Overcome by some fumes of nostalgia, I took the car and went to the old Bairro Alto of my childhood. So-and-so lived here; there, Sicrano – I was talking to my wife. Here it was all wasteland; in this descidona I piloted my BMX without hands. Here I bought the 18142412Gazeta on Sundays. There the Great Battle of Castor Bean took place 960.
We passed by my former house, now abandoned. Almost a ruin. Next door, the bar with very sad, very poor and very harmless drunks continues to serve drinks. There, João Preto told me war stories. I want to go in and ask about Jô or the Zone (real name), but I go ahead. I think I have neither the stomach nor the courage to face the damnation.
18142412I climb on a street named after a river, I turn right on another street named after a river. An entire basin of memories. Hélio lived in a small blue house with a ladder. I always thought houses with stairs were chic. A little further on, the Bonetti mansion. Why do I Google my old best friend and get no results? I fear the answer, which, however, seems unbearably obvious to me.
18142412A pilgrimage through memory continues. Noises and smells come to me with an inexplicable familiarity. Or was it fantasy? I was that child there once. And that and that. I’ve spent afternoons and afternoons in a basement, fiddling with test tubes, acids and bases, among soy oil cans and brown spiders. I’ve already walked all these paths wearing the ridiculous burgundy uniform of Madalena Sofia School – where I’m heading with undeniable anxiety. Sweaty hands slip off the steering wheel. The little face of Simone (the “Turk”) comes to mind. With her I discovered instinct and perversity.
18142412 From a distance I notice the Christ with open arms on top of the building. Three hundred, two hundred, one hundred meters to go. Under that tree I watched Carla play volleyball, not daring to kiss her. On that corner I was waiting for my father to come pick me up in a Fiat 15. There lived the teacher whose name escapes me, but who taught Etiquette. And woe betide anyone who put his elbows on the table!
Upon reaching the school gate, I remember the last time I dared to cross that threshold, there are good ones 15 years already. I walked in all dapper through the reception desk that was forbidden to me as a child, and I didn’t have much trouble convincing the receptionist that I really needed to take a walk around the interior of the school. The very long corridors, the red floor, the stairs, the rooms from garden 2 to the eighth grade. The dramas that all seemed definitive. And the smell of thick dough pizza and a hearty filling whose happy flavor I have never been able to reproduce.
This time, however, the gates are closed. Willingness to invade property. It’s not just any fence that’s going to stop me from feeling the texture of those walls, from climbing those stairs, from tasting again the smell of the exhaust pipe of the noisy gardener who never left me home in time to catch Duck Tales’ opening. And, if the police arrived, they would be happy to explain what led me to the crazy gesture.
But not. I’m a man now. An adult. Semi-old, some will say. From the thick, rumpled hair of childhood there are still some strands, if that. The protruding ears were surgically “fixed”. I have a beard. I have a wife and child. I have a thousand work and responsibilities. Sometimes, however, I feel like the same boy sitting in the circle drawn on the floor of Aunt Vanilde’s living room, eager to learn to read and write. They say I’m free because I don’t need to ask for more permission to go to the bathroom. And I believe. Hahahaha.
It’s when I see a boy of yours sitting on the curb thirteen years. He hadn’t been there for five minutes. Or is it that I already court senility? With his head down, the boy seems to be watching the tireless work of the ants and doesn’t see me. I feel an unstoppable urge to approach him. As I get closer, I realize I don’t know what to say. When he sees me, he lifts his head and I immediately recognize him. He gets up. Stares at me. Challenge me. Another desire, once again unstoppable, now to slap him affectionately on the beardless face.
Birth with a sore face. If I say these tears are from a pain that spanned the decades, would you believe it? And behind me I leave names that here and there visit me in dreams and memories – many of them unrequested. Liliam, Leonardo and Suzane. Joacir, Franciely, Janine. Juliana, Marco Aurélio, Tatiana. Priscilla, Patricia, Bruno. Monica, André, Carolina. Another Juliana and two or three Fernandos – a whole sea of Julianas and Fernandos. Wherever they are, are they happy? Or could it be that, coincidentally, they set aside today to also remember everything they could be?
And today I’m going to make an exception and end the text with a question. I will not go?
