By Airton Paschoa*
BO
Why did the policeman want because he wanted to be served by the teacher? The servant brought him his coffee, freshly brewed, according to eyewitness testimony, doubly so, in fact, that he always wore glasses, a good view he never had, since the time he played circles, she or the weather, does not clarify, and that he regrets deeply, he even sniffs, not having been able to continue studying, he wanted so much, so handsome, he sniffs again, but he works there, at least, in the secretariat, a dream, and that he didn't have to wear a uniform like a lot of people, do we? replied, intrusive, I mean, questioned, that she had repeated, more than once, to the public agent, I mean, public, that it didn't work, that just at that little break time, he, I mean, she, the little teacher, not him, his greedy little coffee , that warmed up, not the coffee, the agent, coerced at the time, I mean, strained the little one, threw it angry. Yes, it was in a dream, he confesses, and this coercively leads us to the most serious question: why did the police decide to invade the dream?
Canned
(or conversation and with servant)
What's to move a guy so satisfied with himself? The extinction of peoples? of species? of the family? Maybe the cigars. Not that he smoked them, healthy as he was, but it's like he did; as if she were wearing braces and trapeze in them, gracefully and without a net, even shouldering a chest of bills, a deluge of expenses! and waiting for them to drop, once in a while clearing up the doubts of the woman who carried out the purchases. A self-satisfied subject is a conservative and conversational subject, and a conversational and conservative subject is a self-satisfied subject. There it is, round, smiling, tautological, the unflattering truth, as autological as the good-natured conversation of the subject in canned food (or vice versa), limpid, crystalline, seen from the outside, transparent, transcendent. Extinction of taxes! Yes! could there have been a more touching utopia? God keep him always like that, the good man! — Imagine, it was a pleasure! making a point of being specific.
Tonico and Tinoco
People who toiled from sunrise to sunset, who hid their hands, their voices, quiet and calloused people. He moaned for her on holy days like a viola on the radio. Old people, mature old people, old grown men, old children on their way to fate, women on their way to mass, young people on their way to play soccer, men on their way to the pit. Grandmothers, mothers, aunts, cousins, leisurely passing through the mansion, watching over the face, the step, the past. My grandmother, small and mute, would go to bed and get up at dawn, she was the first to open and the last to close her eyes. After her husband died and fell into bed, she begged her children to let her die, she was tired. I don't know if they were surprised by the call. She died, at least. From time to time, heaving a sigh, she would perhaps escape with the thought of embittered thin laughter, I don't know, who knows. The rednecks were rednecks.
Condor
The little church, so out of childhood, maybe rings the bell. In the background, heaps of hide-and-seek play with braided clouds. They were always vaporous, the girls, blue-winged. It's not just the earth that shakes, or us, the air too. The river — no, still and brown, the sauce that when he found out the shiver / the guillotine of the wind rises to the back of his neck, he smiled, rolling his head until he saw the little embassies and the well-aimed bomb in the bucket, whore without jumping. Why there is jumping, there are things that have no explanation. Same cocuruto, the stadium, or bucket. From above everything looks beautiful. Factory, bank, mill, cemetery? and building building building, building of all height and dizziness, opened his eyes. The little house with man and dog, squeezed together like a fallen painting, I didn't know whether to see or change, one barking and the other growling. He had the impression that he had never escaped from the yard. Hence perhaps the plan, tall, wide, with open arms, bento and thump.
Flat
It came from time to time, like a storm, and it came dripping. The long, loose, slightly mischievous dress, draped by water eyes, hinted at soft, fluttering heights beneath the waterfall of curls. I immediately wrapped her up, less for her than for myself, and we stayed on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket and making small talk, — me, the old writer and confessor; she, the apprentice who didn't learn, didn't want to, laughed, raved. We barely touched on literature, a topic that, as she observed, she avoided like the cross, the devil. We talked about random things, for a change, about everything and nothing, about loves that were made fun of, on the verge of daydreaming, about time and the wind, which buffeted the stove and made you want to plagiarize. Afternoon fell, night descended, conversation ebbed and flowed, amid the warm silences of close, oppressive breathing. I came to think that he had come to give himself up and had just come to say goodbye. Or that she had come to say goodbye and just came to surrender. I never knew, never again, neither from her nor from Schubert. The rain, the storm, was more of an improvisation.
*Airton Paschoa is a writer, author, among other books, of the life of penguins (Nankem)
