictures and listen to my music with me. She refused even to visit me. I am devastated. "She drives me crazy, like no one else...."
When I first moved into my house, I invited Bel to come see me and Dadau was here with us. After she left, Dadau said, "You two were lovers, weren't you?" I was kind of thrilled and tickled and delighted because I felt like somebody else at least could see how I feel: the problem was it wasn't Bel.
In any case, I don't have many people to talk to now and hope you will forgive me for sharing this with you. I need a friend. Enclosed are some letters I have sent to my best friend, my daughter, who is in New York. I'm pretty much alone following the isolation arising out of "The Night of the Dragon". In Javanese there is an expression, djago mlil�, meaning a cock who is afraid of hens. At this point that is definitely a place to look for me. I hope you find the letters interesting and that The Project will also please you: the feedback I have gotten has been very good.
Yours truly,
David
Dear Yara,
"Time passes slowly out here in the country..." Anyway, my existence has taken on a certain amount of new interest in the sense that your mother and I are now divorced thanks to the intervention of Clarisse, my heroine. I can now say that I don't hate all lawyers and at least for the moment it is really true. She sat through the waiting (3 hours) with us and the hearing as well. Sweet girl. I'm definitely in love again and I bow to her hand!
Elenor and Madalena went as witnesses and remain kind of delightfully off-the-wall. Elenor told us that she no longer goes out in the car with Cornelio without an established destination because they went out for lunch one Sunday and ended up in Santos. She's cute. With both Carol and Cornelio physicians, she is a card-carrying hypochondriac and is sure she has every disease in the book and then some. Funny.
Madalena interviewed me about my garden in her incredibly intense fashion which you have to experience to understand and wanted to know if I had planted maracuja or manjeiric�o. I told her I have lots of madresilva (everywhere) and damas da noite and belladona (datura) and gardenia and lemon trees and mahogany trees and I forgot to mention my pau brazil but she stopped her investigation with the mahogany trees. I don't know why. She's always interesting. She then warned me that damas da noite is poisonous and I told her Belladona is even more so. She wanted me to be careful about the dogs eating it. Okay. Helena is now playing in only one band and is finishing school. The time passed.
Anyway, Dadau's "delusions of grandeur" have been even worse than usual of late. She is now in Mexico. She left on Wednesday and I was lying on the bed at about 4 in the afternoon waiting for her to finish packing to take her to her travelling companion's apartment to share a taxi to the airport. She threw a couple of Sala S�o Paulo pamphlets on my stomach and told me that somebody might want these: put them in the drawer. I threw them on the floor to be tended to later rather than get up and she got enraged and protested "Que desaforo!" To punish my impudence, she took the remote control to Mexico (or hid it somewhere here) and the television doesn't work without it. I sure can pick the women.
Anyway in celebration of her absence I wrote the following note to Bel Melaragno. I mentioned Bel some time ago and you denied remembering her. She is a geneticist at EPM. We went to her sitio in S�o Jo�o da Boa Vista in our new Lada. You had a dipila��o crisis since you were going to go swimming and your legs needed attention so we went running off into town looking for a depila�ao service. The city boasts a unit of Neurotics Anonomous which seems an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonomous.
We had waffles and there was an American couple there. The man was a physicist who helped you with your physics (remember how you hated physics) though I'm pretty sure you didn't like him or his wife, a geneticist like Bel. Very superior people from Philadelphia. Her name is Hope; they're Jewish and Jews are always somewhat putoffish among strangers and in private actually -- remember I became a Jew when I married one some years ago His name is Tom. I kind of thought we insignificantes (from below the salt) were just there to provide them with someone to talk to in their own language, a courtesy of their hostess.
It seemed like everybody was very definitely better than us. Her two daughters, Julia and Vera, were both, to my eye, a little stuck up. After all this was their sitio and a big place it is. I have had a long (almost 20 years) relationship with Bel as teacher and editor. Some days I think I even might like her but I'm sure I'm not good enough for her so evidently it doesn't matter. After all, she has a job and a sitio and everything.
Love,
David
Sweet Bel,
"Lucky at love" is definitely not my song.
On Thursday 26 October I finally cut the marital knot with Ari officially at Foro Jo�o Mendes. I was not really expecting it to influence my experience much but was I ever wrong. It is as if my disputed relationship with Ari has clouded everything and carries over into my current affliction, my ever so obviously misconstrued marriage with Dadau: she does as she pleases.
Just to give you an idea, Dadau and I have had sex once this year and I got gonorrheia afterwards. I was dizzy with the four weeks of antibiotic treatment when I saw you in July. At the moment she has travelled again (as happens every year -- last year it was Russia, Norway and Holland) and is in Mexico for a couple of weeks, doing what besides tourism I don't know but evidently it's none of my business. Some marriage! She leaves me out of her plans and (except for the initial couple of weeks after we established our marriage through a ring exchange and vows) always has while insisting on double standards: she does as she pleases and I do as she orders. If I don't obey I have to be punished. We have had so many arguments that I eventually just gave up. She evidently doesn't care how she makes me feel in any positive sense and insists on infuriating me by doing the same irritating things over and over.
For example, I hate backseat drivers; when I drive I don't want anyone distracting me. But to this day, after ever so many arguments, she still insists on giving me "palpites" at every traffic light. Nowadays I just let her drive. Forget it.
Dadau is something of a dominatrix and has left me with little: constant abuse, constant nagging, constant idiocy are very tiring. She, like Ari, never really gives satisfaction and the relationship is exceptionally draining. The two stories that most adequately describe us are Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, in which she is the wicked stepmother with me as her slave and the wicked witch with me in her cage, which gives an idea of how incredibly uncaring I find her: "My name is Lucas, I live on the second floor..."
Anyway, not having heard from you for some time, I'm wondering how you are. I would like to invite you to come out and see the garden (which is pretty spectacular in this season) and hear Wasp Honey. You could also bring your China pictures. I want to see the marble houseboat and hear about it along with your impressions about the Great Wall. Please give me a day's notice because the maid took this decade off. I would love to see you and hope you will come.
Yours truly,
David
As Quasimodo (Charles Laughton) commented to the gargoyle in the final scene of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (with a heavy lisp) "Why was I not made of stone like thee?"
Love,
David
Agosto de 1999
Dadau,
Vamos olhar a coisa...
Voc� sabe muito bem se comportar comigo. Voc� consegue me tratar bem quando voc� est� afim. Porem voc� tem mostrado nada de interesse em fazer isso faz muito tempo. Voc� pula de �puxa saco� (lindinho, benzinho, etc.) para �enche saco� sem passar um minuto no meio em sentimento honesto. Quantas gritarias que nos j� passamos enquanto suas provoca��es tem me deixado enraivecido?
Sexta-feira antes que a gente saiu para ir comer truta, voc� exibiu seu lado escuro e me provocou sem parar p�r uma hora. Voc� continuou, perturbando minha paz de maneira incrivelmente desrespeitosa. Se sua id�ia � que para o resto da minha vida eu vou ficar sujeito a esta inf�mia, voc� est� enganada. N�o vou. Mesma amando voc�, eu n�o preciso da companhia de algu�m quem me desafia, me provoca para se divertir, quem tira minha paz e me deixa flutuando em f�ria.
Quando eu mudei para esta casa, eu estabeleci regras aqui que eu contei para voc�. Sexta-feira voc� violou todas a regras. Sem duvida voc� se divertiu mas voc� me perdeu. Eu nunca quero ser tratado desta maneira de novo e j� que voc� recusa assumir responsabilidade pelo que voc� faz, j� que voc� recusa mudar, eu n�o estou afim de ficar perto de voc�.
Eu j� expliquei tudo de maneira clara para voc� sobre seu v�cio, seu habito de machucar outros para se elevar a custo deles. N�o adiantou nada. Voc� continua fazendo a mesma coisa e nem demonstra interesse em mudar. Como voc� bem sabe, voc� tem este aspecto de mandona, de autoritarianismo, de domina��o. Seu motivo p�r ser assim nem me interesse mais. Eu n�o quero ser v�tima de todo dia de uma sem vergonha como voc� at� a morte nos separa.
Com freq��ncia voc� disse que voc� � uma santa. Como eu gritei S�bado de manha quando a raiva que voc� produziu a noite anterior explodiu, "Voc� n�o � nada de santa. Voc� � idiota. Voc� n�o escuta. Voc� n�o aprende."
Lembra quando voc� me provocou tanto que voc� insistiu, "Voc� gosta de ser provocado, neh?" � sua culpa falando, procurando uma desculpa. Na sua vers�o, eu tenho que ser masoquista para ag�entar voc�. Mas como eu j� gritei tantas vezes, "Eu n�o gosto de ser provocado, n�o!" Voc� n�o escuta. Voc� n�o aprende. Voc� n�o muda. Voc� n�o para de me provocar.
Quando eu mudei para ca, eu te convidei morar comigo. Voc� se recusou falando que uma mo�a altamente independente de vinte anos, com quem voc� fica uma coisa de meia hora p�r dia, contou mais para voc� do que eu. Esposa n�o pode fazer isso. Voc� n�o � nada de esposa. Voc� � uma praga, uma mulher vaidosa e falsa que n�o quer mudar p�r nada e ningu�m. Fique com a Mariana, ent�o. Ela � do seu estilo. Talvez ela te empresta seus cremes e voc� pode levar ela junto para fazer unhas e cabelo toda semana.
Boa sorte.
