III

‘Is this right?’

‘What?’

‘The name on your ID here.’

‘Believe it or not, it is. The registrar was a bit out of it and typed an extra “m”.’

‘Your dad could have fixed it. Or you.’

‘True, but I kept Antonym. I’ve thought about correcting it, but this is a country of even weirder names … Does it bother you?’

‘Why should it bother me?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Bernadette.’

‘That’s funny.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve always had the impression that there was an “r” missing in Bernadette. That the right spelling should be “Bernardette”. You know, when I was a child, I got it into my head that I should be a devotee of the saint. I saw a film about her that had a big effect on me.’

‘I really liked the Infant Jesus of Prague.’

‘The one with the fingers.’

‘Yes.’

‘I have something extra, and you seem to be missing something.’

He was going round and round in lethargic circles, reliving his first conversation with his ex-wife, but this was shattered by the sound of a car alarm. Silence had abandoned the world once and for all. Startled by his racing heart, and the bitter taste of barbiturate-induced sleep, he got up. Antonym’s intention, in deciding to take this kind of medication regularly, hadn’t been to escape his crisis; rather, it had been to put off dealing with it. Abolish, eliminate, cancel all and any drama of existence; reduce life to a white square on a white background — that was his motto.

When he opened the window, and the white of the bedclothes blinded him, he thought he’d achieved his objective, without realising that the daylight was merely blotting out his soul, hiding the ghosts that inhabited the folds of his messy sheets. With a stupid smile, he scratched his big toe, and headed for the bathroom.

The illusion only lasted a minute. The maids’ symmetrical tidying caused him discomfort for the first time. Was Bernadette gone forever? With her knickers hanging in the shower, the cabinet drawers half-open, the uncapped eau de cologne. He’d been vegetating in solitude for months. Antonym gazed at himself between the specks of toothpaste on the bathroom mirror. He’d never asked himself: Who am I? Rather, he’d asked: Is that really me? It was as if the face he saw masked an unfathomable essence that couldn’t be recognised in his features, gestures, emotions, and thoughts. And the terror of this brief lucidity killed him a little.

His own Pontius Pilate, he rinsed his hands and eyes. While he was on his way to the kitchen, the telephone rang.

‘Antonym?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Hemistich.’

‘It’s been donkey’s … ’

‘I know, I reckon it’s been, what … eight years since we last saw each other?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s hard to be your friend. You don’t call anyone; you always have to be called.’

‘I know, that’s just me.’

‘And here I am once again. Do you know why? Because you’re worth it.’

‘I hope to let you down.’

‘You’re worth it.’

‘My phone number, how’d you … ’

‘Bernadette. I ran into her at a dinner. A work thing, I think.’

‘You, at one of those dinners?’

‘It was at my restaurant.’

‘…’

‘Hello?’

‘I’m here … Your restaurant?’

‘There are those who call it a steakhouse. Let me give you the address.’

Hemistich remembered in detail things that everyone else had forgotten. Figures of speech, for example. He didn’t need to look in a dictionary to know what ‘anastrophe’ meant. This made him self-assured. Poet, writer, translator, editor, Master of Philosophy — the biographical footnotes of his articles varied according to need. They contrasted with his fidelity to certain stylistic additives and lubricants in his musings on everything. But the great feat of his career had been the timely domestication of his caustic sense of humour. When he was still young he had almost lost everything after having called a well-known concrete poet ‘(in)significant’. He was funny and a good conversationalist, but too intense. Hard to live with. He managed to be eternally surrounded by friends, due to the fact that they were never the same ones.

Antonym was shocked. Hemistich Borba the Second, the quintessential Brazilian intellectual, had ended up running a steakhouse.