Isaura came into the bar as if she were entering through the very last door and we were the gods awaiting her on the other side. Outside, the sky was all blue, and the bazaar was buzzing with people.
The woman’s arrival caused my heart to miss a beat, reined in by the shock. I listened to my inner turmoil, blood to one side, veins to the other.
It was because I hadn’t seen Isaurinha for more than twenty years, more than half the time I had been accumulating existences. Suddenly, memories came to me as if images and sounds were tumbling chaotically into my heart.
It was in colonial times. Isaura and I were servants in the same house. She was a housemaid, and I worked outside. We were both kids, more of an age to be playing. At the end of the afternoon, when she stopped work, she would come and tell me all the news, the secrets of the lives of the whites. It was at the hour when I had to take the dogs for a walk. She would come with me, and we would walk around the block while she made me laugh with all her stories. She told me the boss would push her into dark corners and squeeze her up against the walls. There wasn’t a wall she hadn’t lain on while standing. All that made her sick, caused her stomach to churn. Who could she complain to? Would God listen to me? I used to dream that I plucked up courage to confront the boss. But I would fall asleep without even daring to complete the dream.
And now, here was Isaura interrupting my life, bursting into the beer hall. She had hardly changed, time hadn’t reshaped her. She was as thin as ever. Her eyes gleamed like burning embers. A cigarette between her fingers rattled my recollections. As if the centre of my memory were a puff of smoke. Yes, the smoke from the cigarette that, twenty years before, she had brought through the back door of the bosses’ house, where I was waiting for her. She would do this: she would pick up a cigarette end casually left in an ashtray in the lounge and take a few deep drags. She would fill her cheeks with smoke and then come and meet me in the yard. She had a clownish air about her, her face double its size like that of an owl.
She would come up right next to me, face to face. Then, mouth to mouth, my cupped lips would receive hers. Isaura would blow her smoke into me. I would feel my inner being warmed, my saliva at boiling point. Then, it wasn’t just my mouth: my whole body heated up. That was how we smoked, sharing our breath, the mouth of one crossing the other’s breast.
What is it that we were practising? Mouth-to-mouth fumigation? One thing was for sure: I dwelt in the heavens at those moments. Isaura exhaled eternities into me, her vaporous lips brushing my heart. And all that in the hut at the back of the house.
The procedure was a straightforward one: Isaura would clip off the ends of cigarettes, butt ends in their death throes. Isaura didn’t seem to value our exchange of lips. What she loved was tobacco, gradually becoming addicted to the smoky vapours. As for me and the unloading of it into my chest, that was just a meaningless by-product of the process.
Until there came a time when the boss caught us in the act. Insults rained down on us, accompanied by blows. I immediately excused Isaura, and took all the blame. I made up my version of events: I had assaulted her and forced her against her will. I was expelled, given the sack that very day. I didn’t even say goodbye to Isaurinha. I left with my belongings under a gloomy light. And I never heard from Isaura again.
Twenty years later, and Isaura was playing havoc with my afternoon, bursting into the bar. And what’s more, she had a lit cigarette between her fingers.
The woman sat down at my table and, without looking at me, began to talk. She indulged her memories amid puffs of smoke and mouthfuls of beer.
—I’ve got so many memories. One life wouldn’t be long enough to talk about all of them.
—That’s good, Isaura.
—But my favourite memory is you, my poor old Raimundo.
—Don’t say that.
—I’m telling you: All that smoke I blew into you, do you know all I really wanted, and nothing else? It was a kiss.
I quivered. Was that a knife blade lacerating me? But she went on, continuing what she had to say. Yes, indeed, she had once loved me. She’d never been open about it, for the sake of decency. She was so skinny that it seemed ill-mannered to reveal herself too much. But she had chosen the best aspects of her beauty for me, like someone who has gifts but doesn’t know who to give them to.
—Why, Isaura? Why didn’t you look for me?
—Because I stopped loving you. It was because of that lie you told in order to protect me. That affected me really badly.
From the moment I had defended her, her feelings had plummeted, the mere residue of a shadow. Why the offence? I shall never know. Sitting there, Isaura would never give me an explanation. As if it wasn’t just time that had passed by, but a whole life. She got up, pushed her chair in as if tidying the furniture were the most important thing in this world. And she headed for the exit, while my anguish returned as if, for the second time, my life were draining away through that open doorway. I barely recognized my voice:
—Blow me another puff of smoke, Isaura. Just another little puff.
She looked at me, her eyes so distant they didn’t even seem to focus. She took a deep drag, fought back a cough, and came straight over to me. When she stuck her lips upon mine, the following happened: the woman turned into smoke and vanished first into the air and then, ever so slowly, inhaled into my chest. That afternoon, I smoked Isaurinha.