Chapter V - Blue Flowers

He thought about the difficulty he’d had in focusing for the minutes in the car that morning, perhaps longer, when he was shut away in the car, in the garage, the difficulty he’d had in starting the day, after the hours dragged past as he asked about something at a meeting at work, in English, an incredibly important meeting, in a suit, in a tie, first thing in the morning. He’d acted like an idiot, he knew, his thoughts distant and fragmented, his colleagues throwing him questioning looks: So what was that about? someone had asked him discreetly as they left. Nothing, he replied, escaping as quickly as he could, leaving no time for any more questions.

So what did he mean by his behavior, then? That was what everyone was wondering, that was what he was wondering himself—was he planning to get fired? Other people would have lost their jobs for much less, but he had all that efficiency, that punctuality, that responsibility. He had been on edge for several days now. And he also felt a certain inexplicable irritation. A kind of bad mood. He went to the restroom, took off his tie, loosened his collar, washed his face, an attempt to wake up once and for all.

On the way to his office, he registered the intern who always walked past him unnoticed, but today he stopped by her desk. He looked at her closely. Daniela seemed just out of adolescence, her face elastic and rounded, smiling at anyone who passed. He came a little closer, but her attention was on her computer.

“Daniela, what do you think about receiving letters?”

She looked up, intrigued.

“Letters?”

“Yeah, letters, I don’t mean e-mails, faxes, text messages. I’m talking about letters on paper, the kind you send in the mail.”

She still didn’t react. He insisted:

“Have you ever received a personal letter?”

“I don’t remember, maybe, why?”

“And what did you think?”

“About what? About the letter?”

“No, not about the letter itself, about the fact of receiving it.”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember, if I got one it was a long time ago, maybe when I was a kid.”

“Right, but if you got a letter now? If you arrived home tonight and when you went to look in your mailbox you found a letter. With your name on it, your address, a stamp, a postmark, or without a postmark, that doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t know. It would depend on the letter, what it said.”

“A love letter, say.”

“A love letter, oh, I’d think that was romantic.”

“Would you fall in love?”

“I don’t know, but I imagine that if it’s a love letter, I would be in love already, wouldn’t I?”

“Not necessarily, Daniela, let’s say it was a love letter from someone you knew only superficially, would you fall in love?”

“I don’t know, it would depend on the person, on what the letter said . . . oh, I don’t know, so many things.”

“But you’d think it was romantic.”

“Yes.”

“Would you think it was beautiful?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And the person, what would you think of them?”

“I don’t know, it would depend on the person.”

“Would you find them interesting?”

“Yes, maybe.”

“And would you think they were different from other people?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“Thank you, Daniela, that was all I wanted to know.”

The intern followed him with her gaze until he entered his office. She flicked her hair back several times, cracked her knuckles several times. She opened her drawer, took out a notepad, only to put it straight back in again. She closed the drawer and tried to focus back on her computer.

In his office, he was working on a report that he should have been finishing, he made a few phone calls, replied to e-mails, tidied some of the mess on his desk and went out for lunch. He got a roasted chicken from the bakery. It had been years since he’d eaten a roasted chicken. He sat on one of the stools at the counter. Rice, beans, and French fries on the side. He thought he could eat that forever, without any trouble at all. He was a man of simple tastes, none of this luxury restaurant business, women’s luxuries, like his ex-wife, Fabiane and every woman he knew, the women who would never be satisfied with a chicken from the bakery, to whom a bakery chicken would even be an insult, a mark of disrespect. Even Daniela, the intern who couldn’t say how she’d feel if she received a letter, would have looked at his plate scornfully. Maybe even Manuela, his three-year-old daughter.

The world of women is a closed-off world, he thought, a world apart. And he was surrounded by women on all sides; unlike certain men who felt more at ease with them, he didn’t, and it bothered him, that sense that nothing he was or did would be enough. The truth was, women scared him, and at the same time, led him to experience feelings that were confusing and contradictory.

Instead of going back to work after lunch, he took his car and drove around and around the city, giving no thought to whether or not he should be doing this, just the idea that he needed to get far away, to leave, without really leaving. He called his assistant and notified her that something unexpected had come up, that he’d be back later. He was in the car now, closed off, hermetic, safe in the city. After a while, he parked close to a little square, got out of the car, considered sitting on a bench or playing checkers with the retirees, waiting there for the day to go by. He considered returning home, or even going back to the office. But he ended up going into a snack bar, ordering a random soda; the guy behind the counter looked at him with a smile. He was opposite a post office, he noticed with some surprise. He leaned on the snack bar counter and stayed there, just watching the people going in and out of the post office. He was seeing a lot of retirees, he thought, only retirees write letters, have time to go to the post office, retirees, students, maybe someone looking for work, for an internship. He was imagining a young woman, attractive, well dressed—is that what she’d be like? Like all women. He was imagining his ex-wife. For some reason whenever he imagined a woman it was always the same woman, but not this time, she was somebody different this time, she wasn’t Fabiane, or his ex, or any of the girls he kept at a prudent distance; he realized how hard it was to imagine a different somebody. Maybe the woman from the movie he’d seen the other day, just one of the five he’d rented, in a red dress, a folder under her arm, the noise of her heels on the little sidewalk paving stones, a woman who fixes her hair before walking into the post office.

The post office is a small one, and from where he’s sitting in the snack bar, it’s possible to see the people standing in line, it would be possible to see a woman who is well dressed but different from the others, inside her folder a blue envelope, the careful rounded hand, her long black hair tied at the nape of her neck; she looks from side to side, perhaps knowing that she’s being watched, perhaps looking for somebody, a certain ambiguity about her, she looks one way as though looking the other, her slim fingers holding the envelope—a whole scene that he has imagined. Watching from the snack bar, his soda untouched on the counter, he imagines that the woman would wear a tight skirt, a silk blouse and high-heeled sandals. She might be a secretary on her lunch break: the woman wears glasses with heavy black frames, she looks serious, unattainable, but her body has a certain voluptuousness that gives her away. She walks into the post office, waits in line. When she reaches the counter, she takes the blue envelope out of the folder, hands it to the clerk. The clerk remarks that the sender’s name is missing. The woman is giving off a slight sense of concern, but only to anybody looking very closely. Her reply to the clerk is confident:

“No, it’s right the way it is.”

The clerk doesn’t seem very convinced. She’s young and uncertain, she thinks maybe it’s illegal to send a letter without a named sender, she’s uncertain.

“I think that’s not allowed, not having a sender.”

“What do you mean, ‘not allowed’? Since when?”

“It is not permitted,” replies the clerk, somewhat intimidated by the woman’s self-assurance.

“Of course it is. I come here every day. Call your superior over, I’d like to speak to him.”

The woman looks even more beautiful at this moment, he thinks. And he thinks that the woman has started going back to resembling his ex-wife, or Fabiane. That arrogant, almost insolent manner, the energy that used to intimidate him. When all he wanted was a certain something in their eyes, someone who has nothing to lose, someone who has lost her fear. That’s what they’re like, people who have lost their fear, sharp and sweet at the same time. Maybe that was what attracted him in those letters, this woman who was sharp and sweet. The presence he tried to imagine, without success. The clerk might have thought or felt something similar; she told herself it was best not to seek out trouble on her very first week at work. She thought it best to give in.

“All right, that won’t be necessary.” The clerk took the letter and franked it, a mark that was rather faded but on which it was possible to see the location of the post office.

The woman said nothing, she didn’t thank the clerk, didn’t complain. She just opened her bag, took out a small leather purse and paid the amount due. Then she left the post office, he imagined, walking down the street in the haughty manner of someone who is fearless. Then he tried not to think about her anymore, about what might have been an explanation, even if he ruined it at every moment; he went back to thinking about his ex-wife and Fabiane. His ex-wife and Fabiane, as though they were one and the same person, so alike, deep down, the same braveries and cowardices. Maybe we always choose the same person, he thought, looking at the glass of soda.

He thought Manuela was just like his ex-wife, who was just like Fabiane, who was just like all the possible women in his imagination, and Manuela was only three years old. At fifteen she would be called Manu for good, she would have an unacceptable boyfriend and she’d constantly be hooking her red hair behind her ear. At fifteen she would display evident indifference toward him. And he would see her all ready to go out, would ask, Manuela, where are you going? and she’d reply, a note of boredom in her voice, You know, out, her eyes always looking off somewhere, and chewing gum. He’d ask with whom, she’d say, Some friends; he’d insist, Which friends? and she would say, with a mixture of boredom and impatience, You know, some friends of mine, her eyes always looking off somewhere, and chewing gum, the noise of the gum being chewed bothering him more and more; he’d tell her to throw the gum away, she’d throw it on the floor, and he’d want to whack her and would regret never having given her a whack. But at fifteen he would already have given up. And what was more, she was only a three-year-old girl. He preferred not to think about Manuela.

He felt uneasy. He paid for the soda, for the parking spot, got back into the car. He spent the rest of the afternoon driving around the city with no fixed route, just this, the closed-off car and the city out there. He thought he would arrive home, but kept putting it off and at the same time he was anxious to get home, because he’d been feeling that anxiety for days, a difficulty in focusing.

Even at work he had been making plans, that as soon as he got home he’d talk to the doorman, he’d get the address of the former tenant and at last he’d return the letters, he’d say he opened them just in case, all of them, trying to find his name, a new address, or he’d just say he had opened them and that was that, not explaining too much. He’d arrive home, talk to the doorman and then, feeling calmer, free, revived, he’d call Fabiane, apologize, invite her for dinner, to go for a drive, whatever she wanted. He would say that he had been confused, some trouble at the office, but that he wasn’t confused anymore. Anxiety, he thought, would get him to call Fabiane. Even while knowing that, no, he would arrive home without speaking to anyone, he’d open the door, deposit the correspondence on the table and turn on the TV; he’d put a movie in the DVD player and let his thoughts be extinguished before they even took shape.