If nothing is repeatable, does everything repeat itself? That’s the question I asked in catechism. And I pressed for even clearer answers:
—Has life, whether saintly or godly, got another version to it?
Father Bento didn’t even want to listen: the merest doubt constituted disobedience. Firstly, once bitten twice shy. And then, a sin is hardly worth it if you can confess it. And Bento warned: you can’t enter Heaven any old way. Up there, at the heavenly gates, due permission has to be granted. Then I asked: who does the choosing at the entrance to Paradise? A qualified doorman? A tribunal of venerable judges?
Years passed, doubts persisted. And I still need the matter clarified. That’s why I’ve come back to you, sir, so that you can listen to me, even if it’s only out of religious pretense. Please, mister priest, tell me this: this business of entry into Paradise, is it a question of race, or because we’re not just any Tom, Dick, or Harry? Blacks like me, am I saved, do we get a license? Or do folk need to pay to grease some palms, get someone to put a good word in to whoever’s in charge?
I’m a bigmouth, but it all stems from my doubts, my good sir. Questions leave my throat aching. For example: can someone go straight from their village to Heaven? Just like that, without having to pass through the capital or carry a travel permit, duly issued and stamped by the appropriate authorities?
And then there’s this: I don’t speak English. Even in Portuguese, I can only scribble things without sticking to the lines. I can just imagine seeing the sign there, like in the films: welcome to Paradise! And I won’t be able to read anymore. They might well invite me to speak. It’s like giving a loudspeaker to a mute.
My hope is that it’ll happen like in the dance at the Railwaymen’s Club. It happened so long ago that I need to journey beyond memory. It was the end-of-year dance. You know only too well, Father: the year isn’t like the sun, which is born for everyone. The year ends only for some and begins for fewer people every time.
I knew they weren’t going to allow me in. But my love for the mulata, Margarida, was greater than the certainty of my exclusion. And so, all bashful, wearing borrowed clothes, I lined up outside. And I was the only non-white in the vicinity. To my astonishment, the doorman didn’t seem surprised. Placing his hand on my shoulder, he said:
—Go on in, lad.
He no doubt thought I was a barman. Who knows, maybe the doorman at the gates to Heaven will take me for someone else and let me in, thinking I’m going to work as one of the servants?
For what’s happening, my most esteemed Father, is that I’m dying, leaking blood as my life wishes to let go of me. Do you see this dagger? It wasn’t this that I stabbed myself with. For a long time now, I’ve picked it up by the knife rather than the handle. I’ve held the blade so much that my hands can now cut by themselves. I’ve turned into an instrument for slashing. In fact, you know this defect of mine, sir, these fingers that don’t obey me, this hand that isn’t mine, as if it only allowed my already dead soul the power to act. If I’ve killed myself this time, it’s because of the sharpness of my fingers. Don’t be like that, don’t give up. Remember what I asked you, Father?
—I want to be a saint, mister priest.
And you laughed, sir. I couldn’t be a saint. And why? Because a saint, you said, is a good person.
—And am I not good?
—But a saint is a special person, more special than anyone else.
—And I, Father, I am especially unique.
I didn’t understand: a saint is someone who abdicates from Life. In my case, Father, Life has abdicated from me. Yes, I understand now: saints are sanctified by death. While I sanctified life, that’s what I did.
Now, I’m reaching the end. A saint begins when he finishes. Yet I never began. But this isn’t the first time death has revealed itself in me. My heart died on that faraway night of the dance. I got into the dance at the Railwaymen’s Club, that’s true. But I remained barred from the mulata Margarida’s heart. The girl didn’t even regale me with a cold, absent look from afar. She was a white girl among white men. But then she dropped a glass, which shattered on the floor. And I, to assuage her embarrassment, bent down to pick up the pieces, gathering them together in my hand. That was when the security guard, summoned by her young champions, grabbed my arm and forced me to my feet. The man pulled my hands so hard and squeezed me with such vigour that the splinters of glass cut deep into me. That was when I slashed my flesh, nerves, and tendons. And the blood of a Black man flowed like an illness staining the white men’s immaculate domain.
What caused me the most suffering, dear Father, wasn’t the blow. Nor was it even the vexation. It was Margarida watching me being ejected, without any kind of protest. I suffered so much because of her lack of interest that my soul imitated the glass: it fell, smashed to pieces. When they ejected me, I was no longer aware of myself, I had taken leave of myself for good.
Now that I’ve got so little time left, all my heart hears is the music from that dance where the mulata Margarida awaits me, her arms stretched out in justification of my postponed life. I’m entering the dance hall and, forgive any lack of respect if I take issue with you, but I no longer have the strength to say anything else. Only to dismantle that certainty of yours: life does have a second version. If love, contrite at not loving, so wishes.