The Russian had no hair, no beard, no eyebrows, was perfectly glabrous.
Without being old, he had parched skin, probably a sequel to the Sao Paulo sun, seven summers with skin peeling off the skin until it reached that one, a skin that remembered a piece of paper. He would sit in his chair as soon as I started the tape recorder, and he spoke an exotic but fluent Portuguese, interrupted only for me to change the tape, or when David entered the small room. He entered without knocking, David, for no reason, left, came back with a contract for the Russian to sign and left, letting the door open.
There was no Russian any more, and he kept coming in at any time, he would talk and glance at my computer, forcing me to cover the screen with my hands, to protect my drafts.
Only in the afternoon, when he and his boys left the agency, I felt confident to touch the work. I picked up one of the twenty cassette tapes that the Russian had recorded, vaguely listened to his voice, laid my fingers on the keyboard, and I was a blond, pink man seven years ago when I sailed from Arkhangelsk and entered the Santos Bay. I knew nothing of this city, nor did I intend to learn the native language, I was sent to put order in the Company, and in the Company only Russian was spoken. I did not expect to meet Maria, who introduced me to the Sucesso, a bar where she drank beer and sang sambas all night long. There I began in the language in which I dared to write this book with my own fist, which would have been unimaginable seven years ago when I sailed from Arkhangelsk and entered Santos Bay. At first contact, the language, the climate, the food, the city, the people, everything, everything seemed so absurd and hostile that I fell out of bed, and as I got up a few days later, I saw my naked body horrified and my hair loose on the sheet. Then I met Maria's body and went to study the country, went to the bar, went to the favela, went to the football, took time to go to the beach because I was ashamed. I always turned off the lights to sleep with Maria, but she smoothed my whole body, said that I was as hot and tender as a snake. A brunette like Maria would have been unimaginable seven years ago when I sailed from Arkhangelsk. I would have married her in Sion Chapel if she had not switched me for a German cook, and then I was all bald, I lost even the peas, the hair of the armpit, everything, and the doctor diagnosed a nervous alopecia areata. It would be a temporary baldness, but it was not, and I ended up getting used to it without the hairs that I did not need any more than Maria, and even without Maria I got used to it. I forgot Maria as I had already forgotten Arkhangelsk, and I left the Company to found an NGO, or rather, to pick up woman on Ibirapuera Park, which would have been unimaginable seven years ago when I entered Santos Bay, and entranced, lost all hair.
My text was hooked, slippery, not evolving.
Something bothered me, bizarre words came to my mind, I was strumming my fingers on the keyboard, and at the end of the night, I threw the work away. I would come home and find my place on the bed occupied by a fat child. With Valentina, by the way, I did not even address this issue anymore, because she always had an answer for everything. In addition to being huge, the boy was about five years old and he did not say anything, he only says mummy, nanny, pee, and Valentina said that Aristotle was mute until eight, I do not know where she got it. And in the middle of the night, he took up the mania of stammering things with no nexus, inventing annoying sounds. I had no peace in my bed, I held myself, I bit myself. This could not continue.
"Shut up, for God's sake!" I finally burst.
Finally silence, but Valentina was in his defence.
"He is only imitating you."
"Imitating who?"
"Imitating you, you have now begun to talk asleep!"
"I?"
"You."
"Since when?"
"Since you arrived from Malaysia."
That´s all I need. I discovered at that moment that in my dreams I spoke Chinese.
The passage through Shanghai had dissipated in my brain. When I remembered it, it was like a quick crash, a frame that cracked the memory ribbon. It was an illusory moment, perhaps, that I refused to talk to Valentina or anyone else. It is true that Valentina did not bother to know what great writers were the ones I met every year at the conferences that nobody reported. Perhaps it was to defend herself from fantasizing the adventures of her husband around the world, poets, playwrights, anthropologists who made me lose my mind and return ticket. So it would be foolish to report, without conviction, to a Valentina who did not want to listen, my solitary dawn in Shanghai. And today that Shanghai would be dead and buried, were not for the boy to lift it out of my dream. An attempt to get closer to his father, I realized immediately, and I had rejected with inexplicable brutality. At half-past six the following mornings, when mother and son woke up with the alarm clock, I forced myself to my feet as well. I began to dedicate to the boy the time I had left before work, used in general to stretch myself, to think about life and to read newspapers in the bathroom.
Now, when Valentina was on TV, I stayed in the pantry having coffee with my son. Watching him around with ice cream and cokes, I tried to restore the lost features on his flaccid face, and I admitted that they were those of a very handsome boy. With the tip of a napkin, I wiped the cornflakes of his mouth and found his fleshy lips like the ones of his mother, as were her black eyes. I was to remove the brown curls that hid part of his cheeks, but he repressed me in time, running away. For more than a month, I waited for him to repeat the words of my dream, only then would I feel redeemed. "Speak, my son," I almost begged, holding his wrists, but at that point, he would just burst into tears, call his mother, call the nanny. And at least the nanny shared my afflictions with the boy's aphasia. She said that when she was new to the job, she had already warned Valentina: a baby who is reflected in the mirror has the speech tied. Valentina did not laugh when I told her and assured me that the boy, when far from me, made great progress. She was possessive, it meant that my constant assistance was capable of suffocating him. She being right, or no, I went back to the sheets later. The idea of the Chinese words, however, still came to me in bed, in the bathroom, and above all, in the agency, especially in front of the computer with its empty ice-coloured screen. And it happened one day with David invaded my room while shaking a newspaper.
"Look, man, your gringo is turning into a star!"
In a column of cultural subjects, it was reported that Dimitri Mayakovsky, a Sao Paulo-based businessman, it was giving the finishing touches to his romance book. I was frightened, I thought to call the Russian, I had to let him know that the work was a little late, but my eyes slipped to another note at the bottom of the page: the emeritus novelist, Zhu Hong Zhi, or most commonly known as I Eat Tomatoes, will be honoured tonight at the Chinese consulate.